35

Our agreement was, if we are single at 35 then we would marry one another. So sure that our friendship would endure whatever life threw our way. I’ve battled back and forth for years at this point how to cross this bridge. How to reach out when it came time. I’m still not sure if I’m ready. That’s what has brought me here, back to this place you introduced me to in one of my darkest points in life. The anonymity always felt safe.

I have a terrible tendency to abandon things instead of facing the difficult parts. It’s always less traumatic for me to walk away and pretend it didn’t happen. The truth is though, I felt like you betrayed me. To sit there on my couch and talk negatively about someone you would go on vacation with not a week later, knowing how badly they had hurt me at that time, I felt betrayed. I always said that if someone will do it with you, they’ll do it to you. So I got up from a table I felt I would be the subject of the conversation after I left, and I decided I wouldn’t return.

You were, and still are, one of the few people who ever knew me entirely. I could be the bare bones, raw, unfiltered me- and you never shied away. You held me when I cried. You sheltered me when I was completely and utterly broken. You were my rock so many nights. It killed me to leave you. It made me strong to have to go on without you though.

I have written all this with the hope that you still check it from time to time. That maybe you will see it and it will provide you a bit of closure I may have deprived you of. Maybe one day we will get together for lunch and mend things, or maybe you will read this and decide you have no interest- who knows. The universe, life, is funny that way. I still have so much love for you. I am still in the process of establishing who I am first though. Be bold, be brave, and know that you always have been and always will be a warrior. Love you.

And I go up five milligrams, four days after my initial dose, because the methadone starts to wear off around sixteen or eighteen hours after I'm dosed, and I'm a shaking sweaty irritable mess by the time I walk into the clinic. I should have gone up sooner, but my stomach needed time to adjust, as did my brain. My daily unshakable habit invilved me doing 2.5-10 milligrams of oxycodone at a time, repeat and repeat all day long. Taking thirty five milligrams of methadone is like taking 67.5 milligrams of oxycodone, all at once. It has a tendancy to knock me flat on my ass.