I have a story to tell. I picked up a man that was addicted to drugs, he sincerely asked for my help and we got along so well for such a long time, to the point where we would trust no one else. I sobered him up, picked him up when he fell and bailed him out of jail a few times. In the present now, he has relapsed after over two years of sobriety. The tobacco store released a new product that is legal and similiar to marijuana and once he smoked it, it was back to being a drunk. He has uprooted and destroyed the trust he gained with the professionals he was working with, refuses to go to the hospital and would really like me to get him one last beer, one more.

He has went through a lot of phases in his recent drug use, from wanting to board a bus headed for anywhere but here, to never wanting me to leave his side as his protector. He is extremely sensitive when sober and has made pleas with me to always watch over him, to always be there for him. When he first relapsed I was so angry at him that I kicked him out of my house. He came back saying he was exercising his right that he was on the lease and could stay here and that he was upset that I had kicked him out and hugged me until I relented of my anger. He has relapsed ever since, getting bad advice from case workers and counselors, and at one point the head of a PSR agency knowing that he was very well going to be jailed or hospitalized actually encouraged the idea that he hop on a bus headed for Washington state by the ocean for him to be tossed around by the waves of alcohol begging on the streets and called it a lifestyle choice that she can not speak badly against. To be a vagabond with all the nightmares associated with it, possibly ending in death never to be reborn again or lifted up by a vision of Jesus, a vision to live again.

I convinced him to stay and am working on possibly hoping that his appointment today with his medication provider, a wise woman will make him break down and realize he needs help and that his support is here. His judgments are so clouded right now that all he can hope for is that I sustain his life through these tragic moments that are terrifying to behold. I no longer know what to do about him. My family says to desert him and take a vacation to one of their houses in other states to gain better perspective on the situation but his cry, his moaning about me, his protector will frighten me the rest of my life, because I naively took him on, as a project. Someone I could help.

A friend of mine that I met through Facebook says that in Buddhist teaching and even in some Christian teaching it is right to bear suffering, to learn to gain perspective to not escape this problem and forever ignore it, but it is taking on new direction each day, like Alice going through the looking glass to be absorbed into a world where Americans are cyborgs, and there is no way out except if Gabriel the angel comes and delivers both my roommate and I to Heaven, as something he dreams of and sometimes I do as well. I feel with or without Ted I am destined to watch the end of the world take place in a kindof deep trotted depression that I know well where I want support but refuse, for no one will witness my ugly moments, my terrible times that medication can't seem to erase no matter how numb I can make myself with as needed pills. It is a terrible story, a terrible scenario that I am enduring, and for what I do not know.

I am lost now, I have lived in three countries, visited five, always with the concept that I would be one of them. I would acclimate myself to blending into the background of the city so well, people would take me as one who has lived there all his life. Now I am where I was born with an annoying family and only a mother that seems to be able to counsel me. I ignore my actual counselor for I am mute when it comes to talking to her. The same nurse that may or may not convince Ted his need for hospitalization is trying to find a suitable counselor, someone to break my own mind games, my intelligence and teach me something new in how to live without an Apocalypse, without doom.

Still the roommate lingers on, a fragment of the person he tried to be, was encouraged to be. He has strength at times and it is that I fear, for him to finally mistrust me, for everything I have put him throuh in the name of trying to get him to believe there is life after drinking, there is a life to live that is worth it. He gave it his best shot but the past drug use, the current alcohol abuse clouds his mind, to being a small child, a child that needs a parent always. My options have failed. His case working agency cares not to help him, and I myself doubt I can. It all rests on a nurse practioner that is very old, to tell him that maybe this time is it, maybe this time is the last time to drink. I can't hold his hand any longer, in some instances carrying his money for him to prevent himself from drinking from having my authority to prevent him. I have lost my strength. I feel that I can only regain my strength in his absense. I even though of dropping him off in Vancouver, BC because of a TV special I watched about a man that ran an addiction hospital with great results, because they let it flow out naturally, they let the person speak their last words before accepting a sober life. The state I am in does not want him, the country does not him and maybe there he could find himself. Tear up his passport and stay at the hospital until a greater people decided to care for him, because it is out of the possibility for me to any longer.

And what of me, will I just stay here to be pestered by a middle class family that prizes itself with small parties and irritations to my skin. I wish more than anything to have constant theological discussions with people in Europe as my treatment plan, my escape plan, but it is impossible for I am as unwanted as my roommate is. We are trapped forever in time in this situation, this situation that never resolves itself. My future will forever have his soul screaming to me, from afar, whether he is near, in a hospital or dead from alcohol poisoning. He actually believes that no one will ever help him, despite the fact I spent almost seven years with him, though not trained in helping people, doing my best, sometimes being manipulative. It is all hell to me. The present, the future. All I remember is that when I was younger I felt strong emotions of love and strength that I have not experienced in such a long time that I have forgotten why they even happened to me at all.

Thanks for listening.

Grithnir