Love Found

Love found; Love lost; Love found.

"You never know how much you love something until it's gone."

Happiness thrived in my hands only to be ripped from my grasp. Before I possessed the antidote to cure all my addictions, I engaged in a lifestyle similar to that of a hardcore druggie. I seized anyone or anything I desired. Then I met her, my cure, and she changed my life for the benefit of my physical health and moral development. She touched my life, but she left as quickly as she entered.

I started out my high school career in a tight spot to begin with; starting with an addiction to cigarettes that progressed to marijuana and alcohol. From there, my life spiraled into an abyss of self-destruction, and at the bottom, in the darkest corners of my existence, I consumed morphine daily with the constant thought of suicide. Morphine supplied me with a temporary dreamlike escape, but with death I'd sleep forever. Half way through my ninth grade year, I woke up briefly from my synthetic sleep. The reality I awakened to was a delinquent record with my name printed at the top. Too high and drunk to recall the charges against me that led to my arrest, I laid in my cell, waking up to the morning, with faint memories of breaking a cops jaw. During my darkest days, she tried to reach out to me but I ignored her every attempt. My interests rested in the twenty other girls on hand that I desired by night.

Seven months later, when my probation and house arrest time expired, I disregarded the recent past. I picked up right where I left off the year before, and continued my playboy lifestyle.  Eventually, summer ended and I found myself in the same familiar dark void, but this time a clear difference separated now from the past. Instead of thoughts of suicide, thoughts of her persisted and persisted in the back of my mind. I finally gave in. We started a relationship that rooted from true intentions, and I believed our relationship could thrive forever. The feelings she planted in me bloomed within me and healed my infected lifestyle. She cured me and changed my thoughts on life. Some people go to rehab or use some sort of medicine to suppress the addiction, but I had her and for awhile her love-antidote worked. Within two months of dating her I limited my drug intake, from all the hardcore drugs, to a simple four cigarettes a day, and sometimes none. Then, in the prime of our relationship, something happened that neither of us could help.

She turned eighteen and I was just a mere sixteen years of age. Everything that we worked to archive changed because of a two year age difference. We planned our lives together, but her parents claimed the courtship wasn't legal. They forced us to end the relationship. I couldn't justify it, but I turned to drugs for support. I stayed high to numb her memories… not for the feeling of being high alone. I wanted to slumber in my drug induced sleep without any concerns for mending the wounds of our relationship. I supplied myself with my own form of self-therapy, and the drugs worked. Still, I remembered our days together and her presence continued to linger with me even with my own determination to forget her. She revealed a life for me where I thrived, and my whole-being knew that. I already tasted the nectar of a fruitful life, and she possessed the seeds. I needed her and losing her wasn't an option. I broke away from my destruction and went to find her love again.

© 2007 Daniel P Nagel