Big Mystery Pt. 2

So, what would I have done differently?

And how do I deal with my regret?

I don't hold on to my regret. I don't tresure it. I hate it. I never want to be old, and looking back, and filled with it, either.

I try to make sure that whatever I did, when faced with the same situation, I do differently the next time.

I figure that hey, I sucked the last time, if I suck this time, at least I tried something different.

I feel like I owed that little girl, the one who's 9 now, more.
I feel like I helped her mother down the path to self-destruction, by standing by and 'helping' when she fucked up.

It haunts me that years ago, I didn't look into her eyes, say

"You're killing yourself and I can't keep watching. Clean up or Get Out"

Instead, I looked into those big brown pools of manipulative pain, heard the suicide threats, and kept 'helping'.

I didn't want her to die.
I didn't want her to be mad, cut herself off from me, and fade into that large, black night.
I thought I could help save her.

My regrets are mixed with a weird sort of anger that I let myself be played. I let myself think that I could save someone who had absolutely no plans to save herself.

She worshipped at the altar of good looking corpses, and dead poets.
She lived for the feeling of not feeling at all.
Her demons were enormous, all encompassing, and something I cannot even imagine.
She had been degraded in horrible ways by the time she was 12. At 13 her mom and her did coke together. She was using herion and tricking by the time she was 15.

Her photos are still all over the internet. She has weird stalker-fans who want to know where she is.
I google her name to see if she's dead yet.

I wonder.
I wonder that had we not been such a soft landing, always there, always willing to give shelter both physically and emotionally...

Would she have hit a different bottom, earlier?
Would she have not lived in such a fucked up way, for so long? Would that have given her the strenght to save herself? Get some help?

Would she have checked herself into a psych ward that day I took her in, if I hadn't caved, and promised that we would take her to get help? I should have told the doctor that she was doing meth. I should have thought about the then 2 year old.

I shouldn't have blamed it on the people she was with.
I should have let her deal with the doctors. I should have insisted that she stay.

Would she know her own daughter now?

When she swore that she was cleaned up, and then I watched her do the line of coke, I should have walked away right then.

I should have thrown her out when she appeared, dirty and sad with a story about her boyfriend (really, her pimp) kicking her out. I begged her to get a job.

She didn't.

I begged her to get counsling.

Really, that was laughable at that point. She was such a host of problems at that point, where would have a doctor started? With her childhood? Her drug problem? Her prostitution? Her shattered marriage? (Her husband had taken her back at this point, 'for the baby' 5 times. Each time, the time together was shorter and shorter...the memories less good. The anger worse. He was still willing to take her back at this point. She was still young enough so that she had a good cover story for her lack of 'real' job experience. She was savable, I thought)


She said that she didn't need it.
Her husband finally threw down the gauntlet. Get help, -any- help, of -any- kind, just to show him that she knew there were problems. At the time, I bought that he was an asshole. In retrospect, he deserved my respect and support.
She flew to New York 3 days later, and stayed with her sister.

2 months later, she showed up on my doorstep, complaining that she had lost all her cash (junkies lose massive amounts of cash. I've never figured out if it's a cover for how much their habit costs, or if they are just so fucked up that they drop cash, don't notice people stealing...)and complaining that her planned overdose the night before didn't work. She was still alive.

I should have stood firm. I caved.

I wish I could have saved her. I regret not being able to. I wonder if anyone could have?

In the year that has passed since we last spoke, I think about her often. Because of another young, beautiful damaged woman.

A young woman who I think, really has a chance. A young woman who I can see a way out for. a young woman who desperately needs professional help. who I think, could lead a life that would not be a short, quick, road to hell.

I wish that things were simple. I wish that nobody ever would get hurt. I regret hurting people, through my supposed good actions. I regret working against a child's best interest because of my own, self-aggrandising, hope that she would, get help on her own time.

She only calls in the middle of the night. There is never a place where she lives. She chose that.

I regret the part I played in it.

I regret not being better.

I regret.