oc (and) a love story

He called it “oh see” and rolled his eyes at me when I asked if I should eat the whole thing. It spoiled me, didn’t make my eyes water and my sinuses drip when I sucked it up my nose with a fervor usually reserved for my sister’s friend’s spare Adderall when she needed an extra ten dollars.

Before that, when I would put a Vicodin stolen from a grandparent or those perc 10s we used to get for so cheap up my nose, I would never do much because of the burn. I’m an instant gratification kind of girl. If it hurts, why am I going to keep doing it? But then I found oxy, and soon it was going in me any way I could figure out how to get it.

And we all know it’s not his fault. I would have found it anyway. Hasn’t every therapist in my life warned of my addictive personality and high-risk behaviors? But when he handed me the pink pill with OC stamped on one side and 20 on the other, showed me how to suck on it to get the time-release coating off �" wipe it on the inside of whatever you’re wearing so that even all these years later, you can still find an undershirt with that dirty peach ring of pill residue just about at the belly button �" I knew things were about to get deep.

I didn’t really think about it being oxycontin. Everyone had obviously heard of it, but you don’t put two and two together when you don’t want to. When it hit, I was in love and there was no turning back. It made all his frustrating tics seem like cute habits, made me want to cling to his side like I knew I shouldn’t, made our “love” last a good two years longer than it would have without it.

I spent that night puking. I thought I was going to die. But even as I heaved, I felt calm and floaty, kept sensing a heightened feeling from my solar plexus, something that told me that this was going to be a-OK. And it was.

I never really wanted for drugs. In some cruel twist of fate, they fell into my lap at least to keep me sensible and not withdrawing for more than three years. I don’t know how I lucked out. It was only when I got ripped off buying bags of heroin, got sold eye shadow in a piece of wax paper stamped with the Chanel logo, that I realized how bad it was. And that took a long time.

I’m never going to say I was fixed or that I still don’t fall into addiction-like behaviors from time to time. But I think about the night we sat on his back steps, my head in his lap, rolling over to puke off the drop-off, and I usually smile. Whatever that means.