There’s been some changing brewing in my life. Not necessarily bad changes, but changes none the less.

It started about a week ago when I had a dream about a friend, someone I hadn’t seen in nearly ten years. Oddly enough, I was awakened from that dream to my phone ringing, and it was him. I feel that I have been dreaming of him for months now, the song he sang in my dreams, it was familiar. I ran the melody in my mind across some of Dennis’ recordings, and there has been nothing of the sorts that are familiar. It’s something that I wrote for my friend in my dreams. Freaky, huh? His phone call was simple: He wants to see me at the end of this month and the beginning of next, maybe over Christmas, like we did before. Before I could stop and think about it, I quickly replied, “That part’s over,” as I sat up in the bed. “What part?” he asked. “You know,” I replied. This wasn’t just a teenage fling that kept me busy when I was eighteen and nineteen years old. This was the man who introduced me to the world of heroine. This was the man who refused it himself, but had an endless supply for me. Me and the other woman.

The other woman was his other official girlfriend. We were both racing to get pregnant. Not me so much, since I knew I already was when I started fucking him, but I was more in it to fuck him every day, sometimes multiple times per day, just to keep him too exhausted to screw her when I left. He lived in the sam apartment building my mother and I lived in back in the Louisiana days, and I was still upset over losing Peter. Without a second thought, I started taking guitar lessons from him. His father had been famous in the 1970′s, and I was an eager student. I did what I could to tempt the lesson to be over so I could have that sweet poison and then sex. I wanted both endlessly, but had to stop at nine at night to scurry back to my apartment with my mother, before she got home from work. I never expected him to remember me, but he has. Ten years ago, we met up in his homeland, and yes, screwed again. I didn’t turn down the drugs or the sex, whenever he offers it, even though I know that I no longer need his “love” as a crutch. Needless to say that the other woman got pregnant. I was further along, and told him the baby was his, though I had slept with four other men before him, and knew I was pregnant before I met him.

Weeks went by, and my mother soon found out. I was shipped away to live with my father for the baby’s birth, and lost my friend in the shuffle of the bigger city life. My days were spent grabbing up college credits and fixing computers in a local high school where my father taught during the day, and I soon forgot my friend. When I threw out half of my life two years ago, I chucked the letters and photos I had that been sent from him. He believed the baby I had had was his. He had called me several times when I married Dennis six years ago, and I always was too busy to take the call. The Biz is really a small network, when you think about it, and subtract the fans. When your crack whore gets married to another crack whore, and has a couple of kids, while wanting just one more, word gets around. This man was no exception. He tried to get into our wedding, once with an invitation and once without, and he was refused at the door. Realising what a mistake I had made in inviting him and his wife, I put him on the banned list, that he shared only with Billy, and we had a smooth wedding, living happily ever after.

Only that’s not the way it’s been.

When he called me that sunny Sunday morning, it was to ask not only if I was coming to see him this year, but for his forgiveness. He said he knew what he was doing when he made me into an addict. He said he was lonesome and scared of dying alone, so he reeled in two women to live with him and compete for pregnancy. He asked how his “first born” was. I bluntly told him that she had died some three years ago of cancer, and she wasn’t his daughter. While he had Scandinavian good looks, she was more Greek-ish, with brown hair, brown eyes and olive skin. I often wonder if the wrong twin got me knocked up. Dennis and his brother were famous for that, switching women with each other. I often wonder if my boys will do the same thing when they start dating.

We chatted for some time, and he left me with that trail that I hate: “Sorry that I ruined your life and made you hate me.” The line was then dead. Um, fuck you? You didn’t ruin my life, I did. I knew what could happen when I took that first hit. I knew I was going to become a slave to the injections of the hot liquid (he had a glass syringe he melted everything in), to the feelings of being incredibly sexy and having a male not only go all the way with me, but want me more than once, and what I assumed was crave me. I didn’t mind the other woman, she was merely a competition. Someone I knew that I could beat because I had the upper hand before the game had already started. He told me that he had every intention of marrying me, but that I slipped away, and he had to marry her because she was pregnant with his child. My turn to snort. “You don’t have to marry someone because you knocked them up,” I replied, already perched at my perpetual place, googling as fast as my fingers could type and my computer process.

One of the plus points of having well-known friends is that there is almost always something about them on the web. Reading through his page, I read that he had several (aka: a dozen or so) kids with the other woman and she had left him. Hmm. Wonder why. When I questioned him about this, he said it was because he wanted to make up for that mistake he made years ago. “She wasn’t a mistake,” I replied. “Oh no, I meant losing you,” he quickly replied. I’m sure that was his original intention.

We talked for a few more minutes, and then Chloe came into the room asking if we could go outside, and I agreed. I told him that I was going to have to go for now, but that I would talk to him again. He mumbled his “you hate me” speech, and that irritated me. I’ve felt that I need to call him or otherwise get in touch with him, if nothing more than to drill it into his head that I am not a hating person. Doesn’t matter what mistakes people have made that have caused me severe life changing events, I can’t hate the person. I can hate the situation, that is fine. People weren’t meant to be hated.

For the past week I’ve wondered if he was suicidal. I made excuses for what went down years ago, and then I metaphorically kicked myself for thinking that way. I thought about bringing this up in group therapy, family therapy, or one-on-one, but I can’t do it. I just can’t vilify someone I once cared about.

Coming home from another Premiere with Dennis, I told him that I was happy that our life turned out the way it has. I don’t know where that came from, but I really meant it. At least we’re not my ex, calling a desperate fling in hopes that someone will still talk to them. Dennis has been severely depressed since before our anniversary. I think my getting upset caused some of that. I apologised for it almost immediately when I went back over my notes from therapy. I can’t vilify Dennis either. He has his moments, but it’s me that chooses to be hurt or to harp on things. Let them go. Just let them go. The words I whisper to myself several times during the day, as I’m scribbling in my notebooks, or when I am conversing with someone whom I have unresolved conflict with. I wonder if they remember the conflict they have with me? I know it’s not so easy to let things such as that go, but I can hope that no one hangs onto things as I do. Perhaps that is why my mind is never clear. I used to celebrate meaningless anniversaries when I was a child and a teenager all the time. They mean nothing to me now, but then they were my entire week.

Watching the celestial sky for the Leonids, I silently hoped that my ex was not suffering, physically or mentally, where ever he was. I hoped that Dennis could kick the depression that he was going through and that he did not dwell on the words that I spoke so carelessly just a month ago. I thought of the offer he had run past me, and I really wished I could go back and agree. I wanted to do this now. I wanted to go out there and face the shore wall, just one more time before it washed away the last places that I thought I’d always be able to see again. I wanted to do that so badly, but I had declined and now someone else has my place on the trip. Dennis is devastated that I am not going, as if those summers were just a waste of time to me then. They were not. They were not meaningless. I remember living out some of my happiest memories there.

When I spoke coming home, Dennis was reading a paper from Geoff. He barely looked at me when I spoke. I was driving. I said I wanted to make it up, and he replied that my place had already been taken. My first thought was to threaten to run off with my ex to some exotic place up north for the winter, but I realised how foolish that would be. Did I really want to be the mother who abandoned her children because their father was driving me up a wall? Did I really want to be the wife that turned her back on her husband and rushed back into the arms of an abusive ex, whose intentions may just to be to get me close and inject me with poison and lies once again? Since when do I run from my problems?

After the Premiere, Dennis said we had to take one of his friends home. I was glad for that, since most of his friends and I do not get along. He handed me a paper bag of my medicine that we had picked up from the pharmacy before the Premiere, and gave me a long, tight hug. It felt as though the hug was fueled by despair, sadness. I started to ask what that was for, when he pulled away and said, “Please don’t be fucked up on those pills when I get back. Please?” He wasn’t asking me. He wasn’t telling me. He was begging me. I gently pulled away and walked into the house. I’m sure he watched me go. Dumping the medicine bottles out on my desk, I saw what was in the mix. My old poisons. I put them on the shelf with my other medicines.

It was after nine at night before Dennis came home. I heard him walk down the hall and check the bedrooms, when I was sitting in the living room; he had walked right past me. Upon finding me, he just stared for a few seconds. “All the pills are in their bottles. I didn’t take any,” I said. He immediately smiled and once again, I got that long hug. This time, though, it seemed that the hug was fueled by something different. Relief, happiness. Love, perhaps.