Strong Enough For The Both Of Us

He was supposed to be my Prince Charming. He was. He swept me off my feet; he took me away from all of the bad things that were in my life. I loved him because he made me feel special; he made me feel like I was the most important person in the world. And I was, to him at least.

All of those bad things, he took me away from. But where did he take me? To this dingy old apartment in a part of the city where I couldn’t go out at night alone? I accepted that, because I loved him. We had each other, that was all we needed. After all, we ran away together, we were doing this because we loved each other.

My eyelids flutter as I open them and stare up at the dusty ceiling fan, laying motionless on the ratty old couch we thought we got a deal on at a yard sale. How wrong we were once we got home, but that didn’t matter at the time, because we had each other.

I clutch one of the only photographs I have of him so tightly to my chest, for a moment I fear that I may actually break the glass. But then I realize that I don’t care, that it is just a photograph, it’s just a useless old frame I can easily replace. My fingers begin to hurt at the amount of pressure I’m placing on the chipped wooden frame.

That little photograph gives me no comfort; I don’t want to hold that against my chest, the corners of the frame digging into my chest. I want him there with me, I want him to hold me and tell me that we’re going to make it through this like all of the other hard times we had been through.

Things were supposed to be so much better, once we got away from all of the bad things that used to be in our lives. They may have disappeared, but I never realized what the saying, ‘the past can be haunting’ meant until then.

He couldn’t get past the memories; he couldn’t let his old life go. And that led him to things I never thought he would even dream of doing. Apparently I wasn’t enough for him, but those pretty little lines of white powder he snorted every night were.

If I wasn’t enough for him, what made him think that he wasn’t enough for me? He was, oh how he was. He was like the air I breathed. All I needed was him by my side and I would be just fine.

What exactly did he think I was going to do without him? I used to think that he was strong, and that if he was with me, I would be just as strong. It’s obvious now that was just a front, that he was never really as strong as he let on.

I can’t pay the rent; I can’t afford to live in any part of this city without him. Going back to my family was out of the question, even if I wanted to go back. I had nowhere to go. What was I supposed to do without him? I could barely form a coherent sentence without him around, so exactly what made him think he could just leave me here, all alone?

Nothing else mattered to us back then, we were free, at least in the physical sense of the word. Although I had been pulling through, his mind, his soul had so obviously been burdened. And I wasn’t enough to help him get through.

Now I'm trapped. I close my eyes again, but quickly reopen them as memories rapidly flood my vision, both good and bad, and I don’t like them mixing. I want to remember him for what he really was; I want to remember his boyish smile and that mischievous twinkle in his eye. Not the gaunt figure he had become, that little bit of life he had been holding onto had disappeared from his eyes.

My Prince Charming, I thought bitterly. I gave up everything to be with him. Sure, I may have known from the start that things were going to be hard, but I was never supposed to lose him, he wasn’t supposed to give his life to a substance.

Just look where I am now. Is it my fault? Had I been selfish, had I not taken notice that he was troubled in time? I could have helped him, I know I could have. It wasn’t my fault though, was it? I offered him my help, I wanted to give him my strength to go on, but he didn’t take me up on my offer. I had to watch a substance slowly take his life.

And now, as I still stare up at that broken ceiling fan, I realize that you can only be strong enough for yourself. That sometimes you can’t help people who don’t want to be helped in the first place. It’s their life, the decisions they make are up to them, and then they have to deal with the consequences.

What about me? What had I done to deserve such a fate? I loved him, I gave him my heart and my soul, and he had taken it with him. I’m not feeling so strong anymore without those things.

I was the aftermath; I was the other victim of substance abuse. I was left behind to deal with everything; I would forever be without my one true love, all because of a pretty little white line of powder.