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The world’s a cold place. We spend our days trying to fill that empty void we call our hearts so that we feel something, anything. But what do we really gain from trying? A smile? A half-hearted reply to a long awaited unasked question? Everyone has something different for the assorted voids they’re trying to fill.
But what about me?
I’m no sinner, and I’m definitely no saint. I like to think I’m on that fine line in-between and trust me. It’s a very very thin line.
It started young, as most bad habits do. Maybe that’s why they say old habits die hard, because you’re obviously not getting any younger.
My bad habit started as a drag of poorly rolled cigarette behind the school bleachers at a freshman football game. Correction, it was just a highschool football game, but I was a freshman. It continued on from there.
Eventually, the nicotine wasn’t enough. Wasn’t enough to help me through my parents divorce, my father disappearing, my girlfriend cheating on me. It just wasn’t enough, but for awhile, percocet was.
For a little medicinal information; percocet is a heavily addictive pill commonly prescribed for moderate to severe pain. Say a major surgery. Did I forgo any of those major surgeries. Well no, but my brother did. A little legality information; it’s heavily illegal, but surprisingly easy to collect pills prescribed for another. Especially someone in your close family. The only downside? I mean, besides being addicted to a painkiller. The tolerance builds quickly and you’re after another fix before the first one even wears off.
After percocet it was more prescription painkillers, more cigarettes. More… Recreational activities. Needless to say I was not in a good place, but you wouldn’t know it.
I was exceptionally good at hiding this bad habit. I mean, as good as a lowly teenager from the wrong side of the tracks could be. The older I got the worse the habit became, the harder it became to hide. I mean, how long can you actually go hiding an addiction to prescription painkillers? For me? 6 years. I was 20 by the time my mother noticed and tried to do something about it. And I listened… For 7 months.
I went to rehab, I followed their schedule, their daily life. And my god, I was miserable.
Even there, surrounded by “sunshine and rainbows” as my hallmate would call the daily ‘happy’ life that we lived there, I was still searching for some sort of fix.
My therapist, the one they prescribed me because they thought I was numbing the pain with painkillers for an emotional reason. I suppose in a way I was, but then.
Then I met her.
Blonde hair, pink streak on her right side, grey eyes and the brightest smile I’d seen in years. A smile without pain, eyes without tears.
Who was she?
I would often ask myself this as I watched her bring bouquets of flowers to the assorted patients throughout the building.
I surprised my head nurse Clint one day. “Who is she?” I had asked, calmly.
His head jerked up so quickly from beside my bed to stare at me with owl esque wide eyes. “Who is who?” He questioned back.
I pointed at her through the glass wall that seperated my room from many others in the hall. A small smile graced his lips as he looked at me. “That’s Mia, she comes here often to bring everyone flowers. We’ve found it makes everyones stay a little more bearable.”
“Mia.” I said, my head tilting as Clint handed me my medical book. “How long has she been coming here?”
He looked at the ceiling momentarily before shrugging. “She started coming here when she was 16 so four or five years I’d have to say.” He said, taking the book away after I had filled out everything necessary.
I nodded, settling back into my bed as I watched her smile at me through the glass and offering a small and brief wave.
That’s how it went for a few months. Clint would come in the afternoon, having me fill out that damn booklet while Mia came in with a new coloured streak in her hair every week and she and I made faces at each other through the glass. Until one day, Clint handed me a new booklet.
“You’re out of here.” He had said, smiling proudly as I looked at him alarmed.
“What do you mean?” I had asked, as I looked at the booklet in front of me.
“You’re done. You finished the treatment course, you haven’t wanted anything for months. Your doctor has decided you’re clear.”
That’s when I realised. I was finally cut loose, I was free. And as soon as I set foot out of those doors, I couldn’t help but think. “When am I going to see her again?”
I stayed with my mother for a few weeks while I started a new job, a few months more as I searched for an apartment until one day. I stumbled upon a museum I was not aware my town had. It was small, but full of brightly coloured artwork. Done by the towns artists and I was immediately drawn into one painting in the center of the building.
It was simple, yet complex enough to force the viewer to constantly move their line of view to a new detail of the piece. Colourful, yet missing the saturation that our eyes desired to see. There was something different about this piece comparatively to every other piece in the red bricked building.
Every Friday, from open to close on my day off, I’d sit in front of that painting on the bench and read, or make new observations of that painting. I’d stare for hours, noting in a journal how it made me think.
How soft it was, but how sharp the detail portrayed the subject.
The pastels that seemed too bright to be considered anything but what they really were.
Then the painting changed.
It was no longer the simple yet complex piece I’d come to love seeing every Friday afternoon.
It was now a glob. A glob of colour with no real definition. I asked one of the employees after I’d searched high and low for the painting that I’d come so used to seeing.
“It got shipped off mate, ‘m sorry.” He’d told me.
Panic started ringing in my ears. “What do you mean?” A phrase I’d spoken way too often as of late.
“It got shipped back to the artist, she didn’t want it displayed anymore. It’s been up for months.” He said simply before walking away, pausing at the doorway. “Her information is in the lobby if you’re that curious.”
I took off before he was even finished. Desperate to find out what happened to the piece. “The flower painting that’s been up since I’ve been coming here. Where has it gone?” I asked the lobby employee.
She sighed, reaching into a seemingly never ending drawer and pulling out a simple white card. “Ask her, she requested it back.”
I took the card gratefully, leaving quickly to call the number on the back of the card.
“Hello?” A quiet voice answered, hoarse with sleep.
“The flower painting, where has it gone?” I ask, nervous to not find an answer.
“It’s been shipped to the rehab facility.” The voice answers grimly.
I quickly mutter my thanks and a goodbye as my feet are already moving towards the beige building in the distance.
The building’s as cold as I remember as I walk in, familiar faces wave as I walk past them to get to the front desk. Stopping cold when I see it.
My hand’s touching the frame before I realise it, a small placard screwed into the wall beside it.
In caring memory of Mia, we’ll miss your flowers and sunshine smile.
“Gorgeous isn’t it? Mia said she wanted us to have it, we didn’t know why at the time.” Clint’s voice comes from behind me as I force myself to look at him.
“What happened?” I ask as I look back at the painting finally seeing the small scrawl of Mia in the corner written in black paint.
“Overdose. Can’t trust everything you see apparently.”
And like that. My addiction was gone.