Chapter 23 | Spring Hill

On August 18 after sleeping outside all night on the ocean shore I took a freebie ride to the Burger King and put myself on the greyhound bus to Spring Hill. I was doing exceptionally well too.

I had cut off communication with Chris except when inquiring about how Chewie was doing and I applied to a plethora of jobs and before I knew it I landed 2 jobs! One was at a call center doing political surveys and the other was at Vapor Emporium selling smoke shop items.

I was clean, saving money and even started gaining a little weight back. I was becoming happier. I had a few one night stands while on my sabbatical, but nothing that really stood out.

I wasn’t gone but a month when Chris called me about Chewie. He did it when I was on the boat too but apparently he’d been jumping off the boat and swimming to shore, which was about a quarter mile, more frequently and this one couple who lived close by continuously found him and were threatening to take him if something didn’t change.

So we took the 6.5 hour one way trip and I was able to bring Chewie home to his momma where he belonged.

While in Islamorada Chris, barefooted and looking rough as hell asked us to drive him down the road so he could score some crack cocaine. I was happy to be getting back in that car and driving back to Spring Hill without him.

But then sometime in October Chris decided he missed me and so he started texting me and over the period of maybe just a few days I was desperate to be reunited with him.

You’d think after all we’ve put one another through that we’d both want to stay as far the fuck away from each other as we possible could but that was not the case with us. We defined the word inseparable in every way. You truly cannot help who you fall in love with and I know this because more than anything I wanted to tell Chris to go fuck himself.

By the time Chris was ready to come down I have saved a few hundred dollars. I told Michael I was leaving and he helped me buy a tent and supplies so I was prepared. It was a week before Halloween when he got there and we picked him up from the greyhound station and Michael dropped us off in the woods on County Line Rd on the Hudson side to embark on my last adventure with Chris.

We set up the tent in the perfect location, secluded from everyone. It was behind 7-11, next to my phone job and in front of a set of apartments that had water spigots for bathing and a laundry facility. Michael let me borrow his cooler and we’d fill it up with water and leave it outside of the tent to take bird baths.

Chris brought the solar panel and the two fans from the boat so as far as homeless went, we were doing it in style.

That same week I was able to get Chris a job at the call center with me and I quit my job at the smoke shop due to lack of transportation.

For our anniversary and Chris’ birthday we took our first big paycheck which was the week after the elections and we took the bus to Port Richey and got ourselves a hotel for the night. We wasted no time getting ahold of Nessa and getting some drugs from her. Chris spent the entire evening on the cusp of having a really bad overdose so I stayed away from the opiates and just smoked my meth. It was one of the better nights we had spent together because when Chris shot up heroin he was the sweetest most loving man on the earth. We made love until the sun came up.

After that fun filled day at the hotel, it made us want to get high more often. I started panhandling again and then not before long we just stopped showing up for work and decided we made more money my way then working an actual job.

We were going into town once every other week to get high. Chris and I weren’t allowed back at Nessa’s drug dealers house because we had both overdosed there the time before that. Nessa stood us up one day and we met a new drug dealer driving a Cadillac in the 7-11 parking lot on Trouble Creek and 19; his name was Rooster.

When we weren’t buying off of Rooster we were buying off the other homeless man who panhandled near our campsite. Once every other week turned into once a week then most days a week. When we weren’t using meth or getting high on fetty then we were drinking kratom like it was sweet tea.

Michael and his girlfriend, Destiny, would take Chewie for us over the weekend to give us more time to fuck off and get high.

The thing is that this time getting high wasn’t fun for me, or him. Chris especially had some really bad side effects from our meth use. He’d be awake all night in the tent sitting up on his knees staring out into the night thinking someone was out there trying to get him. The police, teenagers, hobos and hoodlums – and he was ready to fight.

His paranoia and delusions about phone hacking came back into play almost immediately. He thought tree limbs were flying drones and that the police were hiding out in the woods waiting for us to come out or hit the bubble in front of them so they’d arrest us.

I’d try and spoon him to sleep but he’d be filled with the overwhelming need to stare out into the night. I’d try to sleep or fake sleep while we listened to Joe Rogan podcasts. I tried to reassure him that the police would not hide in the woods waiting for us they’d turn their flashlights on and approach the tent with their guns drawn out, unafraid.

By the time December rolled around we were both so exhausted from keeping up with our addiction and the side effects caused by using. Exhausted from always thinking we had to watch our backs, exhausted from walking to Walmart everyday to panhandle and to 7-11 to eat.

We took our paychecks one day and took the bus to Port Richey to get another hotel and feel out for the night. We met up with Nessa for a half of fet and a teener of meth and she actually ripped me off. The fet was real but the ice she gave me was powdered sugar so I spent the entire night just watching over Chris and making sure he didn’t fall out.

We’d argue here and there but honestly things between us were better than they had been in a while. We were staying sexually active, even spicing things up a bit in the bedroom by adding additional partners in the mix.

But come December after using regularly and walking up to the Walmart on 19 and Spring Hill drive to panhandle, drinking kratom everyday and seeing no end to our pathetic lifestyle things started taking a turn for the worse and before long we were arguing about everything again.

On our wedding anniversary, December 16th, I lost it. I was so tired of watching Chris freak out all night long over every little sound, I was completely over him questioning me about phones, I was done with using drugs and arguing about every miniscule thing.

We started fighting and without comprehending what I was doing I had a full on mental breakdown. I grabbed an exacto knife and slashed my arms wide open, the flesh opened over an inch, exposing my tissue underneath. I held it up, blood dripping all over and screamed, “YOU MAKE ME DO THIS!”

“CRAZY FUCKING BITCH!” I can hear him yelling at me in my head. Cutting myself didn’t solve anything, I didn’t die and it didn’t help repair my relationship any either. In fact, every time I go to drastic lengths like I did that day things only got worse.

After that day I think Chris realized, finally, that we really couldn’t stay together and be on drugs at the same time. He was desperate in trying to find a place to take him in for detox. We spent days on end making phone calls to try and get him a ride but the only way he was able to get a ride is from a cop and he was not about to get in the back of a Pasco County Police vehicle.

One night, both of us lie awake unable to sleep due to the methamphetamine in our blood stream. I laid down and closed my eyes despite not being able to sleep and that’s when Chris decided to pick an argument with me. By the end of it he has both his hands gripped right around my neck and I pressed into him, yelling at him to do it.

Seconds went by like minutes or hours but he got off of me and fell to the ground, sobbing. He was afraid of himself, afraid of what he could have done to me. He was so lost in desperation, wanting so badly to be better and to be in love in a healthy way.

It’s like everything was hitting him all at once all over again. Zeke being born early, losing custody of Zeke, him going to jail all those times inly to discover that the mother of his children had cheated on him multiple times. He couldn’t heal, especially in a relationship with me while using drugs.

The next day he packed a small bag and he left. I spent the entire day on the phone with his mom, telling her the truth about where Chris really was because he lied to her and said he went to stay at a commune in Kentucky. I just wanted to see him get help. He never came home and I had an epiphany about my own life and addiction and I had to get myself some help.

On December 22nd of 2022 I called up my mother on the phone and I told her everything and let her know that I was officially ready to go into rehab and I wanted help. She picked me up from the woods and got me a room at Days Inn for a few days until it was time to go to my dads to celebrate Christmas.

Desperate to get high, I took my phone and texted our drug dealer, Rooster. I had him come by to exchange sex for drugs. He didn’t bring anything with him but promised he’d be back later and to just take care of him then so I did.

But, his member was a lot bigger than anything I’d ever taken before and before long he was starting to hurt me. I screamed for him to stop but he wouldn’t. I laid face down in the mattress with tears in my eyes. He got up and just left and didn’t come back.

December 23, 2022 was the last time I saw Chris in person. He hopped on the city bus on the 22nd and walked to my hotel room and spent the night with me. I told him my plans for treatment which were pretty much the same as his were just days before. I planned on going to detox and then into a rehab.

I was hoping – praying – that he would say that he’d come with me to treatment but I was not so lucky. He was fully on board with checking himself into a detox and going to rehab – WHATEVER IT TOOK, but he had always despised Florida… I can hear him saying, “Fuck Florida!”, now.

He was dead set on making his way back to Maryland to start his treatment and not to blame him but he didn’t invite me because at that point neither one of us knew exactly what we needed or wanted from each other but that didn’t mean in any way that we didn’t want to be with each other. That I didn’t want to be with him. Because I did. If ever given the choice, I’d have always chosen Chris.

We cuddled and talked, sat in silence, and held each other while tears streamed down both of our faces. It was definitely an emotional goodbye. There was no way the both of us would be able to find recovery unless we did it on our own. For whatever reason we just enabled one another too much.

So, he was to go to Maryland and seek treatment up there and I’d stay down in Florida where I had my family support system and once we achieved sobriety for at least 6 months then we were going to go back to each other. That was the plan.

He held me until I fell asleep in his arms and the following morning, in the wee hours of the day before my mom could show up, he left. We shared the very last kiss we’d ever share and without my knowledge I’d be saying goodbye to Chris for the very last time.