The Girl

There are two things that I notice more than anything else when ever I visit a city

The addicts

And the homeless 

I don't always see the shops

The lights 

The sights and the sounds 

I see the people asleep in doorways on cardboard boxes

I see the pinned and haunted eyes of heroin addicts

The empty bottles of the street drinkers 

The scatty manicness of the meth users 

The slurred speech of those on methadone

This city is no different

The first homeless guy I saw today was sitting on the cold hard ground

Dressed in a thin jumper and pants

He was visibly shivering with the cold 

His eyes on the ground in front of him

We walked by 

Stopped and looked back

We were all thinking the same thing 

The poor guy

We pooled our change and gave him five euro 

Tipping it in to his paper cup

He looked up when he heard the rattle of the change 

And stuck his hand out

As if to touch the saviour who would allow him to buy a cup of tea and a sandwich 

I usually talk to the homeless when I'm giving them something 

But with this guy

I don't know 

He looked so destitute 

I didn't think anything I could say could make him feel better

Walking away

I turned back to look at him 

He hadn't even checked his cup

His eyes still downwards

I felt guilty in that moment 

Guilty that I had so much 

And he had so little 

Life is unfair 

It's all a game of chance 

We went for lunch then 

And decided to pick the homeless man up some soup 

We walked back to where he was sitting 

There were people talking to him

Giving him bags of what I presume were food

He looked like he was rubbing tears from his eyes 

A lady kneeled at his side giving comforting words 

We decided to give the soup to another homeless person 

And it wasn't long before we met another one 

He gratefully accepted it

And we went on our way

Last night 

We went to see a musical 

After it had finished 

And we had all piled out of the theatre 

I had run across the road to the shop to get a carton of milk

I noticed a girl with two dogs out side the shop 

It was the dogs that attracted me 

And I bent down to pet them and talk too them 

And could tell by the girls demeanour that she was out of her mind 

She was skinny

Wobbly on her feet 

And louder then she needed to be

I asked her about the dogs 

She said they were rescue dogs 

That she was minding them for someone

They had no collars 

No leads 

And seemed really clingy and afraid 

I looked in to the girls eyes

Her pupils were pinned 

Her lids fighting against the weight of the heroin in her blood

I asked her if I could ask her a question

Was she on the gear

She said she was 

That she had recently relapsed after a nasty break up

She had been clean for a year 

All the while she was talking to me 

There was another guy that was in and out of the shop

Talking at great speed to the girl 

She continued to speak to me 

Then all of a sudden I just knew I had to get out of there 

This is how I've slipped before 

Putting myself in stupid situations 

I wished her good luck

And went to walk in to the shop 

Next thing I knew 

She threw her arms around me 

And gave me a huge hug

I was taken aback

But I hugged her back

And in that moment 

I wanted to take the girl and her dog home with me

Nurse her through her withdrawal 

Love her dog in to a happy and healthy little guy

I went in to the shop

The guy was ahead of me 

Buying everything and anything 

At one point he turned around and apologised to me

I said it was no problem 

Just then 

My sister appeared 

It turned out that my sister and mother had been standing across the street and witnessed the whole exchange

My sister asked me if I was ok

I said I was 

But I wasn't really

Again 

I felt a sense of guilt 

That I had got out

And that girl hadn't 

I wondered what kind of place they were living 

Was it safe?

Was it full of addicts?

Was it warm?

I also wondered about the dog

Would they look after him?

Feed him?

Would he have a bed to sleep in that night?

Would someone let him out off he needed to wee?

Or would he be forced to pee where he lay down?

These questions bothered me

And still bother me

I feel a sense of survivor guilt 

I was extremely lucky 

To make it out alive

And relatively unscathed 

There are so many who didn't 

It's more the girls that upset me

Probably because I can relate to them more

And the fact that I know drugs take a far harder toll on women 

Where I live now 

I don't have to look at it 

It's not in my face 

But here 

And in Dublin and other cities 

I see it every 

I've always struggled to describe the look that heroin addicts aquire after a certain amount of time using 

It's like their faces all become the same

That same hollow cheeked, haunted eyes look 

Like the lights are on but no one is home

I read a post once by Shane Leverne 

Who writes Memoires of a heroin head

He described one of his characters once as having a 'smack sculpted face'

These are exactly the words I had been looking for 

I couldn't have described it so perfectly 

It's Sunday morning now

And that girl is still on my mind

I'm not worried though 

I know that soon she will drift to the back 

of my mind soon enough

And I don't kid myself 

I know if I had not been with my family

I probably would have gone and used with her 

And become her new best friend 

That's the way it seems to work in the drug world

It's like a secret little community 

Where everyone is connected by the drug

Everyone has it in common

And that is enough to base whole relationships on

Whether they last an hour or a year 

Something I also noticed yesterday while taking to the girl

Was that we seemed to get in to a one upman ship about drugs 

It goes something like that like this 

You're using 3 years?

Oh I'm using 5 years?

You started using in Dublin?

Well I started in London

You nearly died once?

I actually did die 

Does this seem familiar to anyone?

Yes 

It's a lot like the game we play with out EDs 

The Hunger Games 

That's just the way it is

And I definitely don't miss that 

Anyway 

Today is the last day of our little jolly

We head back tomorrow morning 

Everyone else is still in bed

Tired after yesterday's exertions

It's nice to have some time to myself 

To make sense of last night 

Why do these things always happen to me.....