I talked to him. Asked if there was any concerns or troubles he had that could be aided in. He said there wasn't. I reminded him that it's always better to come and talk first, not let things get out of hand. He agreed, but said that everything was okay.
I let it go at that, but with a sinking feeling. I sensed he was not being as honest as he could be.
I won't hold a person's feet to the fire, though. My father was a big one on a person (child) having to admit everything and be very sorry for it at once. I know from growing up that way that such isn't very helpful. If something is going wrong, you'll soon enough see it without having to force a confession.
I left him with assurances that he could always talk to me, and left it at that.
The next morning, I talked to him again. While he was waiting on his ride to his last part-time work project that he apparently hadn't lost yet. I didn't talk about anything addiction related. Just talked. He's a nice guy. Pleasant to talk to. I actually admired the guy, a body builder, but still cool to nerds like me!
He had nothing to say on any addiction subject either.
He left. I went to do an errand, because I was putting off what I'd be doing next. Which was to search his area in our sober living home. That's not done very often, and there has to be plenty of cause. I'm a private guy myself, and am happy for them to have such tiny bits of privacy as is possible in a group sober living home.
But it is a sober living home, so ultimately, and at times, there's a search. Sometimes that goes well, and nothing is found. In which case I know they're hiding it very well, or took it with them, as if I'm searching, there must have been a heckuva lot of reason to in the first place!
Other times, like now, I find something. It's pictured. Heroin "works", which just means the stuff you use to deliver heroin to your veins. The baggie had a bit of pot. The brown cotton balls and stained spoons mean at least some heroin had been done.
I looked all over for the heroin itself, though most of the time (99%) the addict will take that with him. It's always kept very near and dear to their hearts, oft times literally, sometimes in a shoe or their underwear. But you never know, and I can't have the stuff in the house.
I didn't see any. So then I laboriously unrolled all his socks. Nothing. Shook out all his clothes. Re-folded them. Nothing. Pillow case clear. Mattress, nope. I went then to change the door code. The handy thing about electronic door codes is you never have to worry about getting the key back.
I went to do a bunch of errands, and let one of the guests who was likely to get home before me know what the new code was. I got back in plenty of time to be there before the person who needed to leave could arrive, though. But oops, not early enough, he had already been there.
Like I said, he's a nice guy, though. He already had his stuff packed up ready to go, and had gone again to find a place. I asked the other guys to let me know when he came back for his stuff so I could talk to him.
Instead, he texted one of the guys to put his stuff on the porch, and then got it quietly without anyone seeing him arrive or depart. I've seen that before. It's when they're still on the good side of humanity and know they did wrong, and are sad, not mad.
As was I. Sad, not mad. I wish I had been able to talk to him.
I messaged him instead. And let him know that if he wanted to detox or go to a program we could get him back on track to come back here. Sometimes that even happens.
We'll see.
I wrote this the day after. It's been more days since. He's not answered. I'm sorry for that. I hope he answers one day. Every one deserves a second chance. Or as Jesus Christ said, seventy time seventy chances!
No comments:
Post a Comment