The Schultz Curse

My mother knew only two things about me: that raspberry is my favorite flavor of anything and that I’m an addict.

My family calls itThe Schultz Curse after every person on Gram’s side who drank to access. Pap (Gram’s dad) quit drinking on his own—cold turkey. My mother never quit. I remember being fifteen and washing her piss stained sweats, my legacy.

For me it’s not alcohol. It’s everything else—coke, Xanax, Prep, everything that could make me float and see pink, not heroin (very proud of that)—and sex—again the floating, not in my body feeling. Do you know it? When your body’s there in your friend’s car, but you’re above it, so close to the clouds you can almost touch em. It’s no bullshit when they say you stay chasing that feeling. No high is ever as gapped as the first one, no fuck better than the first dangerous time.

I had my first drink when I was twelve—peach schnapps and Pepsi. When I realized it was my brain that would get me out of that house, I quit, started again when I was eighteen, free from my mother and free, for the first time ever, to give into desire. The beautiful blonde boys with baggies they kept twisted in their pockets. Then came college and every kind of pong you could imagine and blow jobs in dirty fraternity bathrooms and yes, I was on my knees and then waking up in twin beds. Isn’t it wonderful to not be yourself for a second? You’re caught up in the sweat of the moment, not in your schoolwork and your mother hating you.

And then grad school—can we talk about heartbreak and doing coke in your friend’s living room? Rolling on the floor, eyeliner everywhere but your eyes. I would do anything for it—let my friend dress me up like a my size Barbie, read poems too his friends while he cut their hair. I felt so cared for, so beautiful. I’m not joking—there was nothing more glamorous than snorting coke in a vintage dress.

I left all that alone because I want to live. or probably more truthfully—I want to have the life Nate didn’t. It should have been me dead in that alley in Chicago and because it’s not, I’m living for him. Us. I’m writing. I’m teaching. I’m laughing with his sister. Sitting poolside at a resort in Florida. Quoting Seinfeld. Playing with my cats. Covering every inch of my skin with ink so I’m not a person anymore. My addiction is now his legacy and even though I don’t believe in god, believing if I’m good I’ll see him again.