by Josh Samman
I wasn’t always good to people, and maybe it showed. I was 10 years old, and had many friends, but I had a sense of peerlessness. Some of it was being a narcissistic, condescending prick to kids in school, but much of it was noticing that many children simply weren’t being raised the way I was.
To say I had an unconventional childhood was an understatement, and as my mother gave me more freedom to do the things I wanted, the gap between my upbringings and the lives of others my age began to broaden.
9.
"Rock bottom sometimes begins the solid foundations on which we build our lives."
-JK Rowling
Isabel was staying at Anna’s house while awaiting her next court date. I’d promised we wouldn’t lose touch again, albeit not without hesitation. I was still reeling myself in from the night before, wondering where this path would lead should I choose to wander down. I had experienced firsthand the destructive effects an addict could have on the lives of those around them. I had once been the one doing the destruction. She’d burned through many of her bridges, and I felt compelled, like I owed it to her. I would help her where I could, but that would be the extent of it. That’s what I told myself.
She didn’t have a phone at the time, so I had to call her on Anna’s if I wanted to talk to her. I wanted a more reliable way to check in, and bought her a cheap flip phone.
I spoke to her almost every day, always wondering if that was the day where she would spring back into past behavior. We hung out a few times a week, often she’d want to go out for drinks. As long as she wasn’t sticking needles in her arm I guess we were making progress. I gave her rides to court-ordered drug tests, which were a condition of her temporary release.
The day was getting closer, and I wondered if she was still planning on going through with jail instead of probation.
“You’re sure this is what you want to do?”
“Yeah. I don’t want to be in this system anymore. I don’t want to listen to one more drug counselor, I don’t want to have to go to one more NA meeting. I don’t want a constant reminder of what a fuck up I was. My mistakes are going to follow me around everywhere if I have to be reminded of them with a probation meeting every month for the next three years.”
The jail time served as a purgatory in her mind, a way to purge herself clean of her mistakes. She envisioned herself getting out and making a real life, returning to old form.
We discussed jail visitation as it got closer. She insisted I not come. She didn’t want me to see her reduced to an inmate number and a gray jumpsuit. I maintained otherwise. I’d been on the wrong side of the thick glass wall, knew how much a friend could help morale.
The date finally came, as we knew it would, and I had gotten much closer to her than I intended. I’m not sure if either of our motives were pure at the time. We always had chemistry, and I still found myself with a soft spot for her. I think, though, that maybe there was more underneath, that to Isabel I represented a time in her life when she was more golden. Maybe now she was reminiscing about how good things used to be, how everyone once adored her, and maybe she wanted a reminder of that.
Maybe I latched on because I wanted to remember how far I’d come since being an 18 year-old punk kid, chasing after a girl I was never quite able to reel in.
10.
Fall, 1999
My mom and I began a series of what I now realize were bucket list items. We went to the Grand Canyon, the Smokies, and more. Experiences and memories were more important than things, she taught me. We went camping on the weekends and had gone whitewater rafting during the summer. She was sick but managed to hide it well. She wore a prosthetic breast, and her long blonde hair had been replaced by wigs. She thought her being bald embarrassed me. It didn’t.
I wish I could say I made the next several years easier for her, that I continued to help around the house, and do the things she’d taught me up until middle school. The truth is that I made things as terrible as possible, though I didn’t mean to. Somewhere along the way I had just taken a wrong turn.
I was under consideration for what was called the International Baccalaureate program, a set of courses for standout students that extended beyond typical Advanced Placement classes until the end of high school. The program was intense, and intrigued me, save one minor detail. The IB program, as it was known, was placed in inner-city schools, in order to raise the average overall testing scores of that particular school. In Leon County, the chosen schools were Fairview Middle and Rickards High. The crime rate at both was severe, as well as dropout rates, and all parties involved were wary of me being in that situation. I shadowed at the school for a single day before agreeing it wasn’t for me.
The de facto school I was zoned for was Swift Creek, a much more suburban environment, with many of the kids I’d gone to elementary school with. While I entered the 6th grade with several of the friends that I’d grown up with, it wouldn’t be these friends I was interested in for much longer. I was always in a hurry to grow up, couldn’t wait to reach my teenage years.
My first day of 6th grade, I walked to the bus stop at the top of my neighborhood, nervously excited for the next chapter in my life. As all kids did in grade school, I had my favorite outfit picked out for the first day of class, and was anxious to see what new school was going to be like.
When I arrived at the bus stop, there was a large group of students near the road, waiting for the bus. A smaller group crowded behind the local Dunkin’ Donuts. I walked towards them to see what they were doing.
As I got closer, I noticed a familiar smell, cigarette smoke. By this point, I’d already been walking their way too long to turn around.
“Hi. I’m Josh.”
They seemed surprised at being approached so frankly. I may have been a lot of things, but an introvert I was not. I looked them over, wondering what kids this age were doing smoking cigarettes. They were a couple years older, doing their best to grow long, stringy, facial hair.
“You want one?” A kid pulled out his pack of cigarettes in my direction.
Newport Menthol, it said on the box, a brand I’d seen.
“Sure.” As I said this, I caught myself, wondering what I was doing, why I was so willing to try this without any second thought. My whole life I’d attached a negative connotation to cigarettes, never once being curious about them, and now here I was, 11 years old, instantly willing to see what the hype was about.
My curiosity silenced my better judgment, and I grabbed the cigarette as if I knew what I was doing. I did my best to hold the lighter steadily as I lit it like I’d seen people in movies do.
I made sure to take a small hit at first, not wanting to cough in front of the group. I had taken a couple drags before I started to feel a lightheadedness. I hit it again, harder, and got a rush of euphoria. It was my first experience with any mind altering substance, and I liked it. I liked it a lot.
11.
I left my phone and keys at check-in for the Leon County Jail, and made the long trek towards D-block, where non-violent women criminals were held. It would be Isabel’s home for the next 90 days.
I pressed the buzzer to notify the jail guard I was there and sat opposite the thick pane of glass that separated inmate from visitor. There was a long hallway they had to walk on the way to visitation, up the stairs and straight towards us for 40 yards.
I watched her take that walk every step of the way that day. I tried to read her body language. She was running her hands through her hair, trying to make herself look as presentable as possible, considering the circumstances. She managed to crack a smile, which was a good sign, and picked up the phone opposite me.
“Well, how is it?” She had been there a couple days already.
“It’s jail.” She did her best to lighten the mood. “I still have great hair, right?”
“Gorgeous. The best.” I let her set the tone for conversation, and was glad to see her in good spirits. I knew this wasn’t how she wanted to be seen, but
better than not being seen at all.
We began with small talk, a couple awkward moments, and some silence before both of us settled and became comfortable with the situation.
I wasn’t her therapist, but I knew she had things she was wrestling with. More than anything I was just trying to make the road a bit easier for someone I cared for. I could relate to her more than she realized. I too had been in and out of institutions, had hurt my family before, and had caused my parents more than their fair share of grief. I knew what it was like to be addicted to something, to many things.
If she wanted small talk for 30 minutes, I gave her small talk. If she wanted more serious, I was there for that too. Visitation after visitation we hammered away at details of how she’d gotten there. Much of our conversations were mistakes that she made, regrets she had.
Her whole life as I knew her, the most important thing to her was the approval and love of her family. She loved talking about them. There were parents and brothers and aunts and uncles and cousins galore, many of them on their way or already doctors and professors. They loved her, although she was unsure of it. They’d become unable to hide their disappointment, and tough love was the motto most had adopted.
She didn’t have many other visitors, and after getting a grasp on what had transpired in years past, I didn’t blame them. It occurred to me what a nightmare it must have been, left with nothing but concrete walls and bars. She had done it to herself, and expressed the torment eloquently.
“What’s the worst part about being in here for you?”
“There’s nothing to get lost in, nothing to lose myself in the moment with. I’ve got a few books, my thoughts, and regrets.” Finding things to escape in, that’s what life was about for people like us. Sex, or drugs, or travel, or music, or religion, we all needed something.
“I think it’s helping me change, though. I feel different this time.”
She told stories of troublesome folks she would use with, a whole variety of people. Nurses that stole from their doctors, women who looted from dealer boyfriends. Isabel had stolen from her parents on occasion, when faced with unwanted withdrawal. She explained, always with disgust in her voice at what she’d done.
One instance that was difficult for her to get passed was a time she had stolen a gun from her dad’s safe. It was a shotgun, and happened to be the very first her brother Landon ever owned. She looked at that as the moment the trust was severed, the turning point she felt they gave up on her. It was a family keepsake, sold and shot up into her veins.
“I just don’t know what the hell I was doing. I don’t know what I was thinking. When I look back now it feels like that was another person. I remember one time my dad walked into my room while I was trying to smoke the last bit of drugs I had. He caught me and took it from me, and I chased him down the hall crying, begging him to give it back. I can’t imagine what that was like for him.” To be an addict is to not just taste desperation, but to become intimate with it, a fact that she knew well.
The more we talked, the more I saw her heal, and the more she began to show an emotional maturity like she hadn’t before. She accepted responsibility and acknowledged that she’d hurt many people in the process.
All of our 30-minute sessions ended the same, with me leaving money in the jail canteen, an account for inmates to purchase snacks or make phone calls. It was an unforgiving place. It had a particular way of reminding me that things could always get worse. Leaving there always put me in a peculiar mood, greeted by the sunlight, freedom to come and go as I pleased.
12.
Early Winter, 1999
Classes at middle school were not at all what I thought they’d be. Teachers there saw a couple hundred kids a day, and I didn’t build rapport with many. I didn’t have Mrs. Frinks to engage me in things I was used to. I lost interest, and my energy diverted in other directions.
Although I already thought I was an adult, my new school was a level of freedom and responsibility that I wasn’t ready for. I had a locker to stash stuff in, and a schedule that offered time in between classes to talk to girls. It was a first for school dances, and for more trips to the bus stop. There were periods of unsupervised activity throughout the day, and I chose to use those times to take up my new found hobby of smoking cigarettes. I wanted to do it all the time. Often it wasn’t just social. I’d smoked enough to need a whole one to feel the same buzz I first did.
I liked smoking and knew there was more beyond cigarettes. We’d learned about drug education the year prior, but I hadn’t taken much interest in them until I’d felt what nicotine did to me. I became infatuated with the concept of altered perceptions. Every day I walked to the bus stop, I hoped it would be the day that the kids were smoking pot instead of cigarettes. They talked about it often, but I’d never seen it.
Finally, the day came. I was still 11 years old when I got high for the first time. I loved it immediately. I was so profoundly changed by marijuana. It helped me bring my personality from an 11 to a 7 or 8, made my feelings less intense. I wondered why anyone in the world wouldn’t want to feel it. I had stumbled upon a pot of gold and never wanted to let it go. I wanted to get high all the time.
I had one of the bus stop kid’s older brother to thank for it, and I asked him to bring it every day from then on. I still had money from doing yard work around the neighborhood, and getting high made me want to work harder so I could buy more weed. The problem was I had no concept of moderation. I skipped classes to smoke with my friends, and snuck out at night to try my first drinks.
I didn’t like the taste of beer, or the effect as much as I did marijuana, but we made ourselves chug a few warm ones that kids would steal from their dads. My mom didn’t have a clue because a mom just doesn’t expect her 11-year old to be drinking and smoking pot.
Every now and then I’d see other drugs. I wasn’t shy. I wanted to try more. I wanted to try everything. It seemed like an endless list of opportunities to make me change the ways I felt and viewed things, a new world of possibilities.
The thing I saw most, was older kids eating pills. Many times they were getting high off Coricidin, a cough medicine that had psychedelic effects in large amounts. Sometimes they ate prescription pills, of all shapes and colors. I don’t think even they knew what they were eating. They were young, too. We were all headed in disastrous directions.
I can’t recall what I tried first, or second, or third. I remember my mom dropping me off at the local skating rink on a Friday night, and not much else. I woke up the next morning in the hospital.
On December 3rd, 1999, just four months after trying my first cigarette, I was admitted to Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, for a prescription and over the counter mixed drug overdose.
13.
Believe in yourself. Believe in your own potential for greatness. Believe that you can change the world. It is something that is within each of us. Believe in the power of one.
-Evan Tanner
“So you’re dating someone in jail now?” Matt teased.
“Shut up, it’s not like that.” The topic wasn’t a sensitive one, but not one I felt like joking about.
“You know shit is gonna get serious when she gets home.”
“Nothing’s gonna get serious. I’m not trying to get involved like that.”
Isabel and I had been intimate many times in our life, and had regained a feeling of closeness, but we weren’t together in any sense of the word. I entertained the idea a handful of times but scoffed away at the practicality of it. She didn’t yet know how to manage her own life, let alone one with someone else.
“What about the girl you met the other night?” he asked.
That girl was Veronica, a bartender with lots of mutual friends at a local nightclub that I’d worked at. She was from Miami, a tall, slender, fiery, Cuban, with a pretty face and attitude to match.
Isabel had been in jail for a month at this point. I wasn’t sure how to tell her about it, although I wanted to. Sh
e knew we weren’t in a position in which I was going to just stay home, awaiting her release. She brought it up before I had the chance to.
“So who have you been dating now? I know you always have someone in the works.” She prodded.
“I’ve met someone, decent.” I don’t know how much it could have been considered dating. We spent most of our time partying and having sex.
“She’d better be cute,” she said.
“Her hair isn’t as good as yours.”
“Oh, shut up. So you gonna stop coming to see me now?”
“That’s what you think?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“That’s silly.”
“Does she know about me?”
“Yes.”
“What do you tell her?”
“I tell her I have a friend in jail that I visit. What else am I supposed to tell her?” Veronica didn’t think much of Isabel. She didn’t consider her a threat, only because she’d never laid eyes on her.
Not many of my friends cared much for Veronica. Most didn’t expect it to last long. They’d seen me go through countless flings with Hispanic girls from Miami and thought the same about each one. The Cuban girls I’d dated always celebrated being domestic. Veronica had a face like it pained her any time she tried to cook or clean.
I never stopped going to see Isabel, although she called less after that day. I would feel awful if I missed a call from her, not wanting her to think I was ignoring her in lieu of being with another. As I continued to visit, the topic of conversation eventually moved from her and the things she’d done, to me and what I was doing in my life. Isabel was always supportive of my ambitions, forever asking what was on the horizon.
