addiction

i believe one of the most painful things to experience is watching someone you love destroy themselves through addiction. today, a good friend of mine stopped by my house and i had to turn him away because he refuses to get sober. i stood on my porch; looking at him, at his rotting teeth and jaundiced skin and i thought, he is going to die soon and there is not a damn thing i can do about it. the only thing i have any control over are my actions and i choose; painful though it may be, not to watch him slowly kill himself. i have to protect myself. he has put us all through enough already and the only thing he can see is his next fix waiting. he does not care that i broke into his house once; after he had gone missing, fully expecting to find him over-dosed and dead inside. i think the hardest part is the death of such potential...to be able to look back and say, i knew him when. i knew him when he was painting, writing and making music. i knew him when he was beautiful. i no longer know the man i just saw on my porch. i do not recognize his thinness, the way the skin hangs from bone. all the creativity has left him. he is not the man i once loved and the hardest part is coming to terms with that. he looked jaundiced and if in fact he was, he is dying. he is physically dying but my old friend is already dead and has been for a very long time.