A Brother's Love

Dear Heroin-

Fuck you. I know that you do not know me, nor have we ever spoken, but I want to tell you how much I hate you. I hate you with everything that word means, without hyperbole or prejudice. I despise you with every fiber of my being. This is why.

You took my brother away from me. You took my niece’s father away from her. You took my parents peace of mind, and structure, and happiness, and hope away from them. You are like every bad deed, unscrupulous action, vile thought, act of betrayal, sad moment and missed opportunity that’s ever happened as long as this world has existed; except so much worse.

What I hate most is your ignorance. You don’t even care about the destruction you’ve caused. You played the coy role. I used to hang out with some of your friends but even I never wanted to meet you. You hid under the guise of intrigue and curiosity. You played the cult role in movies. You were friends with Miles Davis and Billie Holliday and you hung out with James Taylor in the village. Picasso painted with you and Poe wrote with you. For those of us who never met you, you seemed “cool” or at least memorable. But you never were a true friend to those people. You took Jerry’s guitar away and Chris’ laughter away and I never got to see Jimi shred through “Red House” and it’s your fault. You suckered all of them. You’re a con man. You made them feel good, drew them in and then robbed them of anything that was ever important and you did it with blatant disregard for any of them or those around them.

You manipulate people and make us think that the bad things they do are their fault but they aren’t. They are your fault. You can take a living creature and turn them into a zombie programmed to act on your behalf. You re-wire people like they’re robots and strip away their emotions and feelings. You do it for your entertainment and sit there with a smug look on your face. Sometimes, you don’t even have the common courtesy to just kill the person. Leaving them alive is sometimes much worse and I can’t think of anything worse in this world that could be said than that.

I want to forgive you. I want to tell myself it’s not your fault. I pray that you will go away. I try to have patience with you. I try to think you’ll stop coming around my family. I try to understand you better. But I can’t and I won’t. I guess that makes me intolerant of you but I can live with that. So, from the bottom of my heart; fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you and fuck you.

Written March 28, 2013