-"My name is Lily and I'm an alcoholic"
"We love you Lily"?
-No, we don't mean it that way. We're not a fucking support
group. We're your friends! Do you remember us?!
Somehow, he always managed to blame me for everything...
I'm never allowed to get cross if it's my fault. Even
screw-ups are allowed to be angry!
-I used to have a lot of problems, now they're centered in
one.
I ran out of energy to fight. I sat down on the couch.
Looking around at all those distant faces. My friends.
-So you admit there is a problem?
Jerald asked in an uncaring way. No, he cares. I know he
does. He just doesn't agree with what the rest of them are
doing to me. I think he's proud of me. I dared to do what
he didn't.
-That's the first part of the recovering, you know...
He continues.
I just about had enough of this. It's not like I have track
marks down my arm!
-Screw this. I got up and left the house, and for the first
time ever I actually didn't want someone following me. What
happened to my usual attention seeking self?
But, of course, the Peacemaker came out after me.
All-has-to-be-well-Simon, Mr.
my-:life's-mission-is-to-help-others, comes up to me and
says
.I love you very much. We all do. We're just worried about
you.
I knew what he was doing. He first gets mad, attacks me,
blames, and then he comes up to me, calming me down and
hugging me with 'we love you's.
I fall for it every time. I went back inside.
Actually, I went back inside for a few reasons: A. it's my
house and I had nowhere else to go. B.  with all my fury
when I was rushing out I forgot to take my coat and once I
calmed down I noticed it was freezing.
We sat inside and pretended nothing happened. Everything
was perfect.
I wasn't a pregnant junkie, Reanne isn't dying, Dylan will
come back and Jerald wasn't gay. Yeah, right.
I sat there on the sofa trying to understand what had gone
wrong with me, with my life, with this situation.
Didn't I always say I'd stop smoking when I get pregnant?
Isn't Heroin worse than Nicotine?
Reanne and her shadow, Thom, went out into the garden to
smoke what's left of the Weed. They won't smoke around me.
Not when I'm pregnant.  We changed our way of life for me.
No smoke of any kind in the house or next to me. I must
stop smoking myself, stop drinking and think healthy,
healthy, healthy!.
So no surprise that after a month of everyone keeping in
line, when they discovered that the mother of the unborn
baby was spending her days on Heroin, they got a little
angry.

They were all so exited about the baby when I told them. Of
course they waited for the reaction only after they made
sure that I was happy about it as well. I assured them that
I am planning to keep the baby and am ecstatic about it.
I would call her after the colour of her hair. If she was
to be blond I will call her Buttercup. If she had red hair
- Amber, for black hair Ebony, and for brown Hazel.
That will be her baby names only. At around age five she
will choose her childhood name. I will help her with her
choice, give her options for a name that describes the girl
she will be, but it will be her choice.
When she feels ready, at about the age of fifteen, she will
choose her grown-up name.
I had all these plans. Giving birth to a junkie wasn't one
of them.

In the dead of the night I went out. I was coming down from
the Heroin and I began to think. Thinking never has a
positive result. Not this kind of thinking anyway. I
started thinking about my choices in life.


My distanced childhood was a blur, with a few clear
pictures in my head. All of a happy, normal family life. A
shy weird girl, being slightly bullied in primary school,
low self esteem and difference from others that never could
quite be explained.
A girl that became mentally addicted to the idea of Heroin
when she was 9, after watching 'Trainspotting'.
At fifteen I started to choose. I chose not to fade into
the back ground, until no one would remember my name
anymore and I would disappear. I chose to say 'fuck all'
and do what I want.
I got a tattoo done on a school trip. The entire grade was
shocked. Her? Lily has the guts' to do that?
I wore hippie skirts, and weird shirts. I started talking
to people. I started making friends.
And quite quickly I learnt how to make people not only like
me, but also fall in love with me and do all I wanted from
them.
The first time someone told me he loved me I freaked out.
It was summer holiday before senior year, a Saturday
afternoon, when my neighbor and good friend called me.
Please come over. I need you.
I got worried and went to his house down the street. I knew
he was in love with me. I knew he knew he had no chance.
He decided he was alone in the world, and wrote it on
himself. The word 'alone' written with a knife on his arm,
his leg, his chest.
He told me all his fears of no one loving him and then he
added - there is also something else but I can't bring
myself to tell you...
You're in love with me.
More a statement than a question. He couldn't be bothered
being subtle.
-Yes. He answered. You ass, I thought to myself.
After I managed to calm him down we talked, I made up an
excuse and he accepted it. I couldn't be with him. He
understood.
During the conversation he said -...Because I love you...
That's when it hit me. He loved me.
After him there were 7 more who loved me. None of whom I
loved back as they loved me. I cared about only a couple of
them.
So you can see how the phrase 'I love you' said with that
intention has lost all meaning for me.
I have heard it too many times already.


I get up, go inside, walk up the stairs. I go straight to
my stash in my room and take my love, my precious. I go and
wake Reanne up. I show her the Heroin. She is immediately
awake, afraid of what I'm going to do. Worried about me.
I tell her to come after me, I go to the bathroom. -You see
this? I wave the bag in front of her eyes. Quite a lot of
Heroin. My whole stash.
-This is what its worth. I flush it down the drain. There
it goes.
She comes close up to me. Looks at me. Hugs me. I hug her
back.
-We're going to raise this girl. We're going to have a
baby! A pause. -A healthy baby!
Then we sat down and started talking about the future.
Fantasizing about all we're going to do for her. My baby.
The six months to the birth were hard. I sneaked a
cigarette one in a while. I smoked some Weed when I was at
parties. I had a line here and there when I felt I couldn't
cope. But all in all, I was healthy, my baby was healthy.
After hard fourteen hours of labour, pushing and breathing,
Life has taken her first breath.
The nurse told me it was a baby girl. I knew that already.
I always knew my first born would be a girl.
I called her Life. Any other name seemed too superficial.
She was Life, not the colour of her hair.
Her father never came to see her. But then again, he never
knew I was pregnant with his child.