departures from suburbia

A friend of mine from work is in a band, and they played last night at the Grog & Tankard in DC.

Since I have amassed all this (relatively) fancy new camera gear, I happily offered to take some photos. Despite wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into, it was pretty damn fun. Of course, my husband called me a groupie and a band-aid, but hello? the band wanted me to do it.

I'm fairly pleased with the results (especially considering the low-lighting conditions and that there was alcohol involved...).

Behold, Wandereast:











You can view the other eight billion photos here.

Where to begin?

It's been over a month since I posted. I'm ok with being crappy and slow at updating. And normally it's just because I'm being lazy or doing other things or just too involved to sit back and write about it. Kind of like taking photos - I just sometimes miss the big picture, the excitement, the ~real life~ because I'm only looking through a tiny lens.

However, those aren't the reasons for my current lack of posting. I knew that the next post I needed to write would be this one, and I wasn't sure how to write it. I'm still not sure what to say or how to explain, so apologies for the fast flowing river of consciousness.

Denial. It's not just a river in Egypt. It is far too easy to look around us and think that everything is just fine with our families and friends. No one wants to accept that things are far from ok. Or perhaps they are ok to accept it, but it's too taboo to talk about. Screw that.

My mom's younger sister, Rebecca, is the closest thing I have to a second mom. She was the most amazing, vivacious woman. She was wild and crazy and fun. She never gave a damn what anyone thought. My sister and I are the closest she's ever come to having children. She was the aunt we clamoured to sit next to, always wanted to be with, couldn't stand to leave alone. She rocked our world.



Now she's a drug addict.

Who won't accept help.

We staged an intervention, all flew out to California and found someone so much worse than we could ever have imagined. This amazing, beautiful woman now weighs under 100 pounds and can barely walk. After reading our letters to her, she quietly said ok. My cousins carried her to the car and we drove her immediately to the hospital (all this was set up in advance thanks to the interventionist) to be admitted for a medical detox. I won't go into details, but if you are curious... it turns out that the Basketball Diaries does a damn good job of portraying this process. Scary.

I don't know if I've ever been more proud. She was finally getting help and I felt like my heart was going to burst.

Two days later it did.

I'd flown back to the East Coast and within 36 hrs of landing got the call. She'd split. Left without a ride, without a wallet, without anything. Somehow she made it home.

Now we are in consequence mode. Each of us, in addition to writing our letter pleading for her to accept treatment, had to write an additional letter stating the consequences if she continued using. For the majority of us, the consequence is no contact. No phone calls, no emails, no visits. We can't talk to her until she gets help.

So now, she's at home, continuing to slowly kill herself. Not talking to her or checking to see if she's ok is horrible, but continuing to ignore the situation and keep communicating only enables her.

I've never felt so powerless in my entire life.