Living With My Dealer

I didn’t just sleep at my dealer’s house.

I lived there in every way that mattered.

Technically, I still had my dad’s house. But it was empty most of the time, and being alone there felt unbearable. So I stayed where there were people — where there was noise, routine, and familiarity.

That house became my world.

His girlfriend — the mother of his child — had been my friend before he was ever my dealer. I trusted her. I felt safe with her. And when I started sleeping there, it wasn’t about drugs first — it was about belonging.

We did life together.

She had a baby while I was staying there. I bonded deeply with that child. I fed him, held him, watched him, loved him. I babysat so she could go out. Sometimes it was for drugs. Sometimes it was for money. Other times, it was just so she could escape for a while. That was normal there. That was family logic.

I didn’t think of it as transactional.

I thought of it as showing up.

That house had rhythms. Morning chaos. Late nights. People sleeping wherever there was space. Laughter mixed with tension. It wasn’t safe — but it was mine. It was the closest thing to family I had at that point in my life.

He wasn’t just my dealer.

He became someone I trusted. Someone who checked on me. Someone who made sure I ate, made sure I got home, made sure I wasn’t alone. His girlfriend was my anchor. His kids felt like mine. It’s a feeling that’s hard to explain unless you’ve lived inside that kind of found family.

And then, life moved on.

I got sober.
I grew up.
I left that world.

And it was like none of it ever existed.

We don’t talk anymore. The kids I loved grew up without me. The house dissolved into memory. And five years after my senior year, he was murdered.

There was no funeral I attended.
No space to grieve publicly.
No permission to mourn someone people only saw as a problem.

But he wasn’t just a headline.

He was part of my life.
Part of my survival.
Part of a season that kept me alive when nothing else did.

Sobriety didn’t just take substances away.

It took people.

It took the family I built when I had none. It took routines, relationships, identities I never thought I’d lose. And no one really prepares you for that grief — the kind that comes after healing.

Sometimes I think about how deeply I loved people who are now just ghosts in my memory. How entire years of my life feel like they belong to someone else. It is strange to carry so much history with people who no longer know me. Some of those people no longer exist at all.

That loss still hurts.

Because they mattered.

Even if the world doesn’t understand why.

Living with my dealer wasn’t just about addiction.

It was about building a family out of whatever scraps of connection I could find. Then I had to grieve them twice. Once when I left, and again when they disappeared.

---

🕊 Closing Prayer

God,
You saw the people who held me when I had no one else.
You saw the love that existed even inside broken places.

Help me grieve what sobriety took as well as what it gave.
Honor the connections that kept me alive — even if they couldn’t come with me.
And bring peace to the memories that still ache.

Thank You for carrying me through that season. Thank you for holding the people I lost. I had to let them go.

Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower