My First “Adult” Love

In September, not long after graduation, I went back to my hometown to see my dad. I didn’t go looking for trouble. But trouble had always known my name.

I ran into my old dealer from all of high school. He told me his son had just gotten out of prison. Looking at me like I owed him something, he says “I need someone to cook and clean for him.” Don’t get me wrong, he offered to pay me, but he offered in drugs.

I was bored with drinking. I missed the drugs. And the offer felt easy. So, I said yes. I didn’t see it at the time, but I think I went back home knowing the drugs would find me.

When I met him, my first thought was, He is not my type. I actually laughed to myself about it. But we spent every day together. Morning, noon, and night. Just talking. Riding around. Sitting in silence. Nothing sexual. Not even an inappropriate comment. And that alone felt revolutionary — because by then, men had always wanted something from me.

Except him. He listened. He noticed. He let me be. We sang to each other in the car — loudly, badly, and unapologetically. We had a saying that only made sense to us. Something small, stupid, sacred. We bounced from house to house, never really settled, but always together.

And slowly, without realizing it, I fell in love. Not with the image. Not with the lifestyle. But with the heart I felt underneath the hardened exterior. He protected me in the ways he knew how. He stood between me and people who tried to hurt me. He shut down anyone who spoke badly about me. He never let me feel small in public — even when I already felt broken inside.

For the first time, I felt chosen. And that mattered more than I knew how to say. He was the first man who didn’t rush me. Didn’t pressure me. Didn’t treat my body like payment. After a lifetime of being used — and using myself to survive — that respect felt holy.

But addiction doesn’t stay quiet for long. I introduced him to Roxie’s. He had been clean when I met him, just getting out of prison for a few years. I didn’t understand then what I was waking up inside of him. Or maybe I did, and I just wasn’t strong enough to stop myself.

He spiraled fast. Still, he tried.

He tried fast food jobs.
He tried hustling legally and illegally.
He tried dealing. He even got us all the way across the country trying to start over. Believing distance would heal what pain had wired into us.

It couldn’t.

The stress grew heavier. The frustration sharper. And sometimes, the love came out sideways. Violence showed up in moments, not many but enough to leave a mark. I learned to minimize, excuse, and normalize — because trauma bonds blur danger into devotion. But even then, he was my ride-or-die. My best friend. My protector. My constant.

When my dad disowned me for being with him — because he was half Black — I stayed. Because he loved me for me. Because he saw all of me — the damage, the chaos, the softness — and didn’t walk away. By then, I was far gone. And so was he.

When my dad disowned me for being with him, it wasn’t just words. He took my car too. It was under his name, and he used it as leverage — six months of threats, pressure, ultimatums, and fear. Six months of trying to force me to choose between the man I loved and the family I came from. But I didn’t leave. And eventually, he realized I wasn’t going to.

So, he agreed to meet him. To give him a chance. To see for himself who I was choosing. It went about as smoothly as it ever would. No yelling. No violence. Nobody died. Which, at that point in my life, felt like success.

Three months later, my dad married my stepmom. And that’s one of the memories that still sits heavy in my chest. By then, I was deep into painkillers and benzos. I was twenty minutes late to the ceremony. I showed up dulled, foggy, disconnected from my own body. I stayed for maybe an hour at the reception before leaving. My boyfriend was nodding out, falling asleep with his face in a piece of cake.

That’s the image that stays with me. Not the wedding. Not the vows. But the quiet humiliation of knowing I wasn’t really there. That regret cuts deep. Not because I didn’t love my dad and stepmom, but because they never turned on me. No matter what I did. No matter how far I fell. They stayed. And I wasn’t present in their happiest moments.

I missed something sacred because addiction had already started stealing my ability to show up. Not just for myself, but for the people who loved me without conditions.

That’s a weight I still carry. Not as punishment — but as truth.

Not long after we moved up north, thinking changing places would change us. Needless to say, it didn’t. When things fell apart up in Wisconsin and we came back home, it didn’t explode. It cracked. And then it shattered quietly. He went to prison. Until 2036. And when that happened, the ground disappeared beneath me. The guilt was unbearable. The loss suffocating. The one constant in my life — chaos or not — was suddenly gone. Like he was erased. Like he was never supposed to exist at all.

But he did. He mattered. The trauma bond was real. The love was real — even if it was wounded. Losing him felt like losing half of myself. And without him, without the noise, without the intensity, my life didn’t fall apart all at once. It unraveled.

Slowly. Surely. And I didn’t yet know how to live without the person who had been holding me together. Even while everything else was falling apart.

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🕊 Closing Prayer

God,
You saw the love that lived inside broken places.
You saw the protection, the tenderness, and the damage intertwined.

Help me grieve what was real
without forgetting what was unsafe.
Hold the memories that still ache
and the parts of me that learned to love through survival.

Thank You for carrying me
when the people I loved could not.
And for staying
when everything I leaned on disappeared.

Amen.

XOXO, The Healing Wildflower