It's funny how events in life can reunite people, bring them back together, people on separate paths in life coming back intertwined for a common event or common purpose. When I started going through my divorce, I thought life was at it's end. I was plummeting towards the pits of hell. it was hard to get out of bed everyday, I would hold it together enough to make it through work, and coming home at night a losing my mind. I'm living in an area that, on the outside, is aesthetically pleasing. Right on the coast, typical quaint little fishing community. This in turn brings a flock of tourists every summer eager to fill their Instagram feed with pictures of overpriced lobster rolls, quaint weathered cottages, weathered lighthouses, and of course the breakwater.
This influx of tourism, although good for a select few people in this area, aids in the downfall and demise of the common folk in this town. This area doesn't have a lot of opportunity in this town to begin with. We are a good hour off the Highway. The biggest employers in the area is the company I work for SS&C, the Maine state prison ( where I used to be a correctional officer), Dupont, and Fischer Engineering. Aside from that it's all mom and pop shops, heating technicians, and the handy man type. You know the kind, the jack of all trades - master of non type of guys. The winters are hard, the poverty level is through the roof, and we are in the heart of Maine's Opiate crisis.
Once you lived here long enough you start to peel back the layers to really see the kind of cesspool that Rockland Maine actually is. Maine is in the middle of a housing crisis, the beginnings of an elder boom, young folks leaving the state, and because we are in a high tourist area, housing here is almost unaffordable. Even if you have a professional Job and work forty plus hours a week. It's easy to see why people get into things that they do around here. You see it everywhere. the grocery store, downtown, at work. That look of bitterness, loss of hope, the struggle of how am I going to make it from one paycheck to another. Not a lot of prosperity for the middle and lower class workers. People having to cohabitate because no one can afford to live on their own, and every single person seems to be on state assistance. It's a love hate relationship with the tourists because they bring money into the town, but because of them the locals have a hard time. Especially seeing the tourists come in and throw their money around, treating the locals like shit while they suck up resources and then leave. It's haunting at times, and because of how my time is arranged with my divorce between me and the ex I'm landlocked in this area, at least for now. It's a hard realization of where I am.
Today, I had news of an old high school friend who had passed. Not much younger than myself. He had been caught in the middle of the battle of addiction. Of course this prompted the circle of friends that we had years ago to come together to start chatting about what had happened. Although it was sad that he lost his battle with addiction, it was a catalyst for positive conversation about the rampant addiction that was running through my town when I was in high school. Through conversation I found out that where one mans overdose took a life, another mans struggle turned into survival and ultimately a positive story of recovery and progressing with his life. This man was like a kid brother to me growing up, and issues with his Scoliosis, degenerative discs, and ultimately a bad car accident started his road down the path of addiction. A long 10 years for him, but he was able to pull himself out of where he was. He is now married, living down in south Carolina, and has a wonderful little girl.
We all wonder where it all went wrong. What started out as a group of us hanging out at the town park for a number of years; almost over night, turned into a nightmare for a lot of people. Seclusion, people nodding off if they actually came out of the house, dirty needles laying in the parking lot. Yet, the parents would deny that there was a drug problem. My own parents in fact didn't believe that there was a drug problem in our town. Over the last decade I have seen multiple old friends in that circle pass due to not being able to overcome their demons that were looking at them. What went wrong? How did this all happen. Seeing this time again with friends, and my teenage idols (Layne Staley, Kurt Cobain, Pete Steele) really hits home. How did this all happen. How did we go from a bunch of kids in the park smoking a joint in the sun to a handful sticking spikes in their arms.
How did over 8% of 18-24 year old's in the Midcoast area end up on the same path as kids I grew up with in southern Maine? Are these behaviors learned from their parents, is it living in poverty? How many times do I have to take my kid with me grocery shopping and see people nodding off in the store, or passed out in bathrooms. A hard thing for me to have gone through last summer was seeing my landlords son get dropped off by a car full of his friends. They dumped him on the porch, his lips were blue, he was foaming at the mouth, his eyes were pinned and glazed over and bloodshot. They were going to leave this kid there, on the porch, while he was dying. My son was across the street playing with his friends and watching his dad have to repeatedly slap a 16 year old kid in the face while calling his name to wake him up. We ended up having to call rescue, and were able to get info from the kids before they took off that he had ingested a handful of pills and washed it down with a lot of alcohol. We found out later we saved his life.
I think as I get older, I think about these things more. I seem to think about my mortality more. Having a son has put a lot of things in perspective for me, seeing friends pass always puts things into perspective for me. We are not going to be here forever, and where at one time I may have thought I was invincible, I realize we are but fragile creatures. I will always remember the times that we spent together, and it is a shame that his demons were never conquered. It was, however, a positive thing that it opened up dialogue between old friends, and hearing some of those survival stories. My heart goes out to the people that are struggling with addiction, and I believe we, as a society need to get over the stigma that is attached to it. Do people make bad choices, yes, but those bad choice may be a result of underlying issues even before that choice was made. Rest in peace old friend.
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