This story was first posted to my blog in December 2017. I left Probation in February 2020 and didn’t cross paths with “Rockstar” again, until last week. She’s back in the system. Opiates again. This time, due to a nasty injury over a year ago that led to multiple surgeries and a prescription…and back into drug dependence… in other words, addiction.
I’ll leave the original post alone without revising it…but I have thoughts about addiction and relapse…and Rockstar. So lets return to December 2017 now; hope you enjoy.
SUPERHERO’S LIVING AMONG US
The Netflix Marvel Series which features various shows like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and several others, are stories of normal appearing people living among us who possess special powers that are used to overcome the darkness within their world. Each of the characters experienced personal crisis as they battled coming to grips with these powers and the burden of a responsibility to use them for the greater good of those around them.
It was about a month ago that it occurred to me I’d been having regular encounters with a real-life superhero such as those on TV. Let me take a moment to tell you about this character.
Her cover story is very Marvel-like. She blends into her surroundings as a 20-something gal working long hours in a restaurant. People come and go and have no idea of her true identity. Most are pleasant in their interactions with her, while others are a bit more challenging…but she deals with all the people patiently, biting her tongue in some cases, and doing her best to blend in and keep her true identity concealed.
Like most superheroes that I’ve ever watched on TV, there is a side most people are totally unaware of when they cross paths with her. They have no idea the dark forces she has fought and defeated. When community members see her, they see a waitress, they see a shift lead, they see someone working back in the kitchen pulling orders; They see someone walking the aisle at the local grocery store, they see just another person pumping gas at the local convenience store…they don’t see the person with superpowers who battled and defeated dark hideous forces, leaving them destroyed on the ground at her feet.
HER SUPERHERO NAME
Like I said above, it was about a month ago that all of this came into full view for me. It was like a veil was lifted and I saw things clearly. Every month this gal comes walking into my office and I hear about her battles and I see her clear victories manifesting. Weekly or monthly, she comes in with stories to share about new experiences, sometimes first-time experiences, that give her a taste for what life could be like in her new world. Over the past 8 months, I would end meetings with her by saying a phrase that I never use with others…and then, it occurred to me, “This is her superhero name!”
RockStar!
5+ YEARS AGO
RockStar first crossed paths with me in early 2012. When I say she was a mess…I am grossly understating her circumstances. She was court-ordered into a residential drug rehab setting because most people working with her did not believe she would live long without appropriate help. She did not last long in this setting and was back out on the streets. I won’t get into the details of all that took place during this stretch between 2012 and early 2013 other than to say it was memorable enough for me to possess clear details of encounters with her or involving her.
I will say that the demons destroying her were Heroin and Methamphetamine, along with a dangerous lifestyle above and beyond drug use itself that clearly put her in harm’s way most of the time. These demons drove her to go AWOL in 2013, and a warrant was issued. She disappeared without a trace, her file was stored away, and I heard nothing from her or about her again.
4 YEARS LATER – MARCH 2017
A strange thing took place in March of this year while driving through a town near my house. I looked off to the north toward a neighborhood which held the last known address of RockStar, and I specifically remember saying two things out loud as I drove alone:
- I wonder where “RockStar” is…
- I wonder if she’s even alive…
I had every reason to wonder if she was even alive all these years later.
Within weeks of this conversation between me and myself on that drive past her neighborhood, I walked into my desk to see her file sitting on my desk. RockSstar was revoked and resentenced to probation and her file was back on my desk. It was a twilight-zone kind-of-moment for me as I thought about the coincidence of my reflections only weeks earlier.
WHO WE WERE DOES NOT DEFINE WHO WE ARE
In my first meeting with RockStar after she was resentenced to probation, I learned that she did the hard work to get clean from heroin and meth. She worked hard to get sober, and once she felt she’d proven she could do it, she turned herself in to law-enforcement to deal with the outstanding warrant…from 4 years earlier.
Since April 2017, I’ve enjoyed watching a young lady come into my office overjoyed that:
- She got a job…
- She kept a job…
- She got a raise…
- She was being considered for a promotion…
- She got a Shift Lead position…
- She finished her jail time without going AWOL…
- She stayed clean…
- She experienced Thanksgiving with her mother again…
- She was gaining the trust back from her mom’s husband…who was, oh, by the way, a cop…
- She gets to buy presents for her family and spend Christmas with them again…
- She got the assistant manager position…
- She moved into her own apartment after ending a relationship that went on for all those years.
It’s so wonderful to see RockStar evolving into a person with dreams. She wants to go back to school and build a career…and it seems like every month is filled with “Firsts” for her.
Every meeting ended with me saying, “You’re a RockStar!” Then one day…my eyes were opened and I saw her for who she truly was.
BE MINDFUL
As I listen to her talk with excitement (and sometimes irritation) in our meetings, I can’t help but picture her doing life, going to work, going to the store, doing the simple ordinary things we all do…and I wonder to myself, do the people who cross paths with her have any clue who she is? Do they see a demon-slayer? Nah…..they don’t have a clue.
We never know who we’re encountering in our day-to-day activities. The person ringing up our groceries, the person interacting with us at the bank, the person helping us find some hard-to-find item in Home Depot, yada yada yada… we may be encountering a Superhero and not even know it.
I share this story because the longer I continue as a probation officer, I am convicted by the truth that we will see what we are looking for. Not trying to be flaky Kumbaya-dude here, but those beautiful diamonds we see in jewelry commercials…there was a day when they were covered with rock and dirt completely concealed from the naked eye…then a glimmer was seen!
Thank you RockStar for impacting my life with your story.
REFLECTING 5 YEARS LATER
RockStar is a trainwreck once again. She is literally one day away from being on the streets. Day labor earnings pay for her motel room nightly. The opiate addiction brought her to her knees once again, and her circumstances are oh so fragile. We have to start with remembering… She must remember who she was; who she is! I know who’s really in there; I know who she truly is. She’s a superhero at a crossroads, but her identity is in question by the most important person in this story…herself.
I look forward to being her “Coach”, to challenge her, to being on the sidelines with front row seats as the superhero emerges once again. RockStar will do all the heavy lifting in this relationship… I’ll simply be there reminding her of who she is and not letting her settle; not letting her remain defeated.
Rocky needed a Mickey in his corner…the movie wasn’t called “Mickey” …it was called “Rocky” for a reason. RockStar will have me in her corner. I say this because I think of all the people out there on the streets because they have no where to go; I think about those lucky enough to be couch-surfing in February because someone is willing to take them in at night; I think about all those people dealing with substance abuse issues and dealing with mental health issues that may be complicated by addiction, and I wonder: who is in their corner? Do they come to anyone’s mind when they close their eyes and try to get through the night?
Addiction is a hideous thing…it’s a monster. The damage it does to people, how it morphs people into something so distorted from who their true nature was meant to be.
I can be as annoyed as the next person when I roll up to a busy intersection and see the people out there with the signs…but there is a story…we need to know the story. It doesn’t remove personal accountability for the choices made…but there is a story.
…and sometimes even Superhero’s need someone in their corner calling them out.