May 8, 2018:
Glasgow. That was the end.
Sober, she said, "How long will we have to wait on you hand and foot?"
She meant that. It came from a true place somewhere deep beneath the veneer.
It was a slip but it was the truth.
I sat in the Winter Gardens with my head down, shoulders slumped.
There was another time I'd sat like that. On a bench at Chaco Canyon. The decision then was whether to cut the trip short. It was so sad, for me. An experience I'd anticipated for a year, demolished by the radical selfishness of addiction. A day later, on the way home, I told her from the heart, "You're the most selfish person I've ever encountered." There's irony there, because by that point I was very literally waiting on her hand and foot. As I also later did in Glasgow. As she forces everyone to do.
At Chaco Canyon I was extremely sad. At the Winter Gardens I was angry. That was the moment I pulled away emotionally. I stayed with them for several more days but my heart and mind were no longer committed. I did not visit again.
I paid more of her bills. Her emigration costs and legal fees. That was selfish. It was so that, if she were arrested there for brawling she'd not be deported. In other words, so that I'd never be put in the position again of being asked to support her.
When her citizenship was approved I said goodbye. She wrote, "So we're not friends now? I can live with that."
That was not a shock. I'd known it already. Ever since her slip of the tongue at the Winter Gardens.