Amber

"She’s not with us anymore" 

My heart sank to its deepest.  I knew.  

"What do you mean she’s not with us anymore? Like she’s off the streets? Or she’s gone to be in heaven?"

"She’s passed.  Found her two weeks ago in an alley.  Overdosed on Heroin" 

Detroit seems to chew people up and spit them out. This girl was so beautiful.  She was a child at heart.  Most people would take one look and think prostitute, drug addict, worthless, her fault, her choice, her life, she could change it if she wanted to.  And most people would be completely ignorant, to put it nicely.  

Four weeks ago she spilled her guts to us about how she wanted to be clean.  She just got done with rehab, only had one hit since. “Sorry I’m talking so much, I had to much to drink" with a bottle in her hand.  She applied at a kmart, didn’t have anywhere else to go - so she’s back on the streets.  She had nothing to live for.  A debilitating disease she found out.  She’ll die soon anyway, why not just make it easy on herself and do it.  We offered her a hope that surpasses all understanding.  We prayed with her.  We loved her to our core.  She walked away and chucked her still full bottle into the field.  We all sat shocked that this broken, bruised, and battered girl who never spoke a word before just told us everything.  Everything.  She was done and she wanted out.  We let her know her worth.  Which was much.  

The whole conversation was reminiscent of mine with Mark before he died.  He was hopeless.  He sat there thinking there is no way out.  This recreational drug I did for fun overtook my life and I can’t even tell you when, where, or how it happened… but now I’m here.  And I looked him in the eyes and with a Love that wasn’t mine I told him his worth.  I told him there is hope.  

Six days later he died.  

If you think it’s so easy just to quit, you’re wrong.  Imagine the most hopeless you’ve ever felt and then multiply it by 1000 and that’s how they feel.  There is LITERALLY no escape.  Heroin, to them, is the skin that covers our bodies.  There isn’t even an option for us to take it off - we would never even think to, it protects us, it keeps us living, it is apart of us, we like it, we’ve come to know it, it is what makes us and holds us together.  That is what Heroin is.  There is nothing funny about it.  It’s heart breaking.  

My heart sank knowing that she had a family.  Yes, their battle is over and so is hers, but the emotions that come with that.  She was someones DAUGHTER.  She was someones SISTER.  She had a face.  She had a name.  She had a purpose and a place in life.  She was not some girl on the corner.  

Someone gave birth to her.  Someone carried her for 9 months in their stomach. And somewhere along the way, this life creeped in… inch by inch… step by step… until she opened her eyes one day and said, “where do I go from here? There has got to be more than this." And then one day she took her last breath.  

And no one would ever even blink an eye because of it.