The light at the back of the fridge
Memory can be hell on a brain.
Some nights, I’m dragged down memory lane.
Half-asleep, I find myself somewhere else.
I’m in the big rotten chair. Because I've got the most dope to share.
There's a bang at the door. Someone’s raging, demanding money. Then a thunderous slap. A woman holds her face and runs to the bathroom, shrieking. But it’s occupied — a naked old man is drowning mice in the toilet. You can hear them squealing.
A woman sprawled on the floor peers up at me, her face covered in sores. “Do mice eat cockroaches?”
If you had told me when I was a kid that this was hell, I’d be an extra good boy forever-and-ever-amen.
In early recovery, I figured all I had to do was get off the drugs, and the memories would eventually starve to death. Just give it time. Watch Breaking Bad.
But back then, I didn’t have much else besides bitter memory. And so there was a flashback for every occasion. When I opened my mom’s fridge, for instance, I’d see coconut milk, maple syrup, hummus and — are those hemp hearts?
Then I’d see another fridge, this time at the trap house, bearing a note: ‘DO NOT OPEN.’
And I’d open it anyway because I was hungry. I forgot the apartment hadn’t had electricity in weeks. The rot that escaped that day felt like the end of the world.
Go away, memory!
Then I began to make a few worth keeping — the ones from school and the swimming pool and even yesterday, when I made someone laugh.
The new ones are infused with awe and wonder. Gratitude, too. Especially when I slip under fresh blankets. And when I hug someone who cares not for my dope, but for all the other bits of me — on a molecular level.
Of course, old memories still darken my dreams. Just not as often. They’re crowded out by new adventures.
I don’t think those moldy visions will ever completely disappear. Heartache and trauma and all the things you experience as an addict — there’s no eternal sunshine for a crater that deep. But sometimes, it’s an important reminder of how far you’ve had to climb.
Besides, if you plant a lot of seeds around the crater, and squint your eyes just so, you can pretend it’s a garden. Believe me, if you don’t, it will be just you and the crater. And people who stare too long into craters tend to fall into them.




Have you looked at your thriving garden lately Christian?