



I went farther into the closet. The blue jacket was there. It smelled like my father's cigarettes and old spice. All the shoe boxes were there from boots I had long grown out of and left behind.





There was always the comfort in my addiction of some day being able to return to the only real home I had ever known. When I came home in 1990, my parents let me move back in after a failed relationship that accelerated my addiction. In 1993, my mom let me come home to dry out. She drove me to get my AIDS test. After battling thrush, the doctor felt I may have the virus. I told my mother I was a junkie. She never lost faith that I would some how beat the test and the odds.





That day came in Dec. 1998. I was clean. I was off drugs again for the first time since I was a teenager. I went through the house and found the life, like my past had fallen into disrepair. Time had passed and my parents' house was a dysfunctional time capsule welcoming to visit.





I visited home a few more times. I had my own home, my own life. Eventually, I had my own children. I never thought I would stop using drugs. In fact, I never really wanted to until the day I finally wanted to really stop.





I went outside in the dream. The new owner was living there. Suddenly, the house and the closets were empty. The whole house was empty. My parents were gone and I was alone. I was crying in my sleep as I usually do when I dream of the house. Much more frightening then any dream about dope is a dream about what it would have been like if I would have never gotten to see my parents again. But I got clean, I did these things, I wipe the tears from my eyes and get coffee. Because I have to keep living.

I had a dream during nap time. I was at my parents house in West Chester. I was going through the closet in the living room. All the jackets were there from fall and winter seasons that were long past. My plaid jacket was there from the third grade, the one with the hood I bled all over during a tornado drill. Got a nose bleed as I sometimes did spending winters in the house with the heaters blazing all day. Sometimes we would light the fireplace and make s'mores.