The Exquisite Beauty of Addiction, A True Story

It’s Friday and happy hour hot yoga has just ended. I am taking my sweaty body to pick up Bouquet #8 from The Wine Merchant.

You see, a few months ago, I got a surprise and unexpected email in my inbox: “Congratulations Terra! You just won 10 bouquets of flowers from Passion Flower Bouquet. Choose the weeks you would like them.”

When this email came, I was stunned and then deeply touched. I do a lot of work around personal transformation for myself and others and sometimes it is really, really hard. If you have done deep work, you know what I mean. I would liken it to walking through the pit of hell holding somebody’s hand.

Don’t get me wrong. The dividends are huge: a transformed life and a new way of being. You literally feel like a different person. A whole new capacity to experience beauty emerges.

So when I won those flowers, it felt like a thank you for all the transformational work I do, which was fairly under the radar at that time.

And today I was going to pick up Bouquet #8.

For some reason, I went a different way than usual.

The sun hit my eyes as I arrived and pulled into the tiny, asphalt parking lot. For an unexpected moment, I couldn’t see. Suddenly, the glare shifted and my sight returned. Two homeless figures loomed in front of me. I breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t hit them. It was over. I was fine. They were fine. My panic started to subside as I got out of my car.

Just as I was shutting the door, he was there on my left. A big Indian man with long, black hair. I knew he was one of the two figures. I didn’t have time to engage my automatic reaction to move away or ignore him.

Habits of thinking die hard sometimes: fear, repulsion, disgust. All the feelings that must stare at this man from the eyes of others as he reaches out for connection and help.

Instead, in the split second of seeing him, I saw he was holding something out to me. Some white pieces of paper with drawings on them. “Would you be interested in these Ma’am? They’re charcoal ink. I drew them.”

My hand reached out for the delicate, slightly crumpled pieces of paper with black, charcoal finger smudges. And I looked. I slowly shuffled through them.

They were beautiful, exquisite. There was a drawing of an elk, a deer with antlers, and a buffalo that moved me for some unexplainable reason.

“How much are they?” I asked.

“Twenty dollars,” he said.

I held the buffalo and handed him back the others. He could sell them to someone else. “I’ll see what I’ve got,” I said.

Then my mind had a selfish thought. I’m glad I ignored it. My mind said, “Ok, there were a number of them. I’m only getting one. I’ll see if I have $5.00.”

I ignored it as I reached into my wallet, saw a $20 bill and gave it to him. It was right.

We thanked each other and I went into the store to pick up my flowers. They were there, as usual, amidst a number of other colorful arrangements waiting for pick-up.

My name was hand-written on a small piece of tan paper hanging from a brown string carefully tied to one of the stems. And it was a huge bouquet.

The man behind the counter of the liquor store commented on how lovely they were and I agreed. Then I told him I had won them and noted how generous Lisa, the owner of Passion Flower Bouquet, was.

My eyes welled up with tears for a moment, and we connected in the wonder and magic of it all.

Balancing my flowers in one hand, I opened the door to leave and experienced another moment of startled shock.

There he was again: the artist, the addict with a slight smell of alcohol; the homeless man; the hungry man. Next to him, looking down, was a small, slim woman with gray in her long, thin, straight hair. I never saw her face.

As I started to pass by, he reached for my hand and I was touched.

I felt the old me. The me that would have withdrawn and looked away. The me that wouldn’t have wanted to touch “that.” The me that doesn’t want to see where life can take people and is quietly afraid of the possibility that I could end up there myself.

I felt that old me as I reached back in gratitude and connected with his big, soft, sweet hand. I don’t remember what he said. I know he was expressing thankfulness and love.

As I let go and started walking back to the car with my bouquet, a thought came: “I wonder what he will use the $20 for?”

And I knew it didn’t matter to me. I knew he was managing as best he could. If his addicted brain needed alcohol to numb some hidden pain or if his body needed food, it was ok. And I loved him back.

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Thank you to Terra Brooke for sharing this piece.

You can read more of her work at Becoming a Butterfly.

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