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I had met Mike through my best friend's husband years ago. I admit, at first I didn't like him much. He boasted too much about this and that, and acted like he knew everything. To top it off, he was a mooch. He lived with his grandparents most of his life, and he is still living there today, although only his grandmother is left. As the years went by, I had gotten to know him a little better, learned about some of his background. His mother had given up custody of him because of her own drug addiction and a thread of abusive relationships. When he was in his early teens, she had started to clean up her act. She tried, and succeeded, in being granted partial custody of him and his siblings, and just before the judge was about to give the go ahead for Mike to live with his mother for good, she was involved in an automobile accident that left her in a vegetative state for many years. Mike dealt with this by turning to drugs. It started out with marijuana, but soon he was taking speed, acid, mushrooms, whatever he could get his hands on. Crystal Meth became a crutch for a while, but after a failed suicide attempt, he got off it. Then his mother started coming out of the vegetative state, but before she was completely coherent, she came down with pneumonia and died.

Knowing all this, I became his confidant in some sort of way. My life hadn't been easy, and we had a lot in common. My mother was in and out of my life so much as I grew up, just as Mike's had been. Both of us lived with grandparents most of our lives, although my father and step mother also lived with me, whereas Mike had no one but his grandfather and grandmother. His grandfather enabled him to the point where Mike thought everyone owed him something. I was a fool to think I could change that. But I tried anyway.

In 2003, after he had asked me out several times and I had said no, he finally convinced me to go out with him. We had fun, and I decided maybe he just needed someone to be there for him, and we became close quickly. He moved in with me, but within six months, I knew I had made a mistake. I hadn't counted on him being jealous, controlling, and paranoid about every aspect of life, particularly with me. It was another six months before I found out he had been using cocaine the entire time we were together. To his credit, he tried to stop when we got together. He knew I wouldn't tolerate it. But the addictive personality he had just wouldn't give it up. Before long, I was finding crack pipes hidden

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