Lucy didn’t know how long she stayed on the floor before she dragged herself to the mussed bed.

Over the next few days Lucy battled her debilitating craving, writhing, curling into a fetal posture. Gooseflesh pricked her skin and she suffered tremors, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. Thoughts and images of imminent danger tormented her. She couldn’t sleep or eat.

Certain she would die, she begged heaven for mercy.

God help me.

Eventually, as her withdrawal subsided, flashes of lucidity only confirmed that she had descended into hell and would die there if she didn’t crawl out.

In the weeks and months that passed, she fought to survive. She sought treatment in a free rehab center and managed to qualify for a room in a shelter.

Lucy knew her life was a cursed one, with a line of abusive men like Hugo. The lies and misfortune that had been forced upon her reached back to her childhood. She haunted New York City despising those she saw entering shops, restaurants, wearing expensive clothes, riding in expensive cars; those living in comfort, living pain-free lives, for they were no better than her.

On the street she survived by stealing wallets from inattentive tourists, using credit cards only once to buy things she could sell fast for cash as she continued building her bankroll.

Then the truth hit her.

It happened on a clear blue Saturday morning. Lucy had come to one of the flea markets in Lower Manhattan on Broadway. She’d been searching for tourists to prey upon when the morning sun found a tray of rings, glinting at the right moment, as if signaling her.

Lucy caught her breath.

Gleaming before her was a huge assortment of inexpensive skull rings. Soon she found a death’s head, a sugar skull and one displaying rage. They were so beautiful and Lucy recognized the moment for what it was: a message to act.

She bought three rings.

Later, alone in her room, she admired them for they pulled her back through the years, the agony of flailing in the swirling current that was the river of her life. How she’d changed her name, become a new person. She’d married an older, widowed man from Pittsburgh after meeting him online. She’d moved to Pennsylvania, got documented. The marriage didn’t last and Lucy drifted from one large city to the next. And all the while she cleaved to the unshakable belief that she was not to blame for everything that had gone wrong in the past.

None of it was my fault.

My mother failed me.

And when my blood sisters betrayed me, they set me adrift on an ocean of never-ending pain. We swore a blood pact and they betrayed me. The anniversary is coming. Twenty years. For twenty years, I’ve burned. I don’t deserve this life. Enough is enough.