The Journey Ch. 07

When Dwayne came around on his second lap ten minutes later, I was still sitting on the path, crying.

~~ Day Twenty-Seven ~~

"You okay?" my roommate Laura asked me as we walked towards the cafeteria.

"No, I'm jittery as fuck," I said, "Hope getting some coffee in me will help."

Rhonda had finished her twenty-eight days and left five days ago. Saying goodbye had been bittersweet. I was happy for her, she seemed to be doing well and was hopeful she could stay clean. I'd walked her to her car and met her parents who had driven from Philadelphia to take her home. Rhonda had said some nice things about me to them.

I'd come to really appreciate having her around as someone I could gripe about the food, group sessions, curfew and other bullshit. I felt a... I dunno, a loss, a feeling of being less than settled at having my routine changed by her absence. We'd exchanged email addresses and promised to keep in touch, let each other know how we were doing with our sobriety.

They'd moved Laura in with me that same afternoon. Apparently, in rehab, they didn't like patients having a room to themselves. I'd found myself in the role Rhonda had played for me, showing Laura around, introducing her to other patients. She was five years older than me, which made the way she so obviously was looking up to me, like a big sister, feel super weird. Charlie said that was all part of the program, the patients who had been here longer being examples for the newbies.

"You being nervous when you're about to graduate doesn't help my nerves much," she said as we walked into the cafeteria and over to the coffee station.

"You're doing fine. How's your stomach, by the way?"

"They changed my anti-nausea medication, doing a little better today."

Laura had been going through some pretty bad withdrawal since she got here. I hadn't realized until just this week that the vast majority of patients here were drug addicts, outnumbering us alcoholics three-to-one. Laura had been addicted to Oxy, and had been throwing up a lot. She'd told me the nurse said she could suffer from symptoms for anywhere from one to three weeks.

We doctored our coffees to our tastes, I grabbed a granola bar and we headed back out of the cafeteria.

"You got your group next, right?"

"Yeah," she said sourly. "I hate it."

"I did too, but my advice is to jump in with both feet, even though you hate it and it sucks."

"Why?"

"Because eventually, you'll start appreciating it. It took more than two weeks for me to start feeling it was helping me, but now I feel like I cheated myself out of two weeks of help and I'm getting ready to get kicked out of here."

"Hmm."

"Something to think about. Anyway, I'm headed over to Charlie's office. Catch you at dinner?"

"See you then."

I made my way to the counselor's wing. Charlie's door was open and I knocked on the door frame.

"Good morning," Charlie greeted me. He was already in his chair and at my appearance he turned off his phone and picked up his pad as I shut the door behind me.

"Still need that pad? I won't see you after today. I mean, I hope I won't be back here again. What are you going to write down?"

He smiled and set the pad aside. "Force of habit. How are you feeling this morning?"

I blew out a long breath. In the last ten days I'd gotten really open and honest with Charlie. And with the therapy group. Once I'd let go of my hang up about talking to people about my shit, my shit seemed a lot less daunting to me. But I was still jittery as hell today.

"I'm nervous as fuck, man."

"Tell me why?"

"Because, I check out of here tomorrow. I was given a month to try and get a grip on my problems, and I wasted the first half of that. And now I'm going to some freakin' half-way house, where I'm not going to know anybody. I won't have daily group, I won't have you, and to be honest, I went to bed last night thinking about how much I want a margarita."

"Viv, you may have the urge to drink your entire life. But if you keep working at it, if you stick with the program, you may be able to reduce that urge to background noise."

I took a deep breath through my nose, nodding my head. "I'm just... scared. I've spent my whole life fucking up, and it's going to be so easy to fuck up again. Right now, there's no booze within probably five miles of here and I can't leave anyway."

"It's true, alcohol is available anywhere out there in the world. In some ways, alcoholics have it tougher than drug addicts in that regard. You're always going to be in situations where it's around."

"So, what do I do?" I asked quietly.

"Stick with the program. Do the work. The half-way house our social worker got you placed in has a structure. It's looser than here, but stick with it, it'll help. You have ninety days there to transition back into managing your own routines before you'll really be on your own. Don't break their curfew, follow their rules. Even when they piss you off."

I smiled a little.

"It's also a few blocks from a church that has meetings twenty-four hours a day. You know we want you to go to thirty meetings in the first thirty days. If you feel you need more than one meeting a day, go to as many as you feel you need. The most important thing you can do is find a sponsor that you feel like you can trust. Then trust them. Talk to them. Call or text them when you feel like you need to drink."

I nodded again.

"When do you go back to work?"

"My suspension ends mid-January, but I don't get my cast and sling off until a week after that, then I have a few weeks of physical therapy. I start back to classes at NOVA the week after New Year's though. Thanks for getting me some phone and computer time to set that up, by the way."

"I'm glad you're jumping back in."

"Yeah. I'm kinda pissed, though. I'm taking all the same classes that I dropped to come here, so I'd already done half the work, but my laptop is a puddle of melted metal and plastic now, so I've lost all that."

"That sucks."

I laughed bitterly. "Yeah, it really does. At least I'll be familiar with all of it."

"What are you going to do about all your stuff?"

"The storage place offered me a settlement. I didn't have insurance on my stuff, but their fire suppression systems didn't work as well as they'd promised, I guess, so they gave me seven grand. I can't replace everything, but I'll be able to buy the most important stuff. I'll probably start by getting a laptop."

I lapsed into silence, contemplating the dark cloud of the future ahead of me.

"What are you thinking about?"

I gave another laugh, this one not so bitter. "The me that came here a month ago wouldn't believe I'm saying this, but I'm scared to not have you when I'm out there."

"You have that list of therapists in your area. I put a check mark beside the two I know personally. I think you'd like either of them."

"Yeah... but..."

"But what?"

"I'll be meeting with them once a week, at most. I meet with you every day. I think I need that."

"Daily therapy isn't a luxury most people can afford. I wish it were different."

I bit my lip. "I'm such a fucking mess."

"You are a mess, Viv. But there's two things you need to remember about that. One is that you make choices. Owning your past choices, trying to make better ones, is all part of the process of healing. Not drinking can help you make better ones. Keep your eye on the ball."

"I know," I said, nodding. "I know that."

"The second thing is that while you won't have a session every day, it is vitally important for you to keep going to therapy. You have abandonment issues. Really big ones. Your father died when you were very young. He may not have meant to leave you, but he left you nonetheless."

I looked away, clenching my jaw.

"Your mother was deported. Again, not something she wanted, but she left. Addison emotionally checked out on you while you were in a relationship with her. Your grandmother forced you away, when you needed her the most. These things happened to you. These things caused you a lot of damage. You need to deal with that, in therapy."

"Is this your version of Good Will Hunting? Saying it's not my fault over and over until I cry and we hug?"

He let out a soft chuckle. "No, but I'll give you a hug if you want one."

"Man, if I'd known how many addicts become huggers, I'm not sure I would have come here. Everyone in my group wants a hug after every session now."

He laughed a little louder at that. "Viv, I am not saying everything that's happened in your life is your fault. But you made decisions that brought you here. You need to own those, and take responsibility for them. There's a reason that step eight is to make amends to the people we've wronged. It's an important step.

My stomach flipped at the idea of making amends for all my shit. To Abuela. Diego and Virginia. Manny, the other guys on my bowling team. Jeez, would I need to apologize to Bow-head or Astrid? How would I even find them?

Jane.

"The one thing I'll say is that even though you spent the first half of your time here in denial, fighting me, you've turned your attitude around as much in two weeks as many patients do in twenty-eight days. You're doing good work Viv. You just need to keep it up."

"Thanks."

"And if you relapse, don't give up! Go to meetings and talk about your failures. Talk to your sponsor. Some people get out of here and stay sober their entire lives. Most people don't. Most people have weak moments, and give in. The most important point for you to really absorb is that this place, this program, these twenty-eight days, they aren't a cure for you. It's all just been the start of a journey."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. After I admitted to myself I was an alcoholic, I just wanted to be cured of being an alcoholic. I wanted to get through this program and get on with my life. But everything I'd learned since had told me that this program was just the beginning. It was going to be a long road.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," my voice cracked. I cleared my throat and tried again. "Yeah, I'll be okay." I sniffed. "I think I'd like that hug now."

~~ Day Forty-Two, Springfield Virginia ~~

"My name's Viv, and I'm an alcoholic."

"Hi, Viv," the sparse crowd in the basement of the church echoed back to me.

"It's been one day since my last drink." I sighed. "I relapsed. It was my first since rehab. I don't even..." I reached under the edge of my cast with my finger, trying to scratch an itch on my wrist. I couldn't wait to get this thing off next week. "It was like I was watching it happen to somebody else. I was coming home from my first day of classes, and stopped at the grocery. The halfway house's food is absolute shit."

A couple laughs and nodding heads from some people who had obviously been through the same system I was in.

"The whole time in the store, all I could think about was school. I'm in all the same classes I took last year, but I'd had to drop out to go into rehab. I'd gone into this semester thinking I could just redo all the work I'd done before I quit." I shook my head. "Every class but one has a new professor and a totally different syllabus. Just like that, all my plans for the semester, up in smoke. I just let my frustration keep going 'round and 'round in my head. I don't even remember checking out at the grocery, I just remember walking down the strip mall, the weight of plastic bags cutting into my fingers, and then stopping in my tracks in front of the liquor store. Staring at the Cuervo ad in the window."

I looked around the room for judgment, for disapproval. I didn't find any.

"Next thing I know, I'm standing around the side of the building, pounding a pint of tequila. And..." I felt my bottom lip quiver, but I clamped down on it. I cleared my throat instead. "I'd never been the kind of drunk who would just drink tequila out of the bottle. I was a club drunk or bar drunk."

I thought about it for a hot second, then shook my head.

"That's not true. I drank tequila straight from the bottle most nights, before I went to bed. But I'd never bought a bottle and slammed it in the parking lot." I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. "I had it halfway down when I realized what I was doing. I threw the bottle at the dumpster. Missed, of course. Then shoved my fingers down my throat, and made myself puke. Didn't matter. I still got a buzz off it. My first in over a month."

Now I did feel tears coming on. Goddammit.

"I was so fucking ashamed, for being so fucking weak, that I couldn't even make myself go to a fucking meeting yesterday, couldn't face it. But I called my sponsor this morning and he dragged me here."

I looked across the room and got a nod of encouragement from Jack.

"Which... is the right thing to do. I fucked up." I reached into my pocket. "My one-month chip," I said, holding it up. I turned and tossed it towards the trash can next to the door. I missed, and it bounced off the wall and clattered onto the floor.

"That would have been a lot cooler if I'd hit the can," I said, getting a few laughs. "I fucked up. But I... I have to look at it as a stumble on my journey, not the end of it. I fucked up, but I didn't die, I didn't hurt anyone, I didn't hurt myself. And tomorrow, hopefully, I can come back here and tell you that it's been two days since my last drink. And the day after that I can say it's been three days. Then four. One day at a time."

I stood there, awkwardly, thinking.

"I guess that's all I have to say today."

There was supportive applause as I headed back to my seat. As I sat down, my sponsor put his arm around my shoulder and gave me a careful squeeze.

"Thanks for making me come, Jack," I whispered to him as the next person went up to speak.

"That's what I'm here for Viv. Next time, if there is a next time, don't wait a day to call me when you slip up. Got it?"

"I got it."

~~ Day Fifty-Three ~~

I was as nervous as I'd ever been in my life. I felt like I was going to throw up. My feet were about to decide to take off down the street without my brain getting a vote, when I heard her footsteps coming down the wooden stairs.

Jane slowed, as she caught sight of me through the big window in her front door, and paused a couple steps from the bottom. I lifted my hand in a half-hearted wave.

The sight of her took my breath away. She was in the faded, worn out denim overalls she always wore on Sunday mornings when she cleaned her apartment. A pink t-shirt with BLM printed in giant letters on the front and a matching pink head wrap completed her look. The pile of curls over her head was bigger and bushier since I'd last seen her.

I could see her wrestling with herself, but after a heart-stopping moment she grabbed her winter coat off the hook next to the door, shrugged it on and came out on the porch. Which was all I could have hoped for. In no universe had I ever expected her to invite me in.

"Hi, Jane," I said.

"Hi." Her face was unreadable.

"I know this is... I know you weren't expecting to see me. Like, ever. And, let me say first off that I'm not here to try and get you back or anything."

"That's probably for the best."

I nodded. "Yeah... Yeah..."

There was awkward silence. She seemed willing to let me talk, but wasn't interested in giving me anything to work with.

I nodded again. "Right. So... I'm here because I wanted to tell you that... I'm an alcoholic." I took a deep breath. "I'm in recovery now... Well, sorta. I'm having a tough time with it. But I'm working the program and one of my steps is to atone for the hurt I gave people when I was drinking."

Her head tilted a fraction of an inch to the side as she listened to me.

"I'm really early on this one. I'm still working on the moral inventory of myself. Sorry, that's technical bullshit, but--"

"Step four."

"What?"

"That's step four, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Atoning to those you've wronged is step eight. After Connie told me you went into rehab, I went to a couple of Al-anon meetings."

"You did what?" I blurted.

She narrowed her eyes. "Not because we're ever getting back together. I wanted to better understand what you were going through so I'd be able to better understand it myself, so I could move on."

In spite of the stab of pain those words sent through me, I couldn't help but smile a little. Of course, Jane had researched AA. It was the most Jane thing she could have done.

"Yeah, atonement is step eight. And there's no one I feel worse about how I wronged them than you. I'm doing a little better, but I'm still struggling. So, this is kinda selfish of me, but I thought that if I could at least apologize to you, it might help you. And if I can give you any peace, that would help me. A lot."

"What for?"

"What?"

"What are you apologizing for, Viv? That's the most important part of an apology."

I'd thought about this exact moment. A lot.

"A month ago, I would have been apologizing for being a fuck up. For hiding most of my drinking from you. For drinking and driving. For lying to you. I did cheat on Addison, by the way. I should have told you that, the day we ran into her. I'm sorry for all of that, but it's not what I'm here to apologize to you for."

Her eyebrow arched and I ached. She did that anytime I'd said something she thought was interesting.

"What are you apologizing for then?"

"You and I were in a relationship, probably the best one I've ever been in. But a relationship is a two-way street, and I hid a lot of things from you. How much I was drinking. How much I didn't think you could actually be happy with me in the long run. Because I hated myself and if I hated myself how was it possible you could ever really love me? But I never talked to you about any of that, never trusted you enough to let you in. And then, when I fucked up so bad, instead of talking to you about why it happened, or what I was struggling with, I pushed you away to avoid having to face the music. To avoid owning up to my mistakes."

Jane was like a statue.

"I took your decision about us away from you. I'll never know if we'd have worked out. I think I'd have been happy if we had. Fuck, I know I would have. But I couldn't let myself believe that we would. I thought that I'd never be good enough for you. But I didn't let you be a part of that decision. Didn't show you the trust that you deserved, that you'd earned. So... That's what I'm here to apologize for. For taking away your right to make a choice."

The cold January wind whistling down the street was making my cheeks ache. Her face was an emotionless mask.

"Thank you for listening. All the times in rehab I imagined this moment I thought it was fifty-fifty you'd even open the door for me. I'm really sorry, Jane. About everything. I wish I'd been a better person back then. I'm not really that much of a better person now, but I wanted you to know I'm trying to be."

"I'm... glad you're getting help."

"Me too."

We stood there, staring at each other for what seemed like eternity.

"Well, I should get going."

I forced myself to turn, walk down the steps, head down the street.

Don't look back, Esparza. If you do, you'll come undone.

"Viv?" Her voice stopped me in my tracks.

I couldn't help it, I stopped and turned. She was at the edge of the steps, looking down at me, hands shoved into her coat pockets.

"Don't read too much into this, I... I don't want this to mean more than it does, but... do you want to go get a cup of coffee? Just to... talk for a while?"

To Be Continued...

Thank you for reading this chapter of The Journey, Friend. I appreciate your votes, but comments are what inspire. Please let me know what you thought of my latest installment.