In spite of my new job at the museum and all of my wonderful colleagues, I started to get bored. I loved the work I was doing, and I loved the place. I even loved the people. But – as was the case with every permanent job I ever had – I felt stuck within a few months. I started to question if I wanted to work for the museum for the rest of my life, like so many of my colleagues seemed to be doing.
I hadn’t had a full-time job in a very long time. My commitment to my future felt tenuous at best. I took the job because I needed a job; but what if I had to stay here forever?
I started to question the rest of my life, too. I was still going to therapy every Tuesday. We were talking about my dreams, analyzing what they meant. But what difference did it make? I mean, it was cool to understand whatever symbolism or meaning might be contained in my subconscious, but it had no effect on my conscious life.
And on weekends, I was still somehow enmeshed with Gregg. I had wonderfully independent weeks where I’d get up, hang out with smart, independent women all day, and then go home to a blissfully empty house. Sure, I was still drinking at the local bars, but sometimes I left at midnight. I had a job to do!
Then on the weekends, Gregg would reappear as though I actually wanted him there. I didn’t want to be lonely, but I didn’t want to be with Gregg, either. My options felt mysteriously limited.
I didn’t know what was limiting them.
Every morning felt like, Oh no, not again. And every evening felt like, Everything sucks. And in between, when I was actually doing my job or drinking – the only two things I ever did – I felt simultaneously numb and guilty. The alcohol no longer muted the guilt and it never created spontaneous joy.
But I thought it would. I thought if I tried hard enough, did the right things, drank the right drinks, went to the right places, hung with the right people, then all that fun I’d discovered during my freshman year of college would come charging back, full-force, and I’d feel joy again.
Somehow, instead, the world was letting me down. All the good things were tainted by … something. I didn’t know what was flattening me, graying out my future.
I felt my future as a bright, sparkly thing that had been dropped in a mud puddle.
It never occurred to me that I’d singlehandedly created the mud puddle – and dropped that sparkly thing right in its midst. Then I’d stepped on it and rolled it around to make sure it was completely destroyed.
When it came to the surface – like it did when I got my new job – I doused it in mud again. Then I blamed the world for being too muddy.
I didn’t know I was making choices about my life. I didn’t consider that my drinking played any part in my inability to smile, my dead eyes, my severely compromised future. I thought life was just happening to me, one agonizing minute at a time, and that I had no choices about how it went.
I was 24 years old and my life felt over.
At least, I thought, I’ve been spared from all the really awful things like death and jail and mental institutions.
My new job kept me excited enough to get through the holidays and into 1989. There was no doubt that 1988 had been a better year than 1987, since 1987 featured both a serious suicide attempt and a rape. Discovering LSD and freebase cocaine seemed like a step up.
I also switched from living with an ancient, hard-core biker to living with a young, pathological liar. This felt like more of a lateral move.
Work kept me busy and made me feel independent. But Gregg was still my drug connection, so I kept him around more often than not.
We used Steve, with his bad teeth, bad breath and completely rotted brain, to get our marijuana. I didn’t want Steve in my house, so Gregg walked miles to Steve’s house, disappearing for hours, often coming back with only a single joint. Steve frequently shared his own stash with friends, but as dumb as Steve was, Steve knew Gregg. Gregg never had any money.
Lots of people avoided selling drugs to Gregg.
For LSD we returned to Al, who was still living in his mother’s attic and planning to commit suicide at 30. Our acid trips were few and far between in winter, since sitting in a dark attic and listening to Frank Zappa for hours was not my idea of a good time. Staring at the walls was incapacitating.
No wonder Al wanted to kill himself.
With Kurt’s declaration that I was a coke whore came the end of cocaine in all forms. No one offered it to me in the bars anymore, either. I missed it terribly but at least I didn’t perpetuate any rumors.
Drinking was cheap and easy. I went to the bar at the end of the street, the one with one glass block window and no name, and I drank draft after draft after draft. I begged occasionally for quarters for the jukebox and then forgot to listen when my songs played. So I dumped in more quarters.
As I drank, I stared into the mirror in the bathroom at my empty eyes. I became stupid-drunk and falling down every night of the week, and didn’t leave the bar until it closed.
Sometimes Gregg was with me; sometimes I told him to get lost.
I had been in therapy for nine months, analyzing dreams and talking about Gregg and Larry and all the idiotic decisions I’d made with men over the years. I didn’t understand why these things kept happening to me.
I felt secure working at the museum because I managed to get there on time almost every day. Often I had very little sleep the night before but I didn’t want to disappoint my colleagues. I only called in sick about once a month, when I couldn’t possibly lift my fifty-pound-dead-weight head off the pillow, and they were understanding about it.
I even had something called “paid sick leave” so I was paid for those days, which gave me incentive to get back to work the following day. I wanted very badly to keep that job. And I was young enough, at 24, to drink every night and still show up in the mornings.
But a nagging question started in the back of my brain and worked its way to the forefront – a question that accompanied the dead eyes I saw in the bathroom mirror at the bar.
I started to wonder, without consciously debating it: Is this all there is?
At the beginning of December, I started a new full-time job at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
I was welcomed into the Department of Education with such a flourish and so much care, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. My job was to answer phones, type, and do whatever else was necessary for the other staff in the department.
My office was tucked away in a part of the museum that no one ever sees, which meant I was privy to all the museum’s wonder but rarely had to contact the public.
Every time I left my office, I walked awestruck through the permanent exhibits, enjoyed behind-the-scenes access as temporary exhibits were constructed, visited whole rooms of taxidermized mammals awaiting display, and cruised through quiet hallways that the general public never knew existed.
In my time at the Carnegie, I especially loved Mondays when the museum was closed, and I could cower under the dinosaurs alone and stare up-close at grizzly bears on my way to deliver an invoice to the maintenance department.
The best part of the job, though, was the job itself. I fit right in with my brilliant colleagues: curators, writers and docents. Once word got out that I could proofread, I did some proofreading. When word got out that I could write, I wrote correspondence and articles. They didn’t leave me stuck waiting for the phone to ring; they included me, like I was as much a member of the staff as those who had been there for a decade.
Their confidence in me made me feel confident in myself. While I was still “just a secretary,” I felt important and needed and even essential to the inner workings of that department. I felt like I belonged at this world famous museum. And I wanted to rise to the occasion, to reciprocate by letting my team know how important they were to me, so I did the very best job I could do.
Unfortunately, I was a raging alcoholic and I had a terrible time getting out of bed.
Only a few weeks into my new position, I started staying out too late (again) and hanging out with Gregg (again) and drinking until I could not drink anymore, which was always well into the wee hours of the morning. I never left a bar before closing time, except to go to another bar.
Unsurprisingly, this showed in my ability to get to work on time. It showed in my job performance. It showed in my attitude and my inability to stay awake in the mornings and my inability to focus in the afternoons. Almost as soon as I got to The Carnegie Museum of Natural History, I became a liability.
Fortunately for me, nobody seemed to notice.
So I told my therapist. My new job let me take extra time every Tuesday to keep seeing Dr. C, so I kept going. I analyzed dreams and shrugged off goals and griped about Gregg.
Every week Dr. C would say, “How much did you drink?”
I would say, “I have no idea.”
“Maybe you could count drinks by collecting bottle caps.”
I almost always drank from cans, but I didn’t mention that until the following week.
“No bottle caps!” I’d say.
“Collect the tabs from the cans then,” he’d say.
“I only drank drafts!” I’d say the following week. “And some shots.”
“Use a notebook to keep track,” he’d say. “Keep a running tally.”
“I didn’t have a pen,” I’d say.
Work was suffering. I was floundering. And my therapist was getting frustrated.
I drank, and drank, and drank. Eventually I missed marijuana, since it had been my go-to for getting over hangovers. And I missed LSD. So I found Gregg again and he (unofficially, as always) moved back in. I drank and did drugs for the rest of 1988. My family faded into the background again.
When Thanksgiving rolled around, I told my parents I would not be joining them for any festivities. I’d always wanted to have a zero-pressure holiday without any silly turkey dinner, so I told Gregg I wanted to go camping.
I sure did love the idea of camping.
On Wednesday afternoon, I bought a case of beer to chill, and rented a car for $26.50 – a long maroon piece of junk. I still had the Bug, but we wanted something special for the holiday.
Gregg borrowed a tent from one of his brothers and off we went to have our young-and-free Thanksgiving holiday. We took Kitty, the beer, some pot and cat food, and drove to a rustic campground somewhere near Donegal.
Kitty leapt out of the car and raced off into the woods. I hoped she would come back.
We had a tent and a cooler, and enough daylight to make camp. Neither of us had ever set up a tent on our own, and we failed repeatedly in our attempts to make it stand up. We ended with a pile of nylon canvas on the ground, finally falling on top of the pile and staring at the trees through the waning light until it got too cold to lie on the ground anymore.
We climbed in the rental car and smoked a joint and drank beers until we passed out – Gregg in the backseat and me in the front.
I was so focused on remembering a tent, I hadn’t considered blankets. We used our coats – which we had to remove from our body – to cover ourselves. It was tremendously uncomfortable and, in late November, impossible to stay warm. But I was drunk, so I slept.
At some time well past midnight – BOOM! – something fiercely loud awakened me.
I leapt up with a start and there was Kitty on the hood of the car, mewing loud enough that I opened the door. I thought she’d jump in, but she stayed on the hood. So I stepped out, half-frozen, to cuddle her – and she leapt off the car and ran into the woods.
I hadn’t thought to bring a flashlight, so I just watched her disappear into the dark. Then I crawled back into the car and slept – until Kitty landed on the hood again. And again. And again. All night long, Kitty woke me from a dead sleep by jumping on the car, running away when I reached for her – such a fun game.
When the sun came up, Kitty was nowhere to be found. We slept until at least noon. I headed for the woods to look for her while Gregg rolled up the tent pile. I took two steps into the woods and Kitty appeared, then happily hopped into the car.
For Thanksgiving, we gave Kitty Fancy Feast turkey dinner.
We decided to get our Thanksgiving meal at a diner but – surprise! – the diner was closed on Thanksgiving Day. In fact, every restaurant we passed all the way home was closed. We couldn’t even buy more beer.
Somehow we hadn’t anticipated this.
We were starving, hungover, and utterly exhausted. We ended up eating peanut butter and jelly. Then we got high, passed out and slept until the next day.
After six weeks without it, that first drink was like magic: the slow burn down my throat, my head feeling ever so slightly lighter, the buzz of both emptiness and excitement. That first beer was golden, godly even. Immediately I felt whole and perfect and good.
It had been so very long since I’d felt good.
Instantly my raw, painful emotions were drowned by the alcohol.
One week earlier, I’d ditched my friends because they could drink and I could not. They could be free and I could not. They could dance and hug and flirt and cavort and all I could do was flop around like a sausage stuck in a sugar cookie.
My experience had nothing to do with specific people, friendships, my past or my future. I simply didn’t know how to function in a room full of people without using alcohol as a buffer. I didn’t fit because I hadn’t learned how to live without drinking.
I didn’t know it was possible.
The only thing I knew is that without alcohol, I couldn’t do anything properly. Not only could I not dance at the wedding, but I couldn’t even hold a conversation. Emotionally I ached and wailed. My return to alcohol had everything to do with my complete inability to function in the world without it.
After six weeks without drinking, beer was the greatest gift I could give myself. It returned my courage to speak my mind, to be myself in a room full of strangers, to dance to the jukebox and pour out my heart to the old men who had once dreamed the way I did.
I believed that alcohol allowed me the freedom to do whatever I wanted. And what I wanted most of all – suddenly and again – was to drink.
I didn’t tell anyone in my family that I’d had another alcoholic weekend, but I did share the news with my therapist. I confessed that I’d been drinking on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I’d slept all day Monday and saw him on Tuesday afternoon.
“How much did you drink?” asked Dr. C.
“What do you mean, how much? I have no idea how much I drank. I just drank!”
“More than three drinks?”
“Of course more than three!”
“So maybe six?”
“Oh my god,” I said. “Why would anyone stop at six?”
“So how many?”
“I DON’T KNOW,” I said, frustrated. “I don’t exactly count the beers.”
“Okay,” he said. “Maybe count them next time.”
Why wasn’t he ordering me to quit?
“I wasn’t planning to drink again,” I said.
“Okay,” said Dr. C. “Then maybe we could get back to doing some real work in therapy.”
“Great,” I said. “That’s so fucking helpful.”
“Well,” he said. “I thought you were making more progress when you weren’t drinking. Maybe we could get to the underlying issues we’d been discussing.”
“Maybe,” I harrumphed. “I just think drinking helps me to live my life the way I’ve always wanted to live it.”
“Do you mean the life where you’re a writer, living on a farm with dogs and children?”
“No,” I said. “The one where I am actually free. I’ve wanted freedom my whole life but instead I have to do what everyone else expects me to do!”
“Is there something keeping you from being free right now?”
“YES.” I groaned. “There’s ALWAYS something keeping me from being free.”
Dr. C waited.
Finally he said, “So what is it? What’s keeping you from being free?”
September rolled around and I was still sober. My emotions were raw and agonizing. I hadn’t allowed myself to feel emotions for years. Now they’d clawed their way to the surface. They brutalized me one intense sensation at a time.
I was still so sad about Mocha dying, I could barely function. I burst into tears every few hours. A week later, I had my 24th birthday.
I felt ancient and angry. When I wasn’t crying, I was seething. My anger was this whole additional being that took over my ability to function rationally.
My rage was focused on men. I wanted to kill Larry for terrorizing Mocha. I wanted to kill Kurt for calling me a coke whore. I wanted to kill Gregg for his lies. I wanted to kill my rapist from 1987 and the guy who’d thrown me in a closet at a party in 1980 and every guy who’d had sex with me when I just wanted love. I didn’t see that I’d played any part in anything that happened to me.
I was furious with the world. And I wanted to kill myself, in spite of my decision not to try that again.
After just a few weeks sober, my emotions were completely out of my control. I felt only fury and despair; I experienced nothing else.
About two weeks after Mocha died, my friend Marti got married. And I was still sober.
Finally: there was cause for celebration! Marti was one of my favorite people in the world, and I was excited to witness her big day. I couldn’t wait to see my college friends again; it had been more than two years since I’d graduated as a biker chick and run off to Florida.
I wanted to show my friends the new me – the independent, sober me – but I was a little scared, too. Since the age of 14, I’d never stayed sober at a wedding.
I drove to Ohio, blasting Meat Loaf through the boombox in the passenger seat of my little VW Bug, offering me courage.
The ceremony was perfect. I was so happy for Marti and Donny and the beautiful future they had ahead. The reception allowed me to finally see all my college buddies. Ecstatic to be there, I hugged my friends and enjoyed the party … for about ten minutes.
That’s how long it took before I focused on the alcohol.
She was drinking; he was drinking. They were all drinking. I was not drinking.
Then they were getting drunk and dancing. They were waving drinks over their heads and screaming, just like we’d done in college. It looked like so much fun! I tried; I waved my Diet Coke and swung my hips aimlessly, like an imposter.
Tears stung through my smile. Nobody noticed; I ran into the bathroom alone. It felt like the whole world was spinning to the right and I was spinning to the left. I felt completely out of whack, like I was missing an appendage.
I didn’t fit.
Suddenly I didn’t belong with the people I’d thought for years were “my” people. Someone invited me to spend the night at her house, but I just wanted to go home. I didn’t belong in Ohio anymore.
I cried all the way back to Pittsburgh, feeling friendless, my entire identity having evaporated.
I stayed sober for six days after the wedding, crushingly sad, bitterly lonely, white-knuckling it and wondering when I’d be happy. I tried absolutely nothing new.
I arrived at my parents’ house in time to say goodbye to Anne – and everyone – as they headed out for the airport. They all said goodbye to the dog, too. Then they all headed out, leaving me alone in my parents’ house for the first time in a very long time. I plopped myself down on the couch which was extremely clean, unlike my disgusting sofabed.
Mocha, the beloved short-legged brown poodle we’d had since I was 10, flopped down to nap on the floor beside me. Mocha was breathing heavily, panting even, so I turned up the air conditioning. It was August and, even in Pittsburgh, it could get quite hot.
I petted Mocha for a little while but she didn’t even bother to raise her head. She’s really starting to get old, I thought. When I’d been there for dinner only a week prior, she’d been her usual puppy-like self.
Bored already, I moved to a different couch. Imagine having two couches, I thought. It had been so long since I’d lived with my parents, I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be comfortable. Just barely sober, I was already starting to garner some gratitude for such things.
Mocha walked over to where I was sitting in the other room, and flopped down again, still panting. I patted her on the head. Then I stared out the window.
Outside, I saw something move near the bushes in the backyard. It was tiny, like a pine cone, but it was moving around under the bush. I couldn’t figure it out.
I sat up and looked closer: it’s a bird! A baby bird had fallen from its nest in that bush, a nest I’d never noticed before, and it was flopping around on the ground, unable to fly.
I ran to the basement and put on work gloves, then raced out the back door. I found the baby bird, barely old enough to open its eyes. I carefully lifted it from the ground and put it back in its nest. I looked around for Mama Bird, who was nowhere to be found, so I headed inside to watch for her from the window.
When I went back upstairs, Mocha was lying on the floor where she’d been when I left, but she wasn’t panting anymore. In fact, Mocha wasn’t breathing at all.
I got down on the floor and checked – no no no no NO! – for any kind of movement. She was completely still. I put my head on her fur, hoping to hear a heartbeat, but Mocha was gone.
I burst into tears.
I didn’t know what to do, so I called a grown-up.
Aunt Joy, who had raised Mocha for the first two years of her life, stopped whatever she’d been doing and raced to my parents’ house to be with me. She stayed with me for hours, letting me cry, crying with me. And when my family came home from the airport, they understood immediately what had happened.
I couldn’t help her, I thought. It wasn’t my fault.
But it felt like my fault; I should have done something.
I couldn’t talk. We all just hugged and cried. We wrapped Mocha in her favorite blanket. We stood sobbing together as my dad dug the hole, and we buried the shell of our beloved pet in the ground. Together, we mourned until crying became mundane.
Then we cried some more.
I forgot to check on the baby bird. Later, I went back to my apartment and cried for days.
Given that I could not have my ideal life while being a raging alcoholic/coke whore, I decided to try something different. In August 1988, I quit drinking, quit using drugs, and even quit picking up men.
Instead, I got up in the morning and went to whatever temp job I had to do that day. I came home and blasted albums. I wrote down my thoughts in a notebook. I didn’t call anyone.
Not going to bars meant I had no distractions – no people, no noise, no dart boards or pool tables or jukeboxes. I didn’t even have a deck of cards. I found myself craving Space Invaders and Gorf, but I couldn’t play video games. The internet, smart phones – even personal computers – didn’t yet exist.
I played with my cat for as long as she would let me. I tossed furry faux mice across the room and she carried them back to me like a retriever.
Drinking no alcohol meant I gorged on Diet Coke. And I ate. I consumed ridiculous amounts of pasta with Prego. I devoured Fifth Avenue candy bars, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and heaps of fried bologna. On a big day, I rewarded myself by walking to Arby’s for a roast beef with cheddar.
I walked right past my favorite bar, feeling proud. It looked so dreary from the outside, I couldn’t believe I’d spent so much time on its dreary inside.
It never occurred to me to eat healthier, smoke less, exercise, or play a sport. It never occurred to me to read a book or watch a movie. It never occurred to me to travel, even locally, to visit touristy places, or go to church, or go shopping. It never occurred to me to make new friends.
It never even occurred to me to go to an AA meeting.
I couldn’t think of a single additional thing to do with my life. I thought I was doing “whatever I wanted.”
Eventually I told my parents that I’d quit drinking. Given the horror of our Myrtle Beach vacation, my parents were tentatively happy about this decision.
I didn’t mention drugs to my parents, but now I wasn’t doing those either. My parents seemed to sense the change (somehow) and occasionally invited me over to dinner. I always accepted a free meal.
My parents had a beautiful exchange student living with them, from France. Anne was sweet and kind and funny, and the whole family – me now included – loved spending time with her. After I stopped drinking, we went to Kennywood with her and had a glorious amusement-filled day.
But it was hard being around my parents. I still felt like I was doing something wrong, even though I wasn’t doing anything even remotely “wrong” in the eyes of the law. I felt like a moral degenerate, and I knew they knew I was still a horrible person, even without drinking.
I was sober. I was stone-cold, glaringly, blindingly, despairingly, dully, thuddingly sober.
When it was time for Anne to go back to France, my whole family wanted to be with her, to see her off. My parents called me and asked if I would sit with our dog, Mocha, while they took Anne to the airport. Mocha was older and faltering, and they didn’t want her to be alone for long.
It was a chance for me to show that I was responsible – and I could be in their clean, cool house without feeling guilty about it. I was happy to oblige.
After returning from Myrtle Beach, I didn’t know what to do with my life. This wasn’t unusual, of course. What was unusual is that I was even considering my future.
I mentioned this to my therapist. I told him about wanting to live at the beach, about considering drowning myself in the ocean, about my mother and my family and the end of my childhood dreams.
“If you could do anything,” said Dr. C, “what would you do?”
“Anything? You mean like a job?”
“I mean anything. If you could just pick a future for yourself, what would you pick?”
“I’d be a rock star,” I said. “A singer.”
“Okay,” said the therapist. “How can you make that happen?”
“Well, I can’t make that happen,” I said. “I will never be a rock star. I can’t just blink and make myself famous.”
“Why not?”
“Because it doesn’t work that way!” I whined.
“How does it work?” my therapist asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is there anything that you can make happen just by blinking?” He was trying to point out the obvious.
“I used to think I Dream of Jeannie was real,” I said, “But no. I can’t make anything happen just by blinking.”
“So what does it take to make something happen?”
“I have no idea,” I said. “So far, nothing I have ever wanted has actually happened.”
Dr. C reconsidered his line of questioning.
“Okay,” said my therapist. “Let’s say you could just blink and make something happen – your ideal life. Let’s pretend it’s possible to have whatever life you want. What would your ideal life look like?”
I stopped whining for a minute and imagined my ideal future. I had never actually thought about it realistically. I was a dreamer, but my dreams were far-reaching and sporadic.
Finally a picture popped into my head, and I answered.
“I would be married to a guy with long hair,” I said. “We would laugh a lot, and we’d play games together on weekends. We’d be totally in love.”
“Okay, so you would be happily married.”
“Yes.”
“What else?”
“What else would I need?” It had never occurred to me that my happiness wouldn’t come from whatever man married me.
“What would you do when you weren’t with your husband?”
“Ideally?”
“Yes.”
“I would be a writer.”
“What would you write?”
“Books.”
“What kind of books?”
“Fiction? What other kind of books are there?”
“There are lots of kinds of books,” said Dr. C. “You can write whatever you want.”
“Well I’d write books for kids. And I’d have a German Shepherd. Or a Saint Bernard. Or both! I’d like to have four dogs. Oh! And a farm.”
“Okay, so you would be a happily married writer with four dogs on a farm.”
“Yes.”
“Would you have children?”
“Yes!” I yelled, surprising even myself. “I want six children, like The Brady Bunch!” My ideals seemed to stem entirely from television.
“It sounds like your ideal life would be very busy.”
“Why?” I said. “I don’t even know what I’d do for fun.” I was serious. I had no idea that taking care of six kids, four dogs and a whole farm, all while writing books, would not allow for any downtime.
“Let’s start with what you have,” said Dr. C. “What do you think the first step would be for you to get this ideal life?”
“Meet the right man,” I sighed. I imagined that ever-elusive perfect human being I’d created.
Back at the house in Myrtle Beach, sunrise brought a flurry of activity. Every adult in the house was awake, making breakfast and packing to go home.
My mom’s sisters looked up as we came inside.
“Kirsten!” my aunt said.
Another aunt hugged me. “We’re glad you’re back.”
My mom had been fairly silent for the entire walk, and this didn’t change. “Pack your stuff,” she said, heading upstairs. “I’ll tell Daddy you’re back.”
My whole extended family had forever graciously accepted me into their homes for visits and holiday dinners. These people had raised me as though I were one of their own, and loved me even though I didn’t love myself. These were happy non-alcoholics who had never tried to change me.
And I’d run away. I’d left them, purposefully, and made a plan to live on the beach rather than go back to Pennsylvania and spend my life as part of this loving family.
My reason? Nobody drank.
I didn’t fit in. I didn’t feel like part of this loving family. I felt like an outcast, a reject, a person undeserving of their love. I felt like an imposter. Childhood Kirsten, who made straight A’s and loved animals and just wanted to do the right thing … that person was gone.
I packed quickly, then walked out onto the porch to look at the ocean one last time, this time in daylight.
I lit a cigarette.
My cousin’s wife stepped outside. “Can I talk to you?” she asked. When a prodigal returns, I guess it’s customary to be wary.
“Sure.” I took a short drag on my cigarette, confused.
She was quiet for a long moment. She didn’t seem to know what to say.
Finally, carefully, she said, “Please stop drinking.”
This was new. Addressing the elephant in the room when it was standing there felt unfamiliar, crazy. No one in my family, other than my parents, had ever really addressed this enormous, fat beast.
But this woman was doing it, and she did it with love.
“I’m trying,” I squeaked.
“Try harder,” she said. “Please quit. It affects everyone in your life, even if you don’t see it.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know,” she said. Her eyes welled with tears.
I didn’t understand. “You do?”
“I do.”
Her eyes filled with pain from someone in her life who’d also been an alcoholic. She made quick work of telling me her story, purposefully not crying, choking a bit on her words, then got quiet quickly. I’d never heard her story, never known any of this.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I felt numb and guilty. I didn’t know how to do better.
“You don’t have to be sorry for me,” she said. “Just don’t do it to anyone else.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
I meant it. Although … what had trying gotten me thus far? My family was disappointed in me again. I’d hurt people again. This time, I’d hurt more people than I realized.
And I hadn’t even gotten to live on the beach.
Soon, we all got into cars and drove to our respective homes. I crawled into the backseat and fell asleep, dreaming I was sleeping in the sand, and that sleeping in sand was beautiful.
I woke up hours later, sweaty and parched, achingly alone.
I felt terrified that I was going to drink again, that I’d never be able to quit, that I’d never have a real life.
But I felt – again – like I needed to try.
It had been eight months since I’d seen that shooting star, and somehow I was still a drunk.
