Wanna Smoke a Joint First?
Even in my active addiction, I tried very, very hard to be honest. And I thought everyone understood the importance of honesty. I thought everyone told the truth, except when talking to parents about how much alcohol had been consumed. Then lying was often necessary.
Otherwise, I was the most trusting soul on the planet, in spite of a strong history of occurrences that should have encouraged me to be distrustful.
But I had never met a pathological liar before.
I let Gregg back into my apartment, my life, my underwear drawer, because I believed wholeheartedly that he would never, ever steal money from me again. I didn’t think much about his helping me look for the money, all the while knowing he was responsible for its disappearance. That was too weird to consider.
I attributed Gregg’s behavior to his mother’s death when he was 14 and his (living) alcoholic father.
Gregg did zero self-analysis.
“Don’t ever touch my money again!” I told him sternly, like an angry parent. Gregg’s response was very childlike, too: no actual remorse, just shame and embarrassment at being caught.
“I won’t,” he said. And then he changed the subject. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“I’m going to a bar … by myself!” I didn’t need a thief in my life.
“Wanna smoke a joint first?”
I did.
So I did.
And then Gregg went with me to the bar. And home from the bar. And we got high and watched Pee Wee Herman and My Little Pony in the morning. Then we went back to the bar the next day, and danced around a lot, and then went back home together the next night. We had sex until the sun came up and then passed out.
By Sunday morning, I’d realized that my life was exactly where it had been before, when I’d lived with a biker I didn’t like and jumped out a window and been raped by friends and strangers and spent long, lonely nights wailing With or Without You to the boombox.
Except now I was in a one-room apartment living with a guy I couldn’t trust who was snoring on the pillow beside me in spite of stealing every cent I had. And I couldn’t imagine my life without him because who would dance with me?
I’d finally found a friend, technically a boyfriend, who wasn’t an old man. But without trust, what did we have? We had … sex, drugs and rock-n-roll. We had the things I’d always believed I needed to make my life “cool.”
But Gregg had broken my trust. I’d thought we were friends. I thought he loved me. I never for a moment thought I loved him, but here he was.
And here I was – feeling completely and utterly alone – loneliness beyond comprehension in my own home. Again.
I focused briefly on Gregg’s issues. I could blame Gregg for my life being uncool because he stole my rent just as my life was starting to unravel again.
Still, somehow I knew that the problem was not entirely Gregg. Something was desperately, impossibly wrong with me. Was drinking really the problem?
Was I the problem?
I shoved that thought aside. But I remembered my mom telling me about the AA meeting – that one meeting that could somehow cure me of my unhappiness, and I decided to go.
But first, Gregg and I spent another drunken Sunday together.
We slept all day Monday and then, on Monday night, I took Gregg with me to my first AA meeting.