I sunk into the couch of Jim’s dim lit office. It wasn’t how I wanted to spend my Saturday morning, but it was the only time I had. “Okay, let’s do this,” I thought.
I was on therapist number 4 now. The first one was cold and dismissive, the second one felt more like a friend, and the third just had nothing to say. I was quick to move to the next one.. I needed thorough and efficient, a quick fix me up to get me on my way.
Not today. Now I knew that nothing would be quick, and no one was going to give me some secret to set my life straight. My relationships were non-restorable now. I’d exited them like a villain in a Marvel movie, smiling through a fire with a city imploding behind me. There was nowhere left to go back to, and no one to look “fixed” for. Now, I was doing this for me.
I shared it all, the things I never talked about, details I withheld from the first three providers, secrets I’d never even admitted to myself. I spoke them out loud, and they lingered in that room like a cloud of smoke.
In that hour I was hot, and then sweating, my heart pounded and my mouth went dry. I sat there with hands too shaky to take a sip of water. I tripped over my words and fidgeted from one position to another like the topics we were burning through. At the end I felt nothing but exhaustion.
I felt lost after each session, as if I’d been misplaced in time and space and was weaving back from my thoughts to the physical world. I’d take walks outside to decompress or wander through stores in my disoriented state. Sometimes I’d just sit on my couch until the white noise faded and I was able to shift back into reality again. Dissociating was like my hidden talent, though I’d never mastered the coming back part.
“What would make me feel better?” I thought. I started to make a list, and jotted down anything that made me happy in the past.
Usually I worked. Recently I’d picked up weekend shifts because the weekends felt too long at home. This Saturday afternoon I did my usual things; gym, food, read, a movie. Sunday morning called for a 3 hour bike ride in the sun. I showered and did my hair— an unusual occasion and attempt to feel pretty. When I finally sat down my only thought was “what’s next?” My body was tired, but my mind was restless. I was flooded in endorphins and all I felt was anxiety. Like that cloud of spoken words and feelings was following me everywhere, and I could barely even breath.
Jay picked me up for coffee like he said he would. He ran over on brunch with his friends and I felt like I’d been waiting for forever. Coffee would be good, I thought, going out would be good, not being alone would be great.
“You still want to get coffee?” he asked me as I climbed into his truck.
“Yea, or a beer.” I responded, sarcastically but serious too.
“We can get a beer.” he said.
“I shouldn’t. We should get coffee.” I’d quit drinking, and he knew that. I was 2 months out from my last disaster.
It was 3pm on a Sunday and there weren't many coffee shops still open. Granted, we didn’t look too hard before we made our way to a local bar, “Okay,” I said, “Maybe just one.”
A beer and good conversation, that’s all I needed. But like dominos falling in a line, one beer turned to two beers, to tequila shots to, “I’ll see if I can get some blow.” That was my cue to leave.
We wandered around Uptown in a haze. We frolicked the 2 blocks back to the car like kids skipping in the grass. The buildings, the people, my thoughts, they were all a blur in the background. I felt fluid and free. Uninhibited. Like I could do anything, because every thought and feeling was frozen in a world I’d escaped from. I was floating high above it all, ignoring the fact that I’d fall just as hard. And I did.
I woke up the next day for work with a feeling I’d never felt before. The anxiety and the pain that had consumed me was gone. So was the euphoria. I felt dead. I came and went and worked for days with no recollection of it. I moved through my life like a robot, running on autopilot. Like a body with its soul sucked out.
Alcohol had brought me solace for 18 years, but that morning I knew it couldn’t help me anymore. Suddenly, I was aware that it was slowly killing me, not so much my body, but my spirit. I successfully deadened myself; the darkness, the guilt, the shame, the pain, but the good, the love, and light went with it. With each moment of escape I drifted further and further from my true self, from fully experiencing life. I knew I could continue to survive, jumping from one external remedy to another. Or I could feel may way through it all to a life that is real. I knew that I couldn’t have both, and that the choice was mine, and the time to choose was now.
That day, I chose to live.
