Walking on Broken Glass - Christa Allan [69]
I stood. “I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here. I have to do something with all this.” I waved my hands. The invisible this caught in the space between my hands and my body.
Jan put her arm around my shoulders. “It's okay. You’re entitled to your anger. Let's go outside. We can walk on the trail behind the hospital, and you can tell me what happened.”
She led me to where I’d dropped my suitcase. “But first you need to leave your designer friends behind.” She pointed to my dress and my glitzy pumps.
“I have flip-flops and scrubs in my suitcase.” I pulled them out, changed, and followed Jan outside.
30
Lesson of the Day: Sober = Pain
Not drinking meant I had to feel. But feeling meant I wanted to drink.
Sobriety was complicated.
Jan and I walked and walked and walked until I spewed and spilled the whole story of Carl's betrayal.
“We probably should have charged Starbucks. I think people hung around just to watch us,” I said.
“Did you really think you’d walk back to the hospital?”
“Well, after I leaped out of the car and slammed the door, I had to go somewhere. But with my sense of direction, I would have ended up in Austin instead. All I knew was where I wasn’t going. No way was I going to his parents’ house. There I was, all designered-up, screaming like a banshee in the parking lot. ‘Take me back to the hospital, right now!’”
“I’m surprised somebody didn’t call a television station. How many people do you think demand to be driven back to rehab?”
“Good point. When Carl finally agreed to take me back, I wouldn’t get in the car until he gave me his cell phone. I was afraid he’d go to his parents’ house or who knew where. I told him if he didn’t do what I asked him to do, I’d punch 9-1-1 in the cell and scream I’d been kidnapped.”
“And you’re the woman Carl told people didn’t have common sense?” She shook her head. “I bet he's rethinking that one.”
“Hmm, I don’t know.” I stopped at the water fountain, too thirsty to care about drinking lukewarm water. “Years ago, I heard a radio show with Dr. Laura. Some days I switched the show off because the callers were such goofballs. I don’t even remember what the topic was that day. But I heard her say that at points in our lives, we have to choose the hills we’re willing to die on. That stayed with me. And when Carl told me he’d sold me out, that was my hill.”
“I hope you realize what this says about you, and your commitment to recovery,” Jan said. “Honestly, I didn’t think you should have gone to the party in the first place. That's a tough temptation for anyone whose sobriety is so fragile.”
We’d reached the end of the blacktop trail. Jan pointed in the direction of the cafeteria. And air conditioning.
“I thought if I had Carl and his parents to support me it would be enough. Naïve, huh?”
“Step Two says, ‘Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.’ Carl and his parents aren’t the ‘greater’ in that step.”
“What if my marriage can’t survive my sanity?”
“First, don’t play the ‘what if’ game. Secondly, was your marriage going to survive your insanity?”
“Guess the fact that I’m here answers that question,” I said. “I can’t talk about this anymore. I’m hot. I’m hungry. Do you think there's anything left of dinner in the cafeteria?”
Recovery reminded me of a clearance sale. Grabbing clothes helter-skelter, not knowing if the sizes fit, the colors coordinate, or the prices are palatable. You schlepped it all to the dressing room and refused to emerge until you tried and retried, matched and unmatched, added and subtracted.
For weeks I gathered AA Steps and Traditions, a Blue Book, collections of adages and mottos, theories, epiphanies, crazy quilt pieces of my life. At first, it all seemed random and disconnected. Then I’d find a missing link, or some days I’d throw a useless link away, and order overcame chaos.
The most frightening