I found myself raising my hand, participating for the first time ever. But how could I not raise my hand? This had been one of the longest weeks of my life.
The discussion leader nodded. “That’s how it is the first week of December, my friends. The holiday season is hard. Every single year. The expectations. The family togetherness.”
“The drunk uncles. The eggnog,” a guy in the front row put in. He received a quiet chuckle for his efforts.
“Who wants to share how their week was difficult?” Ms. Librarian’s eyes locked onto mine. “Would you like to say something?” she asked me.
That’s what I got for raising my hand for the first time. “My name is Jude, and I’m an addict. Started with opiates. In prison I switched to heroin.” I cleared my throat. “The cravings were bad this week…” That wasn’t a good explanation for the problem, though. “I mean… they’re always bad. It’s just that this week I felt like I forgot why it matters so much. It was harder to remember why I fight them at all.” Fuck. That was a little more honesty than I needed to spew. That was the trouble with participating. I could never figure out where to stop.
“Okay,” she said. “Why do you fight the cravings? Tell us your goal. Saying it out loud helps me sometimes.”
“I don’t want to go back to jail,” I said. That was a good enough reason for anyone.
“Sure, but what do you want instead?”
“Uh.” I regretted raising my hand. “I want the cravings to stop. I want a better job and a nicer place to live. Fuck, I might as well ask for a purple pony.”
Several people laughed, but not Linda Librarian. “There are so many people in this town that have all those things. Why not you?”
“Because I have a felony conviction?” Now I was scowling at a nice older lady. Nice. Note to self: do not engage. That way lies the abyss.
“Be kind to yourself,” she said. “Especially this month. I’ve made a list for myself.” She pulled a piece of paper from her back pocket and read from it. “Watch an old movie. Eat a good meal. Get outside. Stay away from toxic substances and toxic people.”
“Amen,” muttered someone else.
I stopped listening. Some days I was able to get on the bandwagon and take some hope with me when I left this room. But today wasn’t going to be one of those days. The week had been a string of long hours in the garage, each one of them tainted by the itch. It was like a fly buzzing in my ear. I’d swat at it, occasionally thinking I’d won. But a few minutes later it would be back, the sound of its tiny wings like torture.
Sophie’s visit wasn’t exactly to blame. Her brief, explosive presence couldn’t make my body want drugs any more than it already did. But it had depressed me. Hearing her cry wrecked me. It forced me to see for myself how badly I’d hurt her. I couldn’t fantasize about her happy life in the big city anymore.
I’d always thought that one of us could end up getting what we wanted. But even that was too much to ask.
At the front of the room, someone prattled on about finding his purpose in life. I looked at the clock on the wall, counting the minutes until the hour was over. The week may have been grueling, but Wednesday night was almost here.
Before she’d left my room on Friday night, Sophie had said, “Maybe I’ll see you at the church.”
I’d thought she’d say please don’t come to the church. But she didn’t.
And now the hour of power here in the basement was almost done. I sat up straighter in my chair and waited to be dismissed. Whether it was a good idea or not, I was heading up to the kitchen after this. I told myself that I needed to see her face and to know that she was okay.
But, fuck. I really just wanted to see her.
“Let’s not let this month undo all our good work,” the leader was saying. “We can handle this. It’s December second. We’ve got thirty days of the holiday season to survive. Next week I’m bringing cookies to rally us. But not holiday cookies! Fuck that.”
She got a chuckle for dropping an f-bomb. But there was something else she’d just said that suddenly had me paying attention. It was December second.
Sophie’s birthday.
I sat there in my folding chair wondering how Sophie celebrated her birthday these days. The first time I ever watched her blow out a candle she was turning seventeen. That was six years ago, but it felt like a lifetime. We’d just started seeing each other, and she’d made sure I knew it was her birthday. I’d brought a fancy bakery cupcake to school in a plastic box so it wouldn’t get crushed. At lunch we sat in my car so I could light a candle for her and taste the frosting on her lips after she ate it.
We’d been impossibly young.
Twice more after that we celebrated her birthday together, each one involving greater amounts of nudity.