And I’m not sure which one I want more.
ChapterTwenty-Three
Roderick
May 3rd, 1997
I wake up at nine forty-three.
That’s already a failure.
I know how fucking ridiculous that sounds.Most people in my line of work would kill for a morning like this—sunlight spilling across the sheets like a lover I forgot to kiss goodnight, no alarm screaming bloody murder, no tour manager pounding on the hotel door because I missed another radio interview or photo op or mic check.
But for me?Nine forty-three means I’m already behind, already drowning in a day I’m supposed to control but never quite manage to.
In rehab, they drilled it into us—routines, structure, predictability.Up at six.Lights out by ten.Three meals, two snacks.We should follow the same schedule.Wake up, make your bed, write your feelings in a stupid spiral notebook like that’s going to keep the cravings away.Pretend that the act of putting your pain on paper can keep you from ripping yourself apart.Confession time: it didn’t.
And now, three weeks out?I’m supposed to want that.Supposed to find comfort in oatmeal and silence.Supposed to feel grateful I made it back without dying on a bathroom floor in Tokyo.I’m supposed to feel lucky.Humbled.I’m supposed to believe I’ve earned this blank page, this second chance, this fucking “new beginning” that sounds poetic until you’re staring at your ceiling wondering who the hell you’re supposed to be without the noise and the numbness.
I’m not going to lie, I don’t feel lucky.
I feel like I’ve been stripped down to the raw muscle of who I was before I ever picked up a guitar, before I ever tasted oblivion, before I knew what it meant to take the edge off with a shot and a lie.I don’t know how to be human in the morning.
Not like this.
Not without something in my veins to take the pressure off waking up.Not without tequila humming in my blood and telling me it’s okay to skip breakfast if I can just get to noon without screaming.
The numbers on the clock continue to blink at me in smug, digital red—nine forty-three.No wait, it’s now nine forty-four.With it, a fresh wave of shame curls hot in my gut.
It’s too late to fake being the early-rising version of myself that group therapy wants to believe in.Too early to say fuck it and swan-dive into a bottle I swore off.So I lie in that ugly space between good intentions and bad decisions, trying to breathe through a morning I never wanted.
I tell myself it’s fine.That healing doesn’t follow a schedule.That no one out there gives a shit if I miss breakfast or sleep in past eight.
The problem is thatIgive a shit.Somehow, I care in this quiet, restless, furious way that makes me want to crawl out of my skin.Because waking up late makes me feel like I’ve already lost the day.Like everyone else is already halfway through living while I’m just opening my eyes.Like life moved on while I was too numb, too gone, too far out to catch the bus.
Like I missed the orientation for adulthood, and now I’m standing in the hallway barefoot, pantsless, and late for finals—with no idea what the fuck the test is even about.
And worse—so much fucking worse—is the voice in the back of my head asking if I was better broken.Better drunk.Better high and feral and loud, with blood on my knuckles and music vibrating through my bones so hard it drowned everything else out.
At least then I felt something, I had rhythm.I could play three sets a night and wake up next to a stranger whose name I didn’t want to know, and none of it mattered because the high was the purpose.The show was the drug.The pain was something I could shred through.
Now I wake up stone sober, and I don’t even know what the fuck I’m supposed to do with myself.With my mind.With my hands.I don’t know who I’m supposed to be when I’m not chasing the next hit, the next lay, the next high to pretend I’m not hollow.
And yeah, this isn’t about blaming Kit or that StringTheory girl—not really—but the truth is, if I hadn’t let myself get cracked open by a fucking email thread and a few well-placed memories, I might not feel this fucking wrecked.
If I hadn’t let myself remember her—remember what it felt like to taste Kit on my tongue, to dream about her hands on me, to wake up needing her like air—I wouldn’t be here, spiraling like this.
I didn’t even want to fall asleep last night because I was scared I’d see her again.That I’d wake up haunted by the sound of her voice, the press of her mouth against mine, or the shape she made when she curled into me and whispered that I was the only thing keeping her sane.
But sleep won.I wasn’t strong enough to fight it.
And now I’m here, with the taste of her still in the back of my throat and the craving buzzing under my skin.I have to get on with the program.Even when there’s nothing on the calendar today.Just a two-word promise scrawled in ink, I keep retracing every morning like it might eventually mean more: stay sober.
That’s it.That’s all.
Stay sober.
My mouth tastes like cotton and old mistakes, even though it’s been forty-nine days since I touched a drink or had any pills.Forty-nine days without poison, and still there’s a burn in the back of my throat like my body’s waiting for me to betray it again.Like it knows I’m close.
