Detox is just the beginning—getting the poison out of my body.
Now comes the harder part: figuring out why I put it there in the first place.
Learning how to live without it.
Building a life that doesn't revolve around the next hit.
"I'm ready," I say, even though I'm not sure it's true.
Patricia looks at me for a long moment, and I see something in her eyes.
Understanding, maybe. Or recognition.
"No one's ever really ready," she says. "But you show up anyway. That's all any of us can do."
I think about my mother—the real one, not the hallucination.
The woman she was before the drugs took her.
She had my same laugh, my same stubbornness, my same hunger for something she could never quite name.
She never got this chance.
She never had someone who loved her enough to pay for rehab, never had a facility full of people who believed she could get better.
She died alone, surrounded by strangers who cared more about their next fix than the woman dying in front of them.
I used to think her death was inevitable.
That addiction was a one-way street with only one possible destination.
But sitting here, watching the last light fade over the Pennsylvania mountains, I'm starting to wonder if that's true.
Maybe she could have gotten better, if she'd had the chance.
Maybe she could have fought her way back to the surface, the way I'm trying to do now.
I'll never know, but I can honor her memory by being the person she never got to be.
I'm not going to end up like that.
I'm going to fight.
I'm going to claw my way back to the surface, one painful inch at a time.
I'm going to become someone Garrett can be proud of.
Someone Leah might one day forgive.
Someone I can look at in the mirror without flinching.
Someone my mother would have wanted me to be.
One hour at a time.
One day at a time.
Starting now.
