"Alright then. Now get out of here and go to your meeting tonight. I'll see you at eight sharp."
The meeting that night is smaller, fifteen people instead of thirty. I don't speak this time. I just listen, absorbing other people's stories.
A woman named Grace talks about how she started drinking after her divorce. A guy named Samuel talks about using alcohol to quiet the voices in his head, the ones that told him he was worthless.
His story hits way too close to home.
After the meeting, I call Ivan from the parking lot.
"How was it?" he asks immediately. "How are you feeling?"
"It was hard. But good too, I think." I lean against the brick building. "There was this guy who talked about drinking to quiet the voices in his head. The ones that tell him he's worthless, that he's a burden to everyone."
"Well, that sounds familiar."
"Yeah. It made me pay attention." I swallow past the lump in my throat. "I realized that maybe the drinking isn't really the problem, is it? It's just the symptom. The problem is everything underneath it. The trauma, the shit Henderson and other people did to us, the feeling of being fundamentally broken. That's what I'm actually trying to fix."
"And the feeling that you don't deserve love," Ivan says quietly.
"Yeah. Exactly that." I close my eyes. "At the meeting, they talk about working the steps. And part of that is dealing with the stuff you've been running from. I think I have a lot of shit to deal with."
"We both do. We're both damaged."
"But yours didn't turn you into a drunk."
"No. Mine turned me into someone who spent seven years obsessively searching for his foster brother instead of building a life of his own. Someone who couldn't have a normal relationship because he was in love with a ghost. We all cope differently. That doesn't make your way worse than mine. It just makes it different. Neither of us dealt with things in healthy ways."
"When did you get so wise and understanding about all this?"
"It could be because I've been spending a lot of time with this guy who makes me think deeply about things."
I laugh softly, and it feels good to laugh again. "I talked to Betty today too. Told her about the meetings, asked her to change my schedule."
"What did she say? Was she okay with it?"
"Her son is in recovery too. Six years sober. She's going to work completely around my schedule, let me come in at eight instead of five so I can make all the seven o'clock meetings."
"That's kind of her. I'm proud of you for asking. For being honest with her, too. You have more people in your corner than you realize."
"Don't be proud yet. I've only been to two meetings total. I could fail again tomorrow."
"I'm proud of you for going to two meetings. I'll be proud of you for going to three. And four. And a hundred. And a thousand. One day at a time, right? That's what they say in those meetings?"
"Yes, that's what they say."
Later that night, after I get off work at Betty's, we talk for another hour. Ivan doesn't pretend to have all the answers, doesn't try to fix everything. And I don't put on a brave face and pretend to be okay.
Over the next few weeks, that becomes our routine. Our new normal.
I go to meetings—seven times a week at first, sometimes even twice a day when I'm struggling particularly hard. Then I settle into four times a week as I start to find my footing, as the daily meetings start to feel less like drowning and more like breathing. I talk to Ivan every night, telling him what I'm starting to understand about myself and my damage.
The drinking was never really about the alcohol itself. That's what I'm learning. It was about numbing the pain I didn't know how to face, didn't have the tools to process. The pain of Henderson's abuse, of years in the foster system, of feeling like I was unlovable. I drank because the alternative was sitting with all that darkness and letting it swallow me whole.
In the meetings, I start to learn a different way. Not to run from the pain, but to sit with it. To name it out loud. To let it exist without letting it destroy me completely.
It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
Some nights I come home from meetings and cry for an hour straight, memories surfacing that I'd buried so deep I'd forgotten they existed. Other nights I want a drink so badly I can taste the whiskey on my tongue, can feel the burn going down, and I have to call Ivan or my sponsor—a guy named Robert who's been sober for fifteen years—to talk me through it.
