“Amanda––”
“I need space to think. Can you please take Roxy and Sam home for me? He should be here in the next few minutes. Can I count on you to do that?”
He frowns as if I’ve wounded his fragile feelings. I await his nod, then turn and walk away.
My name is Amanda Shaw and I am an alcoholic.
I’ve thought or said that a million times in the past three years and not a day goes by that I don’t feel guilt at the admission, something I still struggle with. The benefit of always being drunk is that you live in a pleasantly numb state, absent of pain or responsibility. It’s like a shot of Novocain to the heart. Once it wears off, however, the pain comes rushing back tenfold, making you throb with it.
Whenever I’m feeling like I can’t see my way out of something, I know it’s time for a meeting. I pull up a schedule of the local chapter of AA on my phone and I’m in luck, there’s one at noon. After my argument with my self-anointed protector, I walked around town and eventually wound up at the small Unitarian church where the meetings are held.
Today’s meeting is already in full swing, someone up at the podium sharing, by the time I walk in and slide into a pew in the back. I listen to each share and when it’s time for the serenity prayer, the cobwebs have cleared and I feel calmer, steadier, ready to face the world and all it’s problems again.
As people file out, a break in the crowd reveals a very familiar face. “Walter!” I shout a bit too loudly.
Everyone in the church turns to look at me, including Walter, who’s wearing a friendly smile. He walks over and takes a seat next to me.
“How long?” he queries in his deep, scratchy voice.
“Three years, and you?”
He sighs. I get the impression he doesn’t care to count. “I celebrated forty years three days ago.”
“Wow. Congratulations. That’s amazing.” We sit quietly for a while, the silence as comforting as a security blanket. “How did you do it?” My biggest fear in life is that I can’t trust myself, that I’m not strong enough. And this man has done it. He’s conquered his weakness. “I’m so afraid to let everyone down,” I admit, eyes glued on my short, bare thumbnail.
“You can’t think that way. You gotta take it one day at a time and every one is a chance to get it right. It’s really that simple.” At the doubtful look on my face, he continues, “Focus on the small stuff. Otherwise it’ll get overwhelming.”
I know exactly what he means and nod.
“Celebrate every small victory,” he continues. “No matter how small. Your kid is misbehaving? You didn’t have a drink. Pat yourself on the back. You got canned from your job? You didn’t have drink. Give yourself credit. Before you know it, you’ve got forty years under your belt.”
“You make it sound so easy.”
A bushy white eyebrow ticks up. “It’s as hard or easy as you make it.” He examines me closely. “What about your family?”
“Both my parents were alcoholics.” In the pause, Walter nods. “They’re both gone. I have seven brothers and only three of us ever touched the stuff.”
I brush my sweaty palms on my yoga leggings. My parents are not a subject I often talk about with good reason. You ask most people what they remember most about a deceased parent and they’ll keep talking for hours. Mostly good, some bad.
My memories of my mother boil down to two. When she handed me the youngest, Will, right after he was born and said, “Here––I’m not doing this anymore.” And the second, when she said to me, “You’re not talented or smart like your brothers. You’re like me. Find a man to take care of you or you’ll wind up working on your back.” I was thirteen. I had no idea what working on my back meant.
“You quit for Sam?” Walter asks. It’s less of a question and more of an affirmation. He knows that most often the only thing that stands between us and the bottom of a bottle is the people we love and the ones that love us.
I nod. “What about you?”
“My wife,” he answers with a weak smile. “She’d been after me to quit for years.” Lost in the memory, his pale eyes move away and the smile slowly melts. “One morning, I found her at the kitchen table, staring down at it. She couldn’t look at me when she spoke––said that if I didn’t quit, she’d leave me. I told her I’d think about it.”
His knotted hands rub together in an impatient gesture. “When she didn’t come home from work that night, I thought she’d gone and done it…turns out, she was on the Garden State Parkway headed to her sister’s when a drunk driver jumped the median and hit her car head-on. Died on impact.” His eyes find mine again. The blur of tears soften the deep crevices on his face, the pain I know is in his expression. “That was the last day I had a drink.”