Tell Me When I'm Good Enough [Scrim Fanfic]

XVIII

  Anonymous Narcotics Meeting

December 1st, 2016

The small metal chip felt weighted in my hands, flipping it constantly in my grasp reading "One day at a time" and "To thine own self be true" curved around its border. Unity service recovery, I wasn't here to get sober, I was here to sell, lying to everyone that I had been sober for two years.. I was a phony.

Majority of the people here were newcomers, fresh with the addiction. I had been out of the game for the life of my daughter and for promising Ari I would stop selling especially now that we were going to tour more, losing a friend of ours to the crime made us aware of what we were doing in our lives, I couldn't let my mom bury me six feet deep. Then came the death of one of my closest friends in high school, hearing that he was stabbed in his own prison cell.

"I've been struggling recently; I lost my mom in a house fire that my father had started." Fuck, that's deep. I forget how dark this place can get with those stories. It was a graveyard full of untold stories. Ones that no one wanted to know.

"How does it make you feel?" The young girl shrugged her shoulders. "I was fifteen, this was over ten years ago, you'd think I'd be over it... but I can't seem to forgive my father, more hatred than anything when I think of him."

The rep turned towards me, giving a soft smile as they finished off the young girl's story. "Do you want to share your story with us, Scott?"

I was pulled back into the room as I blinked a few times to register what she had said, it was a safe haven, I guess. I leant forward, resting my elbows against my knees as I kept fiddling with the chip between my fingers. If I made eye contact, I'd break easily. They needed to believe I was staying sober.

"Where do I begin?" I chuckled, my fingers brushing through my unkept dreads after I removed my cap. "I spent fourteen years of my life taking opioids, smack and xans were the only drugs I couldn't function without... It got to the point that I could no longer turn to my family, wasn't able to look at my cousin or talk to my mom, I knew I had to get the help." I chewed on the inside of my cheek as I thought about my addiction that I still had today. "I went through so many failed relationships due to my addiction, always blamed everyone around me and never myself."

I kept my eyes on the chip between my fingers. "I found love when I couldn't love myself... in the hardest part of my life, she gave me a daughter." I stared down at the chip. "I let the girl I fell in love with, slip through my fingers and she's now an addict." I glanced up to the circle. "I'm trying to find her; she's been missing for almost three months now..." I cleared my throat, blinking the tears away. Fuck not having my fix really made me vulnerable to emotions. "In a way, I wish we never came back here... maybe just maybe she would be sober, and we'd be happily married right now."

There were a few grown ass men wiping their eyes. "Thank you for sharing your story with us, Scott." I can't remember her name, but she seemed sincere not the fake bullshit like the other narcotics meetings.

*

I entered a gas station, paying the price of the gas I had put in my car. "Can I get a twenty pack too?" I placed sixty dollars on the counter, sliding the cigarettes to my pocket.

The sky was a bright red color, the sun was slowly setting and there were less people walking the streets. I slipped one of the cigarettes between my lips, walking to my car. Once I got into it, I lit the cancer stick and pulled away from the gas station.

I cruised the car down the street, playing our song Clyde on the stereo. It was quite a warm winter so far, however the heat was dying down and the cold was slowly creeping in, I took a draw from my cigarette, pulling down one of the old streets that I used to run in. The nostalgic feeling was overwhelming.