Shortness of Breath

Chapter Eleven

Hallie - October Eighteenth

"Hey," I said shifting once uncomfortably like I was preparing to do stand-up. "This is a little weird, I'm a terrible public speaker. Oh. Hallie, addict."

This time, at least seventy-five percent of the people sitting chorused "Hi, Hallie," like in the movies. Already this was different from my last meeting in more ways than one.

"So, I guess what I have to share is that I've finally started in on those twelve steps. I'm new to the program, but in case there are any newcomers like me, Step One is 'admitting that we are powerless over our addiction, that our lives have become unmanageable.' So I've been working on that first step indirectly for a while now, and I think I'm slowly getting there. I mean my life is certainly unmanageable, but I could've told you that before I started coming to NA. The powerlessness part, though, I guess I never thought that was for me. I was always that person who would do a line at a party, or shoot up just for fun, so I always had this sense of control over it. Like I decided when I used, if I used, and I could stop for good whenever I wanted. I don't think like that anymore, especially not after last night." I paused for a moment before throwing on, "Though it took me doing cocaine off of my ex-girlfriend's tits for me to fully realize that, so I guess that's where the unmanageable life part comes into play."

Some people laughed, which I didn't know was allowed, but I couldn't be offended. It would be pretty laughable if it weren't completely true.

"You guys think it's funny, but we all know that feeling, right? I'm sure every single person in this room knows what it's like when you think you've quit something, and then all of a sudden it reappears and you realize you never had the control over it that you thought you did, because the second it shows up in front of you, you know you're going to want it regardless of the bad shit it's done to you in the past. And that's what my ex is like for me. I broke it off with her four years ago, which gave me the same false sense of control that I had over drugs. I felt like I'd quit her, like I was clean. But that's clearly all bullshit, because when she showed up at my door just earlier this week, it was like nothing had ever changed. And since that day I've kind of been slowly unraveling, I guess you could say. If you want to talk unmanageable lives, my love life tops the list. Things with the new person I'm kind-of-seeing keep getting better, then all of a sudden they get worse. You throw an ex-girlfriend a drug addiction into that mix, you're in dangerous water. And that's what happened to me. So to make a long story short, I gave into not one addiction last night, but two. Yeah, because I did hard drugs and I slept with my ex, which, again, unmanageable life, right? The crazy part is that my ex and the new person I'm starting to really have feelings for are like night and day. My ex is destructive, a real hurricane of a person, but Ca...we'll call her Stacey. She isn't like that at all. In fact, she's the only reason I started coming to meetings in the first place. She wants me to get better, and my ex is part of what makes me so sick. So after the drugs and the sex last night, I didn't feel any better. I felt a billion times worse, because I'd done wrong by someone I really care about in two ways. But I think it took an experience like that, one where I really hit the bottom for me to just really stare at myself in the mirror and ask myself, like, 'What the fuck is going on with you, Hallie?' And now I know what's going on, and I'll say it again. I'm powerless over my addiction, and my life has become unmanageable. And now that I've started to see that, all I want to do is make things right and take my life back. Not just for me, but for Ca--Stacey."

***

When the meeting let out, I felt like the celebrity of NA. It was a sad sense of pride I got, being the coolest of all the drug addicts, but I soaked it in anyway because it'd been a long week and I was taking triumphs where I could get them.