Shortness of Breath

Chapter Twenty Three

Hallie - November fourteenth

For most in the United States, regardless of creed or color, mid-November signifies the unofficial beginning of the holiday season. Whether or not we celebrate any of them, we're left with no real choice about getting involved. It's in the stores, it's on the television. It's drilled into your head that this is a happy time, a joyous time, a song-singing, party-throwing, chestnut-roasting, month-long montage of galavanting that, if done right, culminates in the coup de grâce of the New Year, at which point you can drink yourself into oblivion and start saving up the energy for next year.

It should come as little surprise that the holiday season is also the most popular time of year for deaths by alcohol, drugs, and suicide. For every happy person out there, there is a sad person made sadder by the notion that everyone else is happy except them. That and the sheer ubiquity of liquor between mid-November and early January, when you're being critical of it, are obscene. Holiday propaganda creates an excuse to drink more than any rational adult would in the name of being festive. Mulled wine, spiced wine, spiked cider, spiked eggnog, spiked hot chocolate - in essence, anything you can throw liquor into and give it a fun new name to make it feel seasonal. The holiday season is joyous to many. To others, it's a death trap.

At least I knew I wasn't alone in my current state - lonely, but bonded with strangers in loneliness. It was the day before Scott's birthday, which was glaringly obvious to me. I still felt weird and strangely guilty about everything that had happened with Sylvana. We hadn't spoken since the blowout in my hallway, which may have been for the best but left me with a lot of open feelings. Jada and I had never completely discussed it, and in part because our schedules weren't matching up as of late and in part because we were both good at holding grudges and bad at apologies, things had been cold between us. Things with Casey were nearly as tense. It wasn't my fault, but she was a time bomb - trying to hold everything in as she watched a million things fall apart and waited for the next shoe to drop. It was stressful just to be around her, and lonely to be away from her. For all those reasons, it almost felt liberating to be in the presence of addicts, at their wit's end, forcing themselves - maybe failing - not to use.

Joy to the world, feliz Navidad. I should've seen it coming when, for the second week in a row, NA was standing room only.

"This is the worst time of year to come to a meeting," Lena lamented from where we were seated on the ground. "Bandwagoners. Where are they the other eleven months out of the year?"

"Maybe they don't need it," I pointed out.

"I don't know. Yeah, things always get a little darker when they start playing Christmas music on the radio, but this is ridiculous. It's like when you go to church on Easter and suddenly everyone you haven't seen in years is giving it up for Jesus."

"You may have a point," I said. "Speaking of which, I haven't seen you here in a couple weeks."

"I've been busy."

"Busy?"

"Yeah," she said without elaborating. "Do you have Thanksgiving plans?"

"I don't really celebrate."

"Above the glorification of colonialist white supremacy?"

"It isn't that," I said. "I mean yes, that doesn't help, but I don't know. It's kind of a family thing. My brother and I used to just go out to a nice place and mock all the rich families that don't know how to cook, but then after he died I guess I didn't get into a new tradition."

"These sound like your Halloween woes revisited. I forgot you and he were so close. That must suck."

"It does suck," I agreed. "But some days are harder than others. Tomorrow's his birthday, actually."