Drunk Mom (31 page)

Not maybe.

Chris says, Not maybe then. Yeah, you’re on to something, for sure. Time is funny in general when you’re using. You start okay. You can be okay for a long time. And then the more you do, the worse it gets. It never gets better. The deeper you go, the narrower it gets. Everything just speeds up and shit happens all at once. There’s less room and more shit piles up on you.

What happened? I say.

Last week, I shot up. And I got arrested for the first time. I’ve never been arrested before. So the shit keeps piling up, you know, and the end gives you less space to manoeuvre. And I’ve no idea where else it’s going to take me but I know it’s not going to be back up, for sure.

I don’t interrupt her. It’s not like I myself shy away from addict poetry. And I like listening and watching her so animated, and I like talking about recovery.

I haven’t been sleeping lately, Chris says. I’m going nuts.

You think you’ll sleep tonight?

She says nothing for a long time. I repeat the question.

A large, loud group of students walks in. They line up for coffee behind all the other lined-up people. We’re in the teacher’s college building. Everyone is studying one theory or another. Big kids with textbooks, all of them.

Chris’s glassy eyes don’t seem to register all the tumult.

A thought crosses my mind, that she’s shutting down right now, in this very instant, because of the lack of sleep and whatever else is going on—a withdrawal—that she’s just shutting down right there.

Finally, she says, Thing is, I’m afraid to wake up. Yeah. I’m afraid to wake up. She looks at me, something like surprise in her enormous eyes.

You mean, you’re afraid to be awake.

She nods.

And then, naturally, I understand. It’s easier not to wake up. The world goes on. But not with you in it. This is why we’re here together, on this side of addiction. We’ll always understand what it’s like to be afraid to wake up.

When we’re finished our coffees, we go to a meeting together.

Before the meeting is over, I hold her hand as we stand in a big circle with other addicts holding each other’s hands, and we recite a pledge to help each other out. It’s a silly ritual but it gives the illusion that we’re in this together, before we go out into the world again, outside of the twelve-step walls. The bones in Chris’s hand are tiny, a bird’s skeleton.

I hope she makes it.

But she doesn’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I find out from Cara a few weeks later that Chris goes out, again, and is still out.
Out
is a popular term for addicts who can’t quit.

This sounds as if she has escaped.

Which is the opposite of what’s going on.

W
inter is almost over. I’m in a meeting as usual and the windows are open and you can smell the spring: wet cement after the rain.

The speaker is announced. It’s a man I’ve seen around. Seems like a nice guy though we’ve never talked. But I see people’s faces after they talk to him. They look happy.

The man is older, Irish. He speaks with an accent so thick that I find it too hard to understand him at first. I have to listen carefully, let my ears tune in before I can decode the words. This makes me think of when I drunk-talked. When I started drinking heavily in order to be able to talk in the new language after we moved to Canada. When the drink made it seem as if I had the language tamed and manipulated to serve me.

I recall myself in high school, in a car with a boy, somewhere in a cornfield, a farmhouse somewhere beside the cornfield. In the house,
a party, also, a case of beer—mine—emptied, and me, finally brave enough to speak in the new language.

Me, so pretty and teenage and sexy, and talking, talking, talking. The boy’s unsure eyes. The boy saying something I couldn’t quite hear, as if I was underwater and he was above it, on the safe surface. The sudden realization that I couldn’t understand him, and that I wasn’t really talking either. It was nonsense falling out of my mouth as I tried to put my mouth on his to make myself shut up. And then the boy, turning his face away and calling me words I did understand: you’re fucking crazy.

Hey, hey, Cara whispers.

Sorry. I roll my eyes.

She shakes her head in exaggerated fashion, stifles laughter. I love you, she mouths.

The room laughs. I don’t catch the joke.

I want to ask Cara to repeat it to me but I feel embarrassed that I didn’t hear it and I lose my nerve to ask.

I don’t know why I’m getting so distracted. I even check my phone, though I should have it turned off. It beeps once when a text comes through. It’s my boyfriend.

We had a nice bath, songs and a story and went to bed
, the text reads.

I picture the baby’s fat soft body giving off heat like a small generator when he sleeps. In my mind’s eye I see his room with its tiny yellow nightlight—just enough of a light to draw out my little boy’s impossible loveliness. Arms thrown to the sides, eyelids like shells, thick eyelashes, rosebud mouth. He breathes through his mouth. His breath is sweet.

Right now, in this moment, I am happy and I’m okay with it. Just for
now. My boys are at home and I have a home. I don’t wake up to my own slow death anymore.

As if on cue the speaker says, I am not afraid to live. Right now.

I am not afraid to live.

Right now.

The speaker says that he loved to drink. Why wouldn’t he? It was like in that song, where falling feels like flying just for a little while?

The room murmurs in appreciation.

I write it down on a piece of paper, Falling feels like flying.

I think that I could tattoo this somewhere. I want to remember it forever. I want it to be etched into me, stay in my skin. I want it to protect me.

But nothing can protect me. From me. Not even me.

He’s been sober for nineteen years now, he tells us. And then his story is done and he’s done talking. It was a good talk. The room starts to clap.

Cara whispers in my ear that she’s got a car and can drive me. I can’t wait to get home tonight.

Do I stay sober?

Oh, how would I know? I’m still here. But how can I be sure of anything else?

Drunk Mom
is an imperfect account of the events that occurred from 2009 to 2010 when I relapsed after three and a half years of sobriety. It’s an imperfect account because memory is an imperfect process, a process in which you are the writer and the brain is the editor. By the time it’s retrieved it’s already been concocted into a story that we need to tell ourselves. I’ve also read somewhere (I can’t remember where) that memory is like any other artifact, prone to erosion. In any event, with these limitations, I’ve tried to record events faithfully but have taken liberties. I’ve made changes to the chronology and conflated some events in order to tighten the story. This is by no means a published
journal
of my relapse, and for that reason too all the dialogue is an approximation. I’ve changed all names and some details to protect the identities of some of the people I write about and, in the case of people like my son and boyfriend, whose identities cannot be protected, to at least soften the glare.

This has been a painful story to tell. I wrote it for three reasons. First, because I hope it will help some of those who are struggling with similar issues, and give others a glimpse into what that struggle is like. This is a story of an addiction but also of parenthood, which is in itself a major mind game for which no one is really prepared. Second, but most important, this book is an attempt to make amends to my greatest love, my son, Hugo Smith, who I hope will one day be able to forgive me for this transgression. Third, it is a form of apology to both my partner, Russell Smith, and my sister, Laura Bydlowska.

I want to thank the following institutions and people for making my sobriety and/or this book a possibility: