recovery

It was revolting, waking up to that smell. It was musky, familiar, overpowering. Can a smell be damp? Like that, but with a weird orangey glow. The bed was clammy and dusty at the same time and that smell made the urge to vomit feel imminent. I could feel crawling in my hair, and the taste of a thousand cigarettes lingering in my mouth. It sounded like distant screams becoming closer, a clamour of sirens approaching as I came to consciousness.

‘Get out of my marigolds, you filthy little girl!’ I squinted into the screech to see a furious old lady with a broom looming over me, as my semi-conscious body slowly began to prise itself away from her colourful border of now-destroyed, and apparently, once-prized, marigolds. My thigh had become a moulded imprint of deflowered beauty, while her months of hard work were rendered nothing but the dramatic residue of my chaos.

I didn’t think I was the ‘junkie scum’ she tutted after me, loud enough that it wasn't even close to being uttered under her breath. Or perhaps, I was exactly that. At 7am on a Tuesday morning, wearing one shoe and half my make-up, the police of a town in which I’d never lived removed me from an old lady’s flowerbed in the middle of a street I didn’t recognise, and thought I was unlikely ever to remember.

At the age of 39, after twenty years of drinking, that was to be the last hangover I ever had.

***

They didn't detain me, but that mean old bitch wanted to press charges. For some rancid smelling flowers? It still makes me roll my eyes. A criminal record over marigolds. If she only knew all the things I got away with prior to that.

I got a fine for disorderly conduct and damages for the garden, and a court-ordered place at the morbidly depressing-sounding Alcoholics Recovering. The judge said it was for the good of my health, my future, as well as my ‘currently cursed soul’, and made sobriety a condition of my probation.

***

AR was simultaneously exactly how I thought it would be, and completely unexpected. I was taken aback at how human the attendees seemed to be, unnervingly like myself, really. I had hoped for a monstrous freakshow of epic proportions, rather than a room full of people with whom I had so much in common. It was a combination of group therapy and proselytising mantra-chanting, gathered in a circle, not quite holding hands, but nearly. Certain passages from the official literature punctuated by chorus words I did not yet know, certain knowing nods at references I did not yet understand. It felt like it might be the right place for me, but that did not mean I wanted to be there. As with most of these programmes, though, there were criteria to fulfil, a workbook of rules and tasks designed to prove, improve, and maintain, my sobriety.

There was praying, which apparently didn’t need to be as specific as it sounded, and there was reading, which was as specific as it sounded. There were promises and pledges, and reflection, and writing. I enjoyed the writing part, until I realised that all roads seemed to be pointing in the direction of my own flaws. I failed to see why stopping drinking meant I needed to examine every crevice of my character, especially when, as far as I could see, I was already making an enormous amount of effort: simply through the act of not pouring that sweet, beautiful warmth down my throat and directly into my veins so that I could forget about all this unutterable bullshit in the first place.

No, I didn’t jump at the opportunity to engage with a sponsor, the last thing I wanted was a babysitter on this unpleasant journey through Reflectionville and the nearby village of Penitence. I was assigned one; she gave me the creeps. Way too calm for my liking. Don’t tell me she’s not shitfaced on at least something. Chaperones for shame, popped into my head, during one of our ‘moments of still thought’ in a Thursday meeting. It still makes me giggle, but I don’t dare mention it out loud. Climb aboard the Repentance Express and don’t forget your Shame Chaperone for a new kind of ordeal: repeated remorse, unending guilt-trips, and no end in sight!

I prayed with them, and I shared my experiences, my losses, and my shame. I never felt I had any strength or hope to give to the group in the way that the others did, all of them seeming to brim over with an almost cult-like positivity. Maybe they were simply looking forward and beyond, while I was still fighting with myself. I constantly thought about how I would never have been there if it wasn’t for that stupid judge and the old woman’s marigold patch. I hated not drinking. All I felt was boredom eating away at my brain; vast expanses of time unfilled, unchallenged, unexploited. Every day now seemed to last a thousand years without the rollercoaster of explosive unpredictability, the valleys of depressive trauma found on the floors of anonymous bathrooms, and the jarring confusion of the almost interchangeableness of endless hook-ups.

Looking up in bed at night and seeing only the ceiling, I had to admit, there seemed to be a lot less fear and drama in sobriety. Way more feelings, though, feelings all the time. Where were they before now? God damn if it wasn’t holy-shitballs-terrifying to think of plodding through this straight-laced full-of-feels life forever, though. They kept telling me how great my sleep was going to get. Still waiting, bitches. I kind of felt like I was doing a great job with sleeping until that old cow with the broom went and called the police on me.

My sponsor wrote weekly progress reports for my probation officer. It was just barely notes; illegible scrawl about effort, and a couple of boxes ticked on autopilot. I had made it to being the child with the prize for attendance, and that was essentially my bottom line for forty years of existence - I showed up. However, then came the day when all the book reading and praying and sobbing in a circle converged to a point of action: amends.

Of course, I hadn’t been so naïve as to think that I was going to be able to get through this fresh-Hell, prison-lite scenario without a little graft, but I was by no means ready for bare-soul humility to come knocking at my door. Or rather, for me to go knocking upon its door. Amends sound easy, and I always thought it must be the fun part of recovery from substance abuse, not that I ever considered seriously either recovery or amends, prior to my sentencing. First, though, I had to write a list of all the people I really fucking hated; you know, the kind of resentments that lingered to my core. Nice trick, Shame Chaperone, because she then told me this was the same list of people with whom I needed to make amends. I could have strangled her in her moment of completely undisguised sanctimonious glee, mainly because it felt like she made it last forever, although that could have been in part due to time’s new super-slow sober speed.

It would not have felt so hard but for the agonising process of facing my vast bank vault of resentments against the world, coupled with the limitless encyclopaedia of vile humans who had wronged me over the many years of my drinking. Amends seemed to encompass apologising for things that, in actual fact, I wished I had multiplied in severity by factors of at least fifty.

At that point, I really just committed to sucking it up. I knew my part in the terrible things I had done, and I knew just how awful they were; I knew I had caused hurt, and to some degree, I felt remorse. Did I necessarily want to admit that to anyone? Not so much. In particular, I wasn’t really a massive fan of admitting it to myself… but it was going to keep me out of prison to do so, and I’ve done a lot worse for a lot less, as they say.

The list was long. I had a whole notebook full of people against whom I had spent two decades holding grudges. Humble pie is a dish best served cold? That doesn’t sound right. Without even nibbling on it, I already knew it wasn’t destined to be a favourite. I was already so sick of hearing about the benefit for my soul.

***

I had gone to say sorry to her, but I still chuckled to myself when I realised this would be the first time on her property I would be wearing two shoes. I didn't really feel sorry for my past behaviour, although that didn't even seem to be the point as I congratulated myself for every step I took on the route to sealing the deal on this pretence of humility.

It took her what seemed like hours to answer the door, likely shuffling along in those irritatingly matted (once fluffy, no doubt) slippers, her alien breathing stunted like a broken vacuum. Everything about her annoyed me. While I waited, I read the insipid inscription on the polished plaque beside her door. She really had won prizes for those stupid flowers. Prizes and plaques, how fucking twee. Not for the first time on her doorstep, I thought I was going to vomit.

‘Who is it?’ she already sounded tetchy, and she clearly didn’t even know it was me yet. I bet she brought the broom with her.

‘I’ve come to apologise, it’s Jen Bateman,’ I tried to sound like a relatively pleasant human, but her reticence was fuelling my own frustration.

‘Who?!’ she said, as she opened the door and peered out at me with beady black eyes, ‘Oh, you. What?’

‘I came to say sorry for your garden, and for my behaviour, and the police, and all that stuff.’ I tried to smile sweetly but it was difficult to disguise the fact that everything about our dealings with each other just brought me increasing irritation.

She laughed at me and rolled her eyes, ‘Bit of a struggle, is it? Going cold turkey? Pathetic! They should’ve locked you up,’ she looked me up and down and spat out her vicious words as if each one had been stuck in her throat for weeks.

I saw my anger in colour and real, flashing brightly between orange and yellow before turning red. This no longer counted as amends, but it was starting to feel significantly better than I had anticipated. I only needed one hand around her throat to push her frail, evil body back into the house. I’ve never seen anyone look so condescending whilst being strangled, almost as if she was utterly convinced I wouldn’t have the audacity to continue. In my mind I pulled every marigold from her decorative border while I squeezed tighter around her neck; I revelled in the undoubted disapproval of the judge and my sponsor at this radical misinterpretation of their intentions. That musty straw-like marigold smell permeated the hallway and the familiarity of it made my stomach churn again, or maybe that was simply the jarring sensation of the final struggle leaving her body.

As I stepped aside, and drew my first deep breath as a murderer, I realised amends weren’t going to be as arduous as they had first appeared. Damn, it was a long list to get through, though.