Welcome Anyway

She slaps the table with her hand.

 “Welcome to Grateful Recovery. My name is Sasha, and I’m a grateful recovering alcoholic.”

Thirty fellows hum in unison, “Hi, Sasha!”

Sasha grins. A missing canine tooth. Her big brown eyes dance as she reads from a script at the front of the room. “This is a recovery meeting for those who have a desire to stop drinking.”

My right knee vibrates. Jeans too tight. Stuffy air. The hangnail on my right middle finger won’t rip off despite my desperate excavation into the skin.

“For those who are under thirty days, can you please say your name so we may welcome you?” Sasha says in an almost sing-song voice. 

A chair screeches to the right of me.

“Um, hi, I’m June, and I have twenty days.”

 “Hi, June!” the room hollers. 

My ears ring. I crinkle my brows.

 Another stands. “I’m Rick, twenty-nine days. No fronts!”

 Cheers.

A sweat droplet glides down the back of my neck. My mother, tight-lipped, swats my left knee with her makeshift paper fan—the pink brochure listing recovery meetings in our neighborhood.

My tongue sticks to the back of my throat, yet I’m able to say above a whisper, “I’m Harper.”

A person loudly coughs. “What was that? Speak louder, don’t be shy!”

I clear my throat. “I’m Harper, and I’m new.”

Sasha narrows her gaze on me from the front of the room, still grinning like the Cheshire Cat.

“Welcome home, Harper!” someone calls out.

“Hi, Harper!”

A sigh escapes my mother’s lips, as if my introduction to this claustrophobic room of degenerates is the pin that finally pops a balloon and she can at last deflate.

“And you?” Sasha extends her chipped, blue nail-polished finger toward my mother.

“Oh!” my mother mumbles, cheeks red. “Um, I’m Gwen. I’m not one of you.” She glares at me. “I’m here with my daughter, Harper. She’s court-ordered.”

An explosion of shame rips across my chest as my mother distances herself from the humiliation of my DUI—me found naked behind the wheel, a classmate still in the ICU, my seventy-two-hour hold in a psych unit, and a mental breakdown too absurd for her to accept. I, having just turned seventeen, have shamed the family so greatly that she has to separate herself, righteously, by claiming she’s “not one of you,” and thus is nothing like me.

Pink blotches bloom across my neck.

Sasha nods. “Well, welcome anyway,” she responds carelessly. “Tonight, our chairperson, James, will share his experience, strength, and hope—if any of us drunks are willing to appreciate it.”

“Grateful!”

“Gratefully here!”

“Grateful drunk present!”

“Grateful!”

The hangnail finally peels over, and I rip it off.

A speck of blood blots the linoleum floor beneath my scuffed sneakers.

James, twenty-something, wearing gym shorts and a tank top, muscles ripped as if he were a bodybuilder, folds his hands on the table. Tattoos line one of his arms, mostly a snake and thorns, with a few scrapbook-like pieces of ink depicting animals and random objects. He clears his throat.

“Hi, fam. James, alcoholic. Grateful.”

I have nothing in common with this guy.

“Hi, James.”

I roll my eyes at the robotic repetition of the greeting. My mother shakes her head at my defiance.

James leans back and casually turns his gaze to a large framed poster labeled The Promises.

I follow his gaze and gloss over the words on the wall.

If we are painstaking about this phase in our development...

“I have ten years sober as of yesterday. My sober date is May twelfth, two thousand sixteen. I was seventeen when I was court-ordered here.”

I whip my attention back to him.

“I had a pretty normal childhood. Soccer and lacrosse kept me busy. But by the time I was fifteen, I was introduced to a solution that seemed to make everything click. And that solution was alcohol.”

I cross my arms.

“You see, although I had many friends, I never truly felt understood by any of them. But alcohol changed that. Some of you come from broken homes. Some of you come from the ordinary. I come from a thirty-second moment that can never be reversed while my foot remained on the pedal and stick shift in drive. I killed someone while drinking and driving.”

Side-glancing at a few people sitting in my row, their faces remain unfazed, as if this were old news to them, while I, blood-stained finger and frowning parent beside me, widen my eyes.

“Alcohol made me feel as though I was a part of something, as though the fun in life could finally begin. But by the time I was seventeen, license in wallet, eight beers and five shots of tequila in me, my Ford sedan rammed into a mother crossing Broadway and Twenty-First. Somehow, her three-month-old baby survived. The stroller rolled three times and landed near a curb. I’m grateful that child is about to graduate the fourth grade today. His name is Isac.”

“Grateful,” several whisper under their breath.

Goosebumps shimmer down my forearms.

“Isac visits his mother on her birthday once a year. She’s buried at St. Jude’s Cemetery, five miles south.” James shakes his head. “I was sent to prison for two years. Learned a lot. Suffered some. Met a man named Greg who was serving life for murdering his wife and ten-year-old son on a drunken bender after crashing his car through their living room. I had a lot to relate to.”

Several nod around me, as if they understand.

“Greg taught me things I never knew I needed to be taught. Greg lived a life of regret, and yet there was a light in his eyes as he sat across from me in my first meeting provided by the facility. I asked him to be my sponsor. Greg is still my sponsor ten years later. I help run those meetings now.”

James leans forward. “Today I live a life of purpose and duty to help the suffering alcoholic. I’ve made amends that no person receiving could ever forgive me for. Yet Isac...” James tilts his head toward the ceiling and blinks several times. He clears his throat. “I meet Isac and his father once a year at his mother’s grave, which reads, Annie Wilson, 1981–2016. For some unknown reason, that father extends a forgiveness I will never comprehend toward me as I live a life indebted to Isac’s well-being.”

“Grateful,” a lone drunk, barely audible, repeats.

“I’ve donated fifteen thousand dollars to Isac’s college fund, and although it will never cover the loss of a mother he never knew, Isac is my purpose, and this program is the tool.”

James takes one long breath and says profoundly, “My circumstances don’t make me a victim of life; they make me a part of the game. And today, I hold a PhD in psychology, own a home, have a baby on the way—and her middle name will be Annie.”

He turns to the poster again, the lone one on the wall. He reads, “We will know a new freedom and a new happiness... We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and will know peace.” He pauses, then turns back to us. “And if this resonates with any of you, I hope this is what sticks: my rock bottom doesn’t have to be yours—and there’s a solution. Sobriety and a connection to the Great Reality. Love you all. Grateful.”

The room claps.

My mother, eyes unblinking, a tear streaming down her face, gently turns her gaze toward me.

Others share.

Some things I hear. Some things I can't understand. My mother slowly fans herself, then offers me a mint from her purse at the half-hour mark. Finally, the meeting ends.

Chairs scrape the floor, bellows of laughter surround us, and the group stands, holding hands, my mother joining the shared circle. We chant a line I'm unfamiliar with.

The group disperses; she grabs my arm and yanks me toward James. I let her pull me along. He turns and smiles warmly.

"Hi, this is Harper." She shrugs her purse onto the other shoulder, stuffing the brochure inside. "She's court-ordered here too."

James nods. "Hey, Harper."

I expect words of wisdom to dribble from his lips, but instead his bright blue eyes lock with mine, and the brightest light shines back.

The blood on my finger has dried. The pink blotches are gone. I clear my throat and speak up.

"I related."

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA):

National Helpline (U.S.): 1-800-662-HELP (4357)
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline