I’m let in the back door by someone who looks fifteen years older than he probably is. I walk up a flight of stairs—beige with black flecks throughout. It smells like a combination of middle school and my grandparents’ church.

I take each step, and another, and another, wondering where I go when I reach the top. Will there be a hallway? Are other things happening here? I hate not knowing.

I reach the top of the stairs and turn to my right. There’s a short hallway and a few small rooms. The smell shifts. Stale coffee. I know I’m in the right place. 

I hear voices coming from one room. That must be the room I need to go to. But I don’t go there. I go to the bathroom.

I don’t have to go to the bathroom. But I have to go to the bathroom.

I find the ladies’ room. I reach for the handle. It’s brass. I feel the door stick a little when I pull it. I step in. When the door closes behind me, it doesn’t quite fit in the doorjamb. 

I step into the first stall, lock the door, pull down my pants, and sit on the toilet. 

My heart is racing. I pull a wad of toilet paper from the dispenser, reach under my shirt, and wipe my armpits. I hold it in my hands and look down at the small checkered tile floor. I take a deep breath. I drop the toilet paper between my legs into the toilet.

I pee while I’m at it. 

I wipe, stand up, pull up my pants, flush, and open the stall door. I wash my hands and look around at the decor. A mirror. A cross-stitch. 

I push open the sticky door and make my way to the room with the voices. I choose a seat—not in the back row, but in the row just in front of the back row. This isn’t my first rodeo. 

But technically it is.

I’ve been to an in-person 12-step meeting before—but it’s always been to support someone else.

I’ve never been to an in-person 12-step meeting for me before.

It is hot in this room.

I look at the backs of the chairs in front of me. Someone sits at the front of the room, facing us. Waiting. The speaker.

Someone in a baseball cap begins to read the familiar opening:

“We welcome you to this Al-Anon Family Group…”

I feel like I’m going to pass out—which is weird, because I am seated.

“We who live, or have lived, with the problem of alcoholism…”

I am certain I am going to pass out.

The reading continues—about loneliness. Frustration. Hopelessness.

If I could cross my legs I’d feel more comfortable. But I’m not sure if I’m allowed to put my feet on these chairs.

“…it is possible for us to find contentment, and even happiness…”

I should have sat in the back row. That way I could lean against the wall and not pass out.

“…whether the alcoholic is still drinking or not.”

I take a breath. I cross my arms across my chest and stare at the floor. 

This is the second time I’ve heard this opening today. 

This is probably the 500th time I’ve heard it in my life.

You’d think, by now, I would know.

Last night, I tried to talk myself out of coming. 

I’ll have already done my Saturday morning online meeting—which I love!, I told myself. I don’t need to go to another! 

It’s going to be a beautiful day—I should go for a long walk instead! 

My dog will be lonely.

When I woke up this morning, I brushed my teeth and knew what I had to do. I had to go. 

Imagine how proud of yourself you’ll be, I thought.

I’ve been wanting to go to an in-person meeting since I started attending virtual ones three years ago.

I just always… didn’t.

But this week I found myself in a familiar spiral. Checking. Searching. Going back. Replaying old conversations. Looking at social media, then looking again. Comparing what he told me then to what I know now. Looking for proof that I’d been lied to. Looking for proof that I hadn’t. I was trying to figure it out, figure it all out. Again.

“Figure it out” is not a slogan! my brain screamed. I know this. But I kept going anyway.

I kept telling myself I could stop. I can stop. I can stop, I thought.

I knew I was supposed to keep the focus on myself, stay on my side of the street. Instead, I was late to every appointment that day. I missed a text from a friend who invited me to a concert. I sat through a writing workshop barely present because I was bargaining with AI about someone who wasn’t even in my life anymore.

Denial. Obsession. Anger. Control.

Hallmarks of the family disease of alcoholism. 

I was desperate, again, to find an answer that would make me feel better. Some version of the story that would hurt less. Something that would make me feel less manipulated, less used, less abandoned, less ashamed.

There wasn’t one.

I ended up on my living room floor, crying to my dog.

“I don’t want to live like this anymore.”

The next morning I went to my online meeting. The speaker was local to me. I decided to ask what local meetings they recommend, which led me here, to a room I’ve never been in, in a building I’ve never been in, surrounded by strangers, all of whom—I am certain—have also found themselves on their floors crying to their dogs. Theoretically.

And probably literally.

Later that afternoon—on the day I asked for help—I sat on my couch with my journal, reached for my friend’s prayer card, and dragged it closer to me. 

I picked up my phone, opened Spotify, and searched for the song my friend once said reminded him of me—before he died. From a fentanyl overdose. He was an alcoholic. 

The song appears: Luckiest, by Ben Folds. 

“Precursor—it’s a love song,” he warned me, right before he texted me the song late one night. “But what I’m trying to say is your friendship and our connection make me feel like I’m the luckiest.”

Earlier the night of that text, we had sat on a curb outside a sober club in Annapolis. The week before, he had relapsed—vodka—breaking a four-year streak of sobriety. He stopped the next day and got himself back in the rooms that week. 

I came to the sober club, to an open AA meeting, to support him.

It was a mildly humid summer evening. We sat on the curb. He held his vape and looked down at the asphalt as he shared with me what had happened, how he felt. I sat quietly and just listened. 

At the end, we sat in silence for several minutes. The smell of cigarette smoke wafted toward us from the group standing outside the door to the club. Cicadas chirped from the few trees that stood across the parking lot. 

Finally, he lifted his head, looked at me and said, “How do you deal with it? Feeling like you have to be perfect all the time?”

I had never told him I felt that way—that I feel that way, all the time.

I looked up into his eyes. “I don’t know,” I said quietly.

We broke our gaze and stared straight ahead.

“C’mon Baba,” he said—his nickname for me—”Let’s go inside.”

I gave him a card after the meeting. Words of support and encouragement. He read it at home, before he texted me the song.

“It’s rare someone has to ‘sit with me’,” he said in that same text. “It meant so much.”

“I’ve always believed people cross paths for a reason,” he continued. “You’re one of those to me, Baba. Always. Thank you for being there for me. Thank you for being one of the best people I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

He would be dead three years later.

He was 46.

He was an addiction counselor.

Sitting on my couch, I looked at my friend’s prayer card, lying there on my cocktail table. Tears welled in my eyes as Luckiest started to play. I pulled the cap off my pen, wiped the back of my hand against my forehead, looked directly at his photo and said, “OK, buddy, tell me to do it.”

“Do it,” I imagined him saying. “Play the tape, Baba.”

We worked together at a treatment center for addiction recovery. I remember the first time I watched him lead a group counseling session. He was helping people leaving the center make their crisis plans.

“Play the tape!” he told them. “Because it’s going to get better, and you’re going to think you’re okay. You need to remember how bad it got—so you don’t pick up again.”

“Play the tape.”

I looked up from my couch at the chair across from me. Was he sitting there?

Tears fell from my eyes.

“Play the tape, Baba” 

So I wrote, and wrote, and wrote—the floor, the crying, the searching, the need to know, to figure it out, the desperation rising to such a level that it kept me from doing what I needed to do—the things I could control—again.

When I was done, I put down my pen and looked up at my ceiling. I whispered to myself, “Please let me remember, next time, to choose myself.”

There will likely be a next time. Relapses happen.

I recalled the slogan “live and let live.” Let them go, and go live your own life.

But what is my life? 

I had lost myself in my marriage. My husband left. I tried to figure myself out. Then I got two cancers.

I’ve never been asked to do work this hard.

The night I cried on the floor to my dog, I told myself, “If you can beat two cancers, you can certainly stop this compulsion.”

Right?

I’m not convinced.

Which is why, after three years of attending virtual Al-Anon meetings, I was now sitting in a chair in a room full of strangers feeling like I was going to pass out. 

After the meeting, I walked outside and stood in the sun for a few minutes. I had no plans for the rest of the day. There had been many days over the last year when I had no plans—a perfect breeding ground for my mind to slip into its “what if”s, “how come”s, and “if I had only”s. 

Do not go home, I told myself. I knew what would happen there. Isolation. Another hallmark of the disease.

Instead, I wandered down the busy street and walked into a store. I tried on a pair of jeans for the first time in two years and bought them. I carried the bag back to my car and put it in my trunk. 

Do not go home, I told myself.

I walked farther. I went into a small restaurant I had never been to before. I ordered something I had never eaten before. I ate. I left the restaurant and kept walking.

I came to a corner. There was a walk sign. I saw the red hand. I stopped.

To my left was the store On.

My favorite sneakers.

I smiled.

I needed a new pair. The soles on mine had worn down. But I still wore them. I was wearing them now. 

One day, after my friend had made amends to me following another relapse, we were chatting on the phone. He told me about a new pair of sneakers he bought—two pairs, actually. Ons.

I had never heard of them.

He sent me a picture.

“Those are the ugliest shoes I’ve ever seen,” I said. “What is up with those soles?!”

“Would I ever steer you wrong?” he protested. He sent me a link to buy them.

“Absolutely not,” I said. “I’m never buying those shoes.”

Two days later he texted me and said I could buy them on Zappos. I refused to buy them. Again.

“Mark my words. You will come around,” he texted. “I require a text, wherever you are in the world, when you get your first pair. It will be glorious.”

The following week I go to Fort Riley, Kansas for work. I kill time between sessions at the base exchange. I find myself in the shoe section. I see Ons. I try on a pair.

They are the most comfortable sneakers I’ve ever worn.

I snap a photo and send it to him.

He doesn’t respond. 

Four days later he texts me after a Christmas party. He doesn’t mention the shoes. He recommends some books. Gives me crap about my football team having a shitty game. Sends me a Ted Lasso quote:

Always remember you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, smarter than you think, and loved more than you know. 

After an hour of casual back and forth, I know he’s drunk.

I type the same text I’d sent before the amends, “I will not communicate with you while you’re drinking.”

My heart broke.

He reached out to me over a year later. Sober. Twice.

Within a year, he died.

I pull open the door to the On store and walk in. It’s busy. A sales associate offers to help. 

“Not quite yet,” I say. I’m not ready.

I look at the signs, the shoes, trying to figure out what I need. I drop my backpack on the floor and take a seat. I wait. The associates are all busy with other customers.

I stare at the wall of shoes.

Eventually, an associate becomes free. I stand up and walk over to him.

“OK,” I say, “I’m ready to be helped.” 

I ask to try on the same pair of shoes I’m wearing—the ones I bought right after my husband and I moved, just months before he left. This particular pair is for strength training. I love them. I just need a pair with unworn soles.

“And I need a pair for walking,” I say. “Like, long walks. Really, really long walks.”

“OK!” the associate says. He grabs some styles for me to try on.

I try on each pair and wander around the store to see how they fit. I bounce up and down a bit. Rock my foot from side to side. Roll forward across my toes.

I think about all the walking I want to do. What it would take to get there.

I choose the sturdier pair.

I pay and walk out of the store—two pairs of Ons in hand—and head back to my car, one step at a time.

 

---

 

If you liked this post, you might also like “Over or Under.”

To listen to an audio version of this on Spotify, click here. To listen on Apple Podcasts, click here.

To get posts sent directly to your inbox, click “Subscribe” at the top of the page.