At eleven years of sobriety, a heavy cloud drops on my head. Voices from other realities plague me like a gaggle of hurt geese that can’t find their way home. Men and women in black suits appear in my home and at my front door and in the grocery store aisles where cans neatly line the shelves, and boxes of cereal promise to make me an Olympian. Their presence is a plague. In three months’ time, I overdose seven times. The intensive care attendants get sick and tired of bringing me back. They refuse me cups of soda and stop washing my forehead with soft cloths in the ICU.
I move three times within these three months. People don’t want to rent me a room. Taylor comes to my rescue, as she has done many times before. She converts her living room into a bedroom.
There are three of us living in a small two-bedroom apartment along with Taylor’s two large dogs. No one complains while I am there. And no one kicks me out after I get drunk.
Obviously, I haven’t been good at dying by overdosing on drugs. So I decide I will jump off a cliff. I know I need to be good and drunk to do this.
I go to the grocery store and buy many bottles of booze to include liquor that has come out during my sobriety, like wine coolers. I really want to try Zima, but forget to buy it.
Early evening comes and I march up to Signal Hill from my apartment. Hill is the key word here. It is not a cliff; it is a hill.
I get horribly drunk. The mixture of all the different kinds of alcohol makes me throw up. After throwing up, I realize if I jump from this hill I will probably break a wrist and slowly roll to the bottom of it. Dying is not possible at the height I am at with no overhang.
When I stand up to walk back to the apartment, I fall. I am too drunk to find my feet.
Here comes this guy. He says he is on the hill with his prayer group and notices me not doing so well. He offers to drive me home. I mutter a thank-you and accept the ride. During the ride he tells me I was the reason he needed to be with his prayer group on Signal Hill that evening. He felt destined to help me. I am too drunk to do much more than listen. I do tell him the government is after me, though, and ask him what he thinks about this. He says, “No worry, my car can outrun them.” It was like he was a part of the frequency I was listening to. He says, “You don’t need to be in an airplane to get rid of them. They can fly too. In fact, they can enter any room you’re in without opening the door.” I look at him while he sends these messages to me. His mouth is not moving as I hear his words. Have they infiltrated him? I ask myself. Before I can answer myself, we arrive at my home.
He gives me his phone number. He says, “You will probably want to telephone me in the morning to thank me.” His mouth is moving as he says this. “The little shit you are—you couldn’t even get home by yourself tonight and you nearly wet your pants.” My eyes widen. His mouth is not moving again. I will lose his number.
The miracle of waking up in the morning is that I didn’t crave alcohol and realized I was in love with the Twelve Step program and could not live without it. At least for that morning, I did not want to die, I just wanted to start over. I was upset that I had destroyed my sobriety date. I could no longer brag that I had gotten sober at eighteen and stayed sober. The point is not to brag. The point is that we stay sober one day at a time. I say fuck the day, I just lost eleven years.
Audrey, my therapist, says that this is the most self-destructive thing I could have done. She at one time tells me that I am the most destructive person she has ever worked with. I suppose so. There is much damage I have done to myself, to include taking a razor blade across my stomach while in session with her.
Then, she telephoned the police. They came and handcuffed me and took me to the hospital to be stitched up. From there, the police took me to the psych hospital, where I was admitted against my will.
All I remember from the hospital stay is that there was a woman named Jane Doe. I was sorry I had given them my name because I too wanted to be a Jane Doe.
The air pushes me to act out. My mouth doesn’t stop saying fuck. My body bangs itself into walls. I don’t know what wound my clock.
Isolation, one bed in a room, cuffed. It’s useless to pull against the straps. They are unlike the butterfly that brushes the top of my hand—red wings, there and gone.
Once released from the isolation room, I pace, the corner of a long corridor echoes my name. I no longer say fuck, but use my name like I would a rusted wrench.