Day 1

My sobriety date is December 2, 2012.  This is day one.

I called the treatment hospital.  The intake nurse was nice enough.  What's going on is I'm an alcoholic, and my wife is done, kicked me out of the house, and I've never felt so hopeless, so low.  I need to get treatment.  And she asks me, "Do you want to do inpatient or outpatient?"  And how the fuck am I supposed to know?  I just want someone to tell me what to do.  I'm fixin' to die.  Someone just tell me what to do.

At the meeting earlier it was the same stuff, stuff I've heard over and over here and there for years - that alcohol is cruel and cunning.  That it will kill me.  Jesus.  It killed my daddy.  I know what it will it do.

This is how cunning: so cunning that even now, at the bottom, on a Sunday, staying in a hotel room in the town I live in, just a few miles from home, with the words of my wife in head - "you're a piece of shit" - my fucked up alcoholic brain is telling me that not far away there's a bar and a drink.  No one would know.

Call some people in the program.  Text some people in the program.  I got a desire coin at the meeting and it's sweaty in my palm.  Tonight I sleep at the La Quinta, and I'm not leaving this room until morning.

My body aches for a hug, a kind touch from my wife.  I want to call her, tell her goodnight.  Text her.  But no one has told me to do that.  I may have just bathed and put my son to bed, in his bed, at our house, for the last time.  I'm done thinking for myself.  

I've been doing this, fighting this battle, for seven years.  Except that I haven't really been fighting.  I never did any real work.  I never got honest.  I'd fake it for awhile, and then put myself back in charge and do what I wanted to do.  Which is drink.  Sneak around and drink.  And lie about it.  Lie about being in recovery.  So many lies, every day, all the time.  Lies that I didn't even realize I was telling.  Lies just rolling out of my brain, so that there I am, earlier today, sitting in the airport, trying to get home, knowing I've got to face her, knowing its over, I'm exposed, I'm done, and its past time to tell the truth, and everything that comes to mind is a fucking lie.  Because I'm so far gone, so powerless and hopeless and wasted that I can't even find the truth in my own thoughts.

Tomorrow I will go work.  I will close my door and try to keep my head down.  Meeting at lunch, meeting after work, intake after that.

Tomorrow.  I can't see how it can be any better than today.  I can't see how it can any worse.  So tomorrow is a pretty fucked up place.  But maybe someone will tell me what to do.

Goodnight to my wife, my son, my family.  I love you.  Please let me come home.