by Claire Adams
The shock of the moment prevented me from crying. Instead, I took charge. I called 911 to have the police and paramedics come to the house even though I clearly saw that she was dead.
It wasn’t until the day of her funeral that I finally cried. When I saw my sweet mother lying in the casket and unable to hug me any longer. Unable to offer me advice about girls, or tease me about my grades. It wasn’t until that moment that the loneliness set in.
I didn’t intend to alienate my father or brother. I truly loved them. But as I managed to graduate from high school, all I could think about was getting as far away from our East Coast home. I applied to every college on the West Coast and managed to land a few interviews. Cal Poly drew my attention very quickly, though, and I accepted entrance there without talking it over with my family at all.
My father had assumed I would work with him; his anger toward me when I told him about college had probably been fear of being left alone. I was leaving him. I wasn’t going to be there to run things after he got old. Everything he had worked so hard to build was going to go to waste because I was leaving and Heath had long said he wanted to be a lawyer.
It baffled me why my father hadn’t been angry at Heath for not wanting to be in the family business, yet had been irate when I “went behind his back” and enrolled in college.
If I had been a better man, I wouldn’t have taken his words to heart. I would have known he was just a broken-hearted man who was losing someone close to him. But I hadn’t been a good man at all. I said things I would long regret. I said things that drove a wedge between us and prevented me from reaching out to him and him from reaching out to me.
Before coming to the treatment facility, I did call Heath, just to let him know where I was. I wasn’t looking for his sympathy, I was just relaying information.
“I’m heading to rehab,” I said in our phone call.
“Okay.”
“I’ll be away for a few months at Paradise Peak in Aspen.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” my brother had said.
“Nothing. I was just letting you know.”
“Fine. Enjoy your cushy resort. I’ll just stay here taking care of everything while you fuck up your entire life.”
He was angry. Heath had been angry with me since I left for college. Because I had left, he gave up his dream of being a lawyer to stay home and work in the mortuary business with our father. He had felt obligated not to leave Dad alone. Every chance he got, Heath tried to make me feel guilty for my decision.
But Heath could have gone to college, too. He could have followed his own dreams and I hadn’t forced him to stay home. Although I didn’t blame Heath for being angry, either; it was a messed up situation and neither of us seemed to get the happily ever after that we had been searching for.
When I dreamed, the past was so clear, but then I’d start to wake up and start gasping for breath and feel like I wasn’t able to breathe. It was like my body could still remember what it had been like to be underwater and almost drown.
“No!” I screamed as I woke up sweating and holding my chest.
I couldn’t breathe. I hadn’t been breathing. As I woke up, my breath was labored and I felt dizzy from the lack of oxygen. My dream had been so real that I had actually been holding my breath. It had been happening frequently to me since I didn’t have drugs or alcohol to knock me out for sleeping.
My body was in a fight, and I felt like I was losing. My hands clenched my chest as I desperately tried to breathe but never felt like I was able to get much more than a tiny breath in. It was like torture. I was going to die, I just knew it, and no one would be there for me. I bet even if I actually died, my own father and brother wouldn’t bother to show up.
Before I knew it, my therapist, Jarrod, was sitting at the end of my bed trying to comfort me. I knew I was actually breathing and my breaths were labored, but I still felt the overwhelming feeling of not being able to breathe. The room was spinning. My hands shook. And Jarrod, with his calming voice, was all I had to focus on.
Therapists had never seemed that useful to me in my life. Even in the few days that I had been at the facility, I wasn’t all that sure I needed one. It seemed like they basically made me do all the work, but I had to pay them for it. But in that moment, as panic rushed through my body, I was happy Jarrod was there with me.
“You’re having a panic attack, Erik. Try to take a few deep breaths. Look at me,” his deep voice said.
“I…I…can’t breathe,” I managed to say.
“You can breathe, Erik. Look at me, take in a deep breath like I am,” Jarrod said as he inflated his lungs and looked me in the eyes. “Slowly, let your lungs fill up. Don’t worry about anything, don’t think about anything. Just follow me.”
His calming voice had so much faith in my ability to breathe that I even believed it. Soon I found myself pulling in a deep breath and letting it out again. We continued to sit there on my bed just breathing. Jarrod kept me focused as I took in breath after breath and let it out again. I felt my heart rate slow, my sweating stopped, and the shaking in my hands let up.
“Thanks,” I managed to say as I felt my body coming back to me.
“Have you had panic attacks before?”
“Not like that. I really felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was in a dream, and then before I knew what was going on, I woke up and felt like someone was choking me.”
“Your body is going through a lot right now, Erik. You’ve got to listen to it. Have you had breakfast yet?”
“No. I was too sore. I decided to sleep instead.”
Just then Cassidy came into the room with a breakfast tray. She set it down next to me and looked on with pity in her eyes. I didn’t want her to feel pity for me. I didn’t want to look weak to her or anyone else, but in that moment, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I was weak and there was no denying it.
It was funny to me that I was so afraid of looking weak to people, yet for months I had been getting so drunk that my friends had literally carried me up the stairs to my room. One night, a girl had been waiting in my room fully naked and I couldn’t even remember if I managed to get myself together enough to screw her. She had disappeared by morning, and it wasn’t like I knew her name, so that was a mystery I would likely never know the answer to.
“Go ahead and rest up today, then tomorrow, I want to see you out more. Deal?” Jarrod asked. “And you have to eat something and drink some Gatorade.”
“Yeah, I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all any of us can do.”
Jarrod left and Cassidy followed him. I liked her, but as time went by, I started to like her for real reasons, not just because she drove my body crazy. She was obviously a bit of a misfit, with her bright red hair and tongue piercing, yet she seemed to fit in with everyone. That ability made me jealous. I was a regular guy with brown hair and brown eyes – nothing about my physical appearance stood out, yet I always felt like an outcast.
Never had I been in a room of people and felt like I truly belonged; well, not since my mother had died. She was the last person who I had truly felt like myself with. With her death had come the death of my own personality and happiness.
It didn’t happen because I wanted to be misunderstood, like many other teenagers did. I actually wanted friends; I wanted people to care about me. I searched out that feeling of love by giving people things. I threw parties so people would surround me with their version of caring, yet none of it ever filled me up.
As I lay in bed, still drenched in sweat, I hated the person I had become and the emptiness that filled me up. None of these people could understand what it was like to be happy on the outside and devastatingly lonely on the inside. The other people at Paradise Peak were rich and had people in their lives. They knew more about love than I could even imagine, and I didn’t want to let them see how uneducated I was on the topic.
I closed my eyes again, but not to sleep. I just wanted to lay th
ere and take in the calmness of the moment. For months, even years, I had been constantly running around trying to prove I was worth being loved. It had been exhausting, and look where it had landed me.
I didn’t know the answer to get out of my own despair, but for the first time in a very long time, I was all right with not knowing. Whether Jarrod knew what a good therapist he was or not, I wasn’t sure, but I appreciated his focus on me in those moments. I had felt worthy of it, and appreciated it.
“Do you want my pancakes?” Brad asked as he carried a stack of hot pancakes in his hands toward me.
“Um, I have some, but thanks,” I said as I sat up and pointed to the tray Cassidy had brought into my room.
“You’re not supposed to eat in your room.”
“I know. I think it’s all right this time, though.”
“What’s your name? I’m sorry, I forgot. I forget things a lot nowadays.”
“I’m Erik. You’re Brad, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How long you been here?” I asked him as I tried to be a little social with the guy.
“I can’t remember.”
I laughed at first because I thought he was joking. How could someone be in a treatment facility and not remember how long they had been there? But as I looked at the serious expression on his face, I realized he was telling the truth.
“Sorry.”
“It’s all right. I fried my brain over the years. It’s my addiction. I can’t stop,” he said nonchalantly.
“Well, you’re here, right? You’re trying to stop. You look like you’re doing better than me, if that helps at all.”
“Yeah, a little,” he said as he cracked a smile.
Brad and I continued talking for a little while. He certainly had lost a few brain cells over the years, but he was a down to earth guy. It was funny to me how normal he seemed while talking to me. I had heard him throw a fit about almost every single meal he had been fed since I had been there, yet while sitting with me he seemed like a meek and mild-mannered guy.
“Brad, it’s time for group,” Cassidy said as she stood in the doorway. “Erik, you should give it a try today. I hear Melanie is going to talk about our hike yesterday.”
“How many groups do we have around here?” I grumbled as I climbed out of bed.
“A lot,” Brad answered while he walked out of the room.
“Hey, now. What else are you guys going to do with your days? Sit around and have a pity party?”
“Thanks for the breakfast. I’m sorry I didn’t feel like eating much.”
“You scared the shit out of me, you know. I couldn’t wake you up. I had to get Jarrod,” she said as her eyes watched me walk toward her.
The realization that Cassidy had seen me so vulnerable didn’t make me feel great at all. I was eroding away my cool exterior faster and faster. She wasn’t going to fall for a guy like me. She had probably been hit on by dozens of guys like me over the years. I felt a little foolish for the way I had behaved when I first arrived. Of course, I wasn’t about to apologize, but I did feel bad about it.
“You saw all that?” I asked.
“I’m just glad you’re all right.”
“Thanks, doll,” I said and strolled past her.
Thanks, doll?! Oh my God, what had I just said? Cassidy was being genuinely nice and instead of just being normal, I turned into some sort of seventies player. Close, personal interactions certainly weren’t my thing.
To be honest, any emotional connection with someone wasn’t something I could do. I had no experience in it and that sort of relationship scared the hell out of me. A woman who thought she could have a real relationship with me quickly realized it would only cause her a broken heart. I didn’t have relationships. I had sex, and that was all it was. One-night stands that were fun in the bed and didn’t bother me afterwards – those were what I wanted.
“Look who decided to show up,” a woman’s voice said and was followed by clapping as I walked into the group session.
It was Kimber, and her clapping echoed throughout the room. It was sarcastic in nature, but some of the other patients followed suit and clapped, as well. Before I knew it, they were all clapping in appreciation for my attendance to group. There was an odd enjoyment in the moment. Even though it had started from sarcasm, the others had joined in to support my attending.
I playfully took a little bow and sat down in one of the chairs. Even though I felt awful, I was going to put on a good face and give the group thing a chance. If I didn’t like it, I wouldn’t go again; it seemed simple enough to me.
“Now that everyone’s here, I think we should use today’s session to talk about why we love ourselves,” Melanie said.
“Oh, I love myself every night under the covers,” I joked.
The room was quiet and I realized my joke had not landed well at all. Instead of laughing, people looked at me with pity. Damn, I hated that look in their eyes. Didn’t they understand I was joking? I grumbled a bit under my breath, but then sat quietly as Melanie continued the session.
“Let’s continue,” Melanie said without addressing my comment.
My sense of humor was just how I coped with things. I didn’t mean anything by it. I used my jokes to lighten the mood. Admittedly, it didn’t always work. But being uncomfortable didn’t work for me at all. I hated the idea of talking to the group about who I was or how I loved myself. I didn’t know. I didn’t even know if I could feel love anymore, but if I could, it probably wouldn’t be toward myself.
I didn’t think about things like that on a normal basis. Are we supposed to love ourselves? Really, was that what happy people do? I wondered. I had always thought people were just naturally happy or they weren’t. There was nothing I could think of that would constitute loving myself – except the playing I did under the sheets at night. I truly had no idea what she wanted us to say.
I sat quietly as the group talked and interacted. Partly because I was afraid of saying something stupid and partly because I didn’t have anything to add. There wasn’t anything good about me. Sure, I could pretend really well, but as I sat in the group of people who I didn’t know, I couldn’t even muster up the energy to pretend that I knew how to love myself.
“Erik, would you like to share with the group?” Melanie asked.
“No, thank you.”
I expected some sort of backlash for refusing to participate in the group session. Surely, it was supposed to be part of the treatment and I was being a giant asshole for not offering another word to the group session. Or maybe they would threaten to take away more points, or prevent me from getting a room with a door. I didn’t know what to expect as my punishment, but I was just going to have to take it because I didn’t have an answer.
“Okay,” Melanie responded before moving on to the next person in the circle.
As well as being our recreation therapist, Melanie was a licensed mental health therapist. The two things that wouldn’t seem to work well together, but to me, they were perfect. As our group wrapped up, she put the chairs in an obstacle course and said the first person to finish could decide what we did for recreation therapy later in the day.
I had been dying to swim, and I set my eyes on winning our little therapy session, but I was too sore to make a go at it. Instead, I snuck out the back of the room as they all started to vibrantly race for the control that we all yearned for since we had been in treatment. I wasn’t ready to get into a pool yet. There were too many fears that I had built up and I wasn’t going to expose those fears to all the strangers I was in treatment with.
I had done enough for the day. I showed up to group. I was sick as hell and I showed up to group. It didn’t seem that useful for me to have gone, but at least I didn’t lose any damn points that day.
Chapter Seven
Cassidy
“It’s been a week since he attended a group. I’m surprised he hasn’t just up and left. He’s not doing anything but sleeping in his room,” K
aitlin said as I put Erik’s breakfast tray back on the cart.
“What happened? I mean, I thought he was making an effort.”
“Not sure, but the last few days I haven’t seen him at all. I tried telling him he was never going to get a room with a door on it if he didn’t go to groups, but he didn’t seem to care.”
“Is he doing anything?” I asked as concern for Erik pushed through in my voice.
“He’s been meeting with Jarrod. That’s something, I guess.”
“Well, I’m here today. So, I’ll get him to go to group,” I said confidently.
Surely, everyone else must just really suck at motivating people. Erik and I had talked a few times and certainly he wasn’t the easiest of patients, but he wasn’t the worst, either. He had come for a hike and even went to group with Melanie the last time I had worked. I was positive I would be able to motivate him and get him back into his treatment.
“I’ll take that bet,” Kaitlin joked.
“It wasn’t exactly a bet. I’m just saying I have a way with people and I can get him to go to group.”
“So, what you’re saying is that everyone else who has worked this week isn’t nearly as good as you. And now that you’re here, you will be able to magically motivate the man into getting up out of bed and stopping his self-pity party to attend group sessions?”
She seemed pretty annoyed at my insinuation that I could motivate patients better than others. I didn’t mean for it to sound like I was putting Kaitlin or anyone else down, but I did feel like I had a way with patients. Maybe it was because I had also gone through treatment, or perhaps it was because I was honest with them. But for whatever reason, patients listened to me more often than not.
“I’ll go wake him up again. I didn’t know he had been sleeping in all morning or I would have been tougher on him.”
“So, what’s the bet?” Kaitlin said with a grin.
“What do you want it to be?”
“If he refuses to go to group, you’ll come out to the jazz club with me this weekend. If you can get him up, I’ll go out with you to the jazz club.” She laughed.
