by Claire Adams
My voice was judgmental and rude, but I couldn’t stop myself. He wasn’t thinking at all. Erik hadn’t even tried to keep the story straight. It was my life he was messing up now, and I didn’t like that he seemed so nonchalant about my life. I had taken him in as a favor so he wouldn’t have to spend the holiday alone. I couldn’t believe he had forgotten the one story he was supposed to remember.
“I said I was sorry.”
“Really, is this what you’re like all the time? Don’t put any effort in at all and then apologize? Why not actually put an effort out there?”
“What are you talking about? It was an accident. I said I was sorry.”
“And at treatment? You didn’t even start going to groups regularly until a couple of days ago. Before that when you could be bothered to go to group, you sat quietly and hardly participated.”
“How do you know how much I went to group? You got scared and hid from me on the other unit. Plus, you’re not in my groups, so what do you know?”
“I need to go deal with my mother. This was clearly a bad idea. I’ll have my parents take you back tomorrow,” I said and stormed away.
About halfway down the hall, I started to cry. I didn’t mean to be so horrible to him. I had expected his visit to go so well, and instead, it was a disaster. My mother and father were going to be crazy angry with me. Erik probably thought I was a psycho girl. And now, I felt like I was about to have a panic attack.
I hated when things didn’t go as I planned. It was like I put every bit of effort into something and in one swift motion, it was all wiped out. Even before I had a drinking problem, I always had a problem with being in control.
Hiding it was what I normally did. I could mask my controlling personality by being excessively nice to patients. There was something about being at work that I could adjust better to. But when things got out of control, like they did on the night Brianna had her seizure, then I felt like I couldn’t contain myself.
Slowly, I opened the door to my parents’ bedroom and faced the inevitable. My parents were good people. They had put up with a lot over the years, and they did handle things very well. My biggest issue was that I just hated to disappoint them. The look in my father’s eyes was the worst when I did something that he thought was wrong.
“Cassidy, is that boy a patient from your work?” my father asked me.
There was no way I could lie to him. For some reason, lying about the story originally seemed perfectly okay, but lying when I had been found out was not all right. I had to just tell him the truth – there was no other option.
“Yes.”
“Cassidy!” my mother exclaimed.
“Mom, he doesn’t have any family and only one friend back home. I felt bad for him. He’s been in the hospital for a while and no one has visited him.”
“Where is home? California, in a fancy house? Those are the only people who can afford to be at your work. I can’t believe you lied to us. You lied right to my face, Cassidy.”
“I know, Mom. I really didn’t want him to have to spend Christmas alone.”
It was the truth. I hated when anyone had to spend their Christmas at our facility. The dark gloomy holiday wasn’t good for the spirit when you were locked up in a hospital.
“Are you sleeping with this boy?” my mother asked, and my father covered his ears and turned around.
“No! I’m not sleeping with him. He’s a friend. His mother died a long time ago; he needed someplace to go for Christmas. That was it.”
“Cassidy Conrad, you better be telling me the truth,” my father said, even though he still had his hands over his ears.
“Yes, Daddy, it’s the truth. He didn’t have anywhere to go. If it makes you feel better, he told me this was the best Christmas he’s had in years.”
The statement made both my mother and father calm down. Our evening had been incredibly boring. We had simply eaten dinner and watched a movie – which Erik had fallen asleep during.
“He really must not get out much.” My father laughed.
“I don’t have a present for him,” my mother replied.
That was my mother: Even though she was angry with me about lying, she still wanted to make sure she had a present for the strange man who I had brought home to eat our food and sleep on our couch. She was such a good person, and at moments like that, I had to hope that I would someday be as good of a woman as she was.
“He doesn’t need a present, Mom,” I said as I breathed a sigh of relief that the worst of the conversation was over.
“You could give him that sweatshirt you bought for cousin Henry. We aren’t seeing him until next weekend, we can get him something else by then,” my father added.
“Perfect idea, Bob.”
It wasn’t very often that my father came up with a good idea, and it was even more infrequent that my mother acknowledged the idea. She loved him dearly, but he often wasn’t paying attention enough to contribute to any sort of idea generating.
“So, can I go back out there?” I asked as I inched closer to the door.
“Yeah, but you keep an eye on him. I don’t want anything bad happening and you’re to blame.”
“Like what, Mom? What bad could happen while he’s sleeping on the couch?”
Both my father and I laughed at how ridiculous my mother was at times. She was bossy and domineering, and even when there was nothing to worry about, she found something to worry about. Sometimes I had to wonder how my father put up with her all these years, but then in the very next moment I would wonder how my mother put up with him for the same number of years.
“Oh, just go,” she said in exasperation and waved me out the door.
I didn’t wait another second and quickly left their room and went back out to the living room where unsurprisingly, Erik was asleep. He looked like a large, teenage boy as he slept all curled up on the couch with every single blanket my mother had given him. Even though he was thoroughly covered up, he still looked like he was freezing.
He and I would have a lot to talk about in the morning. Or at the very least, I would have to apologize for behaving so badly toward him. I felt horrible for how I had talked to him, and even though it would be Christmas in the morning, I had to find the time to set things straight.
If Erik was going to get to know me, he was going to have to learn that I didn’t always think logically. Sometimes I was a bit wild and disrespectful. Maybe I would grow out of it as I grew older, or maybe that was all just part of my personality – I really didn’t know for sure. All I knew was that I felt horrible and I didn’t like feeling like that.
When I woke up, it was already light outside and I heard my mother and father in the living room talking with Erik. I pressed my ear to the door to see if I could hear what they were saying, but I couldn’t. It didn’t seem like the best of ideas to leave Erik out there with my parents, but at the same time, I wasn’t sure I really wanted to go out there and listen to them grilling him with questions.
Hopefully, he knew that he could be honest with them now and just talk to my parents like he would talk to anyone else. My parents wouldn’t really care that I had brought him home from work, as long as Erik didn’t make it sound like we were sleeping together. If he made any of those types of comments, I would surely be mortified and my father would be crazy angry.
“Thanks for having me,” I heard Erik say as I walked down the hallway. “This sweatshirt is beautiful; I really appreciate it.”
“What’s going on?” I asked, confused at why Erik was standing by the door and looked like he was leaving.
No matter what had happened between us, I wanted him to stay for Christmas Day. He didn’t need to leave. I knew I had made him feel bad, but he didn’t need to leave. If I could just get him alone for a minute and we could talk, I was sure we could work things out. He had to be leaving because of me, and now I felt horrible about it.
“Erik’s going to head back to Paradise Peak,” Mom replied. “He’s tir
ed and just wants to rest.”
“I’m glad you’re up. Thank you so much for having me here with your family. I really appreciate it. Spending time with you all has given me a clearer vision for my goals, and I really can’t thank you enough.”
“You should stay. We have presents to open and cookies to eat. It will be a great day.”
“No, I better get going. I have a lot of things I need to work on, and I don’t want to be lazy about my treatment.”
My heart sank. He was throwing my own words back at me. I hadn’t meant them, though. I was just agitated and angry that my parents had caught me in a lie. Sometimes, I felt like I was the biggest jerk. Nothing I had said to Erik meant that I truly wanted him to leave, because I didn’t want that.
Actually, despite our argument, I had been looking forward to spending Christmas with him. I had planned that we could make sugar cookies and decorate them. It was going to be a great time and would give us some more time to talk. But it was looking more like I would have to make those cookies alone.
“Don’t go,” I said as I moved closer to him. “It’s Christmas, you don’t need to go.”
Desperately, I wanted to make him stay. He had come so he would have a good Christmas for a change, and now it was all getting ruined. Not only was he leaving my house after we had fought, but he was going straight back to treatment.
The only good thing about it all was that Erik hadn’t relapsed. Hopefully, he had gotten a tiny taste of what it was like to be outside of treatment and have to deal with your emotions and other issues that would come up.
“I have to; my taxi is here.” He smiled. “Thanks again.”
And just like that, he was gone and I felt like the biggest jerk in the world. What had been a beautiful Christmas Eve had actually ruined Erik’s Christmas Day. I could hardly stand still as my guilt started to spread across my body.
Even if Erik and I were only friends, I should have been nicer to him. Actually, because we were friends, I should have been more understanding and talked to him like a friend would and not like an angry girlfriend. As I watched his taxi drive away, I hoped that he would have a decent Christmas and that I hadn’t totally ruined it.
Chapter Sixteen
Erik
“Susan, can I sign up for the hike today or is it too late?” I asked as everyone started to get checked back into the treatment center.
The holiday had been good for some people and not so good for others. Both Brad and Stan had returned for a refresher after using since they were out. It was hard to imagine that after being at the facility for so long that they could actually not stay sober. It was eye opening to me for sure. As was the conversation I had had with Cassidy at her parents’ house.
Being seen as lazy wasn’t something I was used to people telling me. In fact, when I had been building my business, I was working so much that my staff had told me to take a vacation before I had a heart attack. It became very apparent to me after my conversation with Cassidy that I lived in extremes. Either I was doing everything, or nothing. Either I was an over achiever, or achieving nothing. And if that was my personality – and I knew it was – then I’d rather be doing everything and be an over achiever.
There were plenty of activities I could have been doing while at the treatment center, but I hadn’t signed up for them. Instead, I had opted to spend as much time in bed sleeping and avoiding everyone else on the unit.
But that time was over. Instead of being lazy, I was going back to my active self. I could only imagine how much easier being active would be if I wasn’t drunk or high on some substance.
“Sure, I’ll get you on the list. The weather is pretty bad, though, so you’ll have to bundle up. I think Melinda had a list around here somewhere.”
“Thanks. And isn’t there a yoga class sometime? I’d like to give that a try also.”
“Yes, they do yoga every morning at six,” she said with a smile.
Both Susan and I knew that I never woke up early. Mornings were like my kryptonite, but I wanted to try something new.
There was a new drive in me to actually make myself proud. Sure, it had started with Cassidy’s comments to me, and at first I had been incredibly offended. But there was some truth in what she said. I was comfortable being the lazy computer nerd type of guy. Although my body was naturally in decent shape and I still liked to lift weights at my office to blow off steam, I certainly wasn’t all that physically healthy.
Not only was I going to start participating in more of the physical things that were offered at Paradise Peak, I was also going to put some real hard effort into group sessions. I had been holding back in those for a variety of reasons, but I knew everyone in my group sessions now. There was no longer a reason to stay quiet. It was time for me to push through and see what all I could get out of my time at the center.
“Sign me up,” I said enthusiastically.
“Okay,” the nurse said skeptically as she added my name to a list. “Now, this is the kind of enthusiasm I like to see.”
Her comment warmed my heart. That was the type of feeling I wanted more often. Being noticed for doing something good was one of my favorite feelings and I hadn’t even realized it.
While I was building my tech company, I used to love when people looked shockingly at me and didn’t believe I was old enough to run a business. Their dismay and shock was uplifting to me. That element of surprise was a way I often boosted my ego.
The more I thought about my past, the more I realized that I often put on fake, shocking events in the hopes of people thinking I was better than I really was. Once, I had hired a famous musician and his band to play at my party, then went around telling everyone that he was there as a friend and we were really close. It was a stupid lie and only impressed people who I didn’t know. The band had cost over $100,000 and only played for 90 minutes.
I was kind of a douchebag, I concluded as I started adding up the lies and stories I had told over the years. And that was only when I thought about my professional life and my friends; if I dared to think about how I treated the women I slept with, those memories almost made me sick to my stomach.
One time, a girl came pounding on my front door. She yelled at me for a good five minutes about not having morals and not caring who I hurt. When she was finally done yelling, I apologized for sleeping with her and hurting her feelings in a hope she would leave. But I hadn’t slept with her; the woman had been yelling at me for what I had done to her best friend and for breaking the best friend’s heart. I hadn’t even known if I had slept with the woman who was yelling at me.
My love life was non-existent. Instead of a love life, it was a sex life. There hadn’t been emotions or love involved. There was no moral compass, at all.
I wasn’t sure if I had a clearer moral compass now, but I did know that I wanted to do better in my personal life. Business would always work itself out, but my personal life was where the joy had to come from. If I ever wanted to be an old married man with a wife who loved me, I had to make some changes.
“Where you going?” Cassidy asked as I layered my clothes and readied for the hike.
“I’m hiking. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay, but I’d like to talk to you about what happened at my house.”
“I had a great time,” I said as I leaned in to her. “But you shouldn’t be talking about that here or you’ll get in trouble.”
“We can talk later,” she said.
She seemed unsure of herself and what she wanted to talk about, but I knew she wanted to talk about me leaving early. It really wasn’t meant to be rude or anything like that. I just didn’t need another day in her house to realize I still had a lot of work to do.
“Where’s everyone at?” I asked as I waited with Melanie to leave for the hike.
“It’s very cold out today. I think people are changing their mind about hiking.”
“I’m still game if you are.”
“I’m going, I’m going,
” Stan said as he ran up to us.
He didn’t look like he was in good enough shape to be pounding away on another winter hike. The weather was much worse than when we had gone before. The warm, winter days full of sun had left the mountains and we were in the midst of cold, snowy days again.
“We aren’t going too far. Just out two miles and back,” Melanie said as she opened the back door.
The trail was still plowed, but there were a couple inches of snow covering the path. It wasn’t enough to worry about, and the boots I had worked just fine to keep my feet warm. Melanie took the lead and then me and Stan was right being us. We didn’t talk. There was no therapy going on, just three people moving through the winter trail and contemplating their own existence.
My mind filled with all the potential my future seemed to hold now that I was sober. There was no end to the possibilities. Maybe Spencer and I would invest in this new movie studio and it would be successful. We could be those Hollywood-type guys who went to movie premieres and met famous people on a daily basis.
I thought about what it would be like to buy a home in that area, maybe even down by the beach. San Francisco wasn’t all that warm by the beach, so I had bought my home there up on the hill. But the beach sounded much more like it would be a place to relax.
Then, I let my thoughts go back to my father and brother. My father had disowned me when I left. He had been so hateful and angry. But in recent days, I had started to feel bad for him. His age and his health weren’t getting any better, and I had left him with my younger brother to run things.
My anger had clouded my ability to see that my family was hurting. My father had a broken heart from losing my mother and instead of being there and trying to work things out, I stayed away.
But as I walked through the cold, mountain air, there was one thing that weighed heavier on my mind than anything else: money.
I had never sent my father and brother a single dime of money to help them out. Even after I sold my business and clearly had more money than I knew what to do with, it had never dawned on me to give back to them. I hadn’t offered to pay for the salary of a manager for the funeral home so they could take a break. I had given my own flesh and blood absolutely nothing.
