I’m taking a minute to check in with myself before heading to a 10pm meeting. I realised today that I’m six months alcohol-free. Not sober – I’m stoned right now. I don’t mind it, it’s softening everything, which I need right now. I don’t fly off the handle, but instead can talk through arguments. My triggers seem dulled, or I just don’t care to be triggered anymore. I’d love to chalk this up to my spiritual evolution but the cannabis sure doesn’t hurt. The pain of loss and death is too real, too much, too soon. I need coffee.

I feel my body and mind preparing to be in an uncomfortable place. You have to face yourself in these things, I’ve found so far. It’s easy to run and hide during the day, when your mind bops around from one thing to the next. But at night, in a group of alcoholics, not so much. You’re right there, facing yourself along with everybody else. I just don’t want to burst into tears in a group of strangers, not right now. So let’s see. Biggest part of life is just showing up, so here I go…

*

The meeting was great. I really had to settle into myself. Trying to go brought out my deepest fear of being seen. How many times have I wanted to disappear, to become part of the wall? Years and years of being unseen, where first? Tonight I felt comfortable after just a few minutes. At the heart of each meeting, it seems, is someone sharing their story in detail.

Now I lay on the bed, taking inventory. I am exhausted beyond belief. It is a new level of exhaustion. Very deep, into my bones, my soul aches. Pain is fear leaving the body. I feel the fear of not having my mother, it is a childish fear, a childish feeling, true and primal. My body aches in many places, but not from the usual groan of household labor, but from this gutteral sadness. I have smoked too much. If I could, I would non-stop chain smoke cigarettes, a disgusting habit that I’ve returned to like a sling made from self-loathing. Anything to punish myself, to cling to a former self that felt nothing. How shall I take care of myself now? She is gone now, I tell myself, as I hear two urgent train horns sound, as though they are exchanging an emphatic greeting, and they go trugging along in the night with their freight.

It is my last night here and it is late. I am alone in the hotel room, with public TV on in the background, allowing some news from the real world to seep in, It’s not good. The trains still pass, with their engines long gone. Tomorrow I will be gone, too.