What could be better than love? The thing that makes life worth living. If you’re going to be addicted to something, it might as well be love, right? It’s such a better neediness than drugs or alcohol or eating disorders.
Don’t ask me.
I don’t have a clue about love.
I don’t understand it.
It’s a code, it’s a cryptogram, it’s the puzzle I will never solve.
It’s the riddle that leaves me scratching my head, saying huh. Because I thought I had an inkling, that I was coming close, but then bam. Blow to the head, knocked me down flat.
I glance around the claustrophobic Sunday school room at the other junkies parked on tiny chairs, our nervous, twitchy fingers tapping out rhythms of worry, of wishes, of I-have-to-get-away. We’re all fumbling in the dark. Deaf, dumb, and blind.
Or maybe I’m the only one like that. Maybe my feet are encased in concrete, immovable, and the rest of the former users are gliding on, skating away from me.
I scan the faces as we go through the requisite hellos, thanks for sharing, and daily affirmations, wondering if the rest of them flit through their days and nights tailed by the same black cloud of confusion.
“Little victories,” Joanne begins, while the steadfast and hardy hanging kitten watches over us from her framed post on the wall, some sort of patron saint of recovery. “Let’s talk about little victories today. Who wants to start?”
Ainsley raises her hand. She’s the gal who can’t stay away from her teachers.
“Ainsley. Tell us about a victory.”
“I made it through classes this last week and didn’t try to flirt with any of my professors.”
There is clapping all around.
“Excellent news. That is a huge accomplishment. Every little step matters. Chloe, what about you?”
Chloe smiles proudly. “I had an awful day at work, and I went for a run instead of trying to find a guy at a bar for a booty call.”
More praise from Joanne. More clapping. Everyone has been so behaved today, it seems. Maybe something is in the air. A new drug, an elixir that makes us forget how love and sex, sex and love used to fuck us all in the head—and yet, how much we wanted to be fucked back. It’s hard to stay away from the fix. Because the fix feels good. The fix takes away the pain. The fix mends the hole in the heart.
Joanne turns to Gavin. He’s hooked on anonymous sex through Craigslist. “I haven’t been on Craigslist in a week,” he admits, and we all cheer him on.
Trey should go next. Only Trey’s not here. He hasn’t texted, he hasn’t called, and I haven’t heard from him since he took off this morning. That boy vexes me, and I have no clue what to make of him. Trey is a riddle I can’t solve. Is what I feel for him real or not? Nor do I know what to make of my mom’s work. My mind keeps returning to the terrible blackmail story she’s researching, but I remind myself there must be thousands of extortion stories unfolding every day.
Joanne turns to me. “Layla? Anything you can share?”
“A victory?” I scrunch up my forehead. Can we discuss all the ways the opposing team pummeled me instead? Fumbles, interceptions, and then how I let myself be sacked. All the losses I piled up from my own weakness. Because I can’t defend myself. I am indefensible. I am what Miranda called me, and there are no excuses, there is no redemption, there is only the never-ending payment.
Victories, I scoff to myself. As if I’m capable.
But then, I remember this morning in front of the mirror, how I resisted the extra makeup, and it’s the smallest thing in the world, but it’s the biggest thing in the moment, because it’s my only hope right now. I latch onto it. “I didn’t put on much makeup this morning,” I offer, because that’s all I can come up with.
“Hey, every little bit counts. Step by step. Day by day. You can do it,” Joanne says.
I don’t know what I can do. All I know is what I can mess up. I am wading in the knee-deep quicksand of my mistakes.
When the group meeting ends, Joanne calls me aside.
“Hey. I know I said this the other night, but I’m here for you. If you want to talk. We haven’t had a one-on-one check-in in a while. You want to sit with me for a minute?”
“Sure,” I say half-heartedly, because what else can I do? I don’t have anyone else to talk to, so I might as well stay and talk to her. Trey’s disappeared, and I can tell my mom everything about a kiss, a screw, a schlong, but God forbid I tell her my heart has been target practice my whole life and it’s full of bullet holes.
Can you fix it, Mom?
No, but how about a mani-pedi and a little dish on best bedroom tricks?
I head into a separate room with Joanne, who dips her hand into a canvas bag and sets to work on her latest creation, an earthy-looking brown-and-yellow mass of yarn that appears to be transforming into a sweater.
“Check-in time,” she says with a bright smile.
“Is that a sweater for your fiancé?” I ask, beginning my ritual dance of avoidance. I hate telling Joanne things. I hate telling anyone things. I hate people knowing me. But I go through the motions because otherwise I’ll probably wander aimlessly around New York City tonight.
“It is,” she beams.
“Does he like sweaters?” I ask, another deflection.
“He does.”
“What are his favorite colors?”
“Green and brown.”
“Is this sweater a surprise?”
“Layla,” Joanne says gently, cocking her head to the side. “Let’s talk about you. How was your week?”
“Good.”
“Now that is just TMI, Layla.”
I say nothing.
“Sweetie. I want to help you. I want to be here for you,” she says.
Joanne is thirty-one and has been running this college branch of SLAA since her first marriage went up in flames a few years ago. She traveled a ton for business and dabbled on the side until her husband discovered what was happening on the road.
The divorce was swift, painful, and embarrassing. He logged into her Facebook account and posted a status update—I’m a lying whore who cheats on her husband. She lost business, she lost clients, she lost face, she lost him, and worst of all, she lost the dog. He kept their German shepherd–border collie mix, who they’d named Jeter because of their mutual affection for the New York Yankees.
That was four years ago. She hasn’t seen him or Jeter since. She’s also changed. She’s now engaged to someone else, someone she met last year who knows her history and loves her for who she was and who she is and who she’s striving to become. Someone she’s in a healthy relationship with and has been faithful to, she’s said.
A healthy relationship—one based on trust, respect, and honesty. I wonder what that’s like.
Joanne keeps talking. “I can see that you’re hurting. I can see you’re angry. Believe me, I’ve been there. You are amazing at hiding it, but I can see it in your eyes.”
“What do you see in my eyes right now?” Maybe she can find the answers that elude me.
“I see a girl wanting to change, but who feels stuck. Who doesn’t think she can. Who thinks she is damaged beyond repair.”
I wish I could say her comment shocks me or hurts me or cuts me to the core. That it’s a swift punch in the gut that makes me reconsider everything in my life and makes me take stock. But it doesn’t. Because it’s what I’ve known for far too long. “Yeah, and that’s why sometimes I want to go back to the way things were,” I admit.