To which she replied, “Oh no, Laura, is he sweet and sensitive, too? How terrible for you.”
“I’m the funny one, Mom! I’m the funny one!”
She didn’t have any sympathy for me regarding this amazing guy I had met. Early on, I would even try to suppress my laughter when he told a funny joke. Like seriously, comedy is my job! He’s the music person—it’s not like I ever got on the piano in front of him and told him I was a musical genius. Why did he have to be so good at everything?
Fortunately, my silly jealousy was hard to keep up when I was laughing this hard. Also, his humor is one of the things I love most about him. Besides, I maintain that I am the funnier one in the relationship.
We finished dinner and went outside, waiting for the valet to bring Stephen’s car around. I noticed he was shaking. He was so nervous. He looked at me and asked, “Can I kiss you?” Oh my God. No one had ever asked me that before. What the fuck do I say? I should be coy. No, I should be . . . flirtatious. I squinted my eyes halfway closed, which was my best attempt at a sensual expression. “What do you think?” I growled. Pretty dope, right?
He leaned forward a bit, then stopped. Oh God, I had confused him. “Um. Does that—uh . . .” Stephen stuttered. Finally, he leaned in for a nice, soft kiss.
From that moment on, I didn’t see Ben again.
Falling in love with Stephen was sweet and perfect. Since we were both sober, we decided to go café hopping instead of bar hopping. We walked along Ocean Avenue in the afternoon and went from one café to the next, getting coffees and juices and different pastries at each one. I told him about my parents; my sisters; and about the fact that ever since I was little, I’ve woken up at three a.m. every night to eat a green apple. I still do that for some reason.
At the end of one of these dates, he asked if I wanted to come back to his apartment to watch a movie.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yes, but do not try anything funny with me!” I was a changed woman, you guys. With him, I didn’t want to mess anything up. We had gone on several dates by now, and I wanted to take things slow. Super slow, like the tortoise who won that race or whatever? I just mean I wasn’t fucking him yet.
We got back to his apartment and he put on Dr. Strangelove. I think he was trying to impress me. No shade to Stanley Kubrick, but I was more in the mood for something like Happy Gilmore. I’m sorry! Sometimes I have to turn off my brain. This was just really dry and really boring. I looked at him. “This is terrible.”
“It’s really bad, isn’t it?” he replied.
We put on another movie called Bad Timing. It still wasn’t Adam Sandler, but it was good enough. When it ended, it was really late.
“You look tired,” he said to me. “Just spend the night. I don’t want you driving all the way home this late.”
I thought about it. I felt so comfortable with him at this point, and I really was tired. “Okay, I could do that.”
I went to sleep easily in his bed. At three a.m., I heard something in the kitchen. I got a little scared and drowsily scanned the room . . . I opened my eyes a bit and noticed Stephen wasn’t in bed anymore. Then I saw his figure walk into the bedroom, out of breath . . . and he set down a green apple on my bedside table. I smiled and fell back asleep.
In the morning I found out that he had driven to three different convenience stores at three in the morning, looking for an apple for me. (And absolutely nothing else.) “They were all closed, but finally I found one that was still open and carried apples. Tough combination, it turns out!”
It was the sweetest thing. The apple, I mean. They were in season at that time.
But yeah, obviously we had sex after that. I’m not a monster.
I was totally and completely in love. I started to feel more carefree than I ever had been since I got sober. It was like he was teaching me how to have fun and let loose. Before, letting loose meant risking my life.
Time went on and I finally achieved six months completely sober. I felt like I could do this thing called life. I could do anything! I felt so loved and in love. Every week I would go to my meeting at The Log Cabin. Every morning I would get on my knees and ask God-as-I-know-it to keep me sober for the day. Every day I would talk to other sober people to stay grounded. I was working through the 12 Steps. I was on Step 8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. ’Twas a very long list. . . . But yeah, eight out of twelve seemed pretty good. I felt like I was almost done.
But “being done” doesn’t ever happen with addiction. If I wasn’t actively focused on recovery, my addiction would creep up and become my solution to life’s problems. They say in AA that anything you put before sobriety, you’ll lose. I heard them . . . but I didn’t feel like losing anything was possible now. Slowly, I started putting Stephen first. I didn’t really notice it. As time went on, I started thinking to myself, If I can go six months without picking up drugs or having a drink, then I can afford to miss my weekly meeting. I can stop getting on my knees in the morning and asking my higher power to keep me sober. I can stop talking to other sober people.
I stopped for eight days, but those tools were what quieted down the voice of my addiction. By the eighth day of not applying those tools, the voice of my addiction started to get very loud. It wasn’t even a particularly bad day. Stephen and I didn’t have a fight; I didn’t get a rejection; I didn’t lose a job.
I was at my apartment trying to write, but I had writer’s block. Jack was at work. Damn it, what do I write, what do I write? Then I figured out the solution. Oh, I know what will help. Some of Jack’s weed. It was like an out-of-body experience. I went into Jack’s dresser drawer, pulled out his stash of weed, and smoked it. I coughed heavily. It had been a while.
Well, fuck. Now I had smoked weed and ruined six fucking months of sobriety. I might as well go buy some beer. I got some beer and drank it. Well, I’m already drunk. I might as well buy some cocaine.
I had deleted the numbers of every drug dealer I knew, but no one is unreachable in the age of Facebook! I found one of my old connects, hit him up via Facebook messenger, and picked some up.
I snorted some cocaine. I might as well smoke it, too.
Now I was finally cracked out of my mind—jittery and shaking like the crackheads you see on the street. I didn’t even feel good. The shame still seeped through the numbness. How the fuck was it doing that? The weight of my situation came crashing down on me. I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling and feeling meaningless. I ruined my sobriety. I ruined my life. I might as well die.
I went to the drug store and bought some sleeping pills. I took seven pills. I didn’t care if I lived or died. If I didn’t wake up, then I didn’t wake up. Who fucking cares? I knew that the mix of uppers and downers had the capacity to stop my heart. It’s very dangerous to take them together. That’s how Heath Ledger died. I knew this and I didn’t care about the risk. But still, if I really wanted to die, wouldn’t I have taken the whole bottle? Come on, Laura, commit for once!
After I took the pills, I went from cracked out to knocked out. I was supposed to see Stephen that night for a date. When I didn’t show up, he kept calling and calling me, with no answer. Immediately he knew I had relapsed. It wasn’t like me to not show up to a date without calling.