Addiction
I feel the way the chessman must, when the opponent says of it, "This piece cannot be moved."
— Kierkegaard, Either/Or
Part One: Subjective
- Sobs...
- Slips in the shower...
- Flies.
- You're ridiculous, man.
- Smashes you in the face...
- Naked.
- How the mouse felt...
- Raccoon eyes.
- Mama...
- I don't like her sleeping on the floor...
- I did it, I did it, I did it...
- Takes you by both hands...
- She came home to find her girlfriend unconscious on the couch...
- "I love you so much," she says...
- "They planned it..."
- Later...
- Parking lot...
- She pawned two rings and a bracelet...
- Broken china...
- Birthday presents.
- Bottles.
- Safety, you think to yourself...
- Spills from the driver's seat in slow-motion...
- "I will make you this deal."
- Raccoon eyes.
- Fear and stress...
- Smiling her sly, drunken, cynical smile.
- Bottles clank inside her purse.
- Crash, loud, a heavy human body falling in the shower.
- Dialog with the demon.
- Delay isn't so much a disappointment as a form of persecution.
- Smiles sarcastically, staggers, flips you off.
- Anger, white hot.
- "You've never been committed to me."
- Blocks the door with her body, spitting threats.
- Raccoon eyes.
- "You have no idea..."
- "I hope I'm pregnant with your baby."
- "Why must she live through this?"
- Her door opens.
- "I'd sit on the rocks with a half-pint of Hot Damn, praying to God..."
- Always that one foot out the door...
- Knowing she's hurting herself.
- She stole and sold her boyfriend's beloved collection of vintage baseball cards.
- Why does she steal?
- After they were expelled from the sober house they lived in her car...
- Women in Starbucks, single, intelligent, pretty.
- As she failed her field sobriety test...
- How at home she looked, in the dock in her red jumpsuit...
- City of wine.
- Catch-22.
- Strength, compassion, humility...
- AA, founded decades before scientific study of the disease began...
- AA's foundational notion...
- "Thank you," she says...
- "I feel like Jello..."
- "I'm trying so hard. I'm trying so hard."
- It's common for families of addicts...
- Expressions on the faces of the healthy people on the street.
- Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.
- Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.
- Weekend without you...
- Her daughter's recovery is the one thing she most fears.
- "My family and I have been inconvenienced over the years..."
- Omega dog.
- At the theater she's gone a long time...
- Her sister on the coast road.
- At the beginning I hired her to do some jobs for me.
- Addiction is a medical, not a moral issue.
Part Two: Objective
- My codependency originated in depression.
- I could see the pain in her eyes.
- Dr. Google informs me...
- In the depth of your own illness you try to outwit hers.
- Ann Marlowe says addiction is essentially nostalgia:
- At work I would have terrible panic attacks.
- For most of my life I lived with the fantasy...
- Visitors' day at rehab.
- Nighttime, late. Emergency room.
- I would like to be...
- Petulance.
- I told her, "You know who you are, right? You're Cinderella."
- Her mother the Evangelical Control Freak From Hell said once...
- I lived with a violent alcoholic long enough to nearly get killed a few times.
- I bought my first cell phone when my addict housemate, formerly fiancé, racked up $11,000 in long-distance calls to Croatia.
- With her family she loved to set me up for failure.
- For months I'd planned a winter vacation.
- The one time they were here together his dream was to visit Grant Street.
- My mother loved Jackie Gleason's "Honeymooners" sketches.
- What exactly the fuck is "codependency", specifically?
- Yet there was a period after her marriage when I supported her financially.
- At the beginning my fiancée would cut herself...
- Some part of my codependency originated in competition with her family.
- But let me ask you this.
- "That I'm taking responsibility for another person's sobriety."
- It took a while for me to understand Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome.
- Hold your breath.
Part Three: Narrative
- She was a waitress when we met.
- Her apartment was "disordered".
- I no longer remember the exact sequence of events...
- Violence began almost immediately.
- She explained her murderous rage-fueled barrages of blows as an outcome of PTSD.