Interlude 5

Interlude 5

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. The beeping persisted as she groggily woke, annoyed that the sounds of the hospital never stopped.  How are patients supposed to get better if they can’t FUCKING sleep!! She thought to herself.  She rolled off the shitty bed, pushed a button on the machine that connected to one of the many tubes connected to her brother. She sighed.  She was tired and frustrated.  

Her parents had taken turns spending the night with Dave for weeks now… or was it months? She couldn’t remember.  She decided she should have a turn and now was annoyed that she had thought such a thing.  Reality was she just wanted attention and if staying with her brother got it, then that was good enough.  One brother dead, another one sick and I’m the only un-squeaky wheel. Maybe if I got cancer they’d care about me.  She grumbled to herself and lay back down. She was annoyed at herself for thinking such a thing.  I’m just tired, she sighed. But as tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep.

How much more, huh? How much more you want me to go through? She prayed to herself as her brother slept. Tears rolled down her cheeks.  She sniffled quietly, Seriously God, are you going to take him too?  Will you take both my brothers?  Will you?  And what’s left anyway? Mom and Dad are so distracted it’s like I don’t even exist. I DON’T EVEN EXIST. She willed herself to stay quiet.  She didn’t want to wake her brother.

Another beep went off.  She looked at her cell phone and saw the time: 3:30am.  She rolled off the bed and looked at the cup on the table full of pills.  She wondered what they were and if any of them were any good.  She sighed, “David,” she waited, “David” a little louder this time.  He stirred and she handed him the cup of pills and some water.  He took them and said something she couldn’t understand and passed back out again.  She stood there looking at him.  He was so skinny and the cancer was just eating at him and the medicines were worse than the cancer.  

She stood there for a moment.  She walked back over to the bed and sat and prayed without thinking anything.  She didn’t want to admit it, but she was prepared for him to die.  Ready for it.  The waiting to see if death would take over or be held at bay was so tiresome.  She didn’t want him to die but she was tired of the suffering; his suffering, her parents suffering, her own suffering. No one even saw her anymore.  It was Aaron’s murder or David’s cancer and Where was she? Nowhere.  

God, I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live like this anymore.  What do you want from me?  What am I supposed to do with this? I can’t even feel anymore. I just want someone to love me and you won’t even give me that.  I’m single, alone, and taking care of a sick brother just after the one went and fucking died.  How is this in your damned plan? You know what God? YOU KNOW WHAT?! Fuck you.  FUCK you. She was beginning to hyperventilate.  She calmed herself down by daydreaming of some boy she liked, holding her tight. She sat there for a long time imagining someone’s warmth completely embracing her.

She finally lay down. Tears kept streaming out her eyes. Her mind blurred as she drifted off to sleep.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

“Fuck” she said out loud.  She got out of bed and turned off the machine again, laid down and immediately drifted to sleep and into the grips of a nightmare.

She awoke in what seemed like minutes to the sunlight pouring in and her mom tiptoeing into the room.  She was groggy and trying to wipe the nightmare out of her mind.

“Hey, Mom.”

“Hey, honey, how was the night?” Her mother seemed anxious and worried about how she’d handled it.  

Sensing her mother’s anxiety she responded, “Everything was great mom, everything is fine.” She managed a half smile.

“Ok, how about McDonald’s breakfast?”

“Sure Mom, sounds great.”

Chapter 5: Amelia

Chapter 5

Amelia

Rehab saved my life.  Of this, there is no question.  The people who worked with me at my rehab were innumerable and amazing.  The therapists, the counselors, the techs, nurses, and doctors touched me in a time that I felt I was untouchable.  They were the ones that pulled me out of the depths the first few days as I came off the drugs.

Living without drugs for the first time in years was the most painful and raw experience I have ever felt.  It was more painful that my brother’s death, my other brother’s cancer and all the traumas I sustained in my addiction.  This was the first time I could feel anything in years and the onslaught of emotions that came when I finally stopped were so intense that I prayed for death my first few weeks in rehab.  I longed for it. Begged for it.  I hated who I was and I hated what I had become and I hated the thought of facing myself outside of those walls.

There are two things about this particular rehab that, I believe, saved my life. First, was the piano.  The second was the MD intern named Amelia.  I was forced to take piano lessons as a child and though many of those skills had worn off by years of idle hands I still had enough knowledge to pound out basic chords.  So that’s what I did.  I sat on that piano for hours and hours and played out the emotions that I had buried for weeks, months and years.  I played until my voice ran out some days.  I played until they kicked me out of the piano lounge so that the others could watch a movie or play games.  It was the outlet I needed and looked forward to.

One day when I was pounding away at the piano a girl came in who was not too much older than me.  She was Indian, as in, from India, and she was quite pretty and slender.  She wore a white coat and I knew she was a doctor of some sort.  I kept playing, not caring if she was there or not.  She listened to me for a bit at the door and then sat next to me on the bench.  Not touching but close enough that I felt her calm presence.  It threw me. No one had sat next to me or wanted me close like that (unless it involved sex or drunken revelry) in a very long time.  She didn’t want anything from me but to listen to what I was playing.  Like it mattered.  I didn’t understand that.

Her presence and the lack of anything dirty threw me.  I went off key and became embarrassed and stopped playing.  At this point, I couldn’t handle any kind of emotion whatsoever.  I grew frustrated at myself, stood up, and walked away from the piano and left the lounge. I went through the doors and into the main lounge, leaving the woman in the doctor’s coat sitting on the bench.  I didn’t know who she was, and at that point, I didn’t care.  Someone else’s presence in my space wasn’t something I was capable of dealing with.

In retrospect, I realize that I was learning how to live all over again.  Having normal conversations with people, like my therapists and groups in rehab, was exhausting.  I didn’t understand who I was.  I thought I was an extrovert and yet, I desperately wanted to be alone.  I had relied on alcohol and drugs for so long to help with my anxiety in social situations that I was unable to cope with social interactions on a basic level.  Someone interested in my music or in me for any reason scared me and, unable to deal with the attention, I simply ran away.  In many ways, I was a 12 year old who would run and hide.

Luckily, the woman in the white coat wasn’t so easy to get rid of.  She followed me into the main lounge. I can’t remember now if I was watching TV or playing with a puzzle, but I was sitting alone and trying not to think and trying not to cry.  She sat next to me.  Calm. Composed. Lovely.  

“My name is Amelia” she said, “I’m a doctoral intern from Baylor”.  I told her who I was and what I was in rehab for.  We chatted and talked and she just listened.  I didn’t feel as if I was below her. I didn’t feel like I was above her.  I wasn’t sure what to do with her.  So I didn’t do anything. She was there and there wasn’t much I could do about it.  She was nice enough. So, I stayed and chatted for awhile.

I went to dinner. I came back, did what was scheduled for me to do, and then went to bed, as always.  The schedule gave me structure and the structure gave me peace.  In the next few weeks my rehab continued and my interactions with Amelia were varied and calm.  I cried a lot in those days—I didn’t know how to deal with emotions any other way. I cried and I banged on the piano.  I went to therapy, went to group therapy, went to 12-step meetings, listened to lectures and process groups and worked on myself.  I dealt with my ex-husband a few times and had major panic attacks each time.  The overwhelming sense of doom and fear hung over me like a thick blanket. I really felt like he would haunt me forever.  Amelia and the other staff kept reminding me that nothing was forever—I told them they didn’t know shit.

One day, I was thinking too much.  I allowed myself to dwell in the misery and pain.  I relived the rapes, abuse and overdoses.  My mind was so trapped in the past that I couldn’t stop from daydreaming about them.  Within a few minutes I was crying by myself in my room and, though I wanted to stop thinking about those things. I couldn’t. My mind was telling me how awful I was and how many lives I had destroyed by getting people high for the first time. The thoughts kept coming and I was powerless to do anything about them. Sitting in my room alone, I was faced with me.  

This period in rehab is often hazy. I don’t remember why my thoughts started going there or exactly when Amelia became such a force for me. I’m not sure how long I lay on my bed, crying to myself, unable to move.  

But there I was.

It must have been hours.  I lay on my bed, lost in my daymares.  They were no longer daydreams.  I couldn’t escape it, I couldn’t stop them and they were repeating over and over and over and I was crying and crying.  I soon became debilitated. I could no more move off that bed than I could stop my heart from beating.  I could not will myself to move.  

My body felt heavier than the heaviest thing in the world.  Snot dripped down my nose, but I couldn’t wipe it away. I felt the need to pee but couldn’t move to the bathroom.  I was trapped in the thoughts and emotions that. The drugs had always kept that petrification at bay now, without them I became a prisoner in my own mind. Unable to escape. Unable to even want to escape.

This had happened once before while I was using.  It happened after coming down off of a particularly long run on cocaine and, having missed a therapy session because of it, I was forced to call my therapist during the come down.  I couldn’t face the confrontation and, within a few moments of getting of the phone, I slipped into the drug infested thinking.  During that period of catatonia, I didn’t move for almost 12 hours.  I don’t remember time passing.  I remember finally coming out of it on the empty floor of my apartment in Mountain View, California having soiled myself and needing to vomit.  Our furniture had not yet arrived after moving to California and my husband repeatedly called me pathetic as I lay there.  Only when he left and was gone for hours did I finally come out of the state.  It was only a few weeks later that I finally hit rock bottom, left my husband and entered rehab.

And so here I was again just a few weeks later trapped in the havoc that was my mind. It must have been dinner time because I remember being hungry. But I couldn’t move.  I remember my door opening and Amelia looking at me.

“Hannah, are you ok?”

No response.

“Hannah?” This time as spoke my name she moved closer to me and saw me silently crying, unmoving with snot dripping down my nose and into my mouth. My eyes wide and unable to respond she sat next to me on the bed as gently as she had sat next to me on the bench the first day I met her.  She gently placed her hand on my shoulder.  I wanted to pull away from the touch.  It was like a hot brand to my soul, but I couldn’t. Willing my body to move had no effect. I lie still.

“Hannah, it’s going to be okay.”

Nothing.

“Hannah, it’s going to be okay.”

Nothing.

She sighed and continued touching my shoulder, not moving from my side.  She kept repeating it would be okay.  She kept telling me over and over and over.  I felt if I could just die right there I would. I would stop it all. It was too much. How did she do it? How did she live without something else making her feel better. I didn’t understand how the world kept going when the world in my head never left the past.  I was wrapped in it as it consumed me.  Then, with no explanation as to why, I heard it.

“Hannah, it’s going to be okay.”

And then I heard it again with certainty.

“Hannah, it’s going to be okay.”

For the first time in my entire life I realized that the woman sitting next to me telling it was going to be ok actually believed it was going to be ok.  She knew it could be okay.  It occurred to me that she wasn’t saying this because she was supposed to, but because she wanted to. None of the other MD interns had taken notice, sat next to me, or listened to my chatter. Not one had given two shits about my music or my past, but Amelia had. She had heard a lot about me, never made me feel less than her and still she believed it was going to be okay.  

Not thinking, I wiped the snot from my face while I still stared into the emptiness that I still felt.  She smiled.  I was still crying.  My stomach growled. I hadn’t even realized I moved until after it had happened.

“It’s time to eat.  Why don’t you come?”

I looked at her for a minute. I sat up and then went to eat as if it had never happened.  By the end of the night, I felt back to normal and the black clouds of doom had returned to their normal state of mediocre gray.  I don’t remember how long she sat with me. What I do know is that I realized, for the first time, that things could be okay. This was something I had never even considered.  In the depths of my insanity, I never thought for a moment that things could be okay without the drugs or without the alcohol.  Not for one second was life capable of being “okay” on any level.  But now, for a moment, I had a glimmer of hope.

She was only at my rehab for a few more days.  Before she left she handed me a small piece of paper with a quote on it and her name on the back.  Had she not written her name on it I don’t know if I’d remember it was her who had given it to me. But there it was and in my memory it has remained. The quote was by Martin Luther King Jr. or Gandhi or someone.  I don’t remember it now, but I remember her name.  I remember what she did for me. She moved on to another internship.  I remember feeling slightly abandoned and hurt that she was leaving.  I was confused, but part of me felt nothing at all. So much of my heart was so dead it didn’t hit me until later.  I would never have an Amelia like her again.  She was simply someone who had given me perspective and hope.  

As quickly as she entered, she left again.  I have that paper somewhere stuffed in one of my journals.  I keep it to remember that this event was real.  It’s easy for me to forget what was real and what wasn’t.  I lied so much and so often for so long I sometimes can’t remember what really happened. That paper reminds me though that someone, for a minute, a moment, believed that things could change and I could change and that things would be ok.  It seems such an easy concept to grasp, but I was not capable of understanding it, let alone grasping it.  I believed that Amelia believed it and that was enough to pull me out the cage that had become my own mind.      

interlude 4

interlude 4

She sat there,  Why is it THAT moment that sticks in my mind? Certain memories were so burned in her that she would never forget them and yet the ones she wanted to remember faded much too easily.  She sat in the courthouse and what seemed like an eternity was merely a few moments.  “Guilty” they had said.  She breathed. The hard benches reminded her more of church rather than a courthouse. The wooden stake in her knee high boot dug into her ankle.  At least that comforted her.  God she thought, how the hell did I get here?  Her mind began to wander.

Christmas break was over and school had started again.  Her brother was still missing and she was getting worried. The worry and events leading up to that day were hazy but he was missing and she was scared. She was sitting at the lunch table in the crowded lunchroom facing the front doors of the school.  She was eating and laughing and talking with people when she looked up and saw her father charging in. That was the memory that stayed with her: her father charging in and the realization that her father was not a man to be trifled with.  

He was a southern Baptist minister. He was big and obviously used to holding his audience captivated. He was the kind of man that spoke of and with the Divine and he did so with authority and, therefore, wasn’t very interested in the authority of the world. He marched past school officials looking over the vast amount students in the lunchroom looking for his daughter. Looking for her. There was clearly something wrong.

She stood silently, her friends looking at her. In that moment she knew.  She knew.  She held herself together and walked to the front, as he had not yet spotted her.  His eyes said it all. The pain and fear and need to find his daughter was so pervasive she could feel it.  He needed his baby girl and she knew it. She walked slowly not wanting to hear the reality any sooner than she had to and then he saw her when she was only a few feet from him.  Her mother was just behind him and she stepped forward wrapping her arms around her. Her mother had been crying.

“Oh God, he’s dead isn’t he? He’s dead”, she said

Her mother held her tight and her father right next to her tried to catch her as she began to collapse. A few feet from where they stood was a bench and her parents managed to get her there as she sank. Her reality of innocence and peace and faith and God and all that she knew was evaporating from her soul in that moment. It was as if in one instant the entire world had changed. She sat there on that bench knowing what her mother was about to say while the noise of the lunchroom continued.  There were so many students that few had realized what was happening.  The world continued to turn and go on and she couldn’t make sense of it.  She could not grasp it.

“They found him Hannah.  He’s gone. Aaron is gone.”

“Someone killed him mamma?”

“Yea baby someone killed him.”

In the haze she hadn’t seen the school administration people approaching asking them to come into the office and to come out of the hall so as not to attract attention.  They were walked into the office where she sat she couldn’t remember now if she was in shock or sobbing but she remembered the cool leather chair against her back.

She sat there a few moments and then, “I need my stuff out of my classroom. I left my book bag and my stuff in my classroom.”

“We’ll send someone to get it.”

The moments after that were hazy. Someone got her stuff and a few friends at her lunch table who saw what happened had followed her into the office to see what was going on. She remembered Jess being there and hugging her… or was it Rei? Yea it was Rei. Or maybe it wasn't? She didn’t remember anymore. The memory faded there.

Her mother’s voice reached her then, nudging her out of the courtroom bench. It brought her to the present. The courtroom and the fluorescent lighting and the news cameras outside were real to her again. That one memory of her father charging in that day was so very real. She couldn’t grasp why all the memories around it were so hazy.  She stood and gave a brief smile at the jury not sure or not if she was relieved that she would not need to use the wooden knife or not. She had carved it out of her mother’s wooden giraffe letter opener weeks ago. She fully planned on using it on the defendant who had killed her brother had he not been convicted. She walked out of the room past the metal detectors surrounded by people she barely knew and didn’t care about.  

              Her other brother was near and in the wheelchair too sick to walk, her father an emotional mess beside her, and her mother behind her. She wished she felt happy about the verdict. She didn’t though. She couldn’t. It was the first time she had remembered feeling absolutely nothing.  Her thoughts shifted, Mark really likes me. Maybe we can make out later or something. She sighed. That would be nice. 

Chapter 4: Shawn

Chapter 4

Shawn

This is not so much a story as it is an emotional outpouring. It was written the summer of 2011 shortly after arriving in Thailand. I was heart broken and overwhelmed. It was impossible to write his story then or what impact he had on my recovery at that point. Perhaps I will write it later. 

         

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

           It breaks my heart that you’re gone from me.  It breaks my heart to know that you were so lovely and for a moment you were mine and I was yours and now it’s no longer.  For a moment I thought I could hold onto eternity with you.  It was brilliant.  And then that flame burnt through as if it was never there to begin with.  Perhaps I will not always love you or even compare future men to you… but I will always remember that spark that second night when I dropped the walls around my heart and let you in with grace and ease.  For a moment I was yours and I was wrapped up in you.  But you made your choices and you let the flame die and even though I hate it, I am moving on.  
           It often still breaks my heart that you’re gone from me.  You were so lovely in those moments.  I cannot love all of you—I am not so hopeless.  But those moments when you held my hand and comforted me in the dark, those moments when you made love to me like no one had before, those moments when you washed my body in the shower—I will love those.  They still make me smile.  I will love those moments but I shall not linger in them.  I will not allow myself to long for them again—they cannot happen again like they once did.  They are dust and dreams and they are gone from me just as you are gone from me.  But I will love them and cherish them the same.  They are mine.  You are not.  I release you from my fantasy and I release me from the cage it created in my heart.  I love you today.  I will not love you soon.  Reality.

 

Interlude 3

interlude 3

She sat on the floor in front of the bed. She sat on the floor and cried silently.  She was naked and she cried.  She wasn’t devastated because she couldn’t feel.  But she was something.

Maybe angry?

She wasn’t sure.  She was devoid of hope on almost every level though and this she knew: death sounded good. Death sounded like heaven on days like these.  She didn’t pray for death.  She didn’t pray at all anymore.  She longed for it.  She hated him more than anything.  She hated that she didn’t know how to leave.  There she was, stuck in that hotel room silently crying while he was passed out on the bed.

She held the glass in her hand.  The rum was still cool even though the ice had melted long ago.  She had held vigil all through the night until the sun had finally started to rise.  Naked and drinking, she forced herself to stay awake during the comedown to keep him from trying to kill himself again.  It was ironic really, because she wished him to die and couldn’t allow herself to let him do it.  Not because she didn’t really want him dead but because she was afraid of the guilt that might consume her if she allowed him to do it, if he actually succeeded.  Not that he would succeed.  He was shitty at doing things right the first time. Or the second time. Or even the third.

The rum had stopped being effective hours ago.  Maybe days ago.  She hadn’t slept in two or three days.  

She let out a sigh.  

He would wake up eventually and the nightmare would start again.  He wouldn’t remember what he did to her in his insane state of being high for days on end.  Even, if by some chance, he knew inside his heart what he had done, he would never allow her to know it.  He wouldn’t allow her to know understanding.  

He was as dead inside as she was.  He made himself the victim too.  They blamed each other for the insanity and rage.  But she knew.  She knew it was his fault that she was here on the floor in that damned hotel room, naked and crying, trying her best to stay awake so he wouldn’t die.

He stirred.  Her heart nearly stopped and she prayed that he wouldn’t wake up.  The panic began to set in.  The anxiety was so overwhelming she couldn’t do it.  She couldn’t handle it.  She started rocking back and forth, unable to stop the comfort reflex. She rocked and threw back the last of the rum into her thirsty mouth as tears streamed down her face.  She wiped the tears and the snot away with the back of her arm

“What the fuck are you doing on the floor?”

She didn’t respond.  She couldn’t.  She just couldn’t.

“What the FUCK are you doing on the god damned floor?!”

She rocked.

He sat up and leaned forward and touched her shoulder with his cold hand and only then was she able to react. It wasn’t quite human; it was more as if she were almost an animal. She let out a wail and dropped the glass that was still in her hand, it thudded to the carpet as she rolled away from his touch still crying, snot dripped down her face. She turned as she pulled away to turn and faced him.  She emitted another wail as she saw his face and met with his eyes.  

His look back was one of confusion.

“Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

She breathed and tried to reconnect with reality. Any reality. She breathed. Finally forcing words out of her mouth.

“You bastard, you god damned bastard. You raped me and you act like nothing happened? You pretend as if I should be fine with it? Like it was nothing?? NOTHING? NOTHING?!” her voice had started low and calm and was escalating into screams of rage almost not even making sense.

“Please” he responded calmly and coolly, “You could have left and you know it.  You didn’t even try to walk away from it.”

Tears kept rolling.  “You were going to kill yourself if I didn’t, you fucked me while I cried no.  I screamed no.  And you kept going.  You would have actually tried to kill yourself too wouldn’t you? WOULDN’T YOU?!”

His face was stoic and completely unresponsive to her anger, “You didn’t have to. God, Hannah you’re so pathetic. PATHETIC. You want to say I raped you when you laid there and let me do it just ‘cause I said I was going to kill myself? You’ve completely gone batshit.”

She couldn’t do it.  She just couldn’t.  Her panic reached into her throat and she began to hyperventilate as she rocked.  She looked around her. The world was spinning and she couldn’t get it to stop.  She dragged her broken body across the floor and saw the rum bottle next to the bathroom door still half full.  He was still talking, calling her names and telling her she was pathetic.  She barely heard.  She grabbed the bottle and crawled on her knees into the bathroom, shut the door behind her and locked it.  She promptly vomited on herself unable to get to the toilet. And then she drank until the bottle was gone and passed out naked, alone, in the dark of that bathroom on the cool tile floor for as long as she could remember.  

In the haze she heard him beating on the door.  It felt like it was in a dream though.  There was nothing in her left to care.  That cool tile floor felt more real than anything else in her existence.  She breathed.  She slept.

Chapter 3: The Woman whoe Loved me Back to Jesus

Chapter 3

Jill

a.k.a

“The woman who loved me back to Jesus”

    I’ve heard it said that one should be able to look back at their life and it read like an amazing novel with twist and turns that could have happened a million different ways.  This is no different.  I had moved to Pennsylvania because my brother lived there with his new-ish wife and it seemed a better option than living with my parents.  So I met Jill at my first meeting out of rehab in northern Bucks County and without that first, quite simple, acquaintanceship my purpose for life and god and living would not have found me the way it did.  A million things had to happen exactly the way it did in order for that moment to happen.  

Jill was my first sponsor in the 12-step program I participate in. She is not a likely woman to end up as a close friend to a girl like me. 14 years my senior, married, a career and a child… when I met her I was unemployed, unable to drive due to a suspended license, single and crazy.  But there it is.  She became my sponsor and stayed that way for only a few months.  “Breaking up” with her as my sponsor was probably the best idea I ever had.  It allowed a friendship to grow that she and I both needed.  

    She was never the kind of woman who would push her faith on someone—it isn’t her way but she is a churchgoer.  Jill is incredibly talented at loving people (or at least loving me) exactly where they stand and never seems to judge.  That love is incredibly attractive and I often wondered where she got it from- I am not the easiest person to love.  Regardless, not having a license myself gave us a chance to get to know each other better.  Jill routinely picked me up every Friday for our meeting and we’d talk all the way there and all the way back.  It was what we did.  Those conversations are really what allowed us to become so close.  We talked about my current boys and insanity and she talked about her husband and raising her kid.  We were in two very different parts of our personal journey and yet we both lived vicariously in the other person’s shoes.  

    The friendship was kind and soft and gentle.  It never swayed from that.  It was consistent.  While other women and friendships and relationships and boys were coming in and out of my life like hurricanes in the ocean, Jill was the island.  She was the safe space that never moved.  Occasionally tides might change her a bit… but she was always the same consistent island in the storms of my early recovery.  This was pivotal.  Without that place of safety I realize now that I could not have held on to my sobriety like I did.  

The relationship was different for me because I never needed Jill.  This lack of a need meant that the serious codependency issues that I was still fighting never really entered the relationship to any significant level.  We could go weeks without speaking and we’d meet up again and it would be as if I’d never left.  She gave me the freedom to be myself and just liked me the way I was.  There was no whirlwind of emotional connection, instead it was full of gentle transitions.  She is the woman I trust most, who’s opinion I hold most dear and she is the woman, when things go bad, that I call first.  It has been that way from my earliest days clean until now.  An inconsistent consistency has always been the best part of this relationship.

The love that Jill had and embraced me with was something that I wanted.  I was attracted to it. I had never had it before and despite her inclination to fight depression or frustration with child rearing she always had an underlying love.  Despite her fears of change, occasional fights with her husband and a past that could still sometimes haunt her that love was always present. I wanted it. I didn’t understand where it came from but I knew that whatever she had was something good and true and I enjoyed every bit of it.

Understand that Jill knew me more than anybody at that point.  She didn’t know all my secrets or even my past but she did know me and she knew what drove me.  She knew where I was in my step work and she knew where and what I wanted to be someday.  Sometime around a year and a half clean I started a third step.  A third step states that “we turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him” and this was something I struggled with.

I grew up the daughter of a Southern Baptist preacher.  Religion, is and was, the very back bone of my childhood.  God was a very black and white being. If you believed that Jesus was your lord and savior then you could be forgiven and you could go to heaven.  If you didn’t believe in Jesus then you would go to hell.  Period.  In a third step I realized that I didn’t believe this anymore but, despite the fact that I didn’t believe it, I still had a very hard time letting this concept go.  I was raised with it and it was ingrained in my psyche from the time I was a small child.  But, the thing was, is, that I didn’t want to believe it anymore.  I didn’t want a God that was so small… but regardless of where my addiction had taken me I still really loved Jesus.  

I just couldn’t believe that some of the friends who saved me time and time and time again since being clean could go to hell just because they didn’t pray to Jesus.  It didn’t make sense to me. So there I was in a third step trying to find the God I knew and loved and rationalize my faith in this Jesus I adored with the literal readings of scripture from my past.  And there was Jill.  Jill was a woman who had been to the depths of addiction just like me and as different as we were the similarities were striking.  After all, we went to the same rehab (though owned by different companies) 14 years apart in Houston Texas—this is just one example of “coincidences”.  

One day, after a rough patch in life, Jill picked me up from work and took me to the park and we just enjoyed the day together.  We were very close on an emotional level and Jill asked me if she could share her testimony with me that she had written for a Christian 12-step group she and a few people at her church were starting up.  I obliged and sitting there listening to this woman pour out her heart, her wrongs, her pain and her anguish all at the feet of Jesus was something I hadn’t experienced in years.  I didn’t just feel Jesus’ presence in that moment—I knew the presence.  I hadn’t experienced it years and years and my walls and my heart and all the questions about God and how He or She really was all just evaporated.  They didn’t matter.  God was there, Jesus was there, and Jill and I were there.  It was all so very real.

It was the moment that I realized that regardless of the rules and regulations on Heaven and Hell that I very much loved Jesus.  I loved the idea that my God was the knight in shining armor I had always dreamed of.  I loved the fact that this particular concept of God had brought my friend and I together and on such an emotionally intimate level.  Whatever way this God sorted out the afterlife was Her business… I was content with the moment I had and the love and joy I felt for the first time in so very long.  In that one pivotal moment Jill had loved me back into the warm embrace of Jesus that I had so desperately longed for.  The concept and understanding of Jesus was very different than that of my childhood but regardless that moment gave me purpose for the rest of my life. The concept and understanding of Jesus would change again in the future, but for that point and purpose in my life, it was what I needed.

Within a few months of that pivotal moment I began really exploring who God was in my life.  I started talking with God and God with me and it was in those earliest days that I remember my faith being pure and genuine.  If God said go… I went.  It was then, when I still wasn’t exactly sure what I believed, that I realized God was calling me to Thailand.  It’s a funny thing knowing that the God of the universe is calling you to be of service to another country around the world when you have no idea what you believe about that God except that he’s pretty rad and he likes you and you like him back.  But there it was.  I trusted the pull and the power and Jill sat back and watched it happen—often thinking I was crazy but enjoying the show regardless.

A lot of people thought my conversations and directions from God were crazy.  Only two people seemed to understand or (at least) hide their real thoughts: my mother and Jill.  They just let me find my way… and find my way I did.  Jill was there so many times when I was going through broken and breaking relationships, through moving to school (and further from her) and finally getting my license and she was there through money problems, physical problems and family problems.  Even though she was often physically far from me at this point in my life she was always close by.  When all else had failed Jill was ever present.

I spent holidays with Jill.  One Thanksgiving and a Christmas.  Her daughter was my favorite kid and her husband never ceased to get on my nerves and point me in the right direction.  Their family was often the peace and escape I needed to gain perspective—and whenever I stayed with them we were in Church on Sunday.  Jill, and her family, provided the example I needed to see what God was in very simple terms.  God was all about consistency.  Jill was all about consistency.  I wanted to be all about consistency.  God was also all about gratitude and God was all about the presence and the power and the belief that regardless of our own understanding of doctrine we could worship together.

After a few years I began seriously searching for my own understanding of God.  I was desperately afraid of my parent’s disapproval on my own interpretation of scripture and my own development… but then there was Jill. She loved me and accepted me whether I liked Jesus or was a pagan; I was safe no matter what.  I never feared disappointment from Jill and having that support gave me the freedom to find God exactly as I understood him… even when it didn’t agree with our church’s theology or even when it didn’t agree with my parent’s theology.  And this was pivotal.  I realized that the greatest love I needed was the love in that freedom.

In this freedom I developed an understanding of God that was deeper and more awesome than I thought possible.  I dwelled with the Creator.  I learned Hebrew and Greek and I read scriptures.  I worshipped in Buddhist monasteries, mosques, sweat lodges, various churches and kirtans.  I put aside my fear of my parent’s judgment and relied on the freedom in Jill’s love and acceptance to fully explore the amazingness of God’s love.  I hung out with Jesus, Buddha, Allah and the Divine Mother.  I learned how to pray and meditate and to fully understand obedience.  I found out who I wanted Hannah to be.  I wanted Hannah to be simple and something amazing.  I lost everything for the shit in the bottom of a bag once; I would gladly sacrifice what I had for the sake of something better.  I decided my service was to God first—and if that meant living a life of service to the people around me then that is what I would do.

So I went to Thailand.. and then I went again and then a third time.  I finished college with a degree in religion and found that my God was ever present throughout it.  So was Jill.  In school, I called Jill or went to her house when I couldn’t handle the stress of school anymore.  In Thailand, I called Jill from overseas to get perspective and to find balance.  Perhaps it’s this balance that allowed me to find hope and understanding— regardless of what was going on around me.  I had peace and freedom and love.  Then one day, that peace, freedom, and love weren’t just coming from Jill… they were coming from me.  Whatever Jill had had, she gave to me and now, I had the ability to give them to myself.  For the first time in as long as I can remember I could look in the mirror and just like myself.  I liked me.  I loved me.

This woman who had so tenderly and softly loved me back to Jesus and given me the gift to love myself.  Because she had consistently loved me for so long, I could believe that I was worth loving.  She showed me that I was worth the effort to love.  I felt beautiful on my own for the first time in my entire life.  No one had to tell me, no one had to validate me and I didn’t need some physical imitation of love to corroborate what I already knew was true.  I was free.  Jill gave me this sense of freedom in my own life.  We are still friends and probably always will.  I joke often that Jill is the woman who loved me back to Jesus, but she didn’t just love me back to a God that I could understand… she loved me until I was able to fully love myself.  Gratitude doesn’t begin to express the realities that I am present in today.

Interlude 2

Interlude 2

 I don’t care what anyone thinks, she thought, Vegas is fucked up. And with that she laid down her straight, won the $500 pot in the middle of the table, and stood up. She haughtily gathered her chips, allowing her cleavage to be displayed to every loser at the table. She had a thin facade of beauty and she was holding it up quite nicely. She was good at winning and good at looking hot while she did it.

The reality of the situation was so different. Outside of the game, in life, she never had a straight… everything was one big bluff.

I need a drink, an 8 ball and I need a man to fuck that isn’t my husband. That’s what I need.

She had been in Vegas for a week now and didn’t particularly give two shits and a fuck about who or what she had to climb over to get the attention, affection and drugs she needed to make herself feel better. They could go fuck themselves for all she cared. She’d had a hard life and she deserved to have what she wanted, when she wanted it, all the time. Anyone who thought differently was easily swept up in the tornado that her drug use and spending had become and they were effortlessly spit out-

She walked over to her new favorite bar inside the shopping mall of the Aladdin Casino and sat down. She plopped her Guess purse on the bar and her large 24-karat hoops dangled from her ears. She had all the things that made her look good and she pretended that she was good. Sometimes even she believed that she was good. She had a hard time telling the difference between reality and the lies inside her head. She’d feel better soon. She didn’t know why she needed to feel better. She didn’t feel anyway. The feeling had stopped months ago and, though she often wished she were dead, the dull throb of nothingness was better than the onslaught of crazy she felt whenever she stopped using for a few days.

Mark, the owner and bartender, walked over and placed her favorite beer on the counter without even asking. She’d only been there a week and he already knew her name and her beer. Just the way I like it, she thought.

After exchanging a few words about where her husband might be she changed the subject to other services that she needed. He turned, picked up the phone and dialed. He said a few words and smiled while looking her direction. He hung up, nodded at her and then helped another customer who at the bar. She smiled to herself; her husband’s money got her everything she needed. She would keep the winnings from the poker game to herself… just in case he cut the purse strings again. A visible smirk appeared on her face and she took a long drink. She pulled a cigarette out of her handbag and lit it with her over priced lighter.

She took a drag and took a drink and took a drag and took a drink. The alcohol began to sink in and she swayed to some nameless song playing overhead as she waited. She didn’t have to wait long. A man walked up to the bar and sat next to her.

He was attractive and something about him just lured her in. They exchanged words and, had one blinked they would have missed the switch. While exchanging flirtatious small talk, he moved his hand to hers, which was resting on the bar, and as if to hold it. Instead of holding her hand, he slipped three, quarter-sized baggies under it. Simultaneously, she slipped $160 into the back pocket of his jeans, all the while flipping her hair and slipping her leg softly between his. The touch was nothing but sexual and necessary. She needed touch in the worst way.

They discussed meeting up later if she was on her own. He pulled away gently and sauntered off as if he’d never been there. She laughed as she felt herself getting wet. Damn, I’ve got this shit handled. She was surprised how horny deals like that with men like those still made her. She finished off her beer, smiled at Mark and slipped the baggies into her purse discreetly. She needed to find a private restroom as soon as possible.

“Save my seat Mark, I’ll be back in a minute”

Mark nodded and watched her from behind the bar as she walked off to snort her score. He shook his head; he couldn’t help but feel sorry for a girl like that.