August 5, 2008
So this is love…
P and I have been going to meetings together since last Fall. He’s a self-proclaimed redneck intellectual with a long overgrown beard and ice blue eyes I didn’t look into until we’d known each other nearly 3 months. He’s gruff and sweary and likes to tell dirty jokes. He emails me pictures of birds and flowers and when we get coins for our sobriety time, we pass them first to each other for a blessing and a wish. In February, he stopped coming to our meeting ( “our” meeting, like it’s just his and mine), and I began to panic. I craned my neck around and would ask the others: “Have you seen P?” Where could he be?
But I knew. He was drinking again.
When he came back through the door a few weeks later, he had his hat pulled back down over his face and dark glasses covering his eyes. He sat next to me in his chair and I rested my hand on his knee. When they called on me to speak, I started sobbing like someone who has just been told she is missing a limb, but OH WAIT!! Here it is again!! — a strange combination of relief and sorrow and grief at how fragile this life is. How much I depend on the others, my sweet friends like P., to get me through. Am I really this weak and dependent? Yes. Absolutely yes.
P will have 6 months this Saturday and yesterday he told me, eyes lowered, that he is moving away. I felt the lump in my throat and looked away long enough to swallow my fake good wishes. “It will be ok, sweetie, we can still email,” he tells me, but I’m not so sure.
I turn to him and pretend to joke, “You know, P, I find this move of yours incredibly selfish. What about me? We were supposed to keep taking our time together!!”
He knows I mean it. He puts his hand on my knee. I put my head on his shoulder and breathe, fingers crossed, prayers sent to God or whoever, Please keep him safe. Keep both of us sober.
***
I had the great honor to be included in a wonderful dinner the other evening in Seattle. L and I have known each other through emails and stories from our partners (who are good friends), but I wasn’t prepared for how sweet, kind, funny, and completely adorable he is in person. The dinner was a farewell of sorts*** and I had to excuse myself part way through because I couldn’t keep my composure. No greater buzz kill than a sober person at a goodbye dinner who is crying into her Diet Coke.
***Message from L. who has Terminal Cancer***
Please get your skin checked by a dermatologist for a baseline and then regularly after that. Please do what you love NOW and don’t put it off.
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You have such a huge heart. You put on that tough exterior, but that heart of yours??
I’m sorry you’re losing your friend. And I’ve shed plenty of tears into Diet Coke myself.
August 5th, 2008 at 2:51 pmSounds like it was a heart wrenching weekend…and it sounds like love to me.
Take care.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:43 pmLove you and keep up the good work.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:46 pmYou see, once again I’m proud of you. YOo have so much love in your heart.
August 5th, 2008 at 4:41 pmHang tight, Redsy. You are strong.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:38 am