Outside my window, I heard the sounds of the Tenderloin. It was full of the hookers, the hustlers, and the violence I escaped when I went into rehab. My walls were scrubbed white, no pictures or posters. There was no carpet, no knickknacks to make things comfortable for me. I was hyper-aware that I was in transition, just like this place. This was not where I wanted to stay in life, but it was all I could handle at the moment.
My needs were simple: a safe place to sleep, a phone call to my mother once a week, a television to watch crime stories that wrapped up neatly at the end of each episode to put me to sleep at night. I was glad to be close to places to eat, because even though there were cooking facilities in my building, I was not sure how to use them. This living situation allowed me to keep my focus on staying clean as my number one priority. The three and a half months I had spent in the program was simply not enough to have a solid foundation for a new life. Eight years of heavy using cannot be erased in forty-two days of intensive treatment. Plus, I had had one foot out the door as soon as I got to rehab—I spent the last half of my stay focusing on working to save enough money to leave. The majority of my healing would need to occur out in the community. The simplicity of my life was a relief, but that relief was rooted in insecurity and fear. I was afraid to do anything other than go to work or meetings because I feared any variation in my pattern would lead to relapse. With the sudden appearance of this man from my past, I could feel the facade begin to tremble as my hands had when I left the ATM that day. I was holding back a mountain of emotions that could fall on me at any moment.
The next morning, I looked through my clothes for something to wear to work. The few pieces I had were hung in perfect alignment. My shoes, all eight uncomfortable pairs of them, were neatly placed at equal distance from each other. Today, especially, everything must be just so for me to be okay with myself.
Standing in front of my meager closet, I tried to push away the thoughts that were making it difficult to get out the door. Don’t wear that, you look ridiculous, and Don’t call your sponsor, she does not want to hear about your problems. I changed my clothes hurriedly three times. With each time, the voices were telling me it was not good enough.
Out of pure frustration, I tried to isolate these voices. The main one was that of an old ex-boyfriend. It was not enough that he had abused me in the past. Now, it was as if he was sitting in the room talking to me in that same condescending tone.
He had this intensity about him that made me feel as if he was the only one who mattered. To prove he loved me so much, he got a tattoo of my name. What devotion, right? He separated me from friends who had any doubts about his sincerity, and I became more isolated from everyone except him. Soon it was as if I could do nothing to make him happy. As he constantly reminded me, “Who would want you anyway?” Alone in our apartment, it was me and him and all my mistakes. After he hit me, I finally left him, only to find out he had been sleeping with my friend, validating my deep fear that I was unworthy of love. I ended up homeless and turned to heavy drugs to numb the pain in a matter of weeks of our separation. This was the first time I had reflected on him in years. I had spent so much time in his shadow, I became accustomed to that dark place.
You are worthless. I realized his voice was the main one in my mind. Worthless: The word still echoed in my mind. I would lift up a drink and push down the things he told me. Now I was stone-cold sober. I wished I could tell him to shut up. I hadn’t even seen him in nearly a decade. Hadn’t I already given him too much time and space? He was the first in the chorus of negativity that had to go. I knew I would have to unravel all the voices before I could trust myself to make good choices. He was the first man who was abusive to me. Unfortunately, more followed. If I was ever going to be happy in my recovery I would have to get emotionally healthy first. I had to find out why I kept repeating the same patterns, expecting different results.
I went to visit one of my former counselors at the treatment facility to ask for help. She had warned me in the past, “When your arms are going around their necks to hug them at those meetings, they are patting your ass.” Her observation proved to be dead right.
This time she handed me a sheet of paper and said, “Be selective, sweetie.” The paper she gave me directed me to a women-only support group. I took this to mean she didn’t think I was ready to make good decisions about men.
When I got to the meeting, I took my place with a small group at a table in the back.
The group leader started by asking us, “What does it mean to be a woman in recovery?”
No one made eye contact with each other, and no one said a word. I recognized the facilitator from my stint in the county jail, when she had first invited me to this group. She had invited me again when I was in residential treatment. When the women would come for her group, the men would snicker, “There goes the hoes.” I was not willing to get labeled back then. My attitude was much different now. Huddled there in search of rebuilding our lives, we each had paid a high price for dope, yet no one wanted to be the first one to admit it.
“Who here has had sex for drugs?” she asked. The facilitator was not expecting us to raise our hands. She said it to build identification.
She continued. “Who here had sex with someone and thought you were going to get drugs, but that never happened?” There was a round of nervous laughter. The instant identification washed over us. It was soothing. Yes, I had sex for drugs. Yes, I turned dates thinking I was going to get paid and got ripped off in the process. But who was going to admit these things?
I used plenty of excuses not to connect with people at group meetings. I told myself they couldn’t possibly understand. Oh, you don’t live outside the facility? Then you aren’t like me. You used for twenty years? Something must be seriously wrong with you. You never went to jail? Then what do you know about my situation? If you still have a house and job, clearly we have nothing in common. This ritual was the slow sabotage performed by generations of recovering addicts silently planning a relapse.
If I wanted to stay in the clean and sober world, I must be willing to purge the burden of my past. I took a deep breath and raised my hand.
“My name is Tracey. I am struggling to stay clean.” I stumbled on these simple words, but kept going. “I know what this life has in store for me if I go back to using drugs, but I don’t know how to go forward, either.”
I had no trouble admitting I was a drug addict. Admitting that I had degraded myself for drugs was much more difficult. The same people who could understand a drug arrest became unforgiving when it came to prostitution. How could you do that? How could you go that far? I wanted to tell them it really wasn’t difficult to cross that line. I had slept with a few strangers after a drunken night out at the bars. Why not get paid for it? It seemed like perfect logic. I had a habit to support, these men had their needs. It was mutual usury. I used to repeat a line from Orwell’s 1984: “Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, you sold me.” At the time it had seemed like a trade-off, not a compromise. Now I was left feeling alone and ashamed.
I forced the words out into the open: “I had sex for money.” There, I said it. It was liberating for me. “I went to the ATM the other day and ran into one of my clients. I was taking out $40—the exact same amount he used to pay me for a blow job.”
Once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. “I walk by the same spot by City Hall every day. I just want to smash someone’s face whenever I walk there.” One night I had been walking the street looking for a client. I was off heroin but had taken Klonopin and Xanax to take the edge off, without realizing what would happen when the pills hit me. As I walked through the park in front of City Hall, a man waved me over to the stairwell. “What time is it?” he asked as I approached him. Before I could answer, he pulled out a steak knife and put it to my face.
“I’ll do what you want,” I said. “Just don’t cut my face.” I took down my own pants and he clumsily took care of his business. Afterward, he m
ade me sit with him for almost an hour while he smoked crack. He wanted to walk me home like we were on a date. He finally let me leave. I found out later he was a pimp who had been down on his luck that night. I saw him again another time and started yelling, “You motherfucker, I know what you did to me.” He took out a gun and stuck it to my head.
“Go ahead, shoot me, kill me,” I said. “You’d be doing me a favor.”
One of his girls pushed me away and he told her, “This bitch is crazy.” Maybe I was out of my mind. Maybe I should have fought for myself instead of letting him take advantage of me without a fight. This was one of the memories I was trying to stuff down. That night on the stairwell came back to me with every attempt to stay clean. On many starless nights, when I felt the most alone, I would go back to that spot. I would take off my backpack. I would pull off my sweatshirt to provide myself with a comfortable seat. I would look over to the spot. They had built a playground there. I would sit there and I would cry. Not a noisy sob, but a suppressed moment of sadness when the tears fell silently. I’d been at this spot when I was twenty-two years old. That was a mere six months after I had come to the city. My life was changed inexorably that night. It was as if every visitor who walked to City Hall trampled on my lost innocence, or perhaps what little innocence I had left by that time.
These were the memories that made it hard to sleep at night. These were the things that had me looking over my shoulder. My new therapist said I had PTSD. She told me I had disassociated that night. My mind and my spirit had left my body. They had protected me from harm. As I faced my life without drugs, it was hard to keep those parts of myself in the same place at the same time. While my body attempted to heal from all the damage, my mind frequently wandered back to that night or other nights I wanted to forget. This group was helping me, but how long could I maintain my sanity when these were the places, people, and memories I passed every day?
When I left the support group, I stepped onto the sidewalk and got a whiff of Popeyes chicken. This whole section of Divisadero smelled like laundry and fried chicken. I decided to grab a few pieces before I got on the bus home.
Some of the other women wanted to walk with me, but I was wary. Women on the street are taught to be competition, not allies. I would have to learn to trust again. For now, I just wanted to be alone. I adjusted my baseball hat. My hair was slicked back into a ponytail. I had on saggy Ben Davis pants, a pressed Ben Davis shirt, a silver chain from my mother, and black Nike Cortez shoes that were hurting my feet even though they were sneakers. These shoes were only for show, anyway. I modeled myself to look like a drug dealer I had admired. I had the air of someone who still ruled the streets and was merely on a substance-free vacation facilitated by the criminal justice system. It was not lost on me that these were the same people I saw pushing a shopping cart or looking for a rock in the gutter. Was I any different? Honestly, who the fuck was I? What was I doing in these clothes and in this place, anyway? I was so raw after the group meeting. I didn’t want to cry in public. I blinked as hard as I could and told myself, Why don’t you go home and cry like a little bitch.
A few months later, after a similar night at my support group, I was waiting alone for the bus with my usual fried chicken. Letting go of some of the most painful parts of my using history had allowed me to come out of my shell. But I was still thankful the Muni bus was not too crowded tonight. It would only be a fifteen-minute ride over the hill to my place. As I headed for an empty seat in the back of the bus, I heard someone call out, “Tracey, is that really you?”
I did not look at the face. I was tired of talking after group, and I knew what was happening here. San Francisco is a small city. It is only seven miles across by seven miles wide. He had seen the HBO movie I was in. It had been out for a few months at this point. From the day the movie aired, my story belonged to the public. And after sharing in group, I was completely opened up and vulnerable. I had told some part of these stories before, just bits and pieces. But this was the first group where I felt comfortable enough to really open up. I could do it in front of a group of women because they knew what it was like, which made it less painful somehow. For the first time since I had put down the needle, I was feeling hopeful that perhaps someone could understand the complexities of my sorrow over my choices.
Now here it was again. The past was in my face. The film made it impossible for me to deny what had happened during those years. Six months before it aired, I had made a pilgrimage to Ohio to prepare my family for the worst. It was right before the holidays, and I felt like the ghost of Christmas past returning at the worst time of year. My family was accepting of me despite the fact that we had no common points of reference. I hadn’t spent any meaningful time with them since I was a teenager. Now the adults suddenly had gray hair. And I was covered in scars, inside and out. Yet, I was desperate to connect with these people. My heroin addiction was more than just what happened to me; it was a loss to my family. We were strangers. I was still alive, but in many ways, I no longer existed to them.
I had purposely stopped calling home at one point while I was using. I used to imagine my mother sitting on her green plaid Ethan Allen sofa watching the Lifetime network with her cordless phone next to her on the blanket, waiting for a phone call that never came. Toward the end of my addiction, I had started calling again, and my mother started supplying me with money. I lied and told her I was clean, yet I am certain she heard in my voice that I was on something. By the time I went home for this trip, we had spent many months of Sundays rebuilding our relationship with extended phone conversations. I was no longer calling to ask her for things. I was now providing her with the peace of mind she needed to sleep at night. Finally, she could know I was safe. When I saw her in Ohio I had been away for so long, but to her it was like I had never left. That was because she had never given up the hope that one day the prodigal daughter would finally return home.
One night during my extended stay, the emotions of the day began to overwhelm me. As my family toasted my success, I began to slowly crave the alcohol they enjoyed. The visit was like being in an alternate universe where we were somehow a normal family again. For most of my life, I had seen my mother fight to get my father off alcohol. To see him there slowly sipping a beer as if it was an ordinary event struck me. What is happening here? I asked myself. The drinking, the happiness, and the familiarity—which I felt no part of—began to overwhelm me. My family laughed over events that meant nothing to me. I had no clever stories of my own to share. As the night wound down, I went upstairs to the guest room in my brother’s house. My mouth was literally watering with cravings for a drink.
I paced back and forth in that guest room. My heart was in my chest. Maybe I am okay now. Maybe I can have a drink like everyone else. How is it my father can have a drink and still have a family? Why is it I am the only one who can’t enjoy a normal evening with a beer in my hand? I got down on my knees. “God, Buddha, Allah, whoever you are . . .” I whispered to the universe. “Please don’t let me use—just for today.”
In a split second of meditation, my mind became crystal clear. Yes, some people can work and drink. They can maintain a house, they can maintain a family. But I am not one of those people. Not me. They will have a few drinks then go to bed. I knew that I, on the other hand, would have a few drinks, then a few more, then I would walk out in the snow to the housing projects to get some crack. Because that is how my mind works. I don’t need to be jealous of what anyone else can do or have. I simply need to preserve what I have worked so hard for: peace of mind.
When that man approached me on the bus, he was fucking with my serenity. I had completed a good session with a powerful group of women. I was in the zone. I felt better than I would have if I had done two hours on the treadmill. I had released some of the baggage of my past. I left it at the door of the meeting. I also was vulnerable. Anytime I opened up about my feelings, I opened myself up to be hurt.
“Who do you think I am?” I s
aid to the voice on the bus. I asked myself this question all the time, too. I wondered if, in a crowd full of people, I could be picked out as the addict.
Like a rabbit in a metal trap as the jaws snapped shut on my leg, I heard him say those dreaded words, “You want to get high?”
After exposing my fears at the support meeting, I was feeling so raw, so open, as if someone could walk right into me. I didn’t say anything, but I didn’t move on either, as I held on to my two-piece-and-biscuit for dear life.
“Well, do you want to get high with me?” He insisted in a louder, determined whisper. “When I saw you in the movie, I thought to myself, there is a person I could get high with. You look really good right now. So healthy.”
Healthy. When you get off drugs, “You’re so healthy” becomes code for “Look at how fucking fat you are now.” When it came to men, my self-esteem was in the toilet. I had to admit that, for a moment, those drugs were sounding more and more appealing to me. This was the moment every heroin addict faces, when your will is tested by an old bag of dope you find in a pocket, a phone call from a dealer, or a sudden feeling of disillusionment when getting high seems a viable option.
The Big Fix Page 7