We All Fall Down

by Nic Sheff

  “Now,” he says, kinda growling real low at her. “Tallulah, off the couch, right now.”

  She doesn’t move. She just stays staring, staring up at him with her clouded eyes.

  “Come on,” he tries again. “Get off. Right now. I mean it.”

  His hairy hand inches closer, but still she doesn’t move.

  “Tallulah!” he suddenly yells, startling the whole lot of us. “Off the couch! Now!”

  Tallulah doesn’t like that one bit.

  She lunges up at him so fast he barely has time to flinch.

  Her barking is loud and vicious, and it’s only by total luck that I’m able to jump and tackle her before she actually gets her teeth into him.

  Of course, she yelps all over the place when I pin her down, but she doesn’t try to bite me at all, so I’m able to get her leash back on and help calm her. She even finally licks my hand and I kiss the top of her head without really thinking. I mean, what can I say? She’s a dog after my own heart.

  But obviously I pretend to be really angry at her, and I am genuinely apologetic, and Jock and Pam try to be polite about the whole thing. I guess we’re all trying to figure out how to get out of this without too much awkwardness. Sue Ellen makes some excuses for Tallulah’s behavior, and we all agree that she’s a dog that needs to be worked with a lot, and we theorize about how she ended up the way she is. The two of them never do actually tell us straight-out they don’t want her, but we go ahead and load her back in the car anyway and say good-bye and get the hell out of there as fast as possible.

  We drive in silence for a while—windows down, the cold purifying somehow. Tallulah has climbed up onto Sue Ellen’s lap, and even though she’s big and bony, Sue Ellen lets her stay. We’re both petting her absently, and the cold is all around us.

  I’m not sure how much time passes, but suddenly I look over at Sue Ellen and notice she’s really crying hard. I mean, she’s just crying and crying, and when I ask her what’s wrong, she tells me she doesn’t think she can stand letting Tallulah go to anyone else.

  “No one will ever be good to her the way we are,” she manages to get out through little gasps of breath. “No one will take the time to try ’n’ understand her.”

  I glance down at the stupid fucking nutjob of a dog.

  “Yeah,” I say. “She’s just kind of our dog, isn’t she? I mean, she fits with us—and, uh, I don’t think she’d really fit with anyone else.”

  Sue Ellen nods. “Nic, I don’t mind taking care of her while you’re on tour, okay? I know I said I did, but I promise you I don’t. I wanna keep her, Nic. Is it okay if we keep her?”

  I lean over and kiss both of them, even though I’m still driving.

  “Yeah, we’ll keep her,” I say, focusing on the road again. “I don’t think we ever had a choice.”

  Sue Ellen laughs at that. “No, we never did.”

  She reaches over and turns on the CD player.

  I roll up the windows.

  We all three of us drive home.

  Ch.29

  So, he’s here, you know? Standing right next to me.

  It’s been such a long time, and yet, in a way, it’s been no time at all. I take the warmth of his hand in mine. I put my arm around his shoulder. I lay my head against his chest. I am twenty-four years old. I am a little child. He is my dad. He’s the one who raised me—the one who got me up for school in the morning, made my lunch, tied my shoes. He’s the one who helped me with my homework, came to my sports games, plays, parent-teacher conferences. He’s the one who was there—every day—every night—when I woke up screaming, terrified, calling out his name. He was the one.

  And then, again, he was the one who was there when I came home strung out and crazy and sick and rambling. He was the one who answered my desperate phone calls. He was the one who drove me to rehab, visited me in rehab, had his stomach torn out every time I relapsed—and then relapsed again. He was the one who tried to find me, tried to help me, even when I threw the help back in his face. He was the one who didn’t give up on me. He was the one who couldn’t let me go.

  But then what happened? It all got so tangled and frantic, and he couldn’t let me figure things out on my own. He wanted to control me. He was too frightened not to. So I had to go away—show him that he didn’t need to manage my life anymore—that I could do it on my own—that the words of a counselor at a rehab center weren’t necessarily gospel. Because I really do believe that’s how he came to feel. And it’s not like I can blame him. He watched me fall and fall again. He watched me as I lived so close to dying that I barely even lived at all. He watched, powerless. He watched, waiting for some kind of answer—waiting for anything, anyone, who would promise to fix me. And that’s what those rehabs promised—they promised to make me well. It was all he had to hold on to—the one hope, the one solution. Obviously he was gonna freak out when I decided to go against what the “experts” were telling me—you know, ditching out of that rehab in New Mexico and running off to the other side of the goddamn country. I totally get it. I understand. And, well, at this point, I just hope we can try ’n’ put it all behind us, move forward, be friends again. ’Cause that’s what we are—truly—friends. We’ve always been friends. And, man, it’s great to be able to be here with him. It’s amazing, really. I mean, I’m so thankful we’re doing this together.

  Being on book tour this winter is basically like the weirdest fucking thing ever. I feel like a fraud, like somehow I tricked all these people into thinking I have something to say. I feel like a fraud staying in nice hotels, ordering room service, having everything paid for when I barely even have enough money in my checking account to buy cigarettes. Professional drivers pick my dad and me up at the airport, take us to events, have complimentary bottles of water waiting for us. At bookstores people ask for our autographs. I mean, they actually want my signature. They want me to sign copies of the book that I wrote. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like somehow I stepped into someone else’s life. It’s like I’m a little kid playing dress-up—pretending to be an adult—pretending to know what the hell I’m doing when I’ve really got no clue at all. The concierge at the hotel calls me “sir” and “Mr. Sheff,” and I just bust out laughing. It’s a joke. I’m no “mister” or “sir” or whatever. All I am is a genuine, run-of-the-mill fuck up. I mean, hell, just look at me. I’m a fucking mess. I don’t deserve any of this.

  But, I mean, somehow I keep walking through it all. I go on photo shoots, get interviewed by magazines and newspapers, make TV and radio appearances—doing most of the big-time programs, including the Today show and Oprah and Terry Gross and, man, it’s all so surreal I can’t even believe it. I fly to New York. I fly to Chicago. I fly to Boston, Minneapolis, Toronto, St. Louis, Dallas, Portland, Seattle. And I’ll tell you what, if I didn’t have my dad here with me, I don’t think I could do it. We support each other. We laugh about the craziness. We go out to movies at night when the hectic days are over. We talk about missing our respective families. We swim laps in the hotel pool. He holds my hand. I hold his. I rest my head on his shoulder. We stand at the podium together, addressing more than a thousand students from a high school in Boston somewhere.

  To tell you the truth, this gig speaking at a high school scares me way more than anything else we’ve done so far. I’m not sure why that is, exactly. My dad has spoken first, like he almost always does, telling his own story briefly and laying the fundamental groundwork of our situation before introducing me. For the most part, I’d say the kids look skeptical. I watch them whispering to one another, rolling their eyes, goofing around. Not that I can blame them. When I was in high school, which really wasn’t all that long ago, I remember being so totally annoyed anytime we had some stupid drug assembly. Mostly my friends and I would spend the whole time making fun of the speakers—picking them apart. I mean, seriously, you do not want to mess with a pack of surly teenagers. They’re just about the meanest motherfuckers on the entire goddamn planet. Plu
s the people giving the drug talks were always such layups, you know, total squares—completely clueless. They were easy targets, and we showed no mercy, and as I look around the theater, I can tell my dad and I are getting the same goddamn treatment. Hell, in a lot of ways I feel like I’m right back in high school again, fighting desperately each day to avoid social annihilation. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I hated high school. I dreaded every single minute of it. It was a nightmare. And for some stupid reason, when my dad calls me to the podium, that’s actually the first thing that comes outta my mouth.

  “Man,” I say, voice trembling, acutely aware of the principal sitting there in the front row looking humorless. “Man, I know I probably shouldn’t say this, but, uh, goddamn, am I thankful I’m not in high school anymore. I mean, high school really sucked hard.”

  The whole auditorium erupts in laughter and applause, and I make sure not to make eye contact with Mr. Principal Man.

  “I don’t know,” I continue. “I’m not sure what to tell y’all, exactly. When I was in school, I sat through hundreds of stupid, you know, ‘drugs are bad’ assemblies, and obviously they never did a damn thing for me.”

  A bunch of the kids cheer at that, so I just keep talking, feeling like maybe some of them might actually be listening.

  “I guess the truth is, I’m not antidrug at all. I’m not gonna stand here and tell you drugs are bad, ’cause I don’t believe that. Drugs aren’t bad. I mean, I’d say crystal meth and heroin and coke are all pretty gross, but it’s not like they’re inherently evil or anything. I was in a lot of pain, that’s all. I always felt like I was some alien dropped off on this planet by mistake. I just couldn’t relate to most people. I felt alone and scared and, I don’t know, like a total freak or something. I think my biggest fear was that someone would see who I really was and then expose to the world the fact that I really was defective—no good—worthless, unlovable, a mistake. There was this despair in me that was just overpowering. I spent all my time waiting—either waiting for school to be over each day, or dreading having to go back. But, then again, being at home wasn’t all that great, either. I guess I was waiting for something to come change my life—you know, take me away from it all. And when I was twelve years old, well, I found it. One of my friend’s older brothers was a pot dealer, and so he brought some to school, and we went off into the bushes to go smoke, and it was like, yeah, instantly all that fear and self-loathing really just went away. Smoking pot was like the answer to all my problems. It felt like it was saving my life. And, I mean, I think it was… at least for a while.”

  Something catches in my throat, and I pause for a few seconds to take a drink of water. The entire audience is completely silent—staring up at me like… like they’re fucking listening. And as I keep talking and, you know, keep telling my story, I look out into the crowd and, uh, yeah, the kids are paying attention. They’re laughing and gasping, and it’s just weird—I mean, they’re not just blowing me off. It almost feels like some of ’em might be getting something from what I’m saying, even though I know that’s probably stupid. Nothing anyone ever said to me made one bit of difference in terms of the decisions I made with my life. I was gonna do what I was gonna do, regardless. No one could’ve possibly changed anything for me. I had to make my own mistakes.

  But, then again, there were a couple things people said that did stick with me. Not like they were gonna make me do a total one-eighty or anything, but they were still there, nonetheless—nagging at me—corroding the complex, nearly flawless infrastructure of denial and self-justification I’d constructed all around me. They fucked with my high. They held me back from losing myself so completely. Hell, they even say that about the twelve steps—something about how once you start going to meetings, you’ll never be able to go back to getting high the way you used to. And it’s the truth. Once I had some knowledge about alcoholism and addiction, it was impossible to go back to using all carefree and fun. The meetings and the things people told me had pierced the armor of my fantasy world. Somewhere inside I knew the truth. And, yeah, once it was there, I could never get rid of it completely. Even tweaked out of my brain, holed up in some apartment—even then a little twelve-step saying or whatever would come creeping into my consciousness, poisoning me with doubt and unwanted self-reflection. ’Cause, yeah, people definitely aren’t lying when they say ignorance is bliss. The only problem is, well, in this case ignorance can kill you. And the bliss doesn’t really last that long, anyway.

  So, who knows, maybe these kids are hearing something that might stick with them, and maybe they aren’t. Either way, they do seem fairly entertained, so at least that’s something, right? They laugh at my dumb jokes and gasp at the brutal parts and stay quiet in the sad parts, and it feels good. I tell them my story, and I try not to swear, and I follow the fifteen-minute time limit as best I can.

  When I finish, the crowd really applauds loud and long, and I’d say at this point I’m mostly just glad it’s over. I mean, we still have, like, a ten-minute question-and-answer period left, but that’s actually the part I like the most, anyway. I way prefer listening to other people’s shares, rather than blabbering on about myself. So I ask the audience if they might have any questions, and surprisingly, like, twenty hands shoot up. In fact, each time someone asks a question or shares or whatever, more and more of the kids keep raising their hands and shouting things out and getting super excited about participating.

  But after answering a question from a boy who asks what I think he should say to his friend who recently started doing cocaine, I notice a young, slightly overweight girl with black ringlets raising her arm up very straight and still—crying silently, so her heavy black eyeliner is smudged and running down her sickly pale, translucent skin. Of course, I can’t help but call on her. I mean, it definitely seems like there’s something she wants to say real bad.

  So, yeah, I call on her, and the entire auditorium goes quiet as she struggles to let her voice out.

  “Th-thank you for sharing your story with us,” she stammers, her still-childish voice wavering unsteadily. “It was very… uh… br-brave of you. And you… you’ve made me realize that I need to ask for help. I’m… I’m exactly like everything you said. I feel exactly the same way you did. You said it all perfectly. And… I… I don’t know… I’m really scared. I need help. My… my mom and dad just got custody of me and my sisters back after seven years, but now they’ve started using meth again, and I know I’m not supposed to tell anyone, but they’re really scaring me. And now I’ve started doing it, too… just a couple times, but, still, I had all the same feelings you had, and now I don’t know what to do.”

  She cries hard and loud. There are a couple of her friends sitting next to her who take turns cradling her while she cries. Everyone else in the auditorium is beyond quiet.

  “Man,” I say stupidly into the microphone. “What you just did was so amazing and brave and totally inspirational, and I wish I could make everything better, you know? I wish I could tell you what the right thing to do is. But, I will say this, having just shared right now, like you did, is absolutely the first step. Everyone knows now. And I bet that’s pretty scary, but it also means that now you’ll be able to, hopefully, depend on the community here to give you the support you need—especially if you don’t have that support at home. So all I can really tell you is just to keep being open about what’s going on with you, and I’ll totally give your principal here some contacts for professionals you might want to talk to and… and… shit, I don’t know. I’m so impressed with how courageous you are. I wish more than anything I’d had that kind of bravery and insight when I was your age.”

  I see her nod as her friends continue to hold and rock her in their arms. The rest of us stay silent for a while—doing what? I don’t know—just breathing, maybe. We are all here together, and I feel this intense closeness suddenly with every one of these kids. I mean, I have to admit, it’s pretty amazing to realize that through get
ting honest about my own shit, I’ve allowed other people to maybe start doing the same thing in their own lives. It’s weird. But, uh, cool, too. And being here, I do have this feeling like this could be something I truly want to do with my life, you know? Beyond writing, beyond TV shows and movie deals, it’s this, right now, talking with these kids about addiction, that makes me excited about the future. I want to start working with other addicts. Hell, maybe down the road I could even open a sober living for young people or something—give back—try ’n’ have some kind of impact—create something positive out of all the fucked-up shit I’ve done. It could happen. It totally could. At least, it’s a little lovely dream to hold on to.

  And I do.

  I hold on to that dream.

  But then one of the kids in the audience shouts out another question, and I don’t even hear it ’cause I’m so lost in my head.

  “I’m sorry, what?” I ask, looking over at the kinda wannabe gangsta kid standing toward the back. He takes off his Red Sox hat as if that’ll make me hear any better, shouting, “What about weed? Do you smoke weed?”

  My heart seems to freeze up for a second, but I recover quickly, laughing it off.

  “Hey, man, I used to smoke weed, like, all day, every day, and, uh, you know, again, I wouldn’t say there’s anything wrong with the substance in particular. I mean, to me it’s the same as drinking—I definitely don’t see a difference. But the problem for me was that I started using all these different substances as a way of fixing myself. So instead of having to face any of my fears or issues or anything, I just got high. And because I was high all the time, I never actually learned how to cope with anything—I never matured—and, even still, I’m like a, no offense, but, uh, sixteen-year-old trapped in a twenty-four-year-old’s body. I don’t know how to have real relationships with anyone—either romantic or otherwise—and just in general I don’t know how to live in the world. I can’t hold a job. I’ve been in and out of institutions since I was eighteen. Does pot have anything to do with that? I mean, yeah, it does. I used pot—along with everything else—as an escape from reality, right? And now I barely know how to function in reality at all. It’s super pathetic when you think about it. It’s pathetic to need drugs to get through the day. It’s embarrassing. I mean, I’m embarrassed about it. And the hell if I wanna have to keep living that way. So I choose not to today. But I can’t do it on my own. I need help. And as much as I’ve totally fought against this idea, I am learning how to reach out and get humble and take suggestions. It’s definitely a slow process, but at least I’m working in that direction. Does that make any sense at all?”