by Joey Bush
But that time was over. Instead of being lazy, I was going back to my active self. It was where I felt most comfortable and I could only imagine how much easier being active would be if I wasn’t drunk or high on some substance.
“Sure, I’ll get you on the list. The weather is pretty bad, though, so you’ll have to bundle up. I think Melinda had a list around here somewhere.”
“Thanks. And, isn’t there a yoga class sometime? I’d like to give that a try also.”
“Yes, they do yoga every morning at six,” she said with a smile.
Both Susan and I knew that I never woke up early. Mornings were like my kryptonite, but I wanted to try something new.
There was a new drive in me to actually make myself proud. Sure, it had started with Cassidy’s comments to me, and at first I had been incredibly offended. But there was some truth in what she said. I was comfortable being the lazy computer nerd type of guy. Although my body was naturally in decent shape and I still liked to lift weights at my office to blow off steam, I certainly wasn’t all that physically healthy.
Not only was I going to start participating in more of the physical things that were offered at Paradise Peak, I was also going to put some real hard effort into group sessions. I had been holding back in those for a variety of reasons, but I knew everyone in my group sessions now. There was no longer a reason to stay quiet. It was time for me to push through and see what all I could get out of my time at the center.
“Sign me up,” I said enthusiastically.
“Okay,” the nurse said skeptically as she added my name to a list. “Now, this is the kind of enthusiasm I like to see.”
Her comment warmed my heart. That was the type of feeling I wanted more often. Being noticed for doing something good was one of my favorite feelings and I hadn’t even realized it.
While I was building my tech company, I used to love when people looked shockingly at me and didn’t believe I was old enough to run a business. Their dismay and shock was uplifting to me. That element of surprise was a way I often boosted my ego.
The more I thought about my past, the more I realized that I often put on fake, shocking events in the hopes of people thinking I was better than I really was. Once, I had hired a famous musician and his band to play at my party, then went around telling everyone that he was there as a friend and we were really close. It was a stupid lie and only impressed people who I didn’t know. The band had cost over $100,000 and only played for 90 minutes.
I was kind of a douchebag, I concluded as I started adding up the lies and stories I had told over the years. And that was only when I thought about my professional life and my friends; if I dared to think about how I treated the women I slept with, those memories almost made me sick to my stomach.
One time a girl came pounding on my front door. She yelled at me for a good five minutes about not having morals and not caring who I hurt. When she was finally done yelling, I apologized for sleeping with her and hurting her feelings in a hope she would leave. But I hadn’t slept with her; the woman had been yelling at me for what I had done to her best friend and for breaking the best friend’s heart. I hadn’t even known if I had slept with the woman who was yelling at me.
My love life was non-existent. Instead of a love life, it was a sex life. There hadn’t been emotions or love involved. There was no moral compass, at all.
I wasn’t sure if I had a clearer moral compass now, but I did know that I wanted to do better in my personal life. Business would always work itself out, but my personal life was where the joy had to come from. If I ever wanted to be an old married man with a wife who loved me, I had to make some changes.
“Where you going?” Cassidy asked as I layered my clothes and readied for the hike.
“I’m hiking. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay, but I’d like to talk to you about what happened at my house.”
“I had a great time,” I said as I leaned in to her. “But you shouldn’t be talking about that here or you’ll get in trouble.”
“We can talk later,” she said.
She seemed unsure of herself and what she wanted to talk about, but I knew she wanted to talk about me leaving early. It really wasn’t meant to be rude or anything like that. I just didn’t need another day in her house to realize I still had a lot of work to do.
“Where’s everyone at?” I asked as I waited with Melanie to leave for the hike.
“It’s very cold out today. I think people are changing their mind about hiking.”
“I’m still game if you are.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” Stan said as he ran up to us.
He didn’t look like he was in good enough shape to be pounding away on another winter hike. The weather was much worse than when we had gone before. The warm, winter days full of sun had left the mountains and we were in the midst of cold snowy days again.
“We aren’t going too far. Just out two miles and back,” Melanie said as she opened the back door.
The trail was still plowed, but there were a couple inches of snow covering the path. It wasn’t enough to worry about and the boots I had worked just fine to keep my feet warm. Melanie took the lead and then me and Stan was right being us. We didn’t talk. There was no therapy going on, just three people moving through the winter trail and contemplating their own existence.
My mind filled with all the potential my future seemed to hold now that I was sober. There was no end to the possibilities. Maybe Spencer and I would invest in this new movie studio and it would be successful. We could be those Hollywood-type of guys who went to movie premieres and met famous people on a daily basis.
I thought about what it would be like to buy a home in that area, maybe even down by the beach. San Francisco wasn’t all that warm by the beach, so I had bought my home there up on the hill. But the beach sounded much more like it would be a place to relax.
Then, I let my thoughts go back to my father and brother. My father had disowned me when I left. He had been so hateful and angry. But in recent days, I had started to feel bad for him. His age and his health weren’t getting any better and I had left him with my younger brother to run things.
My anger had clouded my ability to see that my family was hurting. My father had a broken heart from losing my mother and instead of being there and trying to work things out, I stayed away.
But as I walked through the cold, mountain air, there was one thing that weighed heavier on my mind than anything else: money.
I had never sent my father and brother a single dime of money to help them out. Even after I sold my business and clearly had more money than I knew what to do with, it had never dawned on me to give back to them. I hadn’t offered to pay for the salary of a manager to the funeral home so they could take a break. I had given my own flesh and blood absolutely nothing.
The thought of my own selfishness was almost too much to handle. Never had I thought of myself as a heartless person. I had always played the victim of a father who didn’t love me and disowned me when I went to college. My own version of the story had clouded what my father had been going through at the time. And my own anger had prevented me from going to him and trying to make amends.
I would make amends, though. It was time that I gave back and built my own family up. Cassidy’s family had so much love between them. They weren’t perfect – they argued, they probably said things they had regretted over the years – but they loved each other and didn’t let anything take that love away.
It was up to me to bring an end to the feud in my family and I knew the perfect way to do that. Of course, money couldn’t buy happiness and I didn’t expect to buy their love with it. But I had an idea for how I could lessen the burden for my brother and father and give them a little peace of mind for the future.
As my mind spun away, I realized that Stan had moved ahead of me and we had already turned around and were heading home.
“Wow, I must have been zoned out,” I said under my brea
th.
“Or you’re just so out of shape that an elderly man is kicking your ass,” Stan laughed.
“Probably both.”
It was nearing dinnertime when we arrived back and I saw Cassidy handing everyone’s meals out to them. I knew she wanted to talk, but I had to make some phone calls. My energy was ramped up for the things I wanted to do for my family and I couldn’t stop for anything.
“Heath, I need you to do something for me, and you can’t tell Dad,” I said when I got a hold of him.
“I’m not going to keep secrets from Pop,” he said with trepidation.
“Just listen to me first and then you can tell me if you can do it. Okay?”
Heath did not sound thrilled to listen to what I had to say. He didn’t even seem interested in talking to me on the phone, but I wasn’t doing this to make them love me or be nice to me again. I was doing this because I truly wanted their lives to be better. Even if they continued to push me away, I was going to continue to move toward them. I was going to show that I loved them and would help care for both of them as much as I could.
“Fine, what’s up?”
“I’ve got to set up some business legal stuff. Can you send me the name of the funeral home’s mortgage company? I’d like to see if they can finance a project I’m doing. Oh, and I need the name of that local bank down the street from Dad’s house, if you have that.”
“Sure, I’ll email it to you. Do you have access to that?” my brother said was as little enthusiasm as possible.
“I’m sure I can manage it. Thanks, Heath.”
“Sure, talk to you later,” he said in an effort to get off the phone as quickly as possible.
“Wait, how are you doing?” I managed to squeeze in before he hung up.
“What?”
“How are you?”
My question seemed to surprise him and it made me feel horrible. He wasn’t used to me asking about his life. I typically just complained about mine or we had some sort of other awkward conversation or argument, and then we hung up. A few months down the road, we might speak again.
“I’m good, I guess.”
“Any ladies in the picture?”
Heath laughed the question off, but then as I sat silently, he decided to answer. Heath was a handsome guy with blond hair and a muscular build. There really was no reason that the women weren’t throwing themselves at him.
“Pretty hard to get a woman when I still live with Dad. I tried buying my own place, but it will probably get repossessed soon. With the mortgage and second mortgage Dad has on the funeral home and his house, there’s not enough money for me to move out.”
His words cut me hard and it hurt that I hadn’t noticed their struggles before. I really had been too wrapped up in my own world to even see what they were struggling with. Money was something I could easily give my brother and father, yet I hadn’t even tried to help them out.
“That sounds very difficult.”
“I better get going. We have a lot to do this week. I’m glad you’re doing better,” Heath said and then quickly got off the phone.
I stood at the nursing station for a few minutes, sort of staring off into space as I processed everything. It was eye opening to realize that I might have been just as wrong in my relationship with my family as they had been. For years, I had blamed them and taking on some of the blame myself was an entirely new emotion for me.
“Everything all right?” Cassidy asked as she stood next to me.
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about my phone call or what was going on between the two of us, but the answer was the same.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I saw you signed up for yoga tomorrow morning. That’s brave. I don’t even wake up that early. I couldn’t imagine trying to do those crazy poses.”
“Just going to give it a try. Thought I’d see how it suits me.”
“Good for you.”
“I better get going, lots to do. Have a good day working,” I said as I went to my room.
Having a room with a door on it wasn’t all that special to me anymore. Although it had been the only thing I could concentrate on when I first arrived, I had started to just leave my door open most of the time.
Instead of hiding away from everyone, I liked being open to visitors. We had new people arriving after New Year’s and Jarrod and I talked about how I was now an example to them of what could work well for their treatment if they worked hard.
It baffled me that I could be an example for anyone, but it further fueled my new mindset that I was going to take advantage of my time in Aspen and really move forward.
As I sat in my bed, I furiously penned some new ideas for business, movies, and helping others. My mind felt so clear and focused. It hadn’t been like that since I left home and went off to college. That time in my life was filled with focus for a future that I wanted so desperately I was willing to give up everything that I knew.
Would I be willing to give up the past I had known for the last few years? I hoped so. I hoped that I would be able to put my new skills to work and finally be able to stay sober. What I had thought was just me messing around was a full blown addiction and I now took responsibility for that.
I still wasn’t all that sure I knew how to control my urges. I wasn’t sure I would be able to stay sober with the skills I was learning at Paradise Peak, but I sure as hell wanted to try and be the man I knew I had inside of me.
Chapter 17
Cassidy
For a week, Erik had pretty much been ignoring me. He would say hi in the halls as he walked past to some sort of group he had signed up for. I didn’t think he was angry with me, but I really had no idea. We hadn’t had more than 30 seconds of time alone in any one sitting since he had returned from Christmas at my house.
He was doing what he was supposed to be doing. If he and I had truly just been patient and employee, I wouldn’t have thought anything at all about how he was acting. Erik was working his program and seemed extremely zoned in on his treatment plan and what would happen after he left the facility.
The girl in me felt left out, though. I saw him running around with a smile on his face and focus in his eyes and I wished I was more of a part of whatever was making him happy. But the adult in me knew this was exactly what Erik needed. He needed to focus on himself without whatever it was that he and I had been doing before. If anything, his new focus on his treatment made him even sexier to me.
He wasn’t stopping to flirt with me; he wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing. His number one focus was himself, as it should be when you were in treatment.
It was funny that I was internally complaining about him not flirting with me, when only a few weeks before I had been complaining that he was flirting too much. Apparently, I hadn’t found my happy median yet.
When New Year’s Eve came, I volunteered to be on shift because I was one of the few people who didn’t want to go out. Being sober and the New Year’s holiday didn’t mix well for me. I found it incredibly hard to go out and have a good time now that I didn’t drink. Not to say that I didn’t think eventually I would be able to do it, just at the moment, I wasn’t able to find my groove.
The overnight shift wasn’t going to be boring on New Year’s. Everyone was hyped up and excited to watch the big Ball Drop event in New York City. Even though it was two hours ahead of Colorado time, it was the best event to watch on television. There were going to be some of the biggest names in music and movies on the show. I was actually excited to be at work with the patients instead of at home with my family – at least it seemed a little less boring.
Susan was the only nurse on staff for the night, and she had to stay on the secure unit with one of the technicians. I was left alone on my unit unless there was a medication issue that I had to call her for. It didn’t happen very often that we staffed ourselves so short, but I wasn’t concerned about it, at all. Everyone would be asleep after the ball dropped in New York, and then the
rest of the night was just making sure everyone slept and there were no medical issues.
“All right, everyone, I’ve got snacks for the big night,” I said as I wheeled a cart full of all the snacks I could find in the back room.
There was a collective cheer in the room and Brianna got up to help me hand out some cups with juice in them. Brianna had been a bit lost since she had returned from the hospital. She was used to caring for three small children all the time, so being in treatment and only having herself to worry about was difficult for her.
Snacks while in a drug treatment facility were like getting a letter from home. Patients got so tired of the healthy food that was being served and would become desperate for candy and soda if they could get their hands a hold of it.
“Erik, chocolate or sour candy?” I asked as I held up two boxes of candy.
“Chocolate, of course,” he laughed.
I handed out a box of candy for each patient and left the rest of the snacks for people to pillage through throughout the night. We had pulled all the couches to one side of the unit and in front of the big television so we could watch the show in comfort that evening.
“Here,” Erik said quietly as he put his hand on the empty cushion and motioned me to sit with him.
I couldn’t help but smile. I felt better about things just getting to sit near him. I had relegated myself to being his friend. I knew we both could use a nice solid and sober friend outside of the walls of Paradise Peak.
“My mom says hi,” I whispered as we watched the show.
No one else was paying attention to the two of us as we sat at the back of the group; they were all enthralled with the show on the television. My mom had continued to ask me questions about Erik every day since Christmas. She had even decided that it was perfectly fine if I wanted to date him because I wasn’t his therapist or doctor; I just worked at the same building. My father stayed pretty quiet about the whole thing, but he didn’t specifically object to my mother’s logic.