I'm Just Happy to Be Here

by Janelle Hanchett

  The counselors advised against leaving early, saying, “Janelle, in your new life you must start following through on commitments.” But I had done twenty-eight days out of thirty, and that was good enough for me. So I thanked them for their service and convinced my mother to retrieve me. Once again, she believed I knew best and agreed to come that very day.

  “Will you bring the kids?” I asked, holding my breath.

  “Yes,” she said, and I could hear her smile. “They’re sitting right here.” I felt my heart jump.

  I packed my clothes in fifteen minutes, and the two hours I waited for them to arrive felt like Christmas Eve when I was nine. They ran to me in the front yard of the rehab house, and I got on my knees to hold them. I couldn’t believe they could be so beautiful. In the car, I tried to nurse Rocket, but he had no interest. He turned his head away and sat up, and for the first time, it occurred to me that there were two children without their actual mother, and that they missed her in a material, clear way, and would create their own defenses to protect themselves. I thought again about the nursery I had made for Rocket, the clothes all lined up by size, the morning I brought him home, and the morning he left. I shook my head right and left to knock the images out of my skull.

  Then I reminded myself how very sick I was, and I asked my mom to please drive, because I had to get home.

  10

  Maintenance Whiskey

  One week after I left rehab, my mother and I sat in her living room in big, soft easy chairs with the footrests kicked out, constructing plans to prevent me from detonating my life. My plan was that I would live in the house Mac and I had rented before I went to rehab. Mac had moved our belongings from the big Natomas house to the new one, but didn’t get beyond dropping off furniture and stacking unmarked boxes in every room. This was the extent of my plan.

  Her plan was: “Devote your life to recovery.”

  “Don’t your counselors say you should take time to just focus on recovery before trying to do life again?” It was not an actual question, but I answered anyway.

  “Yes,” I said. “And I have, right?” I narrowed my eyes at her, sensing she had an opinion on my life that differed from my own.

  “You have, but I think you need to get all this psych stuff in order before you get back with the kids.” As if cued, Rocket bolted out of the bedroom holding a wooden screwdriver and a brown-headed doll with matted hair. When he passed me, I leaned over and grabbed his shirt, yelling “Hey!” and demanding a hug. He spun around in smiles and folded into my arms just long enough for me to get a whiff of the sweet honey sweat of his chubby neck before he ran off.

  “I need to be with the kids, Mom, and Mac and I just rented that house. Have you seen the porch? It’s amazing. Right next to a horse ranch.”

  “Yes, it’s nice, but you rented that when Mac was still working. He’s in a ninety-day program and you’re out of money. You’re on mental health leave for two more months.”

  “How do you know that?” If I told her that, I had forgotten.

  “Because your boss and I talk, Janelle. Everybody talks about your health now.” Good Lord, I thought. Everybody is so earnest about everything.

  “Weird.” I rolled my eyes, pondering how they all couldn’t see how I had my life handled now.

  Since she seemed to make a decent point, even better than mine, I turned my attention to the show we hadn’t been watching but that played in the background because it was comforting—the way it droned on, the hum of canned laughter and commercials with all the happiness they promised. All those beautiful people. All the beautiful things to buy. Like candles and gift bags.

  She lowered the volume with the remote, looked at me, and asked, “So, you think all those diagnoses are true? Your dad wonders about them.”

  “You talk to Dad?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course. He’s been helping me with the kids.”

  “What do you mean?” Now I was utterly shocked.

  “What do you mean? I have to work. Mac’s parents work. Your dad works. Everyone works.” She seemed mildly exasperated.

  “Wow, that’s really nice of him. Too bad he didn’t do that for me when I was a kid.”

  “Well, he’s doing it now,” she said dismissively as she shrugged her shoulders, clearly on his side. It was strange to think of all the life going on behind the scenes while Mac and I hid out in motel rooms. I had a fleeting thought of all the trouble I had caused, of all the grandparents scrambling to compensate for our deficiencies, but I shoved it out of my mind with the thought, Well, I am very sick.

  “Mom,” I said. “If you don’t think all that ‘psych stuff’ is true, why are you telling me to take care of it?” I had spotted a hole in her argument.

  “I didn’t say that. Your dad and I were just saying it seems a little excessive. I mean, you weren’t ever like this before.”

  I turned to face her. “You sent me to my first shrink when I was in high school. Remember that dude with the beard who hooked my fingers up to some machine and talked to me about chakras?” I lifted my eyebrows and smirked, knowing the memory would make her laugh. We loved making fun of new-age hippies.

  “You were sixteen and wild and very angry. I didn’t know what to do with you.”

  “I loved that guy,” I said. “What was his name?”

  “Sergio.” She smiled, and I laughed.

  “But I’ve kind of always been crazy, Mom.” I said, wondering why it was suddenly so important to me that my mother understood I was definitely mentally ill.

  “Well, what do you think about what the doctors say, in your heart of hearts?”

  “Please don’t say ‘heart of hearts.’ I can’t talk to you when you say things like that.” I was not joking.

  I stared at the television, though I was, in fact, thinking of a real answer. “The borderline seems true. The rest I don’t know. Bipolar maybe. But not really. Hard to tell when you’re a coke addict.” I watched her flinch at my last two words.

  She looked away, and I continued, “I get really depressed, but maybe that’s the drinking. And Mac and I fight all the time.”

  “I know,” she said, and paused. “I think you should go into one of those ‘sober living environments,’ Janelle, and do an outpatient program, just to be safe, so you can really get well. We can take care of the kids.” She looked at Ava sitting at the kitchen counter, coloring in a Hello Kitty coloring book. Rocket came darting back into the room, launching himself onto a couch cushion on the floor. He distracted my mother, so I didn’t answer.

  “Pick that up, Rocket. It’s not a toy. It goes on the couch.”

  He turned around and looked at her, deciding whether or not to obey. She looked at him harder and he kicked the cushion, then set it on the couch. “Thank you, sweetie,” she said cheerfully.

  He didn’t respond.

  “He’s still not talking, huh?” I asked, making sure I didn’t sound too worried.

  “No, but he’s barely eighteen months!”

  “Ava had tons of words by this age. Do you think he’s okay?” I watched him drag a wooden frog pull toy around the room.

  “He’s fine. Boys develop slower than girls. Your cousin Benjamin didn’t speak until three, and then he spoke in full sentences.” She was relaxed, and got up to make dinner.

  Still, I wondered if I had broken him. He was so silent. Why is he so silent? I thought of Alice and wondered if she was still alive, and if she got to see her grandkids.

  “Where would I go to outpatient, Mom?” I yelled from over my shoulder while she opened the refrigerator.

  “I was thinking Marin County. Found a great place there!” She had obviously been doing research.

  “I don’t know. Maybe,” I said under my breath, flipping to a new channel to vacate my mind for a few seconds.

  I considered my situation: no job, home in boxes, husband in the drunk slammer, and little money. I had spent three nights alone at the cute house in the country and was s
ure I was going to get cut up into small pieces by some Republican on a horse. It was dark and quiet out there. Nobody would hear my screams. An actual clown lived across the street. She seemed friendly, but still, she was a clown, and sometimes she walked down to her mailbox in her clown suit.

  Perhaps this is what happens when you choose a new rental in between coke binges.

  At the thought, I told my mother, “It is already feeling a little impossible.”

  “Let’s check out that program,” she said.

  • • •

  A week later I moved into a house I found on Craigslist that was forty-five minutes away in Petaluma, California. It was occupied by two sober, friendly men. One was about twenty-five and had recently kicked heroin for the fifth time. This time, he was doing it through Suboxone. The other was “old” in age and sobriety—forty years old and one year sober. He was an alcoholic.

  I brought my red embroidered blanket and a new Buddha statue to my new room and enrolled in the most highly esteemed outpatient rehab in Marin County, which is one of the wealthiest counties in northern California. My family and I were under the impression that if you paid more, you received better sobriety, so my parents and grandparents pooled thousands of more dollars in cash and credit to help me, again.

  In addition to the outpatient program, I signed up for a dialectical behavioral therapy group that involved weekly meetings with a group plus individual therapy. I got a psychiatrist, worked out, and stopped eating sugar. I took up running, kick-boxing, yoga, and meditation, began shopping only at the co-op and Whole Foods, and hired a personal spiritual advisor/holistic health practitioner. I woke every day at seven a.m. to meditate, shower, eat bee pollen, and head to the rehab, where I sat in group listening to forlorn white addicts express how dejected they felt. One of them lived on his yacht off Tiburon. Another owned the winery that made my favorite cabernet. Millionaires. They were actual millionaires.

  I thought of Alice and how she couldn’t even stay for the whole month, and how drugs were the great leveler until it came to outcomes. To treatment. To the world opening itself to help. Nobody cared if Alice lived or died. Nobody would even notice if she were gone. I wished she could have come with me.

  I met with a therapist at the rehab—in addition to the dialectical therapist and psychiatrist—who was staunchly devoted to Jungian psychology. We began a long and meandering exploration of my unconscious and deepest longing, the needs I had but didn’t know I had, but had better figure out how to satisfy, and soon.

  After our sessions I felt emotionally heavier and remarkably more confused, especially when the topic landed on my mother. Apparently, somewhere deep down I had always yearned for a clearer, healthier relationship with her, but never got it. She gave me nothing to “bump up against” because she was nebulous and blurred herself, and that was why I had no “self.” When I left the Jungian’s office, I felt a bit like a fraud and a liar, as if I were saying things that weren’t quite true, because sure, all those problems with my mom were real, and we had endured dark times when I was a child, and I found myself entwined and obsessed with fixing her marriage, finances, and heart, but her love for me was warrior-like—brave and firm and wild—and she was my unequivocal best friend. Talking about her like that felt wrong, and I couldn’t make the therapist understand that we were dysfunctional and perfect. I couldn’t make the therapist understand that I was heartbroken and infuriated by her, but she was the only human I feared I would die without. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t be batshit crazy and woven through each other in the crispest, purest, and sanest love.

  In the Jungian’s office I learned about dissociative behavior and “sober blackouts” and practiced deep belly breathing. After group, I would go to the gym and kickboxing class. In the evening, I would attend my dialectical behavior group, or go to my psychiatrist, or sit at home and read Thich Nhat Hanh and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

  I was living, breathing, thinking, and eating recovery. I got stronger. I lost weight. My mind grew clearer while my family delighted in my “progress.” I had a whole army of activities, mental health workers, family, and friends encircling me, blocking me from the siren song of alcohol. I bought a lottery ticket one day at a gas station and won eighty dollars, which I took as a sign of God’s pride in me. Yes, the God I didn’t believe existed.

  When I was sober almost sixty days, at the peak of my wellness, Mac invited me to “family weekend” at his rehab. Of course! I thought.

  I booked a flight using a high-interest-rate credit card I had somehow been approved for and set out on my journey to Southern California. But while sitting in a restaurant in the San Francisco airport, waiting for my flight, the thought occurred to me that I was afraid of flying. In fact, I hated flying. At some point, while darting around Europe in airplanes, I’d realized that each flight I boarded increased my chances of dying. The more I fly, the more likely I am to be on a plane that malfunctions midair and spirals desperately into the ocean amid screams of mothers and children.

  At the airport in San Francisco, the thought that followed this recollection was, You know what would make me feel better? A glass of wine.

  I failed to remember the Xanax in my purse, and without another thought, without a whispered word from my conscience, therapist, God, friend, or enemy, I rose and floated to the bar across the concourse, stood for a few moments waiting for the bartender, and when he placed his hand on the bar and nodded to me, I smiled and asked, “May I have a glass of chardonnay, please?”

  The next thing I knew I was driving a rental car with a handle of Captain Morgan on the passenger seat.

  I had sipped two glasses of wine before my flight and switched to cocktails on the plane. I then picked up my rental car and drove immediately to Safeway for booze, but in my hotel, I had one drink and realized what I had done. By then it was midnight, and I had to get rid of that bottle. I grabbed the rum, took the elevator downstairs and looked around the lobby for somebody who looked like they needed a handle of Captain Morgan. Nobody was there except the front desk clerk, but he was perfect. He looked about twenty—a surfer type with long sun-bleached hair. I walked up to the counter and set the bottle down in front of him.

  “Do you want this?” I asked, without introduction.

  “What?” He asked, confused.

  “This. The rum.” I smiled, realizing my behavior was a little odd. But he was so young. Of course he drinks, I thought. This is Newport Beach. Everyone drinks in LA.

  “Um…” He looked around nervously.

  “Do ya not drink?” I asked. “Because if you don’t drink, I seriously misjudged you. Maybe more of a weed guy. I could see that.” I laughed the laugh of the sweet spot of drunkenness.

  “Yeah, I totally drink. Alright! Thanks!” He grabbed the bottle quickly and smiled.

  For some reason, I added, “I don’t fucking want it.” This made him laugh again, and he thanked me again, and I could see his after-work plans had instantly improved.

  “Noooo problem,” I said, leaning against the counter for a moment, gearing up for the walk back to the elevator.

  Back in my room, I fell asleep immediately.

  • • •

  The next day, while walking down to the beach, I told Mac about the rum.

  “It was a terrible mistake. But you know? I’m glad it happened. It taught me the power of alcohol. I mean, I really get it now.”

  I was prepared to grovel, but he listened to the whole story and said, “Well, you learned from it. Sounds like it had to happen.” He put his arm around me. He and I believed my declarations of sorrow and a new start.

  When I returned to Petaluma, I told my sobriety army about the relapse, and all of them suggested I go to one of those ridiculous meetings in basements for low-bottom drunks and other nondescript failures. At the first sign of my weakness, both roommates launched into passionate diatribes regarding the only way they could stay sober. I told them I thought it was a cult religion, but as I was say
ing it, I knew it was a lie. I had family members who got sober at those meetings. They were neither cult members nor religious, but I had opinions.

  I knew things.

  But they were right. I had gotten drunk again. I drank again in spite of all the money, work, focus, therapy, and talking I had done specifically to avoid drinking again. All that talking, examining, deconstructing of emotions. It all failed me when I needed it. I couldn’t even explain how or why I drank that night. It just happened, and it frightened me. I agreed to try something new.

  The next day, I drove a few times around a gravel parking lot trying to delay the moment when I had to walk into what looked like an abandoned church hall with homeless people and fifty coffee-can ashtrays around the perimeter. Finally, I parked and meandered inside, choosing a seat in the back of the room, behind a mass of what felt like twenty thousand people considerably too happy to be sober. They were clean and well-dressed, laughing and eating cake. They surrounded the ones who looked like small wet dogs with matted coats, and I hoped to God I didn’t look so sick they thought I needed love, too. I avoided eye contact and sipped my coffee out of a Styrofoam cup, thinking, Now I really have hit the bottom of the fucking barrel.

  When the meeting started, somebody started talking up front about how they now didn’t have to drink against their will, and I rolled my eyes. How does one drink against their will? Is somebody holding a gun to your head? Idiot. It did not occur to me that I had done exactly that in the airport a mere week earlier. There were lists of twelve rules on the wall. Apparently my coat was also matted because immediately after the meeting a woman pounced on me before I could escape. She was relentless with her offers of help as my “sponsor,” so I mumbled okay to get rid of her, but later realized when telling my mother about her that a sponsor could be my new move. My new bulletproof plan.