by Abby Wambach
I meditate with my mala beads and ask myself hard questions: Can I accept responsibility for the things that happened, the things I caused? Can I accept responsibility for the hurt I’ve caused? That’s why people get divorced—because they can’t deal with the sad feelings they created. And until you can get right and accept the fact that you’ve shattered somebody, that you’ve broken their heart in more ways than one, there’s no way that you’re ever going to be able to survive.
I start a new diet, the alkaline diet, with the goal of achieving an even pH balance by eliminating acidic foods: coffee, cheese, meats, refined sugars and flours, white bread. Certainly no muffins, booze, or prescription pills. It’s only thirty days, I tell myself. I’m an extremist; I can do anything for thirty days. I am addicted to this diet while I’m on it, 100 percent committed, and I figure—while I’m at it—that I should work on balancing my obsessive personality.
I continue meditating, unleashing my thoughts: I need to work on the balance of letting go a bit and letting other people be themselves. I did not let Sarah be herself.
I keep waiting for the thoughts to tire themselves out, to sit down and take a rest. But still they come, rattling through my mind with the urgency and reliability of an express train.
Pills will stop them, I think, but manage another day without them.
I spend two hours signing soccer balls, posters, and T-shirts. I go golfing with my dad. I take my mom to her physical therapy appointments and recall a conversation we had shortly after my last game; she could read the misery in every line on my face, every movement of my body. “Abby,” she’d said, “I am your mom and it’s okay not to be okay.”
“Mom,” I protested, “it’s not okay for me not to be okay. And I don’t feel comfortable talking about not being okay with many people.” And then I said something as difficult for me to admit as it was for her to hear: “I especially don’t feel comfortable talking about it with you, because I do still feel a sense of abandonment from my childhood, a fear that I was and am unlovable and unloved.”
Now, two months later, I realize that voicing those thoughts was a breakthrough in our relationship, one I’d been wanting and working toward for years. I do feel comfortable talking about it with her, I think, because I actually had that conversation. I let her see me at my worst and let her hear me admit it. And I came to Florida to help her heal, but she is also helping me.
I check my phone for texts from Sarah, who’s off snowboarding for the week with friends, and I fear she and I will never go away together again. I fear we’ll never even live together again.
I last without the pills until March.
On the weekend of March 11, I fly out to Kansas City to see Sydney and her husband. She’s pregnant with their first baby and has planned a gender reveal party, and I want to be there, for both her and myself. I want the contact high of someone else’s joy, and the possibility of taking some of that feeling home.
I stay for four days so Sydney and I can have some time alone. I’ve long had a private rationale for binges and benders—I’ll quit when I get pregnant, because the baby will force me sober—and the reminder that I’m not already there pervades every thought. We’re talking for hours, just like the old days, but she’s looking at me strangely, as if I’m speaking some language only I can understand. I brush it off and launch into a funny story, but her strange look persists.
“You’ve already told me,” she says.
I brush it off and launch into another funny story.
“You’ve already told me,” she says.
I brush it off and launch into another funny story. From her expression I can tell what she’s thinking; she’s heard this one, too. This time she takes pity on me and lets me prattle on.
After the rest of the guests have left, and we’ve picked up every last scrap of blue confetti, Sydney says we need to have a talk. She tells me she’d intended to ask me to be her son’s godmother, but she can’t until I get help and get sober. I’ve needed help for a long time, and she’s only now finding the strength to tell me. She loves me, she’s not judging me, and she’d do anything to help me bring myself back.
I have to catch my flight but can’t bear to stop the conversation; I am desperate to hear the hard things.
“I’m having a breakdown,” I text her, “because I know what I need to do. Give me strength. Please, I’m begging you. In a taxi to my house. And it will be empty without Sarah the whole time, but I’m just so confronted by it all right now.”
“Take deep breaths,” she responds, “and just believe that everything will be okay because it will be and it always is. You always told me that ‘In the end it’ll be okay.’ You said that to me a million times and now you have to believe it.”
“Okay, I will breathe,” I write, inhaling as I type. “I want my life back. I have to love myself again, which I have started to really do. No joke. Just being here makes me feel like a child, and brings up all these emotions that make me feel crazy as fuck. I want you to know I need to lean on you and for you to tell me the hard things I need to hear. Don’t tell me what will make me feel better in the moment, but what will make me a better person. I know you have always done that. Need it more now than ever.”
I’m relieved to see the message bubble; she’s still there.
“I want you to be happy again,” she says. “And you’re not happy, you’re just numb. I can’t imagine how hard this is but you are NOT alone. If you need me to fly to Portland right now or to follow you around because you’re scared of what it feels like to be alone in your own thoughts, I am right there with you. Pregnant or not, I am there.”
“Thanks, Syd,” I type. “In tears reading this. But I am strong and haven’t been for so so long. I will get stronger. That I know. I have been getting stronger. It’s just that being here makes it hard again, you know? I love you and thank you for loving me for just being me and my crazy self.”
The taxi pulls up to my beautiful, custom home, quiet and empty. I sit at my kitchen table and can’t bring myself to move. I pull out my phone and text Syd again: “I have been choosing to be sad. I know it. Hoping a miracle would happen . . . I know what needs to happen to truly move on. And running wasn’t the answer.”
Thankfully she’s still there: “It never is,” she says.
“But it lessened the toxicity.”
“Seriously, the only thing that’s going to help is time.”
“I’m impatient. And I hate that I have this fucking fancy home. I built this for my future, and now it’s empty with no love.” I think about the other future I’ve been building—the advocacy platform, the old girls’ club—and share a fear I hadn’t been able to admit, even to myself: “I’m afraid my life won’t lend me to any truly loving relationships. I can make myself as busy as I want, and I will because it’s all I know . . . My schedule, Syd. And what I do and will do. No one would want that.”
“You WILL!” she insists. “Because you deserve it. Someone who loves you for exactly who you are and not who they want you to be.”
I feel an urge to confess sins she already knows: “I drank too much, Syd. Because I felt her disconnect and me disconnect. I did that, too. I took pills because I couldn’t deal.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, “and that’s something that you’re still living with that can be fixed.”
“How do I sell this house then? And how do I move on? I want happy again.”
She offers practical advice: “You sell the house. You move to wherever you want, and you pick yourself up off the ground as you’ve done many times before, and you put one foot in front of the other. That is the only way. And you put your heart and soul into being a better person for YOURSELF and no one else.”
“Yeah, that sounds nice,” I agree. “I want to love me again. Be proud of myself again.”
I am brimming with resolve. I quit the pills again.
Two weeks later, Sydney receives a cryptic text from a friend: “OMG . . . Abby!”
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Her first thought is that I had overdosed and died.
22
FAILURE
On the last day of March, Sarah and I have yet another blowout fight—one that convinces me, finally, that we are really and truly over. We stand in our kitchen, in the lovely, loveless house, and hurl our words, each one sharper and more brutal than the last. We’ve created a mess that extends beyond the two of us, with all our friends having to choose sides and split their time. I am being ostracized from my city, exiled from my own life, and I am both despondent and furious. It’s been twelve days since I’ve taken a drink or a pill, and my pain, unhindered, now attacks me with a swift and thorough viciousness.
“This happened,” I say. “This is happening. The least you can do is go and apologize to all our friends for putting them in such an uncomfortable, precarious position.” With each breath I regain an inch of control. “Now I’m going to own my own fucking bullshit,” I declare. “I’m drawing up divorce papers. I’ll move out, you’ll move out, I’ll sell my car, you’ll sell the other car, we’ll get new shit, get new everything, and start over.”
I seclude myself on the opposite side of our house, as far away from her as I can be without leaving. I am still distraught at the idea of selling but can’t imagine staying here, trapped in four thousand square feet of ruined paradise, surrounded by the ghosts of dead dreams.
I am still sober, and furious, when I fall asleep.
The following morning I awaken with a sense of purpose and resolution. There are practical tasks I must accomplish to move forward. I pack up my most valuable possessions, stashing them all in my car. I search online for an interim apartment to rent, anyplace that’s clean and will accept me quickly, and get a hotel room downtown. I wander the hallways, feeling like I’m on the road in my own city, the sole member of my own visiting team. I narrowly avoid the minibar and don’t unpack my stash of pills.
Exhausted, I send a group text to some friends, confirming plans to meet for a game of golf the next day.
When I awaken, I know exactly where I am and what I left behind. I remain invigorated by the act of seizing control, by creating distance between my past and future. I shop for roomfuls of furniture online and venture out to buy a new bed, arranging for expedited shipping to the rented apartment. As a small, petty act of revenge, I compose a cheerful tweet about my spree: “Just got the best and quickest help from Lindsey at Bedmart. Go check them out!!!!” accompanied by a photo of my new mattress.
When I arrive at the golf club, I decide I’ve earned a few drinks, two on the front nine and two on the back. Although I haven’t eaten much, I am feeling pleasant and soft around the edges but not at all drunk. A friend invites the entire group for dinner, and I hitch a ride to his house, leaving my car behind. We cook and laugh and drink wine; I have three glasses in three hours and very little food. When I get up to leave around 11 P.M., my friends urge me to call an Uber, just to be safe.
“I promise I will,” I say, and it’s one of the few times in my life I tell a successful lie. I have about two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of valuables and important paperwork in my car—watches, rings, bank statements, cash, trophies, Olympic medals—and I don’t want to risk a smash and grab. I do the math: I’ve been out since 1 P.M., which means seven drinks in ten hours. The walk back to the golf club is a quarter of a mile, and the crisp night air makes me feel fresh and alert.
I just want to get back to my hotel room and lie in a bed that Sarah’s never touched.
I drive down a hill toward an unfamiliar part of Portland, glancing intermittently at my GPS. I hear the chirp of a siren before I see the flashing lights; I’m being pulled over but am not sure why. The review mirror catches the beams, sweeping them across my face, and I tilt my chin upward to meet my own gaze. Panic is etched in every feature—eyes widened, mouth slack, skin drained of blood—to a degree that I am nearly unrecognizable. I’m fine, I remind myself. This will be all cleared up soon and I’ll be on my way.
We perform the standard routine: I ask what seems to be the problem, officer, and he requests my license and registration, explaining that I ran through a red light. Later, I’ll re-create my steps, driving through this intersection, and notice that the branches of low-lying trees dip into my sightline, obscuring my view.
As he scans the documents, he asks if I’ve been drinking. I tell him I’ve just come from a dinner party, where I had a few glasses of wine.
“Okay,” he says. “Well, your eyes are bloodshot, and I smell booze on your breath.”
He asks me to submit to a field sobriety test, and I agree.
As I step out of the car, he calls another cop and reports our location. This second officer, the field test cop, has one job—traveling from drunk call to drunk call—and it takes ten minutes for him to arrive. While we wait I am proper and polite, full of yes, sirs and apologies, my mother’s ceaseless drills about manners rising like cream to the surface.
The field test cop gets down to business, walking me behind the car. Holding a flashlight aloft, he intones instructions: “Follow the tip of my pen with only your eyes.”
He waves his pen and I follow the light, instinctively moving my head.
“Only your eyes,” he reminds me.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and force my head to remain absolutely still, my eyes flicking left and right, up and down.
I am sure I passed, but it’s not over; next he ushers me to the sidewalk to walk the line.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m going to watch you walk heel to toe for nine steps forward, and then nine steps back, counting out loud both times.”
A busy highway stretches below us, just to the right, and the noise makes it difficult to decipher his words. I’m terrified of misunderstanding, like I did when I followed the light, so I ask him to demonstrate the walk. He walks four steps and totters a bit, and stops before he can show me the proper way to turn.
“Are you serious?” I ask. “You can’t even do it.”
“Just do it,” he says, and I understand I have no choice.
I start, mimicking his steps, and realize the sidewalk is sloped, badly enough that I would have trouble passing this test even in broad daylight with no alcohol in my system. After four steps I also veer off the line. I look up at the officer and shrug, as if to say What did you expect?, but his expression makes it clear: my stumble is the only one that matters.
Without warning, I feel my arms yanked back and metal against my wrists, my hands meeting at the small of my back.
“Whoa!” I say, turning sideways. “Hey, what’s going on?”
“You’re under arrest for driving under the influence of intoxicants,” he says.
My mouth is dry with panic, my breath coming in gasps. This is clearly a misunderstanding, I tell myself. I can explain. I can talk my way through this. When I speak, I sound more frantic than I want to: “Holy shit! Wait a second. We need to talk about this. I swear to God I am not fucking drunk. I’m not saying that just to get off. I promise you I am not drunk.”
He remains unconvinced. “Well, we need to take you down to the station for a Breathalyzer examination.”
“I need to speak to a lawyer,” I say. “This is crazy.”
Another officer, a woman, appears from behind. My arms are jerked again and there’s a click as the handcuffs cinch tighter, the metal grinding against my wrist bones.
I twist, trying to meet her gaze. “Not for nothing,” I say, “but could you please loosen these handcuffs? They’re very tight. They’re entirely too tight for someone who is not resisting arrest.”
She doesn’t look at me. “Get in the car,” she orders, making each word its own sentence. Reaching up, she palms my head and pushes me down into the squad car. The cuffs dig into my back. I lean forward, my head nearly touching the divider. I’m a caged pet, groveling for attention, hoping they can understand my attempts at communication. “Can you please move my car to a proper parking spot,” I ask, “and br
ing my black backpack to me?” They grant me those small mercies and my backpack comes along for the ride, carrying two Olympic gold medals and my wedding ring, shiny vestiges of my former life.
This is not happening right now, I think. This is a fucking nightmare. Out loud I say, “I’ve never been in a police car before. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”
They don’t respond, and for the rest of the trip I am quiet.
The police station is a tight white box, each wall tilting in and encroaching on my space. I am escorted to a window where I recite my name and other pertinent information, and then to a cell. The door swings shut. Another small mercy: a guard slips my cell phone through the bars so I can make phone calls. My first is to a friend who is a lawyer, who refers me to a lawyer friend of his who specializes in DUI law. That number rings and rings. No answer. Next I call Sarah. Please pick up, please pick up, I plead silently. I know you hate me right now but please pick up.
She does. “I’ll be right there,” she says, and I almost can’t believe it. I don’t deserve this, I think. I don’t deserve her. Whatever she did, I was complicit. I wasn’t there; I chose instead to be with alcohol and pills.
The booking officer strolls past the cell. “Excuse me,” I call out. “My lawyer isn’t answering.”
“All right,” he says, and returns with the yellow pages. It is the sight of that fat book, the pages flipped to the “A” section for attorneys, that finally cracks me. What the fuck? I think. What is happening right now? My life is literally falling through my fingertips. In the moment I can’t even accuse myself of being hyperbolic, having spent all of my thirty-five years being the special one, the different one, the one—yes—with the world at her fingertips, and now, with the heft of that yellow book in my palm, I picture it all rewinding, event by event, stopping at the beginning, with my five-year-old self on the soccer field, legs now pinwheeling backward instead of forward, my feet never touching the ball.