Page 68 of Take You Down

Stupid, blissful ignorance, not knowing that the next morning the exact thing I’ve been struggling to figure out how to bring up to Walker would instead be splashed across the internet, forcing my hand before I’m ready.

But there’s no more of that now.

With a sigh, I begin.

“I’ve told you before that I grew up in a very religious community and always felt very restricted by its rules and my family.”

Walker nods.

“When I was about fifteen, I started to really resent my friendships with kids that I went to church with and how easy it all seemed for them. How natural it all seemed for them to fall in line exactly how they were supposed to. I got angry, bitter, and I wanted to do something that made me feel like I had control over something and a decision that was all mine. And if it flew in the face of what I was being taught…well, even better.

“I started drinking with some friends from school on the weekends, sneaking out to go to parties, helping distract the clerks at liquor stores to get booze for everyone. It was fun, indulging in something everyone around me told me I shouldn’t.”

Until it wasn’t.

“Where my friends would drink on the weekends at parties and go about their week like usual, I started to pregame the pregame, then began craving a drink while I was sitting in class, trying to focus. Then it started that I wanted a drink before I wanted breakfast in the morning.”

The reprieve that drowning myself in alcohol gave me went far beyond the fun and partying that my friends enjoyed it for. It finally allowed my mind to turn off and forget the constant expectations put on me by my family, their church, that community. With every shot, the feeling of being a failure to them and myself faded and faded like dust in the wind.

In that drunken, delirious state, I could forget that I wasn’t fulfilling the purpose I was intended to and instead exist free of the weight of that guilt that always followed me around like a shadow for not being a good enough, godly woman.

I look down at my hands and twist one of the gold rings around my finger. “Then I just spiraled.” The words are barely audible, but I know by the way that Walker's hands squeeze me a little tighter that he heard me.

“It got bad. Especially after I moved out and didn’t need to do as much work to hide it. I was also very isolated in those early years when I moved out to L.A. I didn’t have many friends and the ones I did have were drinking just as much as me, so no one was batting an eyelash when I fell so far down that I didn’t know which way was up.

“Boone tried to get me help before, God did he fucking try.” My words come out with a huff, my chest aching at the pain I put Boone through over the years, self-hatred burning my throat. “He was doing everything he could to get me connected with artists to write for, producers to work with, fellow songwriters to collaborate with, anything to get me where I wanted to be. And instead of doing the responsible thing and getting my priorities straight, I would show up to studio sessions so many drinks deep I could barely write words down. I flat-out missed meetings, fumbled deadlines, everything.

“But you can’t accept help from others if you don’t want to help yourself. And at the time, I had no plan on stopping. I loved the feeling when I forgot my own name and hated the feeling when consciousness crept in enough that I never wanted to sober up enough to face it.”

Pausing to take a breath, I look at Walker’s eyes one last time before I fear he may never look at me the same way again.

“And I don’t know when I would’ve stopped if it wasn’t for a night almost two years ago. I was drunk, obviously, and out at the bar with one of my friends whose couch I had been crashing on for a few weeks after getting kicked out of my last apartment.”

I haven’t talked to Lydia since that night, but clearly, she hasn’t forgotten about me as she was quoted in the article this morning, confirming the stories and adding her own comment in here and there, I’m sure for a price.

“She wasn’t supposed to be drinking that night because she had an early shift at work the next morning, so she drove us to the bar so we didn’t have to pay for a ride. But when we got there, she insisted she’d just have one or two, but she’d be fine to drive at the end of the night. I was already three sheets to the wind by that point and wasn’t keeping track of my own drinks, let alone hers.

“By the time that last call came around, she could barely stand up straight and I knew there was no way she could drive home. And for some reason, I thought I could.” The last words come out so small, my voice barely above a whisper.

I feel a tickle on my face and before I can reach my hand up to scratch it, Walker’s thumb is wiping across my cheek, collecting an escaped tear. My brow scrunches. I didn’t even realize I was crying.

Walker nods his head in encouragement, waiting for me to keep going. His hands squeeze my hips and I focus on them, tethering me to the present while I expose him to my past.

“I don’t remember what happened after that. Only that when I woke up, a car alarm was blaring and someone was yelling at the car window, pounding on it to get my attention.

“I had somehow driven the two of us back to her apartment, only to crash into a parked car on the street and pass out. The worst of it didn’t even hit me until the next morning when I woke up in the drunk tank at the station and realized where I was and that I had been arrested.”

I still can’t decide to this day if it’s a blessing or a curse that I don’t remember being arrested that night.

But one thing I won’t ever forget is the panic I felt that morning when I searched through my mind and couldn’t remember how or why I got there. And in that moment when I woke up alone in that small, cold little box with nothing on me except the clothes on my back and a camera watching me from the corner, fear paralyzed my entire body.

I can still remember the way it came in a singular crashing wave, suffocating me and sending me into a blind panic. The way my lungs screamed for air as my mind screamed for answers and I couldn’t find relief for either of them.

“I thought I had killed someone,” I choke out, not able to keep the tears at bay any longer and they begin to stream down my face. “I remembered getting into Lydia’s car at the bar, grabbing her keys and putting myself behind the driver’s wheel when I should’ve been nowhere near it. But I didn’t remember anything concrete past that point and for the fifteen minutes that felt like fifteen hours for an officer to come in and take me to a different room to give me a rundown of my situation, I truly thought I had hurt someone.”

Walker lets me fall into his shoulder, arms squeezing me tight and hands running comforting circles over my back while I cry, letting the pain of that day resurface. He rocks us gently in his lap, not rushing me through my pain but letting me feel every jagged bit of it and waiting for me to come out the other side.

I wish I could stay like this forever and ignore everything else, tied up in Walker’s arms, the world around us spinning but just the two of us existing in this moment.

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