Page 126 of Sweet Caroline
“Did you take it?”
“No, but Caroline came over pretty much right away.” My knee starts to bounce.
“But there was a chance to accept the drink before she intervened?” Lydia asks.
“Yeah.”
“So you could have taken it, but you didn’t.”
“I was tempted.”
“But you didn’t act on that temptation.”
I frown again. “No, I guess I didn’t. And we got outta there.”
“Good. And more recently… The night you almost drank. What was that like?”
I feel myself sink into the couch. “Fucking awful.”
Lydia nods slowly. “Say more about that.”
“Caroline convinced me not to give up.”
“Was she there with you?”
“No, I called her.”
“Why?”
I take a moment to think about it.
“You didn’t have to call her. You could’ve just taken the drink. Or called someone else. But you called her instead.”
Tension chokes my throat and I try to swallow past it. “I guess I knew she wouldn’t judge me for fucking up. Or she’d understand why I was hurting so bad. And,” I swipe the tears from my eyes, “I dunno, maybe she’d give me a reason not to go through with it.”
Lydia, like the pro she is, silently extends a box of tissues. I take a couple, and she gives me a few moments to breathe. To process all this.
“Miles, what’s the pattern you notice here?”
I give her a look—borderline annoyed, mostly good-natured. “That I’ve been through stressful shit and stayed sober? Like, used healthy coping strategies instead of drinking?”
She nods, contemplating me before she speaks. “The reason relationships are discouraged during the early stages of recovery is they often involve emotional highs and lows. It’s important to be in a place where you can navigate those stressors without falling back into unhealthy habits. In your case, drinking.”
“So you’re saying I’ve done that?” Something like hope creeps into my psyche. “Shown I can handle my shit?”
“I’m saying you’ve been tested. Especially recently. Put through some very stressful experiences—some significant temptation—and still chosen the sober path.”
I chuckle wryly at the wording. “Sounds like some kind of choose-your-own-adventure shit.”
Lydia smiles. “Something like that.”
“I guess that’s life, right?” I muse. “A bunch of fucking choices.”
People talkabout a breakthrough in therapy like it’s some transformativea-hamoment. A spark, a sudden light bulb, or the clouds suddenly part and you can see everything with perfect clarity. But they don’t talk about the fatigue—the soul-level emotional drain of processing your shit. The sheer effort of bushwhacking new neural pathways to get out the other side of the mess. The way your past still claws at you, your old patterns none too keen to let go or let you embrace new ones.
Brains are dicks like that.
“So, wait.” Gus sounds confused. “You think you could go for it?”
