Page 89 of Dark Ink

“It’s alright.”

Mason cleared his throat. “I just thought, I don’t know, that—that she’d want to be here.”

I smiled at my friend, but there was no joy in it. “I hurt her,” I said. “Maybe more than anyone. I need to prove to her I’m…worth it before I deserve any more of her time.”

“Rian—” Mason started, but I was already opening the door. If he said anything after that it was swallowed by the pouring rain.

They helped bring my suitcases into the in-patient addiction facility. The fluorescent lights were harsh. The art on the walls of the lobby drab, smears of beige and brown in thin wooden frames. I’d given up so much colour, so much life. The attendants spoke to me in low tones. Everything seemed so damn sterile.

I hugged Mason. I hugged Conor. I couldn’t yet bring myself to thank them. To utter the words out loud. I hoped they could feel it, though. In the way I wasn’t quite ready to let go when I did. When I had to. I didn’t look back at them, standing side by side, as I was guided down a carpeted hallway. Maybe it was embarrassment. Maybe I thought I’d call it off if I did. Because there it was, help, aid, love. Right there! Conor, Mason, Dublin Ink!

But I needed help that they couldn’t give me. It was time to learn to help myself. So I didn’t look back. The door swung closed without a sound. And then there was no going back.

I was shown my room. A simple single bed. A tiny desk without drawers, just a notebook and a pen atop it. A generic lamp. A window overlooking an oak tree in the garden. The rest would stay the same, day in and day out, but it gave me hope, that oak tree. It was bare now, the limbs. They rattled against the windowpane in the wind. There was winter yet to survive.

But spring would come. For the oak tree. For me, maybe. Buds of growth. The speckle of dancing sunlight through a sea of leaves. Blissful shade in unrelenting summer. And then, once more, colour. Green shoots like emeralds. I closed my eyes as I imagined their leaves drifting through my open window.

The words of “Raglan Road” came as if from far away as I began to tack up some drawings I’d brought along.

A knock at the door interrupted my soft singing. Brought me back to where I was.

A middle-aged man with an ill-fitting tweed blazer and wrinkles too soon at the corner of his gentle brown eyes introduced himself as my new therapist. He congratulated me on the bravery it took to make this decision. He somehow managed not to make such trite bullshite sound too much like trite bullshite. As we shook hands, he narrowed his eyes at me.

“You’re still hesitant,” he said.

I sank onto the bed. He gestured to ask if he could join me and I made a place for him.

“You obviously must have had a reason for coming here,” the therapist said.

I stared at the drawings of Eithne. She called to me, stirred my blood. Made my throat tight and my brow sweat. I leaned forward, elbows on my knees.

“It’s just—what if my reason is my drug?” I asked. “What if the thing keeping me alive is the thing killing me? What if I can’t get better because the only thing I want to get better for is more of her?”

My therapist was quiet for a moment as he studied the drawings on the wall across from us.

“Love can feel that way,” he finally said, speaking slowly as if he were picking every word carefully. “Love is tricky like that actually. We can call a lot of things love that aren’t love. Mean things, selfish things, possessive things, we can all call love. Addictive things, we can mistakenly call love.”

I glanced over at the therapist.

“You take drugs because you want them, is that correct?” he asked. “You want to use them? Drain the needle? Empty the pipe? Burn down the joint to nothing?”

It seemed obvious, but he seemed amused when I snorted derisively.

“Is that what you want this woman for?” he asked.

I looked up again at Eithne, there in charcoal and parchment. There as surely as she’d been in flesh and blood. Heart beating. Heart pounding.

“There’s your reason for being here, really being here,” my therapist said, tapping me on the knee as he stood. “Your reason is to become a version of yourself who is capable of truly loving her. You don’t love drugs, you need them. I’m going to help you not need this woman but love her. To really love her, Rian.”

I cried. The tears were unstoppable as the rain against the windowpanes. I cried because it fucking hurt. I cried because I knew the months ahead were going to be some of the hardest of my life. But I cried most of all because I knew now it would be worth it.

I had my reason.

From the very day I saw her, I’d had my reason.

Eithne

My new apartment sat atop a burger joint that grilled late into the night for all the college kids craving something extra greasy after a night of carefree drinking. It was impossible to fully block out the flashing neon sign situated outside my bedroom window advertising an erotic toy store in the basement below. I had the top floor, a peaked roof attic with ceilings so low you couldn’t stand up straight and ceilings so high there was no chance at swatting down a wafting Happy Birthday balloon from the last tenant. But my downstairs neighbours somehow managed to make enough noise to make up for the fact that no one was above me. Despite its bad location, its smell, its logistical quirks, as I unlocked the door that stuck in the late winter humidity, one thing could not be taken away from it: it was mine.

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