Mike's Secret

“I’m Mike and I’m an addict.”

They’d told him it would get easier to admit in time, but so far it hadn’t. The weekly confessions only went so far in cleansing his soul. The lingering sense of his innate wrongness never quite faded. He’d done what he could to clean up his life, but the past stood etched in the stones of his memory and no amount of confessing would ever change that.

He knew he’d gotten off easy, the others had gone to jail, but he was younger, had acted sorrier, and they’d sentenced him to rehab and probation. That’s how he got here. It’d been long enough he didn’t have to keep coming, but he could talk to these guys. They understood how he’d gone from high school football star to addict to wanted for assault and battery to recovering addict, caring for his ailing mama and working for a shit hole of a cab company.

“So how you really been,” Doug, his sponsor, asked as they were folding up chairs after the meeting.

“Shitty, I keep lookin’ at mama’s pills wonderin’ if anybody would notice if I took just one.” He slumped down into the next chair instead of folding it and put his head in his hands. Doug set a chair in front of Mike and leaned forward ready to listen.

“I’m a real dick too man, I keep wishin’ she’d just die already. I know that ain’t no way to feel about my mom, but she ain’t like my mom no more. She’s just this shell that keeps breathin’. I can’t stand seein’ her like that, and I feel so trapped. I hate Josh for leavin’ this to me. He’s off havin’ a life and I’m stuck here. What kind of shit-head does that?”

“What are you going to do?”

Mike sighed, “I gonna keep sayin’ my prayers and keep takin’ care of my mom. What else can I do?”

“What about your journal? The last time we talked you said it was really helping.”

“Oh man, I been writin’ like you said: whatever pops in my head. But shit’s gettin’ weird man. It feels good, but now I got, like, dragons and shit, it’s like a honest-to-god fairy story or somethin’.” Mike scratched his head, feeling embarrassed, confessing the content of his recent writing. He’d have caught hell if he’d told his high school friends he liked dragon stories. “Not sure how but, I gotta admit, when I’m writtin’ I don’t think about the rest of it. Sometimes it feels more real than the real shit, only better, like I got some kinda control over somethin’.”

“You keep at it the; don’t worry whether it’s weird or not. What about work? Anything new there.”

“I don’t know man. I got no other prospects, but I’m pretty sure the boss man has some side business that ain’t on the up-and-up, you know what I’m sayin’. Don’t get me wrong, I like meetin’ all the people and hearin’ their stories, and drivin’ around town, but I heard him talkin’ to some guy the other day about a job. I sure don’t need anything else on my rap sheet.”

“Has he asked you to do anything illegal?”

“Na, I keep my head down and act kinda dumb when he’s around so he leaves me out of all that.”

“Well, I’ll keep my ear to the ground; let you know if I hear of something opening up.”

“I appreciate that.” Mike nodded, stood, and folded the chair.

Doug took the cue, “Hang in there. Call me the next time the pills are singing to you, or if you just need to talk. And don’t beat yourself up for wanting to get on with your life, just know you’re not alone and things will change in time.”

Mike nodded. Knowing he had someone to talk to helped, but he doubted Doug really understood what he was feeling. The nagging need to be doing something made the promise, that things would change in time, feel like another sentence, like life pronouncing him unfit to be a productive member of society. Only this sentence had no clear ending.

“And keep writing,” Doug called from across the room. “You never know what you might learn about yourself.”