been a trigger. I don’t want to feel, which is why I drink: to numb, to make it all go away.
The pain of seeing Jason and Julia together has continued, as has the wanting to drink. I haven’t, but I think about it all the time, and I am filling my time with calls to my sponsor, meetings, reading literature, writing the steps; anything to stop the white-knuckling.
I need a meeting that isn’t filled with strange strangers, as has sometimes happened when I’ve tried a new meeting. I don’t want one filled with homeless people—forgive me—and nor do I want one with creepy guys that come up afterward and ask for my number.
I know there is a good meeting here, in Soho, and I walk in, a few minutes late, glad the room is packed, every seat taken, both around the table and the second circle pushed back against the wall.
Someone grabs a folding chair for me, and there is a shuffle as they make room. I glance around, see that it’s mostly men, a few women, one I have seen before in a couple of meetings. She raises her hand and gives me a smile. I’m not sure of her name. Andrea? Amelia? Something like that.
I close my eyes during the reading from the daily reader, Thought for the Day. Martin, a middle-aged cheerful-looking alcoholic, reads:
“Roselle says: I used to try to deny or excuse the things he did that hurt, but that didn’t do anything to heal my hurt. When I came out with my true feelings and honestly ‘told’ him I was hurt and angry, he came back with his true feelings. The wrongs are never made right, but the love and forgiveness puts them in the past and out of today’s ‘processing memory.’”
My true feelings. I’m still trying to process what my true feelings are, although I’m pretty sure I know.
I know because I haven’t been able to talk to Jason since the night I saw him kiss Julia. I took Annie to Sconset the next day, just us girls, and when we got home I went straight up to bed with a pretend migraine so I wouldn’t have to go out for dinner with them. Anything to avoid spending time with Jason.
I couldn’t stand it. That moment, him kissing Julia, keeps spinning round and round my head, on a reel, and each time it does I have to fight the tears. And the anger. And the knowledge that Jason was just a pawn, that Julia’s smile told me everything. Had I not happened to walk into the bar and see them, she would have found a way to let me know. She would have found a way to rub my nose in it, for she could see, anyone could see, how I still feel about Jason, and she had waited years for revenge.
I had always thought that Ellie was the bitch, that Julia was the one I had so much in common with, but Ellie, despite everything, was at least honest. Julia had been holding her secret poisonous grudge all this time, and I never saw it. I didn’t know.
Did she even care about Jason? I doubt it. I doubt this had anything to do with Jason other than being the perfect way to get back at me. And Jason was stupid enough to be carried away, to be flattered into seduction, to lose himself in the moment thinking I would never find out.
At least I presume that’s what he thought. I haven’t seen him since. We had different flights home, and in the three weeks since we’ve been back I have managed to avoid him completely, out of the house when he comes to pick Annie up, clicking his phone calls over to the answering machine, texting him the briefest, curtest texts when I have no other choice.
Love and forgiveness. How I wish I were in a place of love and forgiveness. But I’m not. I’m in a place of hatred and murderous thoughts.
Martin closes the book and starts to speak, as I wait with bated breath.
“I’m Martin, alcoholic.”
“Hi, Martin,” from the rest of the group.
“Great reading.” He shakes his head slowly, as if unable to believe the magnificence of what he just read. “So much food for thought. So, here’s what’s going on for me today.”
My heart sometimes sinks slightly when someone starts with apologizing for going off topic, or announcing what’s going on with them today. It can mean fifteen minutes of