Ian listened to Beethoven’s seventh symphony, and begun hammering a nail into the wall. On the third bang, the nail bent slightly upwards. Ian muttered the word fuck under his breath. Oh well, he thought. As long as it doesn’t bend downwards. He hit the nail a few more times, and felt assured that the nail was perfect for hanging his picture on. He picked up a canvas, and held it up to look at it. The light reflected off the paints, casting a glow on his face from the oranges and yellows in the painting. He had painted it during rehab, it was part of the program: expressing the inner-self. He wasn’t sure how much he truly believed in it, the “inner-self”, but he couldn’t find the strength to throw the painting in the trash.
Twenty-eight days of hell, that was rehab. Even now, he felt the burn of rum inside his mouth. Like a magnet, he felt pulled towards imaginary drinks in the room that didn’t exist. Sometimes, late at night, he’d wake up in the kitchen, apparently the victim of sleepwalking, looking for a bottle of Captain Morgan to quench his thirst. But there was none. The risk of disappointing his mother and father again prevented him from going to the nearest liquor store, two blocks away, and buying himself a weekend frenzy that could poison a man’s blood stream to the point of death.
His parents saved his life. For every ounce of his being that hated his parents for sending him to rehab, Ian now understood that if it weren’t for them, he would be in a prison, in a hospital, or perhaps laying in an alleyway. Ian might be dead at this point. Twenty-eight days can make a huge difference in a man’s life. It was his mother mostly that convinced him to go to rehab. The tears in her eyes. Ian felt ashamed when his mother told him how scared she was for him.
Ian felt anger bubbling up deep in his gut. How could his parents shame him like that? They made him feel like absolute shit. The anger burned his forehead. Where do they get off, controlling his life? They were always trying to control his life.
“Wait,” Ian said aloud. His own voice almost shocked him. He took a few deep breaths. He imagined his feelings seeping out of his nostrils with each breath, a meditation technique he learned. A technique he learned in rehab. Rehab. Where his parents sent him. Breathe, Ian commanded himself.
The music took over, taking Ian to a more melancholy place. This song, he heard it in rehab, and immediately connected to it. It was soothing, yet sad. It produced this odd sensation in him, like a thousand needles pricking him at once while a weight slowly crushed him. Yet, at the same time, the music made him feel light. The steady rhythm of the strings pounded against his brain, while the melody lifted his soul. Yeah, lifted his soul.
Ian hung the painting on the wall, admired it for several seconds, and turned towards his black, leather couch. He sat down, sinking into the expensive piece of furniture. Despite his drinking problem, he never managed to spiral into poverty, that’s for sure. Thanks mom and dad, Ian thought. They never let their baby suffer too much. A ping of anger caused his lips to twitch, but he quickly changed the focus to the painting hanging on the wall.
Yes, it was a reminder. It reminded him of absolute suffering, but it was still bright and enjoyable. Yes sir, I’m a regular goddamn Picasso. It was a far cry from cubism, he knew that much. It was modern art: nothing real was there on that canvas. A five year old was capable of as much, but the canvas spoke to him. He didn’t force a single drop of paint onto that blank material that the canvas didn’t beckon for Ian to place on it. Ian had contemplated when he got home from rehab whether or not he would continue to paint. He enjoyed the experience, even though he knew he was no great artist. It was as therapeutic as his counselor preached it would be. It released something inside of him that was pure, untouched by the years of neglect he had given to his inner-self. Inner-self. Another rehab term. The counselors were constantly trying to help every addict connect back to their inner-self. Ian found it all to be a bunch of bullshit at the time.
Things changed, though. Ian had spent much of his time thinking in rehab. He was forced to keep a journal, which at first was nothing but insincere facts about the day. One particular day changed that. His cravings had been particularly painful on that day. Ian’s head felt like the lid to a pickle jar, being twisted open for the first time. He expected to hear a popping sound any moment.
They were sitting, his fellow addicts and the counselor, in a therapy session. Discussing their problems. Trying to help each other figure out how to start their lives over, how to give up the lives they’ve lived up to this point. Ian was angry on this day. There was no push and pull compromise. Ian wasn’t going to change his life. He would stop drinking, sure, if it would shut everyone up, but he wasn’t about to give up the way he was living his life just because some counselor; a gangly idiot, with brown hair cut in the shape of an upside down bowl, and thick black-rimmed glasses, barely out of college and looked like one of those “emo” brats who complain about how romantically tragic their lives are; said that in order to break their destructive habits, they had to completely reconstruct the patterns of their lives.
Ian eventually walked out of the therapy session. He would have none of this on this day. His head was about to burst, he knew it. He needed just a sip of a refreshing alcoholic drink, a rum mixed with Coke. Just a sip. One shot. It would soothe his throat, which was burning. It was release the pressure building up in his head. Ian returned back to his room. The first thing Ian did was rip the sheets off his bed. It wasn’t a decision. His body was responding by impulse. He took his pillow and beat it on the wall several times. The next few moments was an out-of-body experience for Ian. He could see himself beating on the dresser in his room, pulling the shelves out, throwing clothes around the room, and banging on any surface that wouldn’t easily break from the force.
Finally, in exhaustion, Ian slumped on the wall next to his bed, a small space created by the bed, the wall, and his nightstand. Ian’s breathing was deep and rapid. He wanted out of this room, out of this hospital, out of this city, this state, this country. He wanted to float in his own demons, letting them rip their teeth and claws into his body as quickly as his heart was beating right now. Ian thought about suicide for the first time. Images of ripping open his arms, putting a gun to his mouth, jumping off of a building all floated in and out of his head like the words floating across a jumbo screen in Time Square of New York City.
Ian couldn’t explain why his journal caught his attention at this particular moment, but there it was on top of the nightstand. It seemed to have a spotlight shining on it. It seemed to plead to Ian for release. He reached out for it. He pulled it down, into his lap. He stared at it for a few moments. Previously, this red spiral notebook was nothing but an inconvenience for him. At this particular moment, it seemed to offer a solution to him, but he couldn’t figure out what. He pulled the ballpoint pen out of the spiral, opened the notebook to the first blank page he could find, and wrote. Most of it didn’t make sense. He wrote the word “Help.” He wrote, “angry”, and “why?”. He wanted to be released from this shell. Ian wrote this. It was the first sentence he scribbled down, and it hit him. He paused for a few moments and looked at the handwriting: it was shaky and desperate, but it was the catalyst of five pages. Five pages filled with thoughts about what got him here. Every realization about his life surprised Ian, as if a curtain opened in front of his eyes, and he could see the world for the very first time.
He had never felt comfortable in his own skin. Growing up, Ian was a shy boy. Friends weren’t easy to make for him. Once somebody spoke to him, he found it easier to talk, but it almost always required that first step by a stranger in order to open Ian up to the world.
He never had many friends at a particular moment. If he made a new friend, often one of his other friends would slowly phase out of his life. He missed so many of the people who came in and out of his life. Ian wanted so desperately to please everyone. He hated to know if someone didn’t like him. It hurt him.
When high school came around, and more and more of his friends began experimenting with sex, drugs, and alcohol, Ian had a hard time finding a place to fit in. He refused drugs. He hated cigarette smoke and declined any other type of drunk his friends dabbled in: marijuana, acid, even the occasional cocaine binge. He watched his friends subject themselves to these drugs, enjoying their highs, helping them through their lows, but never partaking in the full experience himself.
He would’ve loved to participate in sex more often. However, most girls didn’t find him particularly attractive, and his personality often made it difficult for girls to like him. He was slightly condescending, a naturally bright student who was always taught by his parents to be proud of his abilities, he came off as arrogant. However, finally in his junior year of high school, he got a girlfriend, and he lost his virginity. Even this event he gloated to anyone; he turned girls off even more with this display, but he still managed to get girlfriends throughout high school, mostly picking up younger sophomore girls desperate for an upperclassman to raise their popularity status.
Drinking, however, was his vice that he indulged in all throughout his teenage years. Friends began sneaking beers as early as the beginning of the seventh grade, and harder alcohols, like whiskey and rum, became choice for the last few years of high school. His senior year he “graduated” himself to vodka, the cheapest, most toxic tasting brand he could buy. However, once he went through college he relaxed back into a steady drink of rum. Ian never felt he had a problem. He was doing the “college thing”, drinking whenever the opportunity presented himself.
He never felt awkward or self-conscious when he drank. The shyness of his youth went away. He felt emboldened by every moment his head began to lighten from the alcohol. Ian did not have a problem. He was solving a problem by drinking. He was fixing himself. He became a better person when he was drunk. It balanced him out.
Writing and writing, he suddenly realized how ridiculous his drinking had become. He did need it. The realization hit Ian. He wrote it several times, filling an entire page with “I need alcohol”, but it wasn’t the desperate sort of yearning that led him to rage earlier in the day. It was a realization about his own biological makeup: He needed alcohol.
Ian stopped writing. He flipped through the pages of his notebook. Some of the pen had smudged from his hand dragging across the ink before it could fully dry. His life seemed to have order now. He seemed to understand.
This wasn’t an experience that made the rest of his time in rehab any easier. But it helped him focus. He wanted to get better now. It was the bottom, and now he wanted to dig himself out of the grave he was building.
Ian blinked. The painting still hung there on the wall, as it was a few minutes ago. He looked at his watch. Ten minutes had passed. Ian stretched out on the couch. And checked the time again. It was 6:54 at night. Julie would be there any minute. A date. The word made his stomach lurch. Date. He felt his cheeks turn red at the idea. The shy six-year-old boy was returning in the body of an adult.
Julie was a girl from work. Ian always liked her, but she always avoided any attempt at meeting with Ian outside of work. It was frustrating, and Ian could never get an answer out of her, but a few days after returning from rehab, Ian returned to work, and Julie was very comforting. She listened as Ian explained his experience over a lunch break, and she showed sympathy towards him. In a moment of vulnerability, Ian asked if she would come over to his apartment on Friday night. He fully expected the same rejection, but she said sure. Ian had to ask her to repeat her answer twice; he didn’t believe it. A part of him almost didn’t want to believe it. And now here he was, Friday night, sitting on his couch, waiting for Julie to knock on his apartment door.
God, Ian thought. I could use a drink. Someone knocked on the door three times. Ian wanted to vomit.

02/16/2008

Author's Note: Just something I started writing and didn't stop.

Posted on 02/17/2008
Copyright © 2024 Jared Fladeland