When I arrived home, I pulled my purchase out of the bag and opened it with excitement, mainly because I was just happy to have something different to do with my time. I was fine when at therapy and meetings, but that only took up at the max three hours of my day. I was left to fill the other hours, which at this point was making me nutty. So with much anticipation, I set up a little painting studio in Matthew’s living room, right in front of the TV, because it was close to 4:00 p.m. and Oprah was coming on. I began my hobby and became quite enthralled with this new activity.
I found painting very calming, which was exactly what I needed. I carefully filled in each numbered space with the corresponding paint color from the box. This became part of my daily routine. Wake up, drink coffee, avoid Matthew’s advances, go to a meeting, on some days go to therapy, come home, eat lunch, paint and watch Oprah, wait for Matthew to come home, go to a meeting with him, usually just come home afterward, spend some time watching TV with his dad, and go to bed. The painting became the highlight of my daily life. Realizing that saddened me. I really was starting to feel as though I needed a job or some type of purpose.
By the way, I did finish the painting, and it was quite brilliant if I may say so myself. I framed that bad boy and gave it to my oldest brother, Jimmy, for a Christmas present. To this day, he still has it hanging on his wall. It is my one-piece ongoing art exhibit, and I am damn proud.
After finishing that artwork, and as a result of continual attendance in therapy, it was clear to me that I needed to get a job, get out of Matthew’s house, and get out of the relationship, for that matter. I had been discussing the relationship in therapy, and, although my therapist never told me what to do, the day I mentioned it might be healthy for me to move out and end it, she was elated. It was becoming more and more difficult to pretend to be his girlfriend anyway. We never spent much time alone; we didn’t interact as a couple in terms of kissing or having sex. Eventually, one night when he came into my room and attempted to slip into bed with me while his father was out, I had had enough, sat him down, and told him I was just not ready to be in a relationship—that I needed to focus on my recovery. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that was only half true.
I just felt nothing for him sexually or romantically. It wasn’t him— he was a sweetheart. It was me. There is a really good reason that counselors and others advise you to not be in a relationship during the first year of recovery. Everything is so raw and new, and the focus really needs to be on yourself and your program. However, this is not an easy concept for newcomers, especially us young ones, when we are finally feeling alive again in our bodies and hormones are raging. The sexual energy in a room full of young people in recovery can be a whole other type of intoxicating. It is quite surprising that on any given day you don’t walk into a young people’s meeting and see them all dry-humping each other like dogs in heat.
Matt did not take it very well when I told him, so I knew I needed to get the hell out of his house ASAP.
BY BREAKING UP WITH MATT, I HAD JUST THROWN my newfound routine and stability into upheaval. It was clear after dumping him that I had worn out my welcome and needed to move on. Even though I knew it was the right thing to do, I found myself very emotional after it all. I was sad for hurting him, but I also immediately missed the attention and “love” I thought I had received from him. I cried a lot about it—not so much over him but more for myself and the void I felt inside me. It was confusing, because I also found myself ecstatic about my new ability to vocalize my needs and actually follow through with them. So much change was going on inside me that I felt like I was on a daily roller coaster, and the ups and downs were making my head spin.
My sponsor, Tina, offered to let me live with her while I searched for an apartment. So I moved into her condo, closer to downtown State College, which was where I wanted to be anyway. Everything was new—my room, the coffee maker, my surroundings, the neighborhood, everything. It freaked me out a bit because I was so used to my old routine. But it was a positive change, at least at first.
Tina’s place was beautifully decorated and clean. Her mother was very wealthy. Her father had passed away, leaving her mom with a bundle, and she took care of Tina and paid most of her bills. Tina’s condo had several bedrooms and a nice hot tub in the basement that I could retreat to when I needed it. It also offered me freedom from Matt. I felt as though I had more privacy and breathing room.
Tina hooked me up with a job with the company she was working for at the time. It was a biotech firm, a field I knew nothing about, but it was good pay. To help the company plan for a big conference, I was crafting correspondence, booking the conference locations, and having a blast. It felt so good to have purpose again and to be needed in a broader sense. It felt amazing to have a place to be each day, to be accountable to someone, and to be getting paid!
At Tina’s house, though, I was aware I was still in someone else’s space, so I was careful about my actions. I stayed in my room most of the time because I felt more ownership over that space. Plus, I was slowly noticing things about her that were red flags to me. She was often locked in her room most of the night. She rarely socialized with me. She seemed out of it a lot of the time. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why my gut was telling me she may not have been the person she presented.
When I got into recovery, I had a whole new outlook on people and a naiveté that surprised me. I assumed everyone in recovery was just as honest and willing to work the program as I was. I assumed I could trust everyone in recovery. It was an assumption that I quickly learned was wrong. People from all walks of life come into the program, some for the right reasons and some for the wrong reasons, some who are sincere about getting help and some who aren’t.
There are people who are mandated by the court to come into the rooms as part of their sentence, and you can usually spot them a mile away. They sit in the back of the room, they don’t speak much, and they fly up to the meeting leader’s chair to have their papers signed as soon as the meeting is over so they can get out of there. Not all of them are like this, of course. Some court-mandated attendees do get through the program and stick with it, but many just do their time and get their papers signed.
There are also those who come in and expound upon the text of their twelve-step fellowship, quoting every passage and page in the book like some kind of evangelist and trying to make everyone believe that because they memorized the book they are some type of recovery god. All the while they are hitting on the eighteen-year-old newcomer walking through the door or secretly gambling away all their money every Saturday night at a poker table.
Then there may be a girl who sits all the way in the in the back week after week, never saying a word. Everyone assumes she isn’t getting it and will relapse any minute, until one day she does speak and says something incredibly profound and announces that she actually has five years of clean time.
As with any group of people, everything is not always what it seems. Recovery is a microcosm of society at large. So many of us come into the rooms of recovery having done some horrible, illegal, and unethical things, and yet overall most recovering people I’ve met are some of the most creative, loving, honest, and pure people I know. Many are still faking it just to make it. It took me a while to figure out who was who. I wasn’t always as sharp as I wish I could have been. For example, I briefly dated a guy I thought was just as into recovery as I was, only to find that he enjoyed another compulsive disorder and would try to get me to watch porn every night. I befriended and became the sponsor of a younger girl who told me horrible sob stories that broke my heart. Later I would learn from her mother and her that she was a pathological and compulsive liar and the stories were all lies. I kept hearing people in the meetings say, “Stick with the winners,” but my radar was still a little broken in that department and tended