Evening, Kibitzers.
This is an Open Thread, As Always ...
… but for those of you who are interested, I need to share a story of how I spent my Tuesday. I need to unburden and fess up to some ‘character flaws’ … To share how disappointed I am in how I responded in someone’s hour of need. I’m not looking for anyone to praise me for just showing up for someone. No, it’s ‘who’ showed up and ‘how’ I showed up at issue here.
I’m 34 years sober and didn’t rack us these years through the 12 Steps. A few years ago, however, I began running into people in our local dog park who were also in recovery and who talked about this wonderful evening meeting just down the road apiece. I decided to check it out and for a few years attended meetings there, sometimes a few times a week. There was a certain satisfaction being in rooms with people working to become their better selves. I stopped attending about two years ago.
I had spoken on occasion after the meetings with a woman from Europe — let’s call her Natasha — and I saw her once or twice in the grocery store.
Hadn’t seen her for years.
But Tuesday morning, the phone rang. I had just downloaded Jane Mayer’s New Yorker story on Christopher Steele to my iPhone and had one foot out the door to the gym to log in 9 or 10 miles. It was Natasha. She was extremely drunk. She said she couldn’t do it on her own. Could I come over.
I felt totally helpless. I’m not a ‘program person’ so when I took down her address I told her I was going to contact a friend of mine who is very active in AA and intimately knows how the process works here in this county. I called “Mary” who said to swing by on my way over and pick her up so she could help out. Determine if Natasha was willing to go into a detox facility. I don’t know if I could have made it through this day without her.
I’ll be honest. I was really angry. Annoyed that I had picked up the phone. Why me?
We showed up at her apartment, found her fully dressed in bed with a script for Ativan on the table beside her, an empty bottle of wine in the kitchen. She was sobbing, her face was swollen. All she would do for the first 45 minutes or was to hold onto us with a fierce strength and thank us for coming. We found out she had been discharged from the hospital that morning with the script. She had driven to the pharmacy to fill it and picked up some wine. Had taken one pill.
Mary, who’s on first name basis with much of the staff at the detox facility, called them and was told that they had a bed for her but she would have to go up to another hospital and get them to release her to their custody with a script with meds to last her through several days of detoxing.They suggested she catch a few hours of sleep and then we could run her up to the ER.
I wish I could write that I was glad to be of service but I am ashamed to admit I wasn’t. I was resentful and grew livid with the realization that this was going to be a full day commitment.
Both Mary and I had doctors appointments that afternoon. We both cancelled them.
We pulled together an overnight bag of clothes and toiletries, tip toeing around so Natasha could sleep. After 30 minutes or so we realized she wasn’t going to sleep so we both shepherded her to my car (needless to say she was really unsteady on her feet) and figured she could nod out in the ER waiting room. We put her and her bag in the back of the car.
We were able to piece together her past few days during our drive, mostly through phone calls which kept coming in to her cell phone from people she didn’t want to talk with. Apparently, she had been 51/50’d by her sister on Monday. This time, she was coming off a 2 ½ month bender. She’d had 4 or 5 DUIs in the past few years. She’d recently been dropped by a man whom she claimed was the love of her life.
She kept staring at me in my rear view mirror and more than once asked “Why are you impatient?” or “Haven’t you ever needed an angel?” or “Why are you so angry at me?” I tried to explain that I was having a really hard time because the situation was bringing up unresolved family issues related to alcohol.
By the time we got to the hospital waiting room, she was sobering up and becoming demanding, almost belligerent. Dare I say ‘entitled?”
- The wait was too long: She shied away from us and told the triage nurse that she was sick and needed to be seen right away.
- She was hungry, hadn’t eaten for days: Mary said we should get her some food so I drove out to a nearby fast food joint and picked up some nachos.
- She needed a cigarette: That really got my hackles up but Mary said we’d pick her up a pack on our way to the detox center.
- She needed an ativan: I voted for having her wait for the staff at detox to medicate her but was outvoted so we doled one out after she’d been discharged from the hospital.
About six hours later, I was home again. Desperately needing a shower. Trying to figure out why this happened. Why had she called me? What was the lesson I needed to learn from this experience?
I’m appalled at how I reacted to and acted within the situation. I was impatient, annoyed, angry. It showed me a side of myself I don’t much like.
Mary texted me that she still smelled booze even after showering and said “Just think, You may have saved a life by answering that phone call.”
I’ll never know if that is the case, though. I’m only left with this sense of having fallen short of self expectations. Of being spiritually bankrupt. And the realization, once again, that alcoholism is a viscous, vile disease, one that brings out the worst in most every life it touches.
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share part of the evening around a virtual kitchen table with readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by and tell us about your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper. Newcomers may notice that many who post diaries and comments in this series already know one another to some degree, but we welcome guests at our kitchen table, and hope to make some new friends as well. |