Divine Intervention (Requiem 3)

Fresh from rehab in early spring of 2003, I made it exactly 110 days before I was found unconscious and not breathing outside of a strip club. Let me back up and explain...

The night I left rehab, I went back to the apartment. My dad had packed it up in order to prepare for a middle of the night backdoor move. There was stuff everywhere. I had to unpack a blanket and pull a mattress off of the wall it was leaning on in order to sleep. My dad was staying with his ex wife, so I had a few days with nothing to do. I scrounged what food I could find in the apartment and began the rest of my life. The one thing I remembered was that I was supposed to go to meetings. I had no car and our phone was off, so I had to walk a mile and a half to the nearest gas station to call my aunt and arrange for a ride to the one meeting I knew about. I went to the meeting and it was different than I remembered. In rehab, we were subjected to various meetings all day long. By the time the 12 step meetings came towards the end of the day, it was all I could do to concentrate. After a day on my own, I hung on every word. I kept hearing to get a sponsor and read the book. I left the meeting resolving to do just that. A couple of days later Jen got out and I now had a partner in crime. She told me about a club she had heard about that had meetings all the time. We arranged to meet at the club at noon one day. I showed up, but never saw her. After the meeting I ran into her. Apparently they had more than one meeting at a time in the club. I bummed a ride home from her and we arranged to catch a meeting another time.

My dad and I moved all of our stuff out of the apartment one night a few days later. My dad brought his ex wife and a couple of her kids (which included a half brother of mine). Between the five of us, we were out in about a half of an hour. I'd heard about covert moves like these before, but this was my first experience with them. Our new home was in an apartment right by Highland Ridge Hospital. It was also right by the train here in town, which was good. I was now not so dependent on others for rides. I set about trying to get a job. I spent a day or two at my grandmas looking through the paper and making calls. I got a job fairly quickly, but it wasn't going to start for a week or two. I knew I was going to need a bus pass to get to the job, so I got up at 5:00 AM one morning and snuck a free train ride over to where I could get to a day labor place. I filled out some paperwork and hung out until someone walked in and said they needed a half dozen people to pick up garbage at the dump. I volunteered to go and worked it out to give 5 bucks to a guy with a pickup to drive me out there. I think I was being paid about $6.00 an hour. I worked all day on my feet in the middle of a dump. We put in about 9 hours straight. I didn't think to bring a lunch, so it was a long 9 hours. The sun was out all day and I got burned pretty bad. We got back to the day labor place to get our checks. I got my check and cashed it with the machine there. I paid the driver his 5 bucks and after the government had taken their share, I only had about $35 dollars left. $35 dollars for 9 hours of being on my feet in a dump in the sun. I felt pretty good that I was going to such lengths to get my life back together. Pretty good, that is, until 5:00 AM the next morning when I woke up in agony. My back hurt, my feet hurt, my head hurt, and I felt as though I hadn't slept at all. I sucked it up and hopped the train back to day labor place thinking maybe I'd get a better assignment this time. They sent me right back to the dump. By the end of the day, I decided I was going to live as conservatively as possible to make my new fortune of $70 last until I got my first check at the new job. And I did.

I started the new job on April 15th. I learned that the first 3 months or so was training. I always did pretty good in school, so I was stoked at the prospect. I had to get up by 5:2o to make the 5:50 train that took me to catch the 6:30 bus to my 7:00 job. I had a new respect for people who relied on public transportation. At a meeting one day I heard you were supposed to pick a sponsor who had what you wanted. I asked one guy and was turned down. Then I heard a guy talk about all these vacations he was taking. I wanted that, so I asked him to be my sponsor. He had me start on the steps and read the book. I was calling him pretty regularly and going to meetings. Things were sort of falling into place. I had even started seeing a girl I used to see again. One day at the beginning of June, I opened one of the letters for me from the insurance company that had been sitting on our kitchen table for a few weeks. It was a check with a letter that said that my insurance was cancelled. I didn't understand at first, but what I came to find out was this: when I was let go from my job, my insurance stopped immediately. It was the 28th day of January. I had my grandma pay for one month of my insurance and my father another with my money. The insurance company took my grandmas payment and applied some of it towards the remaining 3 days in January. That left me short a couple of bucks for the February payment. That wouldn't have been a problem except that my dad never paid the second month. He took my money and never paid the insurance. They sent me letters asking for the remaining premium for February and for March, but in the move they were set aside. It was a whole month before I read them, but by then my grace period was done. The check was a reimbursement for the February premium that was short. I faxed in an appeal and prayed for it to go through. On June 9th I got word that my appeal was denied. I thought about all those bills I would soon be responsible for. Despondent, I got permission to leave early on June 10th and went home. I had this check for several hundred dollars in my hand with knowledge that I was going to owe tens of thousands. Tens of thousands that I didn't have. I called my sponsor, but got his voicemail. I thought about going to a meeting, but I made a deal with myself. I decided that if the check cashing store on the corner wouldn't cash my check, it was God's will that I not drink. I went to the store and after a long wait, they told me they needed another form of ID. Divine intervention, right? I went home, got the other form of ID, returned to the store and cashed my check. What can I say? I wanted to drink. I thought about bars in close proximity to the train. The nearest one I could think of was a strip club. The funny thing is that it is the same stop to go to the club for a meeting. I got off on the stop and stood there. I looked left knowing that I could go to a meeting and talk to someone about this. I looked right knowing I could get hammered and forget about this right away. I went right.