I’m told the ratio of recovery is 3 to 1 by a man at a Sunday
evening meeting ‘one person dies, one person is in a relapse, one person is in
recovery’, he says this with a sadness and smile that tells me ‘you’re doing okay’,
but he sees needles and public toilets and pain in his mind. And I am tense in
anticipation. Because nothing in that ratio is solid, but death. This is the
reality. Although I think the real statistic is 1-10 chance of recovery. Sadly, neither feel wrong, and that makes me
ache. And so, I go, back to rehab for the day, the annual reunion. My first
trip back.
We listen to music, talk loudly, silly singing and laughing,
and bubbles in our tummies as we drive. It feels like it’s the only right thing
to do, that there is only one way the car can go. Outside are the hills of Gloucestershire,
I know this drive, something skips in my soul. There is coal in my chest that
can’t be swallowed, it’s indigestible. As the roads get smaller and we get
closer I am somewhere between me and who I was two years ago; I’m sitting
between the two, sweaty palms and hospital stained skin, and clean and serenity.
Squashed and suddenly nameless in thoughts. We turn in and I breathe deeply,
pull together the two parts of me, squeeze them into each other. The tires roll
over the gravel in that beautifully familiar sound. We walk up to the happy and
joyful, who offer tea and name badges. We’re early, we wait. Sip tea under the marque
that looks like too grand, too out of place, a sour thumb. It sits at the
bottom end of the car park. The rest looks the same. It’s how I remember it but
it’s shrunk. All the memories are still here, they’re right where I left them.
As people drift in the bells start to ring in my brain, with
‘it’s you,’ and everyone begins to feel like family again. We swap stories,
talk of therapists we feared and ones who fell asleep. We are naughty school
children with giggles and cigarettes. We laugh at the tedium and the tears we
shared. The changes are huge, ‘not fast car- big house’ huge. But happiness
huge, ‘I have my family back’ huge, ‘I walked the dog’ huge, ‘my life in now manageable’
huge. ‘I don’t want to die’ huge. One mother shares about how she’s now a
grandmother, how she couldn’t be happier since her daughter left treatment
three years ago. A woman talks about the old parts of herself she’s learnt to
live with and ignore. Someone who’s voice was once stuck in their chest, picks
up the microphone and talks of becoming a man, studying at university, being
free from pain, being brave. And I am so proud to be part of this.
There are faces that
are mending, hopeful and full. Chubby where sullen cheeks once sat on grey
sunken bones. Fresh with colour, eyes alive again. None of us want to go back
there, back to the madness. We eat, spread ourselves busy across this space
that now looks so small. Children play on a bouncy castle that sits on a piece of
grass where I had sat and wept in hopelessness. Where I had felt this pain was
forever and it was always. I scan the faces, the faces of the people who have
dug themselves out. Spat out the dirt and scrubbed off the soil. And have come
back here on a Saturday afternoon to keep fighting.
Some have relapsed and come back. My self-included, I’m
almost six months again. We all say- ‘this time I’m doing something different,
this time I have hope.’ That’s what today’s about- hope. The hope we find in
each other. Because we know how dangerous this game of life can be. But today
we are fighting. And it’s beautiful.
Back to Bristol and rain spits at the glass of the car window.
I remember the fear I had of this city before. Terrified the place would steal
me into its stinking underbelly. I’m not afraid of that any more.
It went too quickly. I wanted to hold it longer. To crawl
back into the space that saved me in the moment I needed to be saved to the
most. To let it cover me in warmth. It’s a little bit like going home, like
slipping into a memory or a dream or a world where time doesn’t exist at all because
you’re back there and everything’s changed but nothing’s changed at all. Today
is a tiny fragment of all the collected moments I’ve had so far. A day where
the dots join up and new picture begins.
