The Truth

Rhonda

The weekend passed, blissfully quiet. An NA meeting kicked off Saturday morning, and an AA meeting brought Sunday night to a close. Narcotics Anonymous felt more like home. There were around fifteen people and they welcomed everyone to speak. A regular member had been nominated to lead the meeting and he chose a focal point, but one could speak about anything. I kept quiet that first time, but I appreciated the sincerity of the others and admired their sobriety. I still didn't know if I could cut it on my own. I still don't.

AA felt like an entirely different animal. It took place in a large hall that smelled like a church. Dozens of alcoholics attended; the speakers had been planned. It was very religious, even though they insisted that your chosen higher power didn't have to be God. The NA group understood this better. AA was full of religious freaks. Every speaker marvelled at how statistically they should be dead. I wanted to remind them that unless the statistic was one hundred percent, they had as much chance as the next obsessive moron to still be living. Every meeting ended with the entire group holding hands and chanting the words I refused to believe: "It works if you work it so work it you're worth it."

I bought a Bar One from the vending machine and Carly reminded me that I had to prepare my goals. Every Monday started with a group where we presented a feeling we wanted to work with for the week. It took place early on Monday morning and preparation had to be done during the weekend. So began my tradition of rushing to do my homework at the last minute. I chose to work on frustration, an uncanny prediction of how that week would go.

Tara interviewed and admitted new patients on Mondays and Thursdays. After group we would all take turns to wander past the nervous newbie, checking him or her out in the hope that they were young and attractive. The group I initially joined consisted mostly of people in their twenties. That Monday, Rhonda bucked the trend.

It wasn't her age or her looks that made us hate her - we'd come to embrace a motherly figure later that same week. We hated her because she actually was crazy. You could see it in the vague expression on a face which didn't leave much to the imagination.

I think of her exclaiming that first day that "the psychologists are here to get inside our heads and fix us, and if you don't believe that then you shouldn't be here!" She had already gotten into the habit of deciding who should or shouldn't be on the program. That would come to seal our hatred of her - her constant elaboration of why each of us didn't get it and hadn't changed.

Josh's humour provided a balm to our irritation. Whenever he spoke with her, she'd end up mocking herself without realising that we were laughing.

"If I knew I had one year to live," she said. "I would go travel." We were in the kitchen making coffee, the only alternative to smoking.

"Why don't you travel anyway?" Josh asked.

"I don't have the money."

"And if you were dying..."

"Then I'd work out a plan. I'd stay in hostels."

"So why don't you do that now?"

"Well I'm not confident enough."

"Why would that change?"

"I'd be dying!"

At that moment he decided to make her his whipping girl. He justified it on the fact that she seemed unaware of his malicious intent.

She had no qualms about speaking her bullshit in every group. One Monday, a few weeks later, while we reported back on worksheets we'd been given before the weekend - my first full weekend out - she told us all her secret.

"Every morning you must make affirmations. Stand in front of the mirror and say, 'I'm beautiful'. Then you'll be beautiful. Say, 'I'm happy' and you'll be happy. Say, 'I'm rich,' and you'll be rich. That's what I do and it truly works."

"Is that why you're here?" Josh asked. It was aggressive and mean but no one cared. No one of us at least.

"I'm here because I stopped doing it. If I hadn't lost track of it, I wouldn't need to be here. All you need is positivity. Then you'll attract positive things. It's called..."

"I'm sorry," Skinny said. He addressed Jen, the psychology intern in charge of the group. "Is this relevant?"

"No but it's entertaining," Josh said.

Jen felt it time to step in. "I'm going to have to stop you there, Rhonda, to give the others a chance to report on their homework. Is there anything pressing?"

Rhonda shook her head. It was my turn.

"Okay.

STRONG EMOTIONS: anger; despair. INTENSITY: 100.

PROMPTING EVENT: I was staying at my boyfriend's apartment. He wanted me to go to a club with him. I told him that I couldn't because I didn't want to start drinking again. He decided that I was judging him and began to shout at me. When I shouted back, he got frustrated and hit me in the stomach. He told me to move out and left to go to the club. I called my dad to see if I could stay at him but his wife told me that he was on a business trip and that there was no space because she had relatives over. So I had to go stay in a shelter because it was too late to come back to Tara.

INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SITUATION: Resentment of the pain I've been through and those who've put me through it. Feeling trapped between a rock and a hard place. Hopelessness of things not getting better.

BODY CHANGES: While I fought with my boyfriend my teeth and fists were clenched. When I spoke to my dad's wife, I felt a welling surge of discomfort in my chest. At the shelter I became teary eyed and curled up in a fetal position on my mattress."

Jen stayed silent for a while, giving the emotions in the room a chance to settle. Eventually she spoke. "How did you manage those emotions when they were so overwhelming and when it was something over which you had so little control?"

"Um... I didn't really."

"But you're here. You managed to stay safe somehow. You're alive, you're not in hospital or jail. Did you feel the need to act impulsively?"

"I wanted to kill my boyfriend. And I had thoughts of suicide. But neither were practical. I didn't have the energy to go through with them."

"And if it had been easier?"

"...I don't know."

"So where are those emotions now?"

"They're still with me but I've numbed them out. I'm not really thinking about them much."

I did not listen to the rest of the session. I was doodling a cow and its suckling calf.