38. Luke
luke
. . .
Detoxing is hard, it makes you crave anything that will make the pain go away.
But that is just a trick to keep you in the loop of addiction.
Your mind is telling you that the pain can go away if you just have one more…
But the worst part of being here and being clear headed is that the veil has lifted and with it everything that I have done is right there in front of me in technicolor.
I had to come to terms with the fact that I had started to push Bailey away long before I had an addiction, that I started to drink and then use pills to numb the truth, to avoid the pain I had caused.
Part of my therapy is to understand where the addiction came from to avoid spiralling and following the same path again.
That meant digging into when it all started, what the triggers were.
And it all led back to Bailey, back to when she signed the contract that I practically forced her to sign and then everything unravelled from there.
It hurt to dig into, hurt even more to try and wrap my mind around why I did the things I did.
I knew that if I missed Sadie’s wedding that would be it, that Bailey would not forgive that like she did everything else.
But I did it anyway. I listened to people who didn’t matter, people who only wanted to use me.
A particularly difficult conversation with my rehab assigned therapist has been replaying in my mind since. One that peeled back the layers and made me feel it all.
I was sitting in one of the rooms designated for individual therapy sessions, a room intentionally designed to be clean, calm and minimalistic. The walls were a soft cream colour, the furniture a neutral blue. A window faced the mountains to give the illusion of space... It should feel peaceful.
“Do you think your addiction is about the alcohol, the drugs?” he asked.
“Yes…No… I don’t know… this feels like a trick question.” I sat in an oversized arm chair, my leg crossed over, my ankle resting on my knee. I picked at the hem of my jeans, avoiding looking up. The shame I had been carrying was heavy.
Dr Stevens chuckled, “This isn’t a trick Luke, no wrong answers. I am only trying to gauge how you interpret your addiction.”
I blew out a breath, still focused on the frayed edges, “I think the drinks, the pills were tools. They were ways I could use to forget, to numb myself, to avoid my reality.”
He nodded, “And why did you want to avoid your reality.”
“Because it is shitty.” I huffed out.
He didn’t push, he sat and waited for me to expand. Eventually I lifted my eyes to meet his.
“I… I ruined the best thing to ever happen to me and I didn’t want to face that.”
He hummed to himself before responding, “You are still young Luke, twenty six. How do you know that the life you were living was the best thing that would ever happen to you.”
That pissed me off. I sat up a little straighter, dropping my foot down to the ground, resting my arms on the sides and digging my fingers into the edge of the chair.
“Because I had her. Because being with her, having her in my life… she made everything better. She…” I blew out a breath trying to figure out a way to explain her, to explain how I felt.
“Have you ever met someone and knew instantly that they were it for you? That being in their presence felt like a gift…”
“No, Luke I can’t say that I have.”
The silence felt thick, I was working through the feeling bubbling up within me, when he said, “Then answer something for me.” My eyes snapped up to his as he continued, “If being with Bailey was that good, if it was a gift… Why did you throw that away?”
I huffed, my anger growing, “Isn’t that what I am here to figure out? Isn’t that your job?”
He didn’t react to my outburst, Dr Stevens steepled his fingers in his lap and waited.
I looked away, my eyes trailing the scenery, the mountains… Wondering if she was looking at them too.
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do, Luke.” His voice was kind, but firm.
“I…” I felt a tear slip down my cheek. “I… never felt good enough.”
“Keep going,” he urged.
“You haven’t met her and seeing her on stage doesn’t even come close to who she is in person.
The warmth and love… just who she is at her core.
And beyond being this incredibly kind, generous, loving person…
She is also insanely talented. She could do anything...
Be with anyone… and I….” I grabbed a tissue from the table beside me and wiped my tears.
“She grew up with nothing. Very few people know how hard her and Sadie actually had it. My parents helped when they could, but we weren’t all that much better off at times.
But she never let it dim her. Even before her parents died, they were absent at best. It was almost always just Sadie and Bailey…
and then they became part of my family… and then it was me and Bailey. ”
I crumbled the tissue in my hand squeezing it.
“Even in high school the guys would tease me telling me not to hitch my horse to someone when we were so young and I sampled what else was out there. But I never saw anyone but her… even with all this shit that the media stirred up, the lies... The manipulation of their version of the truth… I have never seen anyone but her, not like that.”
I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut thinking of all the things she must have been told, must have seen. What she must think of me.
“Keep going, Luke. You are doing great.”
“Bailey was always bigger than life, this ray of sunshine. I wasn’t good enough even when we were no ones and had nothing…
and then when she got that contract. I thought I would have time to catch up, but she took off so fast…
and even then… even when… even then she kept coming back to me, kept begging me to let her help.
To be with her in what she was doing… How do you live up to someone like that? ”
He studied me for a moment and then said, “You need to stop putting her on a pedestal.”
“What? Why… what are you…” It felt like my words were tangled up.
“You heard me,” he said with a raised eyebrow.
“Luke, no one is perfect. And yes I know what you are talking about. In life there are people who just seem to have something intangible about them. Who seems to have it all, who could do anything. But what do you think those people think of themselves?”
“I don’t understand.” I was trying to tamp down my frustration. My fingers digging into the chair.
“Do you think Bailey sees herself as this perfect person who walks on water and does no wrong?” he asked.
“No.” I huffed.
“Ok. And what do you think Bailey would say about you in your relationship… before everything happened.” He asked.
“I… I don’t know.”
He gave me that eyebrow again, “What did she get from your relationship? What did she want from you, need from you?”
The tears started all over again, how could I say out loud that all she wanted was me.
To be with her, to share our lives together.
Bailey didn’t ask for a lot, she gave… she gave without even considering what it took from her and all she wanted was…
“She wanted me to be her partner, to be there with her. She always said that it didn’t matter what was going on in her life, just being with me, being in my arms, talking to me…
That it could make anything better. That her world only felt right when I was with her. ”
We sat in silence for a while, the therapist allowing me time to absorb what I had just said.
“It sounds to me like she needed you as much as you needed her. We will dig more into that in later sessions and more around the importance of finding happiness within yourself instead of relying on someone else to do that for you.”
I felt his eyes on me for a bit, when I looked at him, he looked like he was considering something weighing his options.
He nodded seemingly to himself and then sighed.
“I was going to wait on this for your next family visit, but I think giving you time to absorb the information and work through it before your family comes would be best for you. They gave me permission to disclose this information to you.”
What? My heart started racing… no idea what he was going to tell me. What my family was keeping from me.
“Luke, there is no easy way to say it. Sadie is sick.”
I blinked at him, trying to understand what he was saying. I remembered someone saying something about Sadie being nauseous… and then I saw her… She was… “Is she sick because she is pregnant?” I asked.
He gave me a tight smile before answering, “That may have been part of it during the early stages, but now…”
What is so bad that he was struggling with how to tell me?
“Sadie has cancer, Luke. A late stage type of cancer that she will not recover from.”
His kind brown eyes studied my face, waiting for my reaction. But it was like my brain was having a hard time understanding the words he just said. Sadie has cancer… a cancer that she will not recover…. NO…
“No… no. She…”
My dads earlier words about Bailey having too much on her plate… too much to deal with. No.
“I don’t… that can’t be right. Sadie can't die.”
My breathing had picked up and I felt hot all of a sudden.
“It’s ok Luke, breathe through it. But don’t shut down what you are feeling. I need you to hear me and understand what I am saying and then we can work through it together… ok?”
I nodded, my throat clogged with emotion. I knew what he was going to say and all I could think of was, who helped Bailey work through it when she found out… Who was there for her?
“Sadie is dying, Luke. They are planning a c-section delivery to minimize the stress on her body and then she will start her palliative care treatment. She….”
I didn’t hear what else he said. Sadie was dying. Sadie was dying and on top of everything else Bailey had to take care of because of my choices… she was now dealing with this.
I stood abruptly from my chair, panic sneaking up.
“What do you need Luke?”
I laughed at that, pacing in front of the window. “What do I need? I need to not be the selfish asshole who ruined his marriage. I need to get home to my wife. I need to get better so I can go home and see…” A sob burst free from me, visions of Bailey and Sadie growing up with me.
“Luke…”
I grasped at my chest, falling to my knees, “Oh god… it hurts.”
Dr Stevens was there beside me on the ground, “I know it hurts, but you can’t ignore this pain. You have to feel it. If you want to get better and be there for Bailey... Spend time with Sadie. You need to work through this… you cannot shut down or try to numb it. Breathe through it Luke.”
And so I let myself feel everything, I let the grief and anger, the shame, the love, the loss…
all of it. It fucking hurt. But he was right, I couldn't numb this. I couldn’t expect someone else to fix this for me.
I had to feel it. I had to figure out how to heal.
I had to learn from this so I wouldn’t end up back here again and I needed to get back home.