The World According to Chuck

I work at the computer in a recliner, the only solution I could come up with to battle back pain. It turned out all right; I had to learn how to type again, but ergonomically speaking it seems a better choice, and if I have to live with the image of a lazy boy then I guess I just will.

But I fell asleep in it last week, just tilted my head back and conked out for two hours, “like an old person!” Julie thoughtfully said, and I knew something was coming.

It turned out to be a cold, is all, just sinus pain and some coughing, a little lethargy and a convenient place to nap. It could have been much worse, and Lord knows the stress of the dental week didn’t help my energy.

It coincided, though, with a wifeless weekend, just the two boys, and so there were memories of other weekends when I didn’t do a whole lot, and for reasons that still creep into my dreams. I lost a few of those.

I managed to sneak out a couple of times, shore up the supplies, and I was standing in line at the grocery store at 10 am when I saw this jaw-droppingly beautiful woman. I’m not good with ages but I’m thinking early 40s. Blonde hair, perfect body, expensive clothes, classic features, cheap wine.

A big bottle with a $7 price tag. I know this wine. I used to buy it. I haven’t even glanced at it in nearly seven months, but I remember mid-mornings and the whole thing damn near broke my heart.

And, of course, I know nothing. She could have just been errand running and buying the cheap stuff for unimportant dinner guests, but I got a strong sense of pain and I have a pretty well-developed sense of that. Been there, those mornings. Buy some cheese and maybe an apple, make it look like a spontaneous picnic, but you can’t wait to get home because your brain is screaming for relief, and that only comes in a bottle.

I wanted to hold her. I’m sort of embarrassed to write that, what with her being beautiful and fragile, but I did. I wanted to tell her it was okay, that God still believed in her, that miracles happen every day, that I could explain stuff and help her find some peace, but strangers need conventions to connect.

Maybe I’ll catch her in a meeting someday.

I’ve become a hardass, I told Julie the other day, but I have to be more specific. If I become one of those old AA pricks who talk about “we’ve raised the bottom” and sneer at people in pain, then you can shoot me, OK? I give you permission.

What I mean is that I’ve moved past cliches, as comforting as those can be, and as necessary in the beginning. I don’t craft rigorous honesty anymore, build up a nice mini-monologue in case I get called on. You get what’s on my mind, and a lot of time that has to do with my mistakes and misadventures, and sometimes my always growing conviction that it has less to do with drinking than why you would even consider it in the first place.

Not you. Me. Just another convention. Sorry.

I’ve been given back free will. I know, I know. You think I always had it. You want to talk about personal responsibility, and good choices, and I truly understand that and it’s still nonsense, at some level. I lost the power to make choices, for a while. And if you think I was “functional,” just some nice man who drank too much and came to his senses and asked for help and did the hard work and put in the time and got the education, then I could tell you stories.

I crawled into recovery. Crawled. Sustained only by an idea that I didn’t want to die yet, by the love of my family, by the hesitant notion that my higher power wasn’t quite done with me yet, by the knowledge of friendships that stayed through indifference.

Actually, honestly, by the idea that somebody out there might want to hold me.

As I said, I’ve had to learn how to type again.

I almost never go to church these days, but then of course I do. I go mostly to churches, most nights. I know churches. I can find the copier. I know where the power lies (church secretaries). I recognize the hymnals. I understand the seating dynamics.

And I sit in these churches, with people, some of whom don’t believe in God, and I swear I’m tempted to take my shoes off, it’s that holy.

And of course there’s always somebody who wants to talk about being “spiritual” as opposed to “religious,” or expresses a disdain for “organized religion,” and I can be as arrogant as anybody and I’m a hardass now and I express the opinion that for somebody who doesn’t like religion they sure do seem to be active in one.

Rituals. Sacraments. Prayer. Confession. Witnessing. Altar calls. Your typical AA meeting. We hold hands and everything.

I saw a beautiful woman in pain the other day, and of course I saw the least of us, by which I mean me.