I came home yesterday to my ersatz kid sister having an intervention in our living room. She was sitting small in her silver beanbag chair while our house manager sat across from her on the blue velvet sectional.
The air was dense and twisted.
I’d been sensing K’s self-sabotage for quite sometime, the signs are always there. They’re perennial weeds she waters that tangle her up inside until one day she wakes up choking. I hid myself in my room while they had it out.
S came by shortly thereafter, brusquely knocking on our front door. She ripped K a new asshole while K whimpered and sniveled in the corner. I swear the room turned all shades of angry pink, malicious shades of coral with burgundy undertones that swelter in the pit of your stomach.
Later, K swept it all aside. She did her damndest to pretend none of it had happened, that the atmosphere of our apartment hadn’t once again been swallowed up by one of her long gestated self-loathing fall-outs.
I had the sudden urge to rent Girl Interrupted.
Today I’m at Starbucks again. I didn’t even have time to put my favorite perfume on. H wanted me to sit in the office with her while I made some important phone calls. It’s the infantilization of myself at their hands I can’t stand. Why do I need to have her present while I call my father or cancel my cable subscription? She does realize I’m an alcoholic and if I wanted to score a bottle of wine, all I’d have to do is walk into the nearest liquor store. The monitoring of phone calls, the infantilization of it, and the obligation of meetings and meetings upon meetings is really sticking in my craw.
As an introvert, I don’t understand how a meeting spent commiserating over my addiction, basically navel-gazing, is supposed to help me especially if it’s held over my head as an expectation.
I’m not saying the program isn’t great, and I can definitely see its merits, but this whole program and the weekly expectations of meeting certain obligations and sitting in the “principal’s office” to make my important phone calls is some bullshit.
Needless to say, I left without telling H where I was going, finding my familiar corner at the Starbucks with my grande cup of espresso and steamed milk (a “flat white” like I drank at the rehab clinic); I forgot to put on my Kayali perfume but I did remember my cigarettes and my book.
The beauty in not telling anyone where I was going and when means they don’t know I left closer to 11:00am then 10:00am proper which will make my obligatory 10:00am to 2:00pm window of going out pass much faster.
It doesn’t hurt I bought a Rice Krispie treat to munch on. It’s almost noon, I figure that can count as lunch.
Nightingale 
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