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Sarah's phone started ringing. She turned her back to me and answered it - it was her mother. I swiveled on the bar stool and looked through the sliding-glass door to the downtown skyline. I stepped up, Sarah fixed on my movements while talking on the phone. I slid my fingers into the handle on the door and pushed it open, stepping out into the sunlight.
I approached the railing on the balcony. My hands gripping it's rough metal, knuckles turning white, smoldering cigarette dangling from my half open mouth. I wasn't looking at any of the other buildings, or across the blue sky as I had done so many times before. My gaze was cast downwards - down to the pavement, seventeen stories below. I worked my foot in between the bars of the railing, sole resting on a horizontal bar that tethered the vertical ones together. I could feel the muscles in my arms and legs starting to tense, my arms pushing down on the railing, gaze still fixed on the pavement that seemed so very far away.
I had never very seriously considered suicide in quite some time. In this moment, however, it seemed like the best thing to do. It didn't seem like much of a stretch to pull myself over and tumble through that autumn afternoon, because in my mind I had already jumped long ago, and I had fallen much farther than seventeen stories. Fifteen minutes ago, Sarah told me what had happened, and what was going to happen now. I had come home early from school, so the police weren't there yet. But I knew what was going to happen. I was going to lose my job. My graduate program was going to kick me out. My friends and family would disown me. It would be all over the media. I would become a pariah. So I thought.
Some of those things came true, some did not - but that's beside the point. As I stood there, trying to work up the courage to push down just a little bit more and lift myself over the railing, I looked back and saw Sarah, standing there and staring at me. I guess if I had to pick something that stopped me, it was that. I can't really think of anything else. I flipped my cigarette over the balcony and came back inside, collapsing on the bar stool, sobbing like I had never sobbed before.
I was arrested, and I spent that night in the detention center because my parents could not get the bond money together until the following morning. Probably the thing that disturbed me the most, oddly, was that I didn't even get a pillow. As if I had become such a piece of shit that I didn't even get to have the comfort of something to prop my head up on. So I lay there on my vinyl cot, staring through the Plexiglas at the control center for the unit, alternately trying so hard to hate Sarah for going to the police, to blame her for my own actions and to think of ways to commit suicide right then.
Even then, I couldn't hate her. I still loved her very much. I still do, today. Blaming, however, was a bit easier. "Why didn't she confront me?" I asked myself. I told myself that I would of changed. That I would of gotten help. That I would of come clean and admitted everything. She didn't need to do what she did.
So I held onto those beliefs, and that's fostered resentment in me towards Sarah for going to the police to report my illegal activities. I've let go of that resentment today, because I have come to the realization that I am a low-bottom drunk.
How many relationships had I ruined because of my addiction? How many people have I hurt, either directly or indirectly? How many times had I almost been caught? How many lies have I told to cover my addiction? How many nights did I spent wallowing in guilt and self-pity because I had completely lost control of this area of my life? How many times did I swear I would never look at pornography again? How many times did I swear I would break off all of my affairs with other women? How much did my meaningful relationships with friends and family suffer because I had spent most of my time alone and locked up in my room? How many times did I stay up the entire night before an important presentation because of my addiction? How many times had Sarah confronted me about my usage of pornography? How many times had I been caught in a lie or an affair?
Looking over that list of questions, it becomes painfully obvious that I had lost so much and yet I had never acknowledged that I had a problem. This is what it took. It took me getting arrested. It took me losing graduate school and my job, and maybe my freedom. So I can't really be angry with Sarah because I happen to have a thick fucking head. That's not her fault. She did the right thing, and she did it for the right reasons. If I have a right to be angry with anyone, it's myself. I should of been courageous and fessed up that I had a problem, and that I needed help. I should of confided in Sarah, or Tarah, or Anne, or any of the other women that cared about me that that there was a reason behind my distance. If I had been a high-bottom drunk, maybe I would have done those things. But this is what it took.
Now the consequences are mine to accept because my behavior is mine to own.
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