Borrowed Chairs in a Church Basement

"My name is David, and I'm an addict," said a man with a roadmap of veins on his nose. The circle responded in a low, practiced murmur. "Hi, David." It was a liturgy. A call and response for the fallen. I took another sip of the wretched coffee and focused on a water stain on the acoustic ceiling tiles. It looked like a map of a country that had lost a war.

Isla sat beside me, preternaturally still. She hadn't wanted me to come. "You'll stare," she'd said. "You have a staring face." I'd insisted. I called it support; she called it tourism. Maybe she was right. I felt like an anthropologist who had stumbled into a sacred rite, notebook conspicuously hidden.

The people in this circle didn't look like the junkies from films. They looked like my neighbours. A woman who could have been a librarian, a young man in a pristine tracksuit who looked like he should be worrying about his grades, not his sobriety. They spoke of betrayals, of stolen cheques and hollowed-out relationships, all in the same tired, declarative tone. The language of the confessional.

I kept glancing at Isla. She was staring at her hands, which were clasped so tightly in her lap her knuckles were white. Her sobriety was new, fragile as a snail shell. Thirty-two days. She counted them like a rosary. To me, it felt like a lifetime. To her, I knew, it was a high-wire act over a canyon, performed every single minute.

A Vocabulary for Wreckage

A woman named Maria spoke next. She talked about her children, how she'd missed a birthday, then a Christmas. How she'd shown up high to a parent-teacher meeting. Her voice didn't crack. It was flat, worn smooth by the retelling. "They live with my sister now. She sends me pictures. They look… happy. It's the best I can do for them. To stay away."

I felt a cold knot form in my stomach. I looked at Isla again. Was this her future? Our future? A life defined by what was kept at a distance? I reached out, my fingers just brushing the sleeve of her jacket. She flinched, a tiny, almost imperceptible movement, but I felt it like a static shock. Message received. I pulled my hand back.

The speaker droned on. The fluorescent lights hummed. Someone's stomach rumbled. It was all so mundane, so horribly normal. A club no one wanted to join, holding meetings in a room that smelled of damp concrete and cheap biscuits.

The meeting leader, a man named John who had the gentle weariness of a long-distance runner, asked if anyone else wanted to share. The room fell silent. I was preparing to be relieved, to escape back into the crisp November air of Carroll Gardens, when Isla shifted in her chair.

Oh, no. Please, no.

She unfolded her hands. "My name is Isla," she said, her voice surprisingly steady, though it was a register lower than usual. "And I'm an addict."

"Hi, Isla," the room rumbled back.

My heart started hammering against my ribs. I wanted to put my arm around her, to stop her, to protect her from this raw-nerved honesty. But I was frozen. An intruder. A tourist with a staring face.

"I've been clean for thirty-two days," she began, her eyes fixed on that same water stain on the ceiling. "And for thirty-one of those days, I felt pretty good about it. I thought… I thought I was doing it. You know? Waking up, not using. Going to sleep, not using. Simple." She gave a short, humourless laugh.

"But today was different. Today my boyfriend…" She didn't look at me, but I felt every head in the room turn in my direction, their gazes like tiny pinpricks. "...he fixed the squeaky hinge on the bathroom door. Without me asking. He just… did it. And he made me toast for breakfast. And all I could think was, 'he wouldn't have to do any of this if you weren't such a wreck.'"

Her voice began to waver, just slightly. "Every nice thing he does feels like a debt I can't repay. Every time he looks at me, I'm just waiting to see the disappointment. I know it's there. It has to be. Because I'm disappointed. I look in the mirror and I see this… this hole. This thing that just consumes things. Money, trust, time. Love."

Tears were tracking silently down her face now, catching the awful light. She didn't wipe them away. "He thinks he's supporting me. But he's just… documenting the wreckage. And I love him so much for it, and I hate him for it. I hate that he has to. I hate that I made him a part of my mess. Today, I wanted to use more than any other day. Just to turn it all off. Just for five minutes of not being me."

She stopped, swallowing hard. The silence in the room was absolute. It wasn't pity. It was something else. A profound, shared understanding. She had spoken their language. I, on the other hand, had never felt more foreign.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand and whispered, "Thanks for letting me share." Then she slumped back in her chair, a puppet with its strings cut. The man next to her, David of the veiny nose, patted her arm gently. A gesture of solidarity I hadn't earned the right to give.

The meeting ended with a prayer I didn't know the words to. We filed out, back up the concrete stairs and into the night. The air was cold and clean. Isla walked ahead of me, her shoulders hunched. She didn't speak until we were halfway to the subway.

"See?" she said, her voice raw. "Now you know." I wanted to tell her that I already knew, that it didn't change anything. But the words felt like lies in my mouth. Because she was right. I hadn't known. Not really.