“I don’t think it’s an illusion. I think you really are a nice girl and maybe the wild girl wasn’t you, but I still wish I would have known the wild version of Cassidy.” I laughed.
“No, you wouldn’t have wanted to know me back then. I was horrible. I was mean and bitchy and didn’t have a moral compass at all.”
“So, like I am right now?”
We both laughed and leaned against the side of the pool as we continued to talk. Cassidy looked over at Melanie, so I moved a little farther away, just to make things seem a little more professional between us.
“Yeah, you were a giant ass when you got here.”
“I didn’t want to be here at all.”
“Then why did you come?”
“Well, I want to have a career and I want to invest in this movie studio. So, I guess technically, I wanted to be here because I wanted those things. But it was my best friend Spencer who really wanted me here. I had almost drowned in my swimming pool and he rescued me. Thought I had a bit of a problem and didn’t want me to die, so I came here.”
“Do you have a problem?”
It seemed like a trick question that one of the therapists might ask me. But my answer to the question changed on a daily basis. I could see how Cassidy had viewed me when I said I didn’t have a problem before, and I was starting to see her point. I did have a problem; I just wasn’t fully ready to admit it yet.
“I didn’t think I had a problem. I thought I could control it. But I’m starting to see that maybe I couldn’t control it. So, yeah, I did have a problem, but I’m in control now.”
“Oh, that’s funny,” she scoffed.
“What?”
“A little over a week here and you’re totally in control? Sounds like a pile of shit to me.”
“Hey, I’m not out of control like Brianna. I’m honest about my use and I know I had a problem. But it’s all better now.”
“You really are dense if you think ten days at a treatment facility is going to fix all your emotional issues.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t have emotional issues. I was just talking about my drug and alcohol use.”
Cassidy was annoyed with me. She had moved toward the middle of the pool and she stood straight up while she talked to me. It was clear we were no longer flirting with each other.
“So, you drank yourself into a pool and drowned, but you did it for the fun of it? You don’t have any emotional issues that you need to work through? You’re ridiculous.”
She didn’t give me a chance to answer her questions and instead stormed off to a lounge chair on the other side of the pool by Melanie. It was clear that our little flirting session was officially over.
No, I didn’t have mental issues. How dare she try and put that crap on me. I wasn’t crazy. I just liked to party and it got out of hand sometimes. Maybe she wasn’t use to people getting better as quickly as I was, but I didn’t have all that shit to deal with like other people did. I didn’t need the emotional lovey-dovey stuff that others needed. I had been alone for years and I liked it that way.
Actually, I had even been thinking about reaching out to my brother and my father to try to find some sort of peace with them, just because of what Stan had said in group. I didn’t like the tension in my family and wanted to just make one last effort to heal things between us. If my efforts didn’t work, that was fine, but at least I could say that I tried to mend our relationship.
So, how could Cassidy say I had emotional issues? She didn’t know me at all. She didn’t know I was humble and could reach out to my family. And she obviously didn’t know my family hadn’t even bothered to worry about me when I had been pulled out of a pool almost dead. She needed to keep her opinions to herself if she didn’t know what she was talking about.
I climbed out of the pool and wrapped the towel around me as I made my way back inside. One of the technicians from the locked unit helped me back onto my unit and I went straight to the telephones. Cassidy didn’t have a clue who I was. I would prove it by calling my brother right at that moment.
“Hello,” a man’s voice answered when I called Heath.
“Heath?”
“No, it’s Robert.”
My stomach churned as my Dad answered the phone. I wanted to talk to Heath; I wasn’t sure I was ready to actually talk to my father. Heath was always the one I talked to when I called back home. But I remembered that Heath got a new house and the number I had was for my Dad’s house.
“Hey, Dad, it’s Erik.”
“How you doin’?” he asked.