“Wait, where the hell is the door to my room?” I hollered after the two men.
Everyone in the main area looked at me. I looked around and noticed only a few of the rooms actually had doors on them. They couldn’t even offer patients the privacy of having doors on their rooms. Why the hell was I paying such an enormous amount of money for a treatment program that couldn’t even afford doors?
“You can earn a room with a door once you’ve finished detoxing and attended groups as scheduled. Your therapist and doctor will recommend the room change when they feel you can be safe.”
“What the hell!”
I turned and went back into my room and threw my suitcase off the bed and onto the floor. That action felt so good that I continued to grab anything I could and throw it around the room. I threw the blankets. I threw the pillows. Then, I grabbed the weird, orb-shaped lamp that didn’t have a cord and threw that. I had expected it to break, but instead, it bounced off the ground and made a loud thud.
“Everything all right in here?” the nurse came and asked as she stood in the doorway.
“What the hell is that made of?”
“It’s just a plastic, battery-powered lamp. It’s not breakable.”
“Well, that’s shitty.”
She laughed and came in to help me pick up the mess I had made. It was nice of her, so I didn’t yell at her or continue my little tirade. In fact, I started to feel pretty shitty for throwing a tantrum at all. This was exactly the person I didn’t want to be.
“What’s your name?” I asked as we started to make the bed.
“Kaitlin.”
“You are friends with the redheaded nurse?”
“She’s not a nurse. Cassidy is a technician on the unit.”
“What’s that mean?”
“She helps the nurses, she helps the patients, and she’s a nice person. Don’t be an ass to her or I’ll kick your ass.”
“Ha, all right then.”
This Kaitlin girl was a woman I could get along with. I appreciated anyone who didn’t give me bullshit. My whole life was filled with people telling me what I wanted to hear and pretty much sucking up to me all the time. There were very few people that I could trust to tell me the truth.
As we finished putting my room back together, Kaitlin left me alone to contemplate what I had done. The stark walls and calmness in the building weren’t at all what I was used to being around. It didn’t make me feel calm at all – in fact, I felt anything but calm. My life had been mine for way too long to feel comfortable giving up everything to strangers.
My anxiety was reeling, and I felt like I could hardly catch my breath. Why the hell I had decided to check into a damn treatment center was beyond what I could figure out. I didn’t care that much about what other people thought of me. I had just sold a $200-million-dollar tech company; I deserved to party and have some fun.
It wasn’t like Spencer hadn’t been partying, too. He had come to a couple of the same events I had, and although he left earlier than I did, he had been drinking more than me by far. It was the drugs that had him worried about me. But it wasn’t like I was snorting my life away. A couple of lines here or there, a couple joints to calm my nerves and help me sleep, a couple drinks to wash it all down. I wasn’t a druggie…I was just a young guy celebrating the amazing life I had.
Two days prior had been the end of the fun, though. After a full night of partying, I had decided to go for a swim in my new pool. Well, it wasn’t just a new pool; I had purchased another mansion in the hills of San Francisco. Spencer was angry that I had spent so much money and said I wasn’t thinking and was being irresponsible. We fought. He left. I went swimming.
It was my money, and if I didn’t like my first home, I had every right to buy a new one. It was my money. We split the sale 50/50, and Spencer had done nothing but boring things with his money, and I was sure that he was just jealous that I had been having fun with mine. Parties, drinking, women, and drugs had been the bulk of my money, so really, the idea that I had bought some more real estate should have been a relief. But Spencer was pissed off, I had been pissed off, and the whole night got totally out of control.
The next thing I knew, I woke up in the hospital with a tube down my throat. Spencer was by my side. He was a good friend; I couldn’t deny that. He was angry as hell with me, but he still stayed there with me.
There weren’t many people in my life that I could call friends. Even fewer who cared about where I had ended that night.
“You’re going to kill yourself,” he had said to me.
It wasn’t his words as much as it was the single tear that fell from his cheek. My family didn’t even care about me as much as that man did. We had been friends since college and more like brothers than I was with my own flesh and blood. So, I agreed to the damn treatment center. Not for me, but for him. So that I could show him I had control over myself and what I was doing.
I promised him sixty days in that damn facility though. That didn’t at all seem possible to me. Sure, it was a comfortable place to be. There was a spa, swimming, a workout gym, and it was in the Colorado mountains. But I already felt like I was going crazy from the silence and the rules. I really wasn’t sure I was going to be able to make it very much longer than the first week.
For the rest of the evening, I lay in my bed and stared up at the ceiling. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep. I was restless, but I didn’t want to leave my room. This place didn’t feel like home. Not that I really knew what a home felt like.
“Are you hungry?” Cassidy asked as she looked in the doorway.