JOEY
AT THE REHAB FACILITY, they told me that I had to remember.
That in order to get better, I had to go back to the start. To my earliest childhood memories.
If I didn’t, the holes my parents had left inside of me would never heal. I knew that was bullshit.
They couldn’t heal me.
No amount of remembering could fix what was broken inside of me.
All I needed from these people was to keep me locked up until I had detoxed.
Until I had sweated every one of my demons out of my body. So that I couldn’t hurt her anymore.
So that I didn’t break her heart for the hundredth thousandth time. I wanted to get clean, but most importantly, I wanted to stay clean. That was the best I could possibly hope for.
I didn’t need my mind patched up. Just my addictive nature.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here, or how many days it had been since my mother’s funeral. I didn’t know what day of the week I had, or when I’d last felt the sun on my skin, because I couldn’t think – at least not about anything but the pain coursing through my veins as my body endured the withdrawal process.
It was beyond agonizing.
The shakes, the puking, the relentless fucking muscles spasms. It was never-ending.
For the first time in years, I forced myself to stare at the reflection in the
mirror, staring back at me.
I honestly didn’t recognize my own reflection looking back at me. Jesus, I looked like shit.
I was sick of myself.
That was a weird statement, but it was the god honest truth.
I was sick shit of every thought, notion, and idea that traveled through the fucked-up brain I had been given at birth.
I wasn’t sure where it all went wrong, or if it had always been wrong and I was only noticing now.
Either way, my life had gone to noticeable ruins, and I was standing slap bang in the center, the master of my own destiny, the destroyer of all things good.
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“YOU WANT to know how it feels to be me?” “Yes.”
“Hopeless. It feels hopeless.”
“Are you still frightened, Joey?” “I was never frightened.”
“I think you’ve spent your whole life in a state of fear, and it’s your reaction to that feeling that fear that made you so reckless.”
“I was never frightened of him.”
“Only of what he might turn you into?” “Don’t go there.”
“Your father hurt you.”
“You already know this.” “And you’re still here.”
“Yeah, I fucking am.”
“You came about as close to death as a person does.” “I’m not a victim.”
“He knew just how to get inside of your head.”
“No.”
“No, your father didn’t know how to get inside of your head?” “No, he didn’t.”
“But your mother did.”
“I’m done talking now.”
