Angie, a live-in-the-now singer-songwriter on the cusp of fame, sweeps Mike, a proper Mama's boy and a structural engineer by day, off his feet the moment they shake hands.
They can't deny the chemistry between them, so they start with a boom. What'...
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▪️Saturday, January 23rd, 2018▪️
▪️Phoenix, AZ▪️
Back at my hotel room, I flop on the floor and become part of the mess: my keyboard, the bedding, the clothes. My heart on the floor, like a fish without water flapping and begging me to push the button and call Mike, tell him I need him and that with him by my side I don't need an artificial substance to help me ignore the even bigger mess that's on the floor of this hotel room.
The mess that is inside me.
He could make it better, be my protector, my shelter from the past, my bridge into the future. But I can't use him like that. I can't make him carry my burdens too. He's already been saddled with too much, and I must learn how to handle my past, so maybe I can trust life enough to accept the possibility that I, too, can have a future.
I pick up the phone and push the button.
"What time is it?" Am's voice is groggy, the screen on her end dark. It's probably way too early for her in France.
"I'm so stupid." I sob into the device. When did I start crying again?
"Wait." She turn on the light and stifles a yawn. "What happened?"
I roll into a ball on the hotel carpet and put the phone next to my head. "It's Mike."
"What did he do?" She sounds both sleepy and indignant.
"He tried to help me." I taste the tears that make their way into my mouth.
"With what?" Confusion is evident in her voice. "Music?"
She still thinks I'm a whole person. I haven't told her I'm not who she thinks I am. No one has seen the hurt inside me. So much easier to mask it, to take a pill, or two, and to see the rosy glow of the world outside, not the charred remnants inside. Acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it, right? In the darkness of the solitary room, with everyone who could be near me gone, confessing to my friend across the pond seems if not easier, then possible. "Am, I'm a liar. I'm such a liar. And I don't know if I can stop it."
"Start from the beginning." Amelie is the voice of reason that I no longer possess. "What are we talking about?"
I wipe at my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt. "I lied to Mike. I lied you too. I lied to my parents. I lied to your dad." The gurgle of words removes the protective coat I've been wearing for so many years. "I lied to myself. I think Neil was the first one to figure it out."
"Angie, breathe." The water noises on her end tell me she's now one hundred percent awake. "What the hell is going on?"
"I might be using my pain pills too much." I let my friend see the burn marks on my soul, and I finally can't hide them any longer from the one person who they mean the most. Myself.
"Might?"
"I am, okay? I am using them too much, because everything hurts, and it's not the physical pain I'm talking about." I roll onto my back and let the tears glide down my cheeks in a silent salty rain.
"When was the last time you talked to your therapist." Amelie's all business now.
"I don't need her, I'm fine." Another lie. I can't stop. I should stop. "I'm not fine now, but I've been doing great before the tour. On the road, with the performances, with the pressure. . .and I really thought I wanted it and now. . .I don't know if I do."
"Ange, you know." Amelie drops into a lower range, that creeps through the cellular waves and into my head. "I can hear it in your voice. You already know."
"I don't." A lie. Because I'm not ready for the truth that's waiting for me to acknowledge it.
"Maybe you can't say it to me yet, but you know. You wouldn't be calling me if you didn't. You know what you want to do and what you need to do."
As if I were waiting for someone's permission, I don't lie. "I need to call my therapist, and I need to stop pretending I'm all the way better."
"Are we ever all the way better?" It's her turn to sound tearful. She's not whole either. I know it's her grief talking. Her grief over losing her dad and leaving Ben.
Can I leave Mike? Can I be as strong as Am and rip him out of my life? I should, but I pick up my gasping heart off the floor and put it back into the aquarium of my chest, because I'm not ready to give up on us.
"All the way better? We could be." I sit up and take the phone off the floor. Amelie's face is too close to the camera for me to know if she's crying. I can't see what's to come from here, but better things seem possible. "We need help. I'm going to call my therapist, and you are going to find one in France. Pinkie swear." I lift my pinkie to the camera for her to see. "How does that sound?"
Am steadies her phone, lifts her pinkie on her side of the screen, and laughs through what I now register are tears. "Sounds like you're being my best friend."
"I like that sound of that."
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▪️Saturday, January 30th, 2018▪️
▪️Sacramento, CA▪️
I call my therapist. I go to my first NA meeting. Neil offers to be my sponsor while we're on the road. The Whats suggest I stop the tour, go home, but I have no home. In the two months on the road they've become my home away from home, and changing it is the last thing I want to do. I want to finish what I started. The tour, being on the road, it's no longer what I want, but to begin my new journey, I must finish this one.
The tour manager helps me find a keyboard player who joins me for the rest of the tour. The money I pay him is worth it. The money and time I spend on working through my shit is too. I'm not well, and I won't be for a long time, but I'm better than the day I sent Mike away. Every day I want to push that button, make that call, summon him to me, and forget the world for a while, but I don't. Not yet. I let myself heal: my mind, my soul, my hand.
I've not thought about my hands much until the car crash. As a classical pianist, I spent my time considering the positioning of my hands and feeling the keys under my fingers, but I didn't think how able my hands are, or what excellent job they did outside performing the pieces the way I trained them to. Before the accident I didn't consider that raising a spoon to my mouth without spilling it, holding a bag of groceries, putting sheets on my bed were activities I needed to be grateful to my hands for.
Being without Mike is like that.
I wasn't thanking him for sending me texts first thing in the morning but waking on my bunk at the bus or a new hotel room and not seeing any messages from him hurts. I wasn't thinking much about the photos of progress at the dojang, discussions on if he found an artist to play during the opening event, our chats about the color of the walls his office should be, or what social media accounts he needs to establish before the opening. Not talking to him about things that were important to him dulls my days instead of freeing them up. I wasn't thanking him for listening to my drawn-out monologues about each performance, the venues, the blisters from the new shoes I stupidly bought for my act.
The ball is in my court, and I'm the one who needs to call him to abandon this painful silence, but if I do, we'll be back to the place that has no way forward. My therapist suggests strategies to record my feelings. I try a bullet journal; I try talking to Am; I attempt to type them up, but what clicks is me putting the Voice recording app into the interview mode and imagining that I'm pouring my heart to Mike and not the flat rectangle with no one to answer.
