Out

When I got out of rehab, I found out the world had changed. Things had gotten uglier – there was more brown and less indigo, the cacti had wilted, and all the insects had lost their ability to communicate through telepathy.

I wondered, “Was my altered consciousness the only thing sustaining them all these years?”

I apologized to brown, and to the cacti, and of course to the insects, who could no longer understand me.

When I got out of rehab, I drove just as badly as before. I still drove too fast and I still carried a gun and I still had an intricate assortment of hand gestures to communicate my feelings to other drivers.

I got out of rehab, you see. But as it turns out, it is possible to make bad decisions while sober, too.

When I got out of rehab, I went to see old friends. And these old friends, they’d apologize for beer commercials that appeared on the tele, and then they’d sit there. Expectantly. Waiting. Just staring, with their arms crossed, like “Well?”

Finally, it occurred to me they were expecting an apology. Each of them – separate people, separate apologies!

They’d all heard – seen it in a movie or maybe read it in some confessions-of-a-newly-sober-diva book – that apologies fit in somewhere amongst those famous twelve steps. And so it was that each of them – completely independently of all of the others, so far as I was able to discern – got it into their heads that an individualized, made-to-fit apology would be forthcoming at any moment.

Maybe this guy thought I’d apologize for calling him an idiot that time he acted idiotically. Maybe that woman thought I’d say my inebriation had been to blame for crushing her in court back in April, crushing her so badly that she’d given up the practice of law entirely. Maybe this other fellow – this one over here – believed I’d found Buddha or Muhammad or Plato and the Jackson 5 whilst my body was de-pickling for that month, that I’d be less apt to point out some serious irregularities in his logic now.

And so it was we’d sit there – me over here and my friends over there – and we’d sort of stare it out. I’d try to ignore the uncomfortable silences surrounding Lindsay Lohan references, or how everyone would say the word “alcohol” in a whisper now whenever I was around.

But after a little while had passed, I’d get up and I’d go back home. We’d go our separate ways: me, without changing my opinion of their idiocies; them, without getting their duly-expected apology.

And just before leaving, I’d turn to them, in that kind of Lt. Columbo way of mine, and I’d say, “Oh! Yes. Just one last thing.”

I’d say, “Keep holding your breath on that apology.”

I’d say, “My Higher Power thinks you’re an idiot, too.”

When I got out of rehab, the monsters didn’t go away. They patted me on the back with their huge demon-claws when I got home, and they welcomed my return. They looked sincere about it! But it seems that despite what I’d been told, the monsters, they’d never been hallucinations at all.

And when I got out of rehab, the nights got longer, and my house had been rezoned into the Insomnia District, and the cobwebs in the corners always frightened the Sandman away.

It’s been a long, long night, since when I got out of rehab.