Not to mention times when the sadness of my wasted years just floored me for a while. And I got bouts of terrible guilt at the hurt and worry I’d caused to so many people, but Nola assured me that when I was a bit better, I’d make it up to them. Although I didn’t like the sound of that either.
It was like living on a rollercoaster because at yet other times I was assailed by rage at drawing the short straw and becoming an addict.
As every emotion under the sun bubbled out of me in no particular order, I couldn’t have survived without the meetings. Nola and the others comforted, bolstered, reassured, encouraged and calmed me. No matter what I felt, they’d felt it too. And, as they kept saying, ‘We survived it, we’re happy now.’
They were particularly invaluable during the great G-string wars, which blew up out of nowhere. I’d thought that, after the great bedside reconciliation, my mother and I would never fight again.
Wrong. Very, very wrong indeed.
Oh, you couldn’t even begin to imagine how wrong.
What happened was, everyone knows that Visible Panty Line is a bad thing, right? No one wants to have their knickers on display through their boot-leg pants, do they? And everyone knows that the solution to this is to either wear no knickers at all, or to wear a G-string. Everyone knows this.
Wearing a G-string doesn’t mean you’re a stripper or a brazen hussy, on the contrary, it implies great modesty. But you should have tried telling that to my mother.
She appeared in my room, all abject and mortified. She had something to tell me, she said. Work away, I cheerfully invited. With a trembling hand she advanced a small scrap of black lace.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘I don’t know how it happened, but the washing-machine must have shrunk or shredded these knickers.’
I examined said knickers, found that they were actually a G-string, and that there was nothing wrong.
‘They’re fine,’ I reassured her.
‘They’re ruined,’ she insisted.
‘They’re fine,’ I said again.
‘But they’re completely unwearable,’ she said, looking at me as if I was mad.
‘They’re in perfect condition,’ I said.
‘Look!’ she commanded, holding it up to the light. ‘This wouldn’t cover an ant’s backside.’ She was pointing to the front bit.
‘And as for this,’ she demonstrated the string which gave the garment its name. ‘What use is this to anyone?
‘What amazes me,’ she confided, ‘is how it shredded away so evenly, just leaving this nice straight line.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I said, kindly. And, taking the G-string from her, explained. ‘This isn’t for the bum, this is for the front. And this nice straight line here is actually for the back.’
She stared at me, understanding dawning. Then her mouth began to work convulsively and her face became dark red. She backed away from me, as if I was highly infectious. Eventually, she started to screech ‘You brazen HUSSY! That might be the kind of thing they wear in New York, but you’re not in New York now and while you’re under my roof you’ll cover yourself like a Christian.’
I felt the old fear take hold. I was shaking and nauseous from the shouting and confrontation. It was horrible, it felt like the end of the world. I legged it out of the room, wanting to kill myself, kill Mum, run away to sea and ingest handfuls of chemicals.
But this time, instead of belting into town and seeking out Tiernan, I rang Nola. And she came and took me to a meeting. Where she and the others calmed me. Told me it was understandable to be upset, reassured me that I’d live through it, that it would pass in no time. Naturally, I didn’t believe them. All I wanted to do was take drugs.
‘Course you do.’ Gobnet coughed, lighting a cigarette. ‘You’ve never done anything upsetting without getting off your tits.’
‘It’s dead easy,’ Nola said soothingly. ‘All you have to do is learn new responses to everything.’
I couldn’t help but laugh. She was so positive it was frightening.
‘But it’s so hard,’ I said.
‘’Tisn’t,’ Nola sang. ‘It’s only new. Practise.’
‘I’m going to move out of home,’ I declared.
‘Oh no.’ They adamantly shook their heads at that. ‘Fights are part of life, far better to learn to live with them.’
‘It’ll never be OK with Mum again,’ I said sulkily.
And I was almost disappointed when, in less than a day, the scrap was over and forgotten about.
‘The next barney you have with her will be even easier,’ Jeanie advised me.
It gave me grudging pleasure when it turned out she was right.
Time continued to pass, the way it does. And still I didn’t relapse. I felt different. Better, calmer.
The only bad thing that showed no sign of shifting was the rage I had for Brigit and Luke. I couldn’t explain why. God knows, all that they’d said was true. But, every time I thought about them coming to the Cloisters and saying what they did, I felt uncontrollable fury.
Everything else in my life improved, though. I no longer had to do things I hated, like steal money or borrow money with no intention of paying it back, or skip work because I was too sick, or end up in bed with some horrible man that I wouldn’t have gone near if I hadn’t been out of my skull. I never woke up racked with shame and guilt about the way I’d behaved the night before. I had my dignity back.
I wasn’t constantly tormented with worry about when I’d next be taking something, or about where to get it or who to get it from. Mine was no longer an existence where I had to lie constantly. Drugs had put a wall between me and everyone else. A wall that wasn’t just chemical, but made of secrecy, mistrust and dishonesty.
At least now when I was with people I could look them in the eye, because, unlike the last year or so with Brigit, I had nothing to hide.
I was no longer tortured by stomach-turning, vague, nameless anxiety. And that was because I wasn’t letting people down or being dishonest or cruel or unkind to anyone.
And I never felt the savage depressions that followed a good night out.
‘That makes sense,’ Nola agreed. ‘You’ve stopped putting powerful depressant chemicals into your body, no wonder you feel better.’