The blue binding and gold writing of Alcoholics Anonymous had been gathering dust on my bookshelf for years. Inside the beat up hardcover lay an inscription to someone named Kookaburra, and scattered throughout were 3x5s of unfamiliar faces: A mustached man smiling wide in the cab of a long-haul truck, a pair of old women who looked like life-long best friends — or sisters — in a church basement.
I didn’t think I’d end up there again, but as I approached the church on West 74th street, I caught sight of the round blue sign that read AA. I passed through a large red door set in a stone facade to a long damp hallway. Morning light illuminated bulletin boards full of community events, colorful rooms full of children’s artwork, directions to a food pantry. My heels echoed. I sipped my coffee.
Ahead of me were double doors behind which a gravelly voice carried. I crept in gently, a child late to church, careful not to interrupt her sermon. A few eyes glanced as I grabbed a seat in the back. A sea of orange chairs surrounded an old maple desk where the woman sat. Wrinkles gathered around her eyes, the crinkle of her dimples took us through her life. She’d lost her husband, missed her parents’ death, chronicled her dreams slipping away one milestone at a time, all in the name of King Alcohol.
My flannel sleeve caught the first tear.
“There was no reason I should have survived.”
Her words seared into my heart. The wound was too fresh. I ached.
“But I did, and I’m here today with a life worth living.”
The tears came in angry streaks, my sleeves wet with snot, muffling sniffles. As she went on, I turned into something uglier. I clawed at my hand begging for the unravelling to stop, but with every word I broke.
I shouldn’t have survived.
A dam opened. The tears came faster and faster. A woman slid in next to me, handed me a tissue and put her arm around my back, I shook.
I was dying in this church basement and everyone could see it.
There was no recovery from this.
I had been seen.
***
I was frozen in place, and despite my plan to sneak out, a flurry of women approached me as the meeting closed. I knew the drill. I’d been here before.
Last time it was a cold hospital room in Florida.
There were more men than women then, and as the room began to filter out, an older gentleman called out to me with a blue hardcover in hand.
“Take this, you need it more than I do right now.”
He smiled gently, it wasn’t condescension, it wasn’t pity, it was something else.
Standing on 74th Street, my coffee replaced with a pamphlet doodled with phone numbers, I wondered if I’d keep well on my promise to the women that I’d hit another meeting today. I didn’t know what was happening, and as I started home I decided to think over it with a walk along the park.
When I hit 81st Street I crossed and descended into the subway, the night was catching up to me, the coke had worn off, the caffeine buzz fading. I grabbed a plate of sushi from the grocery store, and collapsed into my bed as soon as I could.
The afternoon passed in a blink, and I woke up around 6:30. I had just enough time to shower and head to the Young Peoples meeting I’d been directed to this morning. Some spark in me called an Uber, and I grabbed a bodega coffee on the way out.
three pages 
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