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Chapter 17
Jet
Jet looked around at the nondescript community center door and thought, for the thousandth time, about turning around and getting back in his car. Just ditching this whole idea and driving the forty-five minutes back to Valentine Bay.
After all, it’s not like he’d told anybody he was planning on finding an AA meeting and giving it a shot. No one was depending on him. No one was going to be disappointed in him if he didn’t walk in this building.
Except me.
He was working hard to create a life where not only his friends and family could be proud of him and his actions, but he could be, too. That wasn’t always going to be easy, he knew. In fact, sometimes it was going to be damn hard.
Like now. He didn’t know why it felt so terrifying to walk into this meeting. He’d played shows for crowds of thousands, simulcast to millions. What was so scary about talking to a group of a dozen or so?
He knew the answer to that question without even having to think too hard. The difference between the scenarios was vulnerability. He wasn’t playing a role when he walked into AA. He was just being himself. Jet Valentine, in the flesh. No band, no screaming fans, no panties being thrown, no hype. Just him, being real, and trusting that that was enough.
Yeah. Fucking terrifying.
But, regardless of how crappy it felt to push himself outside his comfort zone, he knew this was something he had to do. Overthinking it was just making it worse. Without hesitating a minute longer, he pushed through the glass door at the front of the community center.
In the lobby, there was a hand-drawn sign with the letters AA and a crude arrow pointing to the right. Jet started down the hall and only had to go about 10feet until he found an open door with another hand-lettered sign that let him know he was in the right place.
Despite feeling like he was about to lose the fast food lunch he’d eaten in the car on the way to this meeting, he stepped through the door and took a seat.
A middle-aged, balding man stepped to the front about two minutes later and got the meeting started.
It was just like every one he’d seen on television. Introductions, announcements. Serenity prayer. Then, the leader invited people to share.
Jet was happy to see that someone else raised their hand right away. He didn’t want to be the first one to talk. He knew that he was going to have to say something before the meeting was over. For some people, he was sure it was incredibly helpful to just come and listen to the struggles of others in the same situation. In the future, that might be the case for him as well.
But for this? His first meeting? The thing he was struggling with the most was being vulnerable. In order to conquer that, he had to share his truth. If he didn’t do that, everything he’d made himself do so far just to get in this room would be for nothing.
Jet listened to three people tell their story. They were very different people, and very different stories, but they all had one thing in common, both with each other and with him– they’d all lost or destroyed important people or things in their lives because of alcohol.
The other thing that all of them had in common was that they were working hard to change things, and live a better life. Jet felt proud that now he could consider himself a part of that group, as well.
Finally, he summoned the courage to stand up and share his own story.
“Hi, my name is Jet.” He swallowed hard. He was sure that saying the next words would get easier over time, but as of now he had to speak past the giant lump that had formed in his throat to spit them out. “I’m an alcoholic.”
The rest of the room returned his greeting and he was surprised by the rush of warmth and camaraderie that filled him. Yeah. The people in this room understood. It felt good to be around people who “got it.”
“My parents died five years ago. I know a lot of people my age have lost their parents, and they get over it. They deal with it just fine. That wasn’t me, to say the least. I dove into a bottle and stayed there. Last week, I was… Well, fired from my job, I guess you could say.
“That was one part of my wake-up call. Realizing what I could lose, and have lost, as a result of my drinking, and my out-of-control antics.
“I decided to come home for a while. Finally face my parents being gone. And I discovered something while reconnecting with my family, and old friends.
“There are people in this world that depend on me, just like I depended on them. And I may not have been dead, but I certainly haven’t been dependable. So now I want to change that.”
As he sat down, he half expected the room to turn on him. For people to sneer, and tell him that he hadn’t had it all that bad, and how dare he compare his story to theirs.
No one did that, though. Instead, he was the recipient of encouragement and even a few claps on the shoulder.
It occurred to him, in fact, that the only person in the room that seemed to think he was a piece of shit was him.
Time to work on changing that. And he figured that here, and in other rooms like this one, was a pretty good place to start.
