Falling in Love (37 page)

“Whoa! Wait a minute. First you work on a relationship,” Elaine reminded me. “If you can achieve that, you can think about more.”

“I’m scared.”

“It’s a huge risk, Sherry,” Elaine admitted, “but so is the reward. You would have a real relationship—for the first time in your life.

“Okay, let’s make believe that I was ready for a relationship. Is there a guy out there ready for me? Where would I meet him?”

“I can’t believe that no one at work or at the gym or at Hunter has hit on you.”

“They have,” I admitted. “But I tell everyone I’m working a lot of overtime and going to night school so I don’t have time for dating. After a couple of tries, they move on. But those are now safe places for me. I couldn’t handle it if I told some guy about my addiction and he dropped me like a stone and then spread it all around. I’ve walked down too many halls in my life amid a symphony of “slut” whispers.”

“I can’t see you going out with someone now who would be that juvenile.”

“And what if I’m not ready for sex? How long is he supposed to wait? What if I’m never ready for sex? That would certainly inhibit having children.”

Elaine smiled. “Sherry, you’ve been ready for love for a long time. You just have to remember the difference. Are you attracted to anyone in group?”

“Gregory. How pathetic is that?” Elaine laughed. Every woman in group was attracted to Gregory. “And group is my family. It would be almost incestuous, and I’ve had enough of that in my life, too.” I stood up. “Forget it. I’m not willing to risk falling in love, and put my recovery in jeopardy. Okay, so I’m probably never going to be a wife, and I’m probably never going to be a mother. But at least, hopefully, I’ll be sober.”

I went home and hugged Robie so hard that he shot out the window and didn’t return until the following night, for dinner, of course.

The following Friday, I realized that my desperate need for a family was messing with my head. As Elaine and Gregory and I headed for the coffee shop, I thought I saw a man looking at the church. I blinked and he disappeared. But he had looked exactly like Paul. Obviously, I was going a bit crazy. But all I could do was try to calmly keep on going through life and try not to get so crazy that I couldn’t handle it.

When I first got sober, I had counted not only the days but sometimes hours, minutes and seconds. After managing to last a few months, I kept only a daily count. Yet, despite being very good at math, it still came as a surprise to me when I realized that in one week, on a Friday no less, I will have been sober for an entire year. I hadn’t had sex with anyone, including myself, for 358 days.

I stayed in my routine, working as much overtime as possible, relishing my boring life and carefully watching out for any temptations. In group, I had heard countless stories of people who had neared that one-year mark, only to then slip. Even though I was as self-destructive as anyone on earth, managing a year of sobriety had to mean that I wasn’t a total failure. Scoring one championship winning goal and 365 days of abstinence didn’t seem like much in 26 years of a life. But it was two more successes than I had accomplished in the first 25 years.

To mark the event, I wondered if I should share my story and asked Elaine how much pain might be involved.

She laughed. “A lot less than acting it out. Some people need that pain as a reminder.”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Sherry, you never have to share. Don’t put any added pressure on yourself.”

I finally decided that sharing was out. I couldn’t take reliving all that pain.

But when the day finally arrived, I figured I had to do something special. I couldn’t exactly knock back a drink. So after work, I went shopping for a birthday present.

In a Soho boutique window, a dress looked lovely on the mannequin and I hoped that it might not look terrible on me. Unfortunately, I was taller than the mannequin so the dress was shorter. I tried pulling down the hem but I couldn’t get it passed my knees. Worse, while leaning over to pull on it, the medium-cut top looked very low-cut.

I straightened up and for a long time I stared at myself in the mirror. Suddenly, I burst into tears and didn’t stop crying for almost a half-hour.

Ever since confiding in Tina, the girl on the subway who wanted ‘desperately’ to be a sex addict, too, I hadn’t mentioned my addiction to anyone outside of group. But I felt that I owed it to Dede to tell her. If I was ever going tell her, my birthday seemed like an appropriate time. She had returned from New Orleans without Casey a couple of days before for her last sitcom callback and was waiting to hear if she had gotten the part. She had left me a message saying that she wanted to catch up but I suspected she was about to learn a lot more than she was anticipating. After a couple of hesitant half-dials, I reached her. “Hey, Sher. I’m really busy at the moment. What’s up?”

“Nothing really,” I suddenly stammered. “I’m just having a sort of second birthday this evening. It’s not a party or anything, just—”

“—Okay. Where? I’ll try to make it.

“St. Augustine’s Church—”

“—Church? We’re not church—oh, I get it, Sis. Of course, I’ll make it.” Before I even finished telling her the time and address, Dede was gone.

I agonized over also asking Darcy to come. Finally, after I thought it was too late for her be able to make it, I called her, hoping she to get her machine. She answered.

“Darcy, I know you’ve got about a million friends but you are the best friend I’ve ever had and tonight is sort of my birthday and I thought if you’d not busy, I’ll like you to come.”

“Sherry, I’m honored. I’ll have to make a couple of calls. When is it? Can I be fashionably late?”

“It starts at seven-thirty and if you’re late, you’ll kind of miss it. Listen, forget it. I’ll—”

“—No way. I’ll make it.” She quickly took the address and then, like Dede, she hung up on me.

In case, my dress turned out to be a disaster, I wore a long coat. I didn’t see how I could wear the coat all night but I figured I could just leave group after five minutes. Outside, I saw only Claire sitting on the church steps, her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably. She certainly wasn’t in any shape to give me advice.

Inside, Gregory approached me. He had an incredible fashion sense as well as unsparing candor when he disliked something. I breathed deeply and feeling like some kind of weird stripper, I opened my coat. Gregory smiled and helped off my coat. He looked me over for a moment. “God, you look gorgeous tonight. I can’t decide if it is from a year of sobriety or that stunning dress.”

I breathed again. As I sat down in the front row next to Elaine, she said that I looked “beautiful and special.” It was nearly seven-thirty and the regulars had arrived. Most of them sat near the front, depending on how much they needed to be surrounded by the group. As usual, the last few rows were empty, awaiting the arrival of any newbies who wanted to stay near the door for a quick getaway if their apprehension turned overwhelming.

Then I heard someone singing a show tune and knew that Dede had arrived. She continued singing in a lower volume as she came down the stairs but was dead silent when she opened the door to see everyone turn and look at her. She gave me an encouraging wink and almost tiptoed to the end chair of the last row.

During the Serenity Prayer, I heard someone sprinting around the church and I knew that very few people could run that fast period, let alone in high heels. Darcy had arrived. But I heard two sets of heels and wondered who could possibly keep up with her. Of course, it could only be one person. The door opened and Darcy and Paula strolled in. Without a hair out of place or one bead of sweat, they both looked fantastic. Darcy was carrying a Bloomingdale’s bag and Paula’s bag read Bergdorf Goodman. I was mortified! I’d forgotten to tell them that it wasn’t exactly a birthday with presents. Dede moved over and they sat beside her.

Elaine and I walked up front. Her eyes were misty as she said, “It is with enormous pleasure that I present you with this medallion for one year of sobriety. Happy Birthday, Sherry!”

She handed me my bronze medallion and gave me a huge hug and then she sat down. I just stared at the medallion. “I can’t believe I’m really holding this,” I said. “After so many times that I almost slipped in the last year, I can’t believe I actually made it.”

The group applauded softly. “Thank you all,” I said. “I wouldn’t be holding this without all of you. You are my friends, my family. The only family I’ve ever really known.”

Since I hadn’t planned to share I hadn’t begun with the requisite admission that I was an addict. Instead I found myself talking about what it had been like to grow up without a family and to be so starved for love. And about my aunt never showing me any affection and my uncle that never really noticing me until I was eight.

“Then he gave me a bath and molested me,” I heard myself say. “At first, I felt the warmth and love I had always craved. Until he told me that I could never tell anyone or they’d put him in jail and it would be my fault. Then all I felt was shame.”

Without really meaning to, I continued. “I became obsessed with sex, constantly acting out with myself and with about every boy in school. And loathing myself every second of every day. When I wasn’t acting out, I was studying. If I didn’t get an A, I would feel completely worthless, so I always studied twice as hard as I needed to. Getting great grades kept me from killing myself.

“And soccer. But there, too, I had to be the best, or I felt suicidal. So I only cared about being the top scorer, and scoring the winning goal. My junior-high team was undefeated, and I had never missed a penalty point. Until the championship game, when I sailed a ball over the net and we lost.”

I had been talking very quickly, as if trying to get everything out before it hurt too much. I paused, unable to go on. I thought about sitting down. Instead I heard myself saying, “That night I acted out with the entire boys’ football team. The next day I was suspended from school, almost expelled, and banned from playing soccer in high school. That night I drank four bottles of nighttime cold syrup. But instead of dying, I just slept for fourteen hours, woke up and threw up all over my bed.”

My voice quivered. “I spun out of control but no one noticed, and I couldn’t stop. I let any guy do anything he wanted as long as he said he loved me or even liked me. Only to hear him, all of them, call me the worst names behind my back. Without soccer, I had only my grades to keep me alive, so I studied and acted out, occasionally at the same time. I had to get a hundred on each test, afraid that a ninety-nine would lead me to slit my throat. Although I graduated with the highest grade point average in my class I wasn’t valedictorian due to ‘special circumstances.’”

My body was wracked with pain but now I had to get it out. “I managed to get an academic scholarship to college but during my freshman year, I added alcohol to my acting out and managed to, quite literally, screw myself up, and out of college.

“Since I couldn’t take care of myself, I decided to get married and have someone else take care of me. So whenever I met Mr. Right, I’d be a perfectly good girl. So good that I’d barely let him kiss me. But once our date was over, I’d go off to act out while fantasizing about making perfect love to him. Unfortunately, Mr. Right would always find out that he was the only one in town I hadn’t acted out with, and my life would crash again. This vicious cycle lasted until I got into this program.”

I again looked down at the medallion clutched in my hand. “Now, I am trying to overcome my anger. Even for my uncle, who I now realize was a victim, too. I need to stop this rage because one day, I hope to have my own family. But not until I’m sure that I can give my kids the love and caring that I never got.”

I looked up at Darcy and Paula. “This year, I was lucky enough to meet the most awesome group of women I’ve ever known. They allowed me to play soccer again and embraced me as one of them even though I didn’t deserve it. One day, I hope I will feel like I do deserve to be one of them.”

I clutched the medallion harder. “I’m not religious but I always envied religious people because they had some code to live by, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ or whatever. Not that I’m sure how many live by it. But now that I’ve decided to try to actually live a life, I’ve borrow from these women a code for myself. In this crazy game called life,” I said softly, “I plan to ‘play hard, play fair, play to win, and have fun.’”

I inhaled a deep breath and smiled at Elaine. “My bootcamp-sergeant sponsor, Auntie Elaine, says that I don’t love myself enough.” Several people gave me knowing smiles. “So she makes me say a thousand times every day, ‘I will show love for myself by becoming the person I’ve always wanted to be.’ Some days, it has been so hard to say it even once, especially when I’d have no idea who that person was that I wanted to be.”

I glanced down at my dress. “This afternoon, when I decided to honor this day by buying a dress, I looked in the dressing room mirror and I started crying, unable to stop. But for the first time in my life, it was for a different reason. Because the woman I saw in that mirror was the person I’ve always wanted to be.”

People started clapping and then slowly rose to a standing ovation. Only Claire was still sitting, her head buried in her hands. Tears trickled down Dede’s face above her huge smile, as she blew me a kiss. Beside her, Darcy and Paula were also misty-eyed. As our looks met, they both instinctively raised their arms, their hands in knotted fists, their thumbs pointed toward the sky. The ultimate team salute was finally mine.