21. Cam

Two hours after I arrived at my parents', I knew I'd made a mistake coming. Nothing had changed. My mom and dad greeted me at the door and gave me a hug, both of them looking me over carefully as they did, like they were searching for evidence that I was using again.

"I made your bed with fresh sheets," my mom chirped. "Why don't you go get settled, and then we'll have dinner in a half hour."

I took my bag into my old room and tossed it on my bed before looking around. I stared at the plaid bedspread, the worn beige carpet with the stain on one side of the bed from when I'd woken up with a stomach bug once in sixth grade and hadn't been able to make it to the bathroom. The box of baseball cards on my dresser, an old Bible next to it, neither of which I'd opened in years. In my closet were mostly dress clothes I'd left behind. Formal pants and shirts, suit jackets for church. I'd taken them with me freshman year but had never used them. My parents had returned them to the closet when they'd cleaned out my room at the fraternity house while I was in rehab.

Everything felt familiar and alien at once.

I closed my eyes and let the memories rush through me. The peek of sunlight through the curtains in the morning, my mom's voice calling out to me to get dressed, the Bible verses I recited, the pride in my mom and dad's eyes. Darryl Townsend, the biggest guy in my grade, in baseball pants stretched tight across his ass as he walked out onto the field when I was a sophomore. I'd looked away quickly, ignoring the tingle that zapped through my groin. I'd had to look away a lot after that.

I'd looked away so much that I got used to not even looking at myself.

I turned to face the mirror over my dresser, half expecting to see the specter of my high school self gazing back, complete with a perpetual cowlick that Mark had finally taught me to tame with a dab of hair pomade. During rehab, I'd let my hair grow longer, and now there was no trace of it. Aside from that, physically speaking, the guy staring back at me wasn't much different from the guy in high school who'd been locked in battle with his own desires and determinedly trying to ignore them.

I sucked in a breath and moved forward in time. The hazy warmth of a fresh high, the light-headed carelessness that flooded my veins, the shiver of skin on skin, the feeling of another man's hand on my cock, the feeling of mine on his. Another line, another pill, another drink. Blowjobs in back seats. The comedown riddled with shivers of shame.

Another line, another pill, another drink.

One night, two nights, ten, twenty. I lost count, I lost time, I lost myself—whoever that had been in the first place.

And then darkness pierced by incessant beeping. Lights in my face as harsh as reality. A twin bed in rehab, the walls painted pale blue for calm. No sharp edges. A guy shuddering through withdrawals in the bed next to mine, a ghost who was gone the next day, replaced by another who lasted a week. AMA, they called it when people just left. I couldn't think of any place I'd leave for, no place safe from myself. So I'd stayed. Trazadone for anxiety. Talk therapy. Sponsors. Loneliness and regret like a song stuck on repeat. The familiar refrain thrummed through my blood, the space between every heartbeat, every breath.

Tell me why you're here, my therapist had said, and I'd flooded out of myself like a dam unplugged, every dark memory, every ounce of shame unleashed.

When I paused for a breath, sucked it into my lungs in a sobbing gasp, I felt it. Relief, clean and cool, crisp as spring. Salvation, not from above, but in a cramped room that smelled like old rubber and magazines. Baptism by a saline IV.

My gaze moved from the dresser mirror back to the familiar touchstones of my youth. It was like a time capsule. Nothing had changed, and yet, inside me, everything had. I was no longer the same person who had once lived here.

Below the mirror's frame, square in the middle of the dresser, sat a drug test.

I picked up the box, started to unseal the top, resume the usual routine, and then paused as I caught my own eyes in the mirror again.

I set it back down on the dresser and walked out of the room to dinner.

"Didyou see the box I left in your room?" my mom asked at dinner the third night.

I nodded and swallowed a bite of chicken. I didn't know why she couldn't just say drug test or call it what it was. A trust check. "I did. I don't need to take it."

"Cam." A muscle in my dad's jaw twitched as he set it. The day he'd become a deacon at church, I was sixteen. He'd sat me down, explained the weight of responsibility and virtue, eyes shining with conviction. He regarded me now with eyes full of disappointment and worry, the muddy brown becoming stern.

"I don't want to argue about this. It's my choice, and I'm choosing not to take the test this time. I've taken every other one. Hell, I used to take them regularly and send you the results."

"It isn't negotiable," my dad said, each word clipped and precise.

I regarded him coolly, swallowing the acid bitterness that tried to crawl up the back of my throat. "I understand, and my answer is the same. I haven't relapsed. I haven't thought about it. I'm a legal adult. And I'm trying to respectfully decline."

"Then you'll need to leave this house."

"Frank!" My mom's alarm pierced through the staredown that ensued between me and my dad. "Let's all calm down. Cam, why don't you sleep on it, and tomorrow, you can join me at the recovery meeting?—"

I shook my head. "I'm not doing that either. It's not for me. I've forged my own path, and while it's not the one you both would've chosen, it's what works for me. I respect what works for you, but I don't want to be a part of it."

"Addiction doesn't just go away, Cam. The struggle?—"

"Mom, I'm not struggling with addiction! Or with being gay. I've worked through that shit." I ground my molars together. That was part of recovery, admitting it would always be with me. But I refused to let it define me any longer. I'd seen folks who'd gone the other way, where sobriety became a religion, NA their temple. I didn't judge them for that, more power to them. Whatever worked to keep them sober. But I didn't want to be judged for taking a different approach either. "I've been completely clean for two years, and I don't miss being fucked-up one bit." My mom gasped, and I sucked in a calming breath. "I'm sorry for the language. I'm really trying here. I know it's super hard to trust me, and I know you and Dad didn't approve of me leaving home again or being gay?—"

"Cameron!" She cut me off sharply. "We don't have a problem with you being gay. At first, we thought that yes, perhaps the pills had somehow swayed you towards men or that maybe when you were on the drugs, you'd been taken advantage of by a man, and that had?—"

"That right there. That's what I'm talking about. No one took advantage of me. Pills did not make me gay or an atheist. Sometimes it feels like you're addicted to this narrative of addiction you've subscribed to."

"That's enough." My dad's knuckles were white where he gripped his knife. It clanged against his plate as he set it down.

My mom's eyes darted between us, her hands wringing the cloth napkin. I felt a pang of regret seeing the worry etched in the lines around her eyes. But it was replaced by a surge of resolve.

We had been at an impasse for a long time. Maybe it was time to stop fighting circular battles. I didn't hate my parents, I couldn't, but it was becoming clear to me that a relationship with them came with a lot of expectations that I was never going to be able to meet. I couldn't seem to make them understand that, like anything else, addiction wasn't black-and-white. That someone could go through a rough period of time, hit rock bottom, and then actually recover. That someone might not struggle mightily to avoid relapse once they'd gotten through withdrawals. That someone might stare into the abyss, realize it was staring back at them, and never have any desire to approach the edge again. But so many support groups I'd attended seemed hell-bent on painting anyone who'd ever walked through their doors as an addict for life, like that was all they'd amount to.

I was a guy who'd fucking struggled with my sexuality in the context under which I was raised and handled the transition to freedom poorly because of my own sense of shame about the disconnect between what I was and what I thought I was supposed to be. Because it'd been messy and dramatic and sudden, unlike the slow erosion of the lives of people with more socially acceptable addictions, like workaholism, it often felt like I'd been branded as a pill-popper for eternity and judged accordingly, even though technically I'd only used pills for five months out of the two-hundred-plus I'd been alive. But that feeling was never more present than when I was with my folks. It was exhausting, and I couldn't pretend it wasn't anymore.

"I'll leave in the morning," I said quietly. "I know we don't see eye to eye about the church or God, or anything at this point, really, and I'm sorry about that, too," I continued. "I'm grateful for everything you've done for me, but it's time for me to move on." I stood and folded my napkin before placing it on the table. "No amount of church counselors, Bible studies, recruitment initiatives disguised as support groups, or prayer, are going to turn me back into the son you keep wishing for. He never existed."