On The Outskirts

Rocking and rolling west on the eleven-bus, mid-afternoon on an unusually warm October day, under a storm-cloud sky, I considered my situation. Recently separated from my wife of ten years, practically penniless, I was dying for a cigarette. I was on my way to see my shrink, and in the back of my mind I knew for certain, that I would break down and buy a pack (on my debit card), and that I had no cash to pay my fare back into the city. I wanted to, and probably could have, cried—but, I bore down, onward.

I was on familiar turf, ground I’d covered before and that I thought I’d left behind, by graduating to the relative comfort and normalcy of recovery, and family life: a wife-and-daughter, two-dog, two-cat, two-car, two-income fuzzy security blanket of domesticated bliss. How quickly that relative sense of ease and possibility was swept away, like the raindrops now falling on the bus windshield. As the rain came down, I numbly noted that I had no umbrella, and would have to walk several blocks to my doctor’s office.

Due to the fact that I am a person living with chronic mental illness, and one who has lived clean as a recovering addict for many years (except for that bout I had with xanax a few years back: the quack doctor I had at the time was sure it would help my marriage), I know well the terrain of want, the landscape of loss and shadowy fear, the relentless grip of a primal neediness. And I didn’t want to be back here, stranded and alone, ride-less, walking slowly under an overpass, as the well heeled whizzed by in their sports-utility-vehicles.

But there it is, and here I am. After I left my doctor’s office carrying a holy plastic bag stuffed with a month’s supply of three different psycho-pharmaceuticals, I wandered a bit, before I decided to call one of my recovery brothers (who, oddly enough, had just purchased a new SUV), to ask for a lift back to my place. He was happy to help, and slipped me a twenty as he dropped me off.

I thought about some of the homeless and struggling folks I worked for, and with, at the Empowerment Center, of their lives of shelters, bummed smokes and bologna sandwiches. And though I missed the comforts and security of my brief better life, I figured now, I could at least take comfort in the knowledge of the fact, that I worked a job that married gratitude and service in such a way so as there was no doubt, that I might be in it for the money, or some other, worldly acclaim.