7 years ago, I was 47 days sober. It was a windy, cold day in New York and even colder inside my heart sitting outside my thousandth AA meeting, just as skeptical as the first time. It was different though. It was like my 25th time in detention and now I had a name for myself. Unlike high school, at AA I sat at the cool kid’s table. All I ever wanted was to be seen, even if it was a bunch of alchis.
I was outside waiting for the usual people to start the meeting in the usual way, while I did my usual chain smoke trying to make up for the 25 minute bus ride. Back then, those transitions between cigarettes felt like quick sand into the dimensions of addiction. I sat on the ice covered stoop and my phone rang.
“Why the f* is this B* calling me”. Oof, okay, not cool I know, but my resentments against my 4th AA sponsor lasted almost as long as my active addiction did. She fired me over weed, I think. I answer the phone and can immediately feel the remorse in her judgmental voice. She says, “I’m sorry for your loss.” What loss? I had already lost everything I ever loved but she didn’t care 3 years ago so why was she calling me now? Maybe she had a spiritual awakening!
I met Brad in my 2nd year of college during Intro to Psychology class. On the first day, we did an ice breaker alliterating our names and we went down the line and had to remember every person before us. Me being me, Joyful Justine wouldn’t suffice so I changed the rules and went by Queen Justine. Two people later, Baffled Brad successfully named the whole class of mostly 19 years olds. It was obvious he was smitten by the queen.
It didn’t take long, 20 minutes, for him to peg me as a Leo, the spicy astrological sign of the sun. We were both in our mid-20s, both veterans, both loved art and words, both Leos and both in recovery for alcoholism. It only took a few weeks to become Prom King and Queen of the AA dances. He was all the Promises in one. He was my dreams coming true. My twin flame. My muse. Everything and nothing. He made me a believer in love.
But it was complicated. Brad was expecting a baby with someone who he barely knew. I was with him the moment he got the call that he had become a father. I saw Christian change Bradley in front of my eyes by simply taking his first single breath. It was beautiful. It was scary. It was a challenge that I learned a lot about myself in. Mostly, it was the realization that we were officially adults. Our life of doing anything, everything whenever we wanted was no more. Christian’s birth was more sobering than AA.
Our love was one built in the healthiest way I had ever experienced. We both had a grasp of our defects and our goals before we met and as a codependent, it was the first time I found myself with someone who pushed me my own direction. He was exactly what I needed to learn that love isn’t just me sacrificing everything that makes me, me. It was perfect, even when it wasn’t because he taught me how to receive it.
Brad ended up relapsing. I tried keeping my relationship with him by maintaining boundaries where I could. Before entering our home, he had to strip down to his boxers so I could search him for paraphernalia. Protecting my sobriety while nursing an opiate detox is a delicate dance. Eventually he volunteered to go to rehab, yes, a reprieve. The waves of denial and shame divided us but after he had a few months of clarity, we fell back into each other. He was creating again. We made it!
When he got out, he moved into an apartment with a heroin addict that he met in rehab. He was still coming over, sleeping over, going to AA with me for the first few weeks but it was quickly apparent that he wasn’t himself. During the 2nd detox of him sweating through the sheets and hunched over the toilet begging for a bowel movement, he stole my prescribed anxiety medication. I asked him about it. He lied. He took that lie to the grave but I watched him do it in the mirror. I called his uncle and pleaded for his family to help me, help him. Brad swore to my face that day that he would never forgive me.
A few months later, I started courting with someone I met in AA. He was the same old, same old guy that would ultimately lead to my last relapse. We moved fast, moved in and got engaged. In hindsight, I know this was my way of avoiding grieving Bradley. There was nothing about Paul that lived up to my healthy love for Brad but I was willing to sacrifice myself again to avoid the pain.
In October 2015, I got a call from Brad. He said, “I am not clean but I need to see you. I am at my mom’s”. I didn’t even think twice, I got on the next bus and met him at his mother’s headstone. It was cold and rainy but as soon as ours eyes met my soul was ablaze in the middle of that cemetery. The only thing keeping my feet on the ground was the diamond ring weighing me down. We danced, we sang, we rapped, we ran hand in hand like time had stopped and we created our own heaven in the interlude. We took the long walk home and as we approached my corner he stopped, gently embraced my face and said , “our love was always real”. He kissed my forehead, quietly said goodbye and walked away. The way my eyes responded, I think my heart knew that it was forever.
My relationship with my fiancé had already been unraveling, it was apparent when I had given up 2 years of sobriety, but I think that secret meet with Brad was what I needed to see how far from me I had gotten again. I left my fiancé and limped my way back to AA the same week.
I made a decision the day that Brad died that I believe saved my life. If I needed any reason to drink, it was losing his presence on this Earth. When I hung up the phone, I went straight into the meeting. I sat down at the squared circle table in shock. The introductions came around to me and I said, “I am Justine, I am an alcoholic and I just got a phone call that the person I thought was my person just died of an overdose.” My bottom was at 6 weeks sober. I could have left that parking lot. I could have let the news take me back into oblivion. That single decision to go inside, I believe, saved my life.
7 years later, I still cry. I still miss him. I still listen to our song. I still have the paintings I made with him in my heart. I still have the letters that I wrote to make it all feel less intense. I still have the vigil candle that I burned when I went to the beach and screamed at a god I don’t believe in. My dresser still holds a jar full of beach glass that I collected through my watered vision. I still compare him to every man that I meet and wonder how they could possibly live up the sunshine Brad was in the lives of everyone.
He will always be the one.
