The Man Beside

stories

Running with Balloons

Balloons make me smile. They are happy things.

When I see a child with a balloon, the balloon becomes its best friend. They become one bubbly happy mess. And when, and it will happen, that balloon slips out of that child’s hand, it’s the parent’s sworn duty to risk life and limb to retrieve that wandering beast.

Back in 1967, it was Canada’s Centennial, and I was at Expo 67 in Montreal. We were standing in line late at night waiting for the last ferry to cross from the island to the mainland. The line-up, in my seven-year-old opinion, stretched for miles. Exhausted parents did their best to amuse cranky children. Their empty stares focused on that golden moment when the ferry would arrive, ushering them off the island to warm hotel rooms and cool beverages of sanity.

Suddenly a red balloon got loose.

A blood-curdling scream was heard from the de-ballooned child.

The father, a large man with balding slicked back black hair, gave chase. Sweat poured as he gasped for air, leaping around, attempting to catch the end of the string. Other parents cheered him on. The entire crowd came to life with the sole purpose of encouragement.

With what seemed like his last bit of strength he managed to catch the string and pull the balloon to the ground, gaining its control. With ab- solute pride and his head held high he walked back to his daughter. In an exaggerated gesture of grandiosity, he swept his hand forward and placed the string in her eagerly waiting hands.

It was the ‘60s.

We were not nearly as health-conscious back then as we are now. To celebrate the delivery of the prize and to ease his heaving chest, the man lit a cigarette.

In that instance, I sensed disaster.

A rogue breeze caught the balloon pushing it into the heated end of the cigarette. And in the blink of an eye, victory was no longer his. The death of the balloon shocked the impromptu audience. To the sounds of disappointment, then laughter, and finally cheers of condolence, the crowd encouraged the man who in turn did his best to console his distraught child.

The line still waited, but this time with a sense of community and light-heartedness.

Sometimes sobriety is like that balloon and its adventure. It has its own life. Its own motion. Its own personality.

When you’re just starting out and you think you have it, you’re just like that little kid holding onto the balloon—all bubbly with joy. But in reality, you barely have a grasp on it—all it wants to do is get away.

Sometimes with help, like AA, you get it back. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

But like those people in the line, pretty much everybody’s on your side.

The Bogeyman

The bogeyman lives underneath your bed, or in the dark corners of the closet. The bogeyman comes out at night to get you if you are bad or not careful.

As a child, I remember being afraid of the bogeyman. All my friends were, even if they wouldn’t admit it. We all had our own versions of what the bogeyman was and what he could do. To us, he was true terror. As I got older, my parents convinced me the bogeyman didn’t exist, along with the tooth fairy, and Santa Claus.

As I sit here now I believe they were not entirely correct. The bogey- man does exist. And he likes the dark.

I found that in recovery, you have to face your bogeyman. 

Sometimes you have to turn off the lights to do it.

You have to face your fears. You have to sit back and look at the past. You have to dig into it, become part of it, and then tell it to fuck off.

You have to learn from the past but you don’t have to live it. 

You did it. You bought it. You own it.

But the main thing you have to remember is that it doesn’t own you.

Just like anything else you buy, you can use it and when it’s done, throw it out. You put the effort into screwing up. You put the time and the patience into recovery.

 Take advantage of your past. Learn from it and use that knowledge to move forward, but don’t let it hold you back.

Don’t dwell on the past when there is so much more in front of you. 

You’ve worked hard to get clean so why not enjoy it?

Why would I keep reminding myself of my failures?

I realize I need to learn from them, to move forward. That’s the whole point of recovery—to keep moving forward.

To keep creating a better life. Not to live in the past.

The Fridge

 I am home. 

Alone.

I am bored. 

I am hungry.

It’s a mindless state of being, like floating in a void.

I’m not really thinking. I’m not really doing. I’m staring but not fo- cused. I wander aimlessly to the fridge and peer into its lit vastness.

I stand there without movement, unblinking, and it strikes me that I have no idea what I’m looking for or why I am here.

I close the door and shake it off.

Three minutes later I find myself in the exact same situation. My head stuck in the fridge, looking aimlessly at expired milk cartons, half-eaten pieces of steak and something green that I’m unsure what it is or was. But this time I tell myself I’m hungry.

There is more than enough variety and volume of food to satisfy my inexistent need and yet I become frustrated, and the hunger that once wasn’t there now begins to develop and grow and bring on a life of its own.

I’ve become impatient and irritable. I think, why is there nothing in this fridge to eat!

What the hell is going on! The hunger now has control.

I am now upset and driven. I need to satisfy my hunger. The hunger that didn’t even exist before.

I sit back and wonder, where did this hunger come from? My answer to myself is this:

It was born out of my boredom.

In that time while I was suspended in nothingness, my so-called inner-self decided to try and fill that void with the nearest and easiest thing it could—my hunger.

I think that’s how what I call ‘latent cravings’ happen.

Even without the alcohol, I am always an alcoholic.

I believe that there is always a craving in hiding. Maybe not that deep down.

I have learned that this void sleeps. It’s like something behind a door resting. The way I conduct my life is the tapping on the door. If I allow myself to venture too far from my routine by not eating properly, not sleeping enough, not eating well, I begin to tap on that door. If I continue to slack, it becomes a knocking.

I think my subconscious takes the easiest route it can, and when I allow myself to open that void, it grabs the nearest and easiest thing.

And that could be me.

I Am Seven

I have a brush cut like the older boys, my reward for reaching the weight of fifty-five pounds.

I am wearing brown corduroys and a gray turtleneck that is too small and tight to my skin. It’s the first hot spring day.The sun heats the room, bringing out the smells in the old wooden desks and the yellowing linoleum flooring.

I sit facing the front of the room, middle row toward the back. There is a chalkboard in front of me and one to my right, with doors leading to the hallway at either end. To my left, a bank of windows looks out onto the playground and beyond that to a rusting factory.

The classroom windows are open, letting the smell of warming grass mixed with the mold and dampness from the last of spring in. I can hear the constant pounding of the hammers from the nearby forge and taste the sulfur of its blast furnaces.

Behind me is a long closet for boots and coats and a small wash sink for the messier activities. I am surrounded by my classmates.

The hum of their constant tapping, whispering, and fidgeting is an audible fog.

The flies, having come alive again after their winter death, buzz madly around the room. They snap against the windowpane, adding to the acoustic confusion.

I am more aware of this than most, I think.

I watch the large silver clock at the front of the class. I cannot tell time, yet I am the only one in my class who cannot. I understand the principles of it. I know what the physical positioning of the hands means. 

I imagine a colored space between the hands signaling certain activities, like when the space between the long and short hands creates a pie with about a third of it missing, I know that means it is time to go home.

I hate it here.

I know I am not dumb, but I know I do not understand.

The teacher does not call me dumb, but she does not ask me questions anymore. She stopped asking me to read out loud when the other children began making fun of me. In her own way, she is probably being kind to me, but it feels like she’s telling me I am stupid.

I am afraid of the confusion inside me. It forms like a storm unfolding.

I do not understand what goes on around me. What the teacher writes on the board makes no sense to me. It is as if the words have no face, nothing recognizable. But I understand what she is saying; her words have a meaning that I can remember and work with in my mind.

I am told to write a paper on what we have been taught this day. I have understood the verbal parts of the lessons, yet I cannot write down what it all means to me. It is as if I am writing with ink in the pouring rain.

It blurs and bleeds, then runs off the page and puddles away.

The teacher senses something; again, she tries to be kind, helping me simplify my thoughts into words I can write.

They are few.

I must be dumb. I am alone.

The room is now too hot from the sun.

The smells and noises become suffocating, making my turtleneck unbearable.

I want to run.

PF Flyers

The ads on TV for PF Flyers say they will make you jump higher and run faster.

I am eight years old, and I know—I truly know—that when I get my first pair of Flyers, all this and more will come true.

I walk beside my mother to the new strip mall, a low, flat, L-shaped building housing a large grocery store, a liquor store and a Woolworths, complete with round red swivel stools and a green Hamilton Beach shake maker. Six doors down is the store I seek. 

Clark’s shoe store.

I sit, fidgeting excitedly, while the owner of the store—a man in his late forties with a brown suit and balding head—fits me with my new Flyers.

The shoes are snug, firm, and ready to go.

I put them back in the box, carefully rewrapping them in the tissue supplied. I will not wear them home.

I need them pristine for the race ahead.

Beside my house is a road, a combination of gravel and stone held together by hard tar, the perfect running surface. 

I meet my older brother and his friends at the road.

The starting line is drawn. One hundred paces away is the finish line.

 I run as if my feet have lightning bolts attached to them. The speed is incredible, the wind in my hair.

This is my race.

I raise my head, drawing my focus off my shoes, checking my winning progress.

There, ahead of me, are the backs of the older boys, the finish line easily within their reach.

This is not my day for victory.

The PF Flyers did not live up to their promised glory. I stand disappointed in my new shoes.

I was convinced that with them, I would be invincible.