The Choice

At the intersection I could go right and head home but turning left would take me back out to Post Road. I wanted to turn right but my entire physical psychic being was pulled left. I tried to tell myself I did not need to go there, tried to think it through, asked myself how I would feel in the morning. The many times in the recent and long ago past when I went to that place, I experienced defiance and short-lived relief. The next morning, though, I awakened to remorse, disappointment, hopelessness.

But all those times when I went left instead of heading home, I held hope in my heart. I have to say I did not always believe in myself but once I got through a few years of therapy, I mean deep and hard therapy, I started to believe in myself, hope gained momentum, seeping under my skin, entering my heart osmotically.

Early evening setting sun, windy and clear skies, wispy clouds, tried to speak to me, show me gifts, but I headed into my dim internal war. I will. I won’t. I will. I won’t. Paralyzed except for the electromagnetic field sweeping me. I am light, a smooth wave moving through the field at constant speed.

I turned left, caught in mental chaos, pulled into a driveway, backed out and headed to where I would have turned right, to home. Back at the intersection, I felt deprived, that germ of what the fuck, who cares boiling over, I made a U-turn to go to Mo’s Wine and Spirits, drove into the Mo’s parking lot, parked, opened the door, stood in the lot, the wind of that blustery spring day spilling across my face.

Sixty years old, tan from a recent trip to Siesta Key, wearing jeans and a Ruth Bader Ginsburg t-shirt, my necklace with sapphires and diamonds, a chain with eleven religious medals and a cornicello or portafortuna, gold, silver and diamond rings on every finger, I stood in that lot and remembered the time I almost went into a package store in New London, saw a skinny gray woman with a bottle, said a prayer for her and wondered if I would end up like her, someday sitting alone in a small apartment watching Jeopardy and drinking white wine.

For years, I did not pray, choosing to feel alone, lonely, without a god, without a source of hope and goodness. But now I prayed.

Mo’s Wine and Spirits dragged me through its doors like a Neo magnet. I lost my mind. My surroundings blurred except for the white wines in the refrigeration section. Decoy Sauvignon Blanc? Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio?

Often, the Neo magnet transported me to the dispensary. Gummies were a way out from a day’s stress, subsuming me into the high world, but just me, no one else, I was not a partier, I opted to be alone the way I was as a child in my closet with a lamp and a bench, where I could sit for hours, in semi-darkness. The gummy high completed my dissociation. Already an observer, now I could pretend to be present all the while enjoying my stoned state. Gummies were better than wine – no hangover or headache.

I would not want to tell Nessa that I drank or used. I can’t find the words to tell you how in love I am with her, I think of her every day, I long for the days and hours I see her, I need her. I guess I knew I would not lose Nessa if I drank or used. She loved me too. Still, I wanted to show her that her love fortified me, filled the emptiness, eased the sorrow that I used alcohol and drugs to hide.

I knew that a wine tumbler and a bag of mango sativa gummies hidden behind my computer screen did nothing to bring me closer to Nessa. She became this cool, amazing, brilliant woman who existed out there, detached from me. Truthfully, I enjoyed obsession, but I would rather obsess about Nessa than booze and drugs. In the beginning of life with her, it literally hurt, I could not stand one minute without her, I found songs that reminded me of her and played them over and over. The Sarah Bareilles song I Choose You, Blind Faith’s I Can’t Find My Way Home.

In a way, Nessa’s love brought out all the pain of all the years of my life and I began to leave that pain behind though at times regressing to scraps of an old survival mode. I had to trust that Nessa knew how much I needed her, not having to keep banging my hand against the wall in my parents’ bedroom to prove that I was injured. She knew I was injured, she knew it was crazy back then. I told her and she believed me.

Staring at the wine in Mo’s, I thought of Nessa, heard her voice in my heart.

It may not be obvious, but the choice whether to go left or right was gigantic. I did not make a choice and stick to it. No, I turned my gray Honda Civic hatchback around a few times, first going left, then right, then left, parking in the Mo’s lot, every moment a necessary step, all the confusion wheezing through my soul, to get me to the ultimate direction.

As a child I asthmatically gasped for air, my crazed, frightened mother getting me to medical help, and finally I had medication, Tedrol, with side effects of tremors, nervousness, a fast heart. Was this my first drug? I remember those side effects; told my mother I had nervous contention. She thought my term for the side effects was funny.

In just a few minutes, in the time it took to make what might have been a no-brainer choice, life, love, obsession tumbled through my mind, it seemed endless. A lifetime in the aisle of Mo’s Wine and Spirits. Even my head turned right and left. For those minutes, I was directionless.