To wrap up 2015 I’m giving away a signed copy of my book!
To enter, send an email to rubyabrowne[at]gmail.com with your name and address by January 5th.
I’ll select a winner randomly, but everyone who enters will get a handwritten thank you note from yours truly. It’s the best way I can think of closing 2015.
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It’s been a hell of a year, y’all. Though I can’t say I’ll miss it a whole lot, I’m forever grateful for the little community we’ve grown here over the last year. I’m really excited to see what kind of strides we can all make together in 2016. I think it’s going to be one of our best years yet.
I won’t be posting again until January 4th, but when we come back we’re going to have Monday through Friday posts. That’s right. Five posts each week instead of just two. We’re also going to have an exciting new format, including guest posts from writers I love. I can’t wait to share some of their work with you over the next year.
As always, thank you so much for reading, for following, for your love and support. Your kind words and well wishes have gotten me through some of my roughest times this year. I wouldn’t have done it without you.
I was standing at the door of my apartment. Backpack on my back and another bag hanging from the crook of my left arm, keys in my right hand. While I was unlocking the door, Richard came down the stairs leading into the hall behind me. I turned and called out to him.
“Hey, dude! How you been? I haven’t seen you around here very much lately.”
Richard stopped in his tracks and stared at me. He looked like a little kid who just found out his parents wouldn’t be living together anymore. A rush of adrenaline surged through my body. I didn’t know what was happening, but I could feel it was monumental. I knew that people don’t put on faces like that for the everyday tragedies. That face is for the heartbreak moments. The ones that tear us in two.
I dropped my bags and walked toward him as fast as I could, barely catching him as his legs gave out and he crumbled to the floor. His body shook as he pulled his knees up to his chest, fumbling for words. He tried several times to start a sentence, but he didn’t have it in him. After another set of shakes and a big breath in he managed to speak. “The doctors,” he said through shutters. “The doctors say he’s not going to make it through the week.”
“Wait, what? Who? Calvin?”
He turned his face toward me and took another rattling breath, “Yes. Calvin.” Then he dissolved into my chest. Sobbing.
I held him on the floor in the hallway. Crying quietly into his hair. It’s not that I knew Calvin well, it was that I loved Richard fiercely. And sometimes that’s all it takes to mourn an impending death. I could see the slowly opening gash in my friend that Calvin used to fill.
We try to fill those voids. We try with drugs or booze or other people. We try with hobbies and new jobs and cross-country moves. But when someone we love leaves us, there is always going to be that gap. A cave that collapsed in on itself, but never closed. But I guess it’s just like Leonard Cohen said, “That’s how the light gets in.”
When Richard stopped crying I helped him to his feet and walked him to his door. I didn’t ask him what was wrong with Calvin. It didn’t matter anyway. He was either going to pull through or he wasn’t. My job wasn’t to know the details, my job was to make sure that Richard was safe.
At his door I asked, “What can I do for you right now, man?”
“Just be around this week. Like, if I come knock on your door at 11 PM, will you answer?”
“Of course. I’m here.”
“Thank you,” he said more to the ground than to me. He closed the door and I could hear his shoulder blades hit it and his body slide down the length. I held up my hand to knock again, but I knew he just needed to be heartbroken right now. And that was okay.
I put my bags into my apartment and ran up the stairs to Allen’s, banging hard on the door. When he answered I didn’t bother with any greetings, just asked, “Dude! What the fuck happened?”
“Calvin has bacterial meningitis. He’s been in the ICU for about a day and a half now and they… You know, they just don’t have any good news.”
“Damnit.”
“Yeah, kiddo. It’s rough. I don’t even know what to say to Richard. He’s just barely holding it together, of course. I mean, I would be a total wreck, too. He’s just usually such a jubilant guy, you know. It’s so hard to see him… Shit. What am I doing? Complaining about how hard it is for me to watch him hurt like that. What must be happening in his head right now? His whole world is falling apart. You know he’s not even on the lease to their apartment?”
Allen’s words started fading out. He wasn’t talking to me anymore, he wasn’t talking to anybody. He was just trying to fill the space with something that wasn’t our brains stuck on a spin cycle. Repeating over and over that our friend was lying in a hospital bed, ten minutes away, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.
These events happened in the summer of 2010. This piece is an excerpt from my current NaNoWriMo novel.
Holy smokes, today’s the day, y’all. The digital and paper copies of my brand new book, Unrailed, are now available for purchase on Amazon.
Recently, I told you all about this collection and how proud I am of it. Today, I thought I’d share a selection from it. An earlier version of this piece first appeared on one of my favorite blogs, Running on Sober. It was also my first piece to be featured on Freshly Pressed.
I hope you enjoy this sneak peek into Unrailed. If so, please consider picking up a copy.
Thanks,
Ruby ❤
Summertime Sobriety
At least once during the course of any given day I’m going to think, “This is it. This is when I relapse.”
Maybe it’s when I’m walking home from work. The sun kissing my shoulders and I’m not sure if I have anyone to come home to yet. Maybe it’s when we’ve closed up the office and my colleagues have gone out to bars or met up for dinner dates. Maybe it’s when I’m taking my lunch at the park and everyone has their toes in the grass, a beer in their hand. Those quiet little moments that make me feel like I don’t belong anywhere sneak up on me.
A pint of lager in her hand, she asks me, “Does it bother you when I drink around you? I mean, you’ve never said anything, so I assume not, but I figured I should ask or something…” Her voice trails off as I press my lips to one side and nod in appreciation.
“Nah. I mean, I made the choice to be here and I knew y’all would be drinking. It doesn’t bother me.” And it’s not a lie. At least, I need it not to be. It’s true that I can always just turn down the invitation to these outings. But while we’re talking about it, I’m playing out what my relapse is going to look like.
It’s going to be a summer day, just like this one. Just warm enough for a dress and cowboy boots. A little bit of cloud cover, so sunglasses are an option, not a necessity. The sidewalk cafés are going to be full of smiling people just off work. Everyone eating two-for-one tacos and taking shots of tequila. I’ll have had a moderate day. Not particularly awful or stressful or even interesting.
I’ll lock up and start walking home. Wonder what Mason is working on, if he’s home, how his day was. Flip through my phone to see if anyone sent an invitation that didn’t start with, “I know you don’t drink, but…” Brush my fingertips along the mortar between the bricks of buildings.
It will occur to me how exhausted I am. How tired I am of saying, “No, thanks. I don’t drink.” Or maybe lacking the motivation to even say that, and instead just shaking my head, hoping they don’t press. Tired of feeling like I’m living on a completely different plane of existence than everyone I work with or befriend.
So sick of how during summertime the living is supposed to be easy, but only because everyone has a frosty, boozy beverage in hand. Everything will start to feel so unfathomably big again. The unbearable heaviness of sobriety. A lifetime of excluding myself from the things other people have no problem with. I’ll take a deep breath, I’ll peek over my shoulder, and I’ll whisper, “I can’t do this.”
Then I’ll duck into a corner store and buy a bottle of bourbon and a pack of cigarettes. Walk down to the lake or the park under the freeway and find a bench. Put my headphones in and blast an album that tugs at my heart and makes me feel like punching through walls. And I’ll sit there and I’ll drink and I’ll smoke and repeat to myself over and over again, “You knew you couldn’t do this. You knew you couldn’t do this. You knew…” It will take me hours to work up the courage to go home again.
But that day wasn’t today. Today I ordered club soda with muddled lime instead. Today I sat on the patio of the dive bar next to the office and I listened to my colleagues laugh. Today I got through it. Tomorrow I’ll get through it again.
Ruby Pipes 