Chapter Sixteen
Erik
“Susan, can I sign up for the hike today or is it too late?” I asked as everyone started to get checked back into the treatment center.
The holiday had been good for some people and not so good for others. Both Brad and Stan had returned for a refresher after using since they were out. It was hard to imagine that after being at the facility for so long that they could actually not stay sober. It was eye opening to me for sure. As was the conversation I had had with Cassidy at her parents’ house.
Being seen as lazy wasn’t something I was used to people telling me. In fact, when I had been building my business, I was working so much that my staff had told me to take a vacation before I had a heart attack. It became very apparent to me after my conversation with Cassidy that I lived in extremes. Either I was doing everything, or nothing. Either I was an over achiever, or achieving nothing. And if that was my personality – and I knew it was – then I’d rather be doing everything and be an over achiever.
There were plenty of activities I could have been doing while at the treatment center, but I hadn’t signed up for them. Instead, I had opted to spend as much time in bed sleeping and avoiding everyone else on the unit.
But that time was over. Instead of being lazy, I was going back to my active self. I could only imagine how much easier being active would be if I wasn’t drunk or high on some substance.
“Sure, I’ll get you on the list. The weather is pretty bad, though, so you’ll have to bundle up. I think Melinda had a list around here somewhere.”
“Thanks. And isn’t there a yoga class sometime? I’d like to give that a try also.”
“Yes, they do yoga every morning at six,” she said with a smile.
Both Susan and I knew that I never woke up early. Mornings were like my kryptonite, but I wanted to try something new.
There was a new drive in me to actually make myself proud. Sure, it had started with Cassidy’s comments to me, and at first I had been incredibly offended. But there was some truth in what she said. I was comfortable being the lazy computer nerd type of guy. Although my body was naturally in decent shape and I still liked to lift weights at my office to blow off steam, I certainly wasn’t all that physically healthy.
Not only was I going to start participating in more of the physical things that were offered at Paradise Peak, I was also going to put some real hard effort into group sessions. I had been holding back in those for a variety of reasons, but I knew everyone in my group sessions now. There was no longer a reason to stay quiet. It was time for me to push through and see what all I could get out of my time at the center.
“Sign me up,” I said enthusiastically.
“Okay,” the nurse said skeptically as she added my name to a list. “Now, this is the kind of enthusiasm I like to see.”
Her comment warmed my heart. That was the type of feeling I wanted more often. Being noticed for doing something good was one of my favorite feelings and I hadn’t even realized it.
While I was building my tech company, I used to love when people looked shockingly at me and didn’t believe I was old enough to run a business. Their dismay and shock was uplifting to me. That element of surprise was a way I often boosted my ego.
The more I thought about my past, the more I realized that I often put on fake, shocking events in the hopes of people thinking I was better than I really was. Once, I had hired a famous musician and his band to play at my party, then went around telling everyone that he was there as a friend and we were really close. It was a stupid lie and only impressed people who I didn’t know. The band had cost over $100,000 and only played for 90 minutes.
I was kind of a douchebag, I concluded as I started adding up the lies and stories I had told over the years. And that was only when I thought about my professional life and my friends; if I dared to think about how I treated the women I slept with, those memories almost made me sick to my stomach.
One time, a girl came pounding on my front door. She yelled at me for a good five minutes about not having morals and not caring who I hurt. When she was finally done yelling, I apologized for sleeping with her and hurting her feelings in a hope she would leave. But I hadn’t slept with her; the woman had been yelling at me for what I had done to her best friend and for breaking the best friend’s heart. I hadn’t even known if I had slept with the woman who was yelling at me.
My love life was non-existent. Instead of a love life, it was a sex life. There hadn’t been emotions or love involved. There was no moral compass, at all.
I wasn’t sure if I had a clearer moral compass now, but I did know that I wanted to do better in my personal life. Business would always work itself out, but my personal life was where the joy had to come from. If I ever wanted to be an old married man with a wife who loved me, I had to make some changes.
“Where you going?” Cassidy asked as I layered my clothes and readied for the hike.
“I’m hiking. I’ll catch you later.”
“Okay, but I’d like to talk to you about what happened at my house.”
“I had a great time,” I said as I leaned in to her. “But you shouldn’t be talking about that here or you’ll get in trouble.”
“We can talk later,” she said.
She seemed unsure of herself and what she wanted to talk about, but I knew she wanted to talk about me leaving early. It really wasn’t meant to be rude or anything like that. I just didn’t need another day in her house to realize I still had a lot of work to do.
“Where’s everyone at?” I asked as I waited with Melanie to leave for the hike.
“It’s very cold out today. I think people are changing their mind about hiking.”
“I’m still game if you are.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” Stan said as he ran up to us.
He didn’t look like he was in good enough shape to be pounding away on another winter hike. The weather was much worse than when we had gone before. The warm, winter days full of sun had left the mountains and we were in the midst of cold, snowy days again.
“We aren’t going too far. Just out two miles and back,” Melanie said as she opened the back door.
The trail was still plowed, but there were a couple inches of snow covering the path. It wasn’t enough to worry about, and the boots I had worked just fine to keep my feet warm. Melanie took the lead and then me and Stan was right being us. We didn’t talk. There was no therapy going on, just three people moving through the winter trail and contemplating their own existence.
My mind filled with all the potential my future seemed to hold now that I was sober. There was no end to the possibilities. Maybe Spencer and I would invest in this new movie studio and it would be successful. We could be those Hollywood-type guys who went to movie premieres and met famous people on a daily basis.
I thought about what it would be like to buy a home in that area, maybe even down by the beach. San Francisco wasn’t all that warm by the beach, so I had bought my home there up on the hill. But the beach sounded much more like it would be a place to relax.
Then, I let my thoughts go back to my father and brother. My father had disowned me when I left. He had been so hateful and angry. But in recent days, I had started to feel bad for him. His age and his health weren’t getting any better, and I had left him with my younger brother to run things.
My anger had clouded my ability to see that my family was hurting. My father had a broken heart from losing my mother and instead of being there and trying to work things out, I stayed away.
But as I walked through the cold, mountain air, there was one thing that weighed heavier on my mind than anything else: money.
I had never sent my father and brother a single dime of money to help them out. Even after I sold my business and clearly had more money than I knew what to do with, it had never dawned on me to give back to them. I hadn’t offered to pay for the salary of a manager for the funeral home so they could take a break. I had given my own flesh and blood absolutely nothing.
The thought of my own selfishness was almost too much to handle. Never had I thought of myself as a heartless person. I had always played the victim of a father who didn’t love me and disowned me when I went to college. My own version of the story had clouded what my father had been going through at the time. And my own anger had prevented me from going to him and trying to make amends.
I would make amends, though. It was time that I gave back and built my own family up. Cassidy’s family had so much love between them. They weren’t perfect – they argued, they probably said things they had regretted over the years – but they loved each other and didn’t let anything take that love away.
It was up to me to bring an end to the feud in my family and I knew the perfect way to do that. Of course, money couldn’t buy happiness and I didn’t expect to buy their love with it. But I had an idea for how I could lessen the burden for my brother and father and give them a little peace of mind for the future.
As my mind spun away, I realized that Stan had moved ahead of me and we had already turned around and were heading home.
“Wow, I must have been zoned out,” I said under my breath.
“Or you’re just so out of shape that an elderly man is kicking your ass.” Stan laughed.
“Probably both.”
It was nearing dinnertime when we arrived back, and I saw Cassidy handing everyone’s meals out to them. I knew she wanted to talk, but I had to make some phone calls. My energy was ramped up for the things I wanted to do for my family and I couldn’t stop for anything.
“Heath, I need you to do something for me, and you can’t tell Dad,” I said when I got a hold of him.
“I’m not going to keep secrets from Pop,” he said with trepidation.
“Just listen to me first and then you can tell me if you can do it. Okay?”
Heath did not sound thrilled to listen to what I had to say. He didn’t even seem interested in talking to me on the phone, but I wasn’t doing this to make them love me or be nice to me again. I was doing this because I truly wanted their lives to be better. Even if they continued to push me away, I was going to continue to move toward them. I was going to show that I loved them and would help care for both of them as much as I could.
“Fine, what’s up?”
“I’ve got to set up some business legal stuff. Can you send me the name of the funeral home’s mortgage company? I’d like to see if they can finance a project I’m doing. Oh, and I need the name of that local bank down the street from Dad’s house, if you have that.”
“Sure, I’ll email it to you. Do you have access to that?” my brother said with as little enthusiasm as possible.
“I’m sure I can manage it. Thanks, Heath.”
“Sure, talk to you later,” he said in an effort to get off the phone as quickly as possible.
“Wait, how are you doing?” I managed to squeeze in before he hung up.
“What?”
“How are you?”
My question seemed to surprise him, and it made me feel horrible. He wasn’t used to me asking about his life. I typically just complained about mine or we had some sort of other awkward conversation or argument, and then we hung up. A few months down the road, we might speak again.
“I’m good, I guess.”
“Any ladies in the picture?”
Heath laughed the question off, but then as I sat silently, he decided to answer. Heath was a handsome guy with blond hair and a muscular build. There really was no reason that the women weren’t throwing themselves at him.
“Pretty hard to get a woman when I still live with Dad. I tried buying my own place, but it will probably get repossessed soon. With the mortgage and second mortgage Dad has on the funeral home and his house, there’s not enough money for me to move out.”
His words cut me hard and it hurt that I hadn’t noticed their struggles before. I really had been too wrapped up in my own world to even see what they were struggling with. Money was something I could easily give my brother and father, yet I hadn’t even tried to help them out.
“That sounds very difficult.”
“I better get going. We have a lot to do this week. I’m glad you’re doing better,” Heath said and then quickly got off the phone.
I stood at the nursing station for a few minutes, sort of staring off into space as I processed everything. It was eye opening to realize that I might have been just as wrong in my relationship with my family as they had been. For years, I had blamed them and taking on some of the blame myself was an entirely new emotion for me.
“Everything all right?” Cassidy asked as she stood next to me.
I wasn’t sure if she was talking about my phone call or what was going on between the two of us, but the answer was the same.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“I saw you signed up for yoga tomorrow morning. That’s brave. I don’t even wake up that early. I couldn’t imagine trying to do those crazy poses.”
“Just going to give it a try. Thought I’d see how it suits me.”
“Good for you.”
“I better get going, lots to do. Have a good day working,” I said as I went to my room.
Having a room with a door on it wasn’t all that special to me anymore. Although it had been the only thing I could concentrate on when I first arrived, I had started to just leave my door open most of the time.
Instead of hiding away from everyone, I liked being open to visitors. We had new people arriving after New Year’s, and Jarrod and I talked about how I was now an example to them of what could work well for their treatment if they worked hard.
It baffled me that I could be an example for anyone, but it further fueled my new mindset that I was going to take advantage of my time in Aspen and really move forward.
As I sat in my bed, I furiously penned some new ideas for business, movies, and helping others. My mind felt so clear and focused. It hadn’t been like that since I left home and went off to college. That time in my life was filled with focus for a future that I wanted so desperately I was willing to give up everything that I knew.
Would I be willing to give up the past I had known for the last few years? I hoped so. I hoped that I would be able to put my new skills to work and finally be able to stay sober. What I had thought was just me messing around was a full-blown addiction and I now took responsibility for that.
I still wasn’t all that sure I knew how to control my urges. I wasn’t sure I would be able to stay sober with the skills I was learning at Paradise Peak, but I sure as hell wanted to try and be the man I knew I had inside of me.