Ari's Adventure by Laina Turner

Author:Laina Turner [Turner, Laina]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Laina Turner Media, LLC

18

Jack pulled out of Ari’s driveway after dropping her off, tapping on the steering wheel to the music and feeling both happy and shameful. He found he’d enjoyed dinner and spending time with Ari so much he didn’t want it to end, but then felt bad. The fact that he didn’t tell Ari why he didn’t drink and instead changed the subject was the opposite of what he was supposed to do in his recovery process. Would he ever be able to come to terms with that part of his life? He regretted asking her to dinner in the first place. He’d known alcohol would come up. It always did in a social setting. It was why he didn’t want to get close to people.

Michelle, his ex-wife, had used his admitting that he was an alcoholic as fodder for mudslinging during the divorce, as if what she’d already done hadn’t been enough. The majority of his friends hadn’t understood and some had even argued with him that he wasn’t an alcoholic. He realized later it was mostly because the truth hit too close to home. They’d envisioned an alcoholic as someone who wouldn’t be able to hold down a job or someone you would find passed out on a street corner, their booze wrapped in a brown paper bag. Sure, they’d known that he liked to drink. Everyone in his circle at the time had been big social drinkers, but no one had known the extent of his drinking outside of group dinners and parties. He’d been what one might have called a functioning alcoholic, though he later learned that there was really no such thing. Even if it appeared you were functional, you weren’t healthy-adult functional.

Over the previous few years, there had been a part of him that knew he drank more than he should, but for over twenty years, he had almost worn it as a badge of honor, never thinking that he had a problem. He and Michelle had been very social people and had gone out several times a week once the kids had gotten older, and they both had drunk a lot during those evenings. As his marriage and business started their death spiral, he had started drinking more and more as a way to cope. He would start earlier in the day, end later in the evening, and skip meals in lieu of what he’d called a liquid dinner. He got his wakeup call one night when, after imbibing way too many drinks, he started thinking about his life and how all that he’d worked hard for in the previous twenty years was gone. His life had been destroyed by the two people who had supposedly been his best friends and his biggest supporters. What was the point of living, he asked himself that night?

He had started thinking about how suicide would make the pain go away permanently, but luckily he had passed out before he did anything stupid. The next morning when he woke up, he remembered the evening before.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.