“I just...don’t feel like I need to be up there right now,” I explained, although not really explaining anything at all.

“I don’t get it,” Preppy said, forgetting to whisper. Several heads turned around to see where the commotion was coming from and I flashed them an apologetic smile although I really wasn’t sorry. Preppy wasn’t a conformist. Being quiet, especially in a setting like a church was a huge undertaking for him. I was actually kind of impressed he wasn’t doing cartwheels up and down the isles. “I don’t always sit in the back. It just depends on...on how I’m doing.”

“I still don’t get it, Doc, use small words if you have to but explain it to me.”

“Okay, so like right now I’m sitting in the back pew by the door, just listening. It’s like being back here makes me feel like I’m straddling this invisible line separating the meeting going on up there and the outside world, which is how I feel most of the time. Like I don’t quite belong up there, but I know I need to be here in some way.”

“What about on other days?” Preppy asked, seeming genuinely interested in what I was about to say.

“There are some days that are a little harder,” I admitted. “Days when I’m up there with the others, participating, telling my story, because I feel like the outside world doesn’t get it and I need to be up there with people who do.”

“How long has it been since you’ve been up there?” Preppy asked, just as Steve, the meeting leader, called out my name.

“Andrea, are you ready?” Steve asked, gesturing to the empty `podium with a smile.

I nodded to Steve and stood. “I’ll be up there in about three seconds.” My heart hammered in my chest as I shuffled sideways out of the pew. “I’ll understand if you want to leave before I’m done,” I added, looking him over one last time.

He wanted the truth and I was about to give it to him in a big way.

The BIGGEST way.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he reassured me, although there was no way he knew what exactly he was agreeing to. I made my way to the front of the church where the small wooden podium was positioned directly in front of the pews in the center of the aisle. I looked over the crowd of a dozen or so other men and women, a few teenagers in the crowd and I took a deep breath.

Preppy flashed me one last reassuring smile from the back pew and I hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

“My name is Andrea,” I started, my voice shaky. “But everyone calls me Dre. I’m an addict. Heroin was my weapon of choice if you’re interested in knowing.” I looked over the crowed. “And I’ve been sober for a few years now.”

My introduction was met with several “Hi’ Dre’s” from the crowd and a few claps of encouragement. “You know, I’ve been to a thousand of these meetings. I’ve introduced myself to hundreds of others just this same way.” I shook my head and cleared my throat. “For some reason stupid reason I keep expecting this to get easier.” The crowd laughed. “But telling my story never does.”

Steve chimed in from the front row, “It may never get easier, but it’s a good reminder of why you are here and why you can never go back.”

There were more words of encouragement murmured from the small crowd, but it wasn’t their reaction that had me holding onto the edges of the podium for support. I cast one last glance to Preppy in the back row. He was partially hidden in the shadows so I couldn’t make out his expression and in that moment I was grateful for it.

I continued. “I’ve been sober now for several years. I’ve lost people. I guess that’s how this all started. I lost my step-sister and I blamed myself. Her boyfriend blamed me too, and we fell into our addictions together. He became violent. He...he hurt me. He RAPED me. I told myself I deserved it. In the end, I lost him too.” I took a deep breath and looked down at the podium.

“I almost killed myself one night. I almost jumped off of the water tower right here in Logan’s Beach. But I was saved by someone. I wouldn’t call him a guardian angel exactly. More like a devil with good timing.

“After a bunch of other stuff that I won’t bore you with, I sobered up and my dad took me back and I checked into rehab.

“One night, not long after I’d gotten there, I realized how fucking tired I was. Not like sleep tired, but tired of hurting. Because just when I thought my heart couldn’t break anymore it kept shattering over and over again and after a while, just when I thought I was going to be okay...I couldn't take it anymore.

“And as an addict, I only knew of one way I could make it all go away.

“I don’t even remember how I managed to escape the rehab facility, or what door or window I snuck out of. All I know is that night, less than an hour after thinking about using again, I was sitting on the dirty floor of some dealers drug den holding a lighter in one hand and a spoon in the other.”

I paused. My chest tightened. I fought back the tears that threatened every single time I was about to start on the next part. The most important part. The tears won and by the time I started speaking they were falling in warm streams down my cheeks.

“That night everything changed in a flash of a second. Before I could tie off my arm, my gut twisted. I thought it could’ve been the guilt of what I was about to do. And I think it could have been a part of it, but when it passed I tied off my arm and just as I lifted the needle to prick my skin a pain tore through my stomach and I blacked out.

“I woke up in the hospital thinking that I’d overdosed. My dad was there and he told me I didn’t have any drugs in my system. He had tears in his eyes and when I asked him what was wrong,” my voice cracked. “He told me he wanted to be the one to tell me himself that I...” I took a deep breath to compose myself. “Sorry. He wanted to be the one to tell me the news that I’d lost a baby. My baby,” I said, a sob escaping my lips. “A baby I didn’t even know I was carrying for fifteen weeks. A little girl.

“I loved her the second he told me about her and I grieved her as hard as any mother can grieve for the loss of a child. When the guilt came again, the overwhelming maddening guilt, it crashed into me a thousand times worse than it ever had before and I realized that she was never fated to make it in this life.

“If it weren’t for those pains I would have used and I know in my heart that she wouldn’t of made it if I had. Or possibly me as well. That sweet unborn baby, who never stood a chance at taking her first breath, stopped me from making the biggest mistake of my life.