Being discharged from rehab felt like what I imagined being released from prison felt like. Everyone was happy for me, including Alice, but some of them also looked at me wistfully, like they were jealous.
Alice, though, was just supportive. Well, supportive in her own way.
The day my aunt was coming to pick me up, Alice came up to me and said, "I'll kill you if you end up back in a place like this."
I rolled my eyes at her. "I won't."
"Seriously." She stared into my face intensely. "I'll murder you. Brutally."
"I'll miss you, too," I told her with a grin.
She stared at me for a moment longer, and then she suddenly stepped forward and wrapped her arms around me, squeezing tightly. Alice and I didn't really have a touchy-feely friendship, so her weirdly intense hug caught me by surprise.
Quietly, she said into my ear, "Show them who you are, Josh. I believe in you."
Then, after she pulled away, she thrusted a piece of paper into my hand. "Reach out, okay?"
I unfolded the scrap of paper and saw she'd written down her email and phone number. I looked at her and, while trying to keep the smile off my face, I said, "Sorry, um, I'm actually gay."
Alice let out a loud laugh, throwing her head back. "It's gonna suck here without you."
"I'm sure you'll find another pet project."
Meeting Alice had changed my time there. It had even changed me. She was cynical but in a way that disguised her true optimism. Alice was full of life and believed so fully in me that I started to believe it, too.
And the abyss I thought I was trapped in was actually a valley, a peak hiding just around the corner. Things could get better.
Dr. Andrews decided I had all the tools I needed and the will to use them to stay sober. To stay alive. So, now, I walked outside the main office of the facility, waiting for my aunt to come pick me up.
I knew dealing with Aunt Kathy was going to be difficult. It wouldn't be like rehab, a place where judgment was forbidden. But I felt like I could handle it.
She pulled up in a black SUV. I got into the passenger seat, throwing my bag in the back of her car.
"Josh," she greeted me in a formal manner.
"Hi, Aunt Kathy," I said awkwardly. "Uh, thanks for picking me up and letting me stay with you."
"It wasn't my decision," she said tersely, pulling away from the place that had become my temporary home.
She barely said a word as we drove towards her house. My mom and I used to come visit her when I was younger, but this was different. I wasn't just her nephew anymoreâI was her troubled, gay nephew.
When we arrived in the suburb where she lived, she showed me to the guest room I'd be staying in. My Aunt Kathy had never been married nor had kids, and her house reflected that; it was blindingly white, with stuffy, modern decor. It looked like a model home that had never been lived in.
She didn't ask how rehab went, didn't care enough to. Instead, she told me what the rules were. No drugs, no alcohol, like I didn't know that already.
"You need to clean yourself up," she told me. "If you're going to live under my roof, I'm not putting up with that lifestyle. Now, give me your phone. I have a laptop you can borrow to finish your schoolwork, but I won't have you talking to those miscreants from back home. They're bad influences."
The thought of Connor being labeled a miscreant was almost laughable, but I kept my mouth shut and begrudgingly handed her my phone.
It wasn't like I really needed it anymore anyway. I had no one to reach out to, besides Alice who could only communicate through email. Connor and I were done, thanks to me.
I asked myself, many times, whether breaking up with him was the right decision. I'd agonized over it like a broken record with Alice, showing her the emails he sent me basically begging me to reconsider. But I held my ground. It was for the best, a clean break for both of us. We needed to find out who we were now, who we could be without each other.
Right?
The first few days with Aunt Kathy were tense. She wasn't my mother and, to be honest, I didn't think she had any type of motherly instincts in her. She sort of acted like a prison guard trying to keep me in line. Which was strange for a number of reasons, the main one being I didn't really do anything other than schoolwork.
She also always had to give me unsolicited advice that was more like judgmental instructions.
"I'm glad you're sober, but you need to stop all this nonsense. It's not natural, Josh. You just need to find a good girl and settle down. People change. You can, too."
At that, I thought she did sound a little bit like my mom. I started tuning her out, wishing I was still in rehab. How the tables had turned. I missed Alice, I missed the art therapy instructor, and I even missed Dr. Andrews' stupid face.
And, of course, I missed Connor.
Over time, Aunt Kathy's comments and her general personhood started to wear on me.
I wanted to scream, to tell her that I couldn't change this, no matter how much she wished I would. But instead, I just nodded, letting the silence settle between us. I'd been fighting that battle long before I even realized what I was fighting for. My whole life had been about pushing away that part of me, hoping it would disappear. But it never did.
Her offhand comments about "normal" families, about the future she saw for meânone of it included me being myself. She didn't know Connor, didn't know how much I had loved him, how much losing him had hurt me.
The breaking point came one evening when I overheard her on the phone with who I assumed was my mom. "I don't know how long I can take this," she whispered, but her voice was sharp enough for me to hear it from the other room. "He needs to fix himself. I don't know if he's even trying."
Something inside me snapped. That night, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, replaying every conversation I'd had with Connor in my head. I wanted to reach out, to tell him how hard things had been, how I missed him.
But I didn't. What would I even say? "Hey, I'm falling apart, and I still can't stop thinking about you even though we're over." No. I couldn't drag him back into my mess. Connor wasn't mine to reach out to anymore. And I had to be okay with that, even if I wasn't. Even if I didn't know how to be.
I stared at the ceiling, fighting back tears. I didn't think it was going to feel this way. I didn't think I would feel...better, but also worse. I thought about emailing Alice, telling her how wrong this felt. But instead, I thought back to the last email Connor had sent me.
He'd told me about a club he started and how they were throwing some sort of event for the gays. He wished I was there, that I could share it with him.
I wanted to tell him everything. That I was still broken in places, that rehab hadn't magically fixed me. That I wished we could be us again.
As I drifted off to sleep, one thought kept running through my mind: I couldn't stay here. Not with my aunt's disappointment choking the life out of me, not in a place that didn't feel like home. And as much as it scared me to admit it, there was only one place I wanted to be.
Then, I decided: I had to go back to him.
The next day, I laid out my plan which included stealing my aunt's car and driving hundreds of miles to the boy I just couldn't fall out of love with.