Lights Along the Path

Thanks to the nagging of a counselor I met along my year-long trail of mental hospitals and detox centers, in October 1992 I went to a twenty-one-day treatment program in Kentucky. It was a nice place. The food was a whole lot better than the food I had become accustomed to during my sick travels. I was twenty-eight years old and felt sixty. I hated myself so much I could hardly look people in the eye or at myself in the mirror. I had blown it all with the bottle. I had lost my career, crashed my car, and had no home of my own. My parents had had it with their miserable wretch of a daughter, the daughter they had educated and hoped to see succeed.