Part 1: No resolution, and apparently about nothing—of course

I left the hotel at 7:15am, allotting an hour for transport to Madrid’s airport, and another hour and a half for check-in, security, and a casually sipped hazelnut latte. This, however, is not what happened. In reality I boarded the plane in a rush of sweat and panic. Of course I had waited at the wrong bus-stop, disembarked at terminal 1 when I needed to be in terminal 3, walked a mile to the Air France check-in, found out that I would need to leave a bag in Madrid, that the flight was closing in ten minutes, and enjoyed zero sips of the Coffee Giant’s latte.

But I did catch the flight, and easily transitioned in Charles de Galle airport from one Air France flight to another. And I ate a juicy, overpriced burger in terminal A of Detroit’s modern airport. And I slept soundly on the two hour flight into Orlando International. And I incessantly spoke of café’s and people during the familiar ride to our home.

When I was throwing the “necessaries” from one suitcase into another I noticed that the things I couldn’t leave behind had absolutely zero practical value. My passport from the Camino de Santiago made it, as well as some awful gifts I had gotten for family, but clothes and books were left behind. The check-in attendant laughed. While I was running to security I realized that getting rid of my extra bag, the one that I couldn’t take with me, would actually be very difficult. It was the day after the raid on OBL’s compound, security levels were high, and apparently the entire Spanish army, brandishing huge guns, was in Madrid’s airport. First I tried to stuff the suitcase into a trashcan. This, you can imagine, looked conspicuous. Me, sweating and panicked, shoving a suitcase into a trashcan. People actually stopped and looked, murmuring to one another. I looked around with saucer sized eyes, yanked the wedged bag out of the iron trashcan, and took off in the direction of security. I thought about leaving the bag next to the trashcan, but remembered the ominous warnings against leaving baggage unattended. I saw myself running away from an orphaned bag, trying to explain, in Spanish, to the guards who would be shooting at me, that I had only paid to check one bag and was forced to leave another. I was upon security before any reasonable solutions had come to mind. When I told the guard that I wished to leave a heavy suitcase in a trashcan, (I don’t speak Spanish), he was obviously alarmed.  More guards came over, tightly gripping the black stocks of their automatic rifles, and tried to understand what the young American nut was saying. Eventually one guard, holding my bag at arms’ length, walked it through the scanner, and allowed me to proceed. And I ran. Luckily, only five days earlier I had mistakenly sprinted through the same gates of the same airport, so the path was familiar. But the sprint was a long one. And since I had worn jeans and a long-sleeve shirt, thinking myself handsome, and that I would make every guapa Spanish chick wish she had met me while I was in her country, I, as I mentioned earlier, accumulated a great amount of sweat in all of the obvious areas, and arrived at my gate breathing as if I might had smoked three packs since security. Also, I’m sure that I had already been red-flagged and secretly followed.  I sat next to the creepiest people on the plane. A couple, the guy from Canada and the girl from the Netherlands, she matching his un-trimmed nails with her unshaven legs, flirted via some perverted computer-game lingo. The short flight was long.

Drinks of all kinds were complimentary on the flight from Paris to Detroit. This wonderful fact combined with a growing realization that my time abroad was indeed over, made me avert my eyes from average movies like, The  Company Men, and, Love and other Drugs, so that I’d remember the theater of it all, and keep my eyes dry. I was coming home to a loving family, a familiar bed, and a country slam full of English-speakers…But I was also coming home to unemployment, financial desolation, (I literally had zero dollars. No money), the storm of a legal cluster-fuck, the shameful residence of a college graduate in his parents’ home, and high school ghosts that still haunt. I had gained much, maybe even some of myself, but it seemed like everything that I had been sure of in Spain, all that I had accumulated, was as worthless as the euros in my pocket.

Two days after I returned from Spain my mom drove me to a mandatory meeting with my state appointed counselor. Brimming with confidence, and as much charisma as I could muster, I joked with the secretary, pet her dog, and smiled with my eyes while I told Sally, the sweet, elderly counselor, that yes, before being caught, I had driven under the influence. I told her about the night that I was arrested, that I wouldn’t trade the embarrassment and shame, and that I now know that no night, no extra drink, is worth the sacrifice of freedom and finances which the DUI has cost me. I told her about Missouri sending the wrong information, and how what was supposed to be 30 days without driving has turned into 6 months in the passenger seat. Sally said some really nice things about me, and that, “yes”, sometimes people like me, with good parents, a college diploma, and a vocabulary stocked with 4 syllable words, are caught. She assigned me as little counseling as possible, (3 thirty minute sessions in 12 weeks), and apologized for having no choice but to require, because the state requires it of her, that I attend weekly AA meetings. Even while I was still with her I was deflated. Three more months without driving, more shameful meetings, and an increased sense of the feeling that I had at some point transitioned from perpetrator to victim. Sally hugged me at the end and told me that one day I would laugh at “all of this”.

My mom and I went to lunch afterwards. She told me that she was sorry things had turned out as they had. I remembered that I created the situation which allowed the possibility of “all of this”. I had. But I’ve made things hard for myself before. I’ve never had cancer or lost a loved one, but I have, thanks to my own mistakes, endured hardship. And from those times, and those mistakes, from the loss of friendship and loss of self, learned that “this too shall pass”, applies to everything. I told my mom, as we walked from the car I couldn’t drive to the restaurant where I couldn’t order a beer, that, “this won’t stop me”. And even though I didn’t say what it wouldn’t stop me from doing, but earnestly meaning it nonetheless, my mom said, “I know”. And I believed her. And it won’t. And I know that it sounds like something Rudy or Andy Dufresne would say, but I wasn’t embarrassed to say it. Because sometimes the hardest things to get through are ourselves. And I knew that AA couldn’t be bad for anybody, and that I’ll spend more time with my little brother because I literally can’t go anywhere without him, and that one day I’ll be able to drive a friend home, because there were so many times that I couldn’t. And I also knew that August 1^st, when I can drive again, that I’ll probably drive the lonely Neon, at four dollars a gallon, to the goddam North Pole.