On my first day in Montgomery, I had to be rushed to the hospital.
After Jefferson County, my public defender asked whether I would be willing to go to Montgomery Behavioral Health. I jumped so fast I nearly left a cartoon outline of myself in the cinder block wall.
Here is what I found. My own room. No roommates. Nobody shouting down to the fifth floor. A large screen television, and I held the remote. No floor manager. Just a man and his remote control, the way God and the Founding Fathers intended.
And real food, clearly made for human consumption. I checked. It came from a great chef named Tish. Tish would never have let me eat an egg with the shell on. Tish had standards.
But I had brought a stowaway from Jefferson County: a massive hernia. For weeks I could not eat because the food was terrible. Now the food was wonderful, and every time I ate, the hernia acted up. God has a sense of humor. Sometimes it takes me a few business days to get the joke.
Most people take a day to locate the ice machine. I went straight for the emergency room tour. They took care of me, brought me back, and I got on with getting better.
I arrived on July 17 thinking I would stay there until August 5. The court dates kept moving, and I walked out on September 29. For sixty-nine days, by my count, I wore an ankle monitor and plugged it into the wall for an hour a day. I still had questions about what would have happened if I had left. Meanwhile, Raven, Nick, and Jasmine listened. Jamee, Stormy, Rachel, and Tish helped me through.
In social emotional learning classes I discovered that naming a feeling is easier than letting it drive the bus. I had been letting my feelings drive for decades, and they did not have a license.
I’d been paying a lot of attention to what I thought God might be telling me. In Montgomery there were people who could tell me something plainly, and who were willing to say it again if I needed to hear it again. I often did, and they usually did too.
I’d spent time on the media side of arguments about social emotional learning. It was an odd experience to hear the same phrase in a place where the exercise required me to speak for myself. Nobody was asking me for a position on the curriculum. I was being asked to recognize what happened between feeling something and doing something about it.
That sounds simple when I write it down. In the room it was work. I’d been getting from one end of that process to the other so quickly that I’d sometimes have to work backward to figure out where I’d started. I had plenty of experience explaining an action after the fact. The class gave me a chance to notice a feeling while I still had a choice.
I remember walking out September 29 with more names to be grateful for than I’d expected to learn. A chef, nurses, a case manager, and counselors had all done ordinary things that I needed. I could name the help more easily by then. I was still learning to ask for it. I had a life to walk back into and a place to start.
I had come to believe in the work. I have learned things about myself in treatment I would not have learned any other way, a few of which I would have preferred not to learn at all. Some of the strongest people on earth are the ones willing to admit they need help. I am in that group. I just took the long way to the meeting.
Leaving treatment would still take practice. I still need accountability, fellowship, and people who will tell me the truth. And I still need God. He has not issued me any kind of discharge. His program has relaxed attendance requirements and no graduation date.
When Jesus healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, He did not say, attend this pool from nine to three, Monday through Friday. He said walk. Not everyone is ready to walk at the same time, and there is no shame in needing more time. But for me, this was another transition.
To Tish, Raven, Nick, Jasmine, Jamee, Stormy, and Rachel: thank you. And to my court date, wherever you are tonight: I will see you when you are ready. I am a much more patient man now.
— JC
“Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.” — John 5:8 (KJV)
