We stood on the street corner in the middle of the afternoon having a focused debate. I said I felt him pulling away again and that the past ten days I had had thoughts and feelings that were too reminiscent of "before" for my comfort. I said I didn't want to go back there ever again. He said he didn't know what I was talking about and that it must be my imagination.
And then he paused and I saw him squint to see who was in the car that drove past. "That was a guy from Monday night," he said. A man from the meeting that he had attended for the 12 years that we had deluded ourselves by believing that he was working a solid program of recovery when he, in fact, was not.
Our discussion ended abruptly and we turned to continue our walk. It was not lost on either of us that this man from a meeting that is held 30 minutes from our neighborhood drove by us on a weekday afternoon just when we were arguing about whether or not old behaviors were creeping back. The Universe didn't send us a man in a car from the Tuesday night meeting or the Thursday night meeting where he has gone for the past year to find the strength of recovery that has kept us together. No, the Universe sent us a messenger from our dark years.
It was like God's exclamation point.
