Ana Marie Cox Instagram – The latest in my series of short essays on the 12 steps (NOT A NEWSLETTER) is up at https://www.buymeacoffee.com/anamariecox/step-three-not-me.
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I’ve been writing just to experiment with writing and I have a vague plan for doing something even more intense for March — I’ll have 13 years on March 23, God willing and the last three have been, uhm, particularly challenging! They seem worth celebrating with a special urgency.
If you enjoy the essays and want to write your own recovery story, consider joining my Third Story Workshop. The next session is in April, and you can find out more at anamariecox.com/thirdstory.
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My mom was excited to visit the “butt hut,” the weathered gazebo in the back of the women’s dorm where smoking was allowed. We sat on the picnic table, grooved with a thousand hieroglyphics, as holy as an ark. She bummed a cigarette from one of the other patients. She smoked occasionally my whole life, never finishing a pack in anything shorter than a week. Usually, she only smoked when she drank, but today, she was coherent, solid, dry. Instinctively, I’d inhaled deeply when we hugged: no sharpness of vodka, no tang of wine. Just Elizabeth Arden’s Red Door.
“Aren’t the men here good-looking?” she asked me, eying their dorm on the other side of the campus. “They were when I was here.”
I thought of the heroin addict I had a crush on. “Some of them, sure.” | Posted on 27/Feb/2024 19:55:25
