Sobering up my last week of suspension was hard and very, very sickening. Somehow the same delivery guy got stuck with me four times, and he got to know my sickly face much better than he ever wanted to. I want to say this experience has been enough to swear off alcohol forever, but the nagging temptation in the back of my mind to pour another drink confirms that it hasn't. What can I say? I guess I've always been a glutton for punishment.

It's my third day back at work, and it doesn't feel as good to be here as it normally does. I feel like I don't have the right to be happy here anymore; like I've let everyone down, despite the fact that I didn't do anything to harm the company or anyone outside of myself. It's still so embarrassing to have been suspended. With my paparazzi picture doing rounds on social media, I'm sure all my coworkers know I wasn't just out sick. I can't even pretend to be normal here.

"Is she still with us?" Kyle whispers past me to Mariluz.

Something starts waving in my right peripherals and I flinch away as I look in that direction. "There she is!" Mariluz exclaims softly with a grin.

"How was your open-eyed, dead-stare nap?" Kyle chirps nonchalantly, as if asking how my coffee tastes.

I look at him with a deep exhale and pursed lips. "I wasn't asleep. I was just... deep in thought."

Kyle grimaces lightly but forces a smile. "You're kinda scary when deep in thought, so maybe we could do that a little less?"

"If you figure out a magical cure for failure and deep contemplation, you let me know," I tell him happily, with a hint of sarcasm.

"Failure?" he scoffs. "Girl, you landed the Rigo and Chris Ellington story. So you're a little too close to the bottle, so what? You're a writer, all the great writers were raging alcoholics."

I crack up unintentionally at the absurdity of his response. "I appreciate the sentiment, Kyle, but I made some pretty big missteps that are hard to not consider failures when you look at them all together."

"Throwing the bottle at Chris was stupid, yes, but he didn't care! Let it go! I know, the internet is having a ball with it right now," he admits, rolling his eyes. "Just give it time and they'll forget about it. Every meme dies."

"And work?" I challenge lightly.

"Alex is a teddy bear! They showed their mean side already, but they're not going to give up on you, girl. This place is a family, and not in that corporate you-should-feel-bad-about-suing-us way, but in the real way."

"I know," I agree with a head-clearing nod. "I know. You're right. I just can't help but worry, you know?"

"I know, girl, but you gotta keep your eyes ahead. There will be other big projects for you to shine on," he promises comfortingly.

The ringing of my desk phone startles all three of us, and we stare at it for a second in confusion. These phones typically don't ring unless a call is expected, and I certainly haven't been expecting any calls. That only leaves one type of call: inter-office. Suddenly the ringing and the pounding of my heart are all I can hear.

"Answer it, girl," Kyle urges me in a whisper.

I rip the phone off the receiver quickly and hold it to my ear. "Lola Miller, The People Agenda," I answer nervously.

"Lola, it's Alex. Come to my office, please," they say, hanging up without waiting for confirmation.

I stare at the phone for a minute before looking at Kyle, who is watching me with boiling anticipation. "Alex wants to see me," I say quietly.

"Girl, you haven't done a thing wrong since you've been back," he reminds me. "You can't be in trouble right now. Don't be scared."

I nod as I slowly rise to my feet, looking to Mariluz for an extra boost of confidence. She provides that with an encouraging smile, and it helps me some. At the very least, if something bad happens at this meeting with Alex, they'll be on my side.

Alex's shades are up and the door is open when I arrive. They're busy typing on their computer as usual, and they glance up with a quick, small smile before returning their eyes to the screen.

"Close the door," they say. I can't hear any intensity or anger in their voice today, so that's a good sign.

"You wanted to see me?" I prompt them nervously as I sit down across from them at the desk.

They stop typing and turn to give me their full attention, smiling with pursed lips. "So I have an opportunity for you, if you're up for it."

I hesitate in my response, taken off guard. "Opportunity?"

Their smile grows some. "Chris and Rigo would like to work with us from their home to limit paparazzi access. Since you've already been there before, Chris has asked that you be involved. I did request that he withdraw the restraining order to avoid legal trouble for you in that case, and he said that wouldn't be a problem. Is this something you think you can handle right now?"

I can feel that my jaw is sitting on the floor, and I work to pick it back up as I blink away my shock. "Um, y-yes, of course I can handle that," I respond in wide-eyed bewilderment.

"Starting next Monday, you, Kyle, and Mariluz will be spending your workdays at their house until the detailed timeline is completed, and you're ready to direct the rest of the writers on the script. They wanted to keep it small, so it's important that you write down every little detail for those that aren't going to be there to ask questions," they explain. "That gives you the rest of this week and the weekend to mentally prepare yourself and be ready to show everybody what you're made of. If you need anything from me—anything at all to help you make it happen—please let me know right away. I want you to succeed here, Lola."

"Yes, okay!" I answer abruptly, still processing what I've been told. "And um, did they by chance give you the address? I don't remember how to get there."

Alex snickers and nods. "Yes, I have the address written down and on Monday morning, I'll send it out to all three of you. I expect you to treat it with delicacy," they warn firmly. They pause for a moment and inhale sharply. "Better yet, memorize and delete it. We don't want to risk being responsible for that leaking."

"Understood," I agree. "I'll make sure Kyle and Mariluz do the same."

"Thank you, Lola," they say gently. "And if at any point this gets to be too much for you, tell me. I mean it. There's no need to let it get bad and go the disciplinary route."

It's been rare in my life that someone with authority shows me any compassion, and Alex's display breaks through to my emotions with ease. I swallow down a lump forming in my throat as I smile gratefully at them.

"I really appreciate your patience with me, Alex."

"I'm here to support you guys, that's the bottom line. You're not going through anything alone as long as you work here," they promise earnestly.

"Thank you," I tell them again, laughing under my breath. "And um, should I tell Kyle and Mariluz about going to Rigo's and Chris's house?"

Alex appears to think for a moment. "I'll send them an email about it, but you're free to tell them what's coming."

"Okay." I stand and pause before heading back to my desk. "Thank you again, Alex."

They smile warmly. "You're welcome, Lola."

I rush back to my desk and unload the news onto my friends, and they're beside themselves with shock the entire time I speak. Kyle spends the afternoon planning his outfits for when we go over, because he's sure he can impress Rigo's fashion-forward eye and somehow use that to his benefit. He's lucky he doesn't have any deadlines today, or Mariluz would never let him waste so much work time.

I spend the afternoon fighting the painfully desperate desire to lay down on the floor under my desk for a nap, while finishing up an article about the history of alternative pronouns. The deadline is before lunch tomorrow, and with how long it's been taking me to feel human each day since coming back, it's best to get it done before I head home.

The first appointment with my new therapist after work, over video because she's out of the office with a broken leg for the next few weeks. Toward the end of the workday, it's all I can think about.

I've never done therapy before, and I honestly never thought I'd need it. I'm still not so sure that I do. Most people go to therapists with complete ignorance as to what is going on, but I know what's happening.

I feel off—edgy; like I'm the tiniest trigger away from snapping at any given moment, only nobody knows where the trigger is or what it looks like. Talking about my parents or friends or the nightmares I have won't make me less edgy. This is chemical, I can feel it in the way my heart races with the slightest irritation—the kind of irritation I could always withstand before recently. No amount of talk therapy will ever make it go away. It just... already feels like a waste of time.

Way to be optimistic, Lola. Are you trying to make sure it fails? Have a little faith.

Faith? When has that ever done me any good? Certainly not the night I told my parents I'm gay, which had been preceded by one hundred straight nights of prayer for God to give them the openness to accept me anyway. My faith was worthless that night, and it was the one night when I really needed my prayers to be heard.

"You spending the night at the office?"

I blink in confusion and look up at Mariluz, who is all packed up and ready to head out. "Oh, no. Just distracted," I respond coolly as I begin packing my things too.

My thoughts wound me up so tight all afternoon that I didn't even realize time was still moving. Guess I'll have to suck it up and finish my article in the morning.

Traffic is busier with everyone heading home, and it takes about fifteen minutes for me to catch a ride. It's about an extra ten minutes on the normal drive time to get to my apartment from the office, and the stop-and-go motion is making me feel uncharacteristically woozy. Alcohol is hardly the solution for nausea, but I can't help that that's where my mind immediately goes.

I don't need therapy. I need AA.

It feels like a joke as I think it, but it holds some truth that makes me uneasy. I've been turning to alcohol a lot lately, and always drinking until I black out. It's making me feel sick all the time, and I still want to drink. The stress of it all is really taking a toll on me physically, but I still want to drink. I don't understand it any more than anyone else could. It's common sense that I should stop, yet I can't seem to do it. Even exhausted, nauseous, and with the sensation of my heartbeat throbbing all over my body, I still want to drink.

Anything is better than reality, even if it makes reality a little worse each time.

The appointment time has completely slipped my mind until I step into my apartment and my phone immediately starts ringing. My blood runs cold as I panic momentarily about whether to answer, before chastising myself for the pointless indecisiveness because I have to answer. They're billing me for it at this point whether I answer or not, so I may as well waste some of their time.

"Hello?"

"Hello!" a woman chirps on the other end. "This is Linda Bernstein with SoCal Mental Health Clinics, am I speaking to Lola Miller?"

"Yes, this is Lola," I confirm.

"Great! How are you doing today, Lola?"

Uh, is this the therapy part or the part where everyone lies because no one actually cares how you're doing?

"I'm doing well, thank you," I respond pleasantly, deciding on the lie. "How are you?"

"I'm fantastic, thank you for asking!" she beams happily.

Is it a sign of mental illness that this woman's chipperness makes me sick to my stomach? No, to be totally fair, that's probably just a sign of the alcohol abuse. Everything's been making me sick to my stomach since my dear friend vodka came around.

She continues, "now I do apologize that this is a phone call. We will typically do this by video but I didn't see you in the virtual waiting room, and many people get confused on how to use the appointment software anyway."

"I was actually running late," I admit sheepishly.

She giggles like it's a secret between best friends. "We all do it sometimes, no worries at all. Now, I read through your intake forms to get an idea of what we'll need to work on, but I just want to hear from you now how things have been lately."

Why the Hell did you make me fill out all those damn forms just to make me recite what's on them to you? I seethe in my head.

Begrudgingly, I lead her through my history with anxiety and depression since childhood as noted on my intake forms. I've always been anxious, I got depressed in middle school, and I spiraled once during high school. The spiral mostly consisted of slipping grades and skipping school, so to those on the outside looking in, it was nothing more than normal teenage rebellion.

The thing is, nothing about what I was thinking and doing felt normal. I was plotting my suicide one minute and plotting my future after running away to start a new life on my own the next. The one place I always felt at home—school—suddenly felt alien. I stayed up until four in the morning every day, watching strange reality shows about pregnant rich people while writing emo poetry and taking breaks to sob uncontrollably every now and again. All my mother ever had to say about it was, "I really don't know where I went wrong with you for you to have come out so damn lazy."

Linda listens intently as I speak with the occasional "mhm" and "right" to confirm that she's still with me. She asks a few probing questions now and again for more details, too. The sound of her pen scratching paper as she takes notes is distracting, and a few times I lose my train of thought. I'm not confident I covered everything when I'm done as a result, and I just hope she's not completely negating my paperwork in favor of the oral history I provided.

"Okay, well this is great information to work with going forward," she says once we're done. "Next week, we'll start with some more focused therapy techniques to address your specific issues, but I'll give you something a little more basic to hold you over for now. All you need to do is pick up a new hobby."

"A new hobby? I have so many I've kind of neglected, what if I just pick one of those back up?" I counter. The amount of dust my viola is collecting these days breaks my heart more than a Sarah McLaughlin ASPCA commercial.

"Going back to your old hobbies can be a lot of fun, but what's great about a new hobby is that it feels like a new opportunity," she disagrees gently. "It's a fresh start; your first time even trying it. It can be a lot more immediately rewarding that way."

She's probably right, but that doesn't make me any less bitter when the call ends that not only did I waste the thirty minutes we spent on the phone, but I'll now be wasting a little more time each day on a mandatory hobby that I have no interest in.

I plop down on the couch with a scowl and wrack my brain for hobby ideas. The only things I keep thinking of are things I've already tried: viola, violin, saxophone, bass guitar, creative writing. I'm not interested in many things, pretty much just music and writing. Whatever I pick is going to have to be something I don't find particularly thrilling.

My TV serves as a point of inspiration as my usual comfort show begins streaming and I watch for possible hobby ideas. Bike riding? No. Cross-stitching? Nope. Drawing? Not a chance.

The vodka bottle sits tantalizingly on the coffee table beside an empty glass just waiting to be filled, and the thought alone is turning my stomach. I lean forward and snatch the bottle just the same, filling that glass and bringing it to my lips in what feels like a show of defeat. I know I won't feel sick anymore once the buzz hits, and it's enough to keep me chugging until the glass is empty again. The base of the glass hits the coffee table with a thud, and I stare at it with a heavy sigh and pursed lips.

Drinking is a pretty new hobby of mine. I wonder what Linda will think of that.