Outrun Home

A Story by Tom Bombidail

Autobiographical, happened directly after Outrun the Cold

Home, such a strange concept to him. It’s almost foreign. He wakes staring at a ceiling and his first thought is, “What a comfy jail cell. What state am I in?”

And then, just as every morning for the past several weeks, it dawns on him. That’s his father’s ceiling. The soft thing underneath him is his mother’s guest bed. That cool feeling, that’s air conditioning.

His surroundings slowly become more real. The urge to roll his bedding up passes. He eventually pulls his clothing on and makes his way downstairs to the kitchen. To the large white box with a handle on it. It’s covered in magnets and photos. Inside is chilled food and drink.

The young man’s mother greets him with a long hug. She pleads with him to promise her that he’ll never go back out there. He’s not a good liar. He decides not to respond.

He lands a job working from home. Every day he repeats the same routine. Go downstairs, greet parents, make food, return upstairs, and sell a product that he doesn’t believe in. Every day a little part of him dies. The walls are closing in.

The only thing that breaks the monotony is his whisky in the middle of the night. He starts with just a pint. He tries to control it. Time goes by and the pint’s turned into a fifth.

He alienated his friends. He isolates himself. All his social media is deactivated. Now he goes days without leaving the house save for a bottle or a cigarette.

Around midnight he can no longer take the feelings welling up inside. He draws a warm bath and breaks open a disposable razor blade. For an hour and a half he holds it to his wrist with the same thoughts on loop, “down the street and take a right. Mom’s asleep, dad’s working, thirty minutes to peace.”

But something tells him not to. Maybe it’s the same guiding hand that brought him back from the cold north. Maybe it’s just his survival instinct.

He collapses in the living room and calls out to his mother. In less than an hour he’s admitted to a crisis unit. In less than a week he’s out, but not the same.

The drugs they give him make him numb to everything. He doesn’t feel happy or sad. Neither suicidal nor content. His face is expressionless for the better part of his days. Except when he takes his whisky. His whisky is always there.

The next time he’s sent away it’s not to a crisis center, but to a rehab. It’s a fancy one. They say Ozzy Osborne went there. He doesn’t believe them.

He fights against the treatment tooth and nail. A week before his discharge date he walks out. It’s a sixty or so mile hike to his family’s home, but he’ll get a ride. He always does. It’s what he’s best at.

Upon his return his parents tell him they’ve rented an apartment for him. It’s a one bedroom less than a mile up the street. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

He lasts for a month. This time the fifths have time to fester into half gallons. There’s a liquor store next door. He can’t control himself.

Soon he stops clocking in for work. His parents break down in tears when he tells them what he feels he must do, “I have to hit the road again... I need to get sober. I can’t do it here.”

They tell him that there are liquor stores everywhere. He knows. If he can shift his priorities to survival he may be able to kick his addiction, he reasons.

He steps out from his parent’s apartment one last time. There’s a large green backpack and a one man tent inside with a cardboard sign hanging off the back. It reads, “West.”