Some Are Sicker Than Others Read Online Free PDF Page A

on his kneecaps and slowly pushed himself up from his seat. When he got to the podium, Robby was there waiting for him, his arms extended out by his head. “I’m real proud of you,” Robby said, as he threw his arms around him, wrapping him up in a bone-crushing bear hug. “Remember what I told you. Just open your mind and listen to your higher power, and I promise those words will pour right from your heart.”
    “Yeah right.”
    “Go get ‘em.”
    Monty turned to face the podium and slowly looked out into the crowd. There were fifty of them, maybe a hundred, their heads like bobble-head dolls bobbing up and down. His hands were shaking, his heart was pounding, and everything inside of him told him to just turn around and run. But, where could he go? His family was afraid of him. His friends didn’t want to talk to him. The only friend he had was sitting right here in this room. This was it. This was what he’d been waiting for. His life, his future, his only shot at redemption—it all came down to this one simple speech.
    He grabbed the microphone and pulled it towards him then cleared his throat and parted his lips.
    “Hi,” he said, his voice a little shaky, his throat still parched from the dry, Colorado air. “My name’s Monty and I’m an alcoholic.”
    “ Hi Monty .”
    “Hi everybody.” And just like that the nerves began to leave him, the butterflies in his stomach emerging from their cocoons. “You know, when Robby first asked me to do this I was like, you gotta be kidding me. You must be out of your mind. There’s no way in hell you’re going to get me up on that stage in front of all those people and make me open up about my life. But, after a few weeks of coaxing and threatening to keep me on my fourth step forever, he finally convinced me to quit being such a baby and get up here and share some of the lessons I’ve learned. Now, I don’t really have anything written down or prepared, but Robby told me that if I just cleared my head and opened my heart that my higher power would grant me the words that I needed to say.”
    Monty paused for a moment and reached for his water, closed his eyes and took a long sip.
    “Now, a lot of people, when they get up here, like to talk about where they’re from and who their parents were and what their childhood was like and all of that. But I’m not going to spend a whole lot of time talking about that, simply because there’s not much to tell. I had a very normal childhood. Nothing tragic ever really happened. My dad was a commercial pilot, my mom was a personal trainer, and I grew up with my little brother and older sister on an average street, in an average neighborhood, in a little suburban beach town on the panhandle of North Florida. My parents were great. They’re still great. They got us everything we ever wanted—all the things that they never had growing up as kids. They sent us to the best private, Catholic schools in all of Northwest Florida and made damn sure that they were front and center at every single, trivial school function that we had going on in our insignificant, little lives. Whether it was basketball games, soccer practices, volleyball matches, swim meets…whatever it was, they were there. And they’re still there, to this day. Even after all the bad shit I’ve done and the horrible, hurtful things I’ve said—things that no parent should ever have to hear come out of their child’s mouth over the telephone in the eerie twilight of the early morning hours, after a hundred bottles of pills and a thousand cases of liquor when your mind is so fucked up you don’t even know if you’re running around or standing still. After all of that shit and all of that insanity, they never stopped loving me. Not once. Never.”
    Monty looked up amazed and with astonishment, as if he didn’t believe the words he just said. He had to calm down. He was getting too excited. He didn’t want them thinking he was losing his head. He