absence of faith

[ALEXANDRIA HARPETH SINCLAIR]

lexa sinclair

In a small town, Alexandria thought she would be free from temptation. She didn't think she would find it easy to find drugs if she wanted them, and she certainly didn't think she would know where she could get them within days, but she knew. Alexandria knew where she could get cocaine and it was eating away at her thoughts from the moment she learned of it. Maybe someone, or her costar, thought it was funny to try to tempt her, but for Alexandria this temptation was the farthest thing from funny. They were supposed to run lines that morning, but instead he offered her cocaine and drinks and said they could put off lines until the next day. Alexandria had to leave the moment she saw the vial of cocaine, because no matter how long she was in rehab, none of it prepared her for the reality of trying to really stay clean. The only things keeping her sane were work and the occasional run to clear her head, and that was before she had come so close to the thing that would tempt her. Even back in her apartment Alexandria had a difficult time convincing herself that she could do this. That returning to working and trying to make another movie would mean she was going to feel like so much of a struggle. Alexandria had tried to reread some lines alone, to go for a run, and to go look for locations with Clay, which didn't work out because he was busy, and she couldn't find a single way to distract herself from the one thing she really wanted. She sat on the bed in her small apartment with her laptop open on her legs and a page she didn't think she would need pulled up. In front of her was a list of narcotics anonymous meetings in the area, which was very short, something she expected. Alexandria knew there wouldn't be much, but just one was close enough she could actually get there, and that was the one at the hospital, because they couldn't find counselors anywhere else willing to take on the job of letting a bunch of addicts and former addicts vent about their feelings. Getting there was going to be a problem for the young brunette, who knew how to drive a car, and had a license, and a car, but she had never actually driven around the town, so she knew there was a chance she would get lost, but that was always a possibility, because she drove so rarely. Alexandria knew she needed to go, no matter how little she wanted to drive to the hospital. Alexandria just hoped she wouldn't run into anyone who would say something about who she was or how her time in rehab wasn't exactly public, although people knew pretty clearly about her previous drug use. The drive to the hospital wasn't long, but it was just far enough Alexandria knew there was no way she was going to be walking all the way there. Alexandria kept debating with herself whether it was a good idea to go to a meeting in a town she didn't know, and her fear of falling down the rabbit hole back into the world of drugs won out in the end. Alexandria was too afraid she would take the offer from her costar or from the next opportunity she had to turn back and return to being alone. She'd never liked being alone, and her apartment had only the furniture she needed, which made the feeling of loneliness even worse. Stepping out of her average looking Toyota Prius in the parking garage Alexandria pulled her had down so he face was mostly hidden as she approached the building. Hiding her identity was just for until she got into the meeting, then things were supposed to be anonymous. Alexandria needed people to stick to the anonymity of the meetings, so she could relax and talk if she wanted to, or she could stay silent and just listen and feel supported the way she needed to at the moment. She'd gone to meetings in California, where she would run into other celebrities sometimes, and she would speak on occasion, but other times she would stay quiet, because some things from her past were too personal. Alexandria never admitted in these groups that she was also depressed and the drugs were to kill herself, but she made it look like she was headed out for a crazy night. Inside the hospital looked like any other hospital she had ever been inside. Clean and white with a smell of cleaning products. It just felt cold when she walked in. At least it was on the psych side, which meant she was not surrounded by sick people, and instead she was possibly surrounded by crazy people, but in a place like this, she didn't think there could be too much going on that people would need psychiatric care. Thirty minutes later, near the end of the meeting, Alexandria found herself standing in front of a group of strangers about to speak, because she still didn't feel at ease. Instead she was feeling scared still. "My name is Lexa, and I didn't plan on speaking tonight, but I also didn't know how hard recovery was going to be. I hadn't been around coke since my overdose, and then someone offered it to me today. I hesitated. I wanted to take it. I think if I didn't come here tonight, I would probably have gone back, and if I go back, I don't think I'll be able to come out of all of that again," Alexandria left out the important detail of her overdose being on purpose, but she couldn't share it. No one could know she tried to kill herself. "I needed this tonight. I needed to feel like someone else has been here like someone was listening for once," Alexandria felt a small amount of relief as she spoke, but she still didn't feel like she could keep going for months, but she had made it almost the whole way through her day.

1028	SOLO/OPEN
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[ALEXANDRIA HARPETH SINCLAIR]

lexa sinclair

"I think a lot of people can identify with the way I feel when I say I feel like people just think I'm too fragile to tell me the truth. I want to tell them I was an addict, or I am, an addict, and that it doesn't mean I can't handle the harsh reality of things," Alexandria felt like things had barely changed in her life since her overdose. Clay was the only one who told her the truth, and everyone around her was paid to be there, so they told her what they thought she wanted to hear, but not what she needed to hear sometimes. Now they just had multiple reasons to lie to her. First they wanted to remain on her good side, because she was an actress, and now she was the actress who overdosed, so they still needed to stay on her good side, but now they had another reason to do so. "After listening to their lies and half truths all day, I get to my apartment, which I still haven't decorated, and I can't stand the feeling. I feel so alone," Alexandria had so much more she could add on at the end of that sentence, but she stopped herself short of it. She didn't need to keep talking about how much she hated herself when she was alone. "I've probably talked long enough now, so I'll stop there, but I really don't think I would have made it through today without this," Alexandria felt like those words were the most honest words she had spoken in her whole life. The only place where Alexandria felt like she was this honest before in her life had been when she was in rehab. Sure, she had avoided the questions about her relationship with Clay when she first got there, and she wasn't always forthcoming with some of the information, but for the most part Alexandria had been honest when she was in rehab. She had opened up there when in individual therapy about how the overdose was on purpose, not on accident like people assumed it was. Alexandria hadn't told anyone else though, other than Clay, because the stigma attached to suicide was one she could not live with. Alexandria returned to her seat in the back of the room when she was done, sitting quietly as she listened to others as they shared their experiences with addiction. She knew she was not alone, but somehow when she was in her apartment it felt like she really was. With the meeting beginning to come to a close, where they would have fifteen minutes or so to mingle with others, Alexandria didn't want to go home, but she didn't know what to do with herself if she didn't.

464	SOLO/OPEN
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[ALEXANDRIA HARPETH SINCLAIR]

lexa sinclair

Alexandria remained attentive as she sat in the back of the room, feeling better since she got to talk about how she felt, especially how she felt dealing with people who thought she was too fragile to hear the truth. People thought that telling her one disappointing thing was going to send her on a bender, when the honest truth was that if she continued hearing lies and half-truths all the time she was more likely to fall back into her path of self-destruction. Alexandria felt alone because people didn't want to be honest with her, and when she felt alone, she had a tendency to make bad decisions. She had used drugs, drank too much, and even slept with people she shouldn't have, just because she felt so isolated. As the meeting came to an end, people got up and began to wander around the room. Some of them greeted each other warmly, like they were old friends, and they probably were, and they had been there for years coming to the same meetings, while Alexandria knew no one, and she wasn't sure if she should talk to anyone. People probably recognized her, especially since she was new in town, and it seemed pretty clear to her that no one was ever new in this town. Alexandria took her time getting up, picking up her bag as she did so, and looking around at the people absorbed in their conversations and consoling each other due to the hard times they face as addicts. Alexandria decided it was best not to approach anyone and to just grab a cup of coffee, maybe one of the mini doughnuts, and to just skip the whole commiseration part of the meeting. Making it to the table with the coffee, Alexandria poured herself a cup of decaf, since caffeine in the afternoon tended to keep her up all night, and that was the last thing Alexandria needed. Sliding in between two people Alexandria picked up the styrofoam cup filled with the dark brown liquid and took a sip, simultaneously picking up one of the powdered sugar doughnuts. It was like replacing one addiction with another when it came to these things, but she didn't care, because this meeting was the one thing that kept her from using on this day.

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[ALEXANDER BLAKE ROOT]

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If you expect nothing from anybody, You're never disappointed.

While those in the town might not be completely welcoming towards those making a movie in this trash bin, Alexander could care less as to what these people did as long as they didn't interfere with him. And of course, with celebrities came people with problems and then maybe he could get out of the office filled with people worried about a cold and get working on people who actually have issues that he could help solve and figure out. The more he did here, the better he would look to hospitals out of this town. While he wouldn't be able to get a job elsewhere for a while, he was going to try to make this stay as short as he possibly could. A year or two, maybe three if the hospitals out there really disliked his stubborn jerkiness. Hey, he could do his job, they shouldn't care if he insulted them.

Perhaps he should learn how to talk to interviewers like a 'normal, boring' person, but that wouldn't be worth the boredom of said interview. He'd rather stay here forever and work in this rinky-dink town than lie and pretend to be nice to people who didn't deserve such treatment.

People were interesting, and if they could accept their flaws and deal with the fact he pointed them out without getting pissed at him for it, then he could be a bit nicer to them. After all, it wouldn't be as fun to not get a rise out of someone by stating a fact about them.

Either way, Alexander had been working late at the hospital, mostly getting his office set up in the way he wanted it to be set up. It was so plain before, but now he had a television set hung on the wall (he stole it from the doctor's lounge), and his desk covered with various different papers and he had downloaded several games onto his work computer. Hey, he wanted to be entertained while he had nothing to do, so they really couldn't blame him. His windows were covered by blinds blocking the view of the outside and he relaxed on a chair he had stolen from a recently deceased doctor at the hospital. It wasn't like he was going to miss it. And it was incredibly comfortable.

Reading over a couple of test results from some of his patients who had insisted they were sick with something, and the tests saying they had the flu, he chuckled to himself and shook his head. He told them it was just the cold, but they didn't believe him. He'd let them worry overnight, as they wouldn't be checked out until morning anyways. It wouldn't hurt them to be scared over nothing. Might teach them to not be so worried when a doctor says it's just the cold.

Making his way out of his office, he heard the murmur of people talking. Ah right, there was the whole addict anonymous thing going on today. He walked by the door to the meeting but then stopped and looked through the cracked door. Spotting some doughnuts and coffee, he decided that it would be worth it to enter, even if these people probably had boring stories. Right as he had taken some of the food and coffee and sat down in a chair in the corner, someone interesting had stood up to talk. It was that movie star girl who had come with the others to make a movie here, for some reason, even though this town was probably the last place that movie should be filmed.

He sat, eating the doughnuts and taking a sip of the coffee as he barely listened, mostly thinking about a show he liked to watch and what was going to happen next, but he heard the words and understood most of what they said. Actually… he thought of a good joke that the actress probably would hate him forever for, but he didn't really care much of whether or not she'd hate it, just that he would find it funny. Sneaking out with a doughnut still in his hand, he quickly ran to his office and picked up something from the minifridge he'd also stolen from the doctor's lounge, and went back. There were a couple more stories, but then the meeting was over.

He watched the star walk over and grab some coffee and doughnuts before he stood up and walked over to her, holding out a can of coca-cola, which had grabbed from his mini-fridge. "Want some coke?" Alexander was smiling from ear to ear. Hey, if she couldn't make fun of herself and her own addiction, then she needed to learn to loosen up. He was good at laughing at jokes made at his expense… or at least he thought. As long as they were insults and lies. Lying was the part he hated the most, but everyone did it. He hated lying to hurt someone most of everything else he had. But if he was just making a joke that wasn't lying and even if hurtful, he didn't care.

"Jokes aside, I never thought I would see the big new face in town at something like this. I'm not an addict, to clarify, I just wanted some free food." He held up one of the doughnuts he had taken and took another sip of his non-decaf coffee. It wasn't like he got much sleep anyways, and this would help him work on some of the stuff he wanted to at home later when he finally made it to his little apartment.

Words: 936 | Tag: ALEXANDRIA HARPETH SINCLAIR

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[ALEXANDRIA HARPETH SINCLAIR]

lexa sinclair

Alexandria liked the feeling of not being famous for a minute, but for only a minute, because she had spent too much of her time trying to escape being just normal. She convinced her family to send her to boarding school in California to be closer to auditions, and she was only in school for a month at a time starting in the winter of her sophomore year for filming, and from then on Alexandria was no longer a normal teenage girl. This room was the only thing in her life that made her feel like a normal person, or as normal as an addict could be. People didn't bring up that she was famous or that she had issues, instead they just listened and let her bring up whatever was on her mind at the time. On this day it was dealing with her costar who was just there to tempt her all the time, when she was trying to prove she could, still do good work while remaining clean. On other days she would go to a meeting because she felt too alone, like when she was alone in hotel rooms or in her apartment where there was no furniture and no decoration. When she was alone, the urge to use would be at its worst. Alexandria considered staying, trying to talk to people, and acting like a normal person, but then she remembered she wasn't. Sure, these people let her talk, but this didn't mean they saw her as one of them. As relatable as her problems could make her, Alexandria knew a lot of people would still just see her as an actress. They probably also saw her as coming from a life of privilege. They would think that her money was one of the reasons she got addicted to cocaine and not something like heroin or just alcohol. The thing about being in Hollywood was that everyone had problems more like her own problems, so they could relate more, and it was something that could interfere with all of their careers. She knew addiction would interfere with even the common person's career, but with acting she saw it as a bigger problem. If she was an addict and an actress, she would show up to filming with bags under her eyes, and after getting little to no sleep. Alexandria had even been known to wander back into her own hotel room to find someone from production, or Clay there waiting for her when she hadn't been there at all the previous night. Alexandria was surprised when someone spoke to her. She had seen the man come in after the meeting had started, then leave and come back after she sat back down. She never judged or made much of the way people acted when they were in meetings. Sometimes she even felt the need to walk out for a minute, just to get away from the things that mirrored her own life. While sometimes Alexandria felt relief at being able to talk to someone, this man's words were not those of someone who understood addiction or having problems like she did. He sounded like a lurker. Someone who just walked by and thought maybe listening to their meeting would offer some entertainment value. "You think you're funny, don't you?" Alexandria questioned as her frustration grew. "Taking someone's problems that you don't understand and turning them into some joke." For Alexandria there would never come a time when she would be able to make jokes about her own problem. It had come too close to costing her her life. Alexandria took a sip of her coffee after a small bite of the doughnut while she listened to the rest of his words. He was telling an addict that he was not one, like it was something she would really care about. Alexandria judged him more for being there when he didn't need to be than she did anyone who was in that room for the same reason she was. "There's enough speculation out there about my drug problem that my being here shouldn't come as a surprise," Alexandria maintained her composure and an even tone to her voice as she spoke, although she was bothered by his presence. "To clarify for you, there's more shame in having to come to a narcotics anonymous meeting just because you want free food than there is in actually acknowledging you have a problem and want to work on it," Alexandria made her point clear, that while he wanted to clarify that he was definitely some lurker who didn't need to be in the room, she wasn't going to stand around and want to listen to him talking about how he probably thought he was better than the rest of the people in the room because he'd never had an addiction. Alexandria knew that maybe he thought his behavior was okay, but for her, making light of something like her addiction was not okay.

834	ALEXANDER BLAKE ROOT
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