Jackhammer. There was a jackhammer pounding against the sides of my skull. My mouth was dry, and my stomach lurched. I rushed to the bathroom and threw up. When the heaves finally stopped, sweat soaked my body and clothes. Rising, I looked in the mirror and found bloodshot eyes staring back. My mascara had wept down my cheeks, and my jacked hair stood up.

It had been more than a year since I’d looked at my face after a binge. That face, this face, was so familiar. And now here I was, right back at square one.

I hated this face. It personified failure, weakness, and a lack of impulse control. I turned away, closed my eyes.

Immediately, I swayed and found myself back on my knees, vomiting again. This time when I rose, my body shook. I wanted to crawl back in bed and pull the covers over my head. Shut out the world until I could deal with it again. But that was what the old Marisa would’ve done. She’d have surrendered to the illness, just as she did as a child.

Instead, I turned on the shower taps, and as steam filled the room, I stripped off clothes reeking of sweat and vomit and carried them directly to the unit’s small washing machine. With the washer chugging, I returned to the bathroom, stepped under the shower’s hot spray, and let the warmth spread over my chilled skin and ease the tension banding my muscles.

Past experience told me that I’d feel like crap for the rest of the day. A cold cola and a couple of aspirin would help, but there was nothing else to be done other than suffer through this.

Served me right. I’d let Brit push my buttons. I’d fallen for one of a thousand traps she’d been setting for me for years. The pleasure-and-pain seesaw I’d been balancing for a year had dipped toward pain with just a few words from Brit. Instead of taking it on the chin, I’d done what I’d always done. I numbed it.

Through bleary eyes, I realized Brit was happiest when she was driving me to rehab, holding my hand through another detox, sitting at my side after the car accident. So smug. My weakness gave her strength.

I tipped my face toward the water, and hot spray pulsed against my skin. “You’re too old to let this happen. Too smart.”

I shut off the water and toweled off. In my room I dressed in jeans and a gray sweater. For the sake of morale, I put on makeup, dried and styled my hair. As I’d said to a woman at a meeting a few weeks ago, “Get back on track, old girl. The future can still be bright.”