BLOGWORDS – Wednesday 4 June 2025 –WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – JEREMY REHAB THERAPY

BLOGWORDS – Wednesday 4 June 2025 –WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – JEREMY REHAB THERAPY

WRITING WEDNESDAY – DOUBLE DOUBLE WHO’S IN TROUBLE – JEREMY REHAB THERAPY

 

* cover reveal Friday 5 September

 

 

JEREMY REHAB THERAPY

      The [family] visit was over though and it was back to business. And by business I mean work. ‘Cause recovery, real recovery, is hard work.

      Some of the guys were here because they had to be—I mean, I was only here ‘cause I had to be—but they didn’t care. They didn’t try. Like Tim. He just sat through group and never said a word. And even though he wasn’t high—couldn’t be high in this place—he looked as stoned as anybody I’ve ever seen. Bored is what he was, though. Bored and uninterested. Passing his time here till he could get out and go get wasted.

      I thought about it and decided that’s a sad way to live. Then the thought occurred to me that I was basically living like that. Sucker punch of a thought, too. One that knocked the breath out of me. I told Stan at our next session and he really got me to dig into that thought. Why was I okay to always go back to bad habits? Why did I not care more than I did?

      And then he asked me the question. The question.

      “Do you think it might be because your father—” He respected my feelings about calling that man father but he said he used the word because it was a fact. “—didn’t show that he cared?”

      BAM!

      I was speechless. Jason Jernigan had made it crystal clear that he didn’t care about me. Or Jordan or Jeff. Mom, either, for that matter. Somewhere in my screwed-up psyche I guess I figured if my own father didn’t care, then why should I?

      I tried to say that to Stan but my brain was whirling, and words tumbled around in my mind. But I couldn’t speak. Not and make sense.

      The session ended early that day. But we accomplished more in that thirty-eight minutes than a lot of full hour-long sessions.

      Rather, that one question accomplished more than all the other sessions before.

      I stumbled through supper, couldn’t even tell you what we had. Skipped movie night and went straight to my dorm. I know I showered and changed into my sleep shorts, but I don’t remember it. It was still light when I laid down on my bed, and the next thing I knew, the morning sun was peeking through the blinds. I slept better than night than I had in… I don’t even know when.

      The whole next day was like some kind of high. I mean, it felt like I was floating but at the same time I was major aware of everything going on around me. I spoke to and greeted everyone I saw. With a smile even. I showered and changed into clean clothes, something I had not been doing every day. I even made my bed.

      Stan had offered an off-day session if I wanted to talk to him. I did. I wanted to break this down. And I needed to know how to change how I felt about myself.

      If I’m being honest, I needed to know how to change how I felt about everyone else, too.

      Did I mention recovery is hard work? If I thought it was hard up to this point, I had no idea what was coming.

      I had watched Mom plant flowers and stuff all my growing-up years. She’d dig out the rocks and weeds, whatever was in the space she wanted for her flowers. Then she’d turn the soil over, add new dirt, and kind of mix it in. Next came the seeds, or the plants she got from Nora’s Nursery. Then she covered it—the dirt, not the plants—with mulch. And before you go thinking I know all about this stuff, I only know the fancy words because Mom said them all the time.

      So anyway, that’s how I felt, deep down inside. Like that flower bed when she was digging all the bad stuff out. Knowing that Jason Jernigan didn’t give two figs about me was a huge dead root, or a rock, or something. And Stan’s question—the question—was like when Mom pulled that rock or whatever out of the way.

      Now, I felt jumbled, like when she added fresh potting soil and mixed it all up.

      But also now, I could see that things could be—would be—different. There would be pretty new plants, and mulch to protect them. I just wished it didn’t take so long. And it wasn’t so hard to get it done.

  

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“I’ve always had voices—er, stories in my head. I once said I should write them all down so someone could write them someday. I had no idea at the time that someone was me!”

 

My stories are deep and dark, my characters raw and real, with a healthy helping of hope and joy, humor and laughter, and abiding and sustaining faith.

My characters struggle in some way for their identity. Their stories are their journey to know who God created them to be.

There is also a strong element of friends, family, and faith in all my stories, and the difference it makes to have such a support system.

 

 

·       unsavory heritage series—seven generations, from Cissy to Connie, each with their own secrets, one of which is ugly and unsavory, and initiates the curse they all bear

·       Seasons series—four friends, each one struggling to know the truth of just what happened when one of them plunged into the depths of the black waters of the Edisto River

·       FourSquare – Four stories about four couples who also happen to be four sets of twins.

 

 

“Maybe you have to know the darkness to truly appreciate the light.”—Madeline L’Engle

 

“There is freedom waiting for you on the breezes of the sky. And you ask, What if I fall? Oh, but my darling, what if you fly?” —Erin Hanson

 

#Blogwords, Writing Wednesday, Robin E. Mason, Current Work in Progress, #WIP, Double Double Who’s in Trouble, FourSquare Series Book 2, Jeremy RehabTherapy, #FourSquare, #twinfiction, #twinsmarryingtwins, #twinconflict, #fictionwriter, #battleforidentity, #cominginAugust, #amwriting, #amediting, #fictionwriting, #faithfiction