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TJ Hammond (hammond_tj) wrote in omega_reality,

"This from the woman who says she's not manipulative," TJ commented drily. "Lay off my brother. And you," he added for Doug's benefit. "One major epiphany a night is really all I can deal with and hold onto with any certainty, okay?"

Sighing, he reached over to get the bottle of water, still half full, that Doug had brought him earlier. All he needed was for Travis to get back in the middle of this conversation and he'd have the whole trifecta of uncomfortable praise he had never learned how to accept. And how fucked up was that when he had craved that kind of praise from his parents for so long? Craved it and been denied it and now it was as difficult to process as everything else.

"Tommy's still in the early stages of getting clean, give him time to really want it. Brian?" TJ snorted. As he went on, he took little sips between sentences. Maura had stressed not letting himself get dehydrated, which would slow down the healing in his shoulder...at least, he thought that's what she'd been saying. Details were a little fuzzy. "Brian's not dealing with drugs, but in them. It goes back to what I said last night, though. Appearances are deceiving and I like my privacy. How many cigarettes did I go through last night? Half a pack? And that was all that was keeping me from getting high as a kite so I could pretend none of it was happening. You haven't seen a lot things. Doesn't mean it's not there or that I'm not having problems. It just means Doug's the one who gets to listen to me put the piano through it's paces trying to work through whatever it is that's causing the craving of the moment. Or, it's Travis who finds me in the shower hiding from a vial of white powder not more than two inches tall. As long as I'm still always thinking about it, I can't hear about how great I'm doing, not yet. In two weeks...two weeks and it'll be an accomplishment, something better than I ever managed to do before. When I'm ready to dump my stash of my own free will and don't have this constant fear that the moment I do will be the moment I need it, then tell me how well I'm doing with the drugs."

He was speaking to both of them, but his eyes were mostly focused on Doug. Doug was the one TJ needed to understand how he felt about things, the one he needed to be okay with the things TJ was trying to do. "Mom and Dad aren't the only ones resistant to change. This whole experiment of getting out on our own, getting clean, it's been about putting myself outside my comfort zone, changing who I am when the mere idea scares the crap out of me. I'm not ready to see myself differently, to get...comfortable with the changes until I'm done, until I feel like it's okay to stop, that the parts of me that have been broken for so long are...not fixed, but mended to be a little stronger. I'm getting there. But, I'm still just at the starting gate. I haven't even really hit my first real setback, yet, to know if the mending will hold. It's just...it's too soon to be patting myself on the back when there's still such a long way to go."