Almost six years ago now, I spent my first night in rehab. Two days after they seized our daughter, one day after I had to put my dog to sleep. The staff took the little framed picture I’d brought of my baby girl when I came in. They took my dog’s collar. I’d argued, and the woman had laughed. “You can’t keep a dog collar, no.”

She definitely thought I was planning on wearing it.

I’d fumed, and wobbled, and walked through this great huge place shaking. So many people. Potch-marked and missing teeth and chatting around tables in the caf like we were getting a fresh start from high school up. I judged them, and tongued at the places where my own teeth were missing.

The lack of drug in me felt like a gnawing fever.

I’d been assigned a friend. She brought me a plate of lasagna, and I’d picked at it, blinked, and then it’d been gone, and I’d been shocked at how warm, full, and dizzy I’d felt.

“Ha! I remember my first meal in rehab.”

The day had jumped on like that. Bright moments of odd fulfillment my fucked up self couldn’t recognize. My first shower in a month, and I stood under the hot water staring, not quite remembering what to do. After a while I’d turned off the water, wrapped myself in a clean towel, and burst into tears.

I don’t remember telling my assigned friend about the picture of my daughter. But I was wandering the hall of the women’s dorm, lost and cold, and she found me. She had a staff with her, watching to make sure she did what she said she’d do, which was hand me the picture of my baby, now sans-frame.

That night I lay in a bed that didn’t itch. The sheets were clean, and it occurred to me, distantly, that it had been a while since there hadn’t been bugs on me.

I clung to the picture of baby girl. It was flimsy, just a little thing, yet it felt like the only solid part of this new reality.

I wanted what I have now so, so badly then, then. I didn’t think I’d get it, in that moment. My life felt like something I’d already regurgitated, and would have to eat again. It didn’t seem possible to improve it. Matter can be neither created, nor destroyed, and I thought the matter of my life was only what it was, without a chance of change.

I have two babies now, both with me. Baby girl doesn’t even remember that time she lived with her aunties. Baby boy has never seem me drunk or high.

Husband has even forgiven me, I think.

I think that for me, living anything like childish wonder only comes through the lens of remembering not to rush through all the shit I wanted so desperately, then.