The Gap

“Alright,” he replied, his voice curt. “We’re putting you under arrest for driving under the influence and refusing a breathalyzer.” “Wait,” I blurted, my heart racing. “How can you arrest me? I’m at my house! I can be drunk here—I haven’t done anything wrong!” “We can, and we are,” he said, reaching for his cuffs. “Take it up with your lawyer. For now, you’re coming with us.” The metal clicked around my wrists, cold and unyielding. I glanced back at the house, where Alex and Luke stood in the doorway, their faces pale as they watched. The night swallowed me as the officers led me to the cruiser and headed to the county jail. Several hours later, as I laid my head back on the steel bench in the brightly lit drunk tank, I couldn’t believe that I was in jail. This was the last place I had ever expected to be. Sure, I had spent many nights in jail when I was young, but my life had changed since then. I was on the right track; everything had been going so well for me, but now this? How did I even get here? How in the world had I landed back in this pit? The question gnawed at me, a relentless rat chewing through the last threads of my sanity. I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to block out the light, the noise, the reality of it all, but the darkness only sharpened the chaos in my head. I felt lost—utterly, hopelessly lost—like a man cast adrift on a sea with no shore in sight. Abandoned. By her. By God. By the version of myself I had worked so hard to become. Everything I had poured my soul into—those years of clawing back from the abyss, the fragile normalcy I had stitched together, the freedom from the needle’s pull—it was gone. Or at least it felt that way, slipping through my fingers like sand I couldn’t hold. The life I had rebuilt wasn’t just unraveling; it was disintegrating, an ash in the wind, and I was too tired to chase it. I was supposed to be somewhere else by now. That thought looped in my mind, a cruel refrain. I could see it so clearly: a house alive with noise, her laughter mingling with the patter of small feet, a couple of kids with her eyes and my stubborn streak. A family. A purpose. The kind of life I would have never dared to dream of in the dope-sick days, when survival was the only goal. Marriage was sacred, a vow before God—I believed that with every fiber of my being. We had stood at that altar, hands clasped, promising forever. And I had meant it. Even when she started pulling away, when her warmth turned to ice and her words to silence, I held on. But she didn’t. She had walked out, leaving nothing but empty hangers and a hole in my heart, and now here I was—alone, cuffed, and drowning in a drunk tank instead of the life I had envisioned. All I had ever wanted was to be happy. To feel whole. To live with purpose and meaning, not just stumble through the days like I had for so long. Most of my life had been a wasteland—years lost to the streets, to the high, to the hollowed-out shell I had become. I had wasted so much time, and when I finally broke free, I swore I would make it count. I had found God, or he had found me, and for a while, it felt like redemption. Like I could be normal, whatever that meant. A husband. A father. A man who didn’t carry his past like a chain. But now? That dream was a phantom, mocking me from the shadows of this cell. The happiness I had chased, the fulfillment I had craved—it had all slipped away, and I didn’t know if I’d ever even had it at all. My chest tightened, a vise of grief and rage and something darker, something I almost recognized but couldn’t name. It was familiar, this sinking—this freefall into a void I had known before. Back then, it was the drugs, the way they would pull me under until I didn’t care if I surfaced. Now it was the booze, the barstool, the blur of shots, and slurred nights. But it was more than that. It was her absence, God’s silence, and the shattering of every foundation I had stood on. It was a pain so deep it was a living thing, scraping at my insides, begging to be numbed. I wanted it gone—wanted to disappear into it, let it swallow me whole so I wouldn’t have to feel the weight of this failure anymore. I shifted on the bench, the steel creaking under me, and stared at the chipped concrete wall. My reflection stared back from the reflection in a TV screen—a blurry, haggard ghost with bloodshot eyes. Who was that man? Not the one I had tried to be. Not the one she had married, or the one who had knelt in prayer. He was gone, and I didn’t know how to find him. Maybe I never would. The thought settled in my gut, cold and final: I was sinking again, deeper than ever, and this time, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to fight my way back up.