Title: The Path
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit made
Rating: T for mentions of Drug and Alcohol abuse and Spousal abuse
Summary: While in rehab, Strauss looks back on the path that led her there. Drabble written for the CM Prompt meme. Round one: The ladies. (cmpromptmeme. livejournal. com/877. html - Remove spaces)
Prompt: Strauss, what triggered her alcoholism
A/N: This is a little different that the sort of thing I'm used to writing (*cough cough slash porn cough*) but I thought I'd give it a go to try and cure my writers block :D
10 years ago, an ambitious young woman by the name of Erin Strauss had everything. A promising career in the F.B.I, a loving and understanding husband and a beautiful little boy and two lovely little girls. To the outside world, her life seemed perfect. It seemed perfect because if there was one thing Erin Strauss could do, and do well, it was put up a front. She had learned the tricks to portraying herself as the person she wanted people to see in the muddy backwaters of the F.B.I political field. Decidedly a man's world where despite all the talk of equality, sexism was still the easiest and most effective tool against a woman. Erin however had proven herself ruthless and competent enough that she had eventually earned the respect of even the most chauvinistic pig in the bureau.
Looking back on it now, Erin had to wonder why she never employed any of those tactics to earn the respect of the one chauvinistic pig for whom changing might have actually made a difference in her life. She hadn't ever considered herself an abused wife. Harold had never struck her or physically harmed her in any way, though Erin knew now, from her long years of working in the field of profiling and psychology, that fists were not a requirement for beating someone down. She cringed any time she thought about the words he had said to her, how he had made her feel about herself, how she had believed him. How she had been so desperate to block the words out, to make herself feel something other than shame and humiliation, that she had allowed herself to become dependent on a substance that gave her everything she wanted, while simultaneously threatening to take it all away.
She had already divorced Harold by the time she came to the B.A.U. However, there where still scars there, along with the addiction. She still possessed the wounds that would open painfully whenever some DC political moron would denigrate her, her opinions and her skills based solely on her gender. Moments when she would wonder why her husband would have said such things, believed such things, if there wasn't at least a shred of truth to them. She never let it show, never let anything past her carefully constructed shield, never let anyone see her break down and accuse her of being an emotional wreck. That was not Erin Strauss.
After arriving at the B.A.U, Erin had began to look into psychology to better understand the work of those beneath her, and had stumbled upon a profile of a man that seemed to fit her Ex-Husband rather well. A middle aged man stuck in a unexciting job, a perfect match for Harold's career as a cog in the machine of a financial company, who routinely abused his wife. Abuse came from a sense of frustration and anger at his own lack of ambition and jealousy over her success.
That was the day it hit her, Harold hadn't been making observations about her that she couldn't see, he wasn't being astute in his evaluations of her, he insulted her because she was better than him. She had the life he wanted and yet never made an effort to fight for. Didn't he realize how hard Erin had to work to get to her position, he never tried. He was a lazy, deadbeat loser who had only felt like a man when making his more successful wife feel lower than him.
The next day she contacted various AA organizations and found one far enough out to not risk being seen but close enough that she could make it there quickly if she needed to. She also made sure they where discreet, the last thing she needed was for the big shots in the White House to find out the Section Chief of the F.B.I's Behavioral Analysis Unit was an addict. She could kiss her career goodbye if that ever happened.
2 Years after her divorce, and one year after she gave up drinking, she was no longer going to meetings but did enjoy frequent phone calls with her sponsor, a lovely young woman by the name of Claire. It was a friendship she valued very much, to have someone she could be open with about everything, it was refreshing and freeing. That friendship was never more important to her than the day she got a call telling her that Harold had died. Heart attack. If it hadn't been for Claire, her relapse would have been a lot worse than a few nights downing vodka in her office. Erin don't think she would have survived. It was the uncertainty of what she was feeling that bothered her most, was it relief? Guilt at been relieved by the death of the father to her children? Pain? Knowing that she would never get closure?
She would never be able to confront him like she had always fantasized about. Walk up to him with the same confidence she did everyone else, look him dead in the eyes and tell him exactly how much better than him she was, had always been. She felt like that made her more of who he thought she was, almost as though the fact that she had never been able to prove him wrong meant that he wasn't wrong at all.
Claire helped her through that, helped her see that he knew she was better, that's why he had done the things he had done, that she had already proven him wrong by becoming the successful and strong woman that she was today. That by doing well at her job and still managing to be a loving mother, she had beaten him in every way by becoming the woman he had tried their entire marriage to keep her from being.
Unfortunately this epiphany, the one that allowed her to once again put away the bottle, came too late for her reckless drinking to escape the attention of the new big shot profiler on the team, Aaron Hotchner. He knew her secret, and though he never mentioned it he still held the key to her downfall and she couldn't for a second trust that he wouldn't use it. She couldn't fire or transfer him because he could just use her addiction as his get out of jail free card. Instead she decided to wait for him to do something wrong, to screw up, and then she would throw his ass out of here. She had worked too damn long and too damn hard to let some slick new guy take it all away from her.
Little had she known that Agent Hotchner would prove a hell of a lot more competent that she could ever have expected. Little had she known that when Claire moved away leaving her with recommendations for other sponsors Erin would never in a lifetime trust, and her little Freddie grew up into a teenaged drug addict proving that she had failed to be a loving and attentive mother, that it would be this same hot shot, this same one who had threatened her career for years, who would be the one to push her to seek help for her relapse.
Sitting in a nice, yet plain room, waiting for her group therapy session to start, Erin shook her head. Looking back on all these memories she could, in hindsight, see all the wrong turns she took. All the missteps along the way that she could do nothing but try to fix now. Thinking about how close she had kept the bad and how distant she had kept the good, she realized that it wasn't her circumstances that ruled her addiction. It wasn't the people around her or the way the F.B.I worked. It was her and her constant need to see the bad in everything. She had only seen the bad in her job and allowed it to consume her, she had only seen the bad in Agent Hotchner and he had been the one to reach out a helping hand to her when no-one else would and she had only seen the bad in her son.
So disappointed that her golden boy had fallen to such a shameful low she had unwittingly allowed herself to become no better that the sharks she had tried to hide her own addiction from. Judging him for what he was doing instead of seeing it as the cry for help it was. Instead of offering the support or unconditional love that should be expected of a mother she had allowed her self to be SC Strauss, the ruthless politician who looked on weakness as a failing rather than a human condition.
She felt shame that Aaron had been able to offer more support to the woman who had made his professional life miserable than she had been able to offer her own flesh and blood.
Steeling herself as she heard footsteps coming down the hallway she knew it was time for therapy. No matter how hard it was, no matter how many of her instincts it went against, she was going to talk through these thoughts with the group. She was going to get out of here healthy and strong and she was going to make sure her son knew all about her own weaknesses. She would make him see that he wasn't alone and that she would always love him. Because she was Erin Strauss, and Erin Strauss never, ever gave up.