It would be so nice

Six years ago, exactly one month and one day before Christmas, my husband nearly died. He had a two-week stay in the ICU where it was touch and go, another two weeks in a step-down unit and then finally discharged home on Christmas Eve, I suppose to lessen the load on the staff for the holidays but he was in no shape to be going anywhere.  It took him twenty minutes to get into the house, up our flight of stairs and into bed.  I remember tucking him in, and watching him immediately fall asleep from exhaustion. I bundled up the kids, holding the baby as my two older kids ran gleefully out into the frozen yard to sprinkle reindeer food in preparation for Santa's arrival.  I checked on my husband, then made a bunch of trips up and down stairs carrying packages from their hiding place in my closet, placing them under the tree. When everything was set for the morning and I was sure the kids were all snug and asleep and meds had been given to my husband, I finally flopped on the couch, sitting next to the plate of Santa's cookies and drinking a very large glass of wine that I had filled to the brim.  I don't think I even tasted the cookie that I ate for "authenticity", I was so lost in the feeling of absolute certainty that the magic was over and that things would never be the same again.

I knew my husband had a long, long recovery ahead. We had three children under the age of five, had just purchased our house, were debt free for the first time in our lives apart from our mortgage, and were both having success at jobs we loved. We had taken the kids to see Santa the day before it all happened,  and we had gone to bed that last night, leaving the naked Christmas tree we had chosen that afternoon waiting in the stand for us to decorate the following night. Instead, my husband was rushed into emergency surgery, barely alive.  And the tree sat for another few weeks, forgotten in the chaos.  I have a snapshot of all of us from that day with a sweet, twinkly-eyed, real beard Santa, the kids smiling hugely in their matchy-matchy outfits, and even if baby was looking a little askance at the big guy, she didn't cry. My hair was done, I was showered and wearing festive colors and I remember having a fleeting thought that day that maybe I was finally getting the hang of this three kid thing.  And that was the last moment where anything was remotely ok for a long, long time.

That Christmas Eve I lay awake on the couch downstairs, staring into the fire with eyes that felt like sandpaper.  The month before had been an exhausting trek back and forth to the hospital, shuttling and passing my kids off on friends, dealing with a baby who was weaning and wouldn't take a bottle from anyone but her parents, fielding a house-decimating run through of the norovirus that left me up to my eyeballs in sick kids and laundry and disinfection while trying to find coverage for my shifts at work and sneaking in to the hospital after visiting hours to check on my husband when I had a neighbor over to listen for wakeful babies.  I was utterly terrified and overwhelmed and at a level of fatigue I had never experienced before, but still wanting to give my children the perfect magical Christmases I had always remembered as a child.  I knew all of it was more than I could handle.

I rolled over trying to get comfortable on our shabby sofa and smooshed a tiny penguin toy someone had given my youngest for Christmas. It was a cheapy drugstore toy with a lopsided hat, stripey scarf and sang "Holidaaay, celebrate, it would be so nice" in a squeaky little penguin voice when you pressed its tummy.  I think I had hidden it behind the pillows to get a break from it's cheerful chirpiness. So, lying there in the light of the dying fire and the glow of the Christmas tree I had decorated with the big kids "help", listening to that little voice echoing in the quiet house I remember thinking it would be so nice not to be in this moment at all. I wanted to forget that upstairs my three children slept, unaware of how close their dad came to dying, how close I was to utterly falling apart. How the man who was usually so strong and had already survived two brushes with death as a career soldier could barely even sit in a chair for more than ten minutes. I couldn't fathom how long it would be before he could return to his job at a construction site. How would I get back to my job as a weekend option nurse with no one to help watch my kids or provide care to my husband? What about the huge hospital bills? How would we pay the new mortgage with just my income and on and on... My brain was racing and I felt a lump of fear sitting in my chest that no amount of swallowing would make go away. So, I got up and refilled my wine glass.  And I refilled it again a little while later.  And that was the exact moment I opened the door and let the monster in.  The smooth-voiced monster that would lie to me and tell me I deserved it, as a break, to take the edge off, to help me sleep, to help me get through it all. Mommy's Little Helper.  And God knows I needed help. But it numbed the fear enough for me to get up and get through the exhausting days and not admit how much I needed help.

I had no idea how important the image of penguins would become at that time, or how many other Christmases full of pain and alcohol were waiting. It would be four years before I decided I was finally ready to put all the pieces of myself back together and cease living a sort of half-life.  I let my inner self just crumble as I handled all of it with a smile. Not one soul knew and I never let on.

The online support group that helped me finally get sober refers to its members as Penguins. Real penguins function in a hostile environment by huddling together.  The weaker or wounded members stay in the middle of the flock, and the stronger ones stand on the outside of the ring and withstand the blast of icy wind and rain, providing shelter to those inside the huddle.  Then when they are weary, others rotate to the outside to take their turn being strong and protecting those on the inside.  Its the perfect metaphor for how people in recovery serve and help each other through tough times. But more on that later.

I also didn't expect as I came into this, my second sober Christmas, that I would occasionally still have wistful thoughts about being able to enjoy eggnog or peppermint martinis like a "normal" person.  But taking a step back,  and acknowledging that "it would be so nice" also brought me to another Christmas revelation. My past and my present fold into each other as I journey further into sobriety.  Its no joke how tough it can be at holidays when expectations are so high and swirly memories and emotions lie just below the surface. I read somewhere that every sober day during the holidays should really count as two. That feels true.

My kids and I were watching A Christmas Carol, three days before Christmas. I prefer the old black and white version with Alastair Sim since he still has the best, most exuberant, throaty deep smoker's laugh when he realizes the moment that his entire life is ahead of him and he can't contain his joy and gratitude, running about in his nightdress and scaring the neighbors. This version was the kind of creepy CGI one that seems to be on all the time on the "25 days of Christmas" on tv but the story still sucked me in.  Who doesn't love the moody atmospheric gloom of Scrooges' lonely cold house and empty stingy life and the sudden shocking appearance of Marley's face on the door knocker?  The other side reaching out to this world... And that immense, trailing rattling iron chain he drags behind him..  My nine-year-old son Jack asked me what it was and why he had it wrapped around him and I told him "that's the chain that represents his deeds and attitudes; every time he was unkind or selfish or unforgiving another link was added. He's telling Scrooge that his is even longer since he's had more time to work on it."  The horror is visible in Scrooge's eyes as he imagines that.

"TIS A PONDEROUS CHAIN" Marley intones...

And I had an epiphany sitting there on my same shabby couch from six years ago. Shame was my ponderous chain.  Each time I drank and blacked out, each time I woke wondering what I said or did and each time I couldn't look myself in the mirror because I knew I was failing to be truly alive, failing to face my life, failing my children, I added a link. And each time I smiled and told people I was fine and accepted their praise of "I don't know how you do it" when I knew I was barely surviving I added a link. Each time I lied and presented the overcompensating perfect exterior, I added a link. Forget living with real joy or authenticity. I was a fraud, a liar, and every time I picked up a drink I added a link to my ponderous chain.

And when I got sober, and stayed that way, at some point that chain fell off.  Of course, I still have days where I disappoint myself, or lose my temper or have deeply embarrassing why the heck am I so dense moments.  But that terrible heavy chain of shame that was around my neck, dragging me down and choking me is GONE.  I never imagined it could ever go away.  I thought I would always feel its weight pressing me down, making it hard for me to breathe.  But so much hatred and self-loathing and fear and lies all fell off when I stepped out into the light and chose to stay there.  And suddenly I was much like Scrooge in his bed slippers flinging open his windows to see the white snow of London with new eyes and the whole entire world was full of wonder again.

So, as we careen into the end of the year and life feels spiky and pointy and possibly less than magical, I'm going to strive to maintain a sense of gratitude for my second chance and my own little visits to Christmas past that help point me where I want to go. In spite of dysfunctional families and mud instead of snow and a lot of nights where my eyes still feel like sandpaper and days where all of it feels like too much, this I know in my bones: Sober is better.  It's a miraculous gateway drug to a whole new life of possibility and transformation.  The penguins I've met along the way make it less lonely and help remind me of the truth when I get pummeled by the storms of life.  They remind me to tell the truth, to huddle in when I need to, to rest and take my turn in the quiet until I feel ready to rotate back out there. And that is gift enough. More than enough.

And so, as Tiny Tim observed: God Bless us, everyone.

Never judge a run by the first mile

My 10 and 11 month marks have come and gone. The days came and went and I didn't even realize it was a "soberversary" until friends texted me with congratulations.  And it hit me that I am getting comfortable. And then of course I immediately became uncomfortable. Because I don't want to take it for granted.

Next week I will be sober a year.

It's been a ride. The last few months have seen the election, my first sober holidays, the collective grief and hysteria of the nation, some health scares and the disintegration and attempted resurrection of my marriage, job struggles and through all of it I've been 100% present. Life is gradually less and less about just not drinking and more about building a life I don't need to escape from.  And handling things that would have dropped me to my knees and made me chug huge quantities of alcohol now roll off me like raindrops. That's the miracle of it all.

So the trickiest thing about being a blogger chronicling the early days of sobriety is that you actually need a functioning computer. Something I didn't have for 5 months. Which means that I have little scraps of paper that accumulate. When I open my purse, or grab my journal, little papers fall out and fall to the ground like flurries. Snippets of thoughts, quotes, ideas, mostly in my favorite green felt tip pen in my little scratchy handwriting. I lose them.  None of it was coherently gathered as I had imagined in the beginning when I set out to write about getting sober.  Nothing has gone to plan. And that has also been a blessing.

In hindsight, not trying to "unpack" or analyze those moments and instead just live them was the best thing for me as I learned to be present.  Even writing creates distance from what you are writing about. You become an observer, a reporter of your own experience. In striving to find the perfect phrase, choosing the right words to bring an idea to life in a way that someone else can possibly understand or experience it, the writer becomes a creator. In putting it into words, the idea or story becomes something separate from you. So in holding tight to my experiences and just soaking in them instead of trying to record them, I have for the first time become my own storykeeper.  I have had to trust my own heart and mind to remember.  Which is frightening for someone like me who has huge gaps in memory and the memories that do jump out from the past few years are often painful and full of shame.

But, in not trying to capture or label them, these months that have passed are truly mine. Authentically, not blurred around the edges, not fading into gray. Sometimes they still feel too sharp, too clear. There is part of me that still wants to change my state; to escape or hide. And yet, my life is no longer about "taking the edge off", but finding my edge, coming back to myself.  To do that I have to be in it. All in. Otherwise I am all fuzzy middles and I spent too many years doing that.

So, I'm back. Thanks to the generosity of a beautiful sober friend, my computer has been resurrected and I'm able to write again.  I'm mulling over how to possibly share all the things I've learned over almost a year of continuous days of sobriety strung together, like a necklace with beads and trinkets. Some days are a shiny pearl and other days are a battered old button but they are all there, in a row. And the changes that have been wrought in those continuous days are astonishing.

Many times in the past year as I have been healing, and coming back into my "right mind", I've equated this journey to running.  And the classic phrase that all runners know is to never judge a run by the first mile.  And I think about that as it applies to sobriety, as I see people struggling to get and stay sober.  The back-sweaty fear we have when we are on day one, week one, month one.  Wondering if this is all there is.. just this constant state of having your nerve endings screaming, of feeling so uncomfortable and having your brain be a loud, messy tangle of jangled nerves and cravings. When you go to bed at 7pm and feel like a freak and wonder if you will ever be comfortable in your skin again and what about all the feelings and where the heck do those go and on and on... And to that I say... KEEP GOING.  With running, the good stuff; those moments where you hit your stride and your breathing is almost imperceptible and you feel the air flowing over you and in and out of your lungs and you feel like you can run forever.. only happen after you have gone through the first mile or even the second when you feel herky-jerky and your muscles aren't warm yet and each step feels like a slog and all you want to do is stop and sit down.  But if you stop, you miss the miracle. And believe me, the miracle of sobriety isn't one you want to miss. But its going to hurt. Often.  But I promise it will be worth it.  Because the alternative is constantly being stuck on mile one. And that hurts beyond words.

There is no way around, no shortcuts, no "magic pill" you can take.  There is only through.  Each day, one foot in front of the other. Until you look back and you see how far you have come and you only want to dig deeper and find the strength to go higher up and on and on...

Embrace the suck

Last week I celebrated 200 days without alcohol. It was at the end of a few stressful weeks of bounced checks and crazy shifts at work and hard family issues and I happened to glance at the calendar and noticed a shaky "200" written in the margin of my day planner. I had written it on my last day one when my hands were shaking and I felt physically wrecked. I look back at it now as a sign that I really was done with the toxic merry go round of drinking. Though I had just the smallest flicker of hope, it made me count and look ahead.

Gradually, as I'm settling into this new sober life, it has become less about not drinking and more about building something: a total overhaul of my neural wiring and developing new habits.  It means that I have been systematically (well, more erratically, this is after all me we are talking about) examining and removing things and also trying to no longer avoid or deny painful things.  It all started getting crystal clear that in order to get to "the other side" and the transformation I long for that I need to dive into the pain.  Which sounds so lovely and poetic but is actually terrifying and sucky.

Our modern world gives us a million ways to distract ourselves from what IS.  We numb, deny, lie to ourselves, avoid, procrastinate, and bury our heads in our I-Gods (to quote a friend). Anything to avoid taking a cold, hard, clinical look at our patterns and motivations.  But I'm discovering in sobriety that I have to do that in order to move forward. It's scary. There's years of crap buried under my carefully crafted persona of Teflon warrior, the tough woman who everyone thinks can handle anything that is thrown at me.  I've bought into this narrative as much as others have propagated it, like the fact that they call me the Ginja (ginger ninja) at work and the fact that I've been voted most likely to survive the Zombie apocalypse two years running in our ER competition. (Little did everyone know that I would have had to drag 5000 boxes of wine along for my survival stint).

So, this got me thinking about what it means to be a true warrior.  There's lots of sobriety lingo tossed around and a lot of it reminds me of warrior slang from my Army days. War is risky, and all-consuming in every facet. The warrior slang is a language of shared suffering and phrases of discipline become second nature and rituals make the difficult things more bearable. Sound familiar? As I was talking to sober friends about the last few weeks of life just totally slamming me, with one ludicrous challenge after another, I actually said, "You know what? I'm just going to embrace the suck."

It's actually a kind of zen concept when you think about it. When we try to run away from our reality, or what is truly occurring (with drugs, alcohol or other escapes), we create suffering.  It's that yoga concept of that which we resist grows stronger.  When we say "embrace the suck" while deployed, it's a recognition that "yes, this situation is terrible, but we are going to deal with it." The only way to get through a crap day in the Army is to embrace the challenging, sucky experiences because ignoring them or denying them is literally impossible.  You can't check out mid-battle or you die. Or your buddy does. The same is true in early sobriety.

We have to do the dirty work with a good attitude.  Or maybe a bad attitude some days is all we can muster but the idea is forward progress. Not allowing our situations to control our attitude. Because pain is inevitable.  Recovery means facing the demons I've been running from so long that they've become fearsome (the longer I try to rationalize away the problem, the bigger it grows.) Doing nothing prolongs the pain and the fear of the unknown crippled me for years. Even if I'm creeping forward, I'm still moving forward and that is just a daily decision. To get up and do the work.

One of the amazing, wise friends I've met in sobriety challenged me a few months back to think of myself as an athlete in training, both in my life and in how I approach my sobriety.  And that had me thinking about how I endure physical pain and the mechanisms that I've learned over time to deal with it.  With running, or yoga or any other sport, there is a part of us that embraces the pain, knowing that as we push up that hill, or hold that plank that we are advancing towards a goal.  We beat the pain with self talk and checklists.  " Am I controlling my breathing, how is my posture, am I over striding, can I relax my tight shoulders?" etc.  Some things are beyond our control, and others are not.

I'm trying to apply the same principles to facing my fears and the uncomfortable aspects of early sobriety.  Or at least I was.

So, I started this blog post last week. Was fleshing out these ideas, feeling pretty darn good.  I envisioned my sobriety like a fortress I was building on a hill, brick by brick. I was finding my groove, in spite of stresses and work and life stuff.  Most days passed without a single thought of drinking. I've been immersed in self-improvement, self-care, healthy habits and mindfulness. I even started meditating. Yep. You read that right. So when I uttered the words " I'm just going to embrace the suck", I'm not sure what I summoned other than an opportunity to do just that.

Perhaps I was just getting too comfortable with my routines, and maybe focusing too much on one or two particular sober tools but, within 24 hours of saying those words out loud, I lost my two biggest ones.  My phone basically had a seizure and died after updating to a new operating system. I was phoneless for three days, which meant I was cut off from my small group of sober friends who are more like sisters. I lost all my contact information and all my photos from my first ever sober summer with my kids. For me, sobriety is all about connection, and I depend on hearing hard truths and giving/getting encouragement daily from other alcoholics kind of like I depend on air. With one fell swoop, it was like I was back in 1992 from a technology standpoint.  But, I still had my other "pillar" of sobriety. I could still get out and burn off my crazy with exercise, right?

Well, the day after my phone went belly-up, I fell rock climbing and broke my foot. (Trust me, that's not nearly as sexy or adventurous as it sounds). I'm out of commission for six to eight weeks.

Any cockiness I had, any swagger about being ready to "dive into pain" or whatever, has been sucked away by the SUCK.

What seemed like a great idea a few days before became almost laughable as I was crutching around with a throbbing foot with a constant internal dialogue of "embrace it? Who am I kidding? I'm an alcoholic. We run from pain. We numb it. We kill ourselves slowly in order to not feel it. Regular life? Kids, bills, crazy hours at work etc. I can embrace that, I think, maybe after 6 1/2 months of practice. But this? Cut off from my support? How am I going to work and pay bills with a broken foot? And NO outlet for my crazy? This is going to get ugly. I want a drink."

As another lovely friend pointed out to me yesterday after I finally had a working phone, it's time to expand my tool belt. She said, "Maybe this is the universe's way of saying 'Wen, you've mastered sobriety with two main tools.  Now go out and find others that work too.'" And she's totally correct. As much as I want to stomp my non-broken foot and whine "but I like what I was doing. It was working for me. I don't want to get all YODA-y anymore and say crazy things out loud like when the student is ready the master appears. I want to just keep running and doing what feels cozy. I want my La Croix water and my podcasts and to stay in my bubble where it's safe."

That's just not an option. So, the only choice I have is to do what I set out to do: embrace the suck.

Which means that I have a chance to do a CTRL+ALT+Del in the middle of my first sober year.

Clean slates are good, right? Lost contacts means new contacts, lost pictures means I have to trust my memory again. Putting myself out there in the middle of this, not from a perspective of having moved through it feels like trying to shine a light while my lighthouse is still only half-built. But maybe that's what needs to happen.

My fears about being found out as a fraud, as a weak person really are unfounded.  I'm doing this every day. I'm in the company of others who are doing it too.  Even if we stumble some days or fall completely off the rock face and have to get up, bruised and bleeding.

I will take the pain of having to be stretched and learn new things over the soul-pain of active drinking any day. I don't have answers. But if you are considering being done, of trying things that scare you, of giving up the "comfort" of alcohol, wondering how in the world you will ever feel your feelings without being blown away, take heart.  While I am gimpy and bruised and a little bewildered, I can still continue to hope and look ahead.  Because I have found others who tell me it's possible.  It's possible to change your entire life.  I'm doing that. It's possible to grow, even if you break your foot and bounce checks and have to deal with things that would have driven you to numb and obliviate yourself with booze just a few months ago. You will find yourself continuing to get up every day and living in just that day. Because I'm doing it. And if I can, then so can you.

For today, that means enforced rest:  icing and elevating my foot and watching the rain outside while I try to find words and make sense of things.

So stay tuned, friends.  I'm just getting started. Again.

100

Day 100.

I've been thinking about numbers this morning.

Zero used to be a number I wanted to avoid. It seemed empty and sad. But when I think about zero blackouts, zero hangovers, zero times driving buzzed, zero times I slurred my words, zero milligrams of Tylenol for splitting headaches, zero dollars spent on booze, (when in a very conservative estimate I would have consumed at least 200 bottles of wine in 100 days when I was drinking and even if that came from the cheapie wine bin, I'd say a thousand dollars? Mind boggling) then the idea of zero has weight to it. It represents freedom. Zero shame. Zero regrets. Zero moments that I wish I could get back and do over.

And then I think about "good" numbers. 539 miles run/walked in 100 days. 250,000 liters of water I've drank instead of booze. 100 wine-breath free bedtime prayers with my kids, 1 blog started, 100 journal entries written, 2500 hours spent doing yoga, 15 books read... None of those numbers would exist if I hadn't strung together consecutive hours, and days of just not drinking.  Not drinking was just the beginning. It was like opening the cover on a mysterious book and finding wonders inside, turning page after page as the story sucks you in. I'm hooked.

I was stuck so long in the revolving door of addiction. I'd spin around inside, heaving my weight against the push bar to keep the door endlessly moving, occasionally catching glimpses of the world and light outside, think about jumping through that crack as it spun past, but ultimately I was afraid I'd get pinched in the door and so I just kept circling and circling. Until the day I was so desperate, I just flung myself at the opening and found myself blinking on the sidewalk with an entire colorful world opening around and up and up over my head. These last one hundred days, I have been walking (well, running) away from that spinning cycle of shame, promises, lies and despair and finding an entirely new world.  I wish I had just taken that leap twenty years ago when I first knew I had a problem with alcohol. What would my life look like if I had done that?  And how do you capture that moment, that moment of surrender, that moment of "enough, now" for others who are still trapped in that endless cycle and desperately want out but don't know how? I wish I knew.

Unraveling all the strings and connections of why I drank and surveying the patterns and damage it has done over the years is stretching my mind, making me question and explore my motives and behaviors. I feel like I'm an anthropologist going through my own wrecked civilization and piecing it all together. Now I go to parties or out to dinner and watch friends and family with an almost clinical detachment, observing them cracking their 8th beer or struggling to find a wine opener for the 6th bottle of the night. Realizing how wobbly the conversation path gets when you are talking to someone who has been drinking for hours, how angry and incapable drunk people really are. How incredibly rare and radical it is in a way to be the only sober person in the room. And my inner rebel, the one who used to drink burly Army dudes under the table in my heyday is now shifting in perspective to think that the truly rebellious act in a room full of numbed out people is to be completely myself. My sober, non-impaired, capable, fully present self. It's a sad testimony to our society that sober is rare.

Maybe my radar is just extremely sensitive, but I can't help but notice the complete saturation of every aspect of our culture with alcohol.  Now, I drive past my old favorite liquor store, and I really read their sign, and notice the messages:

"Drinking rum before 10 am makes you a pirate."
"Rain, rain go away... Beer."
" If you are at a party and there's no booze, you're at the wrong party."
"Make your liver quiver."

My perspective is shifting, my eyes are different. I hear and see and live differently now that I, and not my addiction am calling the shots again. I think so much of the horror of alcoholism, at least for me, was living with cognitive dissonance: "contradictory or clashing thoughts that cause discomfort." (that's putting it mildly. It wasn't discomfort, it was PAIN.) People have an innate need for consistency in our thoughts, perceptions and images of ourselves. Alcohol made me act in ways that were wholly inconsistent with my self image.  I wanted to think I was a good mother, a loving wife. And I am, when I don't drink. I'm witty, and reliable, creative and kind. But when I drink, I'm a liar. I'm selfish, petty, self-serving, short-sighted, maudlin, careless, unfiltered.  Trying to reconcile those behaviours with who I imagined I was on the inside was impossible. The only way I can be who I truly am, is to remove alcohol from the equation.

I have a long road ahead. There's a lot of popular wisdom about how long it takes to form new habits or break old ones. There's a debate about whether it's 28 days or 66 days. I'm not sure if those numbers matter, even when I'm writing a post celebrating numbers today. Each morning I just have ONE in mind. The day I'm in is the only one I can control, really. I can't undo my past, can only try to make peace with it and learn from it. I can only impact my future by living in this day. This ONE day.

What I do know, deep down is that sobriety is delivering miracles to me on a daily basis. Small coincidences, signs.... all point me towards the truth that I am SEEN in this journey. I go running and see a tiny plant growing in an improbable place and I see it as a sign instead of a weed.  I would never have even noticed it before.

What am I really doing without? The one thing that was standing in the way of me reaching my full potential, my peak abilities.  The only thing preventing me from living with my insides on the outside.

Nothing has been lost. But I'm gaining everything.