So today I finally decided to level up and step a little further out of my comfort zone and created my own site for my blog.
Going forward, I will be writing at www.unbeachingthewhale.com
Thank you all for reading and I hope you'll continue to follow this journey.
Peace
Showing posts with label sobriety. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sobriety. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Monday, January 15, 2018
A cold wind
" A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things."-- George R.R. Martin
Winter snapshots from my past:
And another...
My boots crunched in the frozen deep snow along a half-mile perimeter of barbed wire. I had my M-16 at the ready, my black Army-issued balaclava scratching my face where my breath froze into crystals. The temperature hovered right around 2 degrees. My Tyvek jacket and fleece socks were fighting a losing battle against the bone-chilling cold. The icy darkness stretched out along the wire, yet strangely lit from beneath by the deep snow. My voice sounded small, speaking into my hand-held radio, "Tower 6 moving right". I could hear a few other staticky voices checking in as re-assurance we were not all out there alone in the frozen bleak. I reached the outer limits of the wire, then crunched the other direction for another half a mile. I repeated this trek every two hours as part of Guard Duty on Comanche Base in the middle of Bosnia-Herzegovina long ago. I thought of fellow soldiers sleeping warm and safely in their bunks as I trudged along for a 12-hour shift in the inky darkness of night. The long hours of walking, freezing then re-thawing in my tower, lost in thoughts and lulled into some kind of other-world with my isolation and the frozen dark and the hypnotizing white all around. Until one night there was someone on the other side of the wire. He appeared suddenly, like a phantom out from between snow-laden pine boughs, his dog at his knee, his shotgun held over his arm. I froze. Breathless. And so did he. Our eyes met and held for a full count of ten. Then he raised his hand and saluted me, turned and walked back into the white pines, the branches swaying slightly in the cold wind. I rubbed my eyes wondering if I'd somehow been dreaming.
I can think of a thousand stories of winter, and I could wax poetic forever about my love of snow, the way it covers and muffles everything, the beauty of it, the incredible wonder of little footprints, yet for as long as I can remember I have always hated this time of year. The space after Christmas when hard winter settles in for real, when spring and the promise of bursting green buds and life and hope seem endlessly far away. It's the winter blahs, when it's bleak and mud or bleak and dirty snow and the magic seems to have drained out of me and it's all cabin fever and dry skin and sniffly noses and no number of candles I light or hot cups of tea I drink seem to be able to penetrate the cold gloom that arises from deep within me. I hate it. Seasonal affective disorder. Such a dumb name for something so hard to describe. Joy Vampire? Fleece and angst-itis?
This last half of my second sober year has been rough. I told someone the other day that it's basically kicking my ass. Since right before the holidays, I've been dealing with a sudden identity crisis due to a major cut back of my hours at work, (as in zero hours). A major source of my sense of self, and also the source of a lot of trauma has basically been ripped away. I feel almost like I'm in a second adolescence where I get to decide who or what I want to be, minus the old labels. Of course, this crisis occurs at the time when my usual high energy almost always seasonally ebbs, leaving me bone tired, in a place where no amount of sleep seems to put a dent in my heavy weariness. It also comes at the worst possible time from a realistic, financial standpoint as I struggle not to panic and visions of ramen noodles and malnourished kids and burly car repo types dance in my head.
These days self-care is summed up by actually changing out of my flannel cat jammie pants and making the effort to shower, going to the closet to get a clean fluffy white towel instead of just grabbing my daughter's hooded duck towel that is hanging on the back of our bathroom door. I put on jeans and a plain sweatshirt, feeling like some kind of colorless bird. I swipe a brush through my hair and put on some tinted moisturizer to cover my dark eye circles, and I try to smile while all the while that voice is there. The constant underlying voice that maybe all people who struggle with depression or addiction fight against. It whispers underneath it all as I pour cereal into bowls, brew coffee, drive kids places and read them stories, struggle through math homework, matching socks, wiping fingerprints off mirrors. It's there at the end of the day when I crumble into bed, and pull the duvet over my head and feel the comforting weight of a cat curl up in the place behind my knees and pray for oblivion and sweet sleep. Its there when I answer the thousandth question of the day, through the endless litany of Mom, Mama, Mom, Mommy, the clearing up of yet another mess, the cycle of emptying and loading the dishwasher, the trudging up and down the stairs with the endlessly reproducing loads of laundry. It stalks me down the crowded aisle of the supermarket as I pick up bananas and whole grain bread and feel my eyes stinging in the cold as I load the plastic carrier bags into the back of my sensible minivan. It is there as I scroll social media and try not to compare my rumply insides with the perfect shiny outsides of countless "friends." It fades a little when I head out the door with a warm hat on and music in my ears, trying to move my body in search of those endorphins I am so sorely lacking. It's there as I take my meds, drink another glass of water and remind myself that this too shall pass.
It's a terrible voice, the voice of depression. I used to drink to drown it out, if not temporarily, for it always returned with more fuel every time I couldn't drink "successfully". The endless loop of old tapes. what did you think would happen when you always settle? you are nothing special. you never have been. foolish girl thinking you deserve anything at all. everyone would be better off without you. you're a fraud. everyone would walk away if they knew how stupid you really are. you are just taking up space. what is the point of you? it's so easy to think maybe I'm an illness or your "addiction" but what if I'm the only one telling you the truth? people tell you that you have a gift but really, being a storyteller is just a fancy way of saying you are a good liar. keep moving, because the emptiness is so staggering that you will fall apart if you truly looked at it. there is something wrong with you. what have you ever done that is worth anything? nothing would change if you disappeared. who are you without all your stories and lies? you are weak. you don't deserve better. your children really deserve better than you.
It's sickening. I want to run from that voice, scared to believe it might be right. It feels like it may be right. But it isn't.
I heard the phrase "emotional sherpa" the other day and found it to be the perfect description for what I'm feeling lately about the past, my role as recorder and storyteller and the repository of all the memories for my family, for myself. The roles and labels I have clung to that need to be re-thought in light of this new me, the sober me. The baggage that I drag, the memories and the old worn-out narratives about me, my life, my mistakes. It falls in on me when I slow down and things are dark and quiet. It's time to drop the baggage. I only want to move forward carrying what serves me. But I'm a slow learner. For me, it tends to be relinquishing inch by inch. I'm internalizing how to talk back to that voice, how to replace those old tapes with new ones. To remember that feelings are just that. They aren't facts. I will get through this winter. And the next and the next. Because underneath all of my stories, there is a core of steel that has never bent. It's the part of me that has survived things I never should have. In recovery, I'm making a new me, forged around that central core, that spark of truth. But I'm not doing it alone.
Camus said it so well: "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger--something better, pushing right back."
So, if you are struggling with your own winter of discontent, with deep sadness or shifting of roles, or wanting to isolate, or even somehow deeply mourning that old carefree you with pint in hand, the you of BEFORE, I want to remind you that you aren't alone. The community of friends in recovery who drag us out of ourselves, challenge our assumptions, call us on our dramatic, overwrought bullshit.. they are part of the invincible summer. One of the gifts of surrender. A roadmap for when we get lost in our own heads and thoughts. So I challenge you: even if you are in an enforced hibernation due to mother nature being off her meds... if like me, some days it all feels dull and muffled and endlessly blah. Reach out. Talk about it. Tell the truth about where you are. You may be overwhelmed by the number of "me toos". Because you are NOT the only one. Addiction wants you to believe that you are terminally unique, the only one suffering as you are. But you aren't. We recover. We move on. We learn new things, and even if we slip down the slope a little and even fall off entirely, that's not the end of the story. Not by a longshot.
I can think of a thousand stories of winter, and I could wax poetic forever about my love of snow, the way it covers and muffles everything, the beauty of it, the incredible wonder of little footprints, yet for as long as I can remember I have always hated this time of year. The space after Christmas when hard winter settles in for real, when spring and the promise of bursting green buds and life and hope seem endlessly far away. It's the winter blahs, when it's bleak and mud or bleak and dirty snow and the magic seems to have drained out of me and it's all cabin fever and dry skin and sniffly noses and no number of candles I light or hot cups of tea I drink seem to be able to penetrate the cold gloom that arises from deep within me. I hate it. Seasonal affective disorder. Such a dumb name for something so hard to describe. Joy Vampire? Fleece and angst-itis?
This last half of my second sober year has been rough. I told someone the other day that it's basically kicking my ass. Since right before the holidays, I've been dealing with a sudden identity crisis due to a major cut back of my hours at work, (as in zero hours). A major source of my sense of self, and also the source of a lot of trauma has basically been ripped away. I feel almost like I'm in a second adolescence where I get to decide who or what I want to be, minus the old labels. Of course, this crisis occurs at the time when my usual high energy almost always seasonally ebbs, leaving me bone tired, in a place where no amount of sleep seems to put a dent in my heavy weariness. It also comes at the worst possible time from a realistic, financial standpoint as I struggle not to panic and visions of ramen noodles and malnourished kids and burly car repo types dance in my head.
These days self-care is summed up by actually changing out of my flannel cat jammie pants and making the effort to shower, going to the closet to get a clean fluffy white towel instead of just grabbing my daughter's hooded duck towel that is hanging on the back of our bathroom door. I put on jeans and a plain sweatshirt, feeling like some kind of colorless bird. I swipe a brush through my hair and put on some tinted moisturizer to cover my dark eye circles, and I try to smile while all the while that voice is there. The constant underlying voice that maybe all people who struggle with depression or addiction fight against. It whispers underneath it all as I pour cereal into bowls, brew coffee, drive kids places and read them stories, struggle through math homework, matching socks, wiping fingerprints off mirrors. It's there at the end of the day when I crumble into bed, and pull the duvet over my head and feel the comforting weight of a cat curl up in the place behind my knees and pray for oblivion and sweet sleep. Its there when I answer the thousandth question of the day, through the endless litany of Mom, Mama, Mom, Mommy, the clearing up of yet another mess, the cycle of emptying and loading the dishwasher, the trudging up and down the stairs with the endlessly reproducing loads of laundry. It stalks me down the crowded aisle of the supermarket as I pick up bananas and whole grain bread and feel my eyes stinging in the cold as I load the plastic carrier bags into the back of my sensible minivan. It is there as I scroll social media and try not to compare my rumply insides with the perfect shiny outsides of countless "friends." It fades a little when I head out the door with a warm hat on and music in my ears, trying to move my body in search of those endorphins I am so sorely lacking. It's there as I take my meds, drink another glass of water and remind myself that this too shall pass.
It's a terrible voice, the voice of depression. I used to drink to drown it out, if not temporarily, for it always returned with more fuel every time I couldn't drink "successfully". The endless loop of old tapes. what did you think would happen when you always settle? you are nothing special. you never have been. foolish girl thinking you deserve anything at all. everyone would be better off without you. you're a fraud. everyone would walk away if they knew how stupid you really are. you are just taking up space. what is the point of you? it's so easy to think maybe I'm an illness or your "addiction" but what if I'm the only one telling you the truth? people tell you that you have a gift but really, being a storyteller is just a fancy way of saying you are a good liar. keep moving, because the emptiness is so staggering that you will fall apart if you truly looked at it. there is something wrong with you. what have you ever done that is worth anything? nothing would change if you disappeared. who are you without all your stories and lies? you are weak. you don't deserve better. your children really deserve better than you.
It's sickening. I want to run from that voice, scared to believe it might be right. It feels like it may be right. But it isn't.
I heard the phrase "emotional sherpa" the other day and found it to be the perfect description for what I'm feeling lately about the past, my role as recorder and storyteller and the repository of all the memories for my family, for myself. The roles and labels I have clung to that need to be re-thought in light of this new me, the sober me. The baggage that I drag, the memories and the old worn-out narratives about me, my life, my mistakes. It falls in on me when I slow down and things are dark and quiet. It's time to drop the baggage. I only want to move forward carrying what serves me. But I'm a slow learner. For me, it tends to be relinquishing inch by inch. I'm internalizing how to talk back to that voice, how to replace those old tapes with new ones. To remember that feelings are just that. They aren't facts. I will get through this winter. And the next and the next. Because underneath all of my stories, there is a core of steel that has never bent. It's the part of me that has survived things I never should have. In recovery, I'm making a new me, forged around that central core, that spark of truth. But I'm not doing it alone.
Camus said it so well: "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger--something better, pushing right back."
So, if you are struggling with your own winter of discontent, with deep sadness or shifting of roles, or wanting to isolate, or even somehow deeply mourning that old carefree you with pint in hand, the you of BEFORE, I want to remind you that you aren't alone. The community of friends in recovery who drag us out of ourselves, challenge our assumptions, call us on our dramatic, overwrought bullshit.. they are part of the invincible summer. One of the gifts of surrender. A roadmap for when we get lost in our own heads and thoughts. So I challenge you: even if you are in an enforced hibernation due to mother nature being off her meds... if like me, some days it all feels dull and muffled and endlessly blah. Reach out. Talk about it. Tell the truth about where you are. You may be overwhelmed by the number of "me toos". Because you are NOT the only one. Addiction wants you to believe that you are terminally unique, the only one suffering as you are. But you aren't. We recover. We move on. We learn new things, and even if we slip down the slope a little and even fall off entirely, that's not the end of the story. Not by a longshot.
Spring is coming.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
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.
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.
Friday, September 15, 2017
Early June. Cape Ann, Massachusetts.
A thick fog was hovering in almost perfect stillness over the water. I could see nothing through the grey, yet I could hear waves crashing onto the unseen rocks. The air was cold and I shivered in my sweatshirt clutching my "regular" Dunkin Donuts coffee in one hand while carrying a net and a bucket in the other. In between odd jobs painting houses and picking up shifts at the local ER as a medical assistant, I had scraped together enough tuition money to enroll in a Summer Marine Institute program at my college. I was working on a pre-med degree and had chosen a field course since I had always learned better outside of a traditional classroom. It was taught by Dr. A, a tiny slip of a woman with wild curly grey hair and the balance of a mountain goat. I'm not exactly sure how old she was since she had the tan, weathered skin of someone who has spent their entire life outdoors and in my 19 year old foolishness, I of course thought that anyone over 30 was ancient. I think she was in her late 70s, yet none of us could keep up with her as she leapt with ease up huge rocks and around slippery tide pools, never falling or slipping in masses of seaweed and unflagging in her enthusiasm for finding the perfect specimen. She was an expert on all types of North Atlantic sea life, both animal and vegetable, and she was hell bent on sharing her passion with her students. It was our second day out collecting specimens and breathing that particular loamy, salty fishy smell that is unique to the North Shore. Later that morning I sat sketching periwinkles and fucus vesiculosis (aka bladderwrack) in my somewhat damp notebook, looking at rocks covered in layers of barnacles, admiring how the waves had cut smooth channels as it had flowed off in foamy rivers, wave after wave, year after year. She noticed me looking at them and said quietly, almost to both of us, "water is the strongest force on earth and it's the universal solvent. All it needs is time."
When she said that, I was thinking in terms of literality, thinking how that couldn't be true- that it could never dissolve oil simply because of the properties of covalent and non-covalent bonds. And it's only now, twenty five years later that I think I understand what she meant about time and solvents. I knew she had been widowed at a young age, and was always out on the water, or in the water. In that phase of life in my own self-centered way I didn't really understand anything yet. She would often wax poetic about the therapeutic properties of sea water and tears; words I remember now. She was talking about coping with pain and the unexpected. She was living her passion and healing herself at the same time, but I was blind to that.
She spoke about how water moves through the air, the ground, even inside our own cells and bodies and takes along chemicals, minerals and nutrients. It is part of us, around us, in us, flows through us. It's a wondrous and mysterious force. Like time.
The summer I spent lugging buckets of fish and urchins and learning the scientific names of snails, fish, plants and birds was one where I was deeply lost. I was incredibly lonely, yet the desolate beaches of Cape Ann and Plum Island appealed to my desire to be invisible, to be lost in a landscape that was bigger than the girl I had become. The hefty athlete's appetite that had been no problem in high school was suddenly a bad fit for my new sedentary life as I started college and worked and focused on studying. I ballooned. By that summer, I felt like I took up too much space. I had an anorexic roommate who was shrinking and dying while I exercised and ate compulsively. I was alarmed at her decline, but unable to stop my own descent into an eating disorder. The voices that told me I wasn't good enough, too soft, too weak, ugly, unworthy were too loud. I would tell myself I was a failure because I lacked the discipline to starve myself like she could. I wasn't the tiny fragile ethereal blonds that were the style of the times. I was a chubby girl with a round face and unflattering hair cut hiding in baggy clothes, hating myself so much. I longed for attention from the boys around me, but none of them noticed me. I thought it was crazy that I could be so big and unseen at the same time.
I would starve myself, then crack and binge eat and then throw up and exercise compulsively for hours and hours, always in the dark, where no one could see me restlessly circling my campus for mile after mile driven by a desire to transform and to return to my old athletic self but unable to curb the insatiable hunger that had grown unmanageable . Food numbed me and the rush and the exhaustion of the binge and the purge left me outside of myself for just a few moments. It was an act of violence against myself and when it was over, when I felt empty and light and spent, I would swear that it would be the last time. I would be normal. I would get it together and stop. I was stuck in an endless cycle that seemed to have no exit. I was spinning and going nowhere. But sitting on those beaches, with my feet in ice cold tidal pools, looking for elusive specimens to catch or draw in my notebook, I felt almost ok. The ocean made me feel safe as I gazed out at its vast wild. There was a big change coming.
Never in my fantasies was I ever me. I was always another person. Someone totally different. My outsides never matched how I felt on the inside. So I reinvented. I became chameleon-like to see if I could be acceptable. I took on whatever form I thought would make me feel less "other". I didn't change for myself. I had no idea who that was. I just knew I was weak and fat and too sensitive. I knew that my dreams were never going to come true unless I changed into someone else completely. And with that first burning sip of alcohol, I found the key. I finally lost the weight because now I had a new self destructive cycle. I got edgier, harder, stronger, leaner, faster. And with each drink, I imagined that I was finally the self I wanted to be. I had the courage to behave the way I felt on the inside. Brave, brash, not caring what others thought. Fearless, sexy, like I could have all the things I had watched everyone else getting for years while I stood on the sidelines waiting like a good girl. I still had some struggles with food and body image but I had my new thing. The thing that made me feel ok. It was all ok once I had those first sips and felt it rush through my blood like a warmth that made me forget. And it went that way for years. Until the absolute pain of not having the insides match the outside returned in a different way. Until my life was consumed by shame and the cognitive dissonance that can only result when you live in a way that is actually daily flirting with death.
When I was first struggling to get sober or stay sober for more than a few patched-together hours or days in a row, I had one central idea: if I could just get sober, it would solve everything. Just stop drinking. It would be like water... dissolve all the messiness and the problems I drank over like some kind of magic. The ultimate cleanse.
Only it wasn't. It was more like a magnifying lens on my life. Too bright, too loud, too messy, too much was the theme during those initial raw months. I simply couldn't imagine being at peace in my own head, inside a body that felt like it's skin was on inside out. Nerve endings screaming, brain scattered to the winds. I could not sit still. It was nothing like I had imagined.
I read somewhere that growing up means putting aside consoling fantasies. For me, that meant setting aside the notion that I could ever drink normally. And for a while, at the start of sobriety the unknown "solution" of getting sober was another sort fantasy. I thought if I could just get that one thing right then everything that was wrong, or broken or unrecognizable about myself after so many years of cumulative damage would be all better. The universal solvent. Like Dr A's water. A force that would sweep away and wear down and smooth out the rough edges. That has been both true and not true.
These last eighteen months of sobriety I've been doing the work of sifting through all the history and the wreckage. I unearthed about twenty old journals from a musty box in my basement. I sat down and read my own voice writing about the paths I chose. I read the pain and the aimless reach for meaning. I read the words of the girl I was, see how my voice changed once alcohol became part of me. How that voice changed even more when I deviated from the path everyone expected and instead became a soldier and then an ER nurse. It's all there in green ink in my tiny neat hand writing... like a road map to self-destruction. I can read how I pushed harder and went farther and faster, yet underneath there was still that same desperation of the chubby girl just wanting to fit in, except now I "knew" that weakness was unacceptable and hid all of my fear behind mirrored aviators with a BDU cap pulled low or under my calm exterior as I handled another horrific injury at work where only I knew that my hands were shaking. I wrote about it all: how I learned to carefully separate my own ambitions from the attention of men as I used them the way I had felt used. Underneath my layers of armor I hid how I never felt good enough or like I deserved any kindness. I set out to be tougher than anyone, would work harder, go faster and faster trying to outrun those old voices. With each trauma, I told myself not to be weak and added to my layers of armor. The scars thickened and alcohol came along for the ride, clouding my judgement and telling me the lie that I wasn't terrified and small on the inside. Its not a great story. I see so many places where I could have gone a different way. I could have leaned into kindness or taken a softer, easier path than I did. But I'm making peace with it.
I realize that once again I am reinventing myself, because there is no going back to who I was "before." Because in looking at my story, I don't think I had any idea who that was to begin with. I'm just now finding out who I am. Without labels or mood altering substances. Just myself. Seems a little late to be getting to know her, particularly when I've been so unkind to her all these years. But that's what I'm doing, every day, slowly. It feels like a gift. And I'm no longer afraid.
I'm learning to replace self-destruction with self care. Accepting soft. Allowing vulnerability and being small. I'm not just giving kindness to others until the well is dry in some desperate bid for worth, or doing senseless things just to feel "ok". I don't have to prove anything. I practice letting my emotions and thoughts ebb and flow and swirl like water, cleaning out things and bringing in new ones like tides.
I am deliberately writing a new life. And I bring all the cumulative lessons and scars and false starts and healing that is happening slowly in layers and circles. I don't know the ending yet.
But I know that I like this story.
A thick fog was hovering in almost perfect stillness over the water. I could see nothing through the grey, yet I could hear waves crashing onto the unseen rocks. The air was cold and I shivered in my sweatshirt clutching my "regular" Dunkin Donuts coffee in one hand while carrying a net and a bucket in the other. In between odd jobs painting houses and picking up shifts at the local ER as a medical assistant, I had scraped together enough tuition money to enroll in a Summer Marine Institute program at my college. I was working on a pre-med degree and had chosen a field course since I had always learned better outside of a traditional classroom. It was taught by Dr. A, a tiny slip of a woman with wild curly grey hair and the balance of a mountain goat. I'm not exactly sure how old she was since she had the tan, weathered skin of someone who has spent their entire life outdoors and in my 19 year old foolishness, I of course thought that anyone over 30 was ancient. I think she was in her late 70s, yet none of us could keep up with her as she leapt with ease up huge rocks and around slippery tide pools, never falling or slipping in masses of seaweed and unflagging in her enthusiasm for finding the perfect specimen. She was an expert on all types of North Atlantic sea life, both animal and vegetable, and she was hell bent on sharing her passion with her students. It was our second day out collecting specimens and breathing that particular loamy, salty fishy smell that is unique to the North Shore. Later that morning I sat sketching periwinkles and fucus vesiculosis (aka bladderwrack) in my somewhat damp notebook, looking at rocks covered in layers of barnacles, admiring how the waves had cut smooth channels as it had flowed off in foamy rivers, wave after wave, year after year. She noticed me looking at them and said quietly, almost to both of us, "water is the strongest force on earth and it's the universal solvent. All it needs is time."
When she said that, I was thinking in terms of literality, thinking how that couldn't be true- that it could never dissolve oil simply because of the properties of covalent and non-covalent bonds. And it's only now, twenty five years later that I think I understand what she meant about time and solvents. I knew she had been widowed at a young age, and was always out on the water, or in the water. In that phase of life in my own self-centered way I didn't really understand anything yet. She would often wax poetic about the therapeutic properties of sea water and tears; words I remember now. She was talking about coping with pain and the unexpected. She was living her passion and healing herself at the same time, but I was blind to that.
She spoke about how water moves through the air, the ground, even inside our own cells and bodies and takes along chemicals, minerals and nutrients. It is part of us, around us, in us, flows through us. It's a wondrous and mysterious force. Like time.
The summer I spent lugging buckets of fish and urchins and learning the scientific names of snails, fish, plants and birds was one where I was deeply lost. I was incredibly lonely, yet the desolate beaches of Cape Ann and Plum Island appealed to my desire to be invisible, to be lost in a landscape that was bigger than the girl I had become. The hefty athlete's appetite that had been no problem in high school was suddenly a bad fit for my new sedentary life as I started college and worked and focused on studying. I ballooned. By that summer, I felt like I took up too much space. I had an anorexic roommate who was shrinking and dying while I exercised and ate compulsively. I was alarmed at her decline, but unable to stop my own descent into an eating disorder. The voices that told me I wasn't good enough, too soft, too weak, ugly, unworthy were too loud. I would tell myself I was a failure because I lacked the discipline to starve myself like she could. I wasn't the tiny fragile ethereal blonds that were the style of the times. I was a chubby girl with a round face and unflattering hair cut hiding in baggy clothes, hating myself so much. I longed for attention from the boys around me, but none of them noticed me. I thought it was crazy that I could be so big and unseen at the same time.
I would starve myself, then crack and binge eat and then throw up and exercise compulsively for hours and hours, always in the dark, where no one could see me restlessly circling my campus for mile after mile driven by a desire to transform and to return to my old athletic self but unable to curb the insatiable hunger that had grown unmanageable . Food numbed me and the rush and the exhaustion of the binge and the purge left me outside of myself for just a few moments. It was an act of violence against myself and when it was over, when I felt empty and light and spent, I would swear that it would be the last time. I would be normal. I would get it together and stop. I was stuck in an endless cycle that seemed to have no exit. I was spinning and going nowhere. But sitting on those beaches, with my feet in ice cold tidal pools, looking for elusive specimens to catch or draw in my notebook, I felt almost ok. The ocean made me feel safe as I gazed out at its vast wild. There was a big change coming.
Never in my fantasies was I ever me. I was always another person. Someone totally different. My outsides never matched how I felt on the inside. So I reinvented. I became chameleon-like to see if I could be acceptable. I took on whatever form I thought would make me feel less "other". I didn't change for myself. I had no idea who that was. I just knew I was weak and fat and too sensitive. I knew that my dreams were never going to come true unless I changed into someone else completely. And with that first burning sip of alcohol, I found the key. I finally lost the weight because now I had a new self destructive cycle. I got edgier, harder, stronger, leaner, faster. And with each drink, I imagined that I was finally the self I wanted to be. I had the courage to behave the way I felt on the inside. Brave, brash, not caring what others thought. Fearless, sexy, like I could have all the things I had watched everyone else getting for years while I stood on the sidelines waiting like a good girl. I still had some struggles with food and body image but I had my new thing. The thing that made me feel ok. It was all ok once I had those first sips and felt it rush through my blood like a warmth that made me forget. And it went that way for years. Until the absolute pain of not having the insides match the outside returned in a different way. Until my life was consumed by shame and the cognitive dissonance that can only result when you live in a way that is actually daily flirting with death.
When I was first struggling to get sober or stay sober for more than a few patched-together hours or days in a row, I had one central idea: if I could just get sober, it would solve everything. Just stop drinking. It would be like water... dissolve all the messiness and the problems I drank over like some kind of magic. The ultimate cleanse.
Only it wasn't. It was more like a magnifying lens on my life. Too bright, too loud, too messy, too much was the theme during those initial raw months. I simply couldn't imagine being at peace in my own head, inside a body that felt like it's skin was on inside out. Nerve endings screaming, brain scattered to the winds. I could not sit still. It was nothing like I had imagined.
I read somewhere that growing up means putting aside consoling fantasies. For me, that meant setting aside the notion that I could ever drink normally. And for a while, at the start of sobriety the unknown "solution" of getting sober was another sort fantasy. I thought if I could just get that one thing right then everything that was wrong, or broken or unrecognizable about myself after so many years of cumulative damage would be all better. The universal solvent. Like Dr A's water. A force that would sweep away and wear down and smooth out the rough edges. That has been both true and not true.
These last eighteen months of sobriety I've been doing the work of sifting through all the history and the wreckage. I unearthed about twenty old journals from a musty box in my basement. I sat down and read my own voice writing about the paths I chose. I read the pain and the aimless reach for meaning. I read the words of the girl I was, see how my voice changed once alcohol became part of me. How that voice changed even more when I deviated from the path everyone expected and instead became a soldier and then an ER nurse. It's all there in green ink in my tiny neat hand writing... like a road map to self-destruction. I can read how I pushed harder and went farther and faster, yet underneath there was still that same desperation of the chubby girl just wanting to fit in, except now I "knew" that weakness was unacceptable and hid all of my fear behind mirrored aviators with a BDU cap pulled low or under my calm exterior as I handled another horrific injury at work where only I knew that my hands were shaking. I wrote about it all: how I learned to carefully separate my own ambitions from the attention of men as I used them the way I had felt used. Underneath my layers of armor I hid how I never felt good enough or like I deserved any kindness. I set out to be tougher than anyone, would work harder, go faster and faster trying to outrun those old voices. With each trauma, I told myself not to be weak and added to my layers of armor. The scars thickened and alcohol came along for the ride, clouding my judgement and telling me the lie that I wasn't terrified and small on the inside. Its not a great story. I see so many places where I could have gone a different way. I could have leaned into kindness or taken a softer, easier path than I did. But I'm making peace with it.
I realize that once again I am reinventing myself, because there is no going back to who I was "before." Because in looking at my story, I don't think I had any idea who that was to begin with. I'm just now finding out who I am. Without labels or mood altering substances. Just myself. Seems a little late to be getting to know her, particularly when I've been so unkind to her all these years. But that's what I'm doing, every day, slowly. It feels like a gift. And I'm no longer afraid.
I'm learning to replace self-destruction with self care. Accepting soft. Allowing vulnerability and being small. I'm not just giving kindness to others until the well is dry in some desperate bid for worth, or doing senseless things just to feel "ok". I don't have to prove anything. I practice letting my emotions and thoughts ebb and flow and swirl like water, cleaning out things and bringing in new ones like tides.
I am deliberately writing a new life. And I bring all the cumulative lessons and scars and false starts and healing that is happening slowly in layers and circles. I don't know the ending yet.
But I know that I like this story.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Scars and mirrors
Her twisted face is mere inches from mine and my ears are ringing from how loud she is screaming inside this small room. Her shrieks are echoing out into the rest of the Emergency Department which has gone eerily silent. Black eye makeup streaks down her cheeks to mingle with tears and sweat. She is screaming obscenities and commanding me to let her go. The smell of alcohol, dirt and sweat stings my eyes. In the next breath she is screaming, begging ,"please just kill me. Just kill me". I am speaking quietly, calmly down near her ears where I hope she can hear me. " I hear you. You need to try to calm down. We don't want to hurt you. We are trying to help you." But she is beyond hearing. She is spitting, kicking and trying to bite my hand that is holding her hand down onto the bed as our staff struggle to put on the locked wrist and ankle restraints without being kicked. I look down at her slender wrist, see the thin blue veins which are lumpy and scarred from shooting up and then my eyes travel further up to a network of silvery and red horizontal lines, scars from cutting. There are hundreds of them. A small, homemade broken heart tattoo hides on her inner arm. Her eyes are pleading, enraged, defiant and sad all at the same time.
Later, when the medications I have given her have taken effect and she is lying quietly in the darkened room with a warm blanket she whispers to me, "You just don't know. I have to get out of here. I got kids." She is barely out of childhood herself, though she looks much older. I imagine if that was one of my children, with a scarred body and shattered mind, strapped to a gurney in four point restraints, strung out and off their meds and so drug addled and drunk they want to die. And I know that I've seen the look in her eyes in my own mirror after I've been drinking.
**********
The gurney rolls up the back ER ramp, surrounded by EMS workers in blue uniforms. On the stretcher is a man a greyish white color that any nurse recognizes immediately as a bad omen. He looks frail, his skin translucent and clammy. His eyes meet mine with an animal desperation as he vomits cascades of bright red blood into a cheap plastic bucket. I can read what he is asking me without words: "Am I going to die?" I speak to him calmly, recognize the smell of vodka mixed with blood which is a smell that stays in your nostrils long after you've gone home and showered in scalding water. He vomits again, a seemingly endless gush; a startling crimson sea. I start his IV, type and cross for blood transfusion, start hanging IV boluses as I watch his pressure dropping precipitously. I send a tech on the run down to the blood bank. As the monitors start alarming with a startling cacophony, he grips my wrist with his grey cold fingers and he says "is this it?" And I say, "I don't know. We are going to do everything we can." He is whisked off to the OR to fix his ruptured varices.. veins in his throat that are torturously dilated after years of chronic alcohol use. I survey the wreckage in the room he has vacated.. the trash on the floor, the suction equipment, the empty bags of transfused blood, the air still heavy with fear and vodka and the unmistakable metallic smell of blood. He is a year older than me.
***********
The car screeches up onto the ramp in front of the ER, the doors fling open and a body is tossed out onto the sidewalk which is more like a river since it is pouring rain. I run down with my radio, immediately notice the blue color of the boy lying on the ground, call for help and start CPR. My team arrives, we load and go with me sitting on top of the gurney still doing compressions as we roll through the waiting room, full of wide -eyed back pain sufferers, toddlers needing stitches and miserable flu patients, back through the pneumatic doors to one of resuscitation bays. Everyone does their jobs, we administer narcan and suddenly the dead boy is back. His eyes open, he takes a gasping breath and immediately starts yelling and cussing at me, calling me the cunt who ruined his high. I remind him that he was dead five minutes ago and that we just saved his life. The doc and I calmly explain the need to monitor him for a while in the ER since the heroin he took could cause respiratory depression and death when the meds we gave him wear off. He tells us to go fuck ourselves, rips the heart monitor off, flings it at me, cusses a few more people out and storms out of the ER, out onto the street as thunder rumbles.
Forty five minutes later we get a call on the EMS radio that they have a priority one overdose en route to us with a 5 minute ETA. They roll through with an intubated patient, CPR in progress. I see curly wet hair, then peer at his face and recognize the boy who had just left an hour ago. EMS said unknown down time. We work the code for a long time, check with ultrasound for cardiac activity, and finally he's pronounced dead, exactly 2 hours and 24 minutes after I first took his pulse out on a sidewalk in bucketing rain.
***********
I hear a familiar voice from behind the curtain of room 3. I know who it is, even before I go in the room to go assess my latest patient. He smiles at me as I enter and I check him out. Double amputee, Vietnam vet in the bed, wild grey hair he has covered with an old bandana. He has a raspy cigarette voice and a deep laugh that makes the fluid wave in his distended belly ripple. He is dayglow yellow and smiles with perfect white teeth in his wasted face. His spindly arms are cradling his massively distended belly and he jokes "We've gotta stop meeting like this, Wen." He goes on to brag to me that last week, when I was off work he came in and they tapped him for 4 liters of fluid. His personal record. His stories are great, his attitude is amazing. Yet his body is failing, his liver is shot and most likely I won't be seeing him much longer. But there is something about him. He talks about the joy he found in sobriety. A joy that sustains him, even when he is obviously dying. I look at him and I think how can he be joking and laughing when he's in so much pain. How can he be telling others about his peace and serenity now that's he's finally sober?
In my gut, deep down, under my neat blue scrubs and name badge that says "RN" on it, under my professionalism there was a voice that I tried to ignore. A voice that was warning me. A quiet voice drowned out by the raging need I felt after shifts like those when I would pull into my driveway in the wee hours. I'd come up the steps with throbbing feet and reach for that glass, hear the glug glug glug of wine that I was gulping before I even had my coat off. When I was still a young, unjaded nurse, I used to come home and pray and go to bed.... then years later I would tiptoe into my sleeping babies' rooms and kiss their sweet innocent cheeks and breathe a prayer of thanks over them, then lie awake until the call of the alcohol drew me downstairs for a glass or two. But in that last year, I couldn't face their innocence knowing that I was bringing a monster inside me into their rooms. I didn't want to breathe my poison on them. I felt tainted by what I had seen.. and utterly convinced of what I knew was coming for me. I would sit in my dark kitchen and drink until the faces faded. But they still haunted me the next day when I would wake with a splitting head, queasy stomach and a soul that felt shredded and hollowed out.
***********
My last shift before my last drink.
EMS rolls in with another intubated patient. Eyes fixed and dilated, she's posturing on the gurney, a sure sign of neurological damage. I'm the primary nurse. Rest of the team shows up to help. EMS tells me that she was found unresponsive by her family. Suspected alcohol overdose. Respiratory arrives and we put her on the ventilator and we start multiple IVs. She starts seizing and I yell for meds. Someone brings them and I am hanging them as her family enters the room. 16 year old son acts as spokesman and her two younger daughters, age 10 and 5 hang back with fear in their huge eyes. One of the nurses goes over and speaks to them quietly, assuring them. I speak to her son who tells me that she had been in recovery for alcohol for a year, started dating a new guy who he said was bad news. She decided last night to have "just one more" which turned into him finding her slumped on the floor of the kitchen when he woke up in the morning at 10 am. He wasn't sure when she stopped drinking or how long she had been lying there.
I start focusing on titrating drips as her blood pressure is dropping and she's continuing to have intermittent seizures. I listening to the rhythmic hiss and whoosh of the ventilator breathing for her. Her jaw is slack, her eyes rolling. Her two little girls are crying quietly at her bedside and kiss her arm and hand. The son takes them out to the waiting room to meet their aunt who has come to take them. I stop focusing on numbers and the medicine for a minute and really look at her. Notice that her necklace is digging into her neck around the ties that are holding her breathing tube in place. I can't loosen it so cut it off and place it in a bag with the clothes we cut off. I wonder what the story is behind it... an angel with a single wing.
Boyfriend arrives, staggering and slurring, yelling at her to wake up and pulling on her tubes and lines. I call security and we all try to calm him down. His eyes are blood red, his hair is wild and nothing we are saying is registering. He keeps grabbing her and crying he's sorry. He turns his eyes to me and towers over me saying " the paramedics told me she was fine. Why did you do to her? Why aren't you helping her." His voice gets louder and he comes closer, grabbing both my arms. I grab his hands and twist away as security steps in and end up dragging him out of the ER. Her son appears a few minutes later and tells me he called the cops to have the boyfriend arrested because he tried to assault him in the waiting room. I ask him if he's ok and he says in a shaky, shuddery voice, "yeah. We've been through this a lot. I thought she was finally better. I can't believe this is happening. She just kept saying she just wanted one more and then she'd be done for good."
A few hours later, I've taken her to CT and xray and we've discovered that she had aspirated (vomited while unconscious and breathed it into her lungs), had a massive hemorrhagic stroke and most likely an anoxic brain injury. She will probably never wake up. I'm reading the CT results on the computer I've rolled up next to her bed and I look at her. Freckles across her nose, red hair, slender. A few years older than me. She looks like me. I have a premonition and the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. I shake it off. I give report to the nurse taking my assignment. I turn in my radio, grab my bag, walk out of the ER and drive home feeling that need. The need.
At home, it's 0300 when I get in the door. I'm shaking. I can't stop thinking. I drink. And I drink some more. As if I can just wipe that memory out of my mind, deny the premonition I felt. The irony that I was making it come true was lost on me as I just slammed shot after shot.
I stumbled to bed, woke with my alarm, had a rough morning getting the kids to the bus. Fight with my son who was melting down about the seams in his sock, sending him off to school in tears instead of with a hug and less annoying socks.. still seeing her face when I shut my eyes. More drinking. A whole bottle of whiskey. Then darkness. Blearily waking to realize I forgot to get my preschooler off the bus. Squinting with one eye to see to drive when the road looked like four roads. Entering the school office, realizing I was slurring terribly. Bursting into tears and telling some unintelligible story about having the flu and oversleeping my alarm. Alarmed faces of the office ladies. Maybe the real truth was too hard to believe. I was almost falling down drunk at noon and about to drive my five year old home. I have no idea why they let me take her. Another squinty eyed drive up the road. Home. Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pretending to be the competent mom who gives her kid lunch after a busy day learning her ABCS. Except I dumped a jar of olives instead of jelly onto her bread. Started over. Opened a second bottle of whiskey. A few more shots since the shame was trying to creep in past my "don't care, nothing can touch me" alcohol fueled bravado. I remember giving my girl a sandwich and some fruit and then stumbling upstairs to my room and that was it for the next 12 hours.
I remember horrible blips and snapshots of that night. I somehow called my husband in my blackout and told him to come home. I remember him trying to pull me out of the shower and my voice that sounded like someone else's' just crying over and over that I wanted to die. Telling him I'm an alcoholic. I want to die. All those fearsome truths that I'd been skirting around for years. The truth was out. The curtain was whipped back like in Oz and this was the new reality. Around midnight, I sat up in bed, finally able to steady my spinning mind to ask about my kids who I was assured were safe. Looked down at my legs and saw that my kneecap was completely dislocated. I felt nothing. Not a thing. Absolute numbness. Stood up and it popped back in, hobbled to the bathroom, squinting in the light to see the entire right side of my face covered in bruises, my lip split and swollen, my tooth missing, my entire body covered in bruises and aching from falling. I have no idea how I busted my face. Limped back to bed, pulled my covers over my shaking shoulders, feeling ice in the pit of my stomach. And I sat there in the dark and realized that I had two choices: I could ignore it. Chalk it up to a bad shift, a rough week, just a one time mistake. Yes, I'd had blackouts and hurt myself before but never that bad. I could cut back or try moderating again. Or, I could absolutely face the fact that I was going to die if I continued this way. I could choose to surrender to the idea that I simply can never, ever drink again. I could have killed my daughter or myself or someone else. The school could (and should) have called the cops. I could have fractured my skull falling with that much force, could have aspirated and been just like my patient, leaving my three kids crying and never understanding why I left them.
I chose the second. And every day I wake up and choose the second.
And I see these patients with different eyes now. I don't fear them anymore, being terrified to see myself in them, wanting to deny the similarities. Now I see the commonalities. I feel compassion. I am able to quietly share, ask questions now that I never would have before. Because I KNOW them. I am them. And they can make that second choice too.
So, I'm like my dayglow yellow man now. I have hope and joy. I am utterly grateful that I was given the chance to walk away, though limping and looking like a hillbilly with one front tooth for a few days. I still have a lot of challenges, a lot of scars. But I have gratitude too. Oceans of gratitude instead of oceans of shame and despair.
Now when I look in the mirror, I can see the lines on my face, the remnants of pain. But I also see a twinkle in my eye.
And there but for the grace of God go I.
Later, when the medications I have given her have taken effect and she is lying quietly in the darkened room with a warm blanket she whispers to me, "You just don't know. I have to get out of here. I got kids." She is barely out of childhood herself, though she looks much older. I imagine if that was one of my children, with a scarred body and shattered mind, strapped to a gurney in four point restraints, strung out and off their meds and so drug addled and drunk they want to die. And I know that I've seen the look in her eyes in my own mirror after I've been drinking.
**********
The gurney rolls up the back ER ramp, surrounded by EMS workers in blue uniforms. On the stretcher is a man a greyish white color that any nurse recognizes immediately as a bad omen. He looks frail, his skin translucent and clammy. His eyes meet mine with an animal desperation as he vomits cascades of bright red blood into a cheap plastic bucket. I can read what he is asking me without words: "Am I going to die?" I speak to him calmly, recognize the smell of vodka mixed with blood which is a smell that stays in your nostrils long after you've gone home and showered in scalding water. He vomits again, a seemingly endless gush; a startling crimson sea. I start his IV, type and cross for blood transfusion, start hanging IV boluses as I watch his pressure dropping precipitously. I send a tech on the run down to the blood bank. As the monitors start alarming with a startling cacophony, he grips my wrist with his grey cold fingers and he says "is this it?" And I say, "I don't know. We are going to do everything we can." He is whisked off to the OR to fix his ruptured varices.. veins in his throat that are torturously dilated after years of chronic alcohol use. I survey the wreckage in the room he has vacated.. the trash on the floor, the suction equipment, the empty bags of transfused blood, the air still heavy with fear and vodka and the unmistakable metallic smell of blood. He is a year older than me.
***********
The car screeches up onto the ramp in front of the ER, the doors fling open and a body is tossed out onto the sidewalk which is more like a river since it is pouring rain. I run down with my radio, immediately notice the blue color of the boy lying on the ground, call for help and start CPR. My team arrives, we load and go with me sitting on top of the gurney still doing compressions as we roll through the waiting room, full of wide -eyed back pain sufferers, toddlers needing stitches and miserable flu patients, back through the pneumatic doors to one of resuscitation bays. Everyone does their jobs, we administer narcan and suddenly the dead boy is back. His eyes open, he takes a gasping breath and immediately starts yelling and cussing at me, calling me the cunt who ruined his high. I remind him that he was dead five minutes ago and that we just saved his life. The doc and I calmly explain the need to monitor him for a while in the ER since the heroin he took could cause respiratory depression and death when the meds we gave him wear off. He tells us to go fuck ourselves, rips the heart monitor off, flings it at me, cusses a few more people out and storms out of the ER, out onto the street as thunder rumbles.
Forty five minutes later we get a call on the EMS radio that they have a priority one overdose en route to us with a 5 minute ETA. They roll through with an intubated patient, CPR in progress. I see curly wet hair, then peer at his face and recognize the boy who had just left an hour ago. EMS said unknown down time. We work the code for a long time, check with ultrasound for cardiac activity, and finally he's pronounced dead, exactly 2 hours and 24 minutes after I first took his pulse out on a sidewalk in bucketing rain.
***********
I hear a familiar voice from behind the curtain of room 3. I know who it is, even before I go in the room to go assess my latest patient. He smiles at me as I enter and I check him out. Double amputee, Vietnam vet in the bed, wild grey hair he has covered with an old bandana. He has a raspy cigarette voice and a deep laugh that makes the fluid wave in his distended belly ripple. He is dayglow yellow and smiles with perfect white teeth in his wasted face. His spindly arms are cradling his massively distended belly and he jokes "We've gotta stop meeting like this, Wen." He goes on to brag to me that last week, when I was off work he came in and they tapped him for 4 liters of fluid. His personal record. His stories are great, his attitude is amazing. Yet his body is failing, his liver is shot and most likely I won't be seeing him much longer. But there is something about him. He talks about the joy he found in sobriety. A joy that sustains him, even when he is obviously dying. I look at him and I think how can he be joking and laughing when he's in so much pain. How can he be telling others about his peace and serenity now that's he's finally sober?
In my gut, deep down, under my neat blue scrubs and name badge that says "RN" on it, under my professionalism there was a voice that I tried to ignore. A voice that was warning me. A quiet voice drowned out by the raging need I felt after shifts like those when I would pull into my driveway in the wee hours. I'd come up the steps with throbbing feet and reach for that glass, hear the glug glug glug of wine that I was gulping before I even had my coat off. When I was still a young, unjaded nurse, I used to come home and pray and go to bed.... then years later I would tiptoe into my sleeping babies' rooms and kiss their sweet innocent cheeks and breathe a prayer of thanks over them, then lie awake until the call of the alcohol drew me downstairs for a glass or two. But in that last year, I couldn't face their innocence knowing that I was bringing a monster inside me into their rooms. I didn't want to breathe my poison on them. I felt tainted by what I had seen.. and utterly convinced of what I knew was coming for me. I would sit in my dark kitchen and drink until the faces faded. But they still haunted me the next day when I would wake with a splitting head, queasy stomach and a soul that felt shredded and hollowed out.
***********
My last shift before my last drink.
EMS rolls in with another intubated patient. Eyes fixed and dilated, she's posturing on the gurney, a sure sign of neurological damage. I'm the primary nurse. Rest of the team shows up to help. EMS tells me that she was found unresponsive by her family. Suspected alcohol overdose. Respiratory arrives and we put her on the ventilator and we start multiple IVs. She starts seizing and I yell for meds. Someone brings them and I am hanging them as her family enters the room. 16 year old son acts as spokesman and her two younger daughters, age 10 and 5 hang back with fear in their huge eyes. One of the nurses goes over and speaks to them quietly, assuring them. I speak to her son who tells me that she had been in recovery for alcohol for a year, started dating a new guy who he said was bad news. She decided last night to have "just one more" which turned into him finding her slumped on the floor of the kitchen when he woke up in the morning at 10 am. He wasn't sure when she stopped drinking or how long she had been lying there.
I start focusing on titrating drips as her blood pressure is dropping and she's continuing to have intermittent seizures. I listening to the rhythmic hiss and whoosh of the ventilator breathing for her. Her jaw is slack, her eyes rolling. Her two little girls are crying quietly at her bedside and kiss her arm and hand. The son takes them out to the waiting room to meet their aunt who has come to take them. I stop focusing on numbers and the medicine for a minute and really look at her. Notice that her necklace is digging into her neck around the ties that are holding her breathing tube in place. I can't loosen it so cut it off and place it in a bag with the clothes we cut off. I wonder what the story is behind it... an angel with a single wing.
Boyfriend arrives, staggering and slurring, yelling at her to wake up and pulling on her tubes and lines. I call security and we all try to calm him down. His eyes are blood red, his hair is wild and nothing we are saying is registering. He keeps grabbing her and crying he's sorry. He turns his eyes to me and towers over me saying " the paramedics told me she was fine. Why did you do to her? Why aren't you helping her." His voice gets louder and he comes closer, grabbing both my arms. I grab his hands and twist away as security steps in and end up dragging him out of the ER. Her son appears a few minutes later and tells me he called the cops to have the boyfriend arrested because he tried to assault him in the waiting room. I ask him if he's ok and he says in a shaky, shuddery voice, "yeah. We've been through this a lot. I thought she was finally better. I can't believe this is happening. She just kept saying she just wanted one more and then she'd be done for good."
A few hours later, I've taken her to CT and xray and we've discovered that she had aspirated (vomited while unconscious and breathed it into her lungs), had a massive hemorrhagic stroke and most likely an anoxic brain injury. She will probably never wake up. I'm reading the CT results on the computer I've rolled up next to her bed and I look at her. Freckles across her nose, red hair, slender. A few years older than me. She looks like me. I have a premonition and the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. I shake it off. I give report to the nurse taking my assignment. I turn in my radio, grab my bag, walk out of the ER and drive home feeling that need. The need.
At home, it's 0300 when I get in the door. I'm shaking. I can't stop thinking. I drink. And I drink some more. As if I can just wipe that memory out of my mind, deny the premonition I felt. The irony that I was making it come true was lost on me as I just slammed shot after shot.
I stumbled to bed, woke with my alarm, had a rough morning getting the kids to the bus. Fight with my son who was melting down about the seams in his sock, sending him off to school in tears instead of with a hug and less annoying socks.. still seeing her face when I shut my eyes. More drinking. A whole bottle of whiskey. Then darkness. Blearily waking to realize I forgot to get my preschooler off the bus. Squinting with one eye to see to drive when the road looked like four roads. Entering the school office, realizing I was slurring terribly. Bursting into tears and telling some unintelligible story about having the flu and oversleeping my alarm. Alarmed faces of the office ladies. Maybe the real truth was too hard to believe. I was almost falling down drunk at noon and about to drive my five year old home. I have no idea why they let me take her. Another squinty eyed drive up the road. Home. Making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, pretending to be the competent mom who gives her kid lunch after a busy day learning her ABCS. Except I dumped a jar of olives instead of jelly onto her bread. Started over. Opened a second bottle of whiskey. A few more shots since the shame was trying to creep in past my "don't care, nothing can touch me" alcohol fueled bravado. I remember giving my girl a sandwich and some fruit and then stumbling upstairs to my room and that was it for the next 12 hours.
I remember horrible blips and snapshots of that night. I somehow called my husband in my blackout and told him to come home. I remember him trying to pull me out of the shower and my voice that sounded like someone else's' just crying over and over that I wanted to die. Telling him I'm an alcoholic. I want to die. All those fearsome truths that I'd been skirting around for years. The truth was out. The curtain was whipped back like in Oz and this was the new reality. Around midnight, I sat up in bed, finally able to steady my spinning mind to ask about my kids who I was assured were safe. Looked down at my legs and saw that my kneecap was completely dislocated. I felt nothing. Not a thing. Absolute numbness. Stood up and it popped back in, hobbled to the bathroom, squinting in the light to see the entire right side of my face covered in bruises, my lip split and swollen, my tooth missing, my entire body covered in bruises and aching from falling. I have no idea how I busted my face. Limped back to bed, pulled my covers over my shaking shoulders, feeling ice in the pit of my stomach. And I sat there in the dark and realized that I had two choices: I could ignore it. Chalk it up to a bad shift, a rough week, just a one time mistake. Yes, I'd had blackouts and hurt myself before but never that bad. I could cut back or try moderating again. Or, I could absolutely face the fact that I was going to die if I continued this way. I could choose to surrender to the idea that I simply can never, ever drink again. I could have killed my daughter or myself or someone else. The school could (and should) have called the cops. I could have fractured my skull falling with that much force, could have aspirated and been just like my patient, leaving my three kids crying and never understanding why I left them.
I chose the second. And every day I wake up and choose the second.
And I see these patients with different eyes now. I don't fear them anymore, being terrified to see myself in them, wanting to deny the similarities. Now I see the commonalities. I feel compassion. I am able to quietly share, ask questions now that I never would have before. Because I KNOW them. I am them. And they can make that second choice too.
So, I'm like my dayglow yellow man now. I have hope and joy. I am utterly grateful that I was given the chance to walk away, though limping and looking like a hillbilly with one front tooth for a few days. I still have a lot of challenges, a lot of scars. But I have gratitude too. Oceans of gratitude instead of oceans of shame and despair.
Now when I look in the mirror, I can see the lines on my face, the remnants of pain. But I also see a twinkle in my eye.
And there but for the grace of God go I.
Friday, May 27, 2016
Center your power
Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri is a god-forsaken place in the middle of March. It's probably that way in July too, actually. It's cold in a damp, bone-deep way. It's barren. There is a lot of horizontal sleet and winds that can knock you backwards. The whole place is ugly: all barracks and training buildings and dirt and cratered firing ranges where there is no shelter from the constant wind. The only part that might have been beautiful was the woods, but it was winter when I was there, so it was all naked trees and frozen mud and shallow foxholes.
It's where I spent my nine weeks of Army Basic Training.
I vividly remember one morning. Like every day that wasn't Sunday, we were up and out and in formation at 0500. It was inky dark and freezing. My stomach felt queasy. I was struggling with a cold that I'd had for three weeks. (They call it the crud and everyone gets it. Too much sleep deprivation and living in close quarters, I suppose). I felt lousy. The temperature was right around 20 degrees and there was a stiff wind that was blowing occasional bands of sleet right into my face. One of our burly, seemingly non-human drill sergeants announced that in honor of the beginning of week 9, we were going to run to the airfield and back. There was a collective groan from the whole platoon. The airfield and back was a 10 mile run. Since it was week 9, those of us that had survived that long were in great shape. But I wasn't feeling it at all.
A little back story: we had started our training with sixty two women in our company. We graduated with six. Of the 200 men that started, only 110 made it all the way through. Those numbers launched an investigation that took two years and which ended in multiple dishonorable discharges and a conviction of soldier abuse against the Commander of the company I was in. We were clueless that anything we were experiencing wasn't what everyone experiences when they go through the hellish, "mind and body breaking down and building back up" process that was Basic Training before it became the kinder, gentler version they have now. We were so exhausted and numb and cut off from the outside world that we just accepted it as reality, put our heads down and pushed through to the end so we could get out of there. In the end, we endured a lot of things that other soldiers on the same base weren't experiencing and which we later discovered weren't in the Army's training doctrine, but a product of the mind of our ex-special forces commander who had a few screws loose. It was unorthodox, but I have to admit that it made us tough in every way. Looking back, surviving that really set me up for success in the Army So much of my flexibility and ability to endure tough things; problem solving instead of breaking down; a large part of my personality developed there. I still have my old battered Basic Training Soldier's manual and I had written on the side of it NEVER QUIT. And I never quit anything, until 81 days ago when I quit drinking.
Ok, back to that dark morning.
I was shivering uncontrollably as we warmed up with some stretches. My drill sergeant stalked past me, stopped and said "Are you cold, Private?" Through chattering teeth, I managed to say, "y-y-y-es, D-d-rill Sergeant." He looked me directly in the eyes. Though he was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, he looked perfectly warm and unbothered by the sleet that was dripping into his eyes. He bellowed "Center your power." And then he walked away.
I had a long ten mile run to think about what that meant, exactly.
And I don't think I really gave it any more thought in the many years that have passed since then. I'm not sure why it came to mind today, but it did. I used to think that it meant being strong no matter what; cultivating a core of strength that you draw from. I thought it meant never ever admitting weakness, ignoring the sleet, pushing through and never admitting defeat.
So, when it came time to finally surrender to my powerlessness over alcohol, to admit defeat and to finally say "I QUIT!!" it meant undoing a way of thinking I have believed was true for my entire adult life.
Mental toughness can't overcome hypothermia or addiction. I used to believe I could think my way out of any circumstance, use my wits, my smarts to just overcome whatever was in my way. Unfortunately, alcohol didn't get that memo. And so I'm dragging myself up out of the abyss that my life had become and am stepping out into the light. But I am not doing it alone.
When I think of that phrase, I think of it in terms of community. How community is helping to keep me sober. The invisible army of other alcoholics that I am meeting on this journey are helping me to center my power, to grow, to challenge my thinking, to reframe external circumstances, to heal the gap between the person I feel I am and the person I became when I drank. To allow my soul to heal from the soul sickness and shame that have made the last few years so very dark.
Instead of drinking to numb my feelings, I am learning to feel them. I am willing to admit when I am weak, when I need help and when I'm freaking out, I can reach out to others who "get" it. They can talk me down, remind me of the good, the privilege of this journey. In giving up one thing: drinking, I get to change the ending to my story. A story that was only going to end in my premature death and an utter waste of life. For "just one more" drink. I am choosing a different ending.
I have the awesome task of rebuilding a life from the wreckage. Some days I am weary, tired of thinking endlessly about my sobriety. It's WORK. It feels like I am unbeaching a whale. But I have the privilege of taking on this challenge in the company of others who are wiser than me, who have had the way paved for them by others who went before them: a gentleman in my online sobriety support group calls it " an endless chain of souls all supporting each other no matter what."
My loneliness when I was drinking was immense and breathtaking and I just drank more when I would start to feel it. In sobriety, I am finding connection, community, and hope. I could never have imagined the life that I'm discovering, when I was in that hole. The changes are immense and the feelings are too.
But I'm finally learning to truly center my power.
It's where I spent my nine weeks of Army Basic Training.
I vividly remember one morning. Like every day that wasn't Sunday, we were up and out and in formation at 0500. It was inky dark and freezing. My stomach felt queasy. I was struggling with a cold that I'd had for three weeks. (They call it the crud and everyone gets it. Too much sleep deprivation and living in close quarters, I suppose). I felt lousy. The temperature was right around 20 degrees and there was a stiff wind that was blowing occasional bands of sleet right into my face. One of our burly, seemingly non-human drill sergeants announced that in honor of the beginning of week 9, we were going to run to the airfield and back. There was a collective groan from the whole platoon. The airfield and back was a 10 mile run. Since it was week 9, those of us that had survived that long were in great shape. But I wasn't feeling it at all.
A little back story: we had started our training with sixty two women in our company. We graduated with six. Of the 200 men that started, only 110 made it all the way through. Those numbers launched an investigation that took two years and which ended in multiple dishonorable discharges and a conviction of soldier abuse against the Commander of the company I was in. We were clueless that anything we were experiencing wasn't what everyone experiences when they go through the hellish, "mind and body breaking down and building back up" process that was Basic Training before it became the kinder, gentler version they have now. We were so exhausted and numb and cut off from the outside world that we just accepted it as reality, put our heads down and pushed through to the end so we could get out of there. In the end, we endured a lot of things that other soldiers on the same base weren't experiencing and which we later discovered weren't in the Army's training doctrine, but a product of the mind of our ex-special forces commander who had a few screws loose. It was unorthodox, but I have to admit that it made us tough in every way. Looking back, surviving that really set me up for success in the Army So much of my flexibility and ability to endure tough things; problem solving instead of breaking down; a large part of my personality developed there. I still have my old battered Basic Training Soldier's manual and I had written on the side of it NEVER QUIT. And I never quit anything, until 81 days ago when I quit drinking.
Ok, back to that dark morning.
I was shivering uncontrollably as we warmed up with some stretches. My drill sergeant stalked past me, stopped and said "Are you cold, Private?" Through chattering teeth, I managed to say, "y-y-y-es, D-d-rill Sergeant." He looked me directly in the eyes. Though he was wearing shorts and a sweatshirt, he looked perfectly warm and unbothered by the sleet that was dripping into his eyes. He bellowed "Center your power." And then he walked away.
I had a long ten mile run to think about what that meant, exactly.
And I don't think I really gave it any more thought in the many years that have passed since then. I'm not sure why it came to mind today, but it did. I used to think that it meant being strong no matter what; cultivating a core of strength that you draw from. I thought it meant never ever admitting weakness, ignoring the sleet, pushing through and never admitting defeat.
So, when it came time to finally surrender to my powerlessness over alcohol, to admit defeat and to finally say "I QUIT!!" it meant undoing a way of thinking I have believed was true for my entire adult life.
Mental toughness can't overcome hypothermia or addiction. I used to believe I could think my way out of any circumstance, use my wits, my smarts to just overcome whatever was in my way. Unfortunately, alcohol didn't get that memo. And so I'm dragging myself up out of the abyss that my life had become and am stepping out into the light. But I am not doing it alone.
When I think of that phrase, I think of it in terms of community. How community is helping to keep me sober. The invisible army of other alcoholics that I am meeting on this journey are helping me to center my power, to grow, to challenge my thinking, to reframe external circumstances, to heal the gap between the person I feel I am and the person I became when I drank. To allow my soul to heal from the soul sickness and shame that have made the last few years so very dark.
Instead of drinking to numb my feelings, I am learning to feel them. I am willing to admit when I am weak, when I need help and when I'm freaking out, I can reach out to others who "get" it. They can talk me down, remind me of the good, the privilege of this journey. In giving up one thing: drinking, I get to change the ending to my story. A story that was only going to end in my premature death and an utter waste of life. For "just one more" drink. I am choosing a different ending.
I have the awesome task of rebuilding a life from the wreckage. Some days I am weary, tired of thinking endlessly about my sobriety. It's WORK. It feels like I am unbeaching a whale. But I have the privilege of taking on this challenge in the company of others who are wiser than me, who have had the way paved for them by others who went before them: a gentleman in my online sobriety support group calls it " an endless chain of souls all supporting each other no matter what."
My loneliness when I was drinking was immense and breathtaking and I just drank more when I would start to feel it. In sobriety, I am finding connection, community, and hope. I could never have imagined the life that I'm discovering, when I was in that hole. The changes are immense and the feelings are too.
But I'm finally learning to truly center my power.
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