Last week I celebrated 200 days without alcohol. It was at the end of a few stressful weeks of bounced checks and crazy shifts at work and hard family issues and I happened to glance at the calendar and noticed a shaky "200" written in the margin of my day planner. I had written it on my last day one when my hands were shaking and I felt physically wrecked. I look back at it now as a sign that I really was done with the toxic merry go round of drinking. Though I had just the smallest flicker of hope, it made me count and look ahead.
Gradually, as I'm settling into this new sober life, it has become less about not drinking and more about building something: a total overhaul of my neural wiring and developing new habits. It means that I have been systematically (well, more erratically, this is after all me we are talking about) examining and removing things and also trying to no longer avoid or deny painful things. It all started getting crystal clear that in order to get to "the other side" and the transformation I long for that I need to dive into the pain. Which sounds so lovely and poetic but is actually terrifying and sucky.
Our modern world gives us a million ways to distract ourselves from what IS. We numb, deny, lie to ourselves, avoid, procrastinate, and bury our heads in our I-Gods (to quote a friend). Anything to avoid taking a cold, hard, clinical look at our patterns and motivations. But I'm discovering in sobriety that I have to do that in order to move forward. It's scary. There's years of crap buried under my carefully crafted persona of Teflon warrior, the tough woman who everyone thinks can handle anything that is thrown at me. I've bought into this narrative as much as others have propagated it, like the fact that they call me the Ginja (ginger ninja) at work and the fact that I've been voted most likely to survive the Zombie apocalypse two years running in our ER competition. (Little did everyone know that I would have had to drag 5000 boxes of wine along for my survival stint).
So, this got me thinking about what it means to be a true warrior. There's lots of sobriety lingo tossed around and a lot of it reminds me of warrior slang from my Army days. War is risky, and all-consuming in every facet. The warrior slang is a language of shared suffering and phrases of discipline become second nature and rituals make the difficult things more bearable. Sound familiar? As I was talking to sober friends about the last few weeks of life just totally slamming me, with one ludicrous challenge after another, I actually said, "You know what? I'm just going to embrace the suck."
It's actually a kind of zen concept when you think about it. When we try to run away from our reality, or what is truly occurring (with drugs, alcohol or other escapes), we create suffering. It's that yoga concept of that which we resist grows stronger. When we say "embrace the suck" while deployed, it's a recognition that "yes, this situation is terrible, but we are going to deal with it." The only way to get through a crap day in the Army is to embrace the challenging, sucky experiences because ignoring them or denying them is literally impossible. You can't check out mid-battle or you die. Or your buddy does. The same is true in early sobriety.
We have to do the dirty work with a good attitude. Or maybe a bad attitude some days is all we can muster but the idea is forward progress. Not allowing our situations to control our attitude. Because pain is inevitable. Recovery means facing the demons I've been running from so long that they've become fearsome (the longer I try to rationalize away the problem, the bigger it grows.) Doing nothing prolongs the pain and the fear of the unknown crippled me for years. Even if I'm creeping forward, I'm still moving forward and that is just a daily decision. To get up and do the work.
One of the amazing, wise friends I've met in sobriety challenged me a few months back to think of myself as an athlete in training, both in my life and in how I approach my sobriety. And that had me thinking about how I endure physical pain and the mechanisms that I've learned over time to deal with it. With running, or yoga or any other sport, there is a part of us that embraces the pain, knowing that as we push up that hill, or hold that plank that we are advancing towards a goal. We beat the pain with self talk and checklists. " Am I controlling my breathing, how is my posture, am I over striding, can I relax my tight shoulders?" etc. Some things are beyond our control, and others are not.
I'm trying to apply the same principles to facing my fears and the uncomfortable aspects of early sobriety. Or at least I was.
So, I started this blog post last week. Was fleshing out these ideas, feeling pretty darn good. I envisioned my sobriety like a fortress I was building on a hill, brick by brick. I was finding my groove, in spite of stresses and work and life stuff. Most days passed without a single thought of drinking. I've been immersed in self-improvement, self-care, healthy habits and mindfulness. I even started meditating. Yep. You read that right. So when I uttered the words " I'm just going to embrace the suck", I'm not sure what I summoned other than an opportunity to do just that.
Perhaps I was just getting too comfortable with my routines, and maybe focusing too much on one or two particular sober tools but, within 24 hours of saying those words out loud, I lost my two biggest ones. My phone basically had a seizure and died after updating to a new operating system. I was phoneless for three days, which meant I was cut off from my small group of sober friends who are more like sisters. I lost all my contact information and all my photos from my first ever sober summer with my kids. For me, sobriety is all about connection, and I depend on hearing hard truths and giving/getting encouragement daily from other alcoholics kind of like I depend on air. With one fell swoop, it was like I was back in 1992 from a technology standpoint. But, I still had my other "pillar" of sobriety. I could still get out and burn off my crazy with exercise, right?
Well, the day after my phone went belly-up, I fell rock climbing and broke my foot. (Trust me, that's not nearly as sexy or adventurous as it sounds). I'm out of commission for six to eight weeks.
Any cockiness I had, any swagger about being ready to "dive into pain" or whatever, has been sucked away by the SUCK.
What seemed like a great idea a few days before became almost laughable as I was crutching around with a throbbing foot with a constant internal dialogue of "embrace it? Who am I kidding? I'm an alcoholic. We run from pain. We numb it. We kill ourselves slowly in order to not feel it. Regular life? Kids, bills, crazy hours at work etc. I can embrace that, I think, maybe after 6 1/2 months of practice. But this? Cut off from my support? How am I going to work and pay bills with a broken foot? And NO outlet for my crazy? This is going to get ugly. I want a drink."
As another lovely friend pointed out to me yesterday after I finally had a working phone, it's time to expand my tool belt. She said, "Maybe this is the universe's way of saying 'Wen, you've mastered sobriety with two main tools. Now go out and find others that work too.'" And she's totally correct. As much as I want to stomp my non-broken foot and whine "but I like what I was doing. It was working for me. I don't want to get all YODA-y anymore and say crazy things out loud like when the student is ready the master appears. I want to just keep running and doing what feels cozy. I want my La Croix water and my podcasts and to stay in my bubble where it's safe."
That's just not an option. So, the only choice I have is to do what I set out to do: embrace the suck.
Which means that I have a chance to do a CTRL+ALT+Del in the middle of my first sober year.
Clean slates are good, right? Lost contacts means new contacts, lost pictures means I have to trust my memory again. Putting myself out there in the middle of this, not from a perspective of having moved through it feels like trying to shine a light while my lighthouse is still only half-built. But maybe that's what needs to happen.
My fears about being found out as a fraud, as a weak person really are unfounded. I'm doing this every day. I'm in the company of others who are doing it too. Even if we stumble some days or fall completely off the rock face and have to get up, bruised and bleeding.
I will take the pain of having to be stretched and learn new things over the soul-pain of active drinking any day. I don't have answers. But if you are considering being done, of trying things that scare you, of giving up the "comfort" of alcohol, wondering how in the world you will ever feel your feelings without being blown away, take heart. While I am gimpy and bruised and a little bewildered, I can still continue to hope and look ahead. Because I have found others who tell me it's possible. It's possible to change your entire life. I'm doing that. It's possible to grow, even if you break your foot and bounce checks and have to deal with things that would have driven you to numb and obliviate yourself with booze just a few months ago. You will find yourself continuing to get up every day and living in just that day. Because I'm doing it. And if I can, then so can you.
For today, that means enforced rest: icing and elevating my foot and watching the rain outside while I try to find words and make sense of things.
So stay tuned, friends. I'm just getting started. Again.
Wednesday, September 28, 2016
Tuesday, August 30, 2016
The Legend of the Lost Ironing Board
There is a strange contraption that lives in my basement. It has only been unearthed from the storage room/laundry room/ the "don't try to shift any boxes or you may be crushed in an avalanche" room/ the "oh please, let there not be any wolf spiders lurking in the dark space behind the washer" room a handful of times this year.
It's called an ironing board. It's a symbol of my former life. A relic from a time when I used to actually iron clothes before appearing in public. Back when I used to iron the scrubs I wear to work, rather than grabbing them out of the clean clothes pile and looking at the wrinkles and telling myself maybe no one will notice.
It creaks and squeaks and protests when I unfold it, probably because it rarely gets unfolded anymore. I dragged it out the other day to touch up the kid's back to school outfits and they all ran screaming from the hideous screech it made. They came back to investigate, only to back away in wide-eyed horror at the clouds of steam rising from the snout of the iron as it sat there puffing like an ancient dragon. "WHAT IS THAT THING??" they cried.
I took a moment to pause since that sound triggered a whole big swirling whirlpool of memory and shame. I hadn't ironed since I got sober. That board and I have had a complicated history. When my drinking got really bad the last few years, I would wildly overcompensate to prove to myself how "high functioning" I was. I would often set up the ironing board after the kids were in bed and drink while I tackled a huge amount of ironing. It was one of those misguided, wine-fueled attempts at proving that I was still a good mother. And it was something that I stopped doing at all when my drinking started taking me down to my rock bottom day.
During this summer of learning to say no to some things and a lot of new "yeses"/safeguarding my sobriety as my first priority, there was zero ironing. It was one of those things I decided really didn't matter. I'd rather give kids my time and thoughtful words instead perfectly coordinated outfits and fake "put-togetherness".
There was something I used to notice whenever I saw pictures my husband has taken of them when I was working.. He sent snapshots of them eating a yummy dinner or at the park and yes, they may not have worn wearing perfectly matched outfits and that was some left-over ketchup on someone's face, but I would look at those cheeks, the sparkling eyes. The big scrunchy-faced smiles. They were so darn happy to be with their Dad, at the park or wherever. They were completely un-self conscious about how they looked. The were in the moment. And they were gorgeous to me. But I couldn't let go of overcompensating when I was with them, as though my kids' appearances were somehow a reflection of me. I could never relax completely, always feeling waves of guilt about being a drinking Mom washing over me. I perfected a fake cheerfulness, an over the top gritting my teeth creating perfect memories all while my brain was screaming for that next drink.
I'm still flawed and get it wrong a lot, but I don't have that desperation to prove anything anymore. That voice telling me I'm not good enough, not a good mother, a selfish person, a weak person still tries to creep in from time to time. But my brain is no longer pickled and so it can identify when my thoughts head that way and put a stop to it. Its an amazing thing when your voice of reason is no longer gurgling at the bottom of a bottle of wine.
The lost ironing board is perhaps a symbol of me finally coming in to my own . Because most of the time I still have no idea what I'm doing. I still wait for somebody to show up and say "ok, we know you are just faking this whole Responsible Mom of Three thing. Please stand here against the wall with your hands behind your back until a real grown up shows up to take over." I think that struggle; that feeling like a fraud was one of the things that really fueled my drinking. But as in so many other areas of life in new sobriety, I'm just trying to float in it gently, and stop reacting so much. Give myself the grace I would give a friend who is struggling with motherhood.
I will never do this perfectly. Every day brings its' challenges, triumphs and crushing moments. Things that worked yesterday suddenly don't work today. I mull, stew, think and plot. Some days I feel like I'm on some long, long, long version of Survivor where all I need to do is just OUTWIT, OUTLAST, OUTPLAY. And the stakes are high, but I'm tired of being driven by fear, worries about appearances and expectations. So I'm letting go of them.
Because ultimately, no matter what is going on, whatever mind-numbing repetitious "wash your hands, stop hitting, use your words, where are your shoes, say sorry, forgotten lunch, playground drama, phantom stomach ache three calls from the school nurse" kind of day I am faced with, sobriety is forcing me to prioritize. I must choose what will and won't matter. And I'm growing in confidence about those decisions as a sober, fully present mother. I honestly have no idea how I managed any of it all the years I was drinking. And I'm so grateful to be done with it. Because life has plenty of challenges in and of itself. The massive amounts of energy I used obsessing over drinking, recovering from drinking and feeling awful about drinking is mine again to use for living. And life is less frantic when you aren't constantly overcompensating and hiding a huge secret.
So going forward, there may days when we look like we climbed out of the laundry basket. And that's fine by me. There may be other things that will fall by the wayside as we continue on this journey.. but maybe don't hold your breath for the Legend of the Lost Steam Mop.
Because with two big dogs who sneak slobbery tennis balls into the house, a husband who sometimes forgets he's wearing muddy boots and kids with questionable snack-wrangling skills, I really need that thing.
It's called an ironing board. It's a symbol of my former life. A relic from a time when I used to actually iron clothes before appearing in public. Back when I used to iron the scrubs I wear to work, rather than grabbing them out of the clean clothes pile and looking at the wrinkles and telling myself maybe no one will notice.
It creaks and squeaks and protests when I unfold it, probably because it rarely gets unfolded anymore. I dragged it out the other day to touch up the kid's back to school outfits and they all ran screaming from the hideous screech it made. They came back to investigate, only to back away in wide-eyed horror at the clouds of steam rising from the snout of the iron as it sat there puffing like an ancient dragon. "WHAT IS THAT THING??" they cried.
I took a moment to pause since that sound triggered a whole big swirling whirlpool of memory and shame. I hadn't ironed since I got sober. That board and I have had a complicated history. When my drinking got really bad the last few years, I would wildly overcompensate to prove to myself how "high functioning" I was. I would often set up the ironing board after the kids were in bed and drink while I tackled a huge amount of ironing. It was one of those misguided, wine-fueled attempts at proving that I was still a good mother. And it was something that I stopped doing at all when my drinking started taking me down to my rock bottom day.
During this summer of learning to say no to some things and a lot of new "yeses"/safeguarding my sobriety as my first priority, there was zero ironing. It was one of those things I decided really didn't matter. I'd rather give kids my time and thoughtful words instead perfectly coordinated outfits and fake "put-togetherness".
There was something I used to notice whenever I saw pictures my husband has taken of them when I was working.. He sent snapshots of them eating a yummy dinner or at the park and yes, they may not have worn wearing perfectly matched outfits and that was some left-over ketchup on someone's face, but I would look at those cheeks, the sparkling eyes. The big scrunchy-faced smiles. They were so darn happy to be with their Dad, at the park or wherever. They were completely un-self conscious about how they looked. The were in the moment. And they were gorgeous to me. But I couldn't let go of overcompensating when I was with them, as though my kids' appearances were somehow a reflection of me. I could never relax completely, always feeling waves of guilt about being a drinking Mom washing over me. I perfected a fake cheerfulness, an over the top gritting my teeth creating perfect memories all while my brain was screaming for that next drink.
I'm still flawed and get it wrong a lot, but I don't have that desperation to prove anything anymore. That voice telling me I'm not good enough, not a good mother, a selfish person, a weak person still tries to creep in from time to time. But my brain is no longer pickled and so it can identify when my thoughts head that way and put a stop to it. Its an amazing thing when your voice of reason is no longer gurgling at the bottom of a bottle of wine.
The lost ironing board is perhaps a symbol of me finally coming in to my own . Because most of the time I still have no idea what I'm doing. I still wait for somebody to show up and say "ok, we know you are just faking this whole Responsible Mom of Three thing. Please stand here against the wall with your hands behind your back until a real grown up shows up to take over." I think that struggle; that feeling like a fraud was one of the things that really fueled my drinking. But as in so many other areas of life in new sobriety, I'm just trying to float in it gently, and stop reacting so much. Give myself the grace I would give a friend who is struggling with motherhood.
I will never do this perfectly. Every day brings its' challenges, triumphs and crushing moments. Things that worked yesterday suddenly don't work today. I mull, stew, think and plot. Some days I feel like I'm on some long, long, long version of Survivor where all I need to do is just OUTWIT, OUTLAST, OUTPLAY. And the stakes are high, but I'm tired of being driven by fear, worries about appearances and expectations. So I'm letting go of them.
Because ultimately, no matter what is going on, whatever mind-numbing repetitious "wash your hands, stop hitting, use your words, where are your shoes, say sorry, forgotten lunch, playground drama, phantom stomach ache three calls from the school nurse" kind of day I am faced with, sobriety is forcing me to prioritize. I must choose what will and won't matter. And I'm growing in confidence about those decisions as a sober, fully present mother. I honestly have no idea how I managed any of it all the years I was drinking. And I'm so grateful to be done with it. Because life has plenty of challenges in and of itself. The massive amounts of energy I used obsessing over drinking, recovering from drinking and feeling awful about drinking is mine again to use for living. And life is less frantic when you aren't constantly overcompensating and hiding a huge secret.
So going forward, there may days when we look like we climbed out of the laundry basket. And that's fine by me. There may be other things that will fall by the wayside as we continue on this journey.. but maybe don't hold your breath for the Legend of the Lost Steam Mop.
Because with two big dogs who sneak slobbery tennis balls into the house, a husband who sometimes forgets he's wearing muddy boots and kids with questionable snack-wrangling skills, I really need that thing.
Monday, August 15, 2016
Dispatch from the laundry room
Summer has been busy, finding me home with my three kids and trying to balance life while working nights in the ER. I've had this blog post bobbing around in my mind the last few weeks, like an iceberg gradually adding mass underneath the calm surface. And so today is the day I'm giving it life. Or trying to.
I remember waking up, not all that long ago, sitting on the side of my bed and wondering if I was actively dying. Chest tight, hard to catch my breath, waves of nausea. Dry mouth and bloodshot eyes. My soul hurt. All I could think about was when it was going to be time to drink again. My future only went that far. It hurt too much to think farther than that and if I could just get that first sip, the rest would fade away. Or I hoped it would.
Now, I wake up and sit on the side of my bed in the early hours and take an inventory. Weird twinge in my back from sleeping like a rock for eight consecutive hours, slightly sore muscles from yesterday's run. Notice my hungry belly; anticipate the first sip of dark, rich coffee. I think ahead to the next few weeks of being able to wake up lazy this way instead of to the clamoring alarm that shouts at me to get up and get going, move move move, in school-year mode.
With the end of summer looming, I have a million things I could be doing to be getting ready for back to school. Errands to run, projects around the house, weeds to pull. Actual school supply shopping. New sneakers for feet that have undoubtedly grown but are still enjoying being barefoot and filthy. But I'm not doing any of those things. Mostly, I'm just being a mom. And doing a ton of laundry.
Which brings me to the haiku I composed last night at 1 am while folding another giant load as I stayed up ridiculously late watching the Olympics:
The pile grows higher
Forget, restart endlessly
Wash, fold forever.
I'm not sure if it is the fact that my kids spend a lot of time outdoors or if they are just extra grubby or can't eat a meal without half of it landing in their laps, but I have been doing a ton of laundry this summer. And while I sit there watching it spinning in the last few minutes before I transfer it to the dryer, I appreciate the fact that I'm actually getting time to myself in the cool basement (with some kind of uncool wolf spiders but lets forget that for now) and I can take a moment to reflect on sobriety. Today marks 161 days of continuous non-drinking. Consecutive days where I have been retraining my brain to realize that just because an emotion surfaces, that's not a cue to drink. I've done this thousands of times in the last five months. And you know what? My slobbery brain is learning that an emotion is just that: not a ringing bell telling me to go pour a drink and numb out. Honestly, when confronted with tough things lately, I actually think how to handle it, which is probably what people have been doing for thousands of years without having to blog about it but oh well, I'm a slow learner. These days a drink is about 29th on my list of things that will "fix" or get me through the next few minutes, hours, days... And that is the miracle of sobriety in a nutshell. I couldn't have imagined even five seconds at the beginning where I wasn't constantly thinking about drinking. And now some whole entire days pass where I haven't thought once about drinking. I'm busy living. And folding laundry.
But, all this laundry has me thinking about how early sobriety is a lot like a heavy duty wash cycle. You dive in, not knowing what to expect, and the water starts rising and you think "ok. I can do this. I'm a little damp but I'm floating." Then the agitating part starts; you spin and churn and can't tell what side is up and start getting water up your nose and you are being blinded by soapsuds that sting and burn and it just all feels like too much and all you can think about is just climbing the hell out of the washer and getting back to your regular dirty, smelly and worn state. It doesn't seem worth it when you keep spinning and getting pushed down over and over and you aren't sure when it will end.
Well, I can tell you that eventually it stops. The spinning dies down, the motor cools and you are lying there, wet and wrung out... but clean. It's quiet. You made it. For me that phase was right at about 80 days without alcohol. At that point, I thought, hmm... maybe I'm ready to try the dryer now, (the real work of sobriety) and you begin to feel warm on the inside. You start glowing literally and metaphorically. Your healing brain starts to smooth out the rumpled and wrinkly parts. And then, almost without realizing it, you start thinking about what it might be like to really go the distance and withstand the heat of the iron and get your soul and body in tip top shape. And some days this seems like a lot of work and other days it comes easily. Depends on the day.
Still with me on this metaphor? Well, if you drink during the early period where you are sloshing around... It's like you open the lid on the washer mid-cycle and dump a gallon of mud in. Add a few greasy wrenches, some musty sneakers and a bag of rocks and then close the lid and let the cycle finish. Not only are you not clean at the end, but you are beat up and filthy and think you never want to go through that again because you feel worse than when you started. There is nothing appealing about even thinking about climbing back in for a do-over. That was me for years.
Consecutive days. That's the key to allowing your brain time to reset and heal. Not three days here, eleven days there, drink and then start over. That's just some kind of awful torture where you leave your brain more confused than when it started. It takes full commitment to putting as much distance between the drinking and the new you. And that can be done even when you have kids climbing all over you, a job, a nutty husband and a busy life. It just means taking each decision as it comes. Being all in. Declaring deep down with complete conviction that booze just isn't an option anymore. Eventually your brain gets the message. And when it does, it's pretty great.
I had a moment at work the other week when a patient came in with a dislocated jaw. We were kind enough to put it back and I was giving her discharge instructions and noticing how uncomfortable she was and she sadly told me she was disappointed because the next day was her birthday. And I said "well, looks like a smoothie with a candle in it for you." And she snorted and said through her giant ice pack: " More like a bucket of margaritas with a straw." And BLAM. That was it, the moment I realized that I would have said the same thing five months ago and it hadn't even crossed my mind that drinking was an option in that scenario. And I got kind of ridiculously giddy and had to share it with some sober friends. Perhaps that's how normies feel. I will never know because I'm not one. But still, it goes to show that the brain CAN be re-wired. We can move from our obsession with booze to being at peace. And that was something I could not have even imagined when I first quit.
My early attempts at re-training my brain made me feel about as competent as the Filipino Olympic diving team. (If you are early to sobriety and suffering from insomnia like I did, I highly recommend you google this. Just because. You're welcome) The beginning days of sobriety where you are being forced to feel your actual feelings, sit with your unfiltered, raw thoughts is excruciating. It's like being stuck in permanent fight or flight, jangly nerves and overload when you are forced to plug in for the first time, possibly ever. I read a research study where subjects chose to be subjected to ten minutes of electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts for ten minutes. That's our numb-out, tune-out, check out world for you. And for alcoholics, it's probably worse since we were the masters at not feeling anything. But adding day after day, moment after moment, where drinking isn't an option, my synapses are stretching and re-wiring. I can sit in a feeling and then it passes. I can examine an unpleasant memory and not fall to pieces. And that is so encouraging. I am finally becoming one of those people I used to look up to... the ones further up the mountains who kept shouting down through the clouds: "It gets better! Keep going! The view up here is incredible." Because it really is.
So, we have two weeks left before my minions return to school. Everywhere I go, I get "the look" (which is half bemusement and half relief it's not them) as people survey my three spirited kids and say "I bet you are really ready for them to go back." And I kind of smile wistfully and say "not really." Because part of me is. It's been a long summer of sobriety and motherhood. Ups and downs and false starts. But I've also been fully engaged for the first time in years and so I'm not quite ready to let go of them, and go back to only seeing them in the afternoons when they've given their best to their teacher and friends and have only dregs of crankiness and homework resistance left for me. Which is ok. I am working to accept that I wasted so many years either giving them my dregs, or wildly overcompensating. I still have a lot of guilt about that. But, I want to squeeze out every last ounce of summer time we have... Which doesn't mean that they don't drive me absolutely nuts some days with the squabbling and messes and filthy sneakers and tween drama and ludicrous battles over Minecraft and groans of "I'm borrred." I have had plenty of moments where all the noise is just overwhelming and I want to yell " Stop being ungrateful little jerks, I'm trying to cherish you for crying out loud!!"
Last week we got a tough diagnosis for my five year old daughter. Life as we know it is probably going to change in ways we can't even imagine. And it's scary and unknown and I kiss my daughter's head and thank God that I'm sober and can be there for her as we navigate this new world of tests and needles and procedures. My first thought when we got the call wasn't that I needed a drink. I cried and felt honest, real sadness. Which I let flow over me, and then I got on with formulating a plan for how we would support and hold her up and walk into this new chapter. This would have been impossible five months ago.
So, for you newbies who are in the first days of trying sobriety on for size. You know your time drinking needs to be done. And maybe you are having some false starts. I think we all did. But let me be yet another voice in the invisible army that is doing this with you: Be encouraged. It does in fact get better. So much better that I won't even spoil it for you. Because you will get to that place and you will notice one day that your heart isn't in a crumpled ball of pain, your breath comes easy, you actually feel GOOD. And quite possibly, nothing "tangible" will have changed. You will still have an asshole boss, money troubles, a painful marriage, maybe health problems or a lack of support. But everything will feel different. Because you will be different.
And so, that's all for now. I'm going to keep on plugging.
Yours with love, signing out from the top of Mount Laundry.
I remember waking up, not all that long ago, sitting on the side of my bed and wondering if I was actively dying. Chest tight, hard to catch my breath, waves of nausea. Dry mouth and bloodshot eyes. My soul hurt. All I could think about was when it was going to be time to drink again. My future only went that far. It hurt too much to think farther than that and if I could just get that first sip, the rest would fade away. Or I hoped it would.
Now, I wake up and sit on the side of my bed in the early hours and take an inventory. Weird twinge in my back from sleeping like a rock for eight consecutive hours, slightly sore muscles from yesterday's run. Notice my hungry belly; anticipate the first sip of dark, rich coffee. I think ahead to the next few weeks of being able to wake up lazy this way instead of to the clamoring alarm that shouts at me to get up and get going, move move move, in school-year mode.
With the end of summer looming, I have a million things I could be doing to be getting ready for back to school. Errands to run, projects around the house, weeds to pull. Actual school supply shopping. New sneakers for feet that have undoubtedly grown but are still enjoying being barefoot and filthy. But I'm not doing any of those things. Mostly, I'm just being a mom. And doing a ton of laundry.
Which brings me to the haiku I composed last night at 1 am while folding another giant load as I stayed up ridiculously late watching the Olympics:
The pile grows higher
Forget, restart endlessly
Wash, fold forever.
I'm not sure if it is the fact that my kids spend a lot of time outdoors or if they are just extra grubby or can't eat a meal without half of it landing in their laps, but I have been doing a ton of laundry this summer. And while I sit there watching it spinning in the last few minutes before I transfer it to the dryer, I appreciate the fact that I'm actually getting time to myself in the cool basement (with some kind of uncool wolf spiders but lets forget that for now) and I can take a moment to reflect on sobriety. Today marks 161 days of continuous non-drinking. Consecutive days where I have been retraining my brain to realize that just because an emotion surfaces, that's not a cue to drink. I've done this thousands of times in the last five months. And you know what? My slobbery brain is learning that an emotion is just that: not a ringing bell telling me to go pour a drink and numb out. Honestly, when confronted with tough things lately, I actually think how to handle it, which is probably what people have been doing for thousands of years without having to blog about it but oh well, I'm a slow learner. These days a drink is about 29th on my list of things that will "fix" or get me through the next few minutes, hours, days... And that is the miracle of sobriety in a nutshell. I couldn't have imagined even five seconds at the beginning where I wasn't constantly thinking about drinking. And now some whole entire days pass where I haven't thought once about drinking. I'm busy living. And folding laundry.
But, all this laundry has me thinking about how early sobriety is a lot like a heavy duty wash cycle. You dive in, not knowing what to expect, and the water starts rising and you think "ok. I can do this. I'm a little damp but I'm floating." Then the agitating part starts; you spin and churn and can't tell what side is up and start getting water up your nose and you are being blinded by soapsuds that sting and burn and it just all feels like too much and all you can think about is just climbing the hell out of the washer and getting back to your regular dirty, smelly and worn state. It doesn't seem worth it when you keep spinning and getting pushed down over and over and you aren't sure when it will end.
Well, I can tell you that eventually it stops. The spinning dies down, the motor cools and you are lying there, wet and wrung out... but clean. It's quiet. You made it. For me that phase was right at about 80 days without alcohol. At that point, I thought, hmm... maybe I'm ready to try the dryer now, (the real work of sobriety) and you begin to feel warm on the inside. You start glowing literally and metaphorically. Your healing brain starts to smooth out the rumpled and wrinkly parts. And then, almost without realizing it, you start thinking about what it might be like to really go the distance and withstand the heat of the iron and get your soul and body in tip top shape. And some days this seems like a lot of work and other days it comes easily. Depends on the day.
Still with me on this metaphor? Well, if you drink during the early period where you are sloshing around... It's like you open the lid on the washer mid-cycle and dump a gallon of mud in. Add a few greasy wrenches, some musty sneakers and a bag of rocks and then close the lid and let the cycle finish. Not only are you not clean at the end, but you are beat up and filthy and think you never want to go through that again because you feel worse than when you started. There is nothing appealing about even thinking about climbing back in for a do-over. That was me for years.
Consecutive days. That's the key to allowing your brain time to reset and heal. Not three days here, eleven days there, drink and then start over. That's just some kind of awful torture where you leave your brain more confused than when it started. It takes full commitment to putting as much distance between the drinking and the new you. And that can be done even when you have kids climbing all over you, a job, a nutty husband and a busy life. It just means taking each decision as it comes. Being all in. Declaring deep down with complete conviction that booze just isn't an option anymore. Eventually your brain gets the message. And when it does, it's pretty great.
I had a moment at work the other week when a patient came in with a dislocated jaw. We were kind enough to put it back and I was giving her discharge instructions and noticing how uncomfortable she was and she sadly told me she was disappointed because the next day was her birthday. And I said "well, looks like a smoothie with a candle in it for you." And she snorted and said through her giant ice pack: " More like a bucket of margaritas with a straw." And BLAM. That was it, the moment I realized that I would have said the same thing five months ago and it hadn't even crossed my mind that drinking was an option in that scenario. And I got kind of ridiculously giddy and had to share it with some sober friends. Perhaps that's how normies feel. I will never know because I'm not one. But still, it goes to show that the brain CAN be re-wired. We can move from our obsession with booze to being at peace. And that was something I could not have even imagined when I first quit.
My early attempts at re-training my brain made me feel about as competent as the Filipino Olympic diving team. (If you are early to sobriety and suffering from insomnia like I did, I highly recommend you google this. Just because. You're welcome) The beginning days of sobriety where you are being forced to feel your actual feelings, sit with your unfiltered, raw thoughts is excruciating. It's like being stuck in permanent fight or flight, jangly nerves and overload when you are forced to plug in for the first time, possibly ever. I read a research study where subjects chose to be subjected to ten minutes of electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts for ten minutes. That's our numb-out, tune-out, check out world for you. And for alcoholics, it's probably worse since we were the masters at not feeling anything. But adding day after day, moment after moment, where drinking isn't an option, my synapses are stretching and re-wiring. I can sit in a feeling and then it passes. I can examine an unpleasant memory and not fall to pieces. And that is so encouraging. I am finally becoming one of those people I used to look up to... the ones further up the mountains who kept shouting down through the clouds: "It gets better! Keep going! The view up here is incredible." Because it really is.
So, we have two weeks left before my minions return to school. Everywhere I go, I get "the look" (which is half bemusement and half relief it's not them) as people survey my three spirited kids and say "I bet you are really ready for them to go back." And I kind of smile wistfully and say "not really." Because part of me is. It's been a long summer of sobriety and motherhood. Ups and downs and false starts. But I've also been fully engaged for the first time in years and so I'm not quite ready to let go of them, and go back to only seeing them in the afternoons when they've given their best to their teacher and friends and have only dregs of crankiness and homework resistance left for me. Which is ok. I am working to accept that I wasted so many years either giving them my dregs, or wildly overcompensating. I still have a lot of guilt about that. But, I want to squeeze out every last ounce of summer time we have... Which doesn't mean that they don't drive me absolutely nuts some days with the squabbling and messes and filthy sneakers and tween drama and ludicrous battles over Minecraft and groans of "I'm borrred." I have had plenty of moments where all the noise is just overwhelming and I want to yell " Stop being ungrateful little jerks, I'm trying to cherish you for crying out loud!!"
Last week we got a tough diagnosis for my five year old daughter. Life as we know it is probably going to change in ways we can't even imagine. And it's scary and unknown and I kiss my daughter's head and thank God that I'm sober and can be there for her as we navigate this new world of tests and needles and procedures. My first thought when we got the call wasn't that I needed a drink. I cried and felt honest, real sadness. Which I let flow over me, and then I got on with formulating a plan for how we would support and hold her up and walk into this new chapter. This would have been impossible five months ago.
So, for you newbies who are in the first days of trying sobriety on for size. You know your time drinking needs to be done. And maybe you are having some false starts. I think we all did. But let me be yet another voice in the invisible army that is doing this with you: Be encouraged. It does in fact get better. So much better that I won't even spoil it for you. Because you will get to that place and you will notice one day that your heart isn't in a crumpled ball of pain, your breath comes easy, you actually feel GOOD. And quite possibly, nothing "tangible" will have changed. You will still have an asshole boss, money troubles, a painful marriage, maybe health problems or a lack of support. But everything will feel different. Because you will be different.
And so, that's all for now. I'm going to keep on plugging.
Yours with love, signing out from the top of Mount Laundry.
Friday, July 8, 2016
Ugly-Beautiful
I read a post the other day about "sobriety bloggers" and how a lot of them seem to run out of gas at the 3-4 month mark, and try to return to the nightmare of moderating or just disappear altogether from the blogosphere because they have fallen back into active drinking.
Well, I haven't done any of those things. Yesterday was four months sober. But as I suspected it would with all of my kids being home for summer, it's been rough trying to continue my laser-like focus on sobriety. Navel gazing and quiet contemplation of my co-dependent ways have taken a back seat to the urgent needs of three small children. Which is understandable. After our vacation, my two oldest kids plunged right into a week of day camps and I spent the week driving to and from opposite sides of the county and hanging out with my five year old in between picking up and dropping off the other two and dodging severe thunderstorms. I didn't realize how much energy my first sober vacation had taken from me. Or how dependent I had become on the hour or two of quiet when they were all in school when I could write or read or go for a run. Most nights have found me running after nine pm, when it's just me and the fireflies glinting in the trees, punctuated by me suddenly flailing to wipe a spider web from my face and praying that the spider isn't crawling somewhere on me. The other night I almost hit a deer. I came around the corner and there he was, standing gazing at the pond. I freaked him out and he ran away, with me envious of his wild speed as I continued to trudge under moonlight. I guess I'm burning off the crazy. I'm not sure it's working. I read my support group emails in the wee hours and use my smart phone as a light to read books about recovery while my husband snores and my kids have gone to bed and I steal time from sleep to do the work. It's not ideal but it's something.
Two weekends ago was our big neighborhood party that in years past has always marked the beginning of summer. Slip and slide and pool for the kids and volleyball and yard games for the adults and booze everywhere. I woke up the day of the party feeling low energy, and having zero desire to be around a lot of people. I expressed this to my husband and I told him that I was going to go but that I might need to leave early. I got the kids dressed, sunblocked and pool ready and then decided to take my time getting showered and dressed and walk to the party, which is about a mile away on roads within our neighborhood. I thought having time to think and unwind might put me in a better frame of mind. I got there and everyone was drinking. No one was really watching the kids in the pool so my paranoid ER nurse self plunked down with my bottled water and watched about 20 kids as they were swimming. It was blazingly hot, and try as might, I just didn't want to be there. My son hit his head on the slip and slide and needed to lie quietly with his head on my lap in a shady spot with some ice and recover his dignity. He finally rallied and when we rejoined the party, all the other moms were doing shots and drinking margaritas while floating in the pool in their bikinis and I just felt like the sweaty, grumpy odd girl out. Reaching into the cooler for water and brushing past glowing ice-cold wine bottles every time just got to be tortuous. I ended up leaving early and came home and immediately started thinking that I need to just re-vamp my entire social circle or it's going to be a lifetime of miserable parties where I feel like an awkward stick in the mud who ends up watching everyone's kids. Not helpfully, my husband who had been drinking and playing volleyball and oblivious to the fact that we had three kids at the party had the balls to tell me that I am miserable now I'm sober. Gee, thanks. Because going someplace I felt uncomfortable going in the first place and trying to have a good attitude and be in the moment as much as possible wasn't hard at all.
I sat on my bed and stared at the wall for a while and had my first fleeting thought along the lines of "might as well drink if everyone thinks I'm boring and miserable now." And I had an actual, physical response to that thought where I felt nauseous and said out loud. "oh, there you are, just waiting for your way back in, huh?" And there it was, the moment when SH#T JUST GOT REAL. The first few months were all about not drinking and triumphs like I was at the high jump and they kept raising the bar and I kept surprising myself when soaring over what seemed like impossible heights. And then I jumped and smacked right into the bar, landing on my back and knocking the wind out of myself. Because not drinking is just the start of it.
I know I'm not the only alcoholic in the world who struggles with excess, boundaries, extremes, always pushing, pushing, pushing. So it's really not a surprise that I overdid it in taking on boozy scenarios in early sobriety. Like a test. Like I could breezily say "oh, it doesn't bother me if you drink. I'm fine." Except I'm not. I hate that everyone is drinking. I hate that there was a pool full of kids with no supervision. I hate that I was left out because I wasn't doing poolside shots. I hate that I have not one single sober friend in real life. I hate that all of my good intentions and hard work are boiled down to me just being no fun and miserable now. I hate that my disease takes all of these feelings and tries to convince me that I should just start drinking again.
Two days after the party, my parents arrived for a week-long visit. Because they only see us once or twice a year, there is usually immense pressure to be the perfect hostess, make lasting grandparent memories, go fun places, etc. This year, I cleaned up within reason, planned very simple non-gourmet meals and didn't go overboard and neurotic in trying to appear perfect. Which is a huge (HUGE) step for me. My parents have always had standards that I could never meet and in somehow not trying to meet them, and in just being myself it ended up being a relaxed, natural and meaningful visit. The kids enjoyed just playing games and doing puzzles and swimming in the pool and going for walks. We didn't do any giant day trips. We ate crabs on the deck. I ended up having an opportunity to tell them that I'm an alcoholic and was met with understanding and compassion. And pride. Which shocked me. But if we had done our normal overscheduled, cram as many happy memories into five days routine, there wouldn't have been the quiet moment when my dad asked me "are you training to be on American Ninja or something? You look great and something has changed" which segued into a long talk about the last few years and sobriety and what I'm learning. My parents both shared times of deep loss and depression and teared up as I told them how low I had gotten. They hugged me and told me they were proud.
So, in choosing different things, in learning to go with my gut instincts, I am navigating the real hard parts of this journey. Because it really is no joke. The pink cloud has blown away and the voice is like a jackhammer in the background of my thoughts. For a while it was quiet. It was peaceful. And now I am heading steeply uphill with no idea what lies at the top. But I know deep down that it's still better than the nightmare that drinking had become. I told a friend it's like the first 100 days or so it was like being at basecamp on Everest. I'm acclimating to low oxygen, getting my body used to a new reality which in this case isn't altitude but being alcohol free. But now I've left the safe place behind and I'm climbing uphill, uphill, uphill and my lungs are burning and my muscles are protesting and every step I hear a voice just saying "give up. This isn't worth it. Even your kids say you aren't fun now. You don't need to go so deep into this. You can drink again now that you know why you did. You can just change those things and manage your stress better." And with the next trudging step forward I say "No. I want this. I'm not going back."
Step. "Just quit". Step. "No."
So that's where I am right now. I am trying to make huge changes. In the midst of the demands of motherhood and life and having all my kids home and feeling like I'm on permanent overload. My ADHD has my brain feeling like a Labrador and someone just threw two thousand tennis balls.
But I know what I want. I want the vista at the top of this mountain. And I'm not stopping until I get there.
What is making this possible is the new friends that I've found in this journey. They may live hundreds of miles away, but they are in pocket, just an email or a text away. They get it. We can talk about all the FEEELINGS. And how we struggle with how to handle the feelings that are hard to face. The anger, the pissiness, the lack of "me" time as a mom of small kids, the straight up blah parts of this. Giving ourselves permission to not just be shiny happy sober people all the time. Some days totally suck. We see things in ourselves and our children and our partners that we feel responsible for. Things we want to run from. Unweaving all of this is exhausting. And some days we are just mad and it's not pretty and we have to reach out or drown. But while I float up to my eyeballs in sadness and regret some days, I have other voices that are louder than the one in the background. They tell me it's ok. It's ok not to love every part of this. It's ok to be mad, disappointed, petty, selfish, overwhelmed. And it's ok to be stupidly happy over a sunset or something cute that my kids did. It's ok to be annoyed when my kids steal my La Croix water and then leave it sitting around unfinished. It's ok in that moment to be a little like Gollum hissing "my pressshusss."
So many of us are black and white thinkers. Things are either good or bad. Sober life; life unbuffered by the numbing effects of alcohol feels wrong at first. The rawness of opposing emotions can be overwhelming when we have spent our whole lives labeling them as "acceptable" or "not acceptable". We spend so much time trying to wrap it up in perfection that we miss the beauty in the ugliness. In not running from the ugly parts of ourselves, in just acknowledging them as just a part and not the whole, those things lose power. Yes, I have moments where I am not patient, I am monstrously selfish, I am hot-tempered and short-sighted. But I also have moments where I am wise, loving, self-sacrificing, long-viewed. The trick is to stop running from the moments when I'm the former. Just allow myself to be angry or whatever.
So, that's where I am. My house is a mess. My kids are either adorable or squabbling. I run every night in the company of bats. My marriage is still teetering on the edge of something. My 11 year old was invited to a sleepover by her 5 year old sister with all of their American Girl dolls and I have no idea how many more years are left of that sweet connection. My son has made his first real friend and he's seven. I'm terrified that he's going to get crushed or his quirkiness will be too much. I have a snake living in my garden that I've named Winifred. My minivan needs new brakes and I think I need a new job. My coffee intake has risen to an alarming level.
There are seismic shifts going on under my surface that no one can see.
And in all of it, I'm trying to embrace the German idea of " hasslich schon". Ugly beautiful. Because that sums up life perfectly right now.
Well, I haven't done any of those things. Yesterday was four months sober. But as I suspected it would with all of my kids being home for summer, it's been rough trying to continue my laser-like focus on sobriety. Navel gazing and quiet contemplation of my co-dependent ways have taken a back seat to the urgent needs of three small children. Which is understandable. After our vacation, my two oldest kids plunged right into a week of day camps and I spent the week driving to and from opposite sides of the county and hanging out with my five year old in between picking up and dropping off the other two and dodging severe thunderstorms. I didn't realize how much energy my first sober vacation had taken from me. Or how dependent I had become on the hour or two of quiet when they were all in school when I could write or read or go for a run. Most nights have found me running after nine pm, when it's just me and the fireflies glinting in the trees, punctuated by me suddenly flailing to wipe a spider web from my face and praying that the spider isn't crawling somewhere on me. The other night I almost hit a deer. I came around the corner and there he was, standing gazing at the pond. I freaked him out and he ran away, with me envious of his wild speed as I continued to trudge under moonlight. I guess I'm burning off the crazy. I'm not sure it's working. I read my support group emails in the wee hours and use my smart phone as a light to read books about recovery while my husband snores and my kids have gone to bed and I steal time from sleep to do the work. It's not ideal but it's something.
Two weekends ago was our big neighborhood party that in years past has always marked the beginning of summer. Slip and slide and pool for the kids and volleyball and yard games for the adults and booze everywhere. I woke up the day of the party feeling low energy, and having zero desire to be around a lot of people. I expressed this to my husband and I told him that I was going to go but that I might need to leave early. I got the kids dressed, sunblocked and pool ready and then decided to take my time getting showered and dressed and walk to the party, which is about a mile away on roads within our neighborhood. I thought having time to think and unwind might put me in a better frame of mind. I got there and everyone was drinking. No one was really watching the kids in the pool so my paranoid ER nurse self plunked down with my bottled water and watched about 20 kids as they were swimming. It was blazingly hot, and try as might, I just didn't want to be there. My son hit his head on the slip and slide and needed to lie quietly with his head on my lap in a shady spot with some ice and recover his dignity. He finally rallied and when we rejoined the party, all the other moms were doing shots and drinking margaritas while floating in the pool in their bikinis and I just felt like the sweaty, grumpy odd girl out. Reaching into the cooler for water and brushing past glowing ice-cold wine bottles every time just got to be tortuous. I ended up leaving early and came home and immediately started thinking that I need to just re-vamp my entire social circle or it's going to be a lifetime of miserable parties where I feel like an awkward stick in the mud who ends up watching everyone's kids. Not helpfully, my husband who had been drinking and playing volleyball and oblivious to the fact that we had three kids at the party had the balls to tell me that I am miserable now I'm sober. Gee, thanks. Because going someplace I felt uncomfortable going in the first place and trying to have a good attitude and be in the moment as much as possible wasn't hard at all.
I sat on my bed and stared at the wall for a while and had my first fleeting thought along the lines of "might as well drink if everyone thinks I'm boring and miserable now." And I had an actual, physical response to that thought where I felt nauseous and said out loud. "oh, there you are, just waiting for your way back in, huh?" And there it was, the moment when SH#T JUST GOT REAL. The first few months were all about not drinking and triumphs like I was at the high jump and they kept raising the bar and I kept surprising myself when soaring over what seemed like impossible heights. And then I jumped and smacked right into the bar, landing on my back and knocking the wind out of myself. Because not drinking is just the start of it.
I know I'm not the only alcoholic in the world who struggles with excess, boundaries, extremes, always pushing, pushing, pushing. So it's really not a surprise that I overdid it in taking on boozy scenarios in early sobriety. Like a test. Like I could breezily say "oh, it doesn't bother me if you drink. I'm fine." Except I'm not. I hate that everyone is drinking. I hate that there was a pool full of kids with no supervision. I hate that I was left out because I wasn't doing poolside shots. I hate that I have not one single sober friend in real life. I hate that all of my good intentions and hard work are boiled down to me just being no fun and miserable now. I hate that my disease takes all of these feelings and tries to convince me that I should just start drinking again.
Two days after the party, my parents arrived for a week-long visit. Because they only see us once or twice a year, there is usually immense pressure to be the perfect hostess, make lasting grandparent memories, go fun places, etc. This year, I cleaned up within reason, planned very simple non-gourmet meals and didn't go overboard and neurotic in trying to appear perfect. Which is a huge (HUGE) step for me. My parents have always had standards that I could never meet and in somehow not trying to meet them, and in just being myself it ended up being a relaxed, natural and meaningful visit. The kids enjoyed just playing games and doing puzzles and swimming in the pool and going for walks. We didn't do any giant day trips. We ate crabs on the deck. I ended up having an opportunity to tell them that I'm an alcoholic and was met with understanding and compassion. And pride. Which shocked me. But if we had done our normal overscheduled, cram as many happy memories into five days routine, there wouldn't have been the quiet moment when my dad asked me "are you training to be on American Ninja or something? You look great and something has changed" which segued into a long talk about the last few years and sobriety and what I'm learning. My parents both shared times of deep loss and depression and teared up as I told them how low I had gotten. They hugged me and told me they were proud.
So, in choosing different things, in learning to go with my gut instincts, I am navigating the real hard parts of this journey. Because it really is no joke. The pink cloud has blown away and the voice is like a jackhammer in the background of my thoughts. For a while it was quiet. It was peaceful. And now I am heading steeply uphill with no idea what lies at the top. But I know deep down that it's still better than the nightmare that drinking had become. I told a friend it's like the first 100 days or so it was like being at basecamp on Everest. I'm acclimating to low oxygen, getting my body used to a new reality which in this case isn't altitude but being alcohol free. But now I've left the safe place behind and I'm climbing uphill, uphill, uphill and my lungs are burning and my muscles are protesting and every step I hear a voice just saying "give up. This isn't worth it. Even your kids say you aren't fun now. You don't need to go so deep into this. You can drink again now that you know why you did. You can just change those things and manage your stress better." And with the next trudging step forward I say "No. I want this. I'm not going back."
Step. "Just quit". Step. "No."
So that's where I am right now. I am trying to make huge changes. In the midst of the demands of motherhood and life and having all my kids home and feeling like I'm on permanent overload. My ADHD has my brain feeling like a Labrador and someone just threw two thousand tennis balls.
But I know what I want. I want the vista at the top of this mountain. And I'm not stopping until I get there.
What is making this possible is the new friends that I've found in this journey. They may live hundreds of miles away, but they are in pocket, just an email or a text away. They get it. We can talk about all the FEEELINGS. And how we struggle with how to handle the feelings that are hard to face. The anger, the pissiness, the lack of "me" time as a mom of small kids, the straight up blah parts of this. Giving ourselves permission to not just be shiny happy sober people all the time. Some days totally suck. We see things in ourselves and our children and our partners that we feel responsible for. Things we want to run from. Unweaving all of this is exhausting. And some days we are just mad and it's not pretty and we have to reach out or drown. But while I float up to my eyeballs in sadness and regret some days, I have other voices that are louder than the one in the background. They tell me it's ok. It's ok not to love every part of this. It's ok to be mad, disappointed, petty, selfish, overwhelmed. And it's ok to be stupidly happy over a sunset or something cute that my kids did. It's ok to be annoyed when my kids steal my La Croix water and then leave it sitting around unfinished. It's ok in that moment to be a little like Gollum hissing "my pressshusss."
So many of us are black and white thinkers. Things are either good or bad. Sober life; life unbuffered by the numbing effects of alcohol feels wrong at first. The rawness of opposing emotions can be overwhelming when we have spent our whole lives labeling them as "acceptable" or "not acceptable". We spend so much time trying to wrap it up in perfection that we miss the beauty in the ugliness. In not running from the ugly parts of ourselves, in just acknowledging them as just a part and not the whole, those things lose power. Yes, I have moments where I am not patient, I am monstrously selfish, I am hot-tempered and short-sighted. But I also have moments where I am wise, loving, self-sacrificing, long-viewed. The trick is to stop running from the moments when I'm the former. Just allow myself to be angry or whatever.
So, that's where I am. My house is a mess. My kids are either adorable or squabbling. I run every night in the company of bats. My marriage is still teetering on the edge of something. My 11 year old was invited to a sleepover by her 5 year old sister with all of their American Girl dolls and I have no idea how many more years are left of that sweet connection. My son has made his first real friend and he's seven. I'm terrified that he's going to get crushed or his quirkiness will be too much. I have a snake living in my garden that I've named Winifred. My minivan needs new brakes and I think I need a new job. My coffee intake has risen to an alarming level.
There are seismic shifts going on under my surface that no one can see.
And in all of it, I'm trying to embrace the German idea of " hasslich schon". Ugly beautiful. Because that sums up life perfectly right now.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Shucking a million oysters ain't gonna do it
Things are a little tangled in my head today. I'm tired after a long shift in the ER last night, and I'm recognizing that being sleep deprived really is a trigger for bad thinking on my part. So, I see this funk as a sign that it's time to write some of it out. To be honest, there are some days when I wish I didn't have to fight so hard or make myself do the work. I want to relax and just take the day off. But, there are no days off. Which seems unfair, but actually, with the right perspective it is really awesome. I don't skip days where I make my health, my life a priority. It sounds better when I reframe it that way. It becomes a privilege and not a burden.
There will always be that voice in my head that wants to think "you're better now. You can stop struggling so hard. You could probably moderate now" The same voice that wants me to revert to isolating, being headstrong and obstinate. Doing things the old way instead of the new.
So, with that in mind, allow me to introduce the frog that I met the other morning in my pool:
There will always be that voice in my head that wants to think "you're better now. You can stop struggling so hard. You could probably moderate now" The same voice that wants me to revert to isolating, being headstrong and obstinate. Doing things the old way instead of the new.
So, with that in mind, allow me to introduce the frog that I met the other morning in my pool:
He looks innocent enough.
But, this, ladies and gentleman is the most "I do what I want" amphibian I have ever come across. He was gleefully swimming all over, diving down and skirting away from attempts to catch him in my net and I swear if he could have given me the finger, he would have (actually, in the picture above I think he may be). He simply had no idea that if he kept on swimming in the chlorinated water that eventually, he would drown. There was no way to climb out without help. He couldn't see it.
After about ten minutes, I finally got him out. Exhausted from his attempts to elude me, he sat for a minute on the warm concrete where I had gently deposited him. And then, he HOPPED RIGHT BACK IN to the pool. Where we then had another game of chase and he did everything he could to avoid my attempts to catch him and save him from himself. I finally got him and carried him out to my garden, far from the pool and gave him a stern lecture about not even thinking about hopping his obstinate butt back into danger.
Folks, this is what we do when we are in denial. We have this idea that somehow we will be the exception. Sure, other people who drink as much as I was end up dying way too early. But I'm special. I'll be that exception. I'll be like that 100 year old person who smokes unfiltered cigarettes and eats bacon and drinks Jack Daniels all day every day and somehow defies the odds. We stay cocky and stubborn, even when we start to suspect that we are totally screwed if we don't stop.
When the truth is, I'll end up a dead frog floating if I don't stop swimming in a pool of alcohol and disordered thinking. So many people are stuck in endless day ones, afraid to accept the help of others who are holding out the net, and instead keep diving down deep away from what looks scary but is actually salvation. Humility. Admitting the need for help. It's tough. But it's necessary.
So I have to remind myself daily: Don't be this frog.
Which in a round about way brings me to oysters.
Stay with me.
So, this past week I watched a movie called "Burnt." It probably got lambasted by the critics for being a little one-note. But the addict in me really resonated with the main character, played by Bradley Cooper (a real life alkie in recovery). He's a dry drunk, a chef who fell from grace and lost his restaurant due to his addictions to drugs and alcohol. It is written as a redemption story; how he attempts to rebuild his reputation and his life (without actually truly making reparations for the things he did when drinking or embracing specific principles). At the beginning of the movie, he's in New Orleans "doing penance" by completing his goal of shucking a million oysters. He's not working a program, is still woefully shortsighted and unaware of how his actions have hurt others. He's a human wrecking ball, and while he announces that he's been sober for two years, 2 weeks and six days at the beginning of his quest to return to greatness as a chef, he's an untreated alcoholic through and through. He's a self absorbed loner, a bully, volatile, and short-sighted. He just doesn't drink or do drugs.
Ultimately, through loss and failure, and from relapsing (which comes as no surprise) he gradually learns to accept community, help and belonging as key to healing and moving on. Which made it satisfying to me as a newbie in recovery (and lots of beautiful food which just makes me happy). But I think the thing that sticks with me is how this movie made me ponder what it means to not just stop drinking but create a meaningful life. Or as my friend in my online sobriety group put it:"Staying meaningfully sober is different than just quitting drinking.. Just shucking a million oysters ain't gonna do it." Outward actions without inward changes ultimately are meaningless. We can not drink and white knuckle and be miserable. Or we can not drink, grow, reach out for help and give it in return.
Some days we are the frog, and other days we are the net. But we don't go it alone.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
There and back again
So, my first sober beach vacation is done.
This is the first year in a lot of years that we haven't packed up kit and caboodle for the journey south to the Outer Banks. We usually rent a big old house, and there a lot of days spent on the beach with very little talking (I'm actually not very talkative, though admittedly verbose in writing), delightfully thick books, surf fishing, kite flying, naps in hammocks and, for me, there used to be a LOT of wine. Vacation used to be the time that no one questioned drinking before noon: We are on vacation! And when the kids were really little and still napped, I could often be found heading over the dune with my beach chair, my book and a travel cup filled to the brim with wine. The solitude, open vistas, sparsely populated beach, booming surf all appeals deeply to my introverted nature. This year, we just couldn't swing it money-wise. So, in January, when my drinking was at its' worst, and our friends suggested a Fathers' Day beach getaway at a super fun party hotel I was all "Yeah!" The fact that I only vaguely remember booking the hotel should have been a warning sign.
So, needless to say, heading to a beach with a bustling boardwalk, public transportation, and some of our hardest partying friends was going to be a change of pace in and of itself. Add in the fact that I was going to be doing noise, crowds, bars, restaurants and all of the above all while newly sober, welp. Cue anxiety.
First afternoon we arrived, we checked in and ventured down to check out the beach. Three of the families we were meeting were there and the adults had obviously been drinking since early in the day. I was immediately pressed to get a drink from the beachside bar and finally told my friend, "sure- tell them to give me their best virgin drink." So, I sat there amongst my very relaxed, incredibly buzzed friends, feeling tightly wound, sipping a virgin mango daiquiri and watching round after round being ordered and thought "There's no way they can maintain that pace. And who is watching the kids?"
My husband, who for the most part hasn't been drinking at all these last few months, (he has refused to have any booze in the house as a show of support to me) suddenly found himself being bought drinks and before we knew it he was three deep with very high alcohol content craft IPAs. When they bought him a fourth, he kind of threw up his hands and I told him "you know you can just say No when they try to bring you another" he gave me a look. It was the "you are becoming one of those people" look.
I had a moment where I considered, "Am I becoming one of those people?"
I love our friends, and used to really love drinking with them, though I never allowed myself to get "drunk" when out. That was always reserved for the safety of my own home. Or "supposed"
safety, since near the end I was hurting myself during blackouts and it was spilling out into the rest of my life..driving, missing work, etc. But for the most part, I kept my drinking under control when at other people's homes or out for dinner because I guess the perfectionist part of me never wanted to look like a bad mom or the cheap drunk (though, I was certainly free enough to be both behind closed doors after my family had gone to bed.)
I woke up early Saturday morning and decided to go running before hitting the beach. I was heading down the beachfront street, enjoying the relative quiet of the morning. I was jogging in place, waiting at a crosswalk, listening to some good tunes and thought "Yep, I am becoming one of those people."
I've seen them. The ones who are out running or biking along the trails at the beach. I would usually see them when I had finally emerged after a night of drinking, usually after 10 am and would look at them like they were crazy. How are they out exercising when I have a headache and want to vomit? How can they stand the bright sun? When can I drink again so I feel better? What is wrong with them?
Turns out, nothing. They value their health and exercise is a pleasure, not a punishment and it helps them feel good. They have time to do it because they ARE on vacation and nothing else is vying for their time and attention. Am I the only one who never saw this before?
I swear I'm becoming one of those crazy optimistic people who sees meaning in everything. You know the ones. They post inspirational crap on their Facebook pages. I used to scroll past with a cynical eyeroll and now I look at their quotes (even the painfully misspelled ones) and nod internally. I feel it resonate deep in my soul and think "Yep, I'm one of those people now."
"Those people" used to seem like aliens. Like who goes to a movie and doesn't bring two or three airplane size bottles of vodka in their purse to add to their soda? Who doesn't start drinking on vacation right around 10 am and continue until midnight, juggling the perfect buzz? Who doesn't pregame before going out for dinner and drinks the respectable one glass of whine but then post-games until they fall asleep (pass out)? Well, me for one, these days.
I was the only non-drinking adult the entire weekend. And you know what? It was fine.
One of my friends actually told me "whatever you are doing, it's working. I'm jealous of your fitness, you are positively glowing and you look so pretty." And I'm sure I was gape-jawed for a solid minute. Because all I ever used to hear when I saw her was how tired I looked. Funny, how not killing yourself makes you look dewy and, well, alive. I know there are external changes. So many. But the internal ones are the ones that are harder to catalogue. There are hundreds of new choices, small shifts that add up to big changes.
For Father's Day, we all went to breakfast at a very rustic and cool converted- barn restaurant and instead of the usual greasy eggs, bacon, homefries toast post hangover breakfast I would have ordered, I had fresh fruit and a portabello, egg and avocado version of eggs benedict which was delicious and didn't leave me in a food coma. I felt light, happy, satisfied. And while everyone else had their Bloody Mary's, I actually really enjoyed my dark roast coffee. I didn't feel deprived or like I was missing out on anything. And I think that's the biggest surprise of sobriety. The things I am doing, and experience sober are so much better BECAUSE I am sober. Things I would have cynically sneered at are actually really great. I simply couldn't appreciate them because my perspective was all twisted by despair and shame. My old attempts to conjure a "be in the moment, find the joy in everything" outlook were always sour, and off in some way. Now, it's authentic. So much so that it's a little nauseating, even to me. I'm sure I will find the balance but for now, my soul that is so scarred but awakening again finally appreciates sentiments that used to feel like bullets. Now they are balm.
Like this little gem:
Yes, I had a few moments where I was overloaded with too many people, noise, input. But instead of drinking, I texted my sober group and took a moment to regulate. Breathed. Used my tools: Paid attention to my own breath and chose to come back into myself when I wanted to check out. I paused and named three things I could hear: waves, laughter, distant steel drums, two things I could feel: hot, grainy sand under my feet, cool air brushing past my warm skin, one thing I could see: perfect puffy white clouds in an azure sky... and then the moment of discomfort passed and I refocused on where I was. And went and got some ice cream. Twice on Saturday.
I have always loved the ocean and how it made me feel like my problems were insignificant in comparison to how vast it is. (Plus, whales.) I love the wind in my face, the salt in my hair and in my nose. The light is even different. The wild air, the rhythm and flow of the cold waves, watching pebbles and shells turned over and over. The mysterious depths feel ancient. My own emotions are swallowed by the sheer vastness of it. But I didn't feel insignificant this time around. I felt like I was where I wanted to be: in the waves, with my kids, fully present (albeit with sand in my ears from getting pounded!) My overarching emotions: hope, joy. The real kind.
And while I have a lot to consider about future vacations: where and with who, I'm trying to not stress it for now. Instead, I'm aware of how many things are shifting, settling, like sand moved by the tide, within my own heart and mind. I'm not sure yet how my new inner beachscape will look in the end. So for now, I'm learning to just float in and out with the waves, not fighting, not panicking.. just trying to relax into it.
There and back again.
This is the first year in a lot of years that we haven't packed up kit and caboodle for the journey south to the Outer Banks. We usually rent a big old house, and there a lot of days spent on the beach with very little talking (I'm actually not very talkative, though admittedly verbose in writing), delightfully thick books, surf fishing, kite flying, naps in hammocks and, for me, there used to be a LOT of wine. Vacation used to be the time that no one questioned drinking before noon: We are on vacation! And when the kids were really little and still napped, I could often be found heading over the dune with my beach chair, my book and a travel cup filled to the brim with wine. The solitude, open vistas, sparsely populated beach, booming surf all appeals deeply to my introverted nature. This year, we just couldn't swing it money-wise. So, in January, when my drinking was at its' worst, and our friends suggested a Fathers' Day beach getaway at a super fun party hotel I was all "Yeah!" The fact that I only vaguely remember booking the hotel should have been a warning sign.
So, needless to say, heading to a beach with a bustling boardwalk, public transportation, and some of our hardest partying friends was going to be a change of pace in and of itself. Add in the fact that I was going to be doing noise, crowds, bars, restaurants and all of the above all while newly sober, welp. Cue anxiety.
First afternoon we arrived, we checked in and ventured down to check out the beach. Three of the families we were meeting were there and the adults had obviously been drinking since early in the day. I was immediately pressed to get a drink from the beachside bar and finally told my friend, "sure- tell them to give me their best virgin drink." So, I sat there amongst my very relaxed, incredibly buzzed friends, feeling tightly wound, sipping a virgin mango daiquiri and watching round after round being ordered and thought "There's no way they can maintain that pace. And who is watching the kids?"
My husband, who for the most part hasn't been drinking at all these last few months, (he has refused to have any booze in the house as a show of support to me) suddenly found himself being bought drinks and before we knew it he was three deep with very high alcohol content craft IPAs. When they bought him a fourth, he kind of threw up his hands and I told him "you know you can just say No when they try to bring you another" he gave me a look. It was the "you are becoming one of those people" look.
I had a moment where I considered, "Am I becoming one of those people?"
I love our friends, and used to really love drinking with them, though I never allowed myself to get "drunk" when out. That was always reserved for the safety of my own home. Or "supposed"
safety, since near the end I was hurting myself during blackouts and it was spilling out into the rest of my life..driving, missing work, etc. But for the most part, I kept my drinking under control when at other people's homes or out for dinner because I guess the perfectionist part of me never wanted to look like a bad mom or the cheap drunk (though, I was certainly free enough to be both behind closed doors after my family had gone to bed.)
I woke up early Saturday morning and decided to go running before hitting the beach. I was heading down the beachfront street, enjoying the relative quiet of the morning. I was jogging in place, waiting at a crosswalk, listening to some good tunes and thought "Yep, I am becoming one of those people."
I've seen them. The ones who are out running or biking along the trails at the beach. I would usually see them when I had finally emerged after a night of drinking, usually after 10 am and would look at them like they were crazy. How are they out exercising when I have a headache and want to vomit? How can they stand the bright sun? When can I drink again so I feel better? What is wrong with them?
Turns out, nothing. They value their health and exercise is a pleasure, not a punishment and it helps them feel good. They have time to do it because they ARE on vacation and nothing else is vying for their time and attention. Am I the only one who never saw this before?
I swear I'm becoming one of those crazy optimistic people who sees meaning in everything. You know the ones. They post inspirational crap on their Facebook pages. I used to scroll past with a cynical eyeroll and now I look at their quotes (even the painfully misspelled ones) and nod internally. I feel it resonate deep in my soul and think "Yep, I'm one of those people now."
"Those people" used to seem like aliens. Like who goes to a movie and doesn't bring two or three airplane size bottles of vodka in their purse to add to their soda? Who doesn't start drinking on vacation right around 10 am and continue until midnight, juggling the perfect buzz? Who doesn't pregame before going out for dinner and drinks the respectable one glass of whine but then post-games until they fall asleep (pass out)? Well, me for one, these days.
I was the only non-drinking adult the entire weekend. And you know what? It was fine.
One of my friends actually told me "whatever you are doing, it's working. I'm jealous of your fitness, you are positively glowing and you look so pretty." And I'm sure I was gape-jawed for a solid minute. Because all I ever used to hear when I saw her was how tired I looked. Funny, how not killing yourself makes you look dewy and, well, alive. I know there are external changes. So many. But the internal ones are the ones that are harder to catalogue. There are hundreds of new choices, small shifts that add up to big changes.
For Father's Day, we all went to breakfast at a very rustic and cool converted- barn restaurant and instead of the usual greasy eggs, bacon, homefries toast post hangover breakfast I would have ordered, I had fresh fruit and a portabello, egg and avocado version of eggs benedict which was delicious and didn't leave me in a food coma. I felt light, happy, satisfied. And while everyone else had their Bloody Mary's, I actually really enjoyed my dark roast coffee. I didn't feel deprived or like I was missing out on anything. And I think that's the biggest surprise of sobriety. The things I am doing, and experience sober are so much better BECAUSE I am sober. Things I would have cynically sneered at are actually really great. I simply couldn't appreciate them because my perspective was all twisted by despair and shame. My old attempts to conjure a "be in the moment, find the joy in everything" outlook were always sour, and off in some way. Now, it's authentic. So much so that it's a little nauseating, even to me. I'm sure I will find the balance but for now, my soul that is so scarred but awakening again finally appreciates sentiments that used to feel like bullets. Now they are balm.
Like this little gem:
Yes, I had a few moments where I was overloaded with too many people, noise, input. But instead of drinking, I texted my sober group and took a moment to regulate. Breathed. Used my tools: Paid attention to my own breath and chose to come back into myself when I wanted to check out. I paused and named three things I could hear: waves, laughter, distant steel drums, two things I could feel: hot, grainy sand under my feet, cool air brushing past my warm skin, one thing I could see: perfect puffy white clouds in an azure sky... and then the moment of discomfort passed and I refocused on where I was. And went and got some ice cream. Twice on Saturday.
I have always loved the ocean and how it made me feel like my problems were insignificant in comparison to how vast it is. (Plus, whales.) I love the wind in my face, the salt in my hair and in my nose. The light is even different. The wild air, the rhythm and flow of the cold waves, watching pebbles and shells turned over and over. The mysterious depths feel ancient. My own emotions are swallowed by the sheer vastness of it. But I didn't feel insignificant this time around. I felt like I was where I wanted to be: in the waves, with my kids, fully present (albeit with sand in my ears from getting pounded!) My overarching emotions: hope, joy. The real kind.
And while I have a lot to consider about future vacations: where and with who, I'm trying to not stress it for now. Instead, I'm aware of how many things are shifting, settling, like sand moved by the tide, within my own heart and mind. I'm not sure yet how my new inner beachscape will look in the end. So for now, I'm learning to just float in and out with the waves, not fighting, not panicking.. just trying to relax into it.
There and back again.
Don't blow up the whale
(This was originally a post I wrote on my online support group site. Putting it here as a reminder to myself that this is all still true! And because this line of thinking has a great deal to do with the name of this particular sober blog)
Well, today was day 70. This week has been rough. My peace has been rumpled and I'm finding that my inability to moderate applies to a lot of things. I've been going hard, pedal to the metal since day one and all of a sudden it hit me last night: I'm exhausted!
Sleeping has been a real struggle and somewhere in all those wakeful hours as I'm lying there in the dark, I begin with thoughts along the lines of " I really need to stop eating so much chocolate. I should probably get some more exercise too. I love the idea of sobriety tattoos. I should get another good sober memoir to read". Then my brain starts going a little bigger: "I need to de-clutter this whole house, I should train for a half marathon. I should tell my other friends and family that I quit drinking..." etc. etc. and then my brain starts to really lose it's sense of proportion until I'm thinking: " I need to quit nursing and find a less stressful career. I should just grow a pair and post about my sobriety on Facebook. I should become a lighthouse keeper on some remote island. I should write a book. I think it's time to end this marriage." Future tripping, escalating, mind racing nonsense. It's real conducive to sleeping.
Perhaps this is part and parcel of hitting this phase of sobriety where it's still so new, but some of the novelty is wearing off and now it's really starting to hit me how much work there is. I have a million issues to deal with. The drinking is done, but the journey is starting to head steeply uphill. And the lack of moderation part of me (which drove the bus for too long and look how that turned out!) has this idea that in order to do that, I need to just burn everything down and start over. There's this little part of my brain that sneaks in when my guard is down and declares "now you've identified the problem, I think you should just fix absolulety everything right. freaking. now." Perhaps that's the old alcoholic/ can't moderate brain in its' death throes but it's a giant pain in the ass. And real bad for my eye bags.
There's this panicky feeling in the pit of my stomach that goes against everything I'm learning. All the wise, prudent "sitting in the moment and feeling all the feelings, just because you feel it doesn't mean it's real or that you have to act on it right away" type stuff. I have to tell myself to slow down a thousand times a day. Remind myself this is new, one thing at a time. (I'm assured by folks with more sobriety who tell me if this is just another phase that passes.. and that your brain learns to chill out a little *please sooner rather than later)
Last night, at 2 am, I found myself reading an odd article about how to get rid of a dead whale that has washed up on the beach. ( Link here, if you find yourself with insomnia and curious about deceased whale removal): http://www.wired.com/2016/05/get-rid-dead-rotting-whale-beach-hint-dont-blow/
The problem: 80, 000 pounds of rotting whale on your pristine beach. How do you get rid of it so the tourists and the surfers can frolic in the sun without a giant carcass blocking the view, the scavengers, the God-awful stench?
And it struck me: that's a perfect metaphor for how I feel about alcoholism and this journey into sobriety. It used to seem like an insurmountable problem. I mean, where do you even begin?
The article talked about how the whale can be towed back out to sea, or painstakingly cut into pieces and hauled away to a landfill... or, in the case of an ill-fated town in Oregon, back in 1970, they decided to blow it up with dynamite. Really.
There's even a YouTube video: https://youtu.be/xBgThvB_IDQ
Let's just say that it did not go well, and everyone who came to watch ended up covered in particles of rotting whale blubber; the biggest chunks actually damaged vehicles in the area and the whole thing ended up a million times worse.
The article concluded that the best thing in the long run is to allow the whale carcass to decompose naturally, which takes time and sunlight and salt air... and time. Lots of time. But eventually, the smell fades, the scavengers leave and all that is left is a set of bleached bones that were once a giant whale. And the bones are intact, a memory of something that once was.
I think we've all seen those "Take it Easy" bumper stickers a million times. I know it's another one of those seemingly cliché' phrases that end up actually being wise when you get past the seeming schlock. I know it's a big concept with the AA crew and for good reason.
I simply have to take it a day at a time. I can't future trip, think in extremes, or rush this process. I have to just let things take their course, and allow what I am learning to sink in, take root. Like light and air working slowly on that whale, the truths I am learning will eventually also do their work. And time can't be rushed.
(Now, if someone could just tell my brain)
That's all I've got. So hang in there, friends, and don't blow up the whale.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
100
Day 100.
I've been thinking about numbers this morning.
Zero used to be a number I wanted to avoid. It seemed empty and sad. But when I think about zero blackouts, zero hangovers, zero times driving buzzed, zero times I slurred my words, zero milligrams of Tylenol for splitting headaches, zero dollars spent on booze, (when in a very conservative estimate I would have consumed at least 200 bottles of wine in 100 days when I was drinking and even if that came from the cheapie wine bin, I'd say a thousand dollars? Mind boggling) then the idea of zero has weight to it. It represents freedom. Zero shame. Zero regrets. Zero moments that I wish I could get back and do over.
And then I think about "good" numbers. 539 miles run/walked in 100 days. 250,000 liters of water I've drank instead of booze. 100 wine-breath free bedtime prayers with my kids, 1 blog started, 100 journal entries written, 2500 hours spent doing yoga, 15 books read... None of those numbers would exist if I hadn't strung together consecutive hours, and days of just not drinking. Not drinking was just the beginning. It was like opening the cover on a mysterious book and finding wonders inside, turning page after page as the story sucks you in. I'm hooked.
I was stuck so long in the revolving door of addiction. I'd spin around inside, heaving my weight against the push bar to keep the door endlessly moving, occasionally catching glimpses of the world and light outside, think about jumping through that crack as it spun past, but ultimately I was afraid I'd get pinched in the door and so I just kept circling and circling. Until the day I was so desperate, I just flung myself at the opening and found myself blinking on the sidewalk with an entire colorful world opening around and up and up over my head. These last one hundred days, I have been walking (well, running) away from that spinning cycle of shame, promises, lies and despair and finding an entirely new world. I wish I had just taken that leap twenty years ago when I first knew I had a problem with alcohol. What would my life look like if I had done that? And how do you capture that moment, that moment of surrender, that moment of "enough, now" for others who are still trapped in that endless cycle and desperately want out but don't know how? I wish I knew.
Unraveling all the strings and connections of why I drank and surveying the patterns and damage it has done over the years is stretching my mind, making me question and explore my motives and behaviors. I feel like I'm an anthropologist going through my own wrecked civilization and piecing it all together. Now I go to parties or out to dinner and watch friends and family with an almost clinical detachment, observing them cracking their 8th beer or struggling to find a wine opener for the 6th bottle of the night. Realizing how wobbly the conversation path gets when you are talking to someone who has been drinking for hours, how angry and incapable drunk people really are. How incredibly rare and radical it is in a way to be the only sober person in the room. And my inner rebel, the one who used to drink burly Army dudes under the table in my heyday is now shifting in perspective to think that the truly rebellious act in a room full of numbed out people is to be completely myself. My sober, non-impaired, capable, fully present self. It's a sad testimony to our society that sober is rare.
Maybe my radar is just extremely sensitive, but I can't help but notice the complete saturation of every aspect of our culture with alcohol. Now, I drive past my old favorite liquor store, and I really read their sign, and notice the messages:
"Drinking rum before 10 am makes you a pirate."
"Rain, rain go away... Beer."
" If you are at a party and there's no booze, you're at the wrong party."
"Make your liver quiver."
My perspective is shifting, my eyes are different. I hear and see and live differently now that I, and not my addiction am calling the shots again. I think so much of the horror of alcoholism, at least for me, was living with cognitive dissonance: "contradictory or clashing thoughts that cause discomfort." (that's putting it mildly. It wasn't discomfort, it was PAIN.) People have an innate need for consistency in our thoughts, perceptions and images of ourselves. Alcohol made me act in ways that were wholly inconsistent with my self image. I wanted to think I was a good mother, a loving wife. And I am, when I don't drink. I'm witty, and reliable, creative and kind. But when I drink, I'm a liar. I'm selfish, petty, self-serving, short-sighted, maudlin, careless, unfiltered. Trying to reconcile those behaviours with who I imagined I was on the inside was impossible. The only way I can be who I truly am, is to remove alcohol from the equation.
I have a long road ahead. There's a lot of popular wisdom about how long it takes to form new habits or break old ones. There's a debate about whether it's 28 days or 66 days. I'm not sure if those numbers matter, even when I'm writing a post celebrating numbers today. Each morning I just have ONE in mind. The day I'm in is the only one I can control, really. I can't undo my past, can only try to make peace with it and learn from it. I can only impact my future by living in this day. This ONE day.
What I do know, deep down is that sobriety is delivering miracles to me on a daily basis. Small coincidences, signs.... all point me towards the truth that I am SEEN in this journey. I go running and see a tiny plant growing in an improbable place and I see it as a sign instead of a weed. I would never have even noticed it before.
What am I really doing without? The one thing that was standing in the way of me reaching my full potential, my peak abilities. The only thing preventing me from living with my insides on the outside.
Nothing has been lost. But I'm gaining everything.
Monday, June 6, 2016
Sorry, Ernest
So I blew past ninety days this week. And sometimes it shocks me that just three months ago my internal landscape was all post-nuclear holocaust in its' bleakness and despair. I was all rubble, sickness, shame, head noise. I had no words anymore.
I've been thinking about language and writing as it relates to this journey. I used to take Hemingway's advice "write drunk, edit sober" and applied it with an extreme amount of enthusiasm. Most of my writing the past twenty years was done that way. Now, I'm exploring how to write sober, edit sober and finding my raw truth without a buffer, without anesthesia. It's more pure and much more scary to write without that armor.
But language, vocabulary... I've spent my life learning "insider" lingo. First in the Army with all of its' acronyms and abbreviations "Copy, NLT, Hoo-ah, FUBAR, BOHICA, OPFOR, etc." And then, with my career in medicine when phrases like "45 yo M presents with h/o of COPD, sob, dyspnea, CP x3 days, BBS c exp wheezes, prn albuterol q4 hours ineffective, r/o PNA/ COPD exacerbation, recommend CTA chest" make absolute sense. I speak the language.
Sobriety has a language of it's own. There's a whole new lingo to learn. We hear a lot of it in recovery. "Cognitive restructuring, surrender, willingness, NA drinks, gratitude, Normies, one day at a time." Slowly, these terms become part of a new vocabulary.
When I think about the word "SOBER", its' definition seems incomplete and lacking oomph for something so life-changing and explosive.
sober
adjective| so-ber
1. not drunk
2. having or showing a very serious attitude or quality
3. plain in color
Well, I'm definitely not drunk. I am dead serious about this journey. But there is nothing plain or dull or staid about this trip. There is belly laughter. Joy that is burbling up like an underground stream. I am laughing at how ridiculous I can be, finding my sense of humor again and rejoicing with friends in recovery as we discover how full of miracles and COLOR life is now that we are no longer letting ourselves be abused by alcohol. I run every night in my reflective orange vest and I'm sure I look like a deranged crossing guard who is lost but I can laugh at how silly some of what I'm doing to stay sober might seem. But I'm all in.... Doing whatever it takes. Scratching notes to myself in a lovely journal, eating dark chocolate caramels with sea salt. Going for runs more than twice a day some days. Coloring with my kids. Eating a whole bag of cheesy poofs with a vitamin chaser. Getting choked up over a post rainstorm sky. Performing the heck outta the "corpse" pose in yoga because my middle aged muscles are protesting all the exercise I'm putting them through. Having to laugh when my earbuds unplug while I'm in the checkout at Lowes buying plants and suddenly hearing my sober podcast echoing all over the perennials/getting the hairy eyeball from stoic sensible sandaled/sunhatted gardener-types. Letting random strangers ahead of me in the checkout line because I'm teaching myself not to rush. Leaving the dishes in the sink and going with my kids to jump off the dock into the river. Playing sober anthems and singing along. Practicing self care like it's my job. Finding the elusive beach blue glass on the beach and seeing it as a sign.
I know it's not the pink cloud because that sucker sunk a few weeks ago. This is an uphill hike where I just keep pushing, and am still shocked at just how much energy it takes to get sober. Some days are unspeakably hard and I have no words. Many moments sting like a bucket of ice water dumped on my head, regrets still float around and surface from time to time, old traumas creep into my dreams and remind me they are still there. In those times, my recovery community surrounds me, encourages and reminds me to keep my eye fixed on the things that are invisible. They remind me that healing results when we do the hard work. They shout reminders to me, cheer me on, help me find the words to speak to myself. And I'm learning to do the same for them.
I don't know if other diseases have a voice. Maybe diverticulitis sounds like a guy talking with a mouthful of nachos, saying "Anybody want a peanut?" and emphysema sounds like a wheezy old broad with 3 pack a day smoker voice saying "Light up, honey." I'm not sure. But I do know that my alkie voice starts out all smooth and velvety like Tom Hiddleston reciting Shakespeare, all posh precise, rich, round tones. It whispers. "You are doing so well, just look at how much better you feel. Why not celebrate with just one? You don't have to tell anyone. It would just be between us. Go on, darling."
I picture my sober self as a wise earth-mother type with a flowy skirt, serene face and a halo made of daisies (a girl can dream, right?) ; "No, I'm enjoying this lovely glass of La Croix coconut water. Plus, I could never just drink one, remember?"
The tone of my alcoholic voice changes the more I talk back to it, reminding it that I don't drink anymore. It gets more whiny, more petulant, more bratty. " But you deserrrve it. Look how hard you are working. No one knows how HARD this is. You never get a break, wouldn't a nice crisp glass just taste so nice."
When I continue to refuse, it gets nasty, in a Loki, "kneel before me, you mewling quim, I must have a drink!" way.
My sober self answers: " Well, sure, if I want to end up dead on my bedroom floor. That's not on today's agenda, thanks." And then I give myself a mental high five and get on with my day.
So that's the new normal. No more waking with a splitting headache, dizzy, looking for a place to throw up. Actually, I haven't thrown up once in the past 90 days. Not once. No more pounding antacids with my shots of whiskey. No more checking my rearview mirror obsessively because I'm driving buzzed for the thousandth time. No more feeling alone, no more secret keeping from even myself. No more energy wasted on denial, procrastination and lies: "I'll quit tomorrow." There were always a thousand tomorrows.
I'm living in today. Writing sober. Living sober. I am finding my new voice.
I wish Hemingway could have found his.
I've been thinking about language and writing as it relates to this journey. I used to take Hemingway's advice "write drunk, edit sober" and applied it with an extreme amount of enthusiasm. Most of my writing the past twenty years was done that way. Now, I'm exploring how to write sober, edit sober and finding my raw truth without a buffer, without anesthesia. It's more pure and much more scary to write without that armor.
But language, vocabulary... I've spent my life learning "insider" lingo. First in the Army with all of its' acronyms and abbreviations "Copy, NLT, Hoo-ah, FUBAR, BOHICA, OPFOR, etc." And then, with my career in medicine when phrases like "45 yo M presents with h/o of COPD, sob, dyspnea, CP x3 days, BBS c exp wheezes, prn albuterol q4 hours ineffective, r/o PNA/ COPD exacerbation, recommend CTA chest" make absolute sense. I speak the language.
Sobriety has a language of it's own. There's a whole new lingo to learn. We hear a lot of it in recovery. "Cognitive restructuring, surrender, willingness, NA drinks, gratitude, Normies, one day at a time." Slowly, these terms become part of a new vocabulary.
When I think about the word "SOBER", its' definition seems incomplete and lacking oomph for something so life-changing and explosive.
sober
adjective| so-ber
1. not drunk
2. having or showing a very serious attitude or quality
3. plain in color
Well, I'm definitely not drunk. I am dead serious about this journey. But there is nothing plain or dull or staid about this trip. There is belly laughter. Joy that is burbling up like an underground stream. I am laughing at how ridiculous I can be, finding my sense of humor again and rejoicing with friends in recovery as we discover how full of miracles and COLOR life is now that we are no longer letting ourselves be abused by alcohol. I run every night in my reflective orange vest and I'm sure I look like a deranged crossing guard who is lost but I can laugh at how silly some of what I'm doing to stay sober might seem. But I'm all in.... Doing whatever it takes. Scratching notes to myself in a lovely journal, eating dark chocolate caramels with sea salt. Going for runs more than twice a day some days. Coloring with my kids. Eating a whole bag of cheesy poofs with a vitamin chaser. Getting choked up over a post rainstorm sky. Performing the heck outta the "corpse" pose in yoga because my middle aged muscles are protesting all the exercise I'm putting them through. Having to laugh when my earbuds unplug while I'm in the checkout at Lowes buying plants and suddenly hearing my sober podcast echoing all over the perennials/getting the hairy eyeball from stoic sensible sandaled/sunhatted gardener-types. Letting random strangers ahead of me in the checkout line because I'm teaching myself not to rush. Leaving the dishes in the sink and going with my kids to jump off the dock into the river. Playing sober anthems and singing along. Practicing self care like it's my job. Finding the elusive beach blue glass on the beach and seeing it as a sign.
I know it's not the pink cloud because that sucker sunk a few weeks ago. This is an uphill hike where I just keep pushing, and am still shocked at just how much energy it takes to get sober. Some days are unspeakably hard and I have no words. Many moments sting like a bucket of ice water dumped on my head, regrets still float around and surface from time to time, old traumas creep into my dreams and remind me they are still there. In those times, my recovery community surrounds me, encourages and reminds me to keep my eye fixed on the things that are invisible. They remind me that healing results when we do the hard work. They shout reminders to me, cheer me on, help me find the words to speak to myself. And I'm learning to do the same for them.
I don't know if other diseases have a voice. Maybe diverticulitis sounds like a guy talking with a mouthful of nachos, saying "Anybody want a peanut?" and emphysema sounds like a wheezy old broad with 3 pack a day smoker voice saying "Light up, honey." I'm not sure. But I do know that my alkie voice starts out all smooth and velvety like Tom Hiddleston reciting Shakespeare, all posh precise, rich, round tones. It whispers. "You are doing so well, just look at how much better you feel. Why not celebrate with just one? You don't have to tell anyone. It would just be between us. Go on, darling."
I picture my sober self as a wise earth-mother type with a flowy skirt, serene face and a halo made of daisies (a girl can dream, right?) ; "No, I'm enjoying this lovely glass of La Croix coconut water. Plus, I could never just drink one, remember?"
The tone of my alcoholic voice changes the more I talk back to it, reminding it that I don't drink anymore. It gets more whiny, more petulant, more bratty. " But you deserrrve it. Look how hard you are working. No one knows how HARD this is. You never get a break, wouldn't a nice crisp glass just taste so nice."
When I continue to refuse, it gets nasty, in a Loki, "kneel before me, you mewling quim, I must have a drink!" way.
My sober self answers: " Well, sure, if I want to end up dead on my bedroom floor. That's not on today's agenda, thanks." And then I give myself a mental high five and get on with my day.
So that's the new normal. No more waking with a splitting headache, dizzy, looking for a place to throw up. Actually, I haven't thrown up once in the past 90 days. Not once. No more pounding antacids with my shots of whiskey. No more checking my rearview mirror obsessively because I'm driving buzzed for the thousandth time. No more feeling alone, no more secret keeping from even myself. No more energy wasted on denial, procrastination and lies: "I'll quit tomorrow." There were always a thousand tomorrows.
I'm living in today. Writing sober. Living sober. I am finding my new voice.
I wish Hemingway could have found his.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
Snake oil and hardboiled dreams
We are limping down the homestretch.
There are exactly four and a half days of school before we officially enter what I like to call the Season of Yes.
Yes, you can swim in the pool until the last bit of pink sunset fades and we have bats swooping over head and we can only see our way back to the house by firefly-light.
Yes, you can climb out of the pool, and sit on the deck wrapped in a towel and eat your dinner straight off the grill and yes we will eat corn on the cob with gobs of butter that drips down our chins and eschew napkins and rinse everyone off in the hose afterward.
Yes, you can stay up late and watch old movies with me.
Yes, we can go for a long walk to the river because we have nowhere to be and search for the elusive blue beach glass that we have somehow decided brings good luck to the finder.
And for all of those reasons, I am counting down the hours until I can be summer Mom again.
Because I have been out of energy and "done" since the last round of viral illness went through the house like wildfire and that was in early April. I have been sober for almost three months now and the energy that is involved in getting up every day, not drinking all day, doing the work, naval gazing, deep breathing, prayers, journaling, running, fighting cravings, going for another run, checking in with my amazing support group... all of that LIFE stuff plus my sobriety stuff means we have missed parties because the beautiful photo card invitation with an adorably toothless child grinning at us has been buried under the mounting pile of bills and end of school year announcements about class parties and Field Days/ice cream/movie days and the avalanche of year end events and Oh crap there's another awards ceremony this morning and just wear your pinchy sneakers another day because you are going to be barefoot in a few days anyways and when is it going to EEEENNNDDD-ness.
I am not sitting easy in new sobriety. It has awakened major perfectionist tendencies in me. I lie awake, thinking of all the ways I can overcompensate for my screw ups this past year, or really, the last two years when my drinking really got to a toxic place. The insomnia, the scratchy burning eyes and the seemingly endless nights where I toss and turn and flip to the cool side of the pillow over and over, all while wishing for a big "OFF" switch for my brain.. I feel pressure to get myself together for summer so we can actually enjoy ourselves . Which is how I sort of stumbled across the lure of Pinterest. (I am not naturally one of those impossibly crafty, super Mom types that I call Pinterest Barbies... who are always posting incredible, inspiring things they have made out of raffia and popscicle sticks or whatever.. That I am even attempting to absorb organization by osmosis shows how dire it really has become).
I created an account and "pinned" some ideas, challenging (kidding) myself to actually try out some sort of enriching craft/ super healthy popsicles and the like this summer. Pins with perky titles like "40 Summer Bucket list activities." Nowhere do I see pins about plopping your kids down in front of a half hour of Princess Sofia so you can go cry in the bathroom because you are totally overwhelmed and not sure how you are going to make it through another 9 hours of this "use your words, stop yelling, what is this sticky mess, stop climbing the bookcase, did the cat fall in the fishtank again, say sorry, why do we work so hard and there is never any money and what if I'm just hopelessly screwing these kids up" type day while stone cold sober.
So, yesterday. Due to distraction/nervous breakdown in progress/exhaustion or whatever, I forgot that when I signed the kids up for a week of summer camp, way back in January when I was still drinking, I had "conveniently" checked the little magic box that said "Please withdraw the balance due automatically from my account on June 1st" because "Yay, I don't have to remember to go online and pay it. How wonderfully convenient! Hooray me, for signing the kids up early, lets have a glass or wine to celebrate"
Except you have to remember to actually transfer money into the account before June 1st.
So yesterday our entire checking account was wiped out in one fell swoop and I'm sure the fall out will be fun the next week or so until we get paid again.
Honestly, signing up for a "high interest savings account" where you can transfer funds by electronic transfer and have money available for withdrawal in 4-5 business days SOUNDS like a good idea when you set it up. But not when you have $1.12 in your checking account and you will be bouncing literally every "automatic bill pay for dummies" transaction like some kind of hyper kangaroo and you get hit with 30 dollar non-sufficient funds fees every time (Gee thanks, bank people, for flogging me for not only being totally forgetful but also poor, that'll show me) and your cupboards are empty and 4-5 business days is a wicked long time, let me tell you. And I'll be that weird lady with the giant jar of spare change at the coinstar making a ridiculous amount of noise with my three kids all clamoring for a turn over the clanking noise of coins....
All of which to say is that in my utterly overwhelmed, unhinged state, I decided that yesterday was the day that I was going to make an effort to feed my kids something other than string cheese, fruit, crackers and yogurt which is what they had in their lunches for about the last, oh.... too many days. I was going to do something Fabulous!
Peering into the empty fridge, I found five eggs. Enter that thing I pinned about "You too can make perfect hard boiled eggs in your oven.. imagine the ease, the no mess, the PERFECTION... the beautiful, delicious egg salad sandwiches soon to be yours."
And that is why Pinterest is exactly like a modern day snake oil salesman. It promises a short cut, an easy out.
And in my desperate, foolish and sleep deprived state, I went right along for the ride..
The result:
I don't know about you, but hard boiled eggs that resemble yellowed BPA-laden circa 1978 Tupperware just aren't real high on the list of Appealing Things to Eat. And the smell?
The smell is like Satan's own Sulfurous Potpourri wafting directly from the depths of hell.
The glaring lesson to be learned is the same one we have been learning since pre-school.
Be yourself. And most things that are worth doing take time. Shortcuts and "magic fixes" rarely are either short or magical...
In all of the whirlwind and pink cloud days of being sober, I imagine that I have to change everything that I am, or make up for the things I lack or which I overlooked. I have forgotten that though I am going through a big change, and putting things back together, I can still enjoy being what I am. Or if not enjoy, at least accept.
I am a disorganized Mom who has a daughter who might have mulch in her hair more often than not from some daring swing set trick, but who also has the best heart, practices compassion as effortlessly as most people breathe. She draws pictures that make me smile no matter how bad the day. She makes up crazy songs and gets busted reading books late into the night because her mind is voracious. She's a dancer with the energy level of a humming bird on crack. She is all wild hair and skinny arms and her will is as strong as mine which is a little scary.
I have a son who may wear head to toe mismatched camo outfits ALL THE TIME... but has an incredibly rich imagination, the best giggle, boundless enthusiasm for engineering, minecraft and monster fish. He practices scooter tricks and tells the best knock knock jokes. He has a tender heart and sensitive soul that is sometimes hard to see under all the quirks. He's the kid who really thinks about the underlying messages in Marvel movies and who discusses them with real sincerity and insight while I'm tucking him into bed with his beloved stuffed animals. He always needs one more hug.
I have a frequently naked, ornery, adorable preschool girl who explores the world fearlessly and is scary-smart/ beautiful. She can color a picture for an hour, hold her own at the skate park with teenage boys zooming past while she wears her Captain America helmet and rides her pink scooter. She is obsessed with owls and will spend hours curled up next to me reading a book or just because she is still my little one. She is my garden helper, and actually works hard helping pull weeds and has always sung to the plants to help them grow. This year she been serenading the broccoli every day.
I need to just accept that God is using me; the hot mess, the hopelessly non-crafty, flawed, recovering, distracted but well-intentioned Mom to grow these little ones into joyful, incredible people. And that's a role that I can handle. Because they are amazing. Maddening and amazing. And I can do it without gallons of wine. I can do it better without gallons of wine.
And it's best to just do it in my own imperfect way. If I'm learning anything in sobriety, it's that nothing can happen overnight. I have to take it easy, not rush ahead or be extreme. That goes against my natural temperament. My brain has identified the problem so it wants to fix every broken thing, right every wrong, eradicate every problem RIGHT NOW. But that's not how this all works. I have to take my time. There aren't any short cuts or quick fixes.
So, I'm going to chalk those eggs up to folly.
I will gracefully keep busting out those cheese sticks and keep reminding myself that if I keep getting up every day and doing the right thing, and then the right thing after that, then ultimately...
Every little thing gonna be alright.
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.
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