“Drunk Talk”

When I was seeing my last therapist (you know, the one that was actually so helpful that I haven’t had to go back to therapy since seeing him?), he and I would talk a lot about the ‘language of alcohol’. There are lots of different aspects to it: the use of ‘you’ when what someone really means is ‘I’, talking around subjects instead of directly about them, lying--especially by omission, and many others.

My therapist and I would talk about this alcoholic-speak as my first language--my native tongue, if you will. And it doesn’t have to be called alcoholic speak. A better descriptor of it might be the language of the Disease; alcoholics use it, addicts use it, codependents, etc. By any name, it was the way I learned to talk growing up. Sorting through this way of communicating helped me to get a handle on how the Disease shaped me in my early years.

It helped me, too, to understand what exactly it was that drove me so crazy as a child and as a teenager. To this day, I still hate being lied to--especially by omission. I’m a big believer that a lie of omission is far worse than an outright falsehood. But there are other things about this language: it’s a dishonest way of communicating, certainly; disrespectful? Absolutely; and in general, when someone communicates with others in this style, they in effect treat others as less-than. At least, that’s how it feels to me. It’s a recipe for failure because a lot of this communication is dependent on the other person figuring out what is actually meant instead of taking what is said at face value. If you can’t figure out what the person meant, well then that’s your fault; in their mind, they expressed themselves very clearly. But no human being is a mind reader.

Anyway, I have done a lot of work to learn a different way of communicating, but I still find myself in situations where people do talk this way. Like anyone who grew up speaking a ‘different’ language, I fall back into it easily, like putting on an old, comfortable leather coat. And it’s only after I’ve been wearing it a little while that I remember, “wait a minute--I hate this jacket!”

It gets my anger up. I can’t even say for sure what makes me angrier. Is it because I allowed myself to fall back into old patterns? Or is it that old feeling of being a failure for not being able to read someone’s mind? Or the failure at not being perfect? Or just general anger at the unreasonable expectations that this way of communicating is based on?

And yet... people communicate this way all the time. So it’s fair to say that this is a challenging area for me. Even if it’s something most other people handle without a second thought, it’s difficult for me. And that’s okay. Even amongst those of us with the Disease, we each have our specific challenges.

Call it whatever you like; it’s a communication style that I’ve worked very hard to change in myself, and it’s something I work with my sponsees on, too. The language we use shapes our thoughts. Changing the way we speak helps to change the way we think.

“Self-Harm”

A little “what it’s like now” before I get to the “what it used to be like”: It’s a full life these days. I got hired permanently at my new job, which is a blessing and a curse. On my second official day, my coworker went out on maternity leave (which is in itself a very long story). One of my good friends went into a voluntary psychiatric hospitalization. And I even have a special someone in my life now. The job stuff, well I knew even before I accepted the position how utterly insane my work environment is so what’s happened there, while extremely stressful for me, is more or less par for the course. My friend made it through his time in the psych ward and it seems to have been good for him, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed, regardless. And the special someone, while a wonderful addition to my life, is a subject I have a very strong policy about not blogging about for many reasons, not the least of which is respect for her privacy. So that’s the update on ol’ Z ;-)

* * *

I was doing some thinking recently about our stories, how we tell our stories at meetings, how the learning to talk about ourselves and see the patterns of our lives is such an important part of the Recovery process. I’ve got a version of my story here in the blog--called ‘My Story’ for some unimaginative reason--that I wrote a while back. I re-read it recently and was surprised. I’d thought it wasn’t very good, but it was. It rambles a little, and it’s a bit talky, but it was truthful and it covered the important stuff. One thing it didn’t mention, though, was my history of self-harm. If I ever do a revised version, I’ll have to be sure to include those details.

It was washing my hands earlier today that jogged my memory about all this. I did a little cutting, but mostly I was a burner--self-inflicted cigarette burns. There’s a scar on the back of my left hand that is all but invisible now, but I know it’s there and I can still see it. There’s one on my upper left arm, too. The rest are all on my legs.

I’ve forgotten how many there are, and some have faded over the years, but they’re all there on the insides, stretching from my ankles up to my knees. I suppose I could rub glycerin on them for a few months, but I’ve never really wanted to get rid of them. These days, they’re an important reminder of just hard it was for me, how deeply in pain I was at that time of my life, before I learned to dull that pain with substances.

I can still remember it, though. An intense, crushing pain. Sort of like having my mind squeezed by an overflowing of raw, negative emotion. I’ve heard people describe their experience with self-harm as a way to overcome numbness, a way to feel something. It wasn’t like that for me; for me it was about giving myself something else to focus on, and to give myself a reason for why I felt how I did. And there was a weird power thing to it. Like, I felt so powerless in my life, so weak and unmanly. Holding a cigarette to my skin and counting the seconds--sometimes minutes--was a way I had found to feel powerful, to feel strong, like I had some minor semblance of control. Maybe the extent of that control was nothing more than hurting myself but still. It was a desperate attempt to find something to hold on to.

Just as an aside, my suicide attempts were like that, too: a desperate attempt at control and escape from a painful, painful existence.

There was a news story not too long ago. It was an interview with an author who’d just published a book about self-harm. She talked about how the act is becoming more “mainstream”. Not that more people are doing it, but more people are talking about doing it, finding each other and being more accepting of the act. It’s not the hush-hush thing it used to be; less and less are people being thought of as sick or seriously mentally ill if they commit self-harm. Personally, I’m not sure that’s the greatest thing; I was seriously in need of real help when I burned. Most people I’ve known who self-harm do it because of deep, unresolved issues. I didn’t burn myself for sympathy (and most people I’ve encountered who cut or burn hide their scars) and if anyone had managed to see my scars or find out I was a self harmer and they gave me a ‘poor baby’ routine, I would have responded very viciously. The last thing I needed was for someone to see that very wounded part and feel sorry for me.

In fact, that reminds me of something I shared once, about why the rooms of Recovery were such a place of healing for me. It was because no one said, “poor baby” to me. No one offered my sympathy, just honest understanding. I didn’t (and still don’t) need to be coddled; I just need to be listened to. I need to speak my truths and just let them be spoken.

I’d stopped hurting myself years before I got into Recovery, but it wasn’t until years after I’d started that I finally felt okay with that part of my past. I remember the first time I wore shorts to a summer BBQ event. One of my close friends who knew why I never had before told me she was proud of me. And wouldn’t you know it, no one even noticed the scars, or at least certainly never said anything to me about them. Such a far cry from those years ago when people would ask me very pointedly why I did that to myself. I would try to answer them, but no matter what explanation I gave, they never really understood.

So much of Recovery is like that. The people we meet in the rooms understand us in ways no one else ever will--because they’ve been where we’ve been; they’ve felt how we feel.

These days, the scars on my legs are a reminder of where I’ve been. And they’re the physical proof, too, when I meet someone else who self-harms, they can know without a doubt that I understand.

"Centering"

Okay, I'm going to break a guy-rule here and admit the following: I can get really emotional watching movies. I'm not talking about crying, I mean all emotions. A good film just taps into me and the feelings start flowing out. I was watching one tonight and paused it--right at really good part, too--because I felt some anger that I needed to take the time to process. I went out for a run, and now I'm at my favorite coffee shop. And wouldn't you know it, there are two friends of Bill here, discussing where the best women's step study meetings are.

We are everywhere.

The anger stuff isn't really about me; it's boundary processing, continuing to learn and practice the principles. Other people's stuff is not mine to deal with. And, ironically enough, the friends of Bill are talking about stuff that's 'outside their hula hoop'. Love it. Their conversation has nothing to do with me, and yet it's exactly what I'm thinking about. This Recovery thing is so amazing.

Tonight when I got home, I did some laundry. My toilet sprang a leak and I used half my towels cleaning the water up. I'd planned to work on some music, but that's not how things worked out. And as it turned out, though, I did get done what I needed to--the bathroom's clean and I got to be here on the patio listening to Recovery happen. And to top it all off, the gal who works the counter here at the coffee shop is involved in our local version of the 'Occupy' movements sweeping the world right now, so I got to chat with her about how those are going. She wants me to come out and join them. We'll see.

Life is so full of such amazing things. Moment to moment, things can and do change. And we get to choose how we deal with all of it. We can be awake for it, taking joy in all that goes on around us, or we can be sucked in to the chaos and insanity. We can ride all the ups and downs, letting ourselves get spun out until we've forgotten what it's like to not be swept away, or we can remain centered and watch it all happen.

We can fall all over ourselves, trying to control, trying to rescue, refusing to accept the things we can't change; or we can choose serenity instead. The choice is ours and no one else can make it for us.

“Four Corners”

I had a dream the other night. The details are a bit fuzzy now, but each place I went to in this dream was empty. It was like at the end of a party where most of the people have left. There were a few stragglers, but even they were on their way out. The overall meaning I took from the dream was that it was about endings, and that I was the last one to be aware of things being over. You could say I was late to the party on that :)

As an addict in Recovery, the larger meaning strikes me as being about letting go of my old life. That part of my life is over. It could resume at any moment, of course, and that’s why I keep working the program--to do what I can to ensure it doesn’t. But after more than three years living clean and sober... On the one hand, it could be my subconscious working through the last bits of acceptance of living a new life. But with how I was in the dream, being surprised at the emptiness of these places, realizing I had come late, that everyone else had left, I wonder if instead it isn’t my brain telling me I still have some more letting go to do of the old me.

* * *

I’ve had some major changes in my life recently. They’ve got me thinking about something I heard shared once. I was at an NA book study and a woman with over a dozen years living clean and sober talked about how, even after all this time, she still had to struggle. She talked about wishing for something that would probably never come--the feeling that she had ‘made it’. As if one day, all her hard work would pay off and she would sit back with a contented sigh.

I’m remembering that because I’ve got a bit of that ‘made it’ feeling going on right now. My hard work in a number of different areas of my life is paying off. I’m grateful for the changes, amazed and surprised by the good things that are happening. And dealing, too, with all the fear and worry and obsession one would expect from a sufferer of the Disease.

Being so used to bad things happening, sometimes the most difficult thing for folks like us to accept is when things are going well. I’m reminding myself that God doesn’t give me anything I can’t handle. I learned that lesson by going through a tough trial in my life--the suicide of a sponsee. It would seem that it applies to good times as well as bad.

* * *

This month is something of a morbid anniversary for me. Fifteen years ago, I went through some of the most tumultuous, difficult events of my life. My second suicide attempt, my being in the mental hospital, and my being arrested all happened fifteen years ago this month. I’ve done the work to move through and get past all of these events, but there can’t be any denying the power and importance of how what happened shaped and changed my life.

Call it bizarre, but I’m much more at peace with the suicide attempt and the hospitalization than I am with the arrest. Even though I’ve never had any difficulty finding a job, I still do the tiniest bit of panicking every time I go through a background check. Fears aren’t always rational.

The scars of severe depression are something that have proven to be something very helpful to others I meet. Talking about being a suicide survivor, showing them the old burn marks up and down my legs, it helps them to know the darkness they’re suffering from doesn’t have to last forever, that there is a way out.

* * *

Maybe there is old stuff, old ideas about myself and who I am, that I’m still hanging on to that I need to let go of. And, as always, the fear that I feel is that of the unknown. If I let go of the idea that I’m not worthy of love, then I have to embrace the idea that I am worthy of it. If I let go of my false modesty when it comes to being a capable, functioning member of society, then that means I have to rise up to my full potential and follow through at my true level of capabilities. If I accept that it is possible for me to have a healthy, satisfying romantic relationship, then that means I have to give up not just unhealthy relationships, but being alone as well. And being alone is something for me that is pretty damn difficult to give up, not because I like it, but because it is so familiar.

Or maybe, just maybe, these are all things that I have learned, things that I already know, and what the dream is calling my attention to is that I’m forgetting them. Like, a one step forward, a two-steps back thing. It could even be my higher power reaching inside to encourage me not to fall back, not to give up and to continue to embrace the fact that good things just keep on happening in my life.

As I continue walking the path, the scenery is changing.

“Reason and Purpose”

For some reason, I’ve got scenes and quotes from the movie ‘The Matrix: Reloaded’ running through my mind. The bit about purpose--that it drives us, defines us; about the importance of reason, how the ‘why’ is crucial and how without a reason for what we do, we have nothing. I think we’ve all heard it at some point in our lives that “everything happens for a reason”. Maybe; maybe not.

Generally, we can say that in active addiction, when we’re in the grips of the Disease, our lives don’t have much purpose beyond getting and staying loaded. We might accomplish other things, but ultimately the main reason for being is to get and stay fucked up. ‘Lived to use, use to live,’ as they say in NA. Finding Recovery gives us a different purpose, a new reason to live. Again, as a broad stroke generality, we stop living for ourselves and start living for others.

People find their way into the rooms for a lot of different reasons. For some, it’s because they will lose their family, their wife, husband, children, if they don’t clean & sober up. For others, it’s a job or a home they will lose (or have already lost). For some of us like myself, it’s for no other reason than the simple fact that we’ve admitted to ourselves we can’t quit on our own.

“Want to quit but can’t? We can help you with that.”

When we first start working the program, our purpose is pretty basic: get clean; get sober; stay that way. The Third Tradition covers this universal purpose very well: the only requirement for membership is the desire to quit. There’s something important here, a flipside to this tradition that isn’t stated outright--that if you don’t want to quit, if you don’t have the willingness to do something different, there isn’t much we can do for you.

We start with a purpose like that, a purpose that consumes us. We start putting time together and our purpose shifts a little. We see that it is possible to quit, and so we begin focusing more on reasons to stay quit. Just as there are many reasons why we want or need to quit, there are even more for why we want and need to stay quit. As we work steps, we find ourselves restored to sanity and discover--to our profound amazement--that our lives are actually working. We tend to find that living clean and sober, walking the spiritual path, is its own reward.

Sure, there are all kinds of fringe benefits. I hear people talk about saving their marriage, or getting a long-needed divorce. I’ve heard heartwarming stories of people getting their kids back. The homeless and unemployable find jobs and start supporting themselves. People buy cars, buy houses, find new love and rekindle old love. Bonds of friendship form that are stronger than anything thought possible. Deep, meaningful relationships of all kind happen.

But the thing that happens to us which is more meaningful than all of the above, is the peace we feel deep inside. Our lives aren’t empty anymore--because we aren’t empty anymore. Some people call it the ‘God-shaped hole’ that becomes filled with our higher power. And yeah, sure, that’s one way to describe what happens. But whatever you call it, however you chose to describe it, it is our innermost selves that are transformed. That’s the reason why our lives change. What happens to us inside is so powerful that it extends outward and sends ripples through the reality around us.

Our very souls become healed, and we discover an entirely new purpose in life: the healing of and maintaining of our spiritual condition.