Self-Ish

It feels like I become more of my self more of the time. Self-Ish.

When I got sober I was definitely no one resembling anyone I was supposed to be or had been. I was this mess contained in my very own skin, that I mostly spent time trying to jump out of. In my head I think a lot  "too much me", "I have had enough of me", "please let me be less me and more be".

I had another one of those brain lightning zip pop wow moments. Because of course, when I am overwhelmed with all this thinking I need a huge helping of brain salad to toss around.

It's about care.

When I was a little girl I felt very uncared for: like, "Hey, huh. There's Amy. And also a wall." When I was in fourth grade we moved. After that my parents fell apart for years together. And I existed. The boys in the neighborhood would beat me up or later finger fuck me in the treehouses we built- but no one really seemed to care except me. The boys didn't care that they pulled my hair until I couldn't breathe, and no one noticed me sneaking off into the woods with the older boy who would do things to me that made me shrink into a shell of a girl too full with shame. My mom was more worried about "One Life to Live" than she was about how my life was falling apart. My dad was at work. Unless he was yelling at me to clean the bathroom.

It sucked. It helps me understand why booze was such a relief. It helps me understand how, when I try to care for myself, it feels arduous and awkward. Because when you are ten and everyone is too busy to notice you slowly dying inside you get used to being alone. Uncherished. I got used to saving the worst for myself, to being the worst to myself. People could hurt me, but I could hurt myself worse. So there, I would think: See? I win. You can't get me. I have already been gotten.

I discovered that I am still waiting for someone to come along and take care of me. That in my head there is a mythical time when some magical someone is going to come along and know how to soothe my fears and ease my pain. Who will say things like Oh, it's alright. You can feel sad and out of place and not eat all that ice cream. Or Everyone gets tired, the world is a heavy thing to carry alone. Rest your self. And Wow, you are really not so perfect. That's just fine. That I have waited long enough. That it's time for the caring to just show the fuck up now, OK?

As you can probably imagine I pride myself on the care I give others. I possibly over care about people like my children, but also that lady in line who wasn't very nice to me. There's like all this caring, but none of it gets to me from me.

It's similar to someone giving you a compliment (I like your dress!) and you explaining it away (Oh, I got it on sale super cheap!). So I feel overwhelmed and emotional (PMS is a bitch) and I know what I need (yoga and a hot tea) but instead I spend so much time talking myself out of caring for myself (but the kids need some attention and oh the laundry) that I end up in the emotional bargain basement once again.

I didn't know that while I was waiting for someone else that I might instead choose to show up myself. That I am someone else. That there is no magical someone who swoops in and takes care of it all- that magical someone is me. If I want these things to happen I have to make it so. I am exhausting myself giving all this care to everyone outside of me and giving none of what I need back. It's sort of like standing in front of a speeding train and expecting someone to appear out of nowhere to push you out of harms way.

Gah. This sobriety stuff takes bravery. It takes such courage and grit to not be life lazy. It is so hard to do for myself what has not been done. It's so hard to get so uncomfortable to get to a better place. It's so hard to not just say fuck it, I'm sober! That's all I can do! Isn't that what I deserve? Isn't being sober the biggest best gift I could have ever gotten? I'm sober! Wanting more is selfish! Greedy greedy greedy. And plus what more do you people want from me???

What more do I want from me? I feel like I have a sweet little secret when I ask myself that question. Because, in secret, from my own self, is this: I want everything from me. I have possibilities. I have chances. I have whatever I dream could be as long as I am brave and faithful to my self. Being sober is wonderful, but it is not what makes up all of me, it's what makes me know that there is so much more to come.

Ready

Lord. Where have I been? Every morning I wake up and think, shit. I have a blog post to write. Then I think it again the next day, and then there's so much to say that I sort of got overwhelmed and just put it off for a better time, another day I'll be able to sit down, to concentrate for real. Then I can do it.

Ha ha ha. We all know how that kind of planning goes. But then! The children went to see their grandparents for Mother's Day. My husband is at work. I'm having a huge Saturday night vegetable roasting party and I'm the only one invited so I can do whatever I want. Which means I can cook and write and go to sleep when I get tired. Word.

I finally funked right on out of my funk. Something that helped was this rock my therapist gave me in group the other week. Here it is:

I was talking about how I can't get things to go the way I want or think they should and then we all nodded since I have "issues" with being a little...."controlling"? And then she gave me this rock, some slips of paper, and a rubber band. She said something like: "Write the things you're worried/trying to control on the slips of paper. Rubberband them to the rock. Carry it everywhere. When you're ready to let something go take it off of the rock until there's just the rock. Then maybe be able to let that go too."

I wrote my things: my mom. My dad. My weight. Money. Finding balance. Work frustration. Eating too much. I rubberbanded them to my rock and went to sleep with my rock next to me on the table by my bed.

I got up the next morning and went for a run: me and my rock and my worries. In my head I was bitching at myself for holding on to things, for being worried and not faith full. Chiding myself for not being able to do the rock thing right. Worrying about failing. In my in my head desperate voice I wailed to myself "But what if I fall???"

And then a voice, my own, but from way down deep inside of me said,

"What if I catch you?"

I sobbed in relief. Instant, overwhelming, blanketing full on full out relief.

I looked at the rock in wonder.

Then I remembered that I was in public, and running. And so I said a fervent prayer of thanks out loud straight up to the sky. Then I wiped my eyes and kept on going.

When I got back to the car I took the rubberband off of the rock and put the slips of paper in the door compartment of the car. I drove home with the rock in my lap.

I haven't really carried the rock around since. My parents and I have made a gentle peace with each other- kind of like we were all wearing tight coats and then someone suggested we unbutton them. It still feels weird, but more comfortable. I am still too thinking about my weight, but I'm running, and rolling around on the floor doing yoga. I'm not eating too much on purpose. I gave up money worries because it's May, or Saturday, or a bird chirped.

I'm reading this book. It's changing my life. It came along when I was ready. Ready, just like I was ready for the rock. Ready for my voice.

Ready, after all these years, to trust myself again.

Into the Light

I am still, still in this part where I am crying every day. It is such a relief and so sad and kind of opposite of the person I am: I have, through it all, cultivated a positive world view and firmly believe that things will get better. I am consistently full of hope. Because why not?

Our dog is OK. We have finally managed to finagle his eating and meds so that I'm not cleaning up diarrhea a few times a day. He has his silly smile back and is sleeping in our rooms again. He cannot go for walks, or chase the ball, but he's with us and that, for now, is more than enough.

My father called last night and it was less than stellar. We sort of argued and disagreed and I cried a lot and then just let it stop since there is no real resolution. We talk, but cannot hear each other. And I cannot make them into people they just are not. I love them so much but the things I need from them do not exist. It's like trying to make a bicycle into a bagel. The shapes are there, but they just are not the same thing.

Here is what I am learning: other people are other people. I cannot change them: but I can change myself. I can be true to myself. I am allowed to ask for what I need and if someone can't give it I'm allowed to stop asking. Relationships can change, and so with the heaviest heart I can hold I have come to know that my parents love me to the best of their ability, but they cannot be tender with me. They cannot not tease me and poke fun at me when I'm hurting. My mother will always be loud, and judgmental. She won't feel comfortable enough to not look for the imagined worst in everyone else. My dad will always think I'm trying to tell him what to do when I say out loud how I'm feeling. They both are very self focused. So be it.

Still, inside I come to their defense. Don't talk about them that way. That's not true, I keep saying to myself, over and over. But I know what the truth is.

I am hurting so much about it: I have longed all my life for them to love me without conditions or little cruelties. They love me as they were loved themselves. For them love equals vulnerability which equals opportunity to hurt which means I'll get you before you get me first. I have always dreamed of the mother who enfolded me safe in her arms and said "There there. You're OK." I have always wanted a father who stuck up for me rather than himself. Who was there for me and not so selfish with his emotions. But what they were not given they do not try to give. I have clung to the idea that one day, one day, we will be a relaxed happy family laughing at the dinner table.

We won't.

That will never be with my growing up family.

My mother still hasn't called. My father never once said he was sorry for them leaving the soccer game without saying a word and then letting five days pass with nothing. How can this be? I don't want things like that to be true but they just are. "I am your daughter!" I want to yell in their faces. I want that to mean to them what it means to me. It's not a victimless crime- I am an alcoholic for chrissakes. I was an asshole for many years. Hurtful in more ways than I can count. I have apologized and stayed sober. That's the very best I can do. It can't all just be one long continuous apology.

Getting sober has brought me out into the light. And sometimes it's really bright out here. And the truth hurts and I want to slide safely back into my naked mole rat hole and hide from all the truth that can pummel me relentlessly until I open my eyes to see. And so I cry and sorrow and yearn: "What? What!!!! What do you want with me?"

But I don't hide. I get hats, sunscreen, and friends. I don't drink, and I don't hide. I might be sunburned but dammit, I'm going back out there.

This healing business is hard. It is tough, and relentless, and sometimes breaks me down so far I don't even want to get up.

So life ain't great. It's not the wondrous end to my forty-second year I imagined. But then sometimes things just don't go the way you planned.

But. God. I am here, and I am sober. I am the mother to my loves that I have always wanted for myself. I cuddle and cook and read and play just one more hand of crazy eights. I tell them how glad I am that they're around, how happy I am to be their mom. Not just that I love them, but that I want them and need them and like them. I'm a better companion to my husband every single day. We are finally starting to care for each other and not just be parents and the people who provide. I have reached out and cried and said help me help me to my people who are close friends. I have people I know are back up. I have Universe Amy who is such a blessing to me. We family for each other. We all do. I am brave and strong and beautiful and good with the grace of the folk who help me up when I'm all broken down.

Family is not just the people you are born to- it's the people you can turn to. I am immeasurably grateful for the family I am making for myself. It's getting me through and carrying me on. It makes it so I can mother myself into feeling better.

Thanks y'all.

The Hardest Places.

Support is one of those things: you don't know you need it, and then all of a sudden you're flailing about wondering WTF just happened. Then you remember. Oh, yeah.....my people. I need them. My support. I need it. My recovery. I have to honor it.

I was feeling so under-able last week. Overwhelmed. Life was just mostly sucky, plain and simple.

As soon as I wrote about it I felt better. It made me think about support- how I shore myself up- my own self and other people and then the things I read and think that help too.

As addicts I think we all just want to hide. Hide from our addictions, hide in our addictions, hide from people, hide from life. Seeing the truth is not high on the list of priorities. Join that with not doing things we're supposed to (you know, the things we know work) and you have a duo of life mucking up muck. So here I am, on the fence- hiding and being wishy washy.

Being on the fence is kind of where that mucky place puts you. Up there, straddling both sides of decision, unable to commit to either action so just waffling back and forth from here to there keeping things confusing and wobbly. I am still unable to commit to a few things that I know will make my life better. I hate it because it reminds me of the years upon years upon years I would promise myself that I would quit drinking only to drink again and again.

Ack.

It's like I'm a spoiled child and I keep mush mouthing around with myself. "No, no sweetheart. Don't do that. It's not nice." But life is hard, and work is hard, and the kids are hard and blah blah blerg. I need to push that sucker out of the way and say, "NO. NOT ALLOWED. TOO EFFING BAD."

But here's the thing: that's OK. I appreciate it when everyone says "Be nice and kind to yourself" and "Don't be hard on yourself" but there comes a time when I need to kick my own ass. When other people might need to join in. There comes a point when I have to say, "OK. Enough is enough." And I can't say it in a sweet voice. I have to mean it. I have to really get out the big guns and put some fire in it. I have to be hard on myself or the things won't get done.

I'm trying to say that making myself behave is OK too. That sweetness and light have time and place, but it can't always be that way. When I first quit drinking I had to find balance between "NO, AMY. YOU MAY NEVER DRINK AGAIN" and "It's OK for you to feel sad and awful, but no drinks sweet one." I need some back up that isn't my friend but my truth from time to time. I need support in breezes and in hurricanes. Sometimes I need a hug and sometimes I need someone to hold me responsible for the things I say and do.

I mean this in the nicest way, but I get so tired of all the damn polite hand holding. Sometimes it isn't OK. Sometimes keep trying and there, there does more harm than good. Sometimes you have to be allowed to say the hard things that maybe people don't want to hear but need to hear. I'm a fucking alcoholic. I'm a master at saying what people want to hear, but I'm not so comfortable with what needs to be heard.

All these feelings I started to feel after I quit drinking deserve to be felt. ALL of them. Even the bad ones. They don't deserve to be minimized or brushed away just because they aren't happy and bright. These tough emotions warrant real attention. They certainly don't feel better just because it's more comfortable for everyone if we aren't hard on ourselves.

Who else is there to blame? Who else has to take responsibility if not me? I have to own it. I have to make it mine and accept the consequences of my actions. I have to be able to take myself to task for not holding up my end of the bargain when it comes to things that I can't compromise on. I have to be honest with myself. I owe it to myself to be so.

I am super stuck right now. I keep Sisyphus-ing along knowing I'm prolonging this part yet unable to shake and get unstuck. But I'm working at it. I know things will shift, and move, and that I'm OK. At fifteen months sober these are all things I know are true all the time. I feel like I'm ready for the tough love I know needs to come my way. I'm going to tuck in, brace myself, and open my heart to whatever comes next. Sometimes the best things come from the hardest places.

Time to Decide

I know at this time last year I was hungover. And asleep. There was probably an empty glass of water beside my bed. I'd probably been up drinking until who knows when- I was getting really deep into my drinking at this point- blacking out almost every time.

Thinking about it now, I can still pick out things to blame. Excuses for having a bottle of wine by 8 o'clock a few times a week. My job was in an awful place. I needed wine to be able to hang out with the kids and not go batshit crazy. I never saw my husband and the only way we could spend time together was to drink together after he got home from work. I wasn't walking the dogs enough. I didn't know what to make for dinner. Life is hard. Blah blah blah.

I was charging full speed ahead into full on alcoholism.

Each trip to the store I was buying not one but two bottles of wine. And a twelve pack of beer, to be sure I would have enough. This seemed like a lot, but not like too much. I might have to share. I was adding seltzer to my wine to make it last longer because I'd started finishing the bottles too fast. I'd started drinking bottles of Prosecco since sparkling means celebrating and there's nothing wrong with that.

I can still picture myself in the kitchen after two glasses getting dinner ready. The boys in front of the TV. Me sneaking out into the back yard to smoke just one more cigarette and then finish dinner. I picture this shell that was me, but not me. I picture me, but I was vacant, disappearing. More wine, dinner, bath, stories. The relief of the back porch when everyone was in bed. The annoyance when one of them would get up and come find me.

It's really hard to remember this stuff. To think about my little boys in their pajamas standing at the porch door wanting me, but I wasn't emotionally there. How they must not have understoond why I wouldn't pay attention to them, or leave the back porch to tuck them in one more time. Maybe they didn't see it as unusual, but I knew it was wrong. They never knew what mom to expect. I suspect they were starting to know which one to expect: none at all.

It's hard to think of my husband coming home from work and finding me in some sort of drunken state chain smoking on the porch. How much that must have sucked. How I would launch into some big talk about how he wasn't good enough at being a husband, or father, or housekeeper, or person, or whatever. How I unloaded all the stuff I hated about myself onto him. I made it about him instead of me. He never knew what wife to expect. I suspect he was starting to want no wife at all.

But I always knew what to expect. I was either going to be drinking or hungover, or in one of those two to five day spaces of trying to not drink. And I was always going to have that tape playing in my head- the greatest hits version of "You Suck At Life" playing over and over again.

There comes this time in all of our lives when we have to decide.

And I'm not talking about "I need to" or "I want to" or "I'm going to try".

I'm talking about "I AM".

It was not until I told myself "I AM GOING TO BE SOBER" and "I AM NOT DRINKING" that I did it.

There's a difference in the way "I AM" and "I WANT TO" is. "I AM" means it. "I WANT TO" gives you an out. "I WANT TO" means that you mean it in the morning when you feel awful and hungover, but that when later rolls around and you're having a drink it's OK, because you didn't say you were going to quit. You just said you wanted to.

It was not until I told myself "I AM GOING TO BE SOBER" and "I AM NOT DRINKING" that I did it.

The biggest thing I remember from the last day I woke up hungover and said "FROM THIS MOMENT ON I AM NEVER DRINKING AGAIN" is the relief. I was laying there, it was noon. I decided. I put down my weapons and surrendered. I felt that surrender, deep deep down. "I AM GOING TO BE OK." I wasn't sure that could be be true, but I believed it anyway. 

I knew that there were going to be two ways things would turn out. My truth would either be "I AM AN ALCOHOLIC" or "I AM ALIVE". I had to decide.

It's one of those things sitting here writing to y'all and me. If I said what I want to I would say just this: Quit. Quit right now and never look back. It is so much better, I promise, promise promise. I put it in writing. I say you can do it. You can. You can. You will be amazed at yourself, and so proud. Do it! But things just aren't that simple sometimes. And maybe you wouldn't believe me, or maybe you wouldn't believe that it was possible for you. I sometimes feel like it would come off like one of those weight loss infomercials where you watch and go "Oh! Look how good he/she looks! I want to do that!..... I could never do that." 

But you can. It will be true for you, just like it has been true for me. Your people will know who to expect. You will too. You will feel that relief, that surrender. It's always the right time to decide. 

So, a while back someone from Good Housekeeping contacted me about me being in the magazine. Not for Christmas cookies. For being sober. For being sober! My whole being hit the floor.

You mean you want me to be in a magazine because I quit drinking? You read my blog? Um.....what?

This happened this summer, and now here it is:

I only knew the article was out because someone emailed me and said, "Hi, I saw you in Good Housekeeping magazine....." And so I called Jonathan before I left work and said to please go to the store and get a copy or four so I could see it.

Holy crap y'all! I am so excited! I mean, there I am! Mixed in among the foolproof holiday dinners and smart ways to save this season talking about getting sober!

And I am also a big bunch of nerves, since now people might know. You know, like my mother-in-law who we haven't said anything to, or maybe someone at work who doesn't really figure into the equation, or well, you know- other people besides my safe sober community. It makes me want to explain: "But, see, really it was only a little problem, and I'm fine, and you know everyone drinks more than they should sometimes and and and....."

While I was hard thinking this morning I realized that I am afraid. Afraid of what people will think. Not of me now, but of past me. Now I'm fine (even when I'm not), it's then that's so messy. That old me is kind of embarrassing. I can stack up twenty different ways I shamed myself in ten seconds thinking about things I've done when I was drunk. (Ack. Don't do that to yourself.) I could probably fill a room with people who could say something bad about me that happened when I had too much over the course of my drinking life. I could feed a small country on the shame of it all.

It's hard, sometimes, to remember that that isn't who I am anymore.

I am afraid that people won't believe me. That they'll think I'm going back to the booze one day. That I am not totally committed. That I can't be trusted. That just like I hid my drinking I hide my sobriety. That I don't mean what I say. I'm afraid that I don't believe me either. What if I'm a big faker? A liar? What if I'm not good enough to have a nice together life? What if I don't really deserve it?

And then I realize that it's none of my business what other people think of me. The only opinion that I need to listen to comes from inside of me. I do believe me, big time. I do deserve it. We all do.

Here I am, in a magazine, and so the universe is making sure that I keep going. There is published out in the big wide world evidence now so there really is no turning back. If that's not a "you're doing the right thing" from somewhere out there I don't know what would be. I'm so grateful for that.

As I got further into my hard think I realized something. I am proud of who I am. And I'm OK with people thinking their own thinks about me. Cause besides all the bad stuff, there will be good stuff. Some of it really good. And so when I need to tie up my ship I'm going to head over to that.

So much of the twenty years I drank was about the continuous self tear down mission. FUCK THAT. I am no longer ashamed, or afraid to put myself out in the world just as I am, right now, today. Getting sober has made me finally, finally, mostly OK with me. Wow.

So this is me. My name is Amy, I am sober, and I am really proud of who I am.

Regular Saturday, Part Two

I've been thinking so hard about happiness. What makes it, why we want it. Why we want other people to be it. How it is pounded into our heads relentlessly: "Must be happy, must be happy, must be happy." Then I read this brilliant book called Introvert Power and I loosened my grip some.

Like, a LOT.

I am a naturally medium jubilant sort of gal. I am generally pretty happy, but also quite introspective and thoughtful. I like to soul search. I like to listen to other people search their own souls. I'm a hand holder. An encourager. A truth teller. I like to cry, to listen to sad songs over and over. I'm not afraid of sad anymore. Some of these are old me, some are new me that is really old me but had been drunk for twenty years and got forgotten.

But what I really have been thinking about is maybe not so much the happiness, but the need to be it. The need of other people for you and me to be it. All the time. Chin up. Don't be so down. Don't be so hard on yourself. Stop being sad. Don't dwell. Turn that frown upside down. Be better. Be better. Be better.

I am better, y'know? I'm not drunk out on my porch two to five nights a week. I'm better.

I also get super sad. Really down deep into the me of it all. I have all this alcoholism and depression and bipolar shit winding it's way through my genes like a relentless crazy plague. But I like to think about it. I like to feel the feeling of being search-y and looking and not afraid to shine the light right there on all that ugly shit.

I saw my therapist one on one two weeks ago. We talked about some very very very hard things that sucked so much to say out loud. So much that it makes me cry writing about it now. But again in that grateful way that makes it almost over. I said it out loud which means I'm not keeping secrets. Not anymore.

Because I said some of it out loud and I didn't die. And she didn't tell me to get out, or laugh. She held me while I cried and stroked my hair and suddenly I was safe. Safer than I'd been since I was fifteen and buried myself where no one could hurt me again.

So maybe I'm not happy every day. Maybe just not. But that doesn't mean that I'm not OK.

I'm more OK than I have ever ever been all grown up. More right with myself than I've been since I was five and got a little forgotten about. Strong enough to say hard things and to trust people with my secrets. Safe enough to be happy when I know it, and OK with just regular Saturdays.