These Revelations

I sent a complaint letter.

I've never done this before, me, people pleaser extraordinaire, forget the thought of me speaking up when mistreated or handled in a clumsy way, but I did it.

I have revelations all the time- Oh! I can do this! Oh! This seems so normal! - it's disconcerting how I realize and understand so much about myself in these short bursts, like an explosion of light bulbs above my head, it's so blinding and so illuminating all at one big time. Sometimes I have to laugh because I feel so off center and wobbly that if I don't laugh I might just cry and revelate forever. I reassure myself with little victories: I'm learning to walk, how to stand while bearing weight on both legs- to be in my body. I can take deeper fuller breaths than I could a year ago, I'm not always holding my breath. My accomplishments may seem small in the grand scheme of things- I can keep my chin level now instead of a little up ready to defend, I think about sex without wanting to seethe, disappear or hide, I danced with other people in the room, I sent a complaint letter. Revelations. Grand scheme ones.

I've gone from reading about sex to reading about grief. Unexpressed grief is basically like shoving giant wads of gunk into your feelings pipes so they get mucked up, impassable, and you become anxiously paralyzed by the fears you'd meant to cry out but drank down for twenty years instead. I can connect the two so clearly, sex and grief go hand in hand for all of my life. I can see how the grief was the beginning, I can take myself back to me at five sweet years old, strawberry blond hair hanging down my back, past the ties of my favorite pinafore, sucking in my tears because I was too dramatic and so so stupid for crying, my parents teasing me for having feelings. I can feel how much it hurt when I needed tenderness and my parents had no idea what that even meant since their parents had no clue how to do things like feelings either. How that grief led me to using sex for hurting myself and being hurt, how drinking helped me unrealize who I was enough to do it, over and over until the beauty of my body was lost and I spread my legs again, bereft. Revelation.

I can feel how much I try to hide myself, too big to disappear and too unwieldy to blend in.

I sit on the couch across from my therapist and stay a good girl, unable to sob out the tears that are dying to get out because I want her to like me and have me please come back again next week. I have stuffed it all down for so long that I'm afraid to let it out because I could possibly head into a nervous breakdown, never to return- we only have one small hour, and then I have to head to work. Not a lot of time for falling apart and then back together.

I imagine a time when I don't have all this work to do, that these moments of glaring understanding, these revelations, will happen only a few times a year instead of a few a week. These things that come up, these elementary understandings that could have been lessons learned long ago had I only been bravely paying attention instead of fearful and drinking. I feel so stupid sometimes that I'm just now getting the idea that I can ask for what I need and it isn't a crime, it isn't wrong. Why wasn't I this person I am now all along? My years of work boxing up and shoving down all of the feelings and it turns out they never disappeared after all. All that work, down the drain.

The other day I was talking to my mom about being sweet when people are hurting and she said she uses humor to make people feel better. WHAT? I felt so sad and angry thinking of all the times I cried, hurting, and got humored by my own parents. They were using their humor, the very people who were supposed to love and heal me instead making it worse. Making it funny. I'm in total disbelief that she thought that teasing was what made people feel better. I want to stomp my five year old foot and scream stop laughing at me! right in her smiling face. Which would have only made her laugh harder.

No wonder I have no clue about what a normal emotional response is. No wonder I don't know how to take myself seriously, or how to speak without questioning myself, or how to be tender, or where to put all these big feelings. No wonder when I sit on the couch at therapy when the most hurty things come up I laugh. God, no wonder. No wonder my life is full of revelations, these connections that lead me from disappeared to conscious again and again.

I'm all spun up, so much happening, so many feelings that I don't know where to put them all. They're all unruly as puppies, scattered and making messes everywhere. I don't feel like myself anymore, but I don't know who I feel like either- sometimes it feels so much like me and then I hardly recognize who I am. It's like giving birth, but for years.

I feel so fortunate to be coming along in my understanding, and also so right at the beginning, like I've been running for a hundred years and somehow I'm still within sight of the starting line. It's frustrating in this gracefully annoying way, this is where I have to laugh, where it actually is funny, and lovely, sweet and amazing. Me, at forty-five years old, stumbling along, learning to walk. Learning to fly. Being exactly myself at my life. Being born, by revelations.

Naturally

I went to go see a holistic health specialist. My appointment was over two hours long. We covered a lot of stuff.

A lot.

She asked me about sleep and dreaming. About my skin. About my joints and muscles. About mucous. And pooping. About exercise. About my vagina. We talked about it ALL. It was cool to talk about my physical health rather than winnow out more mental stuff.

She said, "So, with autoimmune stuff (for me rheumatoid arthritis) stress is a big factor. It seems like you are stressed even when you sleep." I never really thought about that, but I never really wake up feeling well rested either. Huh.

Then we talked about when I quit drinking and smoking and then had to stop running I lost all of my outlets. All of the places I let go of stress had disappeared, but I haven't replaced them with anything else. Eating cookies is not really a stress reliever. Huh.

We also talked about my breathing- how I breathe very shallowly. Another example of being in survival mode.

I need to relax. Saying that makes me laugh a little since my first response is "Yeah. Right."

When I quit drinking I really thought that all the pieces would fall into place. That because I quit drinking I would be healthy, lose weight, and life would tra la la along. That I wouldn't feel tired and wasted all the time.

I would never have guessed that I would be four cups ("cups") of coffee fatigued each day. When I was drinking I couldn't even drink coffee because it made me way too edgy. I wouldn't have thought I'd be thinking about pulling over to take a nap on my ten minute drive home from work. That I would have to go to bed before nine o'clock because I just can't make it any longer. That I would have to give up running because no matter how much I take time to heal it's too much for my body to take. I think about how lucky I was when I was able to go out and easily run ten miles or so even with a hangover. I think about how I felt such relief after that first bottle of wine. How I was almost disappeared by then. Nothing lets me disappear now.

Being present is hard. I didn't realize how alone I felt until Dr. C told me I was in survival mode most if not all of the time. That I don't feel safe in the world. That I lost my three biggest supports and have been sort of flailing around with nothing to take their place. I didn't even think about that.

Getting and being sober is about so much more than not drinking. Dammit. DAMMIT! :)

I have to smile at that too because even as hard as it is, I love being sober. It makes me feel like I at least have a chance.

So yesterday I breathed A LOT. Deep, purposeful breaths. I drank water, and ate slowly. Slept terrible.

Randomly, I feel so encouraged by it all. First off, can you imagine if all this was happening and I was still drinking? I would be feeling ultra uber shitty and probably in dirty sweatpants with wine stained teeth and a bottle of ibuprofen in one of those hip coin dispensers. Fuck. So this is kind of like life tra la la-ing along, really.

I suppose it's all in the way you look at it. "How unfair!" I could rant. Or "How possible!" I can be. My life seems kind of like an endless crossroads- but how fortunate I am to actually have choices that aren't all "guess I'd better get drunk again." It reminds me that I am aware. It reminds me that I have a lot to be grateful for. It reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

"Never grow a wishbone, daughter, where your backbone ought to be." Clementine Paddleford

Since I'm doing all this wishing but not much backbone-ing things are staying the same. Wanting to feel better and working to feel better are two different things. Dammit! So me and Clementine are getting the boat out. The scenery isn't going to change without some rowing.