Grown Up

 

Turning 10 years old was a very big deal to me. My age had TWO numbers and I was officially on the way to being a grown up- the magical thing I wanted more than anything else in the world. My little girl heart desperately longed for the grown up-ness of life to begin. I thought if I was a grown up I would securely fit in, fit most somewheres, that several if not all someones would understand me. That what made me hard to understand was the child part of me, which at 10 years old was most of me. That I would be credible, lovable, and believable if I was a grown up. 

When I quit drinking I wanted to be a person who was a grown up sober person. I didn't want to be a beginner-a sobriety child- I wanted the convincing distance that age of doing a thing for a long time gives you. It was a sense of security, of being able to be believed. Just like wanting to be a grown up as a child, I imagined long term sobriety/recovery would give me the credibility I longed for. That people wouldn't be smiling with goodwill upon hearing I quit drinking and also hiding behind their back the fan of skepticism cultivated from seeing too many people say one thing and do another. 

The interesting thing about quitting the thing that stunts your growth and keeps you from your dream is that it forces you to grow in a whole other ways besides up. My freedom from alcohol now, living my 10th year, seems like such a small step that was also the biggest thing I've ever done for myself. It was a first step, a footfall. A choice. I thought the biggest thing was the quitting, but really it's all the daily things that happen after that that are the big things. 

When I think about the morning I quit, I still cry. It feels so close, the kids innocently small, me a sick sack pinned to the bed so hungover I couldn't speak or move. The slats on the closet door. The love I found for myself that morning, that I dug down and found my worth, my heart. I didn't know that I did that until now. Then I just thought I was miserable, on my last ditch, and if I didn't quit I would lose my children's love and respect, that as soon as they grew up they would get as far away from me as they could. I had to quit or lose them- that was the choice I made then. I could slowly kill myself but I just could not kill their childhoods. 

The boys were 7 and 4 when I quit. They're 17 and 13 now. They are bigger and beautiful, we have solid close loving relationships and both of them thanked me for being there for them in the birthday cards they each made for me. I have wept a bit every day since with gratitude for who we are together. The scariest thing I imagine is how different their lives would be had I drank for the last 10 years. What their lives would be like today if I was still a blackout drinker. How big my mountain of shame would be. Would I still be alive? Would I be alive but dead to them?

I thought drinking made me a grown up. I thought getting drunk was a sign of sophistication. I learned getting drunk made me forget my pain. I didn't know. I didn't know. 

But my children know. I have been open and age appropriately honest with them and we talk about my drinking and why I did it and what they remember about it and what they think about them drinking or using drugs themselves. I am incredibly proud of how quitting drinking makes me the mom I always wanted to be. Present. Loving. Honest. Patient. Supportive. My children love me. We love each other. 

I am also incredibly proud of how quitting drinking makes me the grown up I have always wanted to be. Present. Loving. Honest. Patient. Supportive. I love myself. 

Now I think being a grown up means you learn that there's a lot more to things than you thought. Yes, I did quit for them. What I've learned is that I also quit for myself. As I've reflected on these past 10 sober birthdays and the years that go along with them I am pleased to realize that along the way I found the love I have for my children for myself. There is both. 

That by being their grown up, I also became my own. 

Word of the Year 2017

The photo above is us, New Year's Eve, 2009. It was the first or second year my oldest stayed up until midnight, he toasted our flutes of champagne with his own of sparkling apple cider and felt so grown up while his little brother slept through it all. I had worked that night and had a bunch to drink before I rushed home to ring in the new year with my dears. I'm guessing that after the ball dropped we shuffled Jack quickly off to bed and we drank more, my husband was probably tired and ready to go to bed and me just getting started- "Just one more!" I would demand and he would acquiesce rather than risk setting me off and end up staying up even later to fight instead of drink.

I'm well on way to drunk when we took that picture. My eyes are always my dead giveaway, but sometimes I'm the only person that can see that I've disappeared, to me my eyes look blurry, crossing a very tiny bit, looking far far away even though things are quite close. And this is exactly the way I wanted to feel when I drank: far far away, signals all crissed and crossed, swallowed up. I'm not here anymore.

When I first got sober I wanted to leave that shitty woman as far from me as I could go, I wanted to shed her skin a thousand million times until I was unrecognizable to myself, until you would never ever guess she had ever ever been me. I wanted to be separate from that version of myself, so cut off that there wasn't even a blurry memory of a single phantom limb or reminder of the amputation.

After a few years of sobriety I began to understand that I was still here, that I wasn't leaving. I was beginning to be at peace with admitting that I was my self, my view had expanded wide enough to see past the drunk woman I hated to find the tender girl I was before the hurt of life got in the way. But I was still two separate versions of myself: the unspoiled breakable girl and the woman who didn't drink anymore. Built with courage but scared, free but jailed, I could hold my own hand but not been ready to merge these two: I think of them both as parts of me that are who I really truly am but they remain friendly strangers- these parts of me that recognize each other but haven't trusted that one will allow the other to exist.

A few months ago on a walk in the woods the idea arrived that I was ready to be one person again. I could be finished protecting myself from myself, after four years I am allowed to be trusted. The two hands that represent what I was and what I am have reached across the middle and kept holding on when they used to drop. Instead of passing on the street with a friendly wave they shook hands and held on, each as each, melded together as one person, one woman who is unspoiled and breakable and sober and trustworthy. I have been protecting what is sweet and tender in me from the damage I've been known to do. I know now that this isn't necessary anymore.

My word this year is MERGE. Combining one into the other. Blending what has been and what will be. Becoming indistinguishable: the parts that are fragile and the ones that fight all singly recognizable as just me. Merging the hope and joy of my five year old self with the wisdom and care capably held by this woman at age forty-five. All the heartbreaking hard lessons I learned along the way? They are here too, part of my merge, here to make certain that this one woman never forgets to honor where I came from, where I've been, and all the places I'm yet to go.

Good Advice

I've been feeling super cocky in my sobriety lately. (Being in a magazine didn't hurt.) Like I am a sober badass, and will be forever. Nothing will stop me. After a summer/early fall of feeling pretty wavery and sad and just down in the dumps something changed and I took another step up- another leap away from boozy me and towards this awesome new person I am slowly becoming, that I already am.

It still feels very uncomfortable to think of myself in positive terms, but I'm practicing. A lot.

Which makes me realize that at some point in my life I felt really good about me, and then I felt toooo good about me. And then I got knocked down several times and finally stayed down.

I can be quite firm in my beliefs. Almost unbending. I can also be "If I can, you can. So just do it." Not super fair.

I want so much for anyone struggling with alcoholism to find their way to sobriety- consistent, lasting sobriety. And I'm at this point where I have almost a year, and I feel good about it, but I cannot forget where I came from. That bossing people into being sober (which is where I was heading) is not the way to help people to be sober.

Alcoholics aren't really the type you can boss into anything. Alcoholism is really an act of defiance. You can't really manhandle people like that (me) into anything, much less saving their own lives. Lord knows no one could have told me to stop drinking. It just would have made me drink more. And it did! The more I told myself I needed to quit the more I wanted to drink. You can't tell me what to do.

I'm struggling some with guidance and excuses. How to hear someone's struggle and it be expansive, and then how to draw lines in the sand that define boundaries that cannot be crossed. How to hear explanations, but not excuses. How to have forgiveness, and have expectations. How to hear people in their sobriety, not mine.

My universe friend Amy and I had a really good good conversation yesterday and I could tell I was feeling so smart and wise and superhuman. My advice is so good. My thoughts are wonderful and the best. I was basking in my glory.

And then she said some things in her universe Amy way that brought me back to earth.

One of them thundered through my head: "When you start feeling invincible is when it gets really dangerous. Then you could be way more likely to drink."

It reminded me to be humble in my sobriety. It reminded me to listen to those who have years on me, that my wisdom is far from complete. It reminded me that I am me, and you are you. And that to be the strong person I am and want to be I have to be able to use what works for me, but then I also have to use what works for you, too.  It reminded me that I have a lot to give, and a long long way to go.

My First "Meeting"

I made a blanket! 

Hi y'all!

There is so much to tell you, almost too much. Feel free to take breaks. :)

Right now I'm sitting outside in the driveway, barely able to stand being inside after being in the woods for four days. The house feels so small, so dark, so small. It's hard to concentrate out here with all the singing (Hampton balancing on a ball and needing looking at mostly) and the world going by-ing.

Yesterday I went to my first meeting. Not an AA meeting, but twelve step based and for women. It was such a strange and very cool feeling to be in a room with other women who are rolling along right here in my same boat. I was jealous of the people who had been to treatment (I know, I know. Crazy talk. That being said, I think I could only benefit from some weeks of self examination and help. That being said, we could never afford something like that- money wise or what to do with the children-wise.) I felt so glad to be in the room with these women. I could not help staring, looking at them, seeing me like a mirror right there in front of me.

Today I meet one-on-one with the woman who leads the meetings.

And then look! Here we are this morning, and you didn't even know I'd gone.

Yesterday after lunch I met with my women's group leader. By myself. As in: all eyes on me. (as in all two of them) It was OK- hard to explain my career as a drinker in an hour and a half. Hard because I keep remembering things (the way I had to drive to my senior beach trip alone since I got wasted after graduation, blacked out, and woke up at some dude's house.....ugh.) And then by remembering things like that realizing I had a big problem way before I thought I had even a little one.

I could take all day to sit here and sob and cradle sad me.

To change the subject a bit (we all need breathers from these heavy things) I had fun on our camping trip I was concerned about. Everyone drank all three nights (well, not me or the children) but not the usual booze fest. One night was heavier and people started to get that drunk way and it made me a little uncomfortable but also sort of helped since drunk isn't really cool or all that pretty. And no one seemed to be having more fun just because they were drinking- it actually seemed like they were having less fun the more they drank. Huh. And waking up without a hangover in the woods? Glorious. God, I love being sober at times like that. Not struggling with bike rides up mountains because I drank too much "sipping" tequila the night before. Not wishing the children would just go away so I could drink and smoke and blow off all cares. (i.e. fuck off life, I've got vacation drinking to do.)

I got questioned some, and I was honest about why I quit. For me, I cannot do the "on medication/taking a year off" thing. I have to go ahead and get the awkward so-you-don't-drink-anymore talks out of the way so I don't have to explain again next year.

And then there was the baby shower with guys and drinks last week too. Nothing like a drunk person with red wine stained teeth at five o'clock at a fucking baby shower, let me tell you. Although most everyone was mostly sober it was kind of uncomfortable and small talk-y (which I don't really like) but I made it (and then spent waaaaayyyyyy too much money on food for our camping trip- huh.) and now I don't have any more obligations where booze is involved in the near future. Phew.

One thing talking to my person yesterday showed me was that what I'm doing is amazing. Getting sober without any treatment or meetings is fucking hard. I told her about my blog, and y'all and how much that helps. She was still a bit blown away. So now I'm a bit blown away.

I think that getting to six months also sort of threw me for a loop. Not that I didn't think I was going to make it, but it was a reality check- a sort of I'm really doing this, and it's working! But life is still hard and sad and totally overwhelming sometimes. And now that I gave up my coping skill (ha, "coping skill") I'm sort of flailing around trying to figure out how it is I deal with all the huge emotions and just things that come up- sometimes out of the middle of nowhere. There's a lot more to deal with than I thought. Just stopping drinking doesn't make the me go away. Which is awesome since I'm figuring out that I really do like myself (high five on that) and hard because I still have baggage stuff like regrets and shames. And anger at the wasted time, grrrrrrrr, the wasted time.

Well, that wasn't so much after all. Life has been busy, and mostly really good. :) And there's lots more to come.