Filed under: family, Life on Life's Terms, Monthly Record, Recovery, Take me home
Dear Disease,
A friend who is an ER doctor says that she prefers her specialty because she always knows exactly what her primary goal is: keep the patient alive. To ease pain, diagnose illness, or dress a wound, that’s important, but it all comes second to her prime directive. Keep the patient alive. The first months out of rehab felt like that to me: stay sober. Everything else was icing, had to be icing, because it took all I had to just address my primary goal: stay sober.
The past month has taken me beyond that one clear goal out into the world of shaping-up-my-act. I’ve gone back to work, had a birthday, navigated off-limits medication, started my spring project, had bad days and some very, very good ones. I’ve started some healthy habits. I’ve measured and recorded and kept track and made lists and other basic things that must have been taught the day I skipped class in People School. We go walking in our neighborhood on Saturday nights, and I have loved it, loved the quiet time with our two unruly hounds and our little girl zipping around on her scooter. I joined a Moms of Preschoolers group. I’ve gone to the movies with a grownup friend and we’ve met friends of Mimi’s at parks for playdates.
It is scary out here, working without a net for the first time. I am no longer in full-fledged crisis, no longer just a patient. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, an employee, a friend, a daughter. Now it is time to apply what I have learned, to claim these identities and to show myself and others what I can do with them. I am learning as I go. It is definitely on-the-job training.
In the last month I’ve had moments as a mom that I wish I could bottle up and keep, and moments I so wish I could live over. I have had moments when I felt like a good wife, and moments when I was keenly aware of my shortcomings as one. I have done some things well and others poorly and in half a year I’ve compiled enough experiences to sift through them and look for patterns. I can start to build on what works and retool what doesn’t. I can ask myself why I hurt someone and can have a reasonable expectation of learning from that and not doing it again. I can mend: I can mend me, and I can attempt to mend damage I have done.
Two strange things just happened. Yesterday, Jon and Mimi and the dogs and I were in a big pile on the living room floor and I suddenly exclaimed: “I love our house!” Jon looked at me as if I’d just announced that I love the Republican party. Since Mimi came home I have done nothing but complain about our too [small, old, hot, cold, etc. etc.] house. Then this morning we were racing around, communicating in short bursts when we passed each other in our various tasks, and I was starting to quiver with anxiety. Jon stopped and asked if I was all right. Stressed, I said. And I have yet another cold. And my shoulder hurts. But I’m happy, I said. I don’t know why, but I am happy. Right here, right this minute, standing here in my kitchen, I FEEL HAPPY.
And for now, that is all I need to know.
Love,
Robin
Dear Disease,
There’s an empty wine bottle stuck in the top of my bedroom closet, been there since May, it mocks me but I don’t want to touch it. I could ask Jon to throw it out, but I just can’t face the associations. He’d be kind, I know he would be, but I can’t expect him to smile during such a chore and I can glean so much meaning from the tiniest of grimaces that it would knock me down.
This was the month when I faced, head on and with eyes wide open, the wreckage of my life. Sifted through the ashes. Recovered what I could, mourned that which I could not save. Cringed at the damage. This was the month that forced me onto my feet and forward. I returned to California, left my support system behind in Florida, and reclaimed my life. On Sunday, we’ll see friends for the first time in ages. Next weekend we have a playdate arranged for Mimi. She has had so few in her lifetime, it’s criminal. And last night I taught my first class since May, since I dropped out of life nearly completely. It was a mess, but I forgive myself for that because now, I can. I can evaluate what I did well and what I did poorly and go on. I couldn’t do that then, last spring, my darkest days.
I feared finding bottles or pills in my office. I didn’t, although I did find a cork. It was the vestiges of my old, successful-appearing life that shocked and pained me. When I opened my office door, it looked like I had simply gone home the night before. The teapot was half full, a book was open on the desk, the answering machine light was blinking. Papers were strewn everywhere, half written, now useless. Papers that were meant to be articles that were meant to be in journals that were meant to be published by now. That is where I was meant to go.
Instead, I went to rehab. I like to think that there was something in me, some part of a salvageable me, that rose up to fight for survival and got me to treatment. Some essence of me didn’t want to leave this life, leave Mimi. Some spark got us on a plane to Florida where I knew Mimi’d be cared for, deposited us at my mother’s house, planted wine bottles all over so my family would finally believe me, begged my sister to drive me to the hospital. I touched down there like a tornado, catching everyone by surprise. By then I’d spent hours on the internet, looking up treatment programs, recovery groups… but always in secret. My husband had been hounding me about my drinking for a while but that was in private and even he didn’t know how much Xanax I was also swallowing.
I suppose these memories are rushing up right now because this, where I sit right this minute, is where it all fell apart. And I do mean, fell apart. I can barely connect the dots from sitting here miserable to lurching through the first weeks of treatment, sobbing myself to sleep with the one picture of Mimi they’d let me keep tucked under the hard little pillow. Some days I couldn’t find the picture as soon as I woke up and I’d toss sheets and blankets around the room, wailing like a madwoman. On my last day of rehab, I threw away that picture. I still feel a twinge of nausea when something tangible reminds me of that time… the sweater I wore against the institutional chill, applesauce (which I think is a food group all its own in hospitals), Sandra Bullock. On Saturday nights they’d show movies and one I remember was about a woman going to rehab and she was played by Sandra Bullock. Whom I now see everywhere I turn.
Oh my God. When I look at these words I feel like I am telling someone else’s story. Right this minute I am crying so hard I can hardly type.
I remember a friend who lost her home in a fire telling me that the oddest thing was that all of her underwear itched. She had had to buy all new and she didn’t have even one pair of those comfy old cotton undies. That was 10 years ago; I imagine she has plenty of comfy undies now. And I imagine she appreciates them that much more. Which pretty much describes how I feel. I won’t say I like these tears but I will say that I welcome the sign that my soul is in there somewhere, that whatever essence-of-Robin fought so hard for survival is finally joining forces with the rest of me to make one whole person who can breathe, think, make decisions, and, oh my God, feel. This month was all about integration, I suppose; this was the month that forced my present to meet my past. I will have to face that wine bottle, I know, soon. I will have to acknowledge its existence. But you know what? It’s up there, uninvited, in my closet, but it’s empty. Hollow, unoccupied, void, containing nothing. It no longer has power because I no longer let it. It is inert.
And I? Fina-fuckin-ally? Am Not.
Love,
Robin
Filed under: Dawn, daymaker, Monthly Record, NaBloPoMo, Recovery is Fun, Recovery is hard
To My Disease:
Still winning. Sometimes it seems pretty bare, but I am still winning.
It’s been a tumultuous month. We left Arizona. Mimi started preschool in Florida. My husband said he is ready for a divorce. I’ve thought about taking something for anxiety a million times. I haven’t taken anything. I’ve crawled over every inch of the emotional spectrum, often several times a day. I’ve looked at jobs. I’m aghast at just how far I have sunk professionally.
This morning she blurted out, “Family. They are my family. Dawn, Edward, Becky, Thomas, Abby. They are my family.” Her aunt Dawn had taken her three cousins home the day before, after a weekend of playing and fun.
Not only was I glad that the notion of family held resonance for her, but I was especially glad she so happily linked us all together. She knows we all belong to her, but we are NEVER in the same place. This is my biggest sadness.
When she and I dragged up on my mom’s doorstep just about a month ago, she instantly recognized the house. She spent much of the summer here. I was glad for her comfort, but my mom was visibly nervous the first time I went out without Mimi. The last time I did that, in May, I disappeared into rehab for four months.
I’ll never know the extent of the impact that had on her. Never. It seems worlds between the stances of “she’ll never remember something that happened when she was two” and “a child’s most important emotional development happens before she’s five.”
I do know that her life here, today, at this moment, is much better than it ever would have been had I not gone in. The unknown haunts me so, and there is much of it: I don’t know what is going to happen with my marriage, my home, my job, just for starters.
But I DO know that today, at this moment, I am doing all I can to be sober and emotionally healthy. I do know that if I do that this moment, and the next, and the next, and the next, that eventually it will add up to a sober and emotionally healthy mom. And I know that’s all I can do.
Work on more lovely days, and the months will follow.
Filed under: Dawn, Life on Life's Terms, Mom, Monthly Record, Recovery is hard, Sarai
Dear Disease,
I won this month. It’s not a strong win, but it is a win.
I haven’t been to a meeting in over a week (yikes) — and to think that just over a month ago I was sitting at a meeting near my treatment center, surrounded by a phalanx of other inmates, and wondering how 90 meetings in 90 days could be so hard to achieve.
In the past month, I have not:
1) gotten in touch with friends — I talked to my first friend today (she got the aneurysm tale)
2) stayed in touch with my sister Dawn
3) figured out what to do with my life
4) straightened out my horrific financial situation
5) made any progress with my husband — we have our first counseling appointment this coming Friday
6) attended meetings daily
7) gotten a sponsor
8) attended any social events with people in recovery
but, MUCH more importantly, I HAVE:
1) reunited with Mimi (!!!!!)
2) slept through the night without any sleep aid
3) spent a weekend at my Mom’s “without help,” as I’m fond of saying
4) flown across the country — again without *ahem* help
5) stayed in touch with my mom, my dad, and my sister Sarai
6) MOST IMPORTANT — I HAVE NOT RELAPSED. Can I say that again? I HAVE NOT TAKEN A DRINK OR A PILL. To those of you out there who don’t get that — which is to say, all of you who are saying “I don’t get what the big deal is” — let me assure that that is A VERY BIG DEAL.
In some circles, it would be said that that is EVERYTHING.
Which is just flat out surreal. Six months ago I was the poster child for the position: if you don’t want to get drunk, don’t drink that liquid, dummy! If you want to lose weight, don’t eat that brownie! What’s so hard about that?
HA. Life can hand out a comeuppance, can’t it?
I am going to call this month a cautiously successful first month post-rehab.
I can feel that I am fighting this lifestyle every step of the way. I am the type who goes to the gym because it’s good for her and she HAS to, not because I enjoy it. At all. One thing I learned in rehab was that the primary purpose for reviewing my history is to learn more about myself; what I like and don’t like, for example, is apparent more in where I happily spent my time than in what I write on a “getting to know me” form.
Another thing I preached before but poorly practiced. I remember hearing somewhere the notion that we all have the EXACT same amount of allotted time: 24 hours a day. How and where we spend it really reveals what is important to us. The saying “I didn’t have enough time to …” is disingenuous. What we mean when we say that is that we didn’t have enough time to [whatever] when we’d finished doing all the OTHER things that were more important, whether by our choice or because, for example, we were getting paid to do them and needed the money.
How many times I thought that to myself, and still plowed along. How much time I lost … gave away … whatever. There’s a reason that condition is referred to as “wasted.”
So now, while I know I cannot go back to the way I was living before, I am sad at the loss. I feel right this second like I’ve been diagnosed with an illness — one that will stay in remission as long as I do not do certain things. But I like those things!!! Sad, but true.
So… this first month has been a very mixed experience. I’m definitely not a cheerleader for recovery — I can’t even call myself “sober” yet because while I haven’t used I also haven’t felt content or [at all] serene. Truth be told, I’m pretty fucking miserable.
But Mimi … oh, she just keeps getting better and better.
And… I HAVE NOT USED.
So there.
Love,
Robin
