Filed under: Adventures, Everyday Blessings, family, Holidays, Recovery is Fun
I’m convinced that life doesn’t let you suffer too long, if you do your part: sleep, eat, be of service, have faith. Sunday brought to my house the best Valentine’s Day ever. You know, best day recovery style: full of love and giggles and predictable enough. We rode the train into the hills to visit a petting zoo. It had been a long time since, instead of writhing in anxiety, I could see and feel the beauty in such a day.
Best of all were my travelling companions. A fluffy haired moppet who danced in fountains and spun in her princess dress, and a gentle man whose tired eyes relaxed and smiled and enjoyed. Who could ask for more?
It’s not really called that, but it becomes that every holiday season. Why does it feel like the Victorians discovered Christmas? Anyway, this was the center of the town 125 years ago, and it maintains its Victorian flavor. Which is admittedly strange in a Florida town.
Christmas should also feel strange in Florida, but perhaps because that is how I grew up, it doesn’t. I remember in college my marine-biology-major neighbors decorated a tree entirely in stuff they’d found while scuba diving. Smelly, but creative. I’ve seen many trees since done in seashells and coral, and I think they are beautiful.
And of course, sparkly lights are sparkly lights anywhere. I think the holidays are a great equalizer for public spaces. A few sparkly lights and some bright colors will liven up pretty much any open space, and I’ve gone looking for holiday splendor in the strangest places, from Costa Rican beaches to British iron towns to post-communist Russia. Rich, poor, populated, not … as long as there is cheer, there is Christmas.
We went down to the village center to watch Santa Claus light the Christmas tree. It was just cool enough for a sweater, and to choose hot chocolate, sitting at a sidewalk cafe. Webs of sparkly lights stretched through the trees arching overhead, and clapping from a neighborhood theater production of Annie floated out of a turn-of-the-century playhouse just up the street. Add a dollop of laughter and a happy toddler, and it was magical.
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.
Please take this cat and be nice to her. We had many days of looking for a good home (and we really really tried) but we could not find a home. She is a good cat.
The mom cat had been left on the clinic’s doorstep. Her kittens were born in a nest of sterile blankets and she had a good meal as soon as she was ready. Next would come the business of finding permanent homes.
My niece, a bit older and more experienced in such things, was fascinated by the tiny creature’s umbilical cord.
This small-but-big event reminds me once again to be thankful — for my own found daughter, my own nest, my own family… and so much more.
I love mornings …
For the last couple of months, I look forward to going to sleep so that I can wake up to Mimi and to my first cup of coffee. Strange, but true.
Mimi goes to sleep in her own bed but inevitably wakes up during the night and comes into ours. She packs differently each night, depending, I suppose, on some secret toddler knowledge: sometimes we wake up to a zoo of stuffed animals, her favorite pillow, a blanket and so on. Sometimes it’s just her.
She curls up to sleep, so in the morning she is all tangly hair, swirls of brightly covered kid-pajama fabric, and pink feet poking out. Although she’s timely — 6 to 7, every day — she isn’t a popper-upper, preferring to lie quietly for a minute and think about her day. She’s a cuddly waker, offering kisses and hugs while her pillow’s still warm. One thumb always seems to find its way into her mouth overnight.
Among my favorite sights is her crooked smile around that thumb.
Often, she wakes seemingly straight from a dream, and her first out-loud sentences are directed to whomever her Dreamland company was. One morning she’s sharing animal crackers with her best friend, Olivia. The next, she’s bodysurfing with Lilo and Stitch. This morning my eyes opened to “He likes purple better! He won’t eat lellow!”[emphasis and pronunciation hers]. Yeah, I don’t know either.
After as many cozy moments as possible, my next treat: the first coffee of the day. I only get one cuppa real before switching to decaf. It smells divine, tastes lovely … and I love the feel of the hot liquid sliding down my throat. Ahhhh….
So many mornings have been so very different for me. I remember mornings when I awoke surprised that I actually did awaken. Too many days I was greeted with agonizing memories of the day before. My churning stomach argued against coffee, but my fuzzy, pounding head demanded it. I didn’t luxuriate in it then. It seemed as immediate a need as air.
Too, too often, I’d get Jon off to work and Mimi off to school and would go back to bed, putting off facing my life for as long as I possibly could.
Recovery talks about being present in the moment — finding the pleasures in daily life. No, not just finding them … inviting them, relishing them. They are the stuff, it is said, that makes life really worth the effort.
I can actually see that now, and this amazes me. Numbing myself may have dulled pain, but it also sedated my ability to pick up on the good stuff. The desert flowers in the early light; the first deep inhale of roasted beans. It wasn’t that these things weren’t pleasant. It was that I was completely unable to access “pleasant.”
Gives new meaning to the phrase, “Wake up and smell the coffee.” I get it now.
Filed under: Recovery is Fun
So… this morning I weighed myself and for the first time in months the numbers have started decreasing. Okay, I was down one pound, but I’ll take it.
And I am not anorexic, pinning my life’s hopes on my weight, or deluding myself into believing I can ever look not-40 again. Because, you know, I am. 40. Something.
It’s just that the thing I have always been is stable — when it comes to weight. I have habits, mannerisms, and quirks ranging from the annoying to the dangerous, but my size rarely changed. In fact, thanks to the phenomenon known as vanity sizing — an article of clothing that met the dimensions of a size 12 twenty years ago is now a size 8 — my clothing size has dropped a bit. Seriously, except for that one time in college when I experimented with living entirely on frosted Pop-Tarts, Ruffles potato chips and beer, my weight has not fluctuated more than 15 pounds up or down since I entered puberty.
Until a couple of months ago.
Everyone — all the women, anyway — gained weight in rehab. Seriously. We’d joke about it … especially the alcoholics, who’d note that they’d just given up a 1,000-calorie-a-day habit and now they’re gaining weight? The counselors would give us their take on it — increased appetite, comfort food, improved nutrition.
Many, many alcoholics and addicts are malnourished… there was a reason they called the Kate Moss underfed look “heroin chic.”
Chocolate did seem a necessary component of early recovery — it’s a lot more delicious, of course, when you can actually taste it. Plus, when you get home at 10 PM after 12-stepping since 7 AM, are feeling smug because you’re clean and sober, and have very limited allowable means of rewarding yourself — no movies, no shopping, no sex… well, YOU try to talk yourself out of ice cream under those circumstances. Let me know how it goes.
The food orgy did end with treatment, but my appetite is still crazy. The worst part is that none of my clothes fit — add to that the extra ick factor of too-small clothes in this gross Arizona HEAT and you’ve got a mess.
But, like everything else, it’s getting better.
