Please join me there.

Recently, the lovely Ellie started a website for women to share their stories of addiction and recovery. I immediately threw myself at her and she let me join in as a co-moderator.

So this week, it’s my turn to share the first part of my “what it was like” story.  Please come on over, and give a thought to sharing your story, too.

I was not going to write about recovery today, I really wasn’t. I was prepared to write about the first stop on the Preschool for Mimi Grand Tour, which began at 7:30 this morning at our local Waldorf school.

However.

I have been seized by the nastiest cravings. I have no idea why they’ve struck now. I bought a beer at the grocery store for Jon on Monday. I am staring down 10 months’ sobriety. I feel guilty that I have not yet gotten a sponsor. My rehab center’s annual reunion is in three weeks’ time. Things are stressful. Things are great.

I certainly know by now that cravings are capricious and strike when the occasion suits them. These have been notable because there have been so many in such a short time, and they’ve been so sneaky. They have been the nastiest kind, too, the ‘it’s okay, just one won’t hurt’ kind. Not an hour ago I was perusing cooking schools on-line and one place noted that they serve wine with all of their classes and my mind was already choosing between a cab and a shiraz before the rest of my brain caught up enough to put on the brakes. That. Was. Spooky.

So, I am now turning my thoughts away from the Waldorf school and to strategies to deal with this, and I hope to find one or two that do not require vats of ice cream.

Wow, 8 lbs lost since the summer! My head was full of glee. I immediately thought, “Just 7 more pounds and I’ll be at my goal weight of 115. If I stop eating for a while I could get there!”. Wait, I’m going to go back and bold the key part of that sentance… Yes, I thought, “If I stop eating.” Not, “If I eat healthier” or “If I go on a diet” or “If I start exercising”. See CRAZY.

and this:

Not eating makes me feel powerful. And a little naughty. Like I have a secret strength that no one else has. Kind of like when I had my secret bottle of wine for strength and support? Hmmm, maybe. Looking back, I can see that my “pickyness” as a child/teen had a lot to do with control.

Yikes. I SO could have written this. Right down to the “intestinal problem” which she wisely declined to elaborate on, as will I.

When we brought Mimi home, by train (across Russia) and plane (across the Atlantic) and automobile (across Phoenix), I was overwrought, encountering more emotion in a few weeks than I’d probably felt in my whole life. Plus I always lose weight when I travel, choosing to subsist on bottled water and crackers. Jon, on the other hand, has a stomach of titanium, eating everything including the whole boiled fish we were served on the train. Seriously: the man can eat Russian train fish.

But this time the weight didn’t come back once I was home. Sheer terror, I think, kept it going down for a while. But reading Jane’s post up there helped me to realize how much of that weight loss was also about control. I’d never considered that becoming a mother would make me feel so out of control and powerless. I’d expected to feel powerful, now that I was responsible for keeping this little being alive, all by myself for hours at a time. I’d expected to rise to the occasion and flex my mommy muscles and lift up the world.

I didn’t. I shrank.

By Christmas, I looked awful, but my sick brain told me I looked fine. My clothes were falling off. I was close to 100 lbs, which at 5′ 6″ is not good. I preferred photos taken from a distance, like this one:

This morning when I was pouring my first cup of coffee, I realized how much I had been looking forward to it. The smell, the warmth as it slides down my throat, the little kick…

Uh-oh.

As an addict I am always looking forward to something, always anticipating the sensation that hits when the [insert drug of choice] first nuzzles our brains. Any addict or alcoholic can describe it for you, in brilliant detail. It’s as if the addicted brain releases just a fraction of feel-good chemicals to ensure that we’ll keep doing whatever we have to do to get the rest.

Recovery teaches the danger that can hide in this, the danger that we’ll find ourselves in a place where we’re never in the now, never experiencing a moment as it really is. Anticipation is most useful for the first few notes of the bridal march, the last half mile of the marathon. It’s sort of like trading in a roller coaster for a scenic drive: riveting ups and stomach-churning downs for steady and manageable and pleasant.

I never have been good at living in the moment. It’s too scary, too raw, too precarious to actually experience life as it comes, however it comes. It’s something I work on every day. I’m told that worrying about my morning coffee is overreacting (I am, after all, a founding member of Overreactors Anonymous) but it’s okay. Where I come from there’s a saying, advice to “arm for bear and hope for bunnies.” As with many things Southern it doesn’t completely make sense but the gist of it comes through.

So I’m trying. I’m working on it. I’m getting used to the scary, the raw, the precarious; learning to appreciate the quiet and known. The moments. It’s always about the moments.

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

She was in one of those special moods, in which she
1) was hungry but she
2) didn’t want any food of any kind and she
3) didn’t want to wear any clothes, yet she
4) didn’t want to be naked, and she
5) didn’t feel well enough to sit on the potty even though she
6) couldn’t wear a diaper because it was too itchy.

It was one of those moods that turn her into a newborn. a 90-year-old woman, and an infuriated badger AT THE SAME TIME.

So we headed to our pediatrician’s office, which is open for sick kids on Sundays. If you manage to hang around in the vomiting, crying, feverish crowd — and those are the parents — until the nurse calls your name, then you know your child is sick enough to go to the doctor on Sunday. The verdict: two ears with “raging” infections. One eardrum “bulging” and in danger of bursting. Which we’d know had happened, I was told, if green stuff flows out of her ears. Seriously, if green stuff flows out of her ears we certainly would know what happened because we’d be back at the doctor’s office in minutes.

The doctor had had no trouble talking in a normal voice about green stuff and bursting membranes, but she dropped her voice to a whisper to tell me the medicine wouldn’t kick in until tomorrow so we could expect Mimi to be “pretty miserable tonight.” I didn’t feel any better when we got to the drugstore and the pharmacist dropped his voice to a whisper to say that this medicine is really good “but kids hate the taste” and it’s “really hard on their stomachs.”

So I’m off to bed to cuddle with her and listen to the concert and hope for the best. I’m armed with children’s Motrin, a humidifier, and a big bowl of ice cream. Jon will join us soon, as will Tuco and Rosa. The five of us equal nearly 500 pounds of mammal in our queen-sized bed, but it’s not too crowded as long as we inhale and exhale in shifts. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Take care.

*HALT stands for “hungry, angry, lonely, tired,” four conditions that are triggers for many of us.

Tonight, we’ll be watching the Help Haiti Live concert, streaming on the Help Haiti Live website. The country is beginning the long, slow, second wave of relief efforts; the ones that come after the initial disaster response. The longer term efforts often have more difficulty with funding than do the immediate efforts, and there is really never money “left over” to combat the huge obstacles faced as time goes on. So our habit is to give now as the country shifts into long-term relief mode.

Compassion International is our charity of choice.  We’ve supported secular charities as well but I’m particularly fond of the work these folks do. I know how some of us feel about faith-based organizations, but it works for me; I like their focus on children, it’s a passion we share, and my higher power aligns with theirs so we’re cool with each other.

I met some of them once and I liked them. It was during one of those middle-of-the-night layovers so familiar to travellers, when you can’t let yourself go to sleep because you’re in some random, dark, slightly scary airport and everything you own is in your backpack (everything that matters right now, anyway) and there are no gate agents so if you close your eyes you’re quite likely to wake up in an empty departure gate, in an unfamiliar country, 15 minutes after your plane left. So you fuel up on coffee and vending-machine food and you visit with your fellow stranded travellers.

I also like their profile at Charity Navigator. Over the years I’ve grown careful with relief organizations. I hate to be suspicious of a charity, for heaven’s sakes, but one we donated to once turned out to be a scam. So we’re glad there are groups out there helping us to spend our charity money wisely.

So please tune in. I am especially excited to hear Jars of Clay. Their song “Show You Love” is our theme song, of sorts, Jon’s and Mimi’s and mine. It’s just amazing and captures the essence of international adoption so perfectly. I still cry every time I hear it. You might, too.

I hope they play it tonight.

Take care,
Robin

Earlier this week, Mimi got a gift in the mail, a new book! She is just beginning to fall in love with books, so she was really excited about Danny the Dragon Meets Jimmy. Even though we’d just gotten home, hadn’t even taken off our shoes yet (always the first thing we do), we had to sit down and READ IT READ IT READ IT RIGHT NOW. So I was kinda primed to read it quickly and get on with making dinner.

But we liked it too much. We even ended up putting the DVD in and watching it. We admired Danny’s red shoes. We drew pictures of Danny and his sidekick, Skipper. We stopped just short of going out to find our own magic seashell (Danny’s preferred mode of transportation).

For Danny, it turns out, is a magic dragon who travels the world in a beautiful green and white shell, aided by his navigator, Skipper. (Please don’t ask me what Skipper is: a mini-dragon, perhaps? A chameleon? He’s cute and small and green and wears a sailor hat. That’s all I know.) In this book their ‘talking’ shell captures Jimmy’s imagination and, once at Jimmy’s house, they join Jimmy’s family for a fun summer evening.

It’s a sweet book with a simple storyline and gentle characters. What I particularly liked about it is that it wraps its lessons up in a story. We see how much the family members enjoy time with each other, how helpful Danny is in washing up the dinner dishes, how lovingly mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers speak to each other. It communicates volumes about good manners and respect without ever being didactic.

Mimi didn’t catch all that, of course, not directly, but at least she didn’t embarrass me by saying the characters’ behavior was totally foreign to her. She just loved the bright colors and clear illustrations. She loves that as much is told in the pictures — in the soup bowls on the table, in the faces of the children playing in the yard — as in the simple words. Mostly, she loves the character of Skipper. So much so that we’ve read the book at least twice a day since it arrived, and she wants a little green navigator of her own. And, really, don’t we all?