bouncing

The red wine is for the skillet, for cooking, for mushrooms, for steak.
It is not for me.
It is not for me.

I am standing and pretending I'm uneffected, handing out bread next to the skillet and its chef, downwind of the smell of the wine.

To the people who curve in a line like ants, coming for food, I repeat, bread? bread? bread? would you like some bread? bread? bread?

And I'm thinking, wine wine wine, even while I try to focus on other things, like the serving gloves I'm wearing, my hands sticky and hot, and the faces smiling and thanking me. For the bread.

wine wine wine...

Of course there is irony here. The bread and the wine, this doesn't escape me. This thought reminds me to beg for serenity. This thought, of bread and wine together, not alone. So I say the prayer and kick at the dirt with my sandaled feet.

That bottle of red wine is sitting in arm's reach wrapped in a brown paper bag, and every time it's poured to the sautee skillet- glug glug glug, the smell, so strong, it fills the humid air and blows across my face. I hold my breath and turn my head but I can't get away from that smell. It is crawling up my chest and wrapping its way around my throat and then squeezing.

I love that smell while it begs to take the life out of me.

~~~~~

Suddenly, I walk away without a word, even though I'm a people-pleaser and I want to give the dinner guests the bread and I want to help. But I can't, because the tears are coming and I'm humiliated as if I'm standing there naked. I can't shake the feelings any more than I can shake my skin to the ground. I hate feeling out of control but this is what happens and I start to beat myself up...

I sit with my hands on my knees and my head bent, sobbing, staring at the plastic floor of a service truck, the one that became my shelter when I fled. And I wonder why we have to be so weak to be so strong. I want a break and a moment of freedom for free.

I tell my parents and my sister. I say, it's the wine...I just didn't know it would be that hard. I just can't stop crying and they show me love and hold me up with words. I hear my Dad say that there's no shame in this, that it happens to him, too. And then I finally feel the shift that comes with knowing that someone knows exactly exactly how you feel. I drive home with this, my dad's last words as I walked away, in my head and heart...It does get better, he said.

Sometimes I just can't wait.

~~~~~

The house is perfectly still and quiet, empty. I sit down and think and cry and then I hear a soft knock on the door, a tiny hand with knuckles to wood, and my boys come in. They smile and laugh and tell me about their trip to the store. I choke back tears at the love for them and in them, standing right there in front of me, bouncing. They hop from foot to foot and throw themselves at my lap. They don't know what this feels like, and their not-a-care-in-the-world energy fills the room.

~~~~~

The tornado sirens start to blast and wind like I've never seen starts to blow. We are rushing around suddenly, grabbing blankets and the radio and the phones and calling the dog to follow us to the basement. I'm thinking of safety for my bouncers, instead of the smell of wine.

The people are still out at the festival, where I was serving bread, with the hundreds of tents and three stages and the wind and rain and wine. I think of all the people there and I feel the panic rising in my chest again and find the strength to stay calm for my boys. I tell them quietly why we're in the basement and what the siren means. They wrap themselves in blankets on the floor and we listen to the words flowing from the speakers. We call my family to see if they're okay, still out there with hearts of service, taking care of people, running for cover. They're are in a camper in the wind, waiting and praying and hoping for all the people.

The storm strangely passes then, tornadoes touching down around us but not here, the wind falling away like a whisper.

There is a sudden stillness.

I carry my weak and weary body up the stairs and look out the windows. Light is breaking through the clouds and the grass and trees are acting like nothing has happened at all, dripping rain pitter-pat like applause.

My family starts to appear one by one up the stairs and back to normal. I ask Miles where his brother is and he says he came up, too. He sits down with me to watch the radar, and a few minutes later Ryan asks from the other room if Asher is with me. I shoot up from my chair and say that I thought he was with him. I slow-motion-realize that he's still downstairs. And then I hear it, the distant sound of crying.

I run downstairs to find him in the same place he was before, scared, prepared for a blowing wind that destroys. My heart breaks and I lift him up and ask him why he didn't come upstairs. He says he was too scared and I feel so out of control. I set him down after wiping his tears and telling him the storm has passed, over and over and over. I follow his little boy body up the stairs and I tell him I'm so sorry.

He says, "It's not your fault, Mommy...and it's not my fault, eider."

I look at the back of his head with its soft white hair as he says this, and there is a stillness in me. I know that he's right, about more than his young heart and mind can even begin to understand. It is not my fault. It is not my fault. It is not my fault.

The storm in me is like the storm in him while the storm moves over us.

Sometimes, all any of us can do is pull the strangling fear off our naked skin, to be a comfort to each other, clothing each other with words and bread-giving hands and arms for wrapping and laps for bouncing.

Until the storm passes, and the stillness comes.

Lives

We sat at the parade and my friend said, "Yes, you've lived a lot of lives." And I answered, with a lump in my throat, "Oh yes, I have."

~~~~~

I grew up in a town where the 4th of July is a really big deal. If it falls on a weekend, it's an especially long party complete with red and white and blue and a whole lot of people, and even more alcohol consumption than on the average summer weekend in Midwestern Minnesota.

It took me until the 3rd to realize that this year would be different. In the years before marriage and children, I would go to the parade, hang out on the lake, and drink, and then go to the bar and drink some more. After meeting Ryan and having our kiddos, I would spend the day with my family and then always be sure to have plans with friends, to socialize and drink, and then drink some more and more, out by the lake, seeing people I hadn't seen in a long time.

This was my first sober 4th of July long weekend. It was harder than I thought it would be because I've been coasting along the last month or so, not feeling so heavily weighted by my addiction. And then it just snuck up and waved memory flags, leaving me grieving in a way. I was watching my two worlds collide. The new against the old, crashing around and pulling on me, begging me to let go and to hold on. It's really hard to do both of those things at the same time.

Everything is still the same while I am not. And as grateful as I am for how I've changed, the sameness of everything else around me stings sometimes. I find myself missing the way I used to take part in some things, not only because I'm an alcoholic and therefore I wish I could drink like the average social drinker and can't, but because it's as if I'm learning a whole new culture with its own unique language and customs. I'm walking on new legs with shoes that don't quite fit yet. It's not even so much about the drinking, it's about the painful healing.

Time will help all of this, but for right now, it hurts. I know that as I take these steps on this new terrain, I'll grow and I'll heal more and more and that's so good. I think maybe I'm just afraid of the healing, of what I'll have to walk through as the memories crash. Because there is so much work to be done, I know that. I know because of the way I feel, actually really feel, when I feel time-warped. I'm a mess in it because the feelings are strong and I know they're telling me to keep walking, keep pushing through, keep feeling, keep grieving what I've done and what's been done to me. When it hurts, I'm stepping closer to being free of all of it, and sometimes I wonder if that's even possible, even while I know because of the last five and a half months, that anything is possible.

It's scary. My past holds dark places, and it is what it is while I am not, and while I am.

I am the girl who chain-smoked and listened and talked and listened and talked with good friends, gripping the glass and lifting the glass over and over while believing this was the way to go deeper into meaningful conversation, loosening us up. Like that was the only way to round the edges and let down the guard and say it like it is. I am the girl that would say, We have our best talks when we go out, the emptying bottles nearby.

I am the girl who drove anyway.

I am the girl who tolerated the advances and with each drink swallowed her voice, the one that begged to say no.

And as I grew out of that, while still drinking, I was the girl who made grown up choices and lived a grown up life while drinking faster and more in a way that would keep people from knowing.

If I was living the 4th of July one year ago, I would have made plans to be at the bar on the beach and I would have drank before I got there so that drinking so very much would not seem quite as much to my friends. And I would have had a moment or two of fuzzy and light and carefree and then the night would be spent chasing that buzz and never finding it. I would be the girl, standing there, trying to listen while obsessing about what to drink next or how much was left in my glass or if I had enough money in my pocket for just the right fix.

I was that girl, I am that girl, but I am not that girl.

I am not that. I am this.

I carry her, though, for right now. All of her stories are a part of me and it's impossible not to cry while I walk through this. I will let go of her, finding more freedom every day. But closing the door on yourself and starting again is not only a new chapter, it's like starting to write an entirely new story without any idea how to type or spell or think at all. And I'm trying to do it while life spins quickly on around me in its sameness and its newness. There is so much tension in the transition, the building of the plot with strange new characters, including me. Some days there's just too much tension and I'm beyond grateful that I have a place to go, to sit and say it and be heard, going deeper in conversation than alcohol could ever take me.

You know, the thing is, I want to keep her. She knows what she knows because of living her story. And so I think what I need to do is hold on to her while finding me. She has a lot to teach me. I hope she continues to talk, to sneak up on me and remind me of all she's seen and known. And I hope that when she does, it won't always feel this way, so raw.

I believe that it won't, and so I'll keep walking, until I've worn these shoes to comfort.

P.S. In this new life, the one that clashes with the old, I am their mother. So most of the time, I choose to live in the moment, with them, because this life of mine is really really good.

need

I need willpower. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I know what I need. I can rise up in the morning and tell myself, today I will do the right things, and then I believe I will reap the rewards of self-discipline and self-control. My intentions are so good that I believe I'll do it all (and more) and then maybe I'll feel more peaceful.

As if everything works like checks and balances and tit for tat and punishment and reward.

Do 'A' - Get 'B'

I need to believe in grace because I can't believe A gets B because so often I get a really good B without finishing my A, without following through or doing my good-intended right thing. Grace isn't fair in the best possible way. Grace does not fit in a box, but it remains in all things even though it blows my mind like galaxies do.

I need creativity. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. And so I tell myself I will write from my heart-gut and I will read the words of artists and scour the etsy for beauty. I turn up the sound on music that settles my heart and then I believe I'll feel peaceful.

Most of the time, I'm interrupted, unable to do what I set out to do, unable to focus. And somehow, the beauty is always rising up all around, inside and outside the deafening noise and blinding light of home life with small boys. It's in them and on them and in me and beyond us, like galaxies.

When people say "Higher Power" that's what I think. I think of something beyond and in and on and above and below and never needing food or water or rest but always needing to redeem broken things and to love.

I need God. I'm hungry and thirsty and looking for a place to sleep. I try to hear his voice and see truth. But most of the time, my mind and heart don't match. My mind runs and settles down my heart, covering it with the lies of man-made Christian systems that steal the grace and joy that a God-Man brings, twisting it up to fit a box.

I need acceptance. The knowledge that I'm still good when my willpower fails me again. The acceptance of myself, just as I am, right now. The acceptance of life on its own terms, that whatever life is doing, it is not out to get me, because of the under and in and on and beyond.

I need to be accepting in the same way I must accept and forgive myself.
I need to forgive the systems and the people who tell the lies because they cannot help what they do in their fear and confusion that leads them to unacceptance. They need too, and then they grasp.
~~~~~
For so long, I got up day after day, trying to ignore the reality that by late afternoon I would inevitably throw in the towel and reach for wine, hoping it would fill the need, every need. I was hungry and thirsty and needed a place to sleep. And always, always, there was still that spark in me, holding on and hoping for me, being the grace that's under and in and around and beyond.

When I stopped drinking, I did not stop being hungry and thirsty or needing a place to sleep. But when I stopped, I uncovered the always-gasping-in-me spark, to see that beauty was still there, in a mercy flicker that never snuffed because the in and on and beyond never stops.

I can't stop being hungry or thirsty or needing a place to sleep. I need.

I need to stop fighting that I need.

Help, I will say, and then the flicker will reach up, find air, and spread so I can pass it on.

I will be grateful to need because we all do and fire is contagious and I want to give it to you and to her and to him and to them. To help in any small way that I can.

And then I'll feel peaceful.

P.S. I wrote something in response to a "talk" I heard last night that got me a bit riled up. SO. What I wrote is a response to that and it's titled, "The truth is, most Christians think alcoholism is a choice." Check it out if you'd like. Thank you.

here's the down low

I was thinking about how many things I bring up in this space, never to revisit them again (ahem, thoughts of homeschooling? Wanting another baby? Other stuff I can't think of right now?) And then I thought about how writing about recovery and sobriety and addiction has sort of taken over my blog. So that means that the tone is often...heavy, man.

Then I thought, I hardly ever update on Asher's health anymore and I rarely do "From the Mouth of Miles" posts these days.

The thing is, it all happened naturally. Asher is doing really well, and when Miles talks about things that I want to share with the world, I censor myself a bit more because I don't want him to look back on these pages and wonder why I made every stinking little thing public knowledge, you know?

There's a huge difference in life these days. When I compare last year to this one, I see that not only are we physically in a different place, we're just altogether in a different place, each of us. That's largely because of sobriety, it's what's going on with me and with us, so I write about it often. And I really don't even know why I'm explaining this. I guess I'm just giving you the down low.

I finished outpatient treatment last night. For five months I went to a building and worked hard on my plan for recovery, my honesty, my freedom. First for three nights a week and then one night a week. It's over. I did it. And when I got home, I pulled the blankets up under my chin and felt a shift. A gift shift. I could feel it, another new layer of peace in the following through. Like a button had been pushed, moving me closer to letting go of alcohol completely. I slept well.


What I love about this picture is that it's fuzzy right where I am, and then it becomes clear somewhere later, along the path. Ahead. We can always know that sooner or later, the fog will lift, the truth revealed and the destination clear. That's what I hold on to.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm doing well, really well, even when I'm not. And I feel another blog-shift coming on too. I'll probably always write about addiction, but probably not as often. I needed to focus on it, to be swallowed by recovery and think and write about it a lot, and now I need to bring other things to the surface again. Not to pretend that sobriety isn't important or a priority, but because I can. I can.

{This post is a part of You Capture at I Should Be Folding Laundry}

More

I read something last night. It was written by a woman who struggled with alcoholism like I do and it said that when she drank to enjoy it, she couldn't control her drinking, and when she tried to control her drinking, to drink less, she didn't enjoy it at all. Seems kind of obvious that this would be the case for an alcoholic, but it takes most of us a really long time to recognize this reality.

I thought about all the times in my life that I could, for one reason or another, only have a couple of drinks at a time. Maybe it was in the presence of non-drinking people, or we were about to go to a movie, or any number of things. And I realized how true it was, that I would get so uncomfortable with only a couple of drinks. I didn't see the point in that at all, ever. If I was going to drink, I was going to DRINK, you know?

And when I had the freedom to drink in a way that brought me what I thought was enjoyment, it meant that I could not, would not, be able to control the amount. If I tried, I was frustrated and miserable. My head would stay in only one place, thinking more more more I want more now I want more. I'd be so unaware of whatever experience I was having because my head would stay with alcohol.

After years of my brain taking this particular route of thinking, I'm realizing I have to be patient with myself...it's going to take a long time to re-train my brain. When I see a woman sitting on a porch, reading a book, what flashes through my head is that her experience would be better somehow with a glass of wine...or seven.

It's frustrating to have those thoughts, while never having even two drinks.

The pleasure center in my head still beckons to light up. It stomps its feet and fidgets. It just doesn't know what to do. It wants something to look forward to, something to consume with no control. It wants.

As I continued to read this alcoholic woman's story, I saw myself more and more, even though many times I wonder if I'm really even an alcoholic at all. (That's another thing the alcoholic mind does all on it's own, cunning and baffling.) When she said that she was always a caretaker, always striving to be perfect and even being seen as perfect by everyone around her, I understood. And it hit me in the gut when she said that the first time she got drunk with a group of other drinkers, she finally felt like she fit in, like no one expected her to be perfect anymore. She felt flawed and rebellious and totally accepted.

Me too.

And to be honest, the only time I've felt that way again is at a meeting with people just like me. There is no place like it on this planet. None. There is a circle of complete and total understanding, a passion for grace in the eyes around the room, and power in transparency. It is redemption and I am just me, flawed and rebellious and accepted. Like no where else. It is much better than the acceptance I found when drinking in bars and over bottles of wine with friends.

It is authentic and pure and good. My sick alcoholic thoughts make perfect sense to the people with nodding heads around the room. Grace takes on human form in those rooms, embodied in my fellows and leaping down my throat. It wraps itself around my insecurities and sets me free.

I think this is how it's supposed to be, and I wish it were this way everywhere. But then, I suppose the experience would become too common and lose its holiness.

As a believer in a God who supplies that grace in our struggle, I am starting to see that this is how heaven will be. We will not sit on clouds, bored, playing a harp for all of eternity. No, we will sit in circles and feel free, never pretending, already perfect with our pleasure centers always lighting up in a constant glow of true joy.

Too much? Lofty? Unbelievable? Idealistic? Insane?

I think not. Because I've tasted it here and I am made to want more because there is more.

Releasing

It's been nearly five months since we moved. Five months. This has been the very most surreal five months of my life, I'm pretty sure. I stopped drinking not long after we came here so everything was literally and figuratively new for me, for us.

Today, when Ryan finished building a fence for our backyard, I thought about it all, again. The fence means that our boys can run in and out without so much worry and checking. And it also meant so many other analogous things, and I really liked that it also means that our dog can finally be free of this...

In our previous fenced backyard, our Tia Maria dog had free reign within the parameters of the fence. She was just fine with that. It was as if she knew the fence was there to protect her, to keep her home. Every once and a while she would get out, one of us forgetting the gate, and within minutes of sniffing around the neighbor's yard, she would end up sitting right back in her usual spot on the back steps. The gate would stand open wide for the freeing right next to her and yet every time, she was content to stay in the place she knew best, as if she understood she'd get lost if she left.

And then we moved and we had no fence and so we used the chain and she hated it and we hated it. And so today with the new fence and freedom from chains, I thought about the night I quit drinking, how it had to do with that chain. I thought about how I was too drunk to get it off of her and it was so snowy and slippery and I was bent down trying to release the clasp to let her in and couldn't get up from my knees. It was different than it had been before, I had maintained without being unable to get up before and so I knew I had to quit. I knew I had hit the spiral that alcoholics hit, the one that takes us to insanity. I didn't want to be the stumbly lady in the dark, drinking alone. I quit with that picture of me from that night in my mind.

I hope I never forget it.

Because the night of the chain is the night I was loosed.


Today I thought, We still need a fence, boundaries for safety, but the chain is gone.

When Ryan finished the fence (and practically threw a party for himself, just so you know), he ran for his favorite dog in the whole wide world, the girl he's been so diligently taking for a run every night because she's been so cooped up. He unhooked her chain and he said, GO!

She just stood there. Confused.

You're free, Tia, RUN!

She'd been loosed.

She just didn't know what to do.

Of course, I understood.

She walked over to a place she's been able to reach for nearly five months, ignoring all the new places to adventure, and lay down, close to what she knew, what had become familiar.


And I got it, right then. It made perfect sense to me why new sobriety is so uncomfortable.
It's a releasing from the chain and a new fence in a new home. And so I wondered if Tia was staying still because she was scared or if she didn't quite trust herself yet.

Or maybe she was still because she was just fine, for a little while, not expecting too much, just taking it all in.

We prodded and whistled and said with our high-pitched doggy-talk voices,
C'mon Tia, let's GO!
And she continued to sit still.

Until an idea hit us
and so we went with her
and when she saw us go ahead of her
running with freedom
she hopped up
and she sniffed and she explored
trailing behind a little carefully


She went as far as she could go, safely,
and she finally looked glad to be home.

The chains are gone and this is slow and I am not alone.

The way home

I am on a flight where you choose your own seat and this is new to me. At the same time that this empowers me, it also makes me feel like the unpopular kid in the lunch room, searching frantically for one of the last spaces and a welcoming face. Much like the last four and a half months of sobriety, I think, because I always think in analogies. I can't help it.

I spot the middle seat in the exit row and ask the Aisle Man if it's taken. He kindly says it's yours and I slide in and stretch my legs and start to realize he's been drinking. He makes jokes that aren't funny, loudly, trying to entertain the whole plane. Some people chuckle softly, a courtesy laugh. Others shift uncomfortably in their seats, trying to ignore his volume and obvious drunkenness.

He orders a drink and then another on a flight that's not two hours. I read David Sedaris and somehow I feel at ease. I feel comfortable with him, a kindred spirit even though I'm on this side of our addiction. I understand him and I forgive his clumsy words and actions and talk with him about Minneapolis. I am on my way home and I'm sober and it's surreal and good and different. And I think, when we're together we are not okay while we're okay, we are on different pages in the same book. And then I pray there is speed-reading involved in his story, even though I'm not ahead of him while I'm on this different page.

~~~~~~~

I get off the plane and I walk with this man until we say goodbye. Then I wait to claim my overstuffed bag. We're early, maybe the wind hurried our flight. So I lug said bag over the edge of the carousel and I go and stand outside while it starts to drizzle and I wait. I'm feet away from a bench and so I hear her when she slurs. She's talking to me and to everyone and no one and I don't know what her words are, but I know she's drunk. She can't sit up straight, her body sways from her intoxication and she rolls her eyes and waves away a woman who approaches her. The woman is her sister and she's anxious and embarrassed. She gives me an apologetic shrug of the shoulders and I touch her arm and tell her I understand, that I'm recovering, slowly. Her eyes light up and she says me too and she grabs my hand and tells me it's always so comforting to meet a fellow friend of Bill W.

She needed that right then and I did too and it was no coincidence at all that we stood there together just two people making an army.

With her garbled words, my new bench friend tells me she will be taken to Hazelden. She flew here to go to treatment. She laughs, like it's the best joke of her life and then the corners of her mouth shiver in fear. She is doing an excellent job of having one last hurrah before treatment, and my heart hurts for her and with hers and next to her soldier sister. I want to tell her that things are about to get better. I want to tell her that she's on her way to something good. I want to fix it. But I know she won't remember and so I just stand close by and I wait and I silently pray that she makes it, that her sister makes it. I really want them to make it.

And I pray and want the same thing for me, because we who are not on the same page but living the same story, we are different while always the same.

Then my ride pulls up to the curb and I don't want to leave while I want to leave.

That's how it feels, in this book, my addiction story, their addiction story. We are always both saints and sinners while we get better or we don't.

Whatever the page, there is always growth in the pain, while we wait for our rides home.

Everywhere

I am currently eating a bagel just as fast as I can.

Dear Digestive System,
please don't be mad, I'm in a hurry.
Love,
Overwhelmed

I leave for Utah in just 2 days. There I will be attending the Casual Blogger Conference and also doing a little speaking. Today I am kidless and working hard at preparing for the speaking and whitening my teeth. Because, you know, people might think my teeth are yellow while I'm waxing philosophical about blogging in front of them. Or something.

I've printed out my itinerary and the conference agenda and tickets for this and tickets for that and apparently this is really happening.

I shall now sit back and tell myself (burp) that everything is going to be just fine.

Yesterday I went to get loads of groceries in an effort to continue my job as wife and mother while I'm away. I was starting to feel the stress of traveling and public speaking and all of that, and for a while I sat in the grocery store parking lot, staring at its liquor store. I wasn't going to go in. I've made promises to myself and to my family and friends that I want to keep. But boy oh boy did I ever want white wine. Which makes no sense because I hardly ever drank white wine in my past alcoholic life. But it was so hot out and my stress level was rising and I had that dream about drinking white wine and it was so real. The dewy glass and the cold flow of bitter-sweet rushing to my veins. So real. And I wanted that dream to be real. Even though I know that if that dream were real, it would make me (and many others) very sad.

So I got out of my car and got fruit and meat and cheese instead. And while I stood in the checkout, I watched the little screen beeping through my items, adding up my purchases, and I wondered why there needed to be advertisements on the other half of the screen. This wine is on sale and that wine is on sale, and I will never taste it again.

It's everywhere. In books I read, people meeting up for margaritas. On TV, the way the lies are told, that drinking this or that form of booze will make you happy and maybe even thin. We all know that isn't true. I mean, I lost ten freaking pounds in a matter of days when I quit consuming an ungodly amount of wine. And my teeth are whiter now, too. For the record. Perhaps I don't need to whiten them before the conference after all....

Anywho. Like I said, it's everywhere, and I am everywhere, so I'm thinking I should just get used to it. Or start picketing or something. But not now, I need to go to Utah. In 2 days.

(Now is probably a good time to get prepared for my "presentations.")

What I'll think about while I work hard today is not wine, I will think about the lovely people I'm going to get to see and hear and laugh with. And I will know that I'm going to remember it all and be present and aware for it all, my veins filled with nothing but the blood pumping through them...and possibly, a whole lot of sugar.

Wish me well, friends! Even if you don't, I have a feeling this is going to be good. Even if the haircut I got the other day makes my head look like a very large mushroom.

I'm a fan

I'm a big fan of owls.

The other day, my friend gave me a big fat owl to sit outside my front door. He greets people.
(He's not a real live owl, he's a decorative one.) I would have taken a picture of him to show you, but it's pouring outside right now, so he's busy. I don't know what I mean by that.

Owls can turn their heads all the way around, isn't that mind blowing?
They're like mothers.

I'm also a big fan of garage sales. Yesterday we found an area rug that's just perfect for our family room. It has orange and gray in it, and so do our family and dining rooms. So it matches.

But my socks don't.
I'm not a fan of matching clothing.

Ryan is not a fan of germs and so he's a bit concerned that something horrible is lurking in this garage sale rug. He just told the boys, "First I'm going to vacuum it and then I'm going to steam clean it, and then I'm going to spray it with disinfectant and then I'm going to take it out to dinner."

I'm a fan of Ryan's humor.

I am 35 years old today, which looks really weird to me on the computer screen. I feel 25-ish and act 18-ish and maybe it's time to decide to fully grow up. I'll give that some more thought. Later.

Right now I'm just trying to be a fan of 35.

I had my first "using dream" last night. That's what we addicts call a dream in which you are drinking or using drugs even though you're sober in real life.

I am not a fan of using dreams.

In my dream, Ryan was just as forgiving as he is in real life.

You guessed it, I'm a fan.

He got me a Netbook for my birthday. Seriously. I love it. It's tiny and doesn't weigh very much at all and it can turn it's head all the way around.

Wait. I somehow went back to the beginning.

Oh well, that's what you have to do sometimes.
I'm a fan of do-overs.


{Last night I totally forgot to wrap up the giveaway for Life After Yes until it was past my bedtime. So I consulted random.org and then waited to tell you right now that Mainly a Midwife is the winner! Congrats, lady! Email me and stuff.}

P.S. I'm a big fan....

Miles and Asher~Miles' preschool graduation
May 20, 2010

(Samsung did not have anything to do with this post at all. I just told you what I got for my birthday and in doing so I generously gifted Samsung with free advertising. I hope it's their birthday.)


One last thing...I'm a fan:

Untwisting

You know that rumbly sound of slurping the last of your drink through a straw?

I can't decide if I love or hate that sound.

Maybe I should decide to like it because it's a satisfying sound of finishing, being sure to get every last drop of something tasty. And maybe I should hate it because it's a belchy kind of irritating satisfying sound.

I feel this way about sobriety. Some days I'm absolutely in love with its satisfaction, and other days (ahem, yesterday) I hate the itchy irritation of it. When I was drinking I was trying to take the edge off. What I'm learning is that it wasn't working, not at all. My edges are more rounded now than when I was pouring glass after glass night after night. I'm softer and lighter and different.

The thing is, sober or not, alcoholic or not, life is covered in itchy irritation. So when I'm hating sobriety, it isn't even really sobriety that I'm hating. And therein lies the beauty of remaining alcohol-free. It's just right. It fits, even if a bit tightly at first.

And I see it as a gift. Because I don't know how to answer you when you ask, "but what if I feel like you were feeling and I'm not an alcoholic?"

"What if your journey and your struggle resonate with me and I don't drink? How do I change?"

I've gotten so many emails like that, and I just don't know what to tell you. I really wish I did. Sometimes it feels really selfish to be wading through my issues, taking so much time away, an hour at a time, many days, to work on me, to stay sober. But I have to. I have no choice. So in a way, I wish every one of you, especially the mothers who write to me, could be given that. Time away to remain victorious over it, whatever your it may be.

Here, leave the house, sit and talk and just be. Do it or you will self-destruct. Here are some tools, use them. Here is a list of numbers, dial them when you feel lost or lonely.

I wish every woman, every mother, could be given that permission. To go and seek and learn what it is that makes her tick or keeps her all tied up in her own head. To heal and cry and grow, rounding her edges. To maybe take a good look at her hard truths, the ones we all have, the things that we need to give up, to rid our lives of so that we can breathe. Selfishness, over-eating, booze, vicodin, yelling and screaming, too much TV or Internet time, whatever! Usually we are upset and twisted up inside because we have no time to be honest with ourselves about what needs to go. Resentments? Anger? Habitual lying? Self-deprecation or hatred? Guilt?

You know what it is for you. Maybe only you know. If you could stand in front of the mirror, staring straight into those eyes of yours, refusing to look away until the truth has set you free, you would see that you know. And as painful as whatever that truth can be, looking at it is the only option on a road to freedom.

It will make that slurpy and belchy sound and panic will rise in your chest, but you will start to untwist. And you will look around and say, Oh God, what do I do now and then you will tell someone who loves you dearly and you will say I have to do something about this. And sometimes that means getting help, so you will ask someone to help you get help and then you will do it. Because realizing you are powerless over whatever you are carrying and pushing and pulling and wearing, it just becomes what you have to do, once you stop running from it.

I am sitting in a coffee shop with all the windows open and a breeze is blowing over my sandaled feet and I'm wondering, who am I to say these things? What do I know?

But I wanted to answer your questions, while I hear the slurping sounds of finished drinks from tables around me. I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry I can't give you steps to overcoming the way you feel, you who is maybe not an alcoholic but you who still wants to know what's wrong with you.

Friend, those people, other mothers or just any person, who seem so happy and content? Maybe they aren't. Maybe they're just like you and like me. And if they are truly peaceful, even serene? I'm guessing they gave something up. Because if we're telling any kind of good story at all with our lives, we've sacrificed something to win something better, you know? Every good story (as it says in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years) is about wanting something and overcoming a great obstacle to get it.

Not every obstacle is a bold addiction. But maybe it's more of a way of thinking or living or dealing, a way that just doesn't sit right in your heart of hearts. What we're all seeking so much of the time (aside from spiritual things) is balance. Every mother, every person, knows that balance is at times completely impossible because life just won't allow for it. But I want to tell you that I am closer to it than I have ever come and only because I took something out of my life that would make balance impossible, leaving me reeling and twisted.

I'm still twisted up a whole lot of the time, but not in such a shackled way. New days abound in which I start again and feel renewed. When I was drinking, there was no such thing as true renewal.

I am four months sober today, and that's all I know.

(And I hope I don't sound like a big bossy know-it-all jerk. I promise I'm not one in real life.)

The girl who lived on the lake

The last time I drove by
it hurt
to think back on her,
on me
not so long ago
but so long ago

I came that way again
turning my eyes to the lake
to see the changes
the new houses
the remodels
the spaces where
cabins once stood

In came a hundred
memories
of a twenty-something
party girl
who lived on the great wide and
green lake

What would she ask me?
I thought
What would she want to know
about who she would become,
who she would be becoming?

You'll be okay
I'd tell her,
then. now.
but you are taking a terribly
long way
to okay.
It's starting now
and you know
but you don't know

You will have a new life
while you're still both you
and a wife and a mom
and you will feel like both
and carry too much
of the now with you
then

The pit of your stomach
may never forget this
version of yourself,
broken
by yourself,
and not yourself
by he and them
and her and him

But your heart
will start to heal
long from now,
the now
on the lake,
and you will see
somehow
in the blue eyes
of boys that came from you
and him
that you are okay

Even good.
And the pit of your stomach
will make its twinges
a little less
as you drive around the lake
as yourself now,
you
who would not be she
without the girl who lived on the lake.


{freely written as an experiment to see what I would write in five minutes or less after a drive around the lake I lived on for a year many moons ago, a drive filled with emotion. It's quite a rough draft, so thank you for taking the time to attempt making sense of it. Happy Friday.}

This post is a part of Five for Ten at Momalom.

Saling, A sobriety necklace, Guest posting, Blog Conferences, and Lil Kid Things

Numero Uno:
Trust me. If you live near me, you want to come to the multiple-fabulous-women garage sale that I'm a part of this Saturday. Seriously. If I happened upon this sale instead of schlepping my own lovelies in it, I would FREAK. Email me for details if you're interested. P.S. The hard thing about garage sales is that marking your things is a lot of work. But you knew that.

Numero Dos:
Ellie (gosh, I love that woman) sent me my sobriety necklace a number of days ago and I wear it every day. I'm in love with it. And the one day I did forget to wear it, Miles said, Oh Mommy, you forgot to put that necklace on you that reminds you to not drink wine. Oh my heart. (Yes, my 4 (almost 5) year old knows about my wine issue-in terms he can understand, of course.)

Numero Tres:
I was asked to guest post in a couple of really great places today, so I quickly grabbed a couple of archived posts that people say they especially enjoyed (which is nice of you all) and passed them on. Little did I know that I would re-read them to see if I even wanted to have them posted again, and find myself totally shocked at the way I used to write about my addiction without even knowing that's what I was referring to. Huh.

Numero Cuatro:
One of these guest posts is up at A Design So Vast, one of my very most favorite places in all of Internetdom. Thank you for having me, Lindsey. It's an honor to be in your space.

Numero Cinco:
The other guest post is up at The Never-True Tales, yet another of my favorite places to visit. Amy Whitley captured me with her writing quite a while ago, and I continue to love getting to know her.
(Head on over to the links above and see what you think about my subconscious when I wrote them. It's...interesting.)
(Also, both of the above women will be published authors one day. Mark my words.)

Numero Seis:
Now that it's May, I'm getting more and more excited about Spring/Summer because of the weather and fun outside with my two short people, of course, and also because I'll be getting to see/meet so many blogging cronies/pals/friends/amigos. First at The Casual Blogger's Conference in just three weeks (where I will speak on both depression and faith, because I'm that multi-faceted/intriguing/mysterious) (That was a joke), and then I'll be headed to New York in August for BlogHer. I'm not sure how it happened, but I've never been to New York, and I'm loving this reason to go. While I'm there, I'm going to get picked up in the cash cab. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, just ignore me. If you do, I LOVE THAT SHOW.

Numero Siete:
And finally, the lovely Andrea of Lil Kid Things interviewed me! The answers are up at her place today. It was fun. I pretended to be famous and mixed my responses with both a little wit and a little charm and then a dash of wisdom. (OK fine. I didn't. But I did answer honestly and stuff like that.) (Grandma, click on "Lil Kid Things" above to read the interview.)

This post is a part of Seven Quick Takes at Conversion Diary. Thank you once again, Jennifer. You help me expel the over-flowing contents of my brain on a weekly basis. Without you, I would be even nuttier.

Happy weekend, friends!

COMMENTS ARE CLOSED BECAUSE I HAVE TO GO WORK ON GARAGE SALE STUFF AND YOU GUYS ARE SO GLORIOUSLY DISTRACTING.

On motherhood and addiction: My whole story

A fellow Minnesota blogger, Missy the Marketing Mama, is doing a health and wellness series on her blog with all kinds of information on varying topics. Today's topic is motherhood and addiction, and when Missy asked me to share my story, I was happy to do it and I'll tell you why in a sec.

If you've wondered at all about what my drinking was like (as in, the details) and what happened to get me to stop, I'm over at Missy's place today sharing the specifics of my story.

Please know that I agreed to do this because I think Missy is doing an amazing thing with this educational series, not because I want you to sit riveted in front of my sad addiction story. Actually, I don't. I hesitated before saying yes for that very reason. I don't want this to be about me. I wanted to do this because it's my truth and the truth can help other women like me. Also, Missy has asked some professionals from the amazing Hazelden Treatment Center to answer any questions her readers might have about addiction, and I think that rocks the party.

See you there.

Oh and while I'm on the topic of addiction, I wanted to thank you for your comments on my post The T Word. Seriously, there aren't enough words to tell you how grateful I am for you. Thank you.

~COMMENTS ARE CLOSED ON THIS POST~

The T word

I had to take deep breaths and put my head down, waiting for it to pass. I could feel it coming, the panic. The need.

I thought about how I need to be stronger to handle this. I can't do this, I thought. Who am I doing this for? I think I'd be drinking if I wasn't worried about what people think. Ugh that's awful, I thought of me. You're so selfish, I said to me. You would drink even though you have these two boys who are being so good to you and this husband who patiently understands you. Really? Who are you doing this for if not for them and you and God? And you're not. You're doing this because you said you would and you don't even want this.

In that moment I hated me. And I put my head down and I was gasping for air and I just kept saying right out loud help me help me help me while pulling up to a liquor store kept popping into my head and so I would squeeze my eyes closed to try to make it go away.

Help me, please come help me, I said.

And then I thought about the rats. How someone told me about a study where the rats were given vodka in their water and they wouldn't touch it, they would rather die of thirst than drink it. And then how they were injected with this long 'T' word I can't remember, a thing that alcoholics have in their brains, and when that 'T' words was in their systems, they were given straight vodka in one bottle and plain water in another and then they drank the vodka until they died. Something outside of them made them alcoholics and then suddenly they wanted to drink and they could not stop.

Somehow this was a comfort to me. Not that the rats would drink themselves to death, that's sad, but the harsh reality of what I'm fighting hit me and I realized I'm not as weak as I feel. I'm doing the very best that I can. I'm a rat trying not to choose the wrong bottle even though everything in me is pulled to what I don't want to be.

This isn't a sob story, this is me telling you that there is no other explanation for my sobriety than a power greater than myself. And that's why today is a new and better day. I am here and I'm sober. I'm not drinking myself to death or to the loss of my loved ones and feelings. I'm sober today and I'm grateful. I really wish the 'T' word was not a part of my life. I would much rather be allergic to cheese than wine. But I'm not. This is my reality and somehow, some way, going through this and telling its story will help someone.

If you are that someone, I want you to know that you are worth every moment with my head down with deep breaths. You are.

Peace.

The whole

I finished Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller on Friday. Then on Saturday I went to pick up his latest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. As Anne Lamott says, "I love Donald Miller. He's a man after my own heart."

I'm going to have to paraphrase a line from Blue Like Jazz because I've already given my copy of the book to a friend.

There is no more powerful drug than the addiction to self. (Sorry, Don. I probably butchered that. That line I'm remembering was probably more poetic and profound and probably hilarious, because that's just you.)

Anyway. Of course I thought of this line on Saturday when there I was, with myself taking pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror for myself's profile pictures on the world wide web.

Ouch.

The thing is, I wasn't taking those pictures because I think I'm hot. Actually, it's more that I think I'm not. So if I can try for the right lighting and then delete all the photos that show the two furrowed brow creases and the bags under my eyes, I'll try. Because then maybe I'll somehow get just the right picture for my Twitter profile and for Facebook. But mostly I just end up thinking I don't measure up, and that's why I was taking so many pictures. And now I'm only sharing this handful of the eleventy-gillion I took because these particular ones don't make me look like I have 3 chins like the deleted ones. And still I was looking at the ones I kept and thinking ugh. And I was thinking that I look almost 35 because I'm almost 35 and also that I need a haircut. So then I edited the pictures a lot on Picnik. So this isn't even actually what I look like.

It's only fair that I admit that, right?





As my wise and lovely friend Maggie said more eloquently recently, trying to walk through recovery from addiction while blogging is tricky, and I've been struggling with that too. When I read that line in Blue Like Jazz I realized that we are all walking that fine line. Yes, it may be a little more clumsy for those of us recovering from an addiction to substances, but I think all of us are here trying not to appear narcissistic.

But one of the hardest things to admit and then change is the fact that we are.

If we're not grandiose, thinking we're smarter or better in some way than other people, then we're self-deprecating and insecure and trying to act like we're not. Either way, we're dealing with a twisted form of pride, a self-focus that leaves little room for truly caring about other people because it's so exhausting. I don't mean just bloggers and I don't exactly know how to fix it, but I really want to try.

I've come to learn that I'm powerless over alcohol and I have to think that or speak that every day as a reminder. But what really makes recovery hard is the very thing we're all dealing with. Learning to accept that we have to do the very same thing with our very selves. I'm slowly learning that this is what will get me through, this is what will help me recover: Admitting that I'm addicted to myself and then praying for that addiction to be lifted and replaced with humility that isn't defined by insecurity, because that's not true humility anyway.

These are things that I knew, but I really didn't. I don't know that any of us can truly grasp just how focused on ourselves and our lives we really are, soul deep. Mentally, physically, spiritually...all parts of us pointing toward ourselves and our lives. It causes us so much pain and gets us all tied up in messes of our own making. I think this is why I'm a Christian. I believe in this God-Man who sat with whores and cheaters and drunks and saw through, soul deep, and He just wanted to listen and love that person and tell them true things about that love. They could stop thinking so much of themselves or so little of themselves because they were seeing in His eyes that they were free because of Him, somehow. Being next to Him makes it hard to stay self-addicted because He wasn't and isn't and that is powerful and contagious.

I'm a Christian because I love being next to Him, to Grace, to Love. And so often I forget to sit down next to Him because I'm just so busy thinking about myself.

And now I feel insecure and funny about sharing these photos and more thoughts about my faith. Because I don't want to be seen as narcissistic or the stereotype of a Christian because I'm not. And then again I am, I guess. But only in parts. I'm glad that the whole of me is greater than the sum of its parts, and that the God-Man I believe in sees me as the whole and that He has no problem sharing His perfect humility. I need to go sit by Him and ask for it, because without doing that, I'm powerless over my self addiction.



COMMENTS ARE CLOSED. (I always love what you have to say, but today is just simply a 'closed comments' sort of day.)

P.S. I will be thinking about Blue Like Jazz for a very long time. I'm certain it will be added to my list of favorite books ever. So I want to say thank you to Donald Miller because his words hit my heart at just the right time. His "nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality" put words to so much of what's in my heart and I'm so grateful. And he made me laugh out loud a thousand times, and I love that.

(And no, I'm not being compensated in any way to say that.)

(I get nervous about writing about my faith here and this is why.)

(The End.)

I carry you

I Carry You~originally posted on June 31, 2009

I look down and my hand is doing that thing,
it's resting on my lap in a curve.

Dad, your hand was just this same way today, I saw it.
It was sitting there resting exactly like this.

Just like Grandpa. The same hand in the same spot.

Curved just so, fingertips to leg.
The lanky fingers that grow thicker with time,
they curve on the lap and rest.

I do it too and it's just like the unconscious way I run my finger across my lip like Grandpa Glenn when I'm nervous. Or how I grab the bottom of my shirt and rub my thumb across the fabric, like Grandma Helen. It's the way I care like Aunt Elsie and understand like Grandma Colleen.

It's the way I laugh like Aunt Sandi and cry like Auntie Kay.

Today I'm thankful that I carry you, all of you.

My family.

Today, I'm thankful for you.
The man with the curved and rested hand and skin like leather
turned brown from the sun,
all the working in the sun.

The one who still says I'm the greatest
and falls in love with my boys
just the way that I do.

The man with the heart so big.

I carry my family.
I carry you.

I love you,
Dad.

Happy Father's Day.
~2009

~~~~~~~

Today

He quit drinking when I was very young. Just like that, proving that he could, fiercely. Years and years have passed and he's never picked up a bottle. I can't seem to wrap my mind around how he did it. He said not to do it like he did with no meetings and no treatment. That's not the way to do it, he said. Get help.

I listened.

That first day, two months ago, we sat him down and I cried and I said, I can't say it, I don't know what to say. And then minutes went by and I finally said it, I have a problem and I drink too much. I wasn't worried about his disappointment in me, I knew that wouldn't be there. But I was worried about his guilt. I would never want him to think, I gave this to you, because he gave me so much more than this.

I carry him and I carry me and I carry my boys. And we are not a family of alcoholics first. We are people and loved first. People with a greater capacity for giving that love because of this, this broken down part of us that shows us we're all the same and then reminds us to accept people just as they are.

In the end, strangely, this is a gift. And when I get scared that my boys will live it out next, that the chain reaction of lifting the glass will not end with me, I have to remember...my Papa, and me, we're both okay. We are fighters. God pulled us to our feet so we could walk through it and out of it and he can do that again.

But of course, I beg and plead. Let it skip them...please please please, let it end with me. Help me show them how to be free, with my life, just like he did.

Yes. I carry him and he showed me how to be free.



It's not his fault. It's not my fault. It just is. Like curved fingers, resting just so on our laps, worn from the years and still beautiful because they're carried through to the next generation. The way they show our sameness and shout that we belong.

Like an author's final masterpiece, we need the messy parts of the story to bring us to a richer place. Redemption. We move on from there, people ready for the next chapter because of the painful growing up of us, carrying each other.

Hurts so good

This really is a whole new life and it feels both wrong and right to write that.

It started with the quitting of the drinking and it just snowballs and snowballs and sometimes I feel like I'm just rolling downhill with it, completely out of control.

I'm gone five nights a week to learn how to get a handle on this sobriety thing and that's good and that's hard. It feels both wrong and right. It feels busy and overwhelming and yet I know it's right.

I'm reading little booklets given to me by my chemical dependency counselor with titles like, Intimacy and Understanding Emotions. Identity. Trust. Insecurity. When I'm reading, it all seems so obvious, but I've never really let the knowledge of how to live these things get from my head to my heart. It's overwhelming too, and you guessed it, it feels both wrong and right.

In her book Drinking: A Love Story, Caroline Knapp writes,

"When you quit drinking you stop waiting. You begin to let go of the wish, age-old and profound and essentially human, that someone will swoop down and do all that hard work, growing up, for you. You start living your own life."

That's exactly what's happening here. It's so impossible to describe and so I feel this rift with my friends and family. I feel somehow alien. Like I'm me, but not me, and I don't know exactly how to be. I make the same jokes and I listen to them and something is just so different. I'm different. Everything is different because everything looks different to me, and so I'm thinking and feeling differently. It feels so wrong and so right at the same time.

Not long after I quit drinking, maybe a week, I sat with one of my best friends at a coffee shop. She asked what this was like, how I was doing, and I just looked out the window. I said I just can't explain it, that everything is so different somehow and even though there's this new peace, it's just so much. I said that I feel like a new person and that scares me because starting over is hard.

She started to cry with me and she reached for my hand and said, we're going to be okay. And that was it, exactly what I needed to hear. I was scared that we wouldn't be...at all. That I had somehow irrevocably changed the we of our friendship by turning my half upside down and inside out in a way that maybe wouldn't fit the us of so many years.

I don't think I could walk around in life without knowing she's out there thinking of me and calling me friend. It's always been there, this comfort in a kindred replica of me, alive in her person, totally understanding who I am. A soul reflection, a heart monitor.

We're going to be okay.

My closest friends, the ones that will be with me and look at me and say we're going to be okay, are back in the place we just moved away from. They are still in my life through the phone, a call or text, an email or a short visit, but they feel really far away right now.

So I am grieving. I miss my friends and I miss a way of life that's gone. I am not alone but much of the time I feel alone here with sobriety. Shoving and pushing and pulling, moving all the things I thought I knew from my head to my heart.

All of it is working together, and as Caroline Knapp said, I'm starting to live my own life. I know this is really good, but this is really hard.

And it feels right.

~~~~~~

To my online friends who are on this sobriety road with me, please don't get all worried about the "alone in sobriety" thing. I'm working on that too. I'm going where I need to go to develop friendships with people in recovery. It just takes time, especially in a smallish town. So guess what? It makes me extra grateful for YOU.

Before

I found the post below sitting quietly in my drafts. I had completely forgotten it. I wrote it before we moved and before I quit drinking. I came across it today and realized that I must have known then. I knew I was going to quit drinking. It was coming. I had no idea, really and I didn't believe that I could. But I knew.

Written on December 20th, 2010 - exactly one month before:

Maybe she's not even a version of me. It's more like there's a piling up of these things that I've practiced being until they've covered up the real me.

I still have a lot of rubble to rifle through, and yet, I'm finally hopeful. Maybe it's the new chapter in our lives opening up, a move to a new place, a fresh start. The things I still struggle with, like we all do, seem smaller. I'm threatening to eradicate those things I'm tired of living.

Anger is there in the pile, this irritable, frustrated and negative absolute boulder of a thing sitting on the real me.

A habit boulder.

A person can think a certain way until that thinking is real and true, even if it didn't start out that way. We can tell ourselves lies until we believe them with nearly our whole hearts. That's what I did, anyway. I thought and thought defeating thoughts until I didn't even know I was thinking them, and then they took root in my head and heart and that's a very dangerous thing to do. A person can waste their entire life trapped like that, thinking they aren't good enough or their marriage isn't good enough or their mothering isn't good enough...and then doing things to stay in the rubble of thoughts.

I can still remember sitting at our first tiny little table years ago, pregnant with Miles and mad at our house for being too small. Mad that we bought it without thinking. Mad that there was dust everywhere, piling up like this other version of me while an addition was added for more space. Disgusted and self-centered and so easily done with it all.

It was then, I think. Then that I actually decided to stop trying to be positive, claiming exhaustion and I just can't handle this. No, I was not suffering, and yet there I sat like a spoiled child, wishing we had done things differently, giving up on who knows what. Somewhere in me, I allowed those defeating and irrational thoughts to trump the positive ones. I had no idea the stress we were about to endure with Asher's colic and hydrocephalus and I set myself up, ruminating around the negative thoughts. I set myself up to cope rather than conquer.

Even if I have been through some awful and ugly things in my life, even those things are not excuses for what I'm doing. Because the truth is that we can even be freed from the most traumatic of things, but only if we seek hope and stop thinking about ourselves all the time.

Now, my boys are here and they pull joy from my rubble and show me how to see life. So I try. I claw and I pray and I reach out when I start to stumble toward a funk. I simply try.

Because of them, that version of me that is covering me, is being shed from my life. They are the catalyst, the reason for me to say, I'm leaving her.

~~~~~~~~~~
It kind of blows my mind that I was writing this and not thinking about drinking but kind of letting myself think about drinking but still not allowing myself to have this thought...

I wasn't just drinking to cope with anger and sadness...
anger and sadness were amplified because I was drinking.

Denial and rationalization are broken power tools.


This post is a part of Flashback Fridays over at Mylestones. Thank you, Jo.

When she knocks

A person in love with wine like me asked how I'm doing this,
this not drinking,
HOW?

How did you break up with her?

How do you hit 3 o'clock in your day and not have 5 o'clock to look forward to?
HOW?

The truth is, most of the time
I have no idea.
Yes, I talk about a new calm
peace
surrender
being present,

and that's all true.

But that peace and calm comes without getting to take the edge off
and that is hard work, yes.
My life, like anyone's life
is filled with angst and questions
and hurt and
yesterday was filled with
poop and barf
and whining
and disappointments
and sadness
and snotty noses
and we need groceries
and there's always someone climbing on me.

But I don't know. I guess sobriety teaches you that you have no other choice. I guess it's like anything else you have to do. You just do it.

You simply don't go to the liquor store. When thoughts, when wine knocks on the door, you ignore her while you plug your ears and say la la la...

~~~~~~~

I guess this much self-discovery and feeling while getting help forces you to take a look at your attitude, the very thing that makes or breaks you. That's easier for me to do when I'm not drinking. My mind and body are not so overcome with the obsession to make it to 5 o'clock, thoughts of whether or not there's enough in the house, or when I can get more. And my mind is less occupied by headaches and the guilt of not being able to hold back. There's room in there now to see other things, to make a decision to calm down and see beauty, more often.

And when I can't calm down and I'm obsessing about wine, all I can do is think,

Just for today
for this painful moment
I will make it without wine
because there's community and fellowship in recovery
so I have to make a call,
and there is comfort in a begging kind of prayer
and so I have to beg,
while I grieve my old back-stabbing friend wine.

I will allow myself to know that I want to sip wine while making dinner
so so so badly
but I can't
so I won't,
I'll just breathe
and sometimes pace
and get mad at it all
and find a quiet place or ask to leave
and I grieve
and surrender
because there's no other choice.

I'm new at this and I'm learning and I think knowing that I will learn things I never would have, I will overcome things I never could have, if I would have continued drinking...well, that's what brings the peace and fight in me to the surface. I would rather live free of the demons, my ways of thinking and not feeling that left me scared and lonely. They can't stay now, and that's what makes me want to dance. I'll deal with them one at a time and it will be painful and better than letting them sit on my shoulders, hissing.

Right now I can't be everything to everyone like I've always been,
until I'm spread so thin that I'm no one to anybody,
especially me.
Because we're all only one
and we need many
to be able to be anything to anybody at all. (say that three times fast.)

So I guess that's how I'm doing it. I'm struggling and finally asking for the help of many,
and I'm finding it's not such a bad idea.

The stone

I was thinking about everything, the fact that I found myself in the vice grip of alcoholism, and the fact that quitting is good and hard at the same time. I was thinking about remorse and regret and redemption.

It is all so big.

And then I just set it down. All the thinking, like a stone I'd been lugging around.

kerplunk.

There is no figuring it all out in one day, I said to me.

So I played myself a song and I sat with it. Just sat with it.

The next thing I knew my arms were above my head and I was dancing a bad 80's dance right here all by myself, stomping and even spinning. I shook it and I sang louder and louder and I didn't care about anything.

It wasn't until the song was done that I thought even one insecure thought like, This must look ridiculous, what if the neighbors see me through the window? I just didn't. I was feeling too light for that. Like when you slip or trip on the sidewalk and all you can think about is catching yourself. And it isn't until the moment passes and you've found your balance that you have the wits to look behind you, sheepishly checking to see if anyone was there.

The dancing was like that, my body too busy to pay time or fear any kind of attention.

Here I am, this girl. One who believes with all of her soul but sometimes not her mind and heart that God is really actually totally and completely who He says He is. That He is all things love and that He's here despite the mess and because of it.

Here I am this girl, but I've never in my life felt freedom void of insecurity like that. Sure, I've danced a thousand times, at school dances and bars and weddings and in the kitchen with my boys. But this just felt different, more joyful, and maybe even holy.

~~~~~~~

It's as if there's always been a stone in my belly, churning me up and pulling me down. A thing that had me standing in church and everywhere else my entire life, looking out of the corner of my eyes with my arms crossed, afraid to trust the love that gently walked circles around my heart. That was me, always standing there, scared that I was somehow more irrevocably flawed than the next person. You know, so unique with all my faults and fears and mistakes that I would worry, at least at some very deep level, that I was the only person on the planet undeserving of unconditional love. And then the stone would grow in the pit of my stomach.

I was scared of freedom, comfortable in my uncomfortable skin. Addicted to the familiar trappings of my ruminating mind.

I quit drinking and then I saw it was all still there, that fear of never being good enough, that stone. But I can dance with it now because I finally know this stone is not stuck in my belly for good, and even if parts of it will always be here, I'm finally realizing that even that is okay.

Just own it and let it teach me something, you know?

~~~~~~~

That first night without wine, I did something that finally triggered a true commitment to really working at something, for the first time in my life, honestly.

When I kissed my sleeping boys, I whispered I promise you while tears dropped to their pillows. I've done that same thing again, every night since the first, smelling their hair while whispering those same words. I promise you. I am saying it even though that stone in my belly throws itself around when I do, and I start to doubt that I can really do it.

I'm saying it anyway.

For me, faith in God or myself or anything else takes a kind of getting lost, while I still don't understand it. Like those unsure and sacred whispered promises in the dark, sometimes my head and heart aren't certain and yet I say it, I believe. It starts something miraculous when I do that, like the joy in terrible and holy dancing.

A month ago, I was tripping around and fumbling for balance, my arms out, my knees bent. Then I slowly and sheepishly turned around and there He was, standing on the sidewalk like the old friend that He is. And that belly stone, it sat still and quiet, afraid of that kind of love.

In that moment, my head and my heart ran to do some catching up with my soul, tripping and sliding and fumbling and caught.

"So Heaven meets Earth like a sloppy wet kiss
and my heart turns violently inside of my chest.
I don't have time to maintain these regrets
when I think about how He loves us..."

"If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking."

-John Mark McMillian