Mar
24
Yesterday we spent the day at the cabin and it was one of those glorious spring days where, if the air temperature is not technically warm enough for shorts, the sunshine and lack of wind make it so. I sprawled in a chair with my face tilted up to the sky, wrinkles and age spots be damned, as the boys careened from one edge of the yard to the other and shouted hup two three four hup two three four at each other. I was thinking for maybe the millionth time how much more I am enjoying parenthood now that they’re older — now that, frankly, it’s not so goddamned stressful. Despite its bucolic family-friendly appearance, the cabin is actually pretty rough on parents of very young kids: in one direction you’ve got the grassy yard ending in a startling downward slope that ends in the river, in the other lies the highway, just a few distracted toddle-steps away. I still marvel at the luxury of being able to read a book instead of staring wildly around running a sort of frantic inventory in my head: WHERE’S DYLAN okay whew he’s over OH FUCK WHERE’S RILEY wait yes he’s just UGH WHERE DID DYLAN GO nevermind he’s, etc.
Also luxurious: leaving the boys for a few days with zero guilt. JB’s parents met us there and took the kids back to Coos Bay with them for a spring break visit, and JB and I drove home feeling nearly giddy in our unfettered state. We took the longer, winding scenic drive back to Eugene because there was no one in the backseat to complain about it: this is awesome! We went to the store last night without having to preemptively threaten anyone: this is awesome! We walked around our neighborhood as dusk fell and we had an actual conversation instead of stopping every two seconds to nag someone to stay out of the middle of the road/stop walking on the neighbors’ flowers/do NOT pick up that random piece of garbage: this is awesome!
I have a quiet house to myself today and it is a thing of wonder to work without the Wild Kratts theme blaring ten feet from my head (“On adventure with the coolest creatures, from the oceans to the trees …”). I cleaned the kitchen counter last night and my god, it’s still clean this morning. Later, I might mop the floor! THIS IS AWESOME!
Isn’t it weird how things that aren’t really accepted when kids are very small suddenly become totally okay? I mean, if I were telling you how awesome it was to send my infant away for a couple days, you’d probably start getting kind of uncomfortable and you’d shuffle your feet and say “…yeah…” while thinking I should probably keep my baby-separation-celebration to myself. But being apart from school-age kids? DUDE YES FIST PUMP. Seems unfair, really, considering how much more consuming babies are and how much more parents need a break during those years, but so it goes. It’s like daycare: no one likes to admit they drove away from their childcare center singing “Born Free” at top volume, but nearly everyone agrees that rejoicing after preschool dropoff is A-okay.
Anyway, we’re only kid-free until Wednesday morning, and it will of course be wonderful to see them again, but right now? Oh man, I am LOVING IT.
Mar
16
In the last month or so I’ve had a few different people accuse me of glossing over my alcoholism on social media. I’m not sure what that’s all about, exactly. I assume this doesn’t occur to most people and the angry belief that I’m not tweeting/blogging/Instagramming/whatever-ing enough about addiction comes from a place of being Weirdly Focused and/or Overly Invested. But I suppose it’s also true that I talked about it a lot for a while, and then I didn’t.
I have one of those sobriety apps on my phone, the kind that simply tells you how long it’s been since your last drink. At first I launched it all the time and stared at the counter like it held some great secret promise. I’d switch between the days and months view to see what felt longer, as if there was some sort of gaming checkpoint hidden in there. As if you don’t go all the way back to zero if you fuck up.
Today the app says I’ve been sober for 8 months and 22 days. (Or: 266 days.) The numbers seem calmer, more certain. I have no doubt that I will see twelve months on that screen, and that it will keep climbing.
What I didn’t tell you before is that I’d been backsliding for a long time. I was drinking in secret when JB traveled. It wasn’t happening frequently, but it was often enough for me to get progressively worse. I sometimes wonder if part of me engineered the humiliating public events of last June as a desperate way of throwing on the brakes — although perhaps that lends too much control to what was clearly an out-of-control situation.
The first few weeks were as raw and terrible as anything I’ve ever gone through. For days on end I ate sandwiches made from Wonder bread, yellow mustard, and bologna, in some strange attempt to be gentle with myself. (It was like eating something from a half-remembered childhood memory — the wadded-up dough that sticks to the roof of your mouth, the bland hotdog taste of the bologna — and I’ve never wanted it before or since.) I slept too much, I cried too easily, I was convinced I was utterly worthless and my family would be better off without me. I twitched in shame and my heart pounded with anxiety. I was utterly revolted by the person I saw in the mirror.
And slowly it got better. I stopped passively suffering and I started working on healing. Little by little, that suffocating miasma of self-loathing began clearing away. The days added up.
I don’t go to meetings these days, but I still see a counselor. We mostly talk about inconsequential things to start with, then meander around until we get to a subject that feels like it’s tugging on something, and we delve into that. I think of our appointments as my regularly-scheduled emotional spring cleaning. Lifting up rugs and exposing the detritus I’ve swept out of sight.
I belong to a private Facebook group for alcoholics, and while I don’t post there very often, I read it every day. Over and over, I read about people relapsing. For a while I wondered how healthy that might be, whether it created a discouraging outlook that backsliding was somehow inevitable, but I’ve come to believe these stories serve as an important reminder for me. They are, in maybe a morbid sort of way, an ongoing exercise in gratitude.
Last but not least, I’m committed to a fitness routine. I know without a shadow of a doubt that exercise has a direct impact on my mental health. It is, I think, the most critical part of my recovery.
My name’s Linda, and I’m an alcoholic. I will never stop being ashamed of the terrible choices I’ve made. But I’m facing forward now. I’m doing things differently than I did before, and my outlook is stronger. I am hopeful about my future. I’m a thousand times healthier than I was 266 days ago. I fully own what led me to that point, and I’m incredibly grateful not to be there any more.
I feel good, these days. Really good. And I’m glad you’ve been here when I’ve needed to talk. It’s helped me more than you could know.
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