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Happy Mother's Day to all who take a caring role in another's life. I am so grateful for this. #wedorecover #theadventuresofbeeksandboo #happymothersday #sobermom #iamenough https://www.instagram.com/p/CAAvl-kFhkUg5xdt-2FATMSJ3xlq7ZdnirGQsI0/?igshid=l1uvfp6ng82
New growth shooting up from the old. Resilience is a remarkable thing. So too is the pause before the shift. The knowing that the unknowing is an ok space to sit and rest for a while. And catch your breathe. And trudge on. #wedorecover #odaat #itworksifyouworkit #thistooshallpass #theadventuresofbeeksandboo https://www.instagram.com/p/B_0iYLuFFpJyZMTPYpjbPASxrn9KkKCzivLlBQ0/?igshid=ef59945r49mb
The Question
What if there was a question, a string of words formed in an attempt to illicit a response, that was so big and so unknown to you - that you couldn’t even fathom it’s importance. I’m not even talking about the huge inquiries, the ones that alter the state of your existence in the moment, and then you can plan. You can pinpoint it on a timeline. You make a decision, based on the validity and authenticity and history of the very question and the person asking. There are wishes and desires and feelings and haunts and so many unknowns and knows balled up into the nucleus of the words, the question mark hanging in the air.
Will you marry me?
Do you love me?
Will you move in with me?
Do you want to keep this baby?
Would you sign this DNC?
Are you happy?
Those life altering inquires, pointed decisions with answers that have so much possibility for confusion and grayness and fear. Will you marry me? It’s a pregnant question, right? Either you are or you aren’t. Either you will or you won’t. But maybe there is more space. Maybe there’s a yesness in the no. Or the other way around.
Or maybe there is no answer. Perhaps there is nothing and then the nothingness becomes the answer, expansive and gut wrenching.
The answer, regardless of its direction, depends on the question. There is no answer, no response to fill the air without the initial query. Answers have no power without questions. Nothing exists without questions. There is no life without questions. We are nothing, if not, our construction of thoughts to press forward, propel change and find the reply.
I’m interested in the inquiry, the formation of the vowels and consonants that form the nature and, ultimately, the response of the interrogation. Is it purely meant to extract information? Is the question manipulative in nature and you’re trying to extract an already conjured response? A chess game in your mind, working steps ahead of your perceived opponent. Is there a possibility for gray area? Do you love me? Yes. No. I don’t know. I think so. I could. I love you, but not in that way.
Those are the big questions. The ones that can change the course of your life as you know it. They baffle me. They cause me anxiety and ultimately lead to twitterpated indecision. I know what I want for breakfast. I don’t know if I love you.
But then there are the small questions, the banal construction of words that may not be that important.
Do you want starch on the collar?
Pepper on your salad?
What’s your blood type?
Seemingly simple questions with simple answers that have the potential for cataclysmic outcomes if not given a response.
I had the experience of having a small question matter recently - a question so direct in nature that is unfathomable to consider the gravity of a lack of response. My life, directed in that moment by that inquiry, was placed in the hands of the answerer.
There was no reply.
There was nothing.
There was only vastness and space and dust and lost love and regret and despair.
The, question, powerful in nature was rendered obsolete by the lack of answer. My question didn’t matter. Or did it?
Perhaps, then, it is the question itself and the relationship between inquirer and respondent that make the world go round, that fill the voids and move us forward. Surely, if the connection I had with this person had been more solid, more authentic, more important the question would have been answered.
So it is to me, to create a better question and to foster an environment where an earnest answer can be found.
There are no answers in nothing. There are answers in the space between the nothing.
This question, seemingly small, has changed my life without me knowing it.
What are the questions that have changed your life? What are the relationships that have made your world?
Rehab - Introduction
My journey.
When I roll the tape reel of my short 35 years, I often cringe. It’s like a romantic comedy where you’re sort of rooting for the protagonist to get the her or the him, but they keep fucking up in stupid myriad ways, so you have no choice but to feel sorry for them. They’re hospitalized for an overdose, then drink on the way home from the ER. They ruin Christmas for three years in a row. The make up the stupidest lies and fables about themselves in an effort to appear more in control than they actually are.
They struggle. Over and over and over. Until one day they get it. And the love they’ve been making a fool out of themselves for finally loves them.
Or whatever.
Writing has been the most cathartic part of my whole experience. My words have served as both my aegis and my sword. So, I’ve decided to write it all out.
I don’t know how this is going to go. I just know i need to get it out, to free myself of the story that has wrapped itself like a tumor around my insides. I need to tell you about the time I tried to kill myself, the time I hiked into the woods with no provisions except wine, hoping to die. I need to talk about how I prayed every night for God, or whoever was listening, to take me in my sleep. I need to tell you about California and the amazing people that I met. I need to talk to you about my struggles with anorexia, depression, anxiety, sexual abuse and loneliness.
I want to tell you how I found the love of my life and lost him.
I want to tell you about my beautiful children and how I almost lost them.
I want to purge the incredible spectacle of my existence on the screen for you to read and cry and share and gawk and be angry at.
So, I will.
I’ll tell you about rehab. I’ll tell you about being institutionalized. I’ll tell you about some incredibly divine situations I’ve found myself in, that led me to this spot - drinking coffee on a Sunday, sitting in front of my computer, a little money in the bank, writing about how drastically different everything could have been if I hadn’t made the decision to live.
The Ink Won’t Erase Your Track Marks
The mask I wear is the silent witness to my pain, the contrived persona that I have taken on with the self-inflicted parameters of being who I think you want me to be. Which, upon reflection, is basically insane. I no longer wear the mask. I no longer manifest who I think I should be based on what I think you think.
My words have become my best and worst voice - the whispering defense and the screeching demand. I’m flawed, in more ways than I care to admit. But I’m honest about how I feel. I’m honest about my humanness. I’m honest about the fact that I don’t know shit and I’m wounded and scared and healing and trudging and emotionally bankrupt.
I thought I met the one this past year. And because I’m terminally unique I had the gall to think that this was going to be different. This, this budding romance was going to be honest and earnest and real and raw and we would read the Big Book for fun and would be by one another’s sides and that square peg would never have to be jammed into any circular holes because I got rid of all the square pegs when I got sober.
I shared the fucking first line to my book with you. THE line. Because I thought you were THE one. The laborious construct of words and sounds and syllables and syntax. I will never forgive you for that.
Turns out, no matter how much ink you use to cover your track marks, they’re always there, under the surface, waiting to tease the dragon that is buried so deep within you.
I’m not crazy. I’m not your problem. I’m not any of the things that you said I am because you can’t take responsibility for your actions.
Evil. Interesting.
I’ve looked evil in the face. It smiled and told me it would never give up on me, no matter what. It called me crazy and claimed the position of moral high ground, which is really just a completely transparent way of declaring your cowardice. Evil isn’t in the malice. It’s in the moment before the malice, in the split second of having a choice and deciding to do the wrong thing anyway. It’s having someone’s heart in the palm of your hand, after it’s been torn off the other’s sleeve and laughing at its brokenness.
It’s in the half truths and untruths.
It’s in finding a rig in your pocket and knowing I should have walked away. And you sneering because I didn’t.
It’s in the songs I will never be able to listen to again. Because you stole their meaning and made them your own and placed symbolism where there was no imagery to be created.
It’s in the making my truth, my story, your own.
You don’t get to tell my story. My truth is light years away from any of your answers.
You don’t get to cover your track marks with art and claim you are anything other than what you are.
And this is not to say that the truth is in the knowing. It’s not. We fall, we get back up, we skate over the truth as not to hurt ourselves or our loved ones. The relapse isn’t the thing. The complete and total demoralization isn’t the thing. It’s the moment after, the moment between moments. It’s in the taking responsibility for your own actions, grabbing your own story by the gruff of the neck and exposing it for what it is - not wilding waving someone else’s dirty laundry in the hopes that it will take the audience off yours.
And the thing is, I love you still. Because my heart knows no other way than no matter what.
I finally put my weapons down, surrendered to the deepest parts of myself and gave up. I was broken, but alive; terrified, but hopeful. I started to love myself, to become enough. Then I met you. The him. There's always a him. He looked at me like I was magic and made me believe that I was beautiful and I slowly grew into my own everything and the cracks were glued together by all the external remaining somethings. I fell back into an old trap. Love me so I can be enough. Validate me so I can be. Enough. Enough. I am enough. I have worth outside what any man thinks of me. I am not here to serve as some benchmark for your own greatness. I am not here to feed your ego and pay for your dinner and do your laundry and give and give and get nothing, so that my enough slowly starts to chip away and become merely sufficient. You don't get to call me crazy because you screwed up. You don't get to tell my story as your own unless....unless you include the part where I was there for you every day, holding you up. Unless you include the time I found a rig in your pocket and you lied and lied again and again and again. Unless you want to go head to head, story to story so that we share in parallel so the missing somethings are filled in with the truth. Recovery means connection, taking responsibility for your actions and being authentic. Your deafening silence represents your cowardice. You've been hiding in the bushes on the way up to the high road, but you clearly haven't made it yet. Your story is no longer my story. Your truth is light years away from any credible answers. You are what I used to be. And I will never chip away at myself to be merely worthy of you ever again. #sober #norelationshipinthefirstyear #innerbeauty #sobermom #idontplaytheblamegame
Creating The Space
I have struggled with the overwhelming desire to please other people my whole life. Without truly understanding it, I have put other’s thoughts, perceptions and ideas before my own. I can’t think of a decision that I’ve made for myself. Where I went to college, my career, where I’m living: All decided (under the pretense of a strong-willed and independent thinker) with other’s thoughts in mind. I have put my own value in the hands of other people. It’s no wonder I feel worthless.
I’m 34 and I have no idea who I am.
Through a series of horrible mis-steps, mistakes and drama-filled episodes I have come to realize that I was slowly making myself crazy. It stand to reason: If you’re constantly concerned with the self-actualized world around you, then you have no room to truly look inward and reflect. The only person I will have when this is all over is me. The only person I can cultivate any level of control over is me - and even that’s pushing it.
For so long I have tried to suppress, mask and hide from unpleasant emotions. Guilt over my mother’s unhappiness and my inability to make her illness go away. Sadness over “lost” opportunities. Fear that I will never be good enough, no matter how many fake smiles I plaster on my face. I’ve been faking it for so long, self-medicating for so long, that I’ve lost touch with my inner most self. Hoping for a better version of myself to hurdle over my current self and someone make me a happy, more beautiful person. A better wife. A better daughter, mother, sister, philanthropist, teacher....
I am slowly coming to terms with this simple statement: I am enough.
My foundation has been based on opinions I have created in my head. My base has been built, brick by self-conscious brick, by hoping one day that things will get better. I have been living in an imaginary future that somehow has rendered me happier. I have resided in this self-imposed fantasy as a defense mechanism. It has prevented me from living in the present - from taking a good, hard look at myself.
I don’t know who I am. That is incredibly hard to say. I don’t know who I am and I don’t know what I want. What I do know, however, is that I am learning to create space between my inner most self and my destructive thoughts.
Fear is just a thought. It is a good teacher. It helps me to more fully understand what it is that I care about. I have grown to respect my fear, to acknowledge it, appreciate it and give it the credit it is due. Guilt guides me to understand where my unfinished business dwells. Sadness helps me to reflect on what I know I want to change. This is no easy process, since we live in a society that insists we get rid of these emotions. Feel shame? Go on a diet and get botox. Feel self-conscience? Have a beer, or eight. Feel dumb? Go back to school and get that degree in whatever.
A thriving business has been made of capitalizing on our lack of a “solid” base - the need for everything to be just perfect. The truth of the matter is, that being grounded is impossible. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is attainable unless we understand that that solid base we are “grounded” in is actually fleeting, imperfect and hopeless. Once we begin to process this, we begin to understand that our thoughts are just thoughts, our emotions are just emotions and it doesn’t pay to let other people rent space in your head for free.
The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect to look at ourselves honestly and gently.
Pema Chodron
Ebb and Flow: The Nuthouse: 1
The walls are pock-marked, jagged holes embedded deeply in the grey concrete on the 3rd floor. This is not home. This is not some rudimentary example of what might happen to your existence if you truly screwed up. This is real. You’re in the fucking nut house. I shuffle down the hallway of cheap tile, blue paper shoes scuffing against the dirt that has built up over the day. There is no time to give attention to the cleanliness of the ward until at least half of them are in bed. Wait until they wind down, take their meds. Pass out on their first night because they’re coming down off whatever.
Whatever.
Seboxone. I know all about it. Not because I was on it or that any opiate was my “drug of choice.” They give it to heroine addicts when they detox so that they don’t detox to death. Some people have been on it for years. Years. I’ve seen amazing people coming off of herione. Brave people. Mothers, fathers, daughters and sons...sisters, brothers. I’ve seen people coming off of this horrible drug for the 20th time. Please. Don’t do it. Ever. This drug and every derivative thereof is simply just evil. Beautiful people. Responsible people. Don’t do it. Heroine will ruin you.
Shuffle some more down the crusty hallways. The paranoid schizophrenic two doors down from me attempts to engage in a conversation about the hilariousness of her pet gerbel, Peaches, while you are on your way to the bathroom. You listen, intently, as she describes how she had a full-blown discussion with her pet rodent about the NSA and their interest in our Amazon Prime orders.
from the album On Patrol
We have a choice. We all have a choice.
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It was Her Spine
My daughter. My resilient, dynamic and happy daughter. I had to pause today, to notice the world that is just begging to be noticed, to try to see the world from her eyes. I made an effort today, more than usual. I'll admit, some times I ignore her repeated requests to play with her and bury myself in my work. Today I didn't. I listened to her, truly listened. I rocked her and held her and played in the kiddy pool and looked at the chickens and made bubbles and looked at the chickens again. I'm exhausted. My back hurts.
But I'm happy.
As she was toddling naked around our deck, she sat down, exposing the curvatures of her spine. The spine that could have broken in our accident. The spine that connects tissue and vertebrae and disks and muscle.
It was her spine.
I fell into a rhythm after the accident of being intentional. Breathing. Being more mindful. I lost track of that calm and fell back into old patterns of doing too much, trying to be too much. Trying to be everything for everyone.
It was her spine. Noticing her fragile spine that could have snapped. I gasped. I paused. I breathed. I cried.
As she leaned back up to look at me, a huge smile crept on her cherubic face. "Play with me Mama."
It was her spine.
"Through suffering, comes wisdom. Through surrender, comes strength. Through resilience, comes hope. Keep going.”
Rita Said
On Meditation
I've been reading a lot of literature lately about meditation and being a more present individual. For a number of years now I have blindly barged through life, putting my head down and crossing things off my never ending to-do list. Do the dishes. Change the beds. Grocery Shop. I've fallen into the classic blunder of trying to do it all while maintaining my sanity and keeping up with the overwhelming influx of societal noise about what I should be doing better with my life. I know I'm not perfect. I don't need to be reminded every time I turn on the television or read a magazine.
So, I just attempted to meditate. In a cemetery. I think I needed to be close to real death, to headstones that marked the existence of a person who once walked this earth. I didn't really feel anything except a sense of peace as I walked around and eventually sat under a lilac bush. I tried to empty my mind of everything. Much like that scene in "Ghostbusters", I tried to keep the proverbial "Stay Puffed Marshmallow Man" from entering my consciousness. As I breathed, trying to prevent negativity from entering my brain, I felt calm for the first time in months.
Meditation and being more present in general is a difficult feat of the human mind. We are constantly bombarded with information throughout the day. All of this just makes me feel like I don't match up; that everyone else is doing a better job at, well, everything than me. I have realized recently that the guilt that overwhelms me every day is self-indulgent and doesn't serve me or anyone in my life.
So, I will continue to try and focus on one thing at a time, while taking stolen moments to clear my mind of the pain that has taken up residence in my psyche. We only get one shot at this. I have a vision of the mother, wife and woman I want to be. It is only through engaging in mindful thought that I will be able to become a person whom my children can grow to be proud of.