Category Archives: healing

Who are you?

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You peer into the mirror, and you don’t recognize the person looking back at you. You want to ask, “Who the hell are you?” In your mind, you are still that gal with the long beautiful brown hair, nice olive skin and big brown eyes that will pop with just the right make-up. This could be the reason that you’ve held on to your clothes from that other time: the beautiful and flowy brown skirt with intricately embroidered blue flowers tastefully placed on one side of the skirt, and the matching blue keyhole blouse that hugged your figure perfectly. And let’s not forget the long black formal with strategic cut-outs that garnered the attention of all the queens at the LGBT holiday gala. You were so proud to be loved by the queens!

But, that’s not what you see in the mirror before you. Instead, you see a greasy head of brown hair that is in bad need of a hair cut. Your face is far chubbier than your imagination will allow. It stuns you to even look in the mirror. You have this strange impulse to dive into the mirror, in search of the girl you used to know. Surely, if you dig hard enough, you will find her.

In that other time, you could feel the effortless way that your clothes flowed around you as you walked. You knew that every part of your physical being was perfectly intact, and you knew when you walked into a room you could command attention. But, the perfect physical being on the outside was a shell for the internal deceit taking place inside.

You can only run from yourself for so long, eventually it all catches up with you. In essence, that’s how one can go from belle of the ball to looking like a woman on the edge of falling into the abyss of inpatient psychiatric care. You run into people you knew when you were belle of the ball. They pass you by because they do not recognize you. You know when someone passes you by because they want to pretend they don’t know you, when that happens there’s that nanosecond flicker of recognition in their eyes before they look away. But, these people just look past you as if they’ve never met you. Part of you is glad to forgo the humiliation in front of them, though the humiliation is still there inside of you. You know they don’t recognize you because you look incredibly different from that other time, the faraway other time that feels like a fairy tale that happened to someone else.

Somehow, some part of you knows that your current life is a purer one from the previous belle of the ball sham of a life. But, purity does not mean it is easier, or painless. In fact, it seems the more truth you find the more pain there is to sort through. In those moments when the dissociation and PTSD make you feel heavy enough that you can hardly sit up in your chair, you can’t help but wish that you were still in that blissfully ignorant sham of an existence. At least you looked great.

and there’s the sun …

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I walked into my apartment mid-afternoon with groceries, the bright sun shining through the sliding glass doors in the living room caught me by surprise. I stopped in my tracks, and braced for the floaty feeling because, in the past, the sun shining brightly into my apartment would send me into dissociative floaty oblivion. Usually, on the weekend, I don’t even arrive back home until well into the evening to prevent myself from losing large swaths of time at home. I stood there, afraid for a bit that it was a mistake to come home so early. Instead, the dissociative floats decided to take a vacation as they were notably absent.

Somehow, I’ve turned a corner. This weekend I did not lose time. I was not glued to my bed upon waking, and the all too familiar foggy and floaty state was not present. I have few answers or clues for the change. About midweek I started making future plans. I can’t recall the last time I’ve done that. The challenges I’ve faced the last few years have narrowed my scope in such a way that I lived moment by moment, hour by hour, and day by day. Such a necessary way of life put future planning out of my line of sight. I didn’t even realize this until I started planning for my future this weekend.

Prior to this weekend, I devoted all of my energy to simply moving from point A to point B, and all along the arduous task of moving between points I would implore my system to keep going just one more day. The effort to continue had to be broken down into discrete steps; otherwise, I likely would have been unable to function at even the minimal level I struggled to produce.

There were a few moments this weekend where I felt the floats wanting to get back into my head. I managed to trudge through them. Why couldn’t I plow through them in the past as I did this weekend? I do not know the answer to that question. What I do know is that I sat on the couch with the sun streaming in, and I remember every moment of it.

What they don’t tell you in AA

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You make fast friends in AA the moment you walk in the door for the first time. What they don’t tell you is that not all of those friends will maintain their sobriety. However, there is no way to communicate that to you. It wouldn’t be fair, and there’s no real way to figure out who will “go back out” as they say.

They don’t tell you that “coming back” means you are “coming back” from “going back out” and drinking. No one will tell you this. You have to figure it out on your own. They often ask at meetings, “Who’s coming back, and wants to acknowledge it?” You raise your hand for quite a few meetings there in the beginning as you take the question literally. You think to yourself, “Well, sure I’m back. Aren’t we all coming back?” No wonder you had all sorts of attention from the old timers. They must have thought you were picking up a drink very regularly after meetings. One day you realize your mistake when another man raises his hand when you do, and starts talking about drinking the night before.

They don’t tell you that not every meeting will be inspiring or even useful, but you still keep coming back because you’ll miss out when it is useful or inspiring if you are not there.

They don’t tell you that some sponsors are megalomaniacs, and see themselves as bigger and more important than your doctor or clinician. No one tells that that there may be a time when you have to reach down into your judgement circle deep down inside of you to see if your sponsor is right, or if they are, indeed, a megalomaniac. You are afraid because you know that you are not known for your best judgement. After all, you don’t even have 90 days sober. But, after deeply considering the situation you decide that your sponsor is fucked in her thinking. You land here … taking Trazodone is not equivalent to picking up a drink. You do not have to change your sobriety date. No one will tell you that you will have this crisis.

No one will tell you that mentioning taking psychotropic drugs during an AA meeting will divide the room in half, and render the meeting a Girl Interrupted version of The McLaughlin Group. Without even realizing it, you unveiled one of the biggest controversies within AA, the role of psychotropic drugs in sobriety.

No one will tell you that when you tell your sponsor that she is fired that you will want a drink, and you will only have yourself to rely on during that crisis. You will have that moment when you envision yourself picking up the drink, and you will desperately want the taste of that Crown Royal. There will be no one there to talk you out of it, or help you. You will see the clarity in the midst of it with the realization that taking that drink could get you back to that very bad place you were in when you put down the drink. All you know in that moment is that you want a better life, and you are not going to pick up a drink because of a sponsor with flawed and mistaken ideas. In the end, it will only be your fault if you take a drink.

No one will tell you that people who occasionally come to AA are considered to be “around the program”  and not “in the program.” Sponsorless people and people without a step meeting in their repertoire are also considered to be “around the program.” There’s countless criteria for being “around” instead of “in.” No one will outline the rules for you. You have to observe and watch in order to figure it out. In fact, if you ask what the rules are someone is likely to say it’s a program of “suggestion.” Perhaps that’s the case to some people, to others it is a program of rules.

No one will tell you that there will be a day when you will miss the camaraderie, the terrible basement rooms, and the hope in the air. You will go back to the program in those times of wanting to return, but you will always return to that same place in your heart where you realize that AA is not for you. Sobriety is for you though. Sobriety is a heavenly gift, but the program of AA was not meant for you. You wish it was. You will spend the rest of your life explaining to people that you are indeed sober without AA. You cherish your sobriety, and “people in the program” will look at you suspiciously.

No one will tell you that years later you will run into that sponsor with the wrong-headed ideas about psychotropic drugs. All the statements that you had swirling around in your head for a long time after your parting will come to you in that moment when you see her. Instead, you will smile and hug her because you realize that she was only doing what she thought was right. She will walk away after a brief conversation with you, and in that moment, you will realize that this is sobriety.