Walking the Walk

“Walking the Walk”

 

“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden

 

            I haven’t written a post in a while, mostly because I haven’t had the time.  I am coming to the end of the summer semester of grad school, and, as I learned last summer, the accelerated summer semester is rather brutal.  I have ten weeks of classes when I would normally have thirteen and those thirteen are a little more spread out so there is time to work on papers and projects.  In addition to a Tuesday night class that went from 6:00pm to 9:45pm, I took a Saturday class that met for five Saturdays and ran from 9:00am to 5:00pm.  There was little time to breathe and though I have two more weeks of the one class, I am essentially finished with little left to turn in and complete.  There are others things on my schedule besides my full-time job, I won’t go into all of it, and though Frank and his parents do the lion-share of the time with the kids while I am plodding my way through this program, I still do spend time with them.  Suffice it to say that I am busy.

            So you would think that now that the semester is winding down and I know I will have time to relax for six weeks before the next semester starts and the madness begins again, this time with an internship which will ramp things up a notch, that I would be relieved.  Well, yes, and no.  Yes I have been looking forward to a break, but as it approaches I find myself starting to feel an old sense of mild panic at the thought of too much time on my hands.  Let me explain.

            I discovered once I stopped drinking, that the booze was, “but a symptom” as it says in the Big Book.  I drank because I did not like being inside my own head.  Being alone with my own thoughts was a terrifying state in which to be.  Being bored and alone was a perfect storm and it still can be.  Now don’t get me wrong, my mind can be a wonderfully, creative and entertaining playground, but it can also contain horrors and nightmares, the likes of which I would not wish on my worst enemy.

            When I came out of the recovery house in June of 2014 and got an apartment, I was alone a lot.  I became accustomed to it.  At the time I was working my fourth step which required a lot of self-reflection and a lot of writing.  That was the period of time when I had started this blog as well and so I wrote a lot and more consistently.  I spent a lot of time alone and a lot of time in self-examination.  It was my own Walden Pond period.  I had an apartment and the only things I hung on the walls were a picture of each of the three kids.  It was a nice little apartment but I kept it stark I think for a reason.  I didn’t want to be too comfortable there.  I didn’t want it to feel too much like home because I didn’t want to stay.  I was either going to be going home to Frank and the kids or I wasn’t and I was trying to figure that all out.

            Fast forward four years and I have a house and a very different life.  I know what I want and where I am going and what I am worth.  I think I pack my days because I don’t want to miss out on opportunities.  It is as if I am making up for lost time, the time I lost from addiction.  If I examine this creeping sense of discomfort I feel at the idea of having time alone in my head, then I know I need to take stock.  This is a warning sign.  Maybe I am going at this pace because I want to learn and to help others but maybe I also like not having that time alone in my head.  Maybe I should recognize that and see it for what it is and make some adjustments to balance my mind so when I have time to myself I don’t feel uncomfortable.

            I spoke to a close friend in recovery about this panic I feel the other day and he pointed out that perhaps I need to walk the walk.  He asked me what I would tell a sponsee in the same situation.  I answered, that I would have told them they need to sit in the discomfort and spend time alone, doing nothing, and re-acquaint themselves with themselves.  So I guess I have to do what I would tell others to do and hang out with me for a bit.  I have to do something shocking, like read a book for pleasure (and preferably not one about treating others with PTSD).  I have gotten so used to running at 100 miles an hour that I have forgotten what it is like on my own private Walden Pond.  So you can expect more blog pieces over the coming weeks, because when I visit Walden Pond in my head, I generally have a lot to write about.

"You Do You"

“You Do You”

 

“to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.” – e.e. cummings

 

            Recently, Wren and her Girl Scout troop were working on a badge that involved feeding the homeless.  They met up at the Scout mother’s house and made sandwiches and packed bagged lunches for a hundred people and then we all piled into cars and drove down to the Kensington section of Philadelphia.  The girls joined up with a community action group that was also handing out other food and personal hygiene supplies and clothes and I was so proud of them.  They all did such a great job and they were compassionate and respectful and smiled and looked people in the eye and treated them as equals and gave them more than just food and necessities by offering them a few moments of humanity.

            It could not escape anyone’s notice that among the homeless there were many people suffering from addiction.  The troop mother and I were standing to the side and we were talking quietly about the drug epidemic and I told her about Dermot’s recent questions about Narcan and how I now carry it with me.  In the course of conversation my book came up and she wanted to know if I would consider coming and talking to the troop about the book and about addiction the next week at the troop meeting.  I agreed.

            As the meeting approached I can’t tell you how nervous I became.  I speak at meetings a lot and I have told my story countless times now and have a background in theatre arts from high school and college so speaking in front of others is really not that hard for me anymore.  But something about the thought of talking in front of these girls and their mothers was giving me palpitations.  I was at a loss as to what to say.  Now I get the irony of having written a children’s book to help explain addiction to children and then being at a loss as to how to go about talking about it to this group, but there you have it.

            After thinking about it, I realized there were a few things that were bothering me.  The book is aimed at children but children who are touched by addiction and I was going to talk to children who may or may not be affected by addiction.  I also know that Frank and I are very open with Dermot and Wren and we talk about just about everything with them, to the point I think of it making others a little uncomfortable.  I wasn’t sure how much I should go into or how far these other mothers wanted me to go as the book touches not only on addiction, but co-dependence and childhood trauma.  And finally, as much as I am an individual and a free-thinker and a breaker of norms now, I still worried about what these other mother’s thought of me on some level.  There is still a stigma and I still feel the sting of judgement as much as I would like to say that I am above that, I still feel twinges of it from time to time.

            I expressed a little of that to Dermot and Wren in round-about terms.  Wren looked at me and said, “Why do you care what other people think Mom?  You do you.”  Dermot also later stated, “Mom, you tried to be a Main Line soccer mom and it just didn’t work.”  Damn if they haven’t been listening to Frank and me all along.

            So I, in turn, listened back and went to talk to the Girl Scouts.  I won’t say I wasn’t uncomfortable, because I was and I won’t say that I knocked it out of the park, but it started a discussion and the girls asked some intuitive questions.  I had to laugh at one point when one girl raised her hand and said, “I get that the red dragon is supposed to be addiction, but what is the black dragon about?”  This was the point when Wren cheerfully piped up with, “Oh that’s easy, that’s childhood trauma!”

            I had to be reminded by my kids to step outside my comfort zone and remember to be me and a space where I used to try and conform.  The truth is I did try to be a Main Line soccer mom and it didn’t work out so well because it wasn’t me.  I don’t fit that mold or frankly any other.  I am a glorious contradiction on so many levels and I have to embrace that and live every day in the absurd light of my own spirit.  To do otherwise is a betrayal of what makes me, me and sets a bad example for Dermot and Wren, who apparently, are listening.

 

           

My Plate

“My Plate”

            “Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled but halved.  No man is an island.”  Neil Gaiman

            Not long ago I was driving Dermot home from a music lesson.  It was just he and I alone in the car and I can sometimes snatch some precious moments of straight connection with him when it is just the two of us.  We aren’t being distracted by screens, or other people, or noise and he isn’t posturing in front of his little sister.

            Dermot is a verbal kind of guy, but less and less does he open up about the things that are bothering him.  The older he gets and the further into the murky, hormone-filled days of adolescence, Frank and I have to work harder to tweeze from him what is going on behind his dimples and shining eyes when the dimples disappear and the eyes go dark in anger or introspection.  He goes from happy and carefree to stormy and mysterious in a matter of minutes.

            There are some things he will talk to his dad about and some things he will talk to me about and he is starting to realize that Frank and I, though divorced, will ALWAYS work to be on the same page about him and his sister.  We check in with each other about the kids just about every day so there is nothing that they have been able to get by us yet, and rest assured, they have tried.

            On this particular car ride, I asked him about some incident of less-than-stellar behavior he had displayed at his dad’s house and what might have been behind it.  He managed to express to me what had been bothering him and I asked him why he maybe hadn’t said anything to anyone about why he was upset before he exploded and got in trouble.  He essentially said to me that he sometimes doesn’t want to bother me or Frank because we have a lot on our plates.

            Whoa

            I wanted to bring the car to a skidding stop and grab him by the shoulders to both hug him and yell at him at the same time.  I refrained and instead took a deep breath and talked about how I know that both his dad and I are busy people, but that we will always make time for him and for Wren, especially if they have an issue or a problem.  I know we have been consistent in our message to both kids that this is the case and to some extent that this is teen angst coming through, but clearly it needs to be said over and over and it needs to be said louder and louder and in many different ways.

            I told him also that there are things I notice he is more comfortable talking to his dad about and that was fine with me and that Frank was fine with the fact that there are things he is more comfortable talking to me about.  I wanted him to also know that there might come a time when he might want to talk to someone other than us and if that happened I just wanted to make sure that he talked to someone.  I wanted him to know that he just can’t keep things inside, because keeping things inside never helps, it only makes things worse.  I told him to make sure that no matter what you have to a find a person, someone you can trust to talk to.  It doesn’t always have to be the same person, in fact it probably shouldn’t only be one person, but that you should always have someone to confide in… but in a healthy way.

            Then I reiterated that I may have a lot of things on my plate at any given moment, but that if he and Wren ever needed me to, I would gladly push something off that plate.  The only thing I would not push off the plate I told him, was my recovery.  I said that would always have to come first, because my recovery is the reason that I have a plate to begin with.

The Ripple Effect

 

“The Ripple Effect”

 

            “Even a pebble dropped in a pond sends circles to the margin.”  C. S. Lewis

 

            This week saw two people who attended my home group over the past couple of years lose their fight with this disease.  Two.  Two in one week from a group that averages 40 on any given Monday.  Two young men died from overdoses.  One had just had a baby with his partner a few months ago.  Both were under 30.

 

            We, as a group, found out about the first one this past Monday night.  The other we found out about this past Wednesday.  The death of the first was announced at the beginning of the meeting and a pall fell over the group.  I felt the weight of the news immediately and excused myself to stand outside for a few minutes.  The truth of the matter is that I did not know either man well, but I mourn for them none-the-less because on some level I am them and they are me.

 

            Their families don’t know me, but I cried for them.  The new baby doesn’t know me, but I care about the future of that child and I ache because of the wasted potential and the devastation these men have left in their wakes.  They would not have imagined that I would stand outside a twelve-step meeting on a spring night in May and cry for them, but I did. 

 

            Every action I take has an effect, sometimes great and sometimes small.  I know now, from examining my past through my step-work that my negative behavior impacted the lives of many people.  It impacted the lives of many more people that I had imagined or allowed myself to realize.  Through the process of going through the steps I was able to see myself for who I truly was and to recognize my actions for what they truly were and to fully accept them all, good and bad.  I finally saw an accurate picture of how I interacted in the world and what that looked and felt like for other people to the extent that they let me see.

 

            Once I had this in full focus I knew that moving forward I was determined to be sure that my actions as a sober woman were going to have a far greater impact on people in a positive sense than they did in a negative sense before I got sober.  I can’t erase the past but I can make sure that my intentions in the present and future are pure and that what I leave in my wake will not be devastation but healing and support.

 

            I went back into the meeting with a heavy heart and without much capacity to string together a coherent share.  I was tired and emotional and wanted to go home and crawl into bed, I was just done.  Then a newcomer spoke and introduced himself and simply said that he was new to the process and new to being sober.  He said he was 40 and realizing that he was in the last third of his life and that he wants to get better just so he can die with dignity.  He came to join us so he can get better and die with dignity.  Read that again if you have to… 

 

            You never know what small gesture will mean to someone.  The slightest kind word, smile, hug or nod of approval might be all that is keeping someone else from the edge of despair or just the encouragement they needed to finally get help.  I plan to arrive early for the next meeting and give more hugs, smiles and nods of approval.  If another woman asks me for help and needs a sponsor, I’ll say “yes” because I have a solution and so that maybe, just maybe, that pebble will send a circle of good to the margin.

.

Dermot's Public Service Announcement

“Dermot’s Public Service Announcement”

 

            File this one under the category of “out of the mouth of babes”.  Last weekend Frank took the kids to Comcast Cares Day where the company does a day of volunteer work in the community.  This year they were doing some work at a playground and daycare and community center.  They were painting and building shelves and planting flowers etc...  By all accounts they had a good time and felt they did some good work.

 

            While in this part of the city, Dermot noticed a billboard across from the center they were volunteering at and had Frank take a picture of him standing below it to send to me.  He had asked Frank about it and Frank told him what he knew and then said I might know more about it.  The billboard (see below) is about Naloxone or Narcan and urges the public to carry it and use it in case of opioid overdose.  Across the top is the phrase “Saving a life can be this easy”.

 

            So Dermot, and then consequently, Wren had a lot of questions then about Narcan and opioids and overdoses.  They hear about the opioid crisis on the news and they hear about drugs and addiction all the time from Frank and I and messages from school about prevention.  When I next had the kids, we talked at length about it until their eyes glazed over and I knew the moment was gone, but during that discussion, Dermot had asked me if I carried Narcan.  I had to say that I didn’t.  He wanted to know why I didn’t given that I spend so much time in the recovery world and I am around alcoholics and addicts all the time and you never know who might be struggling and relapsing and not talking about it.

 

            So, after sleeping on that, or rather not sleeping on that…  I decided to find out about how I go about buying Narcan because he is absolutely right.  Knowing the nature of addiction as I do, people are prone to relapse if they aren’t doing the things they should to maintain their sobriety and recovery and with the rise of opioid-related deaths out there and fentanyl-laced batches of heroin and I could go on with all the reason why it just makes sense for me to carry it…

 

            Don’t laugh but I started with Amazon, because, why not.  I bought cases to carry doses in that I thought had the spray in them already because the wording was misleading so be careful about what you are getting.  Then when I realized my mistake I googled it and got better information.  I would have been better off starting with the information on the billboard in the picture but I wasn’t thinking.  In any case it turns out you can buy Naloxone or the generic version Narcan over the counter without a prescription in 46 states at a pharmacy, one of which is Pennsylvania.  There is something on the website about needs-based paying also though I did not look into that too deeply.

 

            Off I went to CVS and marched up to pick up my regular medications and asked if I could buy Narcan.  I will give them credit for not balking too much given that the neighborhood I live in is not the kind of neighborhood I think they get asked that one often.  They had to scramble a little to figure out where the information on the Narcan was and I had to step away from the counter to allow them to ask me some questions and sign a paper acknowledging my understanding of what I was buying and they had to enter what seemed like a lot of information into the computer system and I am sure I am now flagged somewhere, but I’m fine with that.  I paid $98 for a box with 2 doses and that was an out-of-pocket expense without a prescription.

 

            I came home and read how to inject the nasal spray and when.  I learned that if I suspect that someone is overdosing on an opioid and I use this on them and it turns out they weren’t on an opioid, I won’t have hurt them.  Narcan has the ability to help someone on opioids but won’t otherwise do anyone any harm if they aren’t.  I was going to say more about what to do and the ins and outs of how it works but I am not a doctor and though the instructions are simple, if you are at a point where you think you need to administer this to someone, call 911 and have them talk you through it so nothing goes wrong.

 

            I told Dermot all this and showed him the kit I will now carry with me.  He asked me how much it cost and I told him.  He seemed concerned that I had spent that much money on something he had suggested.  But I assured him I hope I never have to use it but if I do and it helps save someone, it will be more than worth it and it will be because he brought it up in the first place.  That is one PSA and billboard that did its job in sparking a conversation and pushing at least one person into action.

 

The Land of the Misfit Toys

 

“Land of the Misfit Toys”

 

            Recently I hosted a recovery meeting at my house.  A couple of my male friends from my home group and I were taking another couple of men through some step work and we gathered around my dining room table to read from the “Big Book” and have them underline passages and look words up etc…

           

            These step meetings center around the first three steps of the twelve steps of recovery and they can take about four hours.  If I am involved in these third step meetings, as we call them, I will generally feed people, and though it is serious business, it is always an intimate and enjoyable process that brings everyone involved closer together.

 

            This particular meeting struck me, because as I sat my table surrounded by these men, I was momentarily overwhelmed.  All four of them are first responders.  They are either law enforcement or veterans and at least two of them have some form of post-traumatic-stress-disorder and so do I, though for a very different reason.

 

            I was overcome as I looked around my dining room table at these somewhat gruff, but lovely men and felt an odd sense of belonging.  Here I was, this mainline soccer mom, sitting dwarfed alongside all this masculine pain and I was utterly at ease.  It struck me then that we were all God’s broken people and we were all so beautiful in our imperfection.

 

            In recovery, I have had the opportunity to meet myself for the first time and have begun to break out of all the molds I and society had tried to cram myself into.  I feel like I have had and have allowed myself to have so many labels over the course of my lifetime.  I care now to be as label-less as possible.  I want to be simply “Fiona” because that one label encompasses so much all on its own and continues to grow in its own scope daily.

 

            I don’t fit in anywhere anymore except among the misfits and it is rather glorious.  To be free of the molds means I see myself differently now and therefore I see others differently also.  For the most part, I try to suspend judgment and not place people in boxes or label them until I have actually talked to them.  Until I have connected with them on some level, I want to keep my mind open as much as I can to meet them spirit-to-spirit and not place them where society tells me they should be placed.

 

            Once I was able to start doing that I began to meet a range of people I had never given the time of day to before.  It was like discovering new colors and sounds I’d never seen or heard.  The scope of my vision and hearing expanded and people looked and sounded more attractive to me.  They became works of art in all their flawed humanity.

 

            I think often now about how many years my senses were shut down.  I think of how many lovely people I walked by in my life, never bothering to give them the time of day because of some pre-conceived notion, label or mold I had already placed them in.  I won’t waste my time on the “what ifs”, but concentrate instead on honing my senses to being as open as they can be so that I can welcome others to the kind shores of the land of the misfit toys.

 

           

Somnambulance

“Somnambulance”

 

            I’ve mentioned before that I go once a month to speak at a rehab in New Jersey with my sponsor.  I’ve been doing this now for three-and-a-half years.  I meet him there and he speaks to the men and I speak the women.  We go after to eat a diner and it is one of those staples in my month that I truly look forward to.  I recognize that it isn’t the norm for a woman to have a male sponsor, but this happened somewhat organically and he is a bit like a father to me and it works so take that for what it is worth.

 

            I was talking to a friend on the phone the other week on my way to New Jersey and she asked me what I was up to.  I explained where I was going and that after I got home later that night I had to finish a paper for school so I did not anticipate getting a lot of sleep.  She commented that she was impressed I was still going to speak given that I still had to finish a paper.  She stated that she sometimes worries I take too much too much.  I understand her concern, but I think I am so busy because I feel as though I lived my life before recovery in a partial state of somnambulance and I don’t want to waste any more time.  I smiled to myself because there are so many reasons why I would put speaking before writing that paper and so many reasons why getting a little less sleep would so be worth the sacrifice. 

 

            I look forward to this second Tuesday of the month even though it means I have to jump in the car right after work and battle through Philadelphia traffic to get across the bridge and it normally takes me about an hour-and-a-half to get there.  I look forward to invariably seeing my sponsor pacing back-and-forth helping yet another person on the phone when I pull up.  We hug, trade quick hellos and catch up briefly before checking in and getting badges and going to different meetings.  I walk across the beautiful campus to the women’s facility and walk in to greet the CAs who know me well by now.

 

            The meeting is held in a large, open room and the women are usually waiting for me in a circle of chairs and I sit at the top of the circle and look out over about an average of twenty to twenty-five broken faces.  I see myself in those broken faces.  I remember what they are going through.  Those feelings of hopeless desperation are all too familiar and I do my best to offer hope.   

 

I tell them about my history with sexual abuse and mental illness and alcohol and all about the bad choices my reliance on alcohol resulted in.  I tell them about my two stints in rehab and my periods of suicidal ideation.  I tell them about living in the recovery house and feeling like I would never make it out of the hole I had dug.  I tell them about marriage counseling and the fragility of my marriage to Frank during my climb back out of that same hole I had dug. 

 

I am sure then to start telling them about the journey out.  I tell them about the meeting I found that changed it all.  I tell them about the steps and how they re-introduced me to myself and how I learned to love myself for the first time in my life.  I tell them about getting an apartment and getting a job and deciding to get a divorce and buy a house.  I tell them about the kids and how well they are doing.  I tell them how Frank and I are friends and how we co-parent.  I tell them how I am now in grad school and about the book and I tell them there is promise and life is good but that it takes work and that you can’t do it alone.

 

I do all these things like I do every month and then there is time for the women to ask me questions if they like and they always do.  We talk for a few minutes and I tell them where my home group is and give them my phone number and e-mail address in case they want my help when they leave.  Then we close the meeting with the serenity prayer and I hug as many of them as will let me.  And with each hug, my heart swells just a little more because that room darkened by hopelessness and desperation has been lit by a tiny spark of hope and I got to be a part of it.

 

I walk out and back across the campus to find my sponsor and we ask each other how our meetings went and head off to the same diner we eat at each month.  We sit and grapple with the same menu and say grace over the meal when it comes and eat and catch up and something about the whole process feels like coming home. 

 

It was worth staying up late to finish that paper.  For one thing, it was my fault for procrastinating in the first place, but then I just proved to myself for the umpteenth time that I am undisciplined.  For another, I went to speak at that rehab so that I could write the paper.  I would not be in grad school in the first place if I wasn’t in recovery and I wouldn’t be in recovery if I did not give away what I have so freely been given by others who have gone before me.