Category: Sobriety

I’m an recovering alcoholic, at this writing five and a half years sober. I write about my own sobriety as well as the general topic of addiction.

All is Grace, Part One: the Story of Sober Me

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Have I turned any other direction but to sit with my pain?

No saint here, bound and praying. I couldn’t quit

all the vices, they were many,

without God’s quiet stillness

ushered in.

A moment of need and prostrate

humbled, obviously being a fallen down drunk,

I opened.

In later years, when life wasn’t still, was in fact full of shit and heartache and disappointment

then, I found myself mostly still

hating Me. Still, considering fondly the

afternoon Gin & Tonic, sipped slow.  Then,

watching the languorous pouring of a glass of wine, everywhere.

I feel the accustomed

pang, insidious and stealthy pocketing my sober reassurance.

Still, open but with stone hard veins, I’m pulsing envy

hating them.

Then scribbled in the margins of a long forgotten book

I had asked –Do I have a death wish?

Of course I did.

The difference between the happy and the depressed is desire

to be alive,

or else every day wanting out.

Back up a year, no make that five years this summer to that fractured moment

when God spoke finally into my bleary drunken

Impasse.

Desire, to be Holy, ever holy or just a bit, less Me. That day becoming

an ex-drinker,

changed by my choice.

Grief and self-absorbed fear, growing like mold on bread left too long

I stank, rancid.

Longing for, but unable to will the power

within,

for peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, joy and light.

All was dark, even sober

unable to pray, not

believing the modulation of my own voice

to be heard by God—with much more important things to concern wtih—I clung

to misery,

hatred,

conflict,

doubt,

despair,

sadness

even as darkness was constant—

All the reasons I drank

stayed on in sobriety.

I thought I was dying to self but I was merely dying

stone sober, amidst my stench, self-loathing and judgment.

At that time sober wasn’t working

for me.

{Ten Thousand Tears}

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My tears are welcome.

I see them splattered, dried on my glasses as I peer out the window into the wintry, cold, gray, foggy morning;

tiny specks on the panes of my eyeglasses.

I wipe hard at these dried salty witnesses.

They are a record of my sodden heart.

Ten thousand tears come raining down.

The soil of my soul is softened.
Broken apart by tears, which took forever to reappear.  Though I fear

that I cannot stop them, deep down I know that they are what keeps my heart growing.

Soil ready for love, open

to the community of believers,
to grace,
to healing, forgiveness and new life,
to hope.

My tears, such an old and forgotten notion

for me.

When I was a child I pinched my eyes closed to reject my weakness, my torment as I was hollered at by a daddy that

didn’t know

better.

I closed down my heart;

it hurt too much to feel bad all the time.  So I told them, you aren’t welcome here.

And my heart and soul slowly turned

hard as stone.

Today my tears rain down though I fear them, they make no sense

their intensity, they make me vulnerable,

they make me feel weak, even when I know this

is

wrong thinking. But it is true now, I cannot protect my soft heart, sodden and murky, saturated

still,

My tears, they are here to stay I hope, welcome.

MHH

I’ve lived with depression, at some points melancholy as a part of my “personality” for much of my life, but it only became clinical major depression about ten years ago.  A variety of things came into play and I fell into a dark, frightening place. (I tell a little of my story in Not Alone.  I tell parts and pieces here on the blog — under My Story.)

But I have worked hard to face my mistakes and demons,as I did I began to heal and then had the strength to do the personal care that one must do who lives with this sort of mental illness.  

Though I am in a similar place today, depressed I know that I am a different person. I am different  “Spiritual Soil.”  I thank God for that picture that came recently from a friend’s teaching in Luke 8. I know God as I never knew God then.  I sense the Holy Spirit’s whispered truth of healing and hope. I have enough hope to believe the truth that I will heal, I will heal again even as ten thousand tears rain down.  

Much of my blog has been about my depression, beginning in 2001 which worsened through a series of personal and family adversities over the next several years (including the death of my father from brain cancer, during which time my sister and I cared for him in our homes). In 2005, when I became even more severely depressed, I was nearly non-functional, attempted suicide, and I was hospitalized for a while.  

In later years, I became a quiet, desperate drunk attempting to self-medicate and forget..  My drinking addiction grew worse and worse over the period of my depression, becoming debilitating by 2006 or so. This was very difficult for my husband and the children at a quite impressionable age saw me frequently out of control. They are now to the age when these things do impact them, though I got sober in July, four and a half years ago.  

These are not easy things to admit.  They make me feel damaged, weak, and if ever there was a stigma related to being broken I feel it like never before.  But it came to me recently, that I have to write my story.  I have to tell it, and let it go.  So that’s where I will go, to that place of heartache, depression, my experience with being a hard-core fallen down drunken mother and my cavernous personal grief about that, and interlaced in-between is Hope that I have found.  

So as much as I fear my own tears, I fear more the depth of my sorrow and grief when it I shove it back inside.  That’s what makes one depressed.  That’s what made me drink.

I know this is the next step for me, to sort it out  and live hard days, weeks and months of therapy, sleeplessness, and depression ahead.  

I am thankful for the everyday, tangible and incredible voices of love and encouragement I find foremost from my husband, but also from friends and family.

Thanks for all those that read and live this story alongside.  I know there are fellow sufferers.  I know there are others who have family or friends who descend into this murky, sinkhole of a hell and you cannot imagine how to help.  I hope that whatever I find in my story that’s redemptive will one day help others understand, find help, and live through it as you walk beside a fellow sufferer.

This isn’t over for me, my story isn’t written.  

Grace & Peace,

Melody Harrison Hanson

January 29, 2013

What If All Your Life You Believed A Lie? You Are Too Broken.

The morning air is all awash with angels …  – Richard Wilbur

2290843205_d92e123b69_oYou cannot unbreak a broken stick.

This morning, I awoke to a sense of life’s forfeiture.  I am broken.
I’ve lived half my life, if my mother is to be believed I’m only in my middle years, as if I am a broken stick; a lost cause [in my mind.]
Separated from love, undeserving and
Lost to hope, real joy and vigor.

Trudging along beside humanity
Caught in my heartache.
Living in the grays, all color is gone.
Broken, bent, useless; a searing mark of shame,

On me.
I believed the lie – I am too broken.

Yesterday I heard my father talking to me about reconciliation. Oh the irony!

Yes, our family is stuck, stuck broken open in pain, wrecked by sorrow and a narrative we’ve been unable to overcome.  Addictions, the palliative that settles us for a moment; achievements, work, knowledge, studies, alcohol, even religion our swan song.

God is saying that I need to sort things out, that I am not
A lost cause.

But many things have become an immense wall of fear and excuses.
And if I say this out loud, it sounds like blame.

Brick by brick, I have built a wall like Fort Knox around my heart.
A broken stick cannot be fixed, but a branch
Still attached to the vine can be pruned.

Holding on to that image of hope which honors god’s love for us and his forgiveness of us and his promise to make all things
NEW.

Fear is the thing that corrodes my spirit and damages everything good in me.  It is not from God.  God seems to be working on in me,

In my sleep, asking: Do I trust him enough to help us work toward reconciliation? Can I let go of the belief that our family was broken such a long time ago, so broken that it would never heal.

I’m trying to trust that God can heal anything

Even a broken stick

That is me.

{We Are All Dying}

The crawl of fear,
of losing, is close.  It licks me,
as if I am a salty wound.  Everyone dies.

Of course.

But lately, I am aware
of Life all around me

healthy or otherwise.

Tiny birds are singing a sonnet, high up in the tree.
Cancer cells are growing inside a dear old friend.
Dementia and life-stealing pain overtake a sweet elderly neighbor.
Depression and anxiety crush the once glowing spirit of my child

Meanwhile I cling
to sanity, to sobriety
and to Faith, there is Peace.

We are all dying,

and yet without the thought of imminent loss,
of the Ultimate loss, death

we haven’t appreciated our life as a gift.

Everyone dies.
Everyone lives.

Won’t you choose to live?

Choose joy in the midst of sorrow and grief?
Choose peace when hope seems dim?
Yes, fear circles around me like a flame, curling and

enveloping me in those early morning hours when

fear wakes me with a vice grip on my heart, blood pulsing.
Aware, that I am alive.

Everyone lives.
Everyone dies.

They are bitter, these days and nights.  Acrid, this
awareness

of life. Pungent,

and in this Pain,
there is a Holy Awareness.

Life’s aroma is sweet.

{Fly Away From Me: On Children}

I woke up this morning, the sun creeping in earlier than I wanted.  Coming out of my dreams, I felt grief wash over my body, sore from running daily; I felt the years wash over me physically.  And fear.

I am afraid for all the time—lost.  Gone.

My children are almost grownup into people, yet not ready to face the challenges of being adult.  But more and more they are absent from me and I feel their absence, the loss, physically — These babies I fed from my breast, nurtured if feebly the best I knew how.  Babies I brought in to the world through the tearing of my flesh and blood.  They are young adults and the time is gone.

I’m running out of time and as I woke I felt the years,

Weighty, heavy, lost.

Lost to the days of over working; long workaholic driven years of loving work more than I loved being at home.  I have forgotten those toddler years, unable to recall the first word, first steps, first book, I simply cannot remember.  Write everything down they said, but I thought I’d remember.

I was wrong.

Lost, because of so many days of a drunken cloud, a constant buzz from self-medicating.

I was trying to forget the sadness, the feelings of inadequacy. Feeling doubt in a world of devoted, sure people. Feeling the loss of losing the faith of my parents and not being courageous enough (yet) to find my own.

I lost many years of my children’s lives to being a drunk.

I woke this morning feeling the weight of it, a grief that is carved deeply within.  It is a heart ache, and with a cry  I wanted to start fresh.  A second chance; to rewind back fifteen years to hearing that I was pregnant for the first time.  I was surprised that my body, which I had loathed all my life, was capable of giving life.  And then I felt annoyed at the interruption to my career.  And then it came eventually; the felt joy and disbelief.

Now that baby girl, my little bird, is a young woman.  She is gone more than she is here and each interaction feels like our last.  I know we have just a few more years.  I think: hang on to love and do what you can to keep things open and safe.  I want to have a home, a heart that welcomes; A home of second chances, and third and fourth.  Arms open wide.

The days are slipping away, the chances are running out.

Even as I know this I know that I cannot clutch at her.  I must open my hands, joyfully and watch her fly. I will pray that she will want to return.

As I get up and face another day, it is to keep the nest warm and welcoming.    Yes, I woke up this morning already grieving. I knew.

My little bird is practicing her flight away from me.

{How I Wish I Were Different: After Four Years of Sobriety}

I go to the garden. My reasons are messy and fluid, resembling the task.

The 95 degree temperature hits me in the face as I sluggishly climb out of my car. Searching the field, I identify three backs bent. I see them from afar. Why am I here? There is no turning back as the heat punches then catches in my throat.

There are things growing.  I am amazed my first night by the thought of food coming from somewhere.  I pull up dirt covered onions, cutting of roots and tops.  I learn quickly and try to be efficient.  Drop them in the bin, but not too rough.  Not enough to bruise.  My hands reek of onion and I wipe the moist liquid from the onions on my perspiring arms.  I’m hoping this keeps the mosquitoes at bay as twilight approaches.  I did not spray myself before coming, though in a type A moment I had come prepared.  I didn’t want to come off as a novice stinking of bug spray.  That night was my first in the garden.

I am nervous, as I am doing anything new.  Intensely shy, I do not like meeting people.  I can carry a conversation fine but more often than I like to admit, I’m just too lazy.  Self-centered even, I suppose.  Showing an interest in someone, even when I care about them, even when they interest me, even when I know someone already takes so much out of me.  There is a price.

This is a quality I hate about myself.  How I wish I were different.

I wonder, after getting gussied up for a wedding yesterday, why being with people so hard for me?  I was drained and tired afterward.  Some people relish parties! Though happy for the bride and groom, all I could think about was being exhausted.

Partly this was for the fact that there was an open bar.  That brought up all sorts of unexpected feelings. Damn it, I think to myself, I still resent  that I cannot drink. Being a drunk (former drunk, of course) this is more than a little ironic to me.

It’s just not fair kept echoing through me, whiny and complaining.  Deep and pulsing, a humming in my soul.  Not fair, not fair, not fair!!!  I was feeling deeply sorry for myself. And this is how I know, how I knew, even then that I cannot drink ever again.  I know even now that I am a drunk that doesn’t drink.

I wish I were different.

Four years ago this week I quit drinking – it was for good this time.

I should go to an AA meeting and get a four year chip.  But I don’t do AA.  Not absolutely sure why.

I guess, I like to act like I’m not really an alcoholic.  I just “don’t drink” and when I’m not around it I’m “fine.”  But I don’t think I’m happy not drinking and this scares me more than you could know.

I am finding joy and peace, learning to feel the abundance of my life.  But I need to find out why other sober people are happy even at an open bar. But not me.   

I realized last night, sitting across from a young gal from my church who was kind of sloppy from drinking three giant glasses of wine, that I am not a happy sober person.  I watched her enviously as she made at least three trips to the bar and brought each one back to our table.  And I knew. There are some things that I need to sort out.

I wish I were different but maybe that’s the thing.  I am me.  I was a crazy falling down drunk, once upon a time.  It was no fairy tale. And I am no princess. I am a drunk, I may be sober, straight and clean, but I couldn’t have a good time last night mostly because I forgot who I was.  And I felt deprived.

I wish I were different.  But I am me. 

Trudging through the cauliflower and tomatoes and watermelon plants today, lugging loads of weeds, carrying hefty loads of hay I worked hard.  I worked to help.  I worked for penance. I worked to forget.  Who knows? Perhaps all that and more.

I know this – I am grateful to sweat, for my health, to be here, to be alive.  Yes, even to be sober.

I may wish I were different but I can only be me.

I can only live this one life.  Oh I have regrets.  Watching others last night brought up plenty of regrets, touched a well of sorrow, a deep recess carved in my soul, but in the end as I embraced the truth of Christ’s grace this morning at church, singing gratefully, I was more thirsty for more of Jesus,

You see, I know I’m a sinner.

I know I’m forgiven.

I need to forgive myself.  And perhaps, even give something back.  Four years sober I don’t know much.  I have no great wisdom about how and why.  There is more I don’t know than what I do.  But this is me.  This is who I am.

I have to stop wishing otherwise.

{A Cautionary Tale of Sobriety}

When I first began this blog in 2008, it was (in many ways) a place to process my alcoholism and recent sobriety.  I felt very alone and thought, why the hell not?  One of the first things I wrote was a poem (of sorts) titled It’s Lonely Here on The Wagon.

That poem chronicled the lonely place of being an alcoholic and a Christian who had lost her faith.

At that time, I knew that I had to stop hanging out with my “drinking friends” and even had one tell me she couldn’t help me with my sobriety.  She had enough problems of her own.

I know she didn’t mean to reject me, but that’s what it felt like.

And I began to tell myself that my friends with whom I had sat around late at night smoking and laughing with, drinking to a buzz, then way past a buzz, didn’t like me anymore and that I was unlikable.  I told myself that the only reason they hung out with me was because I’d drink with them.  I convinced myself that they didn’t like me, sober Melody.  To be quite honest I don’t even have answers to speculation like that, but I know this.

In the light of day I was a manipulative bitch sometimes.  I was petty.  I could be petulant.  I constantly needed affirmation that they liked me.  I even did things to prove to them that I was “cool.” If it sounds like the emotional needs of a high school aged kid, it’s because that is what it was.

I was emotionally stunted and didn’t know how to be a good friend.  In fact, sometimes I don’t think I really know how to be one now.  Perhaps I’m a little better at boundaries. 

I tell myself that I’ve come a long way from those days of drunken insecurity, but something hit me just this week.

I pretty much live my life expecting pain. 

I expect rejection and so I keep people at arm’s length.  I assume others won’t like me and so I stay aloof thus proving I’m unlikeable.  I assume that I am uninteresting, so I don’t engage in conversation.  I believe that I’m incapable of deep intimacy and so I stay standoffish, even remote.  This is what I do.  Now that I see it, perhaps I can begin to change.  Why assume people are going to hurt you by rejecting you?

Today I have to go to a school picnic and see a few of those same friends that I pulled away from four years ago.  My head and heart are telling me that they rejected me, but I know it isn’t true.  I’m feeling afraid.  Later I have to go to a graduation and see more of those old friends.  I’m sick to my stomach, afraid.  My shyness, aloofness, insecurities are flaring and for just a moment I think that it would be easier if I could just have a drink.

Yes, four years in July I’ve been sober and those thoughts return just like that.  Even though I know it’s a lie, the weight of social, emotional, and historic pressures are great.

I won’t drink.  But I want to and that is a cautionary tale for me.

MELODY

This is a part of a series titled: A Different Kind of Real, where I just write what’s on my heart without a lot of self editing or worrying about what you’ll think.

Some of the things I have written about my alcoholism:

I am not Ashamed
The Slow Crawl Of Healing
What Can I Say About Two Years of Sobriety?
Choose Joy
For Everything There is A Season.
Eulogy to Life.
Letting Go.  Thoughts on Being An Alcoholic
ReThink Everything
My First AA Meeting
My Crooked Heart
It’s Lonely Here on the Wagon
The Place of Nowhere
A New Way to be Human
Eulogy to Life
Winter Comes
Splintered Truth
This Epic Grief
No Dignity
I Need a Filling
Addict

I Never Wanted to be Like My Mother

I never wanted to be like my mother.

My mother stayed for more than 40 years in a marriage that broke her heart.  She admits now that she was afraid.

She married in the late fifties, when women couldn’t even have a bank account in their name.  She was a teacher and worked to put my father through college.  In the first year of their marriage, in a rage my father put her head through the wall.  He promised to never do it again.  And to my knowledge he kept that promise.  But  that was the beginning of being manipulated.  He threatened and he yelled.

The man could rage.

The smallest thing would set him off.

I never wanted to be like my mother, because all those years, I thought she was weak.  Weak for staying.

Or so I thought, for many years, until I became a mother.  And when that happened I began over time to see that she did it all for us. 

My mother is strong.  She stayed for us.  She was the buffer all those years between us and my father’s angry raging.  She took it more than we did. (And we took it a lot.)

And in later years as the weight of it became more than she could bear, she began to find comfort in the bottle.  I never wanted to be like my mother, but I became an alcoholic too.  I buried my fears for years in the numbing relief of alcohol.  As is often the case in a family with addiction, I carried it on.  And in the end I realized, I am very like my mother. I hide my pain even now, though I have been sober for almost five years.

I am strong and would do anything for my kids, just like my mother.

I never wanted to be like my mother, but I am.

I am strong, loyal and sober.

Happy Mother’s Day, 2012

Melody

I’ve written about my alcoholism here.

I’ve written about my Dad here. 

Let your Fear Fly Free

So often, if I find myself returning in frustration and anger, again and again, to a subject.

When this happens I know that it has become an area of idolatry for me. Or it’s an area that God wants to heal in my life.   Or both!

I’m a slow learner but I’m learning this about myself.  About God.  His Truth is a beautiful thing.  Opening my heart to God’s voice in my life not easy, even unnatural.

How to you do that?  How do you listen well?  And when you know that you need healing by Him, how does this usually occur?  That’s something else I’m learning to allow space for in my life.

For the longest time I drank to try to make that Ugly Thing (you name it) go away. I ignored God’s regular, persistent call.  His knocking was gentle, consistent, reliable true.  But I chose to numb myself with alcohol or shopping or other idols.  But by self-medicating, aren’t we simply postponing the inevitable?  Running from reality.  Ignoring truth. Letting the Ugly Thing win.

Areas where I have seen this in my life recently, where I am letting go of my vice grip of control.

I’m letting fly free the issue of women in my denomination.

I’m letting fly free my need for a “paying job.”

I am letting fly free my need for significance and accolades.

I am letting fly free my self-loathing.

I am letting fly free my wish for my children to know Jesus as their Savior.

These are all things that I have tried to ignore how much they hurt, yes my big gut wrenching fears that control my mind and heart.  And in the end the weight of them crushes my spirit.  I cannot bear the weight of them any longer.

So I open my hands and I see them fly away knowing that the universe is God’s and he is in control of it all.   He loves me, he loves them, more than I ever could.  His desire for justice and truth to prevail  in the Church is stronger than mine.  And in fact he gave me this heart, that breaks and so easily comes undone.

And finally, his desire for me to be useful to him is less than his wish for me to know, fear, and love who he is, the Holy One.

He made me and he’ll carry me and all my fears.

May we be people open to God and able to let go of our need for control whatever it is — it’s so different for everyone. Let them go free into God’s hands, because is it not true that the Holy One is so much more capable than you or me?

What do you need to let fly free?

Were I to forgive you, Daddy … [A tale of domestic abuse, Part 2]

I just posted a piece on domestic abuse.  This is a tiny bit of my personal story that I wrote several years ago.

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive, but do not forget.  — Thomas  S. Szasz

First published in March 2010.  This was not easy to write and it will not be an easy read.   Although my father was a dynamic, incredible, and beautiful human being he was also the perpetrator of psychological abuse in my life.  The ongoing work of processing that hasn’t been easy.  He’s been dead more than five years.  That’s created some space for honesty.  My goal has been, for many years, to get to a place where I can forgive him.  It has been interesting.

If you were a fan of my father, Dan Harrison, this will be the most difficult for you.  Just as it was unimaginably hard for me to write.

Note:  I DO NOT SPEAK FOR OR REPRESENT ANYONE ELSE IN MY FAMILY.  THANKS FOR UNDERSTANDING THAT each of OUR EXPERIENCES WITH MY FATHER WERE UNIQUE.   SOME WERE TREATED MUCH WORSE, SOME BETTER.

If I were To Forgive.

If I were to forgive you Daddy, does that mean I must forget the pulse pounding fear I felt when I was around you?  The acid stomachs you gave me.  The rage dreams I still sometimes have at night.  The shuttering tears that I couldn’t stop, even when you yelled at me to do so and now I can’t make tears come at all.  The stutter you hated, but couldn’t make me lose.

You made me something broken, something messed up.

Our family was Sadness.  Illness.  Meanness.  Pride.  Anger.  Fear.  Our family was Rigid. Perfectionist.  Isolated.  Secretive.   Constant striving.  Never measuring up.

I found some small strength and safety in sarcasm and attempted humor.  And when you made me stop, there was only safety in distance, in invisibility.  Like mine, your words punctured something deep inside.

Sometimes we laughed; it was a shrieking, jaw aching, gut busting laughter from the relief of it — it was almost a sob — until you pounded on the table.  Stop, you would roar!  You felt we came too close to meanness.  You’re damn right we did.  And then, we didn’t.

If I were to forgive you Daddy, does that mean I must forget the yelling?  Door slamming.  Your rage fits.  Should I forget the fearful anxious cleaning when you were coming home – after weeks and weeks of travel while Mother was always alone?  Why did we clean, to please you.  Why were we afraid, because you were never pleased.

Should I forget the religion you forced down our throats?  Say “I forgive you.” Say “I am sorry.”  Say “I believe.”    I couldn’t forgive.  I wasn’t sorry.  I didn’t believe. “You will sing this song and study the Bible, because I say so.  And never, ever argue with me for I am never wrong.”

Daddy, it takes my breath away to remember all the times you had one of us up against the wall, sobbing.  And you wouldn’t stop.  You kept on, and on until you broke us.

You made me something broken, something messed up.

Our family was Sadness.  Illness.  Meanness. Pride.  Anger.  Fear.  Our family was Rigid. Perfectionist.  Isolated.  Secretive.   Constant striving.  Never measuring up.

If I forgave you Daddy, would the bad memories stop?

… When I was about ten we spent Easter at a cabin.  You had certain ideas of what would happen.   But you can’t make me sing.  You couldn’t make me feel whatever you were feeling.

… Or Thanksgiving with the gorging on turkey almost worth being forced to be thankful.    There was no ‘pass’ when it came to gratitude.  Or whatever you expected.

There was no pass. You changed us.  You made us something broken, something messed up. Our family was Sadness.  Illness.  Meanness. Pride.  Anger.  Fear.  Our family was Rigid. Perfectionist.  Isolated.  Secretive.   Constant striving.  Never measuring up.

Were I to forgive you Daddy, I’d have to stop being invisible for within this “super power” I found a certain peace.  If you can’t hear me or see me, you will leave me alone.  I’d hide out in my room — reading.  Reading romantic novels where the hero was larger than life — loving and devoted, trying to be somewhere, anywhere other than home.

There was so much pain.  So much fear. You changed us.

Daddy, would you have me forgive your dying confession that you were addicted to your rage? It made you feel righteous.   At the end of your life, you felt regret but wanted me to know you still felt right all those years.

Well I’m addict.  I know the lies we tell ourselves that ”I can’t stop.” I know a little of what it takes to overcome an addiction.  It starts admitting you are powerless.  That is what you could never do.  Oh, you would return full of regret and self-pity you never changed.

I reject Your Jesus who never freed you from your pain. I reject your life and actions of hypocrisy, serving God and abusing at home.

And yet, I have forgiven you.  Why?  Because that is not the Jesus I have known. The God I have known has expected me to change.  Clearly spoken and told me to lie down, be humble, let go, cast off, and cut away the things that make me broken.  As I give them up, the addictions, the anger, the bitterness, the lack of forgiveness, the depression, the fear, the isolation, the invisibility …  He fills me.

I am filled up, and as I experience going back over two and a half decades sorting memories and returning — making furtive glances and long wretched journey’s back. —  There are things that I do remember and that I will never forget.

But I forgive

You. Because I must.  God said to me forgive as you were forgiven.

And though this brings no justice, I can live with it.  You may have changed me from whoever I was meant to be, and I will always remember that and wonder who I might have been.

ON THE OTHER HAND God made me, not you.  And I have begun to overcome all that pain, a broken spirit.  I have begun to paint a portrait of a life that is visible; a colorful life, with joy, generosity, gentleness and kindness.  I have become a woman with a heart once broken, but pieced back together and strong.  And my heart is bursting with the forgiveness that I have received. And I am laughing.  And some day I believe my tears will return.

You were the sort to put rubbing alcohol on my mosquito bites, because you couldn’t stand how I wouldn’t listen and stop scratching.  You were constantly picking at me, never satisfied.  But, as a child this was something I could control. You can’t make me stop, though I would bleed and it hurt.  It is cathartic to be in control.  But some day I hope I will let go completely and won’t need absolute control of myself.  Someday, God will open up my heart completely from the prison I put it for protection and long ago lost the key.  The day God unlocks it will be a day I can only imagine, but I believe it can happen.  Then I won’t be so afraid of people.  I will jump toward life not constantly be pulling away!

Yes, I forgive you Daddy.  For now I can laugh and love when I want to, I pray and study because my heart craves more from God and I believe I have begun to create the life I was meant to have lived.

Yes, I do forgive you Daddy because there is no justice in love.

The Lord says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. (Psalm 32:8 NLT)

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I was in Love…with Vodka, Wine and Gin

Wine
Image by isante_magazine via Flickr

On the eve of my birth week, I want to take a moment to remember where I have come from, now that I am three plus years sober.   

While purging and organizing books this week I came across a little orange index card that I wrote to myself while I was working hard at accepting my need for sobriety.  I thought I had lost the card and that would have been tragic because the thoughts written on it are very important to me.

About five years ago, I spent more than a year — at two different stages — seeing counselors specifically about my drinking.  At that time, I wrote what I thought of my life without alcohol so far.  I said:

I value my recovery because …..

  • I have an improved mood.
  • I feel strong.
  • I am more present and self-aware.
  • I am more willing to face my feelings.
  • I am more hopeful about the future.
  • I am more in control of my world, actions, responses to life.
  • My relationships are more honest.
  • I am a good role model for my kids.
  • I am a cultural enigma.
  • I am more relaxed socially (less No worry about embarrassing myself.)
  • I have a higher quality of mental engagement.

All this is true.  And more.  Today when I look back another thing I am so grateful for is that my life partner, family and close friends never judged me. At least I never felt judged. Especially Tom could have. Boy, oh boy, I made some bad choices.  Tom lived with my addiction for many, many years, continuing to love and support me.  At my worst, he wiped up my vomit and put me to bed.  He pulled me out of parties before I could do something stupid.  All those years he was simply loving.  I never felt that I was a bad person because of my dependency to alcohol.  Not from him, but I did judge myself!

In my head, I was constantly accusing myself.

I cannot count, because it happened so many times, the number of Sundays I spent sitting in church nursing the world’s worst hangover, full of shame and self-loathing.   I am not sure which felt worse, the physical symptoms of being hung over or the emotional beating I gave myself.  I just knew I was living the life of a hypocrite.  I didn’t have the courage to give up on churchgoing all together, but I was miserable being there.

For a long time my drinking made family life feel disjointed and a mess, because it was!

I started in on the wine too early in the evening, so I was too “tired” to do anything else in the evenings, except veg in front of the television.  When it was time to put the kids to bed, I was too tired to read to them, something I had always loved.  That memory makes me deeply sad still, but I will forgive myself some day.  Some things are harder to forgive yourself for like driving drunk with my children in the car, even if it was just a few neighborhood streets.  I did that.  I am utterly horrified to think of it now but it happened.  Why do I admit that today?  Why do I force myself to recall the shameful choices I made?

Because I do have fleeting thoughts that perhaps I could drink again.  And those are lies, but it is all too easy to forget.

Back to Tom, he was unhappy with our choices and (very) willingly quit drinking many times with me, for me.  He encouraged me to quit many times and we did quit a few times.  But it was such a part of our lifestyle that we soon were drinking again.

It grew more difficult as the years went by for me to even consider quitting, as I was afraid that I couldn’t live without it.  And, suffering as I was from major depression all those years, I was self-medicating with the very drug that furthered my depression.  (Alcohol is a depressant but I either didn’t know it or didn’t want to know.)

The first time I went to counselling for my alcohol addiction it was an intellectual exercise.

My mother was in a recovery program and addiction is all over my family tree.  I was drinking too much, but I was not yet the sloppy, falling down drunk that I became.  I was “abusing” alcohol.  I was addicted.  But I had convinced myself that I was managing.  I learned a lot from those counselling sessions, most important of which was that I should quit for lots of reasons.

In order to have that type of counselling you must agree to not be drinking as you go through it.  And I did that, but I was just a dry drunk.  All of my behaviors were still of an addict who wasn’t using.  I didn’t yet believe the things I wrote on that index card.  I had not lived long enough as a sober person.

I asked my counselor at my last session, after five months of sobriety,  “What if I just drink socially?  Don’t keep it in the house.  Don’t drink every day.  Just have a drink from time to time (like normal people)?  Maybe I won’t have to quit completely.”  I was desperate to not have to quit.

At that point I could not imagine being happy without alcohol in my life. 

“Then I’ll see you back here in about three years.”  And I literally thought “At least I’ll enjoy the next three years.”   That is how far I was into the lie.  Well, I’ve said it before, but it didn’t even take three years.

About a year and a half later I was back and that time I was serious about quitting.  I knew that alcohol had control of me and my life.  I had no power to fight it.  I thought about alcohol all the time.  I was so in love with wine — and vodka — and gin!  I had spent that summer drinking heavily every day and spent most evenings drunk.  I just did it in such a way that I thought I was hiding it from others.

But enough about that.  (Perhaps the rest will go in the memoir.)  Today, I am so grateful for my sobriety.   It isn’t that complicated to figure out if alcohol has power over you.  How much do you think about alcohol? How often do you choose not to drink, because you wonder if you have a problem?  Do you drink every day?  Do you squirm answering those questions honestly?   Although it is certainly not true that every person who drinks too much from time to time is an alcoholic, rather what I think about is, what is the main focus of your life?  Can you live without alcohol?  If you’re not sure , … I would seriously consider talking to someone.

Those are the questions that haunted me and it wasn’t until I quit that I realized without any doubt that I was out of control.

Melody

P.S. Other things I have written about my life  drunk and addicted.

Being Broken by Addiction

My dog Comet is being groomed for the first time today and as I was dropping him off I glanced over at the magazines. I was drawn like a bee to pollen by the cover of  Brava Magazine.  It had an article about the secret addictions of women in Wisconsin, aptly titled The Silent Treatment.

While I am not quiet about my alcoholism here on my blog and person to person I will freely tell you my story, I have never talked about it publicly — as I think that I am ashamed. 

No-one talks about addiction in my circles. And here is what I imagine others are thinking.  Perhaps they perceive that addiction is simply a weakness or a character flaw.  And in some Christian circles a place where you haven’t allowed God victory or healing or aren’t trusting.   How in the world did she “allow herself” to get addicted?  What a mess she must be.  Addicts are just bad people trying to be good.

That’s all bullshit. (Forgive me, but it is.)

And in my clearer moments I remind myself that I am broken like every other person in the world.  We all have some “thing” or more than one, that we have trouble overcoming. Most people’s “thing” can be a secret–food addiction, money problems, compulsive shopping, secret cutting, or pornography.   I won’t pretend to know what your “thing” is.

This article talked about how so many women in Wisconsin have a problem with alcohol addiction.   More importantly, that addiction to alcohol is in some part NOT a “thing” to struggle with, but an illness to work against.  I can tell you gratefully that I am “in remission.”

“[There is a] stigma that surrounds substance abuse in a culture that loves the sound of clinking glasses.” (Brava)

One of my favorite people is Henri Nouwen. 

I would have loved to have known him and even been his friend, as we share a common lifelong struggle with melancholy and depression and need for affirmation and community.  He wrote this:

Jesus was broken on the cross.  He lived his suffering and death not as an evil to avoid at all costs, but as a mission to embrace.   We too are broken.  We live with  broken bodies, broken hearts, broken minds or broken spirits.  We suffer from broken relationships.  How can we live our brokenness?  Jesus invites us to embrace our brokenness as he embraced the cross and live it as part of our mission.  He asks us not to reject our brokenness as a curse from God that reminds us of our sinfulness but to accept it and put it under God’s blessing for our purification and sanctification.  Thus our brokenness can become a gateway to new life.

Few understand that addiction is an illness like cancer.

There is a perception that somehow addicts cause their illness.  It is both an illness and an opportunity for self-control and inner strengthening.  As we grow in our understanding of our broken hearts and lives, we can become stronger.  How can we embrace our brokenness of addiction when the Church and (some) Christians make one feel as if you are cursed with a mental illness or lack self-control.

Yes, my alcoholism reminds me (almost daily) that I am a broken person.  The days and weeks when I try to avoid thinking about it, and (almost) pretend that I’ve got it all together, those are the times when I feel the farthest away from who I really am. I become lost in the idea of wellness that denies that I am and will be until the day I die an alcoholic in remission.

For whatever reason, I am an addict.

My deeply thoughtful thirteen year old daughter asked me recently why I can’t just drink socially?  We had been to party where there was a lot of drinking and I was having a hard time having fun.  I have been completely honest with her about my addiction and so I value her questions.  I believe she needs to understand my alcoholism, because it is a family illness and because one in four children of alcoholics become one themselves.

So why can’t I now drink socially?  “There is something in my brain that switches off after the first drink,” I told her.  “After that point, I have no ability to stop.”  I learned from my D&A counselor that every time I drank, my brain sends the signal to have more.  The well-worn pathway in my brain needed more, each time, to have the same impact as the last time I drank. I’m three years sober July 17th, 2011 and if I had a drink to celebrate I would need the same amount of alcohol as my last drink — about two bottles of wine, if I remember correctly — to feel any high.

As a Christ follower, it is even more complicated.

Or perhaps more simple depending on how you look at it. My addiction humbles me daily.  Drives me to my knees.  I go to church in a bar and I laugh, joyfully with the irony!  I don’t mind the reminders of my addiction because then I am drawn to the truth that my life is so improved — clearer, better, more meaningful sober. 

But three years of sobriety brings me to a place of acknowledging that I am still full of pride.  I have not been willing to help others who struggle with this addiction.  I have not been willing to speak out locally.  I have hidden my secrets and tried to live in a drinking world as a secret alcoholic.

The article in Brava was a challenge to me.

No, I am not at risk to drink, because I have created enough awareness of those around me of my illness, that the accountability keeps me sober.

But why am I so silent, so secretly ashamed? More importantly what can I do to give back?  I want others to know that this is not a shameful secret in my life, it is a disease of addiction that has harmful effects on people, families and communities and that recovery is possible with support.  It is not only possible but it is transformational!

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