Guest post

“It won’t happen to me”

or

Party animal

I live on a steel bunk in a warehouse. Everything I own in this world is in the footlocker beneath me. It ain’t much; a photo album, a stack of letters, a few books. I’ve been in prison 10 years this time. My release date is 2032. A few hazy, drug-soaked months of strip bars, casinos, and fast living cost me most of my adult life.

I run across old friends and associates from that era on the yard sometimes. They look bad — rotten teeth, track marks, gnawed nails on shaky hands. They give me news of other old friends who weren’t as lucky: overdoses, shootings, suicides. Occasionally I’ll recognize the names of women in the arrest report of my hometown newspaper. Those wide-eyed college girls who were just beginning to experiment with coke and ecstasy in 2003 are now haggard streetwalkers, hardened repeat-offender prostitutes.

This is the natural evolution of drug abuse. Cause and effect. I know you’re thinking it won’t happen to you. I thought I was an exception too. Believe me, no one plans on destroying their life and coming to prison. No little kid daydreams about growing up to rob gas stations for dope money, or getting doused with pepper spray and beaten half to death by abusive guards in a confinement cell, or dying alone in a motel room with a needle in his arm… We call getting high “partying” and like any party, there’s always a mess when the party is over. In fact, the bigger the party, the bigger the mess.

The irony is that the kids we label squares and lames and dorks because they refuse to party grow up to be the doctors who resuscitate us when we overdose, the psychologists who attempt to help us put our broken lives back together, the lawyers who represent us in court when we’re arrested, the judges who sentence us to prison, and the men who step into our families and become the fathers and husbands we failed at being.

So if you’re 15 (or 17 or 24) and you’re popping bars, snorting Roxys or dabbling in meth or molly or whatever, this is what middle-aged drug life looks like. Guaranteed. And if you think it won’t happen to you, we can talk more about it when you move into my dorm. The bunk behind mine is open right now. We’ll leave a light on for you. The one from the gun tower.

From a brother of a brother @ malcolmivey.com

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Mothers Day Minus One

Since last November, I’ve been living in the Year of Firsts, without my boy.

Benjamin was the reason that I had a lot of “1sts”, not only the 1st Mothers Day. He was also the “WHY” for my realising that I HAD to get clean and sober.

Because God allowed me to become a Mom, I got to experience my baby’s first…poopy diaper (tiny but legitimately icky)…the first time our eyes met…the times after that when we would share a smile, a snuggle, a laugh…

As a single parent for about half of his life, I was concerned with SURVIVING for much more of the time than I’d like to admit. It’s nearly impossible to “stay in the moment” and live all of the Hallmark card images that flood the social media streams when you don’t know how your MOST BASIC needs are going to be met. We never got to go on vacations or to amusement parks. Instead, we mostly went to the Children’s Hospital to see whether his heart was working as it should. I learned later that he had to live with his own kind of PTSD as a result. I just know that by the grace of God, I did my best. We had a lot of laughs together.

PLEASE don’t feel sorry for me/us.

I’m not sharing that for your pity. It’s my life, and the reality hasn’t been pretty a lot of the time. So, nobody (except social media) ever said it had to be. Or even that it SHOULD be. It’s just truth.

My boy taught me so many things. For example: when I thought I had taken as much pain as I could stand, he inspired me to endure a bit more. He gave me reason to dig deeper for the answers when there didn’t seem to be any. His smile and tender “I love you more, Mommy” gave me the courage to find a way out of dangerous situations and to leave relationships which were destined to leave lasting scars on both of us.

My 1st baby was the instrument used by God to teach me what unconditional love looked like, walked out.

My boy grew up into a kind, gentle, insightful and funny man. I will always be more than grateful that he was a man who chose to forgive me for sometimes reacting out of fear… and things I learned from my own less-than-perfect, yet perfectly human parents.

I hadn’t planned to write anything for this Mother’s Day. In this year of 1sts, I’d just as soon skip over it.

I am still a Mother. I have another boy, or rather, young man. He delights me, more than I have the ability to express. And, I have Ben to thank for him, as well.

When he was about 6, Benjamin began to say things about how he would like to have a brother. So we prayed together, if it was ok with God, could we have a baby brother for Ben? And God listened.

I have been blessed, doubly. My son’s both grew up to exceed my hopes and dreams for them. I can’t wait to see what my younger son will become. He’s already more than I imagined he would be.

Only God knows what the future holds for any of us. But I know this much:

The Creator is good, He loves us, and He delights in our seeking to know Him. I look for the day when I see my Dad and my boy again. Trusting God to guide the rest of us Home.

Sprouting

I want to write. I know that writing can be a positive way to handle…life. Pain. Hurts. Feelings in general.

I do have things to say, I suppose. But I don’t know that I can express myself. Well. Any more.

If I knew all the words for all the emotions with which I’ve been wrestling, I could have written a novel. In just the last 5 months.

But I don’t.

I have been using other people’s words to try and share my feelings. This helps.

But they’re not MY words.

I seem to have misplaced my ability to string together words in a consecutive order, with which to accurately share what’s on my heart and mind.

I suppose it’s fear that stops me. I’m afraid of judgment. That usually comes from my own tendency to judge other folks. I do that.

Judging comes from my defensiveness, because I feel inadequate and insecure. I guess at this point I’m afraid of what else is going to be ripped away from me.

I admit that this is where trusting God has to come in. Don’t I trust Him, though? I do.

Someone said that “faith and fear can’t co-exist in the same place”. I don’t know if that’s true or not. I have faith that God is in control. I also know that He is working things together for my BEST.

I also know that the process of growth and change can sometimes include great pain.

Growing Pains.

I don’t have as many words as I once did. I can’t think, as I once did. I am not the same person as I once was.

Not worse or less than, as a person. Just different.

Very much different.

Please don’t feel sorry for me. I don’t want pity. Pity is really a BAD thing. I don’t pity me. I don’t feel much at all for myself, really. But certainly not pity.

So, for now, I allow myself to be numb, emotionally, as much as possible. The more I can get through today, without thoughts of tomorrow or yesterday, the better. That’s what spirituality is, right? Staying. In. The. Moment.

The good news is, while I may have been placed in a hole, and covered with dirt…I am, in fact, just about to start sprouting.

I’d love to know I’m not alone…please comment below.

Int’l Overdose Awareness Day

As someone who has attended too many funerals due to overdose, I am asking you to share this image. How many people do YOU know that would give anything to hold their parent or child just One. More. Time? 

As long as we continue to share our stories and educate our world as to the truth about drug addiction, there will be hope. 

If you are one who’s had a loved one taken by addiction, please don’t stop speaking out. The less condemnation an addict feels from those who could instead be helping them to learn how to live again…the more likely that addict is going to be to actually ask for help. 

Outside of recovery – which is available as long as there is life – addicts only have three choices for their tomorrows: 

Jails

Institutions

Death.

Contempt and disgust haven’t worked to spare any addicts life, so let’s try love and compassionate action. What can it hurt? 

And the tears come

​Every month, for the last three or so, someone whom I cared about has died. I can’t even remember further back than that, but it seems to be pretty much on the reg, now. It’s a part of life, right? People die. People are born, and then they die. The Bigger Big Book says that each person is given about 60-70 years to live. Maybe more if you’re a truly amazing individual. But that’s really not the norm for the kind of people that I am acquainted with. The folks in my Tribe usually don’t make it past 40 or 50. Out of the last three to die, one was in his mid 40’s and the other two were right around 50.  

So, here’s the thing that prompted me to write about this: I don’t feel much of anything. I mean, one of these folks was a fairly close relative, and the other two had been important in my life at different times. Shouldn’t I feel…sad? I think intellectually I know I am sad, but emotionally I’m pretty well distanced from that pain. 
When I entered Treatment, I was all up in my head. I had a full-on case of Analysis Paralysis.  Someone told me that I did that to avoid feeling anything unpleasant. It took me a little while to become more aware of what I was actually feeling, and I think part of that lesson involved noticing the signals my body gave me. For example, when I’m initially anxious or stressed, my stomach aches. If I ignore it, the stomach ache moves on down my digestive tract. When I’m afraid I get tensed up and instinctively begin looking for an exit. I had come to distrust myself (and wear a mask) so much of the time, that I completely ignored these signs of my mental upset.  

I was in my teens I think, when I decided that I wasn’t going to cry anymore. I didn’t know it then, but I’d been depressed and struggling with PTSD for years, so crying had been part of a normal day for me. So, I concluded at this time that I wasn’t going to let anyone make me cry. God knows how, but I didn’t cry for more than a year. People died, relationships came and went, but I did not cry. I felt like I had grown callouses around my heart. Eventually I did allow the tears to escape, but even now, they are more difficult to access. There have been times when I was terrified and grief-stricken, but the tears only came for about 15 minutes at a time. Then they stopped. 

This concerns me.

It’s no secret that I have been taking medication to alleviate the depression for many years. I have been grateful to escape the darkness that lurks in my mind via Medical Professionals and pharmaceuticals. I remember telling someone who was considering trying meds for depression that they made me feel “appropriately”. As in, when it was a sad occasion, I felt sad, and when it was a happy event, I could smile and laugh. 
Before the medications, if it was a sad time, I was sad, and if it was a happy time, I was slightly less sad. Eeyore was of course my spirit animal.

I try to keep in mind that there are always many factors to consider when trouble-shooting my emotions. The biggest factor I can come up with now is that I’ve become more aware of PTSD symptoms when they crop up. I’ve figured out several scenarios where I am very much going to be uncomfortable and that I need to try and avoid. That awareness is helpful. It also makes it easier for me to see when others may be having the same issues.

So, in the process of self-examination, each time I learn of someone who has been important in my life dying as a result of this disease, I don’t really feel anything.  The last person, I was shocked at first, but that was just because I thought she’d dodged so many bullets already that she’d never die. And then when I thought about times that we’d been together – and there were ALWAYS shenanigans involved – I couldn’t really work up any feelings.  Same basic situation with the person before her, but we had been friends during childhood…nothing. Before that was my Uncle. 

Brett was a couple of years younger than me, and for as long as I could remember, up until I was 16 or so, I would spend at least a week with him on Grandpa’s farm. We were very much like brother and sister. We swam in the lake, fished, caught nightcrawlers for said fishing, climbed trees and even cleaned out an old pig house (like a very small shed) for a fort.  Brett was where I learned the amazing skill of rolling off of the top bunk directly onto the bottom bunk. Those were the days. As I think back, I miss that period of my life. I miss the carefree time out in the country, being as much of a tomboy as I could stand, and knowing that I was a part of. 
I’m not sure if that all even has anything to do with my uncle, necessarily. I am saddened to think of my innocence then, and how far I ran to the opposite extreme in my active using…years. Maybe it was the fact that I could count on, every summer, getting that break from my reality.  

So, yeah. I wonder about my lack of feeling. Is it a result of having had so many painful and traumatic experiences, that I’m just not (yet) able to open up that part of my consciousness? Is it the old standard “IDGAF” that I programmed into myself for such a long time? And then when I ponder these things, there’s the part of me that says I need to suck it up, remember there are many people who would LOVE to have my problems (I do, and feel terrible for not being more thankful), and make a gratitude list. Gratitude lists are EXCELLENT, by the way, but they’re not the end-all and be-all for overcoming these things. 

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about this sort pf thing, primarily because I’m not sure how to remedy it, and you know the old saying “You can’t think yourself to sober living. You have to live yourself into sober thinking.”

Do you have any experience with this all-encompassing numbness? Do you “know” the right feelings for situations and yet not have them? Do you think this is part of the whole “children of alcoholics watch others to see how they should feel” thing?

I don’t have the answers, and thank God I don’t have to, today. 

P. S. 

Moments after writing this, I was informed that my only friend in this state died this afternoon. It was an overdose. She had a son that was friends with my son, and another who was 4. I am feeling now. 

Written in my cabin in the mountains.

It’s a “We” program

No matter how many times I hear about someone I know dying from the disease of addiction, it still feels like a punch in the gut,  then as if the heaviest, darkest storm cloud has descended and is following my every move. 

I found out this morning that a woman with whom I’d been inseparable for a time in early recovery had died…as a direct result of her addiction. 

I remember her as being friendly, outspoken, tons of fun, and unable to stop the slow suicide that comes in a bottle, or a baggie, or… whatever. 

Back when we hung out, she carrried around with her a 64 oz.”polar pop”- EVERYWHERE, including meetings. At some point, I can’t remember when, exactly, I discovered that there was much more than Pepsi in there. 

Then a few years later I discovered that my friend was struggling to put together a few days sober. I made sure she knew that I was there for her.

When a newcomer at the Women’s meeting we both attended mentioned that this same friend of mine was Sponsoring her, I asked her how long her Sponsor had been sober and she said “a couple of years.” The truth was, it hadn’t been a week. My friend was so much like every other addict… We’re so “smart” that we outsmart the part of us that wants to LIVE. I prayed that she would find a Higher Power that could remove the obsession. 

My friend could recite the Steps, Traditions, and How it Works from memory. She knew how to welcome the newcomers, and the not-so-new comers. She made people feel “a part of”, and she was generous to a fault. 

I’m so sorry that she never won the fight. She really was a fighter, too. 

Sometimes one has to die so that others can live. At least that’s what they tell me. I’m so tired of grieving. But it’s the price we pay for loving. So I guess I’ll get used to it. ❤ May we learn from everyone whose path we cross. 

Time marches on.

Last week I wrote about the  3 tragic words I never want to hear again, and the phone call I got from my Aunt, about my Uncle’s impending… expiration.
Today I got another call, saying that he’s not expected to last the rest of the night. I felt, well, nothing at first. I suppose that’s my go-to, when situations come along that provoke strong feelings. I get kinda numb, then I process what I’m feeling, and how I’m going to get through it.

Family Disease
I want to call and talk to him, but I haven’t talked to him in years… so it seems kind of, I don’t know, wrong? It’s not that we ever had a falling out or that we cared less about each other. We just began to live in drastically different ways. I guess it began when Dad got sober, really: the line was drawn in the sand. This Uncle and my Grandpa were going to drink until they couldn’t, and to hell with anyone who tried to tell them that they ought to stop. (a la Nick Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas”). I have another Uncle, for the record, who is just the opposite of the others of us. I’m not sure he’s ever been drunk, and his life is the stuff of magazine covers.

Turkey Run State Park

Summertime in Indiana

I’m remembering things we did as kids, when I’d spend at least a week every summer on the farm…like the sleepovers where I learned how to flip from the top bunkbed to the bottom without touching the floor. Oh, yeah, that’s a trick you NEED to try!
Or the tree-climbing where we tried to see how far down our spit could go before hitting a limb below us. Then there were the times we had rock fights while standing, oh, about 5 feet away from each other. (Did I mention that I was kind of a Tomboy?) Come to think of it, I’m positive that he wasn’t trying to hit me, because he was a tough, sports-playing country boy, and I KNOW he could have if he’d wanted to. And there were the times after it rained, when they lived in town and we would go worm-hunting…we fished by the pond in the back yard, and swam in the rock quarry…

Kinda like this, but poorer & dirtier

We talked about music and life, and whatever important things kids talk about when adults aren’t around…

And, I wonder if he’s ready to go, now. I’m sure he hadn’t planned on dying this soon. We were alike in many ways, not wanting to grow up, being but one. So, I pray for my Uncle Brett. May God rest his soul.
I wonder if I’m the only one who finds it harder to feel the heartbreaks, as time goes by. I was thinking of it earlier, and I think it’s like having thickened scar tissue. After so many traumas and heartbreaks, the scar tissue is so hard that the pain doesn’t really sink in, to where it ought to go. It goes…somewhere, and I don’t feel it. It doesn’t go away, mind you. It just doesn’t stay where I can feel it.
I read recently that it’s been scientifically proven that you can die from a broken heart. (Once again science proves something humanity has known forever.) I believe it. I somehow doubt that it will happen to me, considering that they also say that stress gives you gray hair. Really? Hm. Something at a very foundational level is different here, I guess, because I’ve got oh, about 8 gray hairs. SERIOUSLY. I’ve earned a butt load more than that. Eh, I guess it’s some consolation that it causes folks to think I’m younger than I am. (I’m not so immature, I guess, if I’m actually quite a bit younger than I am.) 🙂
My least favorite part of growing older, hands down, is people dying.

So, where was I?
Sad. Old. But not gray.
Meh. I’ll take it, I guess. Life is good, today. And I am grateful.