a story you can’t see

Today – at least – I snapped a picture of the jacket gifted to a wee gentleman at his 2-year birthday party.

Birthday Coat For J.

Double-sided fleece, self-drafted pattern. Super-pointy hood and seven hand-made pom poms. Trippin on pom pom-makin, biatches

***

Yesterday morning I wake –

after only a few hours sleep –

to the most oppressive sense of fear.

Slaps me awake and lasts at least half the day. I’m up and I try to do a few things then rest, but I can’t. My mind keeps trying to find a way out of the fear. I can’t think of anything else for long, before jolting back. Might as well make the coffee. Hot shower. Time to get up and go. Got responsibilities.

My mind like to drive me mad. Thinking, thinking, over-thinking. Trying to set it aside but it rises up again through my body. Fear racing through my chest and my kids talk to me, my husband asks after me, and I answer as best I can when I can pull my mind off the fixation. Can they tell? I don’t know. I don’t think so. They’d ask if they knew something was wrong.

Days like today I remember smoking. Pulling on a cigarette, getting that edge. Somehow it always seemed to help, keep me in that space of what I thought was alertness, but in reality: agitation.

And anyway: I quit smoking a while back. And now I’m over the bridge and into breaking sunlight when I know the only thing that will help me, since I’ve done prayer on my knees and lit a candle and eaten food and tried to breathe and tried to quit thinking, is to Help Others. Help Without Regard For Return. It’s not even like I think I get some reward if I help. It’s that the state of Helping takes me somewhere different, and things shift, and clarity comes.

My daughter wraps her arms around me. “Love me,” she says. I hold her and kiss the top of her head, her dry straw-scented hair; Heaven. Later. Running bath water. Kitchen light low. Hot water and a tablespoon of molasses. A heater ticks in the dark. My arm: aching. The laughter of my son in another room.

Cold to the bone, a darkness stretching out. Only a small candle but it’s enough.

 

 

 

 

life in a northern town

Today:

I drive a gal, and her infant child, up to the treatment center where I do my Wednesday volunteer thing. I remember her coming through treatment, pregnant. She’s still clean and sober today, and she looks and sounds amazing. More wonderful still, she has a beautiful baby and watching her haul that little one around town while she does her thing is just – inspiring. Fucking amazing. A few minutes after we arrive upstairs she slips out and returns with a blanket over her shoulder, breastfeeding. It’s a real sort of stunningly-beautiful thing. Words can’t describe. She has so many things against her but she is meeting the world with a smile,  and she’s pulling others out the Pit. For real.

An hour later: my kids gird their loins to receive influenza innoculations. The nurse comes in and tells them they can opt for the nasal spray. They’re thrilled. I snap a picture (Nels is saying, “TRoooooOOOLOO!“):

Jubilation

In the afternoon: we travel to the pharmacy where I get my influenza vaccine – an injection. The kids crowd in the little cubicle with me and give me comfort, full of beans now that their vaccinations are over. Tomorrow I give blood; another needle. Ugh!

In the afternoon: I find out someone I care about is staying sober. Sort of, I amend my statement, as I think they’re smoking pot. This person is opening up to me more, probably because they know I don’t look down on them for what they’re going through. It’s wonderful because I have the freedom to just enjoy today, just enjoy this person when I see them, not start plotting their life or figuring out their problems. Not taking territory that isn’t mine, that wears me out. It’s hard to let people have their problems, though. Well anyway, it’s hard for me.

Later: my kids, mother and I walk the dog along the bay. It’s cold as hell and the wind has picked up. Hutch is happy to cavort in frost-chilled terrain. Our dog has lost forty, that’s 4-0, pounds. He is a MAGNIFICENT SON OF A BITCH, as it were.

Tonight: a friend comes over so we can show her how we make pan cubano, and share a vegetarian meal. Neighbor kids come in and out, and sometimes I lose count of who is over until we set the table which is when I gotta figure it out. A girl from a block away joins us for dinner and it’s so cool to listen to the kids’ world, how they see things, what’s important to them. Phee lectures our younger guest about proper etiquette and hygiene during the flu season, including differentiation between a live and killed vaccine, and guidelines for family members who have infants in the home.

After dinner my daughter does the dishes and my son makes up a large labeled jar for us to deposit spare coins; passionate about gaming, especially platform games, he hopes to buy a Wii U. A few minutes later and Ralph and the kids are out to take the dog on his last walk of the day.

Life is really good.

Cuddles

***

We are still accepting donations through Paypal. I have been using these funds through my new Paypal card, which means I am buying groceries and food on the same days we get donations. It is a fabulous system and every dollar has been a dollar received and spent, in gratitud. (As far as I can tell though, I will need to seek paid employment; I have to write about this and soon, too!). The support has meant a great deal to us in a month with a doubled-up electricity bill (and yes, we know about the averaging program and have used it in the past).

Long story short: this means if you’ve donated here you are “the village . Raising not just my kids, but the neighborhood kids, the people I (try to) help, the community I’m a part of, and now so are you.

So: thank you.


treatment

The young man has incredibly beautiful, large blue eyes. Leonine. Red-rimmed but striking. Today after I ask if he has anything to share, he finally breaks down and talks about the violence he committed while drunk, or on drugs – I’m not sure which (it doesn’t matter). He can barely speak and by the end he is crying as overwrought as I’ve seen anyone in real life. He’s choking and crying and in almost any other place you’d have people rescuing him or shushing him or uncomfortably squirming. This is a holy place though and that doesn’t happen, now.

Still. Since this is an early Recovery setting, there is a break in the sacrosanct listening you can usually expect when there are other “old timers” (like me! Ha!) present. See, addicts in treatment are like a box of baby chicks. Certain things disturb them and they start acting up in concert, popping out of the fog of their meds and talking. After even only fourteen months of regular experience, it’s still rather predictable. Depending on what they’re exposed to, sometimes they’re angry, edgy, and disrespectful. But today they’re offering the young man encouragement, because he’s in so much distress, and maybe they’ve not learned to let someone get through it, because there is no consoling the inconsolable. Or maybe they don’t realize this is a special moment, and our Presence is all that’s required. So anyway they tell him the person he abused will forgive him, the love of family is always there. They say parents are there for you no matter what. They say all the stuff they want to believe but don’t really, deep down, know to be true.

I’ve learned wisdom can come from just about anyplace, and I don’t give less credence to people based on their circumstances. But my thoughts: you can’t get clean or sober based on what your family thinks or whether they let you use them as a punching bag or whether they don’t return your calls. You can’t rehearse the remorse and guilt ad infinitim either without playing with the Relapse thing. And you can’t get clean and sober because you “owe” it to someone. Jack shit on that account. But I stay silent because even though I’m chairing this little get together, I’m not especially needed at the moment.

A few minutes later, incredibly, a young woman M. tells a story of triumph. She’s got it all figured out and she and her ex-husband are going to have a life together and fix everything between them since he’s been clean two years. Another woman asks if she’s afraid, saying, “My boyfriend and I only did heroin together the last four years.” “I’m not afraid,” M. says, lifting her head up. “What am I afraid of? Love? We’re going to be that cute old couple that drives around on casino tours in an RV with a little dog.” Of everyone tonight, she’s the spookiest to listen to. She’s not scared enough, I don’t think. I could be wrong though.

I’m thinking of how much suffering I’m exposed to. It’s quite phenomenal. The human capacity to suffer is incredible. We will take it to such extremes, until we are angry and pinched and flee only to the corners that cosign our bullshit, or the chemicals that give us release, but soon those things aren’t even enough.

Then there are those in limbo. I’m thinking of a woman who came into Recovery sad and frightened but now she’s angry. She’s angry she can’t drink but she’s angry about other shit too. I can see it as clear as I can see through a still pond. She sits in the group and won’t share and smiles but the look in her eyes is crazy-anger. She’s ballooned up in weight and her eyes bulge like someone squeezed her around the middle. But she won’t share. “I’m just here to listen.”

Last night another woman eight months sober broke down crying after many months of “not sharing”. She’s one of those women who’s incredibly beautiful, she did more drugs than I’ve seen and was hauled off to jail and evicted and she’s tough as nails and stunningly lovely. And I sat four inches away and let her cry, it was beautiful and I hope she comes back for more healing. It’s this kind of crying… I can’t describe it. It’s not that congested, angry crying. It’s like watching a river flow, watching a freshet. It’s sorrow, sure, but it’s also a very real moment because someone is breaking down and being themselves, and being broken, and doing this with another human being. It’s one of the most spiritual things I’ve seen and one of the most spiritual things I’ve experienced.

When I was scared I stayed scared until someone could help me, and I did as was suggested and I never got to the angry part. I’m not angry I can’t drink. Well, I can drink. For me, to drink alcohol would make as much sense as drinking Drano. There were many years I drank and thought it did me little harm, and maybe that it helped, and that it was my prerogative. But I was incorrect. It did harm me.

Back to treatment. It meant a lot to me tonight that this young man J. recognized me from last Wednesday, and his face lit up when he saw me. Wednesday I’d made a joke at the end of our meeting, as I’d noticed he had “DGAF” written on his knuckles. Just before we broke the group up I said, “J., I hope it’s not true that you DGAF. I hope you do GAF.” His face went from inanimate to a surprised smile and his eyes came alive. Anyway when he saw me tonight he was glad to see me. He’s one of those who cuts me right to the heart, because at 35 many of these I work with are children. I am often capable of seeing the child in any addict or alcoholic but the ones who are so young, it’s like I want to breastfeed them.

Oh and when I leave tonight a young man C. says, “I like your style.” That’s pretty cool.

I could write pages and pages more just on the last couple days alone. It could be overwhelming if I let it. It helps to write.

One of the most amazing things I’ve learned is I haven’t met the the addict or alcoholic who doesn’t hurt so bad for what he or she did to other people. Not the one and I’ve literally heard thousands of testimonies. It is incredible. It is a blessing. My faith in the beauty of humankind and of God is unshakable.

I’ve also learned to be entirely at home with other human beings.

A woman who helped me so much, and continues to, told me soon I’d feel my heart break because so much compassion would flow in. I remain grateful and humbled by my experiences. There are too many to pray for each evening. Too many to remember in my consciousness. My god-consciousness will have to do, as much or as little as I may have.