I have a wicked ugly bruise on my hand and I cannot for the life of me figure out how I got it.  It’s along the thumb of my right hand, between the bottom knuckle and the wrist.  I almost think there is a fracture.

When I was drinking I would find bruises all the time.  On my legs, arms, waist, once on my neck.  I was really used to stumbling into the shower and seeing evidence of where I had stumbled into everything else the night before. I didn’t spend too much time wondering with who/what or where I had collided; since I didn’t care and probably wouldn’t have been able to dredge up the memory anyway.

Now that I’m sober I really, really, really want to know how I got this bruise!

I spent the last week or so hanging out with my friends.  My dear friend KP was visiting from Chicago.  KP is a friend from college, and she has been a huge support in my sobriety.  For a week there were dinners out, long nights on porches with cigarettes and conversation, movies, hours at the pool, BBQ, jet ski rides on the creek and fireworks seen from the beach.    There was a nocturnal schedule, one perfectly adapted to my no-school summer.  By Sunday I was sunburnt, migraine-ridden, and sick to my stomach.  It was perfect.  Somewhere along the way I picked up this bruise.

Occasionally I think my friends are kind of like bruises.  I don’t know where they came from, they remind me constantly of my interaction with the world, but they don’t insist upon me.  I should explain, because that sounds awful.  I don’t mean it that way.

Most of the people I know, aside from family, are people I met in college.  I don’t have very distinct memories when I met them though.  There were a few I had classes with as freshman, girls who lived in my dorm.  KP is one of the few people I have a vivid memory of when we became friends and what bonded us.  Mostly, over four years I just kind of got swept up in a group that I didn’t intend to join, and that I didn’t understand why they wanted me.  Now a huge part of that insecurity is just me; I don’t really do so well past one-on-one.  (Someone once told me I was a much better friend over the phone than I was in person.  She might have been onto something.)  Once there are more than two people involved in the conversation I just clam up and default to bitchiness.  (It’s not so cute.)  So being involved with a large group of people who are comfortable with each other and interact without hesitancy or awkwardness is simply overwhelming for me.  I’m often left with a “how did this happen?” feeling and that terrible need to rehash in my head everything I said.

It’s humbling to realize how much fear is in your life.  I’m ashamed to admit to myself that over and over again I wait for that moment when the “truth” is going to come out and the people that I try to (and mostly succeed in) trust(ing) have had it with me.  Sometimes I think I might be so unsure because I can’t remember where things started.  I like to trace thing back to beginnings, and without being able to do that I don’t know where to go.

Bruises are marks from a collision that wasn’t as gentle as it should have been.  I’m a total klutz and my skin is hyper-sensitive, so basically I can wake up with a bruise that I didn’t have when I went to bed.  Bruises are evidence that I live in space, in bodily relation to other objects, and that I am not always good at judging that relation.  The people I care about and who care about me in return do much the same thing.  I easily fall into a myopic mindset, thinking I’m the most important person and no one can possible understand that.  When that narcissism runs into other peoples’ needs, their good and bad days, their hopes and disappointments, their opinions, and their correction, it knocks around my selfish need to be self-pitying.  Little moments of bruised ego reminding me that I am not the only one, and I do not get to pretend that other people don’t matter.  A bruise on my leg tells me I need to watch more carefully where I’m walking.  “It’s been so long since we’ve talked” tells me that I’m not giving the care that I should be to the people who’ve earned it through patience, acceptance, love, and time.

But a bruise isn’t a break.  With a bruise you just have to notice it and be careful of it.  With a break you need to go to the doctor and rearrange your life.  I’ve been blessed with friends that don’t push.  I’m stubborn and childish, I don’t like to be told what to do, and I don’t at all like feeling like I’m being manipulated into doing something against my will.  This doesn’t mean that my friends don’t give me advice.  They just let me get there on my own.  They know the quickest way to get me to do the right thing is to let me think it’s my idea.  And they wait for me to invite them into what’s going on.  I’m doing much better now that I’m sober about letting people into what’s going on in my mind and my soul, but even so it’s still a struggle for me.  And they know that.  And so they don’t pry.  They’re just there when I’m ready.

I don’t think I’m ever going to know where I got this bruise on my hand.  It will fade in a few days and it will bug me for a couple weeks that I injured myself and can’t remember it.  I’ll probably never understand where my friends came from, and I don’t know that I’ll ever understand why they stay.  My job isn’t to understand.  It’s to accept.  And to accept without fear.

(1 Year, 9 Months, 19 Days Sober)