When did I become such a rule-following pain in the ass?

This is the question I have been asking myself since June when Margaret and I were having breakfast in a 100 year old saloon in Montana.

Margaret was chuckling with glee as she surveyed the interior of the restaurant; dark wood, brass lamps, the catch of the day (many days ago) mounted on the walls.  I asked her what was so funny.

“I love it.  This place looks like it doesn’t have all those stupid safety posters up.”

“You are very strange Margaret.”

“Oh come on!  I would think you of all people would be annoyed by stupid rules.”

Luckily, our coffee arrived, and the germ of my current existential crisis remained just that, a germ, for the remainder of our trip.  But over the months, the questions have grown more insistent in my brain.  When did I become an obsessive goody-two-shoes?  And more importantly, why?

I’m fairly certain I’ll never pin down the when.  It was more recently in my adult life, that’s for sure.  I was raised with a tendency towards skipping directions, bypassing what was thought to be dumb, and ignoring that which could turn out to be pointless.  This is a slightly problematic way to live, especially when young, because you must rely on your own judgement.

Your judgment can easily be flawed.  Sometimes, near fatally so.

I used to love stealing bricks from construction sites.  Not many bricks, just one, every couple years or so.  It made me so happy, deliriously happy, to sneak my arm under the fencing and dash away with a brick.  I knew I shouldn’t steal, but I didn’t do it often, and really, it didn’t harm anyone. I almost didn’t graduate high school because I determined that there was little of value there for me, so I only went to the classes I like (photography, latin, and biology) and spent the rest of the day hanging out at Starbucks, reading or talking with my best friend.  I never gave a second thought to the fact that I shouldn’t break the law by simply leaving school for the day without permission.  When I was caught (and I was, often) the only thing I cared about was how I would avoid getting caught in the future.

Rules were fine and all, but if there wasn’t any danger, there wasn’t any need for them, or so I justified to myself.

And anyway, isn’t this all what confession is for?

So used to listening to myself, I eventually couldn’t listen to anyone else.  I couldn’t recognize the look in my family’s eyes when I opened the third bottle of wine as concern.  All I saw was them being boring.  I couldn’t accept that my professors adamance about due dates, because it shouldn’t matter that it took me a few extra days (weeks, months) to get my thoughts together.  My thoughts were worth it, they should just be patient.  “Don’t move without a job” wasn’t well-intentioned caution to be thoughtful about my future; rather, it was selfish demands by people who wanted me to remain miserable.

Reality was distorted, and I drank to escape.  The more I drank, the more distorted reality became, and the more I need to drink.  I almost drank myself to death.

Part of the agony of sobriety has been recognizing those parts of myself that are willful, childish, and wrong.  And somehow, at some point in the last almost three years (yayayaya!) I became fixated on following the rules.  Sometimes I can hear myself and know that I am being absurd, but it was like I couldn’t make myself stop.  And it’s really started to bug the hell out of me.

Sitting in Mass today it started to come together.  Often the readings in Mass are about how the old laws are encompassed in Christ’s law of love.  Today was such a day.  I started to see how I’d gone backwards. 

Sobriety has been a very vulnerable time for me.  Talking to others, both know to me and unknown, about my struggles and my triumphs has exposed me in a way I am still not comfortable with.  I get emotional-hangovers when I have conversations with people that reveal myself.  I have a sense of being on display, an object of amusement or pity for others.  The truth of this is irrelevant, because it is my perception of it that correlates to my recent need to never ever deviate from what I am “supposed” to do.  Fearing myself to be an emotional spectacle, I have restrained my behavior to be as unnoticeable as possible.  If I’m never in anyone’s way, maybe they won’t notice me, and maybe I’ll be safe.

When Mary picked me up from the airport after my months away in Portland one of her first questions was:

“So, where is your new tattoo?”

“What?  I don’t have a new tattoo!”

“Ok.  So where is your new piercing?”

“I don’t have a new piercing.   Why do you assume that?”

She laughed, but didn’t respond.  I thought she was just giving me shit.  Now, I think Mary has been on to something that I am just starting to see; I don’t make a lot of sense, because my parts still don’t fit together quite right.  What I love and what I say don’t always match up with what I do or how I seem.

Anyone know of any construction sites with lax security?

(2 Years, 11 Months, and 17 Days Sober)