I was having a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago.  We were talking about how fire-pits are wonderful.  I mean really, they are amazing.  You get to enjoy time with people you like with something pretty happening.  Talking about fire-pits leads inevitably to talking about the social appropriateness of guitar-time.

My friend told me that a few years ago she and her husband invited some friends over for a fire-pit.  She said that in the invitation she wrote “and if someone want to bring a guitar, that would be ok.”  She told me that she had never really thought about the pros or cons of guitar-time (since it had been present in her life for a significant amount of time, without being a feature), until, a friend replied to the invitation saying “I hate guitar-time.”

Slightly shocked, her friend laid out the same case I would have against guitar-time.  Personally, I am against guitar-time.  I don’t mean that I am against people getting together and playing music for one another.  That can be lovely, but only if that is the expressed purpose of, or at least stated possibility mutually agreed upon for, the evening.  That is very different from guitar-time.  Guitar-time is when at a social event someone bring out their guitar, usually without being asked, and begins to play, usually slow, weepy songs.  I do my best to keep my feelings about guitar-time to myself.  Many people enjoy guitar-time as a thing and I believe they are well intentioned in doing so, so I usually just absent myself.

In it’s essence, guitar-time is an activity that is supposed to be enjoyable, and we all say that it is, but is actually just uncomfortable, made more so because we refuse to admit that it is such.

Half-way through this week the phrase “I hate guitar-time” popped into my head and I couldn’t stop laughing.  I sent my friend a message telling her about it.  I’ve decided that I’m simply adopting her friend’s phrase anytime I find myself in the position of politely accepting a situation that I would rather run screaming from.

I’m slightly concerned by how much of my life I devote to collection phrases, but I digress.

I wish I had remembered to say “I hate guitar-time” to myself on Friday during parent-teacher conferences.  Now, of course, the main difference would be that parent-teacher conferences are a professional necessity, while guitar-time is an unfortunate social faux-pas.  I can’t avoid parent-teacher conferences just by leaving the room.  Well, at least not if I want to keep my job.

But maybe, I can keep “I hate guitar-time” in mind as a mantra for the next round I’ll have to do.  I used to be an intensely confrontational person.  But drinking was a fairly effective way of keeping my mouth shut, avoiding telling people what I really thought. Asked a question I didn’t want to answer, I would shrug and sip my drink.  I’m still fairly non-confrontational.  I try to stay out of situation where I know I am going to come into significant conflict with other people’s choices or opinions.  But while avoidance can be a nifty coping trick, it’s not a long-term strategy.

I can admit that I hate something, but that I will also endure it.  The problem with avoidance is that you build no resilience.  I could avoid telling parents difficult realities about their children.  But every time I do, in the midst of the yelling and the accusations and the denials, I get just a little bit better at surviving it.  Even knowing it will suck, I know that it will suck less the next time.

Maybe, someday, I’ll even be able to tell that dude who starts a spontaneous strum session that he can stop.

Wait, I probably still shouldn’t say that.

(3 Years, 4 Months, and 5 Days Sober)

Happy New Year everyone!

Alcoholics are amazing at saying “I’m done” and not meaning it.  Or at least, not being able to stick to it.  New Year’s resolutions are a time when almost everyone in the world gets to know a tiny bit of what it feels like to be an alcoholic.

Even though I’ve been sober for over three years, I’m still not the best at sticking to things.  I make a lot of promises to myself.  I set goals, usually in times of sadness or loneliness, and those goals slip through me fingers when I find something good on TV or a friend invites me to lunch.  My desire to be better, different, more, (or in the case of my weight, less) hasn’t manifested into a great deal of action.  Unless, does whining count as action?

So I might be up to my eyeballs in things I want, plans I have, but I’m only making two resolutions.  First, I want to read one book a month.  I was having lunch with a friend before Christmas and she told me how she tries to read one book a month.  She has three children and another on the way, and honestly, it made me feel incredibly lazy.  Surely, if she can find the time, then I, with far less responsibility and fewer people demanding my time, I can manage to finish a book a month that isn’t meant for teenagers or a trashy romance novel.  I have until February 1st to finish Terry Goodkind’s Stone of Tears.  It’s like a million pages.  Maybe it could count for February too?

I haven’t decided on my second resolution.  I want to wait and see what presents itself as most important.  So I resolve to make a resolution.

Slowly, ever so slowly.

(3 Years, 3 Months, and 14 Days Sober)

Christmas in Portland isn’t picturesque.  (I like that I say Portland and just assume that you will assume I mean Oregon and not Maine.)  It’s cold and rainy and gray.  Normally laid-back Portlanders get agitated and start honking like they’re East Coast-ers.  You must be there to pick up anything you’ve decided to have delivered, or you may end up with damp presents.

But inside my mom’s living room it is cozy, warm, and delightful.  (Ok, maybe not always warm, the heating isn’t the best.)  My mother’s artfully sparse tree is perfectly adorned in white and gold, birds and bows.  (I know, that sounds crazy, but it’s really beautiful.)  My sister’s collection of Nativity sets are all over the house, presenting the miracle in the manger in tin, paper, glass, and clay.  A huge bowl of clementines waits in the dining room, to be slowly grazed upon during the week.

It’s easy to forget that it’s raining outside.

I was talking with a friend the other week and she was explaining to me how she has this idea of a perfect Christmas for her family, and that every year she stresses herself out trying to make her mental picture a reality.  I, too, have a feeling that I am not achieving my perfect Christmas, but professionally.  Every year I want to give my students this lovely day where we make gifts and eat cookies and watch a movie and enjoy each other’s company.  Every year I end up crying.  Or in the case of this year, hiding in a supply closet for about 5 minutes trying not to cry.  (You know what is worse than a grown woman hiding in a closet at work?  Being caught by your coworkers as a grown woman hiding in a closet at work?  Much worse.)  The whole conversation reflected back on me just how little feeling I have been trying to have about this Christmas.

For years I intensely disliked Christmas.  The decorations made me angry.  The presents were a burden.  I would sit in Mass and cry, not out of joy, but out of sheer sorrow.  It ripped me to shreds looking at all the depictions of the Holy Family, singing all the beautiful hymns and carols, hearing all the messages of hope, knowing that that baby was born into the world to die in a spectacularly horrible way.  I didn’t see a gift of love.  I saw a gruesome joke.  And everything felt tainted.  (Well, not cookies.  Nothing taints cookies.  Except poison.)

Now this was many many years ago.  Ten-ish at least.  These sad Christmases were followed by a few-ish DRUNK Christmases.  (Sorry for the CAPS, but when I say “drunk Christmases” I don’t mean your booze-y aunt wearing a Santa hat.  I mean arrive-hung-over-and-drink-till-you-leave drunk.)

For months I have been afraid of change.  That sounds stupid, but oh well, sometimes I’m stupid.  I have been protective of my routine like a sewer rat who found a chunk of brie.  I haven’t wanted to meet new people or venture outside of my accustom activities, because I haven’t wanted to introduce anything that would mess up how lovely my life is.  TS Eliot wrote in an essay about the canon of Western literature that it is not rigid; there is a continual shifting to make room for great art, both newly created and previously ignored.  I have spent a few months rejecting this idea, only valuing what I know is good.

And that has animated my desire to un-feel this Christmas.  This is the first year since he was born that my younger brother and I will not be together at Christmas.  The knowledge that LilBro wouldn’t be there to watch Elf  and eat cereal with me on Christmas morning loomed at the forefront of my thoughts.  He is in Texas, and just started a new job.  There is no anger in his absence; it is not a rift between him and our family.  It is the reality of growing older and having responsibilities.  And it is a change over which I have no control.

I understand how people are often bored with Christmas.  Same story every year.  Same stress.  Decoration dragged down from the attic and arranged in the exact configuration as always.  We immerse ourselves in traditions that we keep simply because they are our traditions.  But my traditions are altered now.  I no longer drink away the holidays, alienating those around me and throwing up down the stairs.  This year I will miss my brother, knowing that he is warm and safe somewhere, even if he is not warm and safe with me, and that is much more than many people can say about their loved ones.  The canon can expand, even though that involves loss.

Much is made of the manger as a sign of Christ’s humility.  This year, accepting that what was for so long is not now, I see something slightly different.  God makes our circumstances beautiful.  The shelter of the stable is not a let down from the expectation of the inn.  Christ will fill that which we fear, and that which we suffer, not by fulfilling our notion of our desires, but by exposing the blessings of our reality.

In the quiet of the kitchen this morning, I don’t even notice that is is raining outside.

Merry Christmas.

(3 Years, 3 Months, and 4 Days Sober)

5 years ago I spent about 4 months inconveniently ill.  My skin, never particularly strong to begin with, basically turned to tissue paper.  I became unable to walk, riddled with abscess infections, golfball sized growths burrowing under my skin.  I was continually filled with antibiotics and pain killers.  I had almost daily trips to the clinic to have my infections opened and drained.  Luckily, I was unemployed and living at my mom’s house at the time.  My family took care of me; driving me back and forth to the doctor and paying for my medication.

It wasn’t the best time of my life.  I still have scars.

Every so often a new infection starts and I have to spend a couple days treating it.  Two days ago I was having trouble walking.  Upon investigation I discovered a patch of dry skin that had begun to open up.  The beginning of an infection.  I weighed my options: take a day off work and try to halt any progress that ended with me bedridden for two weeks or power through and hope for the best.

Obviously I took the day off.

Yesterday I laid in bed, watched craptacular TV, and fielded calls, texts, and emails from work.

Today was picking up the pieces.  Apparently, my students managed to get into quite a bit of trouble while I was gone.  There were facts to collect, apologies to coerce, children to redirect, parents to appease.  It’s my least favorite type of day, because I pretty much phoned-in the academic instruction.  Every second was filled, but I just wanted to use the Force and make it go away so I could get on my way.

I think I needed to be sick.  You see, I went to a friends’ house warming party on Saturday night.  I had a wonderful time, but I left disquieted, a feeling that grew on Sunday and Monday.  I felt surrounded by a sadness.  Sadness in realizing that I’ve finally reached the point that as an unmarried non-mom, I have little in common with the women I interact with as part of the larger social fabric in my area.  With close friends I don’t often feel that distance, but on Saturday I finally saw the lack of common ground between stay-at-home-mother-of-2/3/4/110 and single-overworking-shut-in.

I was angry when I saw that red streak of skin causing me pain.  Wasn’t I done with this shit?  But all the doctors told me that I would need to manage this condition in the future.  I use special soap, try to keep my skin protected from extreme weather, and am careful about the fabrics I wear.  The better I regulate my diet, the fewer flare-ups I have.  What a pain in the ass, dealing with such an annoying problem.

But there isn’t a cure for your own skin.  And there isn’t a cure for not being someone else.  Some days no amount of preventative measures are enough and you get sick.  Some days you see that your life is different, not better or worse, and you get sad.  I easily get ahead of myself, convinced that I’m supposed to be somewhere I’m not.  I shouldn’t get sick anymore, I should be sad that I don’t know what it’s like to be loved as a wife and mother.  I beat myself up because I’m not “over it” yet.

Yesterday I had no choice but to stop.  If I wanted what was best for myself in the long run, I had to accept some immediate frustration and helplessness.  I needed the reminder that my life is not a checklist to be completed.  There is a process, a work that is both to create and revise.  I was losing my patience with the gentle unfolding of God’s plan for me.

I had forgotten that I’m not done yet.

(3 Years and 2 Months Sober)

There is a scene in Soul Eater where we finally hear Soul play the piano.

I cried.

I cried over an anime character playing the piano to unite his soul resonance with the rest of his team’s so that they could defeat something evil.

I saw this last May.  I was burnt out from work, ready to be on my way to a restful summer, and maybe a little emotionally vulnerable, so it is possible under different circumstances I wouldn’t have sobbed like a little baby over a short scene in a deeply morally problematic cartoon.

But maybe the circumstances don’t matter that much.  Soul’s struggle the entire show is the demon he has been infected with, the demon he fears even though he will not show his fear.  From the beginning Maka begs Soul to play for her like he did the first time they met, but he refuses, so as the audience we only know about Soul’s talent through Maka’s admiration of it.  When Soul plays in order to give the team a chance to save the world he is allowing them (and by extension the audience) to participate in something very private between Maka and him.  And he is destroyed.  His demon grows with every note and overtakes him.

I thought of all this again today listening to the noon Mass sermon at school today.  Father gave a few minute homily on the necessity of physical presence to friendship.  His point was that while we maintain relationships with phone calls and emails, those do not actually take the place of physical interaction, the importance of which cannot be ignored, because God became man, instead of just sending us a letter for redemption.

But what if we are consumed?  How are we to open ourselves, to give others what will save them, if we are to be ruined in the process?

There are those in my life who are ravaged by tragedy.  My heart breaks for them.  It breaks because I understand the sense that one cannot express what is good for that will allow what is bad to flood the heart, a drowning in memory without end.  We hold ourselves, wrapped as a guard around our pain, neither giving nor receiving, and our physical presence in the world fades.  We desire no touch, give no words, hear no laughter.  Our senses dull until a small intrusion is an assault.

Maka saves Soul in the end.  She places her own body as a physical barrier between evil and Soul, wrapping the smallest piece of him in her arms and guarding him from darkness.  Christ through his body redeemed our sin, making our body a house of God, a vessel to pour out His love.

We will not be consumed.  And maybe if we can open just slightly, show one other person both our promise and our pain, it will be all they need to wrap us in their arms.

(3 Years, and 18 Days Sober)

I’m sitting on a backporch in Garland, Texas. I’m visiting Dallas for a wedding tomorrow. It is the first time I have been back since in six years.

When I left Dallas I was running. Running from events I was afraid I could never deal with. Running from a truth it would take me 3 more years to face.

I was nervous about his trip. Nervous to miss work, nervous to spend money I should be saving. Nervous that I wouldn’t feel welcome. As my plane descended I must of had a look of longing on my face, because the woman next to me asked me if I was from Texas. I told her no, but that I had lived here for a lot of good years.

It would be so easy to be nostalgic. There was nothing for me to be nervous about. I have had only joy so far in reconnecting with old friends, meeting their many children, and getting sunburnt in the shade. I even got a few semi-offers if new employment at a party tonight. I sense the stillness of a life I loved very much surrounding me. Enveloped in the comfort of people who didn’t give up on me, I can see myself romaticising a place and forgetting the person.

The time between my leaving Dallas and my entering AA is what we lovingly call the “lost years.” It is not a term that does the reality justice, but it is the best we can do now. One day maybe I will be able to have a phrase that captures what I was really like. I know now I was already an alcoholic when I was still living in Dallas, but I was for the most part a functional one. For the 3 years that followed I wasn’t even that. There was a terror inside of me that I could not escape; an absence that I could not express. I assumed it was circumstance. Everyone I knew had gotten married and started families, a future I was determined to be denied. The literature that had brought me such solace was a burden of truth I could no longer carry. My crosses felt like curses, divine retribution for once voicing a desire to be loved.

It wasn’t about a guy, but it was easy to say it was. It wasn’t about grad school, but I couldn’t finish, so I didn’t correct people when they talked about “burn out.” It was about God. Isn’t it always?

God was never going to be able to repay me for all the shit he put me through. I never thought of it as anger. After all, what was the point of being angry with the omnipotent creator of the universe? What a waste of time? No, it was anger. It was simple balance. How could he make up for years of death, for a heart so often broken, for a lifetime of giving to others by taking from me? He couldn’t. His love for me was a love of brutal demand and forced sacrifice. And I wanted no part of it. I could not stay, could not live amoung those whose path was set and set with kindness and generocity, know without doubt that I would forever be their foil.

3 years of sobriety eases many hurts, and sheads light upon many misconceptions. The great misconception would be to tell myself it would have been different if I’d stayed, to trick myself into believing that there would have been no “lost years” if I hadn’t picked up stakes in the middle of the night and fled like a bat out of hell. For many years I had a happy life here, but that life turned sour when my heart turned from others and toward myself.

Selfishness is a funny thing. We tell ourselves that we are so giving, so concerned with others, a fountain of love taken for granted by the very people who should cherish us. We tell a lie that lives in our souls; a winding vine choking our freedom, from which we can only escape with the grace of God. The grace to see that we are not owed. The grace to be as helpless as we truely are in the face of our own redemption. The grace to admit we fear God does not really love us.

I landed here without a heart of fear. Not because my life in DC is perfect and I have no regrets about my choices amoung the endless track housing beneath the wide sky. I will always be sorry. I will always be sorry that given the opportunity to be loved by God I chose to be unloving. I will always be sorry that when given my freedom I chose to be shackled. I will always be sorry that I took from so many when I thought I was giving. I will always be sorry for the “lost years.”

But that sorrow no longer cripples me. I can feel it as a part of myself, but not all that I am. It is simply a piece of a heart that has held so much. One element of a woman who is deeply loved.

(3 Years and 6 Days Sober)

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)

On Saturday I went to my friend Tim’s funeral.

In a moment of deep self-centeredness I had a minor breakdown over the fact that most people I know were at a wedding while I was at a funeral and isn’t that just the most telling statement about my life to date.  As soon as the words escaped my mouth I felt like a total ass.  To make me feel like even more of an ass, I hadn’t been invited to said wedding, so I wouldn’t have been there anyway, funeral or not.  You would think after a whole lifetime I wouldn’t be surprised by how ridiculous I can be, but every so often I find new and amazing ways to be a self-involved asshat.

All of this is to say that I will miss my friend.  Tim was a wonderful man.  He was funny, smart, kind, and selfless.  We both got to school early, so we would talk before everyone else arrived.  Politics, religion, football, all those subjects you’re not supposed to talk about, that was what Tim was interested in.  Tim helped me navigate my first few years of teaching, I was able to encourage him by understanding his Beyond the Fringe references.  I have no idea what my day will be like on Wednesday, our first day of school, when I arrive at the building and Tim isn’t there.  Will it feel like school is actually happening?  How can we have school if Tim isn’t there?

I can’t answer those questions.  I can’t plan for what will happen to our school without Tim.  I couldn’t plan to have lunch after the funeral with my AHM and his family and have a conversation with his 13 year old daughter about where she will be getting tattoos when she’s old enough.  I can’t plan for how long I will cry.

So I put together a bookshelf.  A bookshelf I bought a year ago, that has been sitting every since in my closet in its flat-pack box.  Small accomplishment in the scheme of things, I know, but I’m glad I did it.  It was a waste to have bought it and never set it up.  And I needed something to do, other than sit around feeling sorry for myself and fearful of the future.

I guess you could say summer is officially over.

(2 Years, 11 Months and 10 Days Sober)