This morning my head is aching, my eyes are swollen almost shut, and I am pondering my life choices.

But I do not have a hangover.

Booze would be one reason to be awake a 4 AM, sobbing silently on my couch.  The last season of Friday Night Lights would be another.  I suffer today because of the later, not the former.

When I first became sober an unexpected thing happened.  For months I was completely overcome with emotions.  Not any particular emotion all the time, more like continual waves of all the emotions I hadn’t had in so many years.  By the time I couldn’t put down the bottle without divine intervention I had no capacity left to experience emotions.  I was completely hollowed out inside; able to hate my job, be lonely, and occasionally get angry, but that about covers my range.  I can remember now moments along the way, individual times when I was unhappy or discouraged or overwhelmed, and life seemed hard but being drunk was easy.  Eventually it’s impossible to muster unhappy, that’s out of reach, beyond the need for more alcohol.  Once there is no more alcohol (and the shakes wear off) there is a seemingly endless barrage of emotion.  This is all perfectly normal, but I had no idea it was going to happen.  (I’m starting to wonder if people don’t necessarily talk so much about early sobriety because it is scary as fuck and if you were still drinking and heard what it was going to be like then you’d just keep drinking?)

As I said, for months I was completely overcome with emotions.  This resulted in many things: babbling conversations that didn’t make any fucking sense; occasional cake binges; crying and laughing at the same time.  But the most noticeable result in my life was that I couldn’t watch any TV that was in any way serious, or that I was attached to, or that dealt with anything real.  I just couldn’t.  I started and dropped new shows, because there was no pre-sobriety association.  I tried to take comfort in the lighter shows that I had loved for so long, but after a few seconds I would turn it off.

In this time ended one of my most favoritest of all shows: Friday Night Lights.  And I knew it was there, haunting me, calling to me with all of its humble and touching perfection.  But I wasn’t ready.  And over time this became a huge joke among the friends that I had convinced to watch this show and then had finished it before me.  Conversations would occasionally include the gentle nudge “so, how about finishing Friday Night Lights.”

Last night, after a false start 3 days ago and getting through the first 2 episodes of S5, I forced myself to sit on my couch, ignore the planning work I “wanted” to do, and started up the Netflix.  It was time.  When I said I wasn’t ready before, I mean that in more than one sense.  I wasn’t ready for my beautiful show to be over.  I find it one of the supreme injustices of the world that shite like Family Guy and Grey’s Anatomy run for season after season and getting more episodes of FNL was like pulling teeth.  I wasn’t ready to face a world that had no hope of new episodes of the Taylors and their team, both football and marital.  But I wasn’t ready in another sense.  After somewhat weathering the storm of early sobriety I wasn’t ready to invite that kind of turmoil into myself again.  It’s been nice to make the choice for myself to not let something into my life that is going to reach inside of me and start playing in all the parts I don’t like or am frightened by.  I knew what would happen; that seeing characters I love struggle and strive and fail and triumph, all underneath a vast, quiet sky, would crack me open and expose that which I didn’t want to see. With that knowledge I got to say “no,” to protect myself.  Asserting that “no” was like a tiny balm against all of the things that I can’t keep out.

What changed?  Why now?  

Over the last week I’ve been unbelievably pissy.  And unable to sleep.  It seems like everything that everyone says makes me annoyed.  Now, in all fairness, this isn’t technically any different than the way I normally am.  I’m always annoyed.  But it is different in the sense that I don’t want to stand up for what I think is right, I just want everyone to shut the fuck up and leave me in peace.  I came frighteningly close to throwing something at a guy in a coffee shop on Sunday.  I was working on a discussion outline for a book I’m teaching next year and at the table next to me two bros were catching up on the latest tedium from their lives.  For 2 hours I listened to this man-child (30 years old, same age I will be in 2 months) ramble on about how anyone not “having fun and making memories” is shallow, how he can’t stand when people talk about their jobs because he makes more money than they do, how his date was super-hot but not into sex on the first date so he won’t call her again, but she was super-hot, and how even though he is still married he should have proposed to a woman that he “loves” and needs a greencard.  His buddy nodded along and inserted appropriate approval during all this drivel.  And then added his own drivel.  I shit you not, I thought I was going to explode. Between the basic misunderstanding of what words mean (being only concerned with physical appearance is just as “shallow” as being only concerned with status or money) and the inability to look beyond immediate physical desires (Hey asshole, do you think the fact that you can’t seem to keep it in your pants is why you will be divorced at some point? Most likely 3 or 4 times?) I decided that lifelong celibacy was a small price to pay for not ever having to actually exchange words with that type of cretin.  But the whole time I barely suppressed my desire to stand up and tell him, on behalf of human dignity, to shove it.  Most of the time I can tune people like that out in public places, or realize why their stupidity is hilarious.  But not this last week.

Oh yeah, and not sleeping.  Well, when I say not sleeping I mean not sleeping when normal people sleep.  At about 10:30 every night when I get into bed I am suddenly hit with a sharp stab of depression, and then I can’t sleep, until about 3:30 when my body can no longer function, so I sleep until 11 AM or so.  I find this unpleasant not just because pre-sleep depression is super sucky (it is) but also because it is most definitely summer here in greater DC and early early morning is the only time being outside is somewhat pleasant, so it’s a total waste to be sleeping through it.  The flare-up of insomnia coupled with the general irritation at the rest of God’s creation made me think maybe I was bottling some stuff up inside.

At about 6 PM I started watching.  By midnight I was crying.  By 2 AM I was sobbing.  At 4:07 AM the final credits played.  At around 5 AM I stopped crying and fell asleep.  I cried for the student I never managed to figure out and may have left worse off than when she met me. I cried for the ordinary life that seems forever out of my reach.  I cried for the fact that without love life is meaningless.  I cried for the hours behind me and the hours ahead.  I cried for Texas and a life derailed.  

And I cried because it will all be ok.  

It took me a long time to figure out the whole “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose” thing.  Sounded like sports mumbojumbo to me.  And some days it’s easy for me to forget.  But, if you live with honesty and with love then you’ve succeeded, whatever the outcome.  That’s what I mean when I say I cried because it will be ok.  Because despite setbacks both major and minor, despite days of easy peace and days of white-knuckle-wine-avoidance, despite floundering and flailing, and despite being the difficult little person that I am, everyday it is easier to be more honest and to be more loving.

So thanks Dillion, it’s been real.

(1 Year, 9 Months, and 6 Days Sober)

I hate cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen.

Seriously, I hate it.

My roommate and I have a schedule: we switch off cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen every two weeks, so, ideally, we each have this task once a month.  Now, both of us are busy, and at least I am kind of lazy, so we stretch it out to cleaning every 3 1/2 to 4 weeks.    So the last time I cleaned was 2 months ago.

You would think considering how infrequent a chore it is I wouldn’t act like the sky is falling.  But you would be wrong.  And over-estimating the kind of adult I am.

The whole process of cleaning both rooms takes about an hour and a half.  Neither is particularly big, especially the bathroom, and it’s the only time that I applaud the extremely limited counter-space in my apartment.  No matter what, by the end of the process I am sweating like a mafia boss in court and have a pounding headache because there is NO ventilation in my apartment.  But neither of these facts is the reason that I don’t like it.

I hate cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen because I choose to do so when my roommate is not in the apartment.  I think it’s nicer that way, for both of us.  But, because of this choice I have to clean at times when I could be vegging out on the couch, or reading, or napping, or even out doing something (okay, that last one is unlikely, but it could happen someday).  I get very pissy about what I consider “my” time and don’t want to give that up to do something as unpleasant as cleaning the bathroom and kitchen.  And so, in my pissy-ness the weeks pass; 2 turns into 3, 3 turns into 4.  Suddenly, I’m tip-toeing around the bathroom after my shower, trying not touch anything or linger too long.  And it becomes just embarrassing for everyone, and I avoid talking to my roommate because I don’t want her to bring up the fact that it is my turn to clean and I haven’t because I have been vegging/reading/sleeping/whatever.

I make my life kind of awkward and slightly miserable by childishly holding on to a concept that doesn’t work: my time.

I have always thought that I was a generous person when it came to time.  I would be willing to be there for family/friends on the phone or in person whenever they needed and for however long.  I wouldn’t say no to people if they needed someone to talk to, or cheering up, or whathaveyou.  But as my life has become more demanding (in some ways) I have become stingier with my time.  I’ve started guarding any time that doesn’t HAVE to be devoted to work, Church, or family/friends like it’s the zombie apocalypse and “my” time is the last weapon on Earth.  

But, it’s not really my time, is it?  I’ve caught myself up in an idea that was false from the start.  I didn’t create time and then allot it to myself.  I’m gifted with the same amount each day as everybody else, and holding onto it isn’t going to give me more, or make it better, or actually do anything.  I’m so attached to a false idea that I am not honoring an agreement that I made with my roommate when I moved in.  An agreement, by the way, that is not all the taxing, but I make into something quite taxing by not honoring it in the first place because I don’t think I should have to spend “my” time doing so.

It makes me wonder how many other things that are problems in my life are actually the result of my assertion that I own something?  

Wait, maybe I don’t want the answer to that.

The bathroom and the kitchen are clean by the way.  And I took out the garbage and the recycling.  Nap time!

(1 Year, 9 Months and 4 Days Sober)

Alright, true confessions time: I AM THE WORST AT RELAXING.

The last day of school was a week and a half ago.  In that time, I have managed to finish my grades, plan my whole next year’s curriculum for poetry and vocabulary, begin a gluten-free diet, and otherwise I’ve been sleeping for 12 hours a day.  Seriously, it’s amazing how refreshed you can look when you’re asleep more than you’re awake.

Honestly, I’m having trouble slowing down, like if I stop for too long I’m going to go flying apart.

For weeks I was dying for summer break to start.  Lessons became teeth-pulling agony as the kids became more and more wild.  I was so tired as the final weeks were passing.  I could feel my body stop working, piece by piece.  Simple things like laundry and grocery shopping slipped through the cracks.  And I kept telling myself that it was all going to be okay if I just made it to the second week of June.

And now what I had been looking forward to so much is finally here, and I don’t have any idea how to stop.  I’m terrified that if I stop I’m going to lose all my momentum and then August is going to be on top of me and there I’ll be with nothing done and then next school year will be another year of endless trying to catch-up.  I keep trying to tell myself that it isn’t really going to be that way, that if I don’t put in 8 planning hours a day then the world isn’t going to completely fall apart.  I know that I have many weeks before the next school year starts.  I know that I did my job fairly well this year, and that I will do it even better next year, even if I don’t have it perfectly planned out before day one.

Stopping involves looking at what might be missing from my life.  Faced with more hours than I know what to do with and not enough hobbies to occupy my mind I have a tendency to crash and burn like a pro.  I crawl into the place where all my choices seem like mistakes, where finding the energy to shower seems impossible, where loneliness turns into (seeming) isolation, and before I know it I can’t remember the last time I talked to another human being.

I’m so worried about turning into a total shit-show that I’m running myself raged as if I have to go back to work next week.

The whole thing is going something like this:

I know from experience that even if I start to fall apart, I will be put back together.  I also know from experience that lesson planning comes together in the end somehow.  I know that once I’ve gone through whatever I’m going to go through with all this time on my hands I’ll see how irrational and overreact-y I’m being.  I’m working on using my confidence about the future to reduce my anxiety about the present.

And so, in the spirit of taking a break as a normal person, I’m well into Season 3 of The Glades.  Thanks be for Netflix.

(I Year, 8 Months, 30 Days Sober)

Some days I look at my friends’ lives and suddenly everything in my life looks sad and useless and ugly.

Some days I meet strangers and suddenly I’m a fucking superstar of a competent and informed and productive adult.

In AA (and probably elsewhere, but that is where I heard this first) this phenomenon is called “judging my insides by other people’s outsides.”  And it is a big damn no-no.

That doesn’t stop me from doing it.  And today I did both sides of it over and over and over again, to the point where I’m so exhausted I almost started crying on the bus ride home.  The last couple weeks have just pummeled me.  I’m going through some very serious spiritual development, and trying to finally come to terms with a very painful event in my life.  I’m not depressed or really even sad (well, expect for today, today I’m sad), but it is really really really draining (do you get how draining it is?), because all of my energy and attention is being diverted to this thing, but I still have to you know, go to work, and eat, and take care of stuff.  I think today it was all just a little too much and I started to crack a bit.

I admit, I am not so fucking good at judging my own life.  Or myself for that matter.  I tend to either be way to lenient or way to harsh.  Compared to you, I am without a doubt the most amazing person ever, unless you and I have met, in which case I am but a grub beneath your feet.  I’ve tried to be a little more realistic over the last bit of time, but a lifetime of demonizing myself in comparison to all loved ones and congratulating myself on my triumph over people I haven’t met, well, let’s just say that those habits take a while to shake loose from.  (As does so too my terrible habit of ending sentences with prepositions.  I teach basic grammar to 3rd graders for pete’s sake.)

What it is in the end is an unintentional solipsism; a habit of seeing the world only in terms of how it relates to myself.  The cuteness of my friend’s kid shouldn’t elicit any thought of how less-cute my own future (and at this point purely hypothetical) child will or won’t be.  The habit of a grown woman making a pouty-face to every single minor obstruction in life should not make me (internally) jump for joy at what a mature creature I am.  My perception of the trials and triumphs of others is not actually what my life is supposed to be about.  I don’t want to be the center of the universe, even in my own mind, because it sucks.

So yeah, today I’m sad.  I’m sad because I’m tired, and it’s 90 degrees out (and once it’s over 70 I’m bloated and uncomfortable), and I have a lot of work to do before the last day of school next week, and rent is due tomorrow, and there is no more new Doctor Who for months.  Oh, yeah, and I’m in the midst of some massive emotional shit.  So there are a lot of reasons for me to be sad today.  And I’m okay with those reasons, and with being sad for those reasons.  For today.

But I don’t get to be sad because other people I know or encounter are not sad.  I don’t have the license to use other people as a cudgel or crutch in order to MAKE myself sad about how sad I am.  That is where real emotions become manufactured ones.

“I just end up full of potatoes and sadness” is something I said to Alissa once, and we laugh about it every so often.  I was trying to explain how when I’m sad I buy frozen potatoes and eat the whole thing.  And when I’m buying these sadness french fries, or tater tots, or hashbrowns, I’m always convinced that anyone who sees them in my basket knows that I’m buying them because I’m sad.  I filled myself up with tater tots tonight to match my sadness.  But honestly, and not because of the potatoes, I don’t feel as sad anymore.

So, obviously, it’s time for ice cream.

(1 Year, 8 Months, and 11 Days Sober)

It’s Mother’s Day!

I live on the other side of the country from my mom, so I can’t give her a hug or take her out to lunch.  And I totally thought Mother’s Day would be next weekend, so I didn’t get a card or a present in the mail to her.

But none of that means I love her any less.  My mom is a tough lady.  She’s opinionated, stubborn, and has very high standards.  She was tough on me growing up.  Not as tough as I thought she was at the time, and maybe not as tough as I deserved.  I appreciate more and more every day that she was tough on me, that I couldn’t rest on my laurels, that I wasn’t allowed to get away with shit, that mistakes were forgiven but were not be repeated.  It wasn’t always easy, for her or for me, but it made me resourceful, capable, determined, and brave.

I hope I never have to know the depth of suffering my mother endured while I was drinking.   I could see in her behavior when I visited, even through the booze, that she was terribly worried.  I can’t imagine how worried she must have been, since I lived far away and was heading full steam ahead into danger.  I know she prayed for me, made her self available for me to talk, and went out of her way to come visit me.  When I told her that I had started AA there was an audible sigh of relief on her end of the phone.

So, I forgot to get me mom flowers or cookies or a new scarf.  I’m 3,000 miles away, so coffee on the back porch will have to be via a phone call.  But today I won’t drink.  Every day I don’t drink is a day my mother has to worry about me less.  

It’s the most important gift I can give her.

(1 Year, 7 Months, 22 Days Sober)

I came to a realization a while ago:

God made me dyslexic because if everything in my brain wasn’t backwards, mixed-up and made-up, then I would be the fucking worst person ever.

I’m a giant pain in the ass as I am.  I think I’m smarter than everyone else.  I have no shame about mouthing off my opinion to any poor sod who crosses my path.  I throw total shit-fits when I don’t get my way.  I am belligerent and combative when I’m even remotely challenged.  And everyone else’s faults are huge moral failings, while my own are harmless personality quirks.

(And I wonder why I’m still single.)

So, to keep me from becoming the tin-pot dictator of an island no one ever heard of, God made sure that I would embarrass myself on a daily, and sometimes hourly, basis.  Misspelled words written on my board that my students catch, sentences all jumbled up and looks of confusion on my co-workers faces, road signs of my own pure invention that bring amusement to my family, these and all kinds of other moments that I have to accept and move on from.  I can’t get caught up in any idea of my own perfections, because my brain will make a mess of it even if I tried to have the thought.  I have a humility meter actually built into my genetics.

And it’s good for me that way.  I used to look at all the shit I’d been through and wonder why God was punishing me.  Was I really so undeserving that I couldn’t get a break from grieving, heartbreak, depression, and isolation?  I thought it was just a horrible irony that I was dyslexic and love to read, that I wanted to write for a living, that I was only attracted to doing something that was horribly difficult for me.  I assumed that it was proof that I would never be happy or successful, that I would always want more than what was meant to be mine.  But I don’t see it so much that way anymore.  I’m a little afraid of just how horrid I would have become if everything had been handed to me, if I’d never been hurt, if I’d never had to suffer, if I’d never had to forgive.  How could I appreciate the love and generosity of my friends and family if I didn’t have large and small trials to chip away my ego, my selfishness, and my disregard for others?

Yup, more and more, I’ve come to appreciate my dyslexia not as burden that prevents me fulfilling my destiny, but rather a buffer that keeps me from becoming a Batman villain.

It’s not a hugs and life-lessons though.  I get really impatient with people who assume they aren’t making a mistake.  I always assume I’m making a mistake, because I usually am.  (You see, my ideas and thoughts are correct, the expression is muddled and ridiculous.  This is how I can be always right and always wrong at the same time!)  This morning I got put out with my co-worker.  She has it in her head that she is the only person in the world who knows how to use commas.  Yes, the comma can be tricky.  Some people are completely ignorant of where and when a comma does or doesn’t belong.  But, there is an instance when you put a comma after the word “dear” and that is when you’re writing a greeting to a letter or note, as in “My dear,” which my mom writes to me all the time.  The co-worker was having none of this.  Under no circumstances can you use a comma after the word “dear.”

I left her alone in her wrongness, and as she proceeded to have a crappy morning and I had a fairly smooth one, I admit that I felt a bit justified.  

“She was wrong after all, and wouldn’t even entertain the possibility of being so, and therefore she didn’t deserve to have a good morning.”  

Okay, I only had those thoughts for a few seconds and then realized that I was being a bitch, and decided that I would be nicer and for the most part I was.  Sometimes I can be a tiny bit of an adult and realize that I am being completely absurd and change me behavior accordingly.

Still, I am left with the problem of my original impatience.  You see, my impatience isn’t that I wish I would have fewer lessons, it’s that I wish others would have more.  I don’t demand recompense for having had to learn so much in such difficult ways, but I do desire an explanation as to why other people seem to have had to learn so little.  If I let it get out of control, if I forget that I didn’t live their life, don’t know anything but what I see, than I can turn jealous and bitter, nursing imaginary wounds inflicted upon me by their divine privilege.  But before that it starts with impatience, impatience that the strain of their efforts does not show as plainly on their face as mine does on my own.

Maybe I should just try to be less obvious about how many times I have made God repeat himself.

(I year, 6 Months, and 27 Days Sober) 

This week was bananas.

There was illness, there was sleeplessness, there was a story made up by first graders in which I was brutally murdered.

And there were seemingly countless examples, in both conversation and action, of forgiveness, either given or denied.

Forgiveness is a HUGE deal in sobriety.  And I don’t just mean in the particular case of a 9th step amends to someone you’ve wronged.  I mean long before that.  When God finally reached me at the moment from which I may not have returned it seemed like a simple lifeline: “there is a way you can stop drinking and I can make that possible for you because I’m God.”  Soaked in years of booze and pain and fear, I’m pretty sure that was about as much as my brain could handle as far as thoughts go, and it was surely all my soul could handle as far as receptivity to the divine goes, so God meets us where we’re at and that’s fine.

This week it really started to dawn on me how much more had been going on in that very first reaching of God to me (or I suppose I should say of me to God, since he had been reaching the whole time and I was the one saying no).  It wasn’t as simple as it seemed, because God wasn’t just offering me a way to stop drinking, he was forgiving me for my weakness.  God was willing to accept all the damage, to me and by me, and reshape that into something beautiful.  God in his forgiveness allowed a way not for me to start a new life as if the past didn’t matter, but to set the past towards the right life I am supposed to have.

That is what forgiveness does; it takes pain and turns it into that which glorifies God.  When someone hurts us and we forgive them we assert our love for that person over our selfish desire to be victimized and thereby grow closer to that person and to God.

So where did all my deep and meaningful realizations come from?  (Please DON’T insert here the name of some theologian who came up with this hundreds of years before me.)

Like always, in some part it came from observing my students.  I have two students who NEVER get along with ANYONE else in the class.  There are two girls that every time I turn around are arguing with another girl, and a lot of times with each other.  I can’t stand it.  It makes me so frustrated, because both girls are very upset that they don’t have many friends.  I’ve reached that horrible apathetic place where all I can think is “of course you don’t have any friends, all you do is fight with your classmates all day long.”  This week I really started watching the way these two girls behave and I noticed something: they don’t forgive.  In their eyes there are no accidents.  If someone bumps into them it is because the other person set out to cause them terrible harm and no apology is sufficient. If a game changes it is because the other girls don’t want her to play with them at all and have formed a secret group to keep them out, no denial of which is believed.  If one of the other students picks up something she has dropped in order to return it to her the object is immediately snatched back and accusations of stealing pour forth without hesitation.  And neither of these girls ever ever apologizes for something she has done.  Anytime either has said “I’m sorry” it is because I have dragged it out of her with all my fire and brimstone.  I’m pretty sure that the world would come to an end if either girl ever responded to an apology with “I forgive you.”  Watching them has made me aware of just how impossible it is to even function in the most basic way with other people if you can’t forgive.  Every action becomes suspect, every motive becomes ill will, every person becomes an enemy if you can’t forgive.  My heart kind of breaks when I see these two students who are already so determined to see the worst in other people because I know how much harder it will make their lives.

On the other side of “well, shit kids, I don’t know how to fix your problems” was a dinner I had with some friends.  I few years ago I had an ugly falling out with a married couple who I had been close with for a while.  It was so stupid, and looking back I’m ashamed at how I behaved.  In truth I was looking for an excuse to be angry, at everyone and everything, and I took a small slight and turned it into the end of the world.  Not so much my best moment.  But a little over a year ago she reached out to me, offering an olive branch, and as frightened as I was, I took it.  It’s been a slow and deliberate process of reconciling, which I think is good.  It would be dishonest to try and fall back into the old patterns of friendship as if a great deal of hurt hadn’t been dealt out.  And I can honestly say that I am not the same person I was a few years ago.  I’m not sure who I am now, but I’m sure as shit not that drunk raving bitch who wrought destruction upon all she surveyed.  (The “bitch” part has stuck around, I think that’s permanent.)  So we are literally getting to know each other all over again.  Wait, why am I telling you this?  Oh yeah.  So on Wednesday a mutual friend of ours, who I work with and doesn’t have any idea about any of this, told me she was bringing the couple dinner because they had a baby about six weeks ago and she hadn’t seen them yet.  My co-worker asked me if I wanted to go with her.  I agreed, and immediately regretted it.  What if all my baggage ruined her evening with her friends?  What if we really weren’t reconciled to the dinner point (even though I had been invited over previously and timing hadn’t worked out)?  What if I said something stupid?  But then I was stuck.  How to explain to my co-worker my decision to bail without raising the alarms?  Shit, how do I get myself into these situations? Damn it!

So Thursday rolled around, which ended with “Gruesome Murder Mysteries starring Miss Francois” and I was on my bed crying trying to work up the courage to text my co-worker and tell her to go without me.  But she called me to tell me she was on her way to pick me up, and the tiny spark of keeping my commitments propelled me through the door.  Unsurprising to anyone who isn’t me, the evening was lovely.  There wasn’t any tension, or suspicion, or awkwardness.  It was simply friends having dinner.  We ate, talked about work, family, their kids, politics, the exit of Pope Benedict and the relative merits of cowboy boots versus snow boots.  While we were having tea and talking in the living room after dinner I was asked if I wanted to hold the new baby.  And suddenly I was a little afraid.  He was sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms, I didn’t want to disturb him.  But his father just picked him up and handed him to me.  Within moments the baby was asleep again.  As we sat there talking with the baby sleeping on my shoulder I couldn’t help but be stuck that something so simple was such an accomplishment.  Here were people who I had hurt very badly, and with no grudges held, invited me into their home, took an interest in my life, and trusted me with their child.  How amazing the human heart is to be that open. How lucky for me to experience something like that.  

Despite the wonderful evening I was troubled the next day (that would be yesterday).  Troubled by why I had been so afraid.  I was afraid that they would have decided to take it back.  That somehow I would get to their front door and be informed that my forgiveness was revoked because my bile had been too poisoness.  Not because that is the kind of people they are.  Clearly from what I’ve just said, they are the opposite of the kind of people who would do something like that.  But, even noting the irrationality of it, my fear had been there.   And it’s because I am starting to process the deeper movements of my sobriety.  We can only forgive other people and accept their forgiveness in return in proportion to our understanding of God’s forgiveness for us.  I’m overwhelmed as I begin to see how total God’s forgiveness for me is.  It’s more than I can really understand that God can look at me and say in all truth “I see you as you really are, I see that you burned the life I gave you to cinders, and I will take all of it to make you more beautiful than you can imagine.”  My heart and my brain and my soul can’t quite get to that without a little “um, dude, are you sure about that?”

But I will get there.  Eventually.

(1 Year, 5 Months, and 12 Days Sober)

So I had every intention of writing a post about my night out with my friend at the country bar in Virginia, but something way more ridiculous and annoying happened a couple hours ago.

Every three weeks I must venture from Silver Spring to Friendship Heights to see Angela, my waxer.  Angela is one of my favorite people in the world because with little chitchat she takes care of my mini-beard and mini-stache and expertly shapes my eyebrows.  This is a necessary evil when one has defective ovaries, but I shell out the money with little hesitation.  Usually afterwards I go over to Whole Foods, do my grocery shopping and hop on the bus back home.

This process is typically as uneventful as it sounds.  NOT TODAY!

There I am sitting as we approach the stop before Chevy Chase Circle, headphones in, bags o’ foodstuffs on the seat next to me.  I’m not really paying attention to the new passengers choosing their seats, since there are plenty, but finally I notice that there are a lot of people not sitting.  I look up and a (clearly) homeless man is standing in the aisle looking at me.  He points at my seat and asks if he can sit.  A bit flustered I agree, pick up my groceries, shift into the seat next to the window, and set my bags on my lap.  And then I mentally sigh that my trip has become slightly less pleasant, that due to no necessity at all I now have to share the bench, and I settle back into the article I was reading on my phone.

Not two blocks later:

“Do you live in Silver Spring?”

“Oh yes, I do.”  Headphones back in.

“Montgomery County?”

“Yes.” Headphones back in.  Drive two blocks.

“Sorry to bother you, but see I’m a diabetic and I have to take insulin, and that’s why I don’t work, so do you a few bucks?”

“No, sorry I don’t have any cash.”  Headphones back in.  Now, I was lying, I did have cash, and for a moment I really thought I should just give him a buck, but honestly, what a flimsy story.  Diabetes does not, to my knowledge, prevent people from working.  In fact, my old boss was diabetic and she would always rant and rave about how it didn’t make her any different that anyone else.  So, if I’m going to dig out my wallet after you’ve taken my seat I’m going to need a much better story.  But then all guilt fled:

“Well then, can I have your phone number?”

“What! No. No.”  Headphones back in.  I was starting to get annoyed at this point.  Besides the fact that what he was doing amounts to panhandling, which you aren’t supposed to do on Maryland busses or any transportation run by MetroRail (bus or train), I thought that I had made it clear I wasn’t interested in interacting.  Furthermore I wouldn’t give my phone number to a stranger on the bus even if he wasn’t homeless, unclean and twice my age.  That is just good sense.  But, apparently my disinterest wasn’t clear enough, because another couple blocks later:

“Can I have your hat?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Can I have your hat?”

I looked at his hat, and it seemed to me a nice hat, leather, fussy lining, ear flaps.  Honestly, it seemed nicer than my hat, a oversized floppy purple knit hat that makes me look like I’m on my way to a slam poetry gig.  So I asked:

“What is wrong with your hat?”

“Oh well you know, it’s cold outside.”

As far as arguments go, I couldn’t really fault him.  It is cold outside.  Knowing that I would regret it later, but just wanting him to leave me alone, I gave him my hat, put my headphones in and thought that maybe I could make it through the last 10 minutes of my ride in peace.  What was I thinking?

“Sorry to bother you again, but do you know that CD exchange on Georgia?”

“No I don’t know that store.”

“Oh it’s across from the Corey House.”

“Ok.”

“Well, I’m trying to get this CD, a Led Zepplin album, and I have 10 bucks.  If I give you the 10 bucks will you buy it for me?”

“No, no I won’t.”

“Oh, come on.  I’ll even throw in a 2 dollar tip for you.”

“Hey, I said no.  I’ve already given you my hat, so you can leave me alone now.”

“Ok, ok, you’ve said no, I can respect that.”

“Really? You can? Good.”  I was seriously pissed by this point.  And really annoyed that I have given him my hat.  Luckily, my stop arrived about a block later, and I managed to get off the bus without him asking me for my food, or my purse, or my glasses, or my hair, or to be the father of my children.

Here’s the thing.  This kind of crap happens to me all the fucking time.  I actually hate going out in public because no matter what random people with weird problems in need of something find me.  I have people who can back this up: if I step out of my door someone I don’t know will find a way to talk to me.  And I hate this.  I’m way too much of an introvert to enjoy this in any way, shape, or form.  I never know what to say, and I just end up smiling and nodding as people tell me way too many details about their personal lives. 

But what worries me more is that this is the way it is supposed to be.  I’m afraid that the continual infringement on my public space and anonymity is because God is trying to get me to do something.  On Ash Wednesday Father gave a homily about fulfilling the needs of our neighbors, and that what other people need is companionship, understanding, and compassion.  I know that that’s true, and I know that I fail at that more often than not.  I’m am much quicker to point out a person’s failings than to praise their success, and my version of spending time with other people is watching a TV show in the same room together.  But the fact that for me doing errands now comes with the high likelihood that a stranger will approach me with a story, or a request, or problem makes me feel like God is indicating some sort of generosity towards my fellow man a little bit out of the ordinary. 

And I don’t want to do that.  I don’t want God to be asking more of me.  I feel like most days I have to use all my energy holding myself together and making the best of what I’ve already got.  I don’t want to give of myself anymore that I already do unless I would be doing so for my husband and children.  I don’t want to open myself up and become the servant to total strangers, even though that is what I am asked to do anyway in the name of Christ.  Nope, not interested at this time.  Family, friends, roommate, co-workers, students, other AAers, friends of friends, yes, I will give all those people my time, attention, affection, and energy.  But I’m pretty sure God is calling me towards something more and I would very much like to send that call to voicemail.

And I will self-indulgently display me desire to flaunt God’s will by going tomorrow to buy a new hat because it is still fucking February and fucking cold.

(1 Year, 4 Months, and 26 Days Sober)

“Crawl through the space between Miss Francois’ legs!  It’s the doorway to a new world!”

So said a 1st grader in after care yesterday.  There I was, “supervising” the children (and by that I mean reading National Review Online on my phone and keeping an ear out for signs of distress), when this nugget of wisdom rang out across the room.  I was so shocked two of them had already made it from the regular old multi purpose room to the Narnia I (apparently) guard before I notices there was a train of crawling children beneath me.

And this about sums up my week.  It was really strange.  And I didn’t really know what to do with it.  Vacillating between mild depression and exhausting frustration, I just never knew where I was.  Between bouts of fevered sleep and like-pulling-teeth lessons, I seemed bombarded by internal conflicts with no clear resolution.

So while I am still mildly depressed, frustrated, conflicted, unresolved, and a bit fevered, I have to realize that at one point this week a very small person said something so unexpected to me that I am still laughing about it days later.

Can’t be a total waste.

(I year, 4 Months, and 5 Days Sober)