On Tuesday my friends Becca and Sean lost two of their daughters; Olivia aged 6 and Emma aged 3.

The danger of tragedy is fear that God didn’t answer our prayers. In the face of a loss there is space and in that space fear can all too easily grow. There will never be a reason that my rational mind will understand for why these two beautiful little girls are no longer alive. Were God to explain it to me, I still wouldn’t understand, as I do not hold all of creation in my grasp.

I have never seen more love, more generosity, kindness, care and hope, poured out by friends and strangers. God hears the words of our hearts, for the words from our mouths will never be enough, and gives that forth in our actions.

Without doubt and without fear we mourn two lives lost.

(2 Years, 6 Months, and 4 Days Sober)

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Kevin and I on St. Patrick’s Day 2007.

Almost everyone is still asleep. I know the car is waiting for me. Sunlight is starting to shine across the living room floor. I step gingerly between the people curled up in sleepingbags, searching faces, desperately looking. Des, Leah and Alissa are in the corner. Rueda is sprawled out on the couch, Christian and Toke on the floor below. With each familiar face, every friend I know, I grow more frantic. Time is running out. Suddenly Charlie grabs my shoulders.

“Andrea, you have to leave. It’s time to go.”

“I can’t Charlie. I didn’t say goodbye. I have to say goodbye.”

“It’s okay. He knows. You have to go now. Can’t you hear that?”

I wake up suddenly, the pounding at my door almost thunderous now. Whoever is there has been trying to wake me up for a while now. I grab my house sweater and stumble to the door, confused by my dream and even more so by why someone is trying to wake me up so early on a Sunday. Bleary-eyed, I open the door. Jennie is there.

“I have to tell you something but I don’t know how. Kevin died.”

That was five years ago.

I spent the rest of the day with Jennie, eating way way too much Italian food and going to a movie, just to not have to say anything for a while.  There were a lot of words that day.  It seemed like I spent the entire day on the phone, calling out-of-town friends who hadn’t heard, or who I didn’t think should find out via the internet.  I repeated again and again the few details I knew.  Finally the sun went down and the wine came out, and we all sat in my apartment, smoking and drinking and not knowing what to say.

The next few days were pretty much the same.  The evening of Kevin’s wake I came home to find a rejection letter from CUA, telling me that I would not be offered a place in their PhD program.  It was perfect timing, because I couldn’t care less that my future was basically shot to hell.

I cried, but I didn’t cry excessively, and I tried my best not to cry in front of his family.  They were devastated, it wasn’t my place.  But also, I could feel my grief inside my chest, sitting there, isolated and detached.  I’d had plenty of experience with death and I knew different types of grief (confused anger for my grandfather, overwhelming shock for my father, sad relief for my grandmother that she was no longer suffering from Alzheimer’s) but for Kevin, I could see the grief inside, but wrapped up, I didn’t know what was in there.

I knew something was wrong with me.  I knew I was reacting strangely.  But I didn’t want to think about it.  I just wanted to drink.

Kevin’s death pushed me out of the DC area.  I’d been unemployed for months.  I was broke and had already had one brush with eviction for not paying my rent.  Everyday I consumed more wine and sent out less resumes.  And after Kevin’s death I couldn’t look at any of my friends.  I was ashamed of myself, but at the time I couldn’t say why.  Within weeks I called my mom and asked to come home.  I convinced my landlord not to charge me for breaking my lease, sold all my furniture and appliances, drunkenly boxed up the things I wanted to keep (many of which broke, a discovery I made last summer when I finally opened those boxes) and threw one last night out at the bar.  That was a good night.  Everyone celebrated and my friend Dark Dan got so drunk he knocked over a line of potted trees like dominoes.

And I went home.  I refused to talk about Kevin, unless I was so drunk that I was about to pass out.  I would mention him, start to cry and immediately stop, have one last drink and sleep the whole next day.  Even when I moved back to DC-ish, got a job, etc. I refused to talk about Kevin.  My grief for him, still in its box, simply stayed in my chest.  I wasn’t ignoring it, I knew it was there.  Once a year, on March 15th, I would look at his Facebook page, write him a little message, cry for a few minutes, and then make myself stop.

One night I was walking home from an AA meeting.  I was few months sober and my interior was total chaos.  Suddenly, standing on the corner waiting for the light, I started sobbing.  The wrapping had fallen off the box and for the first time I could see my grief.  But not just my grief.  I could see my secret.

I was jealous that Kevin got to die and I didn’t.

I wasn’t jealous of how many people loved him.  I wasn’t jealous of how his wrecked family would never be the same without him.  I wasn’t jealous of what a wonderful person he was.  I was jealous that his journey had ended, that he was with God and there was no more suffering for him.

I had wanted the peace he had.

I couldn’t put that into words at the time of his death, but it was true nonetheless and the shame of that truth was almost worse than the truth itself.  That shame enveloped any conversation I had with Kate about her brother.  And until today I don’t think I have ever said aloud to another person what I really felt.  Who wants to admit that while others were mourning a life cut short and a world less lovely for his loss, she was cursing what a lucky bastard he was that he didn’t have to deal with any shit anymore.

(Truthfully I can’t believe I’m writing any of this.  I guess I can’t have it inside me anymore.)

So, Kevin, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry I dishonored your life by wishing your death upon myself.  I’m sorry I could not comfort those you left behind because I was too twisted up in trying to destroy myself.  I’m sorry I never believed in myself the way you believed in me.  I’m sorry I ran.  I’m sorry I bailed the last time I could have seen you because it was too much of a hassle for me to show up.  I’m sorry I couldn’t grieve for you these last 5 years.

I’m sorry I don’t talk about you.  I’m sorry I don’t tell people how you were funny and loyal and kind.  I’m sorry I don’t tell people how you never gave up on those you loved, how everyone always got another chance because you had an unwavering faith that anyone can be better.  I’m sorry I don’t tell people how proud I was I of you, how you turned your life around, and lived your faith so beautifully.

I’m sorry.

I met Kevin my senior year of college when he arrived as a freshman.  He was my friend Kate’s younger brother.  We immediately bonded over sarcasm and my ability to provide him with free coffee.  He was the best bullshitter I’d ever met, and I spent some of the best hours of my life sitting with Kevin, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and talking about nothing.  Years passed, and the conversations became less about nothing, but they were no less enjoyable.

I miss him.

I miss my friend very much.  I hope that now I can grieve for him, not for myself.

(2 Years, 5 Months, and 25 Days Sober)

I’m sure that there are millions of small revelations that new parents experience. Minor annoyances or obstacles that no one mentioned in their homespun wisdom, or PhD riddled books, or their holistic blogs.

One of the correlations in teaching is lice. When you’re interviewing, observing, practice teaching, etc. no one once mentions lice. They never tell you how often you’ll have to check for it, how much work you’ll need to put into erradicating it, how many decisions you’ll have to make about proper lice procedure, about how to deal with the parent who doesn’t care so won’t do anything, or the sadness you feel when you have to say that one child can’t hug another because one has bugs and the other doesn’t (yet). Lice is such a common school-age problem that no one thinks to tell you that it will be a part of your future.

And it’s ok that way. You shouldn’t be informed of every eventuality in your life. It’s not that it spoils the surprise in life, but rather that it builds common sense. Common sense is the ability to differentiate between a problem and a tragedy and to respond according in the most straightforward and helpful manner.

Common sense is being aware of context.

Not all situations have equal potential for dire consequences, not all actions have equal moral weight, not all opinions have equal validity. And being able to tell the difference is what separates the adult from the child.

Of course, even an adult sometimes need another adult to pull them aside and say “By the way, you’re being bat-shit crazy about this, and it’s not that big a deal, so calm the fuck down.” I need that a lot.

But I feel a sense of pride when I can accept a situation for what it is and work through it without throwing a fit. Lice is an annoyance. A time-consuming, expensive, exhausting annoyance, but an annoyance none the less.

I spent almost 3 hours this morning nit-picking students. I had to spend almost 50 dollars on supplies. By the time it was finished it was lunchtime and I was totally wrecked. I had been so concentrated on such a detailed task for so long that there was no way I could think anymore. The afternoon was a giant waste; we did the bare minimum of work possible.

And that’s just the way it goes sometimes. You can’t prepare for every single thing that could happen in a day. If I had my way no kid would ever get lice, and I wouldn’t have to give up a huge deal of teaching time to sifting through hair. Be that as it may, I’m grateful for a chance to solve something new (to me) and to be on the other side of something I used to fear with the knowledge that it isn’t as bad as I thought.

It is a relief to learn a small lesson in a safe way. Doesn’t happen like that for me too often.

(2 Years, 5 Months, and 20 Days Sober)

So the last post I wrote was kind of a downer.

Well, only if you replace the words “kind of” with “a complete.”

I think I recall saying something at the beginning of this year about trying to be more grateful, looking for the good things in my life.  This sounds vaguely familiar.  But then stress, and disappointment, and fear set in.

And there is nothing like a call from your parish priest asking if you’ve got cabin fever to snap you right out of your self-indulgent malaise.  When you hear the question “Are you doing alright?” and you realize that you are WAY too embarrassed to answer honestly and say “You know what, no, I haven’t been doing alright, because I don’t think anyone loves me enough, or appreciates me enough, or showers me with enough affection, dammit, and therefore I have been having a crying, angry, pity-party for like a week.”  Wait, no I can’t say that.

“I’m okay.  I took a walk.”

And I am okay.  And I did take a walk.  I finally mailed my tax worksheets to my accountant, which I had ready two weeks ago, but I’ve been too busy crying or sleeping to mail.

I vacillate easily between having zero expectations (I would like another human being to acknowledge that I exist) and have fantastical expectations (I want someone to make it their sole mission in life to please me in every way and wrap me in comfort and protection so that I may never be troubled by anything ever at all for the rest of my life).  As my heart becomes more fixated on the later, the former comes crashing down. They feed on each other, reinforcing anxieties and doubts that only thrive in dishonesty and darkness.

In seeing both as united, as dimensions of a single lack of faith, then the way out is much easier.  If I do not believe that God truly loves me, completely, fully, as I am, in hope of all I will be, with patience for my failings, with no desire for reward, then I will always look for love to be “proved” and I will always be disappointed.

Now, this seems like I’m still being a downer.  And maybe I am.  But I don’t mean to be.  Lent beings tomorrow.  This is the last day of celebration before 40 days of penance, prayer, sacrifice.  I’ve kind of skipped Lent for the last couple years.  I start out on Ash Wednesday with the idea that this year I’ll be amazing.  I’ll give up everything I enjoy, I’ll pray all the time, I won’t complain about anything, I’ll be a radiant font of joy to my fellow man.

By Friday I have given up, and usually decided to test run some new sins that maybe would fit well into my regular rotation.

Then Easter arrives, I act like I’m surprised it did, rush to confession (at least by Pentecost) and say “Next year, next year I’ll do Lent right!”

I’m going to try something different this year.  I’m going to try being normal.  I’m going to try giving up one thing and adding one thing.  Not big things.  I’m going to try giving up Diet Coke.  I love Diet Coke.  I drink about equal amounts water and Diet Coke each day.  It has been a part of my life since I can remember.  But it is also a burden.  It stretches my tight food budget.  It’s heavy to carry home from the grocery store.  It gives my acid reflux.  Clearly, it’s not something helpful for me that makes my life happy.  It’s something that I am used to.  Something that I enjoy, but that I could probably do without.

It’s not a sacrifice equal to Christ sacrifice on the Cross.  It couldn’t be.  Nothing I could do could be.  And I shouldn’t try to make it into such.  Or pretend that it is supposed to be such.

So really, for Lent, I’m just going to try being a little more realistic.

(2 Year, 5 Months, and 14 Days Sober)

You know what I really hate?

I hate the fact that when you act like an asshole, there’s no way to escape it.

I was losing it all last week, and by Friday I was unfit for human company. That didn’t stop me from going to work, acting like a hysterical tyrant to my students and then throwing a hissy fit during a staff meeting.

I could say that there are a lot of reasons that I went down to crazy town. It’s been a long winter. I’m too demanding on myself and others. I’m trying to handle too many issues at once. I’m underslept. I’m underpaid. The list could go on and on.

The truth: sometimes I’m an asshole.

Sometimes anyone and everyone can be an asshole. I’m not special in this. I just find it particularly unpleasent when I am the one being an asshole, because then I’m trapped.

Open Facebook? Oh, there are the co-workers I spewed posion at. Go to Mass? Yup, there’s one of my students with her family. Stay at home and read? Well, fuckballs, then I have to be alone with my thoughts, regrets and guilt.

There is no way to say, “Can we all just pretend THAT didn’t happen?”

People are forgiving. They do pretend. It doesn’t mean they forgot, just that they’re too nice to pile on when I already feel ashamed of my behavior.

And that is it’s own form of torture.

(2 Years, 5 Months and 12 Days Sober)

I’ve eaten so much damn chocolate in the last five days I’m surprised I’m still alive.

Or maybe I’m not.  Alive that is.

I joked last year, and this year it is even more true, that as long as I remain a elementary school teacher at a girls school, I won’t need a boyfriend on Valentine’s Day, because my students will drown me in sugar and cards.

I feel vaguely embarrassed by holidays.  Very short people walk up to me with super ernest expressions and give me gifts with misspelled cards.  I never know what to do.  I’m a pretty demanding teacher.  I have high standards and I don’t hide it so well when I’m disappointed.  (It’s a running joke among the staff at my school that I’m way too mean to teach 8 year olds.)  My students consider it a Herculean triumph if one of them makes me laugh.  So holidays, like Christmas and Valentine’s Day, are one of the few times that my students have the opportunity to show any affection for me.  And it’s because I can’t stop them.

Their sincerity just kills me.

It’s not surprising, since any sincerity kills me.  Emotions should all be cloaked in a protective layer of sarcasm with a lining of mockery.  And anyone attempting to show that they care for me in any way makes my skin itch.  I was listening to the atrocious sermon last night (7PM Mass at St. Michael’s is the punishment for putting sitting on my couch knitting and watching Dr. Who as a higher priority than God) about “love.”  It was a rambling mess of cliches and song lyrics (not joking!) so I started thinking about other stuff.  (Don’t judge, you do it too when sermons suck.)  The gospel was about Christ explaining how there is a seeming infinite regression of responsibilities within each commandment (do not kill also means don’t hold anger against others).  This makes sense to me: there is always more you can do.  No matter what, there is room for improvement.

I easily turn this on myself.  I fixate on the times that I have failed in love for others.  The times I’ve been unkind, gossip-y, vengeful, or dismissive.  Without any effort I can rattle off a list of (recent) times where I’ve failed to be charitable or understanding, when I’ve blamed others for things that couldn’t possible be their responsibility, when I have assumed that others have a person vendetta against me.  I have a disaster taking out the trash last week, complained about it on Facebook, my roommate saw my complaint, and I felt horrid, because I shouldn’t have made her feel like I was unwilling to take out the trash.  

But this so easily becomes its own kind of selfishness.  I’m not God.  My love is not a bountiful outpouring of my infinite being for which there can be no equal return.  And focusing only on how I love others is trying to pretend I am God.  I leave very little room for others to show that they love me and therefore I close the world in on myself.  I’m not good at making gestures of affection, so I don’t want other people to try to make them to me.  A student gives me a Valentine’s Day card and all I can think about is when I made her sad by correcting her posture (a million times), instead of recognizing that it’s important for her to give me the card (if only so that maybe I’ll ease up on the posture correction).

A couple weeks after I stopped drinking (or maybe a couple of days, that whole time was kind of a mess) I was talking with a friend.  He and I have always had a rather “honest” relationship, meaning that he wasn’t so concerned about bruising my delicate little feelings.

“Seriously Andrea, how did this happen?”

“Really?  Well, really, I just didn’t want anyone to miss me when I died.”

“You fucking idiot.  You’re so fucking dumb.  You don’t get to decide if we miss you or not.  It’s not up to you if we love you or not, you asshole.”

“Um, thanks.”

“And we missed you.”

*SOB*

This conversation stays with me, kind of living in the back of my mind, because it’s still not something I’m comfortable with.  Not what he said, but what it means.  I still want it to be all about me.  I want to be in control.  Because if I control how other people feel about me, I won’t disappoint them.  If my student hate me then they won’t notice how much I fail them everyday.

But for the last five days I’ve worked my way through an immense chocolate reminder that I don’t dictate what others feel.

(2 Years, 4 Months, and  27 Days Sober)

I, like most people, have a very old pair of Chuck Taylors that are falling to bits.  There are holes in the heel and ball of both soles.  The rubber along the sides has completely split.  I wouldn’t call them black so much as “formerly black.”

I love these shoes.  I’ve had them for years.  I can’t remember when I bought them, but I think I’ve had them since I lived in Texas, which was five and a half years ago.  If I’m correct (and while I can distinctly remember buying other colors of Chucks, I’m 99 precent sure I haven’t bought new black ones) then these little shoes have been through quite a time.  From Texas, to Maryland, to Oregon, (back) to Maryland.  From grad school drop out, to unemployed, to dead-end employed and finally to joyfully employed.  From backyard BBQs, to hipster dives, to seedy dive-dives, to AA meetings and Target dates.  These shoes have carried me to and from movies, museums, weddings, family vacations, holidays, hang-outs, errands, hospitals, doctor’s appointments, beaches, mountains, Stonehenge, Mount Vernon, Juneau, house parties, Church, and once, a courthouse.

But I can’t wear them anymore.

I started spiritual direction about a month ago (after the Epiphany incident).  It’s been slow going, but not in a bad way.  When I ask someone to take time out of their day to talk to me I suddenly become a total idiot who can’t sting two words together.  But Fr. seems to understand that I’m just frightened, so mostly we’re just getting in the habit of me showing up and answering a few questions about how I’m doing.  Two weeks ago (ish) he asked me to think about not holding on to my brokenness, the things that separate me from others and from God.  I immediately thought of my shoes.

I’ve known for over a year that I needed to replace my black Chucks.  I couldn’t wear them if it had rained within the last 24 hours, because there are too many holes for water to seep in.  Even if it were dry, all the holes have ruined a few pairs of socks.  Any outfit immediately went from “cutely-casual” to “wow, you gave up when you got to your feet.”  When my mother and sister visited for Thanksgiving, we went to Mount Vernon.  I accidentally stepped in a soggy patch of ground and got mud all on the inside of my shoe.  My sister was so sad that I was wearing hole-y shoes that she gave me a gift certificate for Christmas to Zappos in exactly the amount for a replacement pair.

I just couldn’t bring myself to order the replacement pair.  But when Fr. asked me to consider letting go of some of my brokenness, I knew it was time.  Not because he was in any way talking about an old pair of shoes.  He of course meant spiritual/emotional brokenness, not shoes.  But I like metaphors.  And in many ways, my outside is how I sort out my inside.  (The real broken thing on the inside isn’t something I’m ready to talk about publicly yet.)

I order new Chucks last week.  And when they arrived I put the whole box in the closet and refused to even open it.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been hounded by a parent who thinks her daughter needs more difficult math work.  Every time I try to explain that the student hasn’t mastered the assigned material, the mom tells me that her daughter doesn’t do the work correctly because it is too easy, and then we both end up semi-yelling.  Then she goes and complains to my Assistant Headmaster about me.  We’ve repeated this cycle almost weekly since mid-January.  I’m exhausted.  AHM is exhausted.  The only one with any energy left for this fight seems to be the mother.  I tried arguing my point.  I tried ignoring her.  I tried giving her what she told me she wanted.  Now we are at the point where what I gave wasn’t good enough, so she’s making new demands.  By the end of last week I had cried all my tears, had all my days of hiding in my apartment because I couldn’t face other human beings, all my hours of self-doubt and my nail were bitten down to bloody stumps.  I to AHM that I was simply going to stop checking my email.  Since he refused to accept that as a solution, he played therapist trying to figure out why this whole thing was upsetting me so much.  Finally he asked me:

“Well, how do you feel as a math teacher?”

“I’m ok.  It’s not my worst subject.  That’s religion. But math is just above that.”

“What would you say your strongest subject is?”

“Poetry.”

“Ah.  So, she’s hitting you in your weakness.”

I was so defeated by this conversation I went to sleep at 7 PM that night and woke up crying the next morning.  (Luckily it was a Saturday!)

You see, I was caught in a strange position.

I hate being weak.  I mean I hate it more than I hate almost anything.  But I’m proud of being broken.  I’m refuse to acknowledge my weaknesses until it is humiliating.  I shout my damage from the rooftops for anyone to hear.

Weakness seems to me to be the natural state I was born into; the least intelligent in my family, the most prone to emotionalism, the normal looking girls with an endless supply of very pretty friends, the one who “never lives up to her potential.”  I  react like a banshee when someone points out to me where I need to improve because I hear them piling on to a lifetime of “not good enough.”

Brokenness, on the other hand, is a perverse badge of honor.  Through choices and circumstances I’ve managed to cultivate some deep fissures in my soul, cracks that leave me alone in ways I don’t need to be.  But that brokenness is mine.  I made it.  No one gave it to me, and it’s a testament to what a good little fuck-up I can be.  I look pretty normal, and then I get to shock people by telling them secrets about just what a mess I’ve (at times) made my life, just what horrid things I’ve done to people, just what chaos I’ve left simply by being present.  And I get to do so with smile, daring them to call me out as a bad person.  It’s my favorite game in the world.  A game where I’m the only possible winner.

If I’m seeing my own situation clearly, it seems I can only have one.  I can be weak or I can be broken, but I have to choose.  If I choose to be broken I get to keep my twisted amusement, but I have to accept that my weakness will be permanent.  If I choose to be weak I have to be humble and honest, but there is the option that I can be better, with hard work and grace.

I took the new shoes out of the box and put them in the closet where the old ones were before.  I asked a few teachers around school if I can observe how they teach math and when my next paycheck comes I’m ordering a book titled “How to Be an Outstanding Math Teacher – Primary Grades.”

(2 Years, 4 Months and 23 Days Sober)

Memories can be remade.

Well, not remade, so much as patched over.

It’s no shock to anyone to say that relationships change over time.  If you’re an alcoholic (and I mean in the drinking-ness of it all) and you hold on to a single friend, that friend is the friend you drink with.  Your friendship may have begun as fun and meaningful and compassionate.  But if you’ve reached the point where you have no will to live and booze is the final solution, if there is someone there with you from days gone by, it’s because they can drink just as much and just as regularly as you do.  Now, it’s not necessarily true that that other person is an alcoholic as well, but if they’re in it with you, it mean they can hold their own.  All recovering alcoholics have former “drinking buddies.”  In my case a good friend became a drinking buddy.

Over years, and location changes, and mistakes, and choices, and many things I will never understand, a person who came into my life as a friend who made me laugh and helped me throw Christmakah parties and held my hand when I cried, left my life through my silence.  I made the decision not to speak to her anymore.  I was 3 months sober.  I didn’t return phone calls or texts.  I just stopped talking.

I think we both knew it was coming, but it was a huge decision for me.  And one that I had to assign a hierarchy of motivation/effect to: my primary motivation was to make a clean break from the worst of my drinking past so that I could build a new life sober, but the secondary effect of that was that she was hurt.  It was without a doubt in my mind the most intentionally selfish thing I have ever done.  I made the choice to act in a way that put my needs ahead of, and at the expense of, another person’s.  For two years I tried not to think about it.  Not to berate myself for being so unloving, not to nurse grudges over wounds long past.  I just wanted to put it away.  I didn’t see the point in parsing out blame or reminiscing about “that one time we…”

But I heard through the grapevine a while back that she was pregnant.  I tried to have no emotional response to this whatsoever.  I attempted to build distance between myself and any type of reaction; God’s will, individual paths, my side of the street, etc.  I did a pretty good job of staying entirely neutral (within my own mind) despite some minor hiccups.  (And by hiccup I mean hysterical sobbing.)  On Thursday she had her baby, and by Friday the low-level headache I’d been fighting all week exploded into a vengeful migraine coupled with nausea and hearing loss.

I went home from work early.

On Sunday I took a walk with my co-worker Mary.  Mary is incredibly practical and no-nonsense.  She just doesn’t put up with anything resembling bullshit.  I guess I needed to talk to someone more than I thought I did, because I ended up telling her about how things were for me when my friend Kevin died.  Turns out she was at his wake as well, and even though I knew her family was close to his family, it didn’t occur to me that we had crossed paths 5 years ago.  Talking about Kevin led to talking about my other friend.  Finally I let this out:

“You know, she and her husband lived across the street from where I live now.  Every day I walk by the porch where I drank away 2 years of my life.  I see it whenever I have to go anywhere.”

I had been thinking about this for a while, but I think her having her baby made me say it out loud to someone else.  I try not to look at the porch, but it is no joke between me and everything I ever need to get to.  And sometimes I can’t help but look and in looking there are so many questions: why did I let it get so bad? why didn’t I see what was happening? why was my friend helping me die? is she sorry?  am I sorry? could I have made a different choice?

Mary’s response was perfect:

“Let’s go do cartwheels on their old lawn.”

So we did.  In the evening, in front of plenty of foot traffic, a couple of 30-year-old women did none too graceful cartwheels on the lawn in front of a 1st story apartment at a major intersection.  It doesn’t take away the old memories (those that I have, because let’s be honest, most of it is a haze), and it doesn’t take away the questions.  But it give me something new to add; a pleasant memory to temper the painful ones.

I have been so concentrated on removing things from my past; of examining, dealing, labeling, and putting away.  I’ve never denied the value of painful experiences, which are after all, how we develop character and wisdom.  But I’ve never tried to add a non-painful present to a past pain.  I’ve never tried to bring that which happened and reshape it into something hopeful of what could be.

I may never have the answers to the questions of the porch of the past.  But I may be able to ask new questions about possibilities of the future.

I suggest cartwheels for everyone.

(2 Years, 4 Months and 2 Days Sober)

My resolution for 2014 is to take more time to appreciate the easy happy things.

And so far it’s going really well.

I’ve eaten cupcakes for breakfast the last two days running.  (I use running as in ongoing, not actually movement of my body through space.  Please.)  On January 1st, around 11am, there was a knock at my door.  I was in bed sleeping off the full day of travel on the 31st that took me from Portland to DC.  My roommate was huddled in bed, valiantly fighting the cold that wouldn’t end.  I decided to be the nicer person and answer the door.  A slightly disgruntled looking man said “Andrea?” and upon my nod handed me a pink and black bag.  He turned without another word.  The bag was from Georgetown Cupcake (as was pressumably, the deliver man) and inside was a pink box, holding a dozen gluten-free cupcakes.  (Well, what else would be in the box?)  The card said:

FREEEEEDOM!!!!! AND MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

It was a gift from Katie.  I knew she was sending me something (there had been a slight scheduling problem due to my leaving town) but I admit I was totally floored.  Floored by my friend’s generosity and thoughtfulness, not to mention her ability to put up with my endless (and childish) complaining about a co-worker.  And then I faced the question: what do I do with a dozen cupcakes sent to me in celebration of an event I really had nothing to do with?

Simple answer: eat them.  For breakfast.

2013 was kind of a slog.  It was a long year, and much more emotional than I care for.  Every time I turned around it seemed I was embroiled in some sort of painful and difficult situation, either of my own making in the present, or unresolved damage from the past. There was much more “I have to” than “I want to” and that just drains you after a while.  I wouldn’t say it was a bad year.  There wasn’t an tragedy that marred the landscape.  There wasn’t some demon I felt I would never escape from.  No, in fact, I had a lot of good things.  I got better at my job.  I spent time with family and friends.  I enjoyed books and movies and music and art.  I stayed sober.  I wouldn’t say that there was anything bad about 2013.

But it was long, and sort of dreary.  And I think that was mostly me.  Mostly because I didn’t want to see what was fun and sweet and hilarious about my life.  I’ve always had a problem showing gratitude in my daily life.  I pray when in need, but I forget to pray in thanks.  I tend to look at good things as the consolation for all the shitty things I’m so good at identifying (and magnifying).  And I would like to change that.

(2 Years, 3 Months, and 13 Days Sober)