Or in my case TWO!

Two days off of work due to snow!

(Can you tell I’m excited?)

I don’t usually appreciate getting texts at 4:49 AM, but in the case of MoCo telling me I don’t have to get out of bed, I’m totally okay with it.  I’m a little sad that the library is holding my next Percy Jackson book hostage, but really, if the library was open, then the schools would be open, and I would be at work, and I wouldn’t have the book anyway, so, it’s not like I’m really loosing out.

In certain cases, perspective really does matter.

Yesterday I trudged (yes, trudged, my sock had fallen in my boot and was rubbing the hell out of my heal) through the melting ice to the grocery store, because I wanted to make soup.

There are only 2 months when it would even be possible for me to know what the inside of a grocery store looks like on a Monday at 11:00 AM, and December isn’t one of those months.  What I saw was this: many senior citizens, and a lot of moms with school-aged children.  The senior citizens ignored me, but every few minutes one of the moms would give me the stink eye.  I guess my relaxed and unshowered demeanor gave away the fact that I had less work for the very same reason that they had more.  Had any of the moms asked me to explain why I felt so justified in being happy, I would have simply replied: “Ma’am, I’m sorry you have an interruption to your routine, I can sympathize, but I won’t apologize for being overjoyed that I can stay home today and make soup and drink cinnamon tea and work on my knitting.”

But it isn’t just randos at the store.  When I don’t work it is harder for my roommate to work.  She works from our living room.  I usually leave in the morning before she wakes up and I don’t come home in the evening until she’s done.  But when I have a weekday off, then I’m here: making noise, competing for bandwidth, using the toilet paper.  (Seriously, over the summer when I didn’t work we went through so much more toilet paper it was crazy!)   I don’t try to be in her way, but people being what they are and space being what it is, my presence is a significant change to her daily routine.  (Plus, I practice my scream therapy in my room.  Maybe that is a bit distracting for her?)

Some things are yes or no, black or white, right or wrong.  And other things just happen, and what they are depends on who you are.  I hate the moral relativism that directly results from purely emotional anecdotal argument; everyone has a friend, or an uncle, or a loose connection to whatever misfortune/poor choice you want to advocate for.  When someone starts a sentence “As a parent…” or “As a teacher…” or “As a wombat…” I immediately stop listening to them.  I want to reply “As Andrea, I don’t care.” no matter what they happen to be saying.  It’s a struggle for me to remember that they way people see things based on their experience actually matters in their understanding.

A few weeks ago I ended up telling two teachers and a parent at school that I’m a recovering alcoholic in what was probably the worst way possible.  In other circumstances I wouldn’t have told them at all, and the way it happened left me feeling vulnerable and horrified the next day.  I was so distracted that I walked to the mile and half to the grocery store in 30 degree weather without my debit card and ended up having to have the checker cancel the whole thing and running out of the store in tears.  (Am I the only one concerned by how many of my stories have to do with the grocery store?)  As time went on I kept thinking about what was making me so upset?  I wasn’t worried that these people were going to tell everyone and suddenly I would be the subject of gossip and scandal.  I wasn’t worried that it would put my job in danger; my Assistant Headmaster knows and doesn’t seem to think it affects my work.  I wasn’t even worried that these 3 people might think poorly of me.

What I came to was this: information enlarges experience, and experience deepens understanding.  The more information about myself that I give to others, the greater our experience is between one another.  And the greater that mutual experience, the more then will I understand them and in turn be understood by them.  I will become more real to them and they will become more real to me.

When another person is real you can’t ignore the snow day scenario.

When I was first sober Fridays were my worst days at work. 

At my old job, which I hated, and by Friday I was so worn out by all the stupid shit I had to do and put up with that I had no energy left.  The only way I would make it through Friday was knowing that I could start drinking before the sun went down and there would be no immediate consequences, as Saturday was reserved for sleeping, and then more drinking.  Yup, alco-logic is stunning.  So the first few months of sobriety were rough all around, but Fridays were just brutal.  I was miserable all day and then basically went home to white-knuckle it until Saturday morning, when everything looked a lot brighter.  Friday, the great reward to everyone else, was to me the great chasm of misery.

Things got better when I started teaching, because when I got home from work on Fridays I would cry for about 17 minutes and then fall asleep until Sunday afternoon.  I was too tired to be depressed, or think about drinking.   

I was sitting in adoration this evening and that feeling started to creep up on me again.  Not the “I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to make it through this day without a drink” but rather the “well, shit, there is silence waiting for me at home, and this week has kind of sucked” feeling.  It made me think of those other Fridays, those nights that seemed so empty that I would just get lost in them and fear I would never find my way out.

Friday is the day I feel my single-ness most acutely.  The weekend is fine, I’ve got more than enough shit to do.  Work nights are fine, as there is always more work to do.  I feel most single on Friday not because I want to go out, not because of some cliche of youth that demands I be compiling stories and perpetuating my sleep-deprived state.  No, it’s because on Friday night I just want someone to take care of me.  I want someone else to make me dinner.  I want someone to choose which episode of Doctor Who to watch.  I want someone there to hug me, refill my coffee cup, and help me make a grocery list.  It’s the time when I am honest enough to admit that I would like another human being to love me enough to care for me and that I wished I loved another human being enough to let him do that.  I make decisions for other people all day all week long; I direct everything and that’s exhausting.  But between the end of work and bedtime on Fridays, that exhaustion takes on a more emotional life than it does any other time.

But it’s a fantasy.  Like always, an image I’ve built in my head makes me unhappy about something that I don’t have.  I don’t have a perfect man who attends my every need without any sacrifice on my part, because no one has that.  It isn’t real.  When I am married it will be to someone who also worked all week, who also has concerns and difficulties, who may at times need my support more than I need his.  

I must constantly ask myself if what is making me unhappy is a real misfortune, or just a projected desire to be the only thing that matters.

(2 Years, 2 Months and 16 Days Sober)

I decided to take a break from my life today.

After an utterly exhausting round of parent/teacher conferences, I decided that I would just not today: not shower, not get dressed, not get out of bed, not eat food that is good for me, not watch high quality programming.  You see, for all I complain about it, I really do like my life.  It’s difficult and frustrating, but full of love and silliness and dorky goodness.  Yesterday I used a quote from Game of Thrones as a spelling test sentence and I just about choked trying not to laugh at myself.  I’m amazing.

But something is coming.  I can feel it.  I know it sounds stupid to say, but be it tragedy or triumph, something is about to happen in my life.  I don’t know if it will come from the outside or if I will initiate from the inside.  I just know that everything is a little off right now.  My life feels too small for me.  Wounds that have been long festering are starting to heal.  Habit that I was holding onto because their pain was comforting are no longer a comfort and do not seem that much of a burden to release.  I feel neither frightened by the future or belabored in the present.  

Knowing this, or knowing at least that I think this, today was like a little mini-vacation, before whatever happens happens.  I have work and chores and library books.  All those things are still there.  But today I have naps and bad TV.  I had a few hours to choose not to be focused and committed and dutiful.  

But I think my roommate would really appreciate it if I cleaned my dishes.

(2 Years, 1 Month and 26 Days Sober)

The Name I Gave My Nightmares will be going on maternity leave at the end of December.

Thank fuck.

Seriously.  Thank fuck.

I know it makes me a bad person, but last week I counted the work day I have left with her.  I texted KP with the information and now we’ve taken to making signs and sending pictures to each other, counting down the time left in my own personal purgatory.  At the time I just needed to know how much longer I had to deal.  After today, well, I’ll have to think of some way to celebrate, because IF I still drank I would get loaded on the last day.  (I don’t, and I won’t.)

We were talking today, and I mentioned how certain chapters of the religion book seem oddly structured to me.  The writers grouped together some commandments that I think should be handled separately, specifically a chapter on purity and stealing.  I’m sorry, I just don’t like teaching a chapter to 3rd graders on purity.  It makes them and me uncomfortable.  It’s too big a subject for them.  So to link it with something fairly straightforward like stealing seems like a poor editorial choice, in my opinion.  Well, apparently I’m wrong.  She told me that, you know, the last two commandments go together, about not coveting your neighbor’s goods or your neighbor’s wife, so it makes sense, because:

“Purity is keeping people from coveting you.”

Please, everyone, take a moment to absorb that.  That is a direct quote.

My immediate “NO IT ISN’T!” had her backtracking to “well, that’s what modesty is.”  And that was when I died just a little on the inside, pulled out my phone, and started talking about the weather.  I just didn’t have it in me to fight with so much stupid.  I believe that the institute from which she earned it should revoke her Master’s degree in Theology.  I believe she should buy a dictionary.

And I believe she should go on maternity leave tomorrow.

Just to clarify, because for all my lack of knowledge on Catholicism, I do know some things, modesty is being circumspect and restrained in your behavior.  While that includes clothing, it also includes what you say and to whom.  It is an attitude of privacy, of retaining your dignity as a human being.  It is much deeper than the avoidance of being sexual objectified by refusing to wear scandalous clothing.  Purity is something else all together.  Purity is devotion in mind, heart and body to God.  It is ordering your desires to the will of God so that you may love him above all other things.  It is very easy to believe that these are virtues confined to sexuality and sexual behavior, but they aren’t.  The mind can be as easily corrupted with excessive violence as it can will excessive sexuality.  And one can easily be covered head to toe, but be immodest in speech.

Now, yes, it is difficult to cultivate purity without modesty.  But it is not that difficult to appear modest and not be truly striving towards purity.  And the trappings of modesty is all you have with a definition like “keeping people from coveting you.”  What the fuck is that supposed to mean?  Seriously.  Again, that is modesty only in the sexual sense.  But also, how is that to even be achieved?  I dress for the most part in a way that could be described as VERY modest.  I’m super white and get sunburned in the winter, so I don’t show a lot of skin, ever.  I don’t show off my cleavage, my skirts are down to the knee or just above, I rarely wear terribly high heals, and it would never occur to me to buy something I couldn’t wear with both underwear and a bra.  My makeup is subdued, my hair is usually up in a bun.  The only eye-catching thing about me is my earrings; I really like big, weird earrings.  Oh, and I have tattoos on my wrists and on one ankle, people do tend to notice those.  But, generally, nothing about my appearance incites lusty thoughts of “wow, she is totally bangable!”  Nope.  And that is how I want to be.  So according to she-of-all-the-wrongness, I have achieved maximum modesty, because I have prevented any man from every coveting me on looks alone.

But, here’s the thing.  I don’t know for a fact that that is true.  BECAUSE MODESTY IS A PERSONAL INTERNAL DISPOSITION!  It isn’t about what I do to men, but about how I look at men.  I can be as dressed down as I like, in lounge pants and a sweatshirt (like I am now!), but if I’m scanning pinterest looking at pictures of Tom Hiddleston in a suit, he might be fully clothed, and I might be fully clothed, but it is a good bet that I am sexually objectifying him in some way.  (You know, just a little, because, damn, God did good on that boy.)  And that isn’t being modest.  (I think I might need to go to confession seeing the picture of Zachery Levi, Nathan Fillion and Tom Hiddleston from the Thor: The Dark World premier.)  Making sure I wear a potato sack to work won’t make a damn bit of difference if I look at other people as objects, or if I behave in a way the dehumanizes myself.

I swear all the fucking time.  And it’s a lack of modesty.  I choose to put forth the most vulgar version of myself because I do not wish to cultivate the restraint it would take to clean up my language.  But this is the fundamental dispute between her and I: she wants to make it about everyone else, I want to make it about me.  I have no interest in being responsible for the amorous thoughts of strangers.  I won’t do much to encourage that, because I’m not interested.  But for all I know some dude I’ve passed on the street is really into cubby women with glasses and a love of knits.  How can I possibly know if someone has coveted me?  How can that be the measure of my modesty?  But I sure as hell know when I covet someone.  I know when I’m treating someone as less than a person.  It both baffles and infuriates me that her definition leaves one entirely morally powerless, at the mercy of another’s taste or whim or state of grace.

So, yeah.  If one comment of hers can get my goat this bad, I’m going to count down every damn day that I have left with her damn stupidity.

And not get loaded the day she leaves.

But I will eat a cake.

(2 Years, 1 Months, and 23 Days Sober)

I can honestly say the last two weeks have been awful.  Just awful.

And, as a native Portlander and true enthusiast for anything that blocks out the sun, I blame the rain.

Well, the rain and the flu.  And the food poisoning.  And the bad sleep.

Oh, and, mostly, myself.

I accept without question that I am at the root of most of my problems.  I am long past the age of thinking the world is out to get me, or that I have been grievously targeted by forces beyond my control.  I’m kind of a stupid person who makes stupid mistakes.  I stupidly gave myself food poisoning by cooking something that was a bit more than questionable with a “oh, it’ll be fine” in the back of my head.  It was not fine.  The food poisoning is all on me.

Nothing really seems fine right now.  In many different aspects of my life I am facing the possibility that I am not the person that I think I am.  Or more so, that I am not the person I am used to thinking of myself as.

I admitted during confession yesterday that I am angry.  Angry that I was hurt and that  there is the same forgiveness for all of us.  I want to hold onto to my sense of being the injured party.  I kept trying to tell myself that I was over it; that I had moved on with my life.  No harm, no foul, and if I just didn’t think about it, then I was all good.  Just reading how many clichés I managed to rack up in those few sentences should be an indication of my level of not-dealing.  I have to accept that towards a very specific person I am choosing to not be forgiving.  I’m trying to take onto myself the power of saying yes and no to the dispositions of another’s heart.  And that isn’t my place.  And I never thought I would try to do that.  I have always considered myself fairly forgiving, willing to (eventually) look beyond personal grief I might feel and see their soul having equal value to my own.

But Fr. Jedi pointed out to me, in a not so subtle way, that my anger is causing me more damage that I thought.  I didn’t see that the anger wasn’t separate from what else has been going on in my soul.  I like to put my sin in boxes; here is sin A that I do most of the time, here is sin B that I do often but not excessively, here is sin C that I occasionally indulge in and here is sin D that got me in the talking-closet today.  My anger was distinct from the other thing I was doing that weren’t in accordance with God’s will.  Or so I thought.  If it isn’t, and it can’t be, since I am a human being and not a robot and everything that happens to me or that I do is going to affect everything else, then the anger is what I have to deal with.  I can’t pretend that I am better than I am anymore, pretend that I just let it all go without doing any of the work of forgiving.

Now, on the complete opposite side of shit, I cannot either pretend any longer that I am worse than I am.  I cried myself to sleep on Thursday because I opened up to my assistant head-master about my difficulties with my co-worker.  I couldn’t explain myself well at all and it ended up with me looking like an asshole bad-mouthing a woman whom should wear a hallow, according to popular opinion.  I cried for hours, first of all for being so stupid as to tell someone with power over my career just how spiteful I am, and for being such a failure.  I managed to be the one person who can’t get along with a woman generally considered to be “just the nicest person.”  How shitty am I that most of the time I’m around her I want to scream?

Well, the thing is, I’m not shitty.  I react in shitty ways sometimes when I don’t want to behave like an adult.  But I think I’m failing to get along with her because I have been seeing myself as someone less than her, and the truth is I’m not.  I get frustrated because there are certain things she is unwilling to do that seem like perfectly normal and easy tasks to me.  (On Tuesday she came in looking for the cups I keep in my room.  I mentioned that it would be easier for her to just get a water bottle, rather than every day have to come looking for a cup that she loses by the end of the day.  She told me having a water bottle was too difficult, because then she would have to wash it out and she’s to busy for that.  I’m pretty sure I made lemon-face at her.)  Everyday there seems to be a new instance where in my eyes she shows a lack of common sense or good judgment or more importantly, emotional maturity.  But I’m beginning to think that it isn’t that she’s particularly stunted, but rather that I am more gifted than most people.

Yup, that makes me sound like a totally up-jumped bitch.  But, hear me out.  When I consider that I spent years of my early teens attending funerals, that I survived a serious suicide attempt at 16, that I was told before I was 16 that I would never be able to have children, that I had my heart-broken into the tiniest of tiny shard right before I graduated college, that I spent 2 years unemployed, that I was held for years as an emotional hostage by a friend who said they “loved” me, that I was verbally abused and psychologically manipulated by my employer for 2 years, and that I tried to drink myself to death for years (and years and years), well, I’m not actually in too bad a shape.  I have an amazing capacity for endurance.  Despite everything (and trust me, this is just the highlights, not nearly everything) that I have been through in basically 20 years (my first ten where pretty awesome), I am not a drooling puddle on the floor.  God has given me a talent for living through pain and making it out on the other side.  It’s a gift.  It’s a gift for difficulty and it makes me less prone to making disasters out of what are simply the details of everyday life.  And, it makes me impatient with those who don’t have this gift.  It makes me see people who have not been asked to face great hardship, and have not been given the grace to do so, as somehow lacking.

Maybe if I can remember that I am not a wretched person incapable of not being frustrated with the most well-intentioned yet ineffectual person I’ve yet to meet, but rather that God has asked more of me because I am capable of more, then maybe I can find a way to get along with her.

I don’t want to be angry anymore.  But I’m the only one who can do anything about that.  And the only way I can is if I see who I am in the clearest possible light; no better, no worse.

(2 Years, 23 Days Sober)

My heart can hold onto hurt without me even knowing it.

I was standing at my dinning room table on Sunday.  I’d just finished grading some math papers that has piled up from having the flu last week.  Suddenly I was sobbing.  Not crying.  Sobbing.  

I found out two weeks ago that life has taken a blessed turn for a person who harmed me deeply while I was drinking.  I’m no longer in contact with this person.  I couldn’t keep them and stay sober at the same time, so they went.  It was time, and while I’m not entirely proud of the way I made my exit, I don’t regret my choice.  In fact, I have done my best over the last (almost) two years since the last time we spoke to not think or speak about this person.  To neither hold ill will or to wish well.  To just let go.

And I thought I had done that.  I thought I had let go.  But there I was, double over with full body tears and consumed with anger I didn’t know I had.  How could God give such a gift so someone who had hurt me so much?  Didn’t he know what I’d suffered?  Didn’t he know that she didn’t deserve good?

I haven’t let go.  I’m not really sure how to.  But now I know it’s there.

(2 Years, 18 Days Sober)

So something shitty happened this week, and I’m afraid if I don’t get it out I’m going to be up all night crying.

Yesterday was Back to School Night.  It’s a lovely evening of awkward small talk and low level interrogation.  We start off all together with remarks from the Headmaster, during which he talks about our school and the faculty.  Everyone gets a little introduction; where they went to college, some interesting fact about them, the odd anecdote.

Except me.

I get:

“And Andrea Francois came on to replace Previous Third Grade Teacher who now has, well, I think 2 children now.  Oh yes, two, I just saw pictures of her little girl on Facebook.”

Yup, that’s it.  I am a replacement.  Nothing inspires confidence in a parent like “yes, your child’s teacher is the one we put up with because the one we had left.”

I mentioned to the Assistant Headmaster that there might be room for improvement in the remarks introducing the faculty.  He agreed, and assured me that I am more than a replacement.  I would love to say that was the end of it, but here I am, on the verge of tears.

Because all day those few sentences sat in my heart, spreading slowly across everything I felt.  About my job, my life, and myself.  It made everything I did today harder, because I questioned the value of dedicating myself to my tasks.  I kept wondering why I don’t find a life outside of my job, since clearly my place there wasn’t as secure as I thought it was.  And as the day went on, as tiredness set in, I finally had to admit that I couldn’t shake it off, because completely unintentionally my greatest insecurity was paraded out for people whose respect I need.

A room full of people found out that I wasn’t necessary.

Now there is just hollowness.  And ice cream.  And the need to vomit since I can’t digest dairy.  And then, after I vomit, there will be even more hollowness.  I honestly think going to bed and crying might be the best way to deal.  I know that I’m necessary, that there are distinctive things about me that add value to the world, and that I am love beyond my comprehension.  I know that my boss wasn’t thinking the effect his words were going to have, and that there was no malicious intent aimed at me.  But I’m too tired, and too hurt to really absorb any of those things.

Right now what I see is what I saw so much of for so long; who I am and what I do are completely irrelevant and beneath notice.

But I know enough to know that I won’t feel this way for long.  It will pass, probably by Monday.  A weekend relaxing will give me the space to let go of the old habit of mind that unintentionally got stirred up by some misplaced words.

So, to bed I go.

(2 Years, 7 Days Sober)

I had an amazing, frustrating, wonderful, crazy, impossible, terrifying, and blessed day today.

Today is the 2nd anniversary of my sobriety.

2 years ago I was shaking so hard my teeth almost fell out.  I was dead inside.  I was lost, and afraid, and barely able to put one foot in front of the other.  I had to make a choice to live.

Today I took class pictures, and worked on map skills, and read saint stories, and totally skipped reading because I was too tired for it.  I managed to get completely pissed off at a co-worker who picked the wrong day to be a passive aggressive nightmare, I was seen by my Assistant Headmaster crying my little heart out in Adoration, and end the night almost choking laughing at an impromptu dinner with the new teachers.

I’m too tired now to tell you how thankful I am, how awestruck I am by the love and support I’ve received, and how I cannot even fathom how different my life has become in such a short time.  I’m too tired to contemplate how different I’ve become.  I’m too tired to tell you how scared I am of whatever is going to come next, how worried I am that I’m going to fuck it up, or how I have the niggling suspicion that I’ve become too comfortable in my existence.

This day was too much for me to have that many thoughts, let alone express them in any sort of order.

But two years ago was the worst and best day of my life.  And every day since has been a gift.

(2 Years Sober)

My friend got married yesterday.

I couldn’t be there.

My freshman-year girlfriends are planning our next reunion trip.

I already told them I can’t go.

I attribute these fact to the cause of waking up this morning immersed in sadness.  Blinking sleep out of my eyes I dug my phone out from under my pillows and started doing what all social-isolated narcissists do first thing in the AM: checking my email and Facebook.  Confronted with pictures of many of my friends gathered together in their finery, smiling and laughing, I could just see how my day was going to go.  I was going to lay in bed, torturing myself with photographs, until I made myself cry.  Finally, I would fall asleep again and not rise again until sometime in the early afternoon.  At which time I would realize I had no food in the house, order pizza, and sit on my couch in my pjs for hours.  By the evening I would convince myself I had a headache and was just too worn out to go to Mass, and I would go back to bed.

How do I know this is exactly what would happen?

Because it has happened before.  Many times.  More times than I care to admit, even to myself.

BUT NOT TODAY!

Today, I decided that I didn’t want to be that self-involved sad-sac who wasted her day feeling sorry for herself!  I jumped out of bed, threw on clothes, pack my backpack, brushed my teeth, and set off on my To-Do list.  I sent off a package at FedEx that I had been meaning to take take care of all week, returned Library books that I’d actually finished, and bought groceries without any ridiculous indulgence buys that I would keep on my waistline forever.  When I got home I took out the recycling that was piling up, cleaned up my room, showered, put away my laundry, made hummus, and have even managed to sneak in about 4 hours of TV.  In about an hour I’ll head to Mass.

I’m still sorry I missed my friend’s wedding.  I’m still sorry I won’t be seeing my girlfriends in January.  But at least I don’t have to add “being a pathetic child” to the things I’m sorry for.  Right now I am facing the consequences of my poor financial choices over the last, well, um, 8 years or so.  I’m terrible about staying in my budget, I hate saving, and I’ve always over-used my credit cards.  I’m just bad about saying no, to myself and to others.  Be it ice-cream, or new shoes, or the weekend out of town, I agonize over it, but eventually I give in, telling myself it will be the last time and I’ll cut up the card tomorrow.  (Any wonder the booze got me?)  My sister very very very generously pays my student loan bill every month.  She never complains about it, but it is a burden on her.  I agreed with my mother to be as diligent as possible in paying off my credit card debt so that as soon as possible I can put that money towards my student loans and only be taking about 1/4 as much from my sister each month as I was before.  This means trimming down my budget, putting all my AfterCare money towards debt, and possibly getting another job (like a weekend one, not a new full time job).

More than anything it means no traveling until the debt is paid off.  And this is a big thing for me.  I travel a lot.  A lot more than someone who is as stoney ass broke as I am should.  There are always weddings, and new babies, and old friends, and holidays, and one-in-a-lifetime opportunities.  Last summer I practically lived at Reagan airport.  But that cannot be my life for a while, because living my life like that has finally caught up with me.  I have to stay put for a while.

And I have to learn how to deal with staying put without lashing out like a child.  I have to remember that I am not being left out, but rather that I made choices and those choices have consequences.  Today has been a good test run; a new example of how things can go to use in comparison for all those other times when things having gone my way and I’ve reacted like a spoiled brat who no one loves.  When you’ve done the same thing so many times you forget (or don’t know) that it can be different.  But it can.  

You just need a To-Do list.

(1 Year, 11 Months, and 18 Days Sober)