Coming Home

A Return to Myself

January 19th, 1981/ May 2002

Now the earth became formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be light,” and I opened my eyes for the first time, from out of the dark waters of the womb and into the blinding new world. I took over God’s handiwork right then and there as I let out a primordial cry, channeling the generations of ancestors that flowed through my blood.

As an infant, Freud said that our Ego develops three qualities: omnipotence and a belief that we should have our way, an urgency and impatience that makes things going our way nearly impossible, and deep frustration when things inevitably do not go our way.

It’s a delicate balance of nature and nurture that provide what is needed for that immature Ego to grow up; but sometimes everything is out of whack, jumping straight from Genesis to Revelations where the four horsemen of neglect, trauma, chaos, and fear ransack a child and leave her to her own devices to survive, to just make it through a day, a night, a morning before school when she’s backed into a corner where the inner demons of a sick parent rain down upon her as she wishes she was closer to the phone mounted onto the wall in the kitchen so she could call the police. Moses had a better chance of Exodus than I did in escaping those moments. But wasn’t I one of God’s people, too?

So my Queen Baby Ego lived long and reigned supreme through a shaky adolescence and my roaring 20s. I needed a bit of relief, a tiny reset button that would allow me to breathe for just a moment. The constant cycle of fight/flight/freeze/fold was like a runaway rollercoaster that never ended, backwards, forwards, faster, faster, wheels falling off, rails breaking loose. All I was looking for was a knob to turn down the pressure inside just a tad, or a sprinkling of holy water to ease the fire in my mind. I was scrounging the bottom, slithering around like a snake in Eden, searching for a connection that would save my dying spirit, some fix for my heart and mind.

What started with the welcome burn of a glass of whiskey at age 14 became a thirst so unquenchable I would, without hyperbole, cross oceans and deserts for one more. The self-centered sacrifices started small- an obligation unmet, a lie by omission, a friendship ended.

But the insatiable parasite wanted more. It was ever-patient, ever-demanding until I was running out of things to give. There wasn’t even a thought that crossed over that dead sea of my mind the first time I went home with a random person when my favorite bar closed. He had seen me drinking whiskey, and whispered in my ear that there was more of that elixir at his place- it would be my land of milk and honey that night, my promised land.

January 19th, 2008

How we made it 10 more months past this night is beyond me.

I always hated birthdays. The too-much-attention made me want to melt into the floor, but not enough attention from those whom I thought should be giving it would set me right off. He knew this line was as thin as silk thread, like a tripwire set between explosives. One wrong move and I would either implode or explode.

He chose a French cafe that we had passed several times on the way from our usual parking garage to Pike Place Market. We both knew that my drinking was a problem, but he hoped I would try to reel it in a bit that night given the quiet, refined atmosphere. He was aware through passing comments that I harbored dreams of sophisticated drinking- a glass of vintage Bordeaux sipped while reading Camus at a small table on a Parisian street, a flute of true champagne along on the riviera at sunset. These dreams were delusions of grandeur of the highest order, as one glass and one glass only filled me with both an intense anger and a craving so insatiable I would jump into the Puget Sound if there was a bottle at the bottom.

I tried to be on my best behavior that night, I really did.

We had met in NYC seven months prior, and it was a blast falling in alcohol-fueled love. Then when the housing bubble burst and he moved back to Seattle, I followed him, believing wholeheartedly the adage that one should live with reckless abandon. Three weeks in, I discovered a slew of dirty messages between my boyfriend and his ex, the dates overlapping with our burgeoning relationship. How can one feel both consumed with despair and anger at once?

I wanted to burn it all down, to run, to fall apart. How could I have been so stupid as to believe someone could love me, want me? I was unworthy of it, just like my parents used to tell me when I was a child. They would fight and fight, and at some point their hurt and anger would be unleashed onto me. Their pointedly cruel words became my truth. And here was confirmation- unlovable, not good enough, unwanted, undesired.

This purported birthday celebration took place several months after I found the messages, and by then I had accepted his ultimatum of either forgiving him or leaving him. With no money and nowhere to go, I acquiesced to his demand the best I could. But something had touched into the raw, dark wound that had never fully healed, one that had been covered over for so many years with booze, drugs, dissociated sex, food (or lack thereof), one that was now festering and oozing all over my life, like an acid that erodes and destroys.

The discovery of what I considered infidelity and the deep resentment that followed were fuel for a resurgence in my drinking career. When he would object to my drinking, a warm cascade of shame would rise in me and mix with a sharp rage; my insides became an estuary of lethal brackish waters. Having to ask permission to drink made me double down. So I drank at him, drank at the world, drank at everyone and everything that had ever hurt me.

And here we were for my birthday dinner at a tiny French cafe, a snapshot worthy of an Edward Hopper painting to anyone walking past our window and peering in for that moment in time. We gingerly sat on wooden chairs atop a black and white checkered floor. A slow-moving ceiling fan above our heads sent down breezy circles, the aroma of fresh baguettes wafted through the air, Edith Piaf chanteused in the background, and a pot of fondue simmered before us as we tried to act like we were not teetering on the edges of a shaking fault line- one that was about to give way to a 1901 San Fran level earthquake that would level our night as soon as I ordered a glass of wine.

And I did. Of course I did.

March 2006 (An interlude)

He touched the medallion that swung from the rearview mirror of his forest green Land Rover. “Do you know what this is?”, he asked as he drove us up Mulholland Drive one night.

I shook my head.

“I’m a recovering addict, and I’ve been clean and sober for 9 years. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.” A smile broke across his face when he spoke those words; it had the primordial truth of sunrise.

I quickly changed the subject for I suspected he could look straight into my heart of darkness. I had lied to him about how much I drank, and I had done a smidge of drugs in the bathroom at the bowling alley earlier on our date that evening to help me relax or to be more gregarious or to be a version of myself I thought he would love- whatever the lie was that I told myself and then believed. Or maybe I didn’t have any thoughts at all as I rubbed the coke on my gums.

There was a truth hidden in my subconscious, though, and it showed itself to me when I sabotaged the relationship a few days later. It’s this: Addiction obliterates anything that stands in its way, including love- especially love. It comes paramount to all.

But, unknowingly to us both, he had planted the tiniest of seeds within me that March night as we drove through the streets of LA. I kept it hidden, unwanted, unwatered in some shadowy, fallow part of my heart for many years, not knowing that it had sprouted secret roots and was waiting to grow upwards and outwards once given the chance.

October 2012

It was one of those bleak stretches where I lost all sense of time. The hours turned into days which soon became the semi-oblivion I was seeking, a passage through this life in a substance-induced bardo. The limbo between “to be or not to be” was sharp and serrated; it was a waltz I had lost all control over long ago, but one that seemed the singular choice left. There only line filled on my dance card by then.

Rock bottom has trap doors, and I kept sinking lower and lower as I surrendered to it. The madness was my norm by now, offering me comfort and security because it was known.

Was it three days or seven that I had been up at that point, copping in alleyways behind Penn Station and taking a drink every other breath? My mind was on fire, and everything inside of me felt like a pressure cooker about to explode through my skin, pieces of me everywhere- and finally the world would see what I could not articulate, what I could not put into words, what I could only release when at some point in the cycle the rage would burst forth, rage that was a blistering cover for years of trauma and hurt pushed down and festering inside.

There was a time (at some point in time) when picking up the first drink felt like Russian roulette- how would I behave that night? But by now all the chambers were bullet-filled. Violence was escaping my lips frequently, and my fists and trauma-informed body were always looking for a fight. Hurt people hurt people, and there came a time when it stopped being a gamble and I knew, I knew with every fiber in my being I was drinking to let it all out before I imploded.

I was on my way down to my bar job on a hot, sweltering Tuesday afternoon. I’d been up for days, brokenhearted over a guy who did not care about whether I lived or died, much less the nuances and tenderness of my heart.

The hours that day were a dizzying blend of incomprehensible confusion and panic, like the time I was 12 and the Gravitron at the county fair went off its axle while we were spinning so fast we defied gravity inside. We went from being upside down in midair to crashing to the ground, then back up and down again in that cheap metal container before emerging bruised, confused, terrified. And now here I was inside this too-tight skin, feeling the same way as I had on that broken ride at the fair on that cool day in October, but this time I couldn’t escape.

It had been days upon weeks upon months spent shaking, sweating, sobbing, physically inebriated but not mentally, screaming at myself in the mirror, wanting to stop but inevitably picking up again and not understanding how or why, drinking to find homeostasis between the drunken levels of mind and body, drinking as soon as I came to in the morning, drinking to black out, drinking to get the courage to leave my apartment or open mail, drinking in the shower, drinking instead of brushing my teeth, drinking on the walk to the subway, drinking as I made a pit stop at the corner liquor store for the mini bottles to put in my makeup bag so that I could secretly continue the alcohol maintenance of my bloodstream during my bar shift where I could also drink openly, drinking vodka mixed into my Vitamin Water on subway rides, drinking to pass out and hoping I would not wake up. Mornings were spent in anguish if I did not have alcohol or drugs available. My heart broke at the rising sun and singing birds, and another day felt unbearable. The thought of running out was debilitating and panic-inducing, and so I stockpiled stashes at home and on my being.

Three pm found me at the 86th St. stop, transferring from the local train to the express by descending another level into the sweltering station. I was in my red sundress that had been a gift from my friend A, who was the one who introduced me to the drug that immediately became the love of my life. It was also the substance that would bring me swiftly to my knees.

As I stood on that dirty, hot platform, I vibrated at the lowest level possible for a human being. The seeds of restlessness and hopelessness that had been planted in my body and heart and mind all those years ago as a child were now in full bloom, like the tree whose flowers smell like death.

I saw the light of the 4 train bending around the corner. I had made a mental note months prior that it was one of the fastest trains in NYC. My body moved towards it as naturally as a small bent paper clip to a powerful magnet, ready for it to just be done, done, done, one step, two steps, three.

And then my feet stopped. A force of nature, as strong as the pull of the moon on the ocean waves, carried me up the stairs- out of the humid, fluorescent-lit cavern of the subway station and into the blinding light of that humid August day. I watched as my hands typed the words “I need help”. I hit send before the willingness evaporated . And there I was, broken open by truth and born back into the world.

January 2013 through The Here and Now

It was always right there in plain sight. Walk with me now through a Southern coastal city after a hurricane. The streets are strewn with broken trees and downed power lines, flooding waters run wild and pool into every open crevice, windows are boarded up while eaves and roofs have been blown far into the distance, chickens and dogs and children are running wild as the electricity in the air gets into their veins. The sky is still a dark greyish pea green but the air is cool and breezy with the last gasps of the storm that just ran roughshod. Now, taking a look at this scene, would you be surprised to learn that a violent storm had just blown through, destroying all that it touched?

There’s a hallmark characteristic of addiction, which is the addict goes through the motions of secrecy while being fully aware that everyone around them knows about it. How could they not? They are but trees in the path of the tornado, sometimes willing, sometimes taken completely by surprise if the lie was strong enough. “Believe your lies” is an unsaid mantra of addiction, and it protects itself using denial, delusion, and a mirage of secrecy to live on. It is a parasite that doesn’t care if the host body lives or dies. It is a machine for more at all costs- destruction, death, broken hearts and broken dreams. It might begin as a small spot on the radar hovering in the Caribbean, but over time, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, it expands into a giant, lethal force of nature. When I was a kid, I used to love watching cotton candy being freshly spun at the county fair. It always amazed me how just a small handful of dyed sugar could grow into something so big and glorious. I’m equally amazed at how a glass of whiskey in a field or a bottle of strawberry Boone’s Farm while sitting in the parking lot at Vallarta’s during my high school years could turn into a juggernaut that laid waste to everything good in my life and harmed all in my wake.

But here we stand, on the other side, and I wish everyone could have the heavens and earth moving experience of making amends, of finally letting honesty flow out of the mouth, of saying the truth of all that was obvious but all that was unspoken, of looking someone straight into the eyes and truly atoning, of becoming at-one with someone you loved and harmed but did not want to harm, of asking for forgiveness, of forgiving oneself, of coming to someone broken completely open and laid bare so that they can see the heart which is now whole and true and clean- free from deception and fear, of taking ownership of harms you have done to another, of feeling real courage instead of the liquid kind, of being at peace and at home with myself and the world around me.

Cour-age. Cœur-age. “Cœur” means heart in French. Now I understand.

My drinking began as a way to cope with trauma, an attempt to self-regulate my nervous system and emotions, a chance to finally exhale for I had been holding my breath since childhood. But I also believe it was a low-level search for connection, for the ability to flow with life as it unfolded, for unity with others and with myself. Recovery means to get back what was lost or stolen, and the plot twist is that everything I was seeking outside of myself has always rested within me. The work over these years has led to a transcendental alignment, an internal rearrangement, a constant river of discovery and discarding, a Jungian psychic death, a life based in truth and trust, a great clearing of the channel inside, a oneness with nature, a reentry into the space of love and wholeness.

It has been my homecoming.