Hi there,
I have been back from China for a while but got out of the habit of posting here and then wrote something to post but saved it instead and decided it sounded too self-pitying so spared you all that. I have been told recently though by someone close to me in spirit but not distance that she and her husband do read this blog and it means a lot to her, so I've decided to revive it in her honor. She is my cousin and has been going through a lot of horrendous health-related things and I love her to bits as she knows...she's the closest I will ever have to a sister, and so cherish her. And the weird thing is, I know the feeling is mutual, which fills me with tremendous warmth and gladness. Makes me wish I did have something resembling a family in some more consistent way but my weird patchwork quilt of hand-me-downs, steps and exes will have to do. Plus my long-distance husband on skype...rumor has it we're married...
However, and this is true, I had an amazing time in China, and won't give a travelogue as I believe they are boring. It is not however, what you expect if you haven't been there before, and the very difference of well everything made it stick in my mind and dreams for weeks after coming back. Go if you can, it's something that cannot adequately be described in words but only experienced.
I am as of Thursday, 24 years sober. That means I have been clean and sober longer than I was even alive when I first walked into AA (aged 23) and had my last slip - on pot - in late Feb or early March (hence sobriety date of March 3) 1987. Reagan was president, Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister, there was a Soviet Union that Gorbachev had recently taken over, a Berlin Wall and no one had ever heard of Tienamann (Sp?) Square. I was a mess and a half...I had come into AA in early November 1986, after a week in Al-Anon...realized I was an alcoholic and decided everyone else I knew was one, too. This did not go over well, and I faced mass resentment from my friends and roommates. I tried to straddle two worlds and inevitably had a slip (the aforementioned night high) which I blame more on Tom Stoppard than anyone else, because I was ushering for the determinedly mediocre ACT in SF and they were doing horrible piece of comic tripe by Stoppard and all I could see was the punch line, the audience laughing where expected, the jewels and upper middle class pretension at intelligence and 'wit' and it made me ill. I ran out of the theatre and wanted to blow it up. You may think I am exaggerating. I am not. Mediocre tripe is bad enough if you can have a couple glasses of wine or beer to take the edge off, stone cold sober, it makes you want to resort to violence.
I went home and got stoned with my friends and roommates, who were mighty relieved at my so-called transgression. One said "see, your nose didn't fall off" and we all laughed. Someone took a photo of me that night - the only photo of me taken during that period by my so-called friends, because I was back on their program and in their expectations for me.
For some reason, that didn't leave me wanting more, and I somehow managed to fall apart further, get into therapy, find a boyfriend, lose him and that sadness landed me back into the heart of recovery in AA. From then on, I took suggestions and did the 'steps' - which if you don't know them you can look them up and if you do, the last thing you need is me saying them over again - and then had a spiritual experience I also can't put into words and never drank again...I did however meet my now ex-husband and made him into my higher power, which was a big mistake - obviously - and that sunk me for years into a codependent fog...which I managed to slough off I think through meditation mostly...too long a story to reiterate here, but he left me when my first play got published and that was that. Won't go into a song and dance about it here as it always sounds too victim-y and the fact is it takes two and all that.
However, now here I am sober, alive and 47. It is. Thank you. As the African prayer goes. I'm at it is right now. In and out of thank you. I am in 'thank you' for my life, sobriety and love in my life, but can't quite get to 'thank you' when it comes to fertility issues and losses there or some other friend's losses of children or their own health. It is just has to be enough right now for that. And it kind of sums it up really, because it is the truth. It is, not fuck all I can do about it.
And this is the crux of where I am today, having grown up considerably over this past year and realized how much in the back of my mind I was/have been waiting for some kind of 'reward' for being 'virtuous' and 'sober' and 'good' and 'helpful' and 'sticking to my creative vision' etc...and you know what, it doesn't work that way. Duh. Well, some of us it takes a while...as they say in AA 'sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly' and I'm a sometimes slowly chick. Always have been, always will be. I'm just one stubborn motherfucker and will not learn until I have to learn.
But I have. I have learned. It's not about rewards but nor is it about punishment. There is the freedom. No one has 'done anything' to me to make me pay, etc...no higher power anyway. I'm not any better or worse than anyone else. I'm just me and that's that and you're just you and that's that. And we have to be enough as is because we just are who we are.
No that doesn't mean no one can change, etc...if I believed that, then how the fuck could I have gotten sober and stayed this way? No, it's deeper than that...Way deeper than that. And it's freedom. When I can have those crystal moments of know the whole carrot-stick routine is so much smoke and mirrors, I am free. Even if sad at times, grieving at times, relieved at others, sometimes giddy and even joyful...and all the usual stuff in between. This is it folks. This is the whole show.
And I get to be here for it, that's the gift of sobriety. It's a gift in the true sense of the word gift. It's not a reward because it's not earned. It's a gift. I show up for this completely unearned gift by not taking a drink a day at a time, and I get to experience life, all of it, taste it smell it, touch it, hear it, see it, love it even when it fucking sucks. And oh oh oh I do love it and I love so many people, it hurts. And I never felt that when I was drinking, not this kind of love. I felt sloppy sodden sentimental crap but not selfless love, it was impossible. Not because I was horrible but because I was incapable of it...and even in many ways when I was with my ex I was incapable of it, because I had surrendered my will and my life over to the power of him...that is not love it's slavery and slaves cannot love. That much is true. And nor can anyone who owns a slave either, btw...so don't think I'm spouting some kind of cod Nietzsche crap. I actually like Nietzsche but not the cod pseudo-Hitler version to justify any number of atrocities no... And the slavery I mean is not involuntary, as in, you've been physically turned into a slave, I mean the kind where you're an addict, alcoholic or in some way addicted to something or someone...you can't do anything else.
I remember trying to open a beer bottle with my hand once, the top needed an opener, I would not accept this and tried and tried until my hand bled and my friend who was driving pulled the car over to the shoulder of the highway so I could open it using the car door. She asked me before that if I could wait and I looked at her like she was Insane. Wait? Fucking WAIT???? What fucking PART OF ME DO YOU THINK CAN FUCKING WAIT???? I didn't say that but she could tell and drove to the side of the rode. We were doing to DC to protest something at the time. because I 'cared' so much...sure, sure whatever as long as I can FUCKING DRINK...
I was 18 at the time.
See why I got sober at 23? I lost my virginity blind drunk to a player, and was surprised when he wanted me out of his life. Shocked, shocked. Also 18. Bad year. Bad vintage. Brought Abbie Hoffman to speak at my university tho, he was mad as a hatter and so was I, perfect for each other. He killed himself the next year, and I felt guilty cause I hadn't taken a job working with him but went to work in a crappy NYC theatre instead. Felt selfish and unclean. Story of my fucking life...
And now, now, I am sober, what the fuck? Do you see, do you see and can you Feel the miracle of that? It's insane. I shouldn't be sober. My so-called privileged friends from my tony schools I went to on scholarship, so many are dead from drug overdoses and alcoholism...I thought they had it all, but all they had was enough rope to hang themselves. This disease takes no prisoners and is no respecter of class distinctions...it's vicious, cruel and wanted me dead, still does in fact...but I'm alive, against all fucking odds and my ex, bless him, is out there drinking - he took that rode at 19 years sober - it's his life and journey and all that but it pisses me off for selfish reasons...I don't want to have to worry about him and I'd like to be in touch with him but that doesn't work for me. He's in a weird place and I can't cope with that. Our relationship was also, as mentioned above, not in any way shape or form healthy so perhaps it's all for the best. But still, seems sad to me...also sometimes it can make me jealous, which is insane, but it can...like somehow the alcoholism won out over me Or even worse what if he's 'getting away with it' and I'm the schmuck who's staying sober? What then?!
And it goes back again and again to this simple dumb thing: I know me, I know I'm an alcoholic, I know for me to drink is to die and as I've heard before and know is true for me: I may have another drink in me but I don't think I have another recovery in me. This is brutal stuff and I've walked through so much, I don't want to let that go.
Last night, at a meeting, a guy talked about getting sober in prison because when drunk at 16 he almost killed his father who had prior to that almost killed his mother. He got sober, eventually got out of jail and then watched his 9 year old child get killed by a car last year and his twin sister and 19 year old daughter die of this disease. And he said 'and I don't have any excuse to drink' and he meant it, and I know that because I've said similar things and that guy, that guy was my hero last night. And that guy, my friends, is truly hardcore. I really believe this, there is n blessing like sobriety if you are a drunk and there is nothing more hardcore than living in this world - the one we are in right now, right here - sober.
No windshield. Indeed.
Thank you all for reading and for those of you who know who you are, thanks for keeping me sober. I wouldn't trade it, even now. Even Now.
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