I’m grateful for a bright, summer morning. I’m grateful to have my daughter staying with me. I’m grateful to get to make breakfast. I’m grateful to see what happens when you let people come to you. I’m grateful for lessons and grateful for chances to see things in a new way. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to Episode XX of Breakfast with an Alcoholic:
I’ve written quite a bit about the process of rebuilding my relationship with my daughter. She stays with me when she’s in NYC for work and it’s really lovely. We’ve had lots of ups and downs and she’s seen some pretty rough stuff and there is still a wariness to her that I’m not sure will ever quite go away. I think that must be the hardest thing, to wonder whether it’s safe to trust us again. I was very involved as a father and I think trying to reconcile that with the alcoholic beast I often turned into is pretty tough. Way back in the 1930’s,1 Bill W. realized how devastating alcoholism was to families:
An illness of this sort—and we have come to believe it an illness—involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer’s. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents—anyone can increase the list.
Big Book, p. 18
I think that sums up the dismal state of affairs. Alcoholism, as a disease, is like no other. It tears apart families, sows mistrust and disgust and leaves innocent people scarred for the rest of their lives. That’s one of the reasons that helping people understand that this really is a disease is so critical. If this isn’t a disease, then we’re just a bunch of assholes who like drinking and using drugs more than we love our children. It’s tough to come back from that.2
The roller coaster of come-backs and relapses and second stints in rehab, well, it’s an awful lot for people to handle. Relapses are especially terrifying for civilians; after all that work, all that effort, the rebuilding of trust, slowly letting the fear drain away and then, without warning, we’re back doing exactly what we did before, only way worse. My daughter has seen all of that and got to the point where it was just easier not to have me involved anymore. She didn’t do that out of anger, she did it out of despair and fear and with a lot of sadness. She did it because she loved me and it just hurt too much.
For many years, I tried to persuade my kids that I had finally turned the corner, finally managed to unlock the sobriety key. I’d tell them about the things I read and thought, all of the epiphanies, all the meetings I went to, everything I could think of to convince them that it was safe to love me, that it was safe to come back. Of course, it wasn’t. From their perspective, who but a monster would try to persuade his children he was sober when he couldn’t stop drinking? From my perspective, everything that mattered to me in life was drifting away, I was desperate to find a way out and keep the last few people who loved me. Guess what, that turns out to be a formula for even worse drinking.
I really don’t know what finally got me to stop.3 I guess I got to a place where I had lost too much and was finally willing to listen and believe. My heart was cracked open and finally able to receive the signal. I don’t know what exactly happened, but one thing I realized was that I had lost the right to tell people I was sober.4 I had lied so many times about being sober, about being better, there was really no one left who believed me, including me.
Like the great writing maxim, “show, don’t tell,” the only option I had left was to let people see that I was sober. It was on their schedule, not mine. I had no ability to control the rate at which I was allowed to re-enter their lives. The alcoholic in me did not enjoy this. But it works and it is still working. When my daughter calls out “Hey Dad, can I ask you a question,” my heart still skips a beat.5 That’s an old, ingrained reaction from when I drank every day and lived in mortal fear of being discovered. But I don’t need to be frightened about that today.
Rebuilding is hard and definitely takes longer than building, owing to the need to clear away the wreckage and prepare the site first. Patience and keeping faith that the right thing is going to eventually happen can be pretty hard. But it works and the rewards are pretty stupendous. Actual conversation this morning:
K: Maybe I will take the ferry to work. Where do I need to go?
Me: Cool. It’s right over at 90th Street. I can walk you over there, I have tickets!
K: Dad, I’m not 11, I don’t need to be walked to the ferry stop.
Me: I know, I know. I forget. Sorry.
K: It’s ok, Dad, you can come walk with me.
When I say, “I’m grateful to have my daughter staying with me,” that’s a gigantic understatement, it simply means the world to me to have a spot in hers.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
That’s the last century, for those keeping track
And why it’s so shitty when an addiction psychiatrist publishes an editorial in the New York Times saying it’s “misleading to call addiction a disease.”
Part of why I’m here everyday is to figure that out. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.
I think I may have stolen this line from my Sponsor.
The actual question was “Could we go to that Japanese place we went to last time?”
"I’m grateful to see what happens when you let people come to you." <--Good stuff. We're usually forced into that state when we need to be there. Difficult to do, but enlightening.