I’m grateful for a little bit of hooky. I’m grateful for the new plants in the house. I’m grateful for getting to watch the ferry while I write. I’m grateful for the first few signs of spring on the pirate balcony. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Song of the Week:
Sometimes the answer is just “because.” Now, most folks are more familiar with the radio version:
The studio version is really great. I mean, really great. I have done this song at karaoke (during a somewhat sober-ish period of time even) and it’s deceptively hard because the music in the background doesn’t really change much—so if you lose where you are (hypothetically) it’s very hard to know where to come in again.1 Anyway, the live version that is officially the sotw, is pretty amazing and definitely, measurably, groovier. I will say this about the drummer: He really enjoys playing the drums. Also, the keyboard “wows,” between the repeated “Baby’s” near the end, that’s worth listening to the whole song. Also the sunglasses.2
Ok, this is also the sotw, because it is in the background of one of the greatest segments of any sports movie—and that’s this playoff game scene with Dennis Quaid in “Any Given Sunday.” Tell me this isn’t perfect.
I’m not even going to try and make some connection to recovery—isn’t that kind of freeing, by itself? I was walking around beautiful New York City last night—spring here is very much underrated and thankfully under-reported. It’s amazing how suddenly buds appear on trees. And when I looked out the window at the garden on the pirate balcony—well, lo and behold, things are starting to pop-up. 3
It got me thinking about how those same branches looked pretty lifeless just a week ago—the same way they’d been looking since late last fall. And then all of a sudden, there’s a huge bud or even blossoms:
Out of nowhere. I’m starting to think that’s a little bit how recovery works and maybe how change in life happens, too (to be more general about it). I struggle to reconcile the person I was and the person I am. The person I was could not take a trip like the one the person I am took last weekend. The person I was could not stop drinking, despite the clear knowledge that he could not continue to pull this off and avoid consequences, and even during and after the consequences. It didn’t matter what he stood to lose, the idea of not being able to drink was far worse.
I’ve had more than one therapist describe my relationship with alcohol in romantic terms. I’ve had more than one person say something along the lines of, “you love drinking more than you love me.” There is a great book about recovery called “Drinking: A Love Story.”4 I’m not sure it was ever really love. I knew from the very beginning that drinking was something I needed to do, and, to be fair, I very, very much liked the person I was when I was drinking.
That person didn’t have a lot of concerns. He didn’t worry too much about how other people felt about his conduct, because he was right so often. If you were upset, it was probably actually your own fault. That person spent a lot of time seething about how he wasn’t getting his due; that people refused to concede in the face of his overwhelming right-ness. That person was funny and certainly convinced a lot of people that he just didn’t give a shit about too much.5 Despite interludes where he could keep up the sober charade, he was mostly alone. No one really knew him because he held such a terrible secret inside, it required almost his whole life to be compartmentalized, just to ensure the integrity of the terrible secret.
For all of those years of trying to stop drinking, well, nothing much changed, either outwardly or inwardly. All of those trips to rehab and the zillions of AA meetings and all of the heartfelt conversations after relapse number 16 (there is no actual, accurate count) didn’t change very much. Given the solemn promises I made to myself and others, you could count pretty much regard every single day as a new relapse back then. The branches stayed pretty barren during these times. I remember a lot of falls and winters, but not so many springs.
It’s still a little chilly here in New York, but the trees and flowers have decided it’s time. Suddenly, those empty branches have kind of gigantic looking buds—buds that were just little bumps on the branch a few days ago—hardly observable. In a way, that’s what happened to me. Nothing worked, nothing could stop me from drinking, until I learned how to live a life where drinking is not necessary.
If you’d rather, you can call it an “obsession” and talk about the miracle of it being lifted. The more I think about it, it feels less like the miraculous lifting of an obsession, and more like something just changing categories, from the “necessary” bucket to the “not necessary” bucket. I will tell you, once something is in the “not necessary” bucket, it’s harder to ignore the consequences and there is much less desire to bear those consequences.
Saying it that way, living a life where alcohol isn’t necessary, seems like a very doable way to approach working the Steps and buiding a Program. I think the exercise is less about confronting demons and excising toxic people, places and things from life, and more about cultivating the seedling of self-love. Some people like shouting at meetings about their realizations and come to jesus moments, I, personally, think that it’s more of a gentle, but sudden process. Kind of like the bud appearing on the previously-barren branch. Suddenly things come together, the light goes on, there’s a new way of seeing and understanding things. The things we did to maintain that “life,” well, they’re just not necessary anymore.
I can’t tell you exactly when that moment was for me, when things finally changed, when I finally found enough love for myself to be myself. But it happened and then everything began to change. There have been a lot of falls and winters, but last night, all I could see were buds on trees and I knew it’s Spring.
Again, hypothetically.
Also, Bill Withers is way more famous for “Lovely Day,” but isn’t this just better?
That would be the picture up there by the gratitude list—which, by the way, is written daily, even when I’m not writing here: TFLMS on Twitter
“Drinking: A Love Story,” by Caroline Knapp.
There are a number of ways to do this—some are more hurtful than others.