Two Years Sober

December 28, 2015December 27, 2015 Ruby Pipes36 Comments

"Windows Molde Norway abstract" © Les Haines, 2012. CC BY 2.0. — “Windows Molde Norway abstract” © Les Haines, 2012. CC BY 2.0.

Tomorrow will be my second sober anniversary and I am terrified. So terrified I’ve found myself lying on the floor, still in my coat and scarf, kicking the wall, and sobbing. So terrified I drove to my parents’ house after dinner to cry onto my mother’s shoulder. So terrified I’m struggling to find the words to write about it. Terrified.

Because the second year is when I learned that not drinking isn’t the end of the battle. That I’m still sick. I still have bipolar disorder and it’s still something that needs to be managed. The second year is when I learned that there’s a difference between giving your all and giving enough.

The second year is the year I learned that yes, I have PTSD. Yes, some horrible things have happened to me. Yes, I’ve been hurt by people, but they didn’t do this to me. The second year is when I learned that no matter how much other people have done, the fact that I’m sick is nobody’s fault and I have to stop blaming them. That blaming them is just letting them do it again and again.

This year I finally learned that if I’m ever going to get better I have to mourn the loss of normality. I have to let go of the idea that if I can just stay sober everything will be okay. I learned I have to manage my medication, go to therapy, exercise everyday, avoid caffeine, get regular sleep, and write daily. Just like not drinking, these aren’t options for me. They’re not perks. It’s just what I have to do if I want to be okay. And I want to be okay.

If I’m going to do that, some things have to change. I have to admit that I’ve been wallowing in my marriage in order to avoid discovering who I really am without booze. That I’ve let a relationship become my defining attribute, so that I don’t have to figure out what my defining attribute is. What I want it to be. I’m going to have to admit that I’ve been using love and food and video games and sleep to prop me up the way bourbon used to.

I feel like I just barely made it to the finish line this year. I feel like a dry drunk. But I also know that–just like when I quit drinking–realizing what I need to do is half the battle. So in the next year I’m going to give myself the space to figure out who I am as a person. Give myself the space to manage my illness effectively. The space to stop blaming my character flaws on what happened to me in the past. The space to stop confusing character flaws and symptoms.

Because when I hit my third year, I want to know I earned it. I want to know I’m stronger. I want to know I did it different.

Autobiography · Relationships

Finding Out

November 16, 2015November 16, 2015 Ruby Pipes6 Comments

“The Doors Project” © Mykhailo Liapin, 2014. CC BY-NC 2.0.

I was standing at the door of my apartment. Backpack on my back and another bag hanging from the crook of my left arm, keys in my right hand. While I was unlocking the door, Richard came down the stairs leading into the hall behind me. I turned and called out to him.

“Hey, dude! How you been? I haven’t seen you around here very much lately.”

Richard stopped in his tracks and stared at me. He looked like a little kid who just found out his parents wouldn’t be living together anymore. A rush of adrenaline surged through my body. I didn’t know what was happening, but I could feel it was monumental. I knew that people don’t put on faces like that for the everyday tragedies. That face is for the heartbreak moments. The ones that tear us in two.

I dropped my bags and walked toward him as fast as I could, barely catching him as his legs gave out and he crumbled to the floor. His body shook as he pulled his knees up to his chest, fumbling for words. He tried several times to start a sentence, but he didn’t have it in him. After another set of shakes and a big breath in he managed to speak. “The doctors,” he said through shutters. “The doctors say he’s not going to make it through the week.”

“Wait, what? Who? Calvin?”

He turned his face toward me and took another rattling breath, “Yes. Calvin.” Then he dissolved into my chest. Sobbing.

I held him on the floor in the hallway. Crying quietly into his hair. It’s not that I knew Calvin well, it was that I loved Richard fiercely. And sometimes that’s all it takes to mourn an impending death. I could see the slowly opening gash in my friend that Calvin used to fill.

We try to fill those voids. We try with drugs or booze or other people. We try with hobbies and new jobs and cross-country moves. But when someone we love leaves us, there is always going to be that gap. A cave that collapsed in on itself, but never closed. But I guess it’s just like Leonard Cohen said, “That’s how the light gets in.”

When Richard stopped crying I helped him to his feet and walked him to his door. I didn’t ask him what was wrong with Calvin. It didn’t matter anyway. He was either going to pull through or he wasn’t. My job wasn’t to know the details, my job was to make sure that Richard was safe.

At his door I asked, “What can I do for you right now, man?”

“Just be around this week. Like, if I come knock on your door at 11 PM, will you answer?”

“Of course. I’m here.”

“Thank you,” he said more to the ground than to me. He closed the door and I could hear his shoulder blades hit it and his body slide down the length. I held up my hand to knock again, but I knew he just needed to be heartbroken right now. And that was okay.

I put my bags into my apartment and ran up the stairs to Allen’s, banging hard on the door. When he answered I didn’t bother with any greetings, just asked, “Dude! What the fuck happened?”

“Calvin has bacterial meningitis. He’s been in the ICU for about a day and a half now and they… You know, they just don’t have any good news.”

“Damnit.”

“Yeah, kiddo. It’s rough. I don’t even know what to say to Richard. He’s just barely holding it together, of course. I mean, I would be a total wreck, too. He’s just usually such a jubilant guy, you know. It’s so hard to see him… Shit. What am I doing? Complaining about how hard it is for me to watch him hurt like that. What must be happening in his head right now? His whole world is falling apart. You know he’s not even on the lease to their apartment?”

Allen’s words started fading out. He wasn’t talking to me anymore, he wasn’t talking to anybody. He was just trying to fill the space with something that wasn’t our brains stuck on a spin cycle. Repeating over and over that our friend was lying in a hospital bed, ten minutes away, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it.

These events happened in the summer of 2010. This piece is an excerpt from my current NaNoWriMo novel.

Autobiography · Mental Health · Relationships

Belief

September 28, 2015September 27, 2015 Ruby Pipes16 Comments

"Empty House" © Jeff Garris, 2011. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. — “Empty House” © Jeff Garris, 2011. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

I rock back and forth. The ever-present, “I can’t do this,” dripping from my lips.

Mason whispers into the nape of my neck, “Yes. You can. I believe in you.”

I inhale sharp and nod my head. Hemingway running through my mind, “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

In therapy Leif won’t even let me entertain the idea. “You are not uniquely broken. It sounds like you want to create different habits and responses. There’s no reason you can’t do that.”

I stare at him and bite my lip and start to cry and nod again. “Okay,” I say. Though it feels like it’s more for his benefit than anything.

Strangers leave blog comments as votes of confidence. I get pumped up for a moment, but I inevitably remember that I don’t believe any of it. That I think it’s all bullshit. Like I know some great secret no one else does. Truth is, no matter how much everyone else believes I am capable of making it out of this, I’m not.

I’ve always asked if bridges were high enough when crossing them. Always known where the hotels with balconies are. Always been aware of how long it takes to get a gun in the city I’m living in. I’ve always had a running list of options. Always known I am just biding my time until I break down well enough to go.

I talked openly about how I wouldn’t make it to twenty-five. But rarely mention how I continue to assume I won’t make it another year. Every birthday comes as a complete shock to me. Every anniversary.

But they’ve been right all along. I’m the one who has been foolish.

Inhale sharp. Nod my head. Mean it. This year I’ll learn to believe it.

I love you, Mase. Happy anniversary.