I went to another meeting. Once again, nothing terrifying happened. I think I was right that putting myself face to face (or rather side by side) with other people is something I need to do. I didn't actually talk to anyone or anything as bold as that. There's no hurry. What I did do is listen to the people who spoke, and watch the people in the room, and notice my reactions. And that was illuminating.
Here's what I noticed: my reactions to being there swung wildly back and forth between thinking it was a good idea to vowing I could never come back. And that was just in the five minutes or so before the meeting started, when I was just sitting in a chair, waiting. Also, I was watching people get settled, deciding who I thought was interesting and who wasn't. How hilarious is that? Apparently I know this sort of thing about people on first glance. I didn't know I did that! I caught myself thinking all this, and realized I was reacting to everyone else because I was nervous, and it's way easier to decide who's great and who isn't based on appearances than it is to just feel nervous, isn't it? So for a couple of minutes, I was just uncomfortably nervous. And I survived.
The meeting started when someone read a text, and I once again reacted strongly to the words. Oh, I could argue with that text! But I looked around, and I could see that lots of people seemed to be sitting politely but not getting all caught up in the words, so I thought maybe I could do that, too. I just ignored it, thinking maybe that's not for me right now. No argument required.
Then some guy talked. I managed to stop myself see-sawing between thinking "I belong here" and "I am never coming back" and actually listen. And he said some things that really helped me. Yesterday, Primrose wrote what I thought was a great post about being willing to change, and how that seems to have to include getting connected to other people. I loved what she had to say there. The speaker talked about such similar stuff, so it really resonated with me. Then a few other people spoke, and at different points, everyone said something that struck me deeply. One woman talked about Carl Jung as having said (quoting roughly), 'If you find spirituality in the second half of your life, the first half was worth it.' At that, both me and the young woman next to me teared up and caught each other's eyes for a moment, and smiled. Hard to say why that was so powerful, because the words don't cover it. Words matter, but this is about way more than the words. The experience of sitting listening with people is where the power comes from. I'm not much given to certainty, but I feel sure of this.
A number of years ago, I used to do some serious Zen meditation, but I decided sitting meditation wasn't for me. I spend enough time alone in my own mind, so silently observing my thoughts any more than I do can send me into a spiral that isn't so great for me. More recently, I have tried to listen to the various meditation gurus that get talked about on sober blogs, but they just make me angry. And yes, I know that anger is all about me, not them, but that doesn't stop it from happening. But I try to use the zen training in my own way. For me, it's better to watch my thoughts while I'm out walking or biking, or when I'm sitting in a classroom. It's a kind of meditation in action, and it suits me better. Seeing how I react in real time, that's what I've been trying to do.
And on that score, I think the meeting was good. Because just listening and paying close attention to my own reactions showed me how wildly I do react to what people say, or just the way they look, how quickly I jump on some opinion in my mind, even while I seem calm and balanced. And I could see that when I get uncomfortable, I am very, very quick to interpret my discomfort as disliking someone or something. It's easier, right? If some person or event is annoying and that's why I'm annoyed then I have a kind of equilibrium. It's false, though. And when I caught myself getting annoyed--as I did about a hundred times in the hour--instead of falling into believing that the person talking was at fault, I was able to notice my reaction, and accept that I was feeling uncomfortable, and then try to open my heart to my own discomfort and to the person speaking. And in that openness, sometimes I felt connected. The speakers were uncomfortable sometimes, too. And sometimes they were funny, and everybody laughed. More than once most people were in tears, as was I. Whatever was happening, we all seemed to sit in it together, sharing a little bit of human connection on a rainy Saturday morning.
While I was there, I realized that today I am 13 months sober. It was nice to quietly share that in person with people who would get it. And I did feel like I was sharing it, even though I didn't talk to anyone. So that's my second meeting. I still don't know my way about in all this, but I think I'm OK with that. I'm paying attention, anyway, and sitting with other people. And maybe that's enough.
Thanks for reading. Peace and joy to you. And love.
Saturday, 7 February 2015
Saturday, 31 January 2015
Other people
I'm starting to think I'm in a second stage of getting sober, or of being sober. The first year, it was all about how to live with myself. I was pretty big on acceptance all year long. And that's going to be an ongoing process, but I tell you, I'm doing a lot better now on that score than I was a year ago. But these past few weeks, there's something new going on, and I think it's a different kind of acceptance: accepting other people. Lately, I'm paying more attention to learning how to live with others, something it seems I don't know all that much about.
People have said that things shift once you get a little sober time. And they do. I'm less reactive than I was. I feel myself getting caught in problems, but it's slower, and I have some time to pull away and think. But a few months ago, I got kind of swamped by the emotional tensions in a group situation that weren't all that much of my own making, and I didn't see it clearly until well after the fact. I tried to talk to a counsellor about this, but I felt like I talking wasn't going to be the answer on this one. The thing is, I think I don't much know how to be with other people. There are exceptions, of course. My partner and I have a great relationship, and I get on well very with his family, and I have some friends who I genuinely feel close to. But these all seem like exceptions to me. In the general run of things, when I am in a group of people, I often feel as though I am somehow a little off to one side, as though I'm somehow not really there. Classes are usually an exception to this, because then I'm engaging intellectually, and I'm very comfortable in that realm, as long as it stays there. But when the situation is more social or emotional, I don't quite know how it's supposed to go. I used to call this doing "people as a second language," and I have probably written about that here before. Like lots of people working in a second language, I can do it, but I'm not completely fluent. I don't always know the idioms. What happens next?
None of this is new to me. But now, I've been sober just over a year. (And that only came after kicking against the fears and the wisdom of other people on the folly of drinking again and then realizing, after drinking, that it didn't much matter what they said. Booze was sucking the life out of me. The very life.) Now, sober, I'm feeling that my sense of alienation is a restriction I don't much need anymore. I don't quite know how to get rid of it, but I do think that's the next thing I need to work on.
Blogging has been amazing for me. It's let me learn from others and figure things out for myself and get to know some amazing people online. Still, when I'm here, I am sitting alone in a room, typing. I have laughed and cried and felt real warmth from people online. But that's not the same thing as being in the same room as other people and feeling that. It's not bad, and it's not fake. It's just one step removed, somehow. When sober bloggers have met face to face, and talked about how amazing the experience has been, I've felt envious. And when people who attend meetings talk about fellowship, I have felt a longing for something like that.
Anyway, I decided to do something about this, something more direct than thinking about it or talking about it. So I went to a meeting. And it was all right. Yes, I was nervous. But it felt pretty good to sit in a room full of people, all in different stages of dealing with pretty much the same problem. People had all different kinds of ways of listening to the speaker. Some were entranced. Some fidgeted. Some smiled in recognition at different bits that were said, and some looked at each other significantly. As it happens, I liked the main speaker, and felt a kind of connection to her story. She was talking about living in her head for so long, and how she has had to learn to live in her body, too. Now that doesn't sound like much when I repeat it. But it was powerful, sitting in the same room, feeling connected. There were a lot of people and I was nearly late, so I sat near the back and off to one side. I could barely see the front of the room, as there were maybe a hundred people there! (So many alcoholics! Who knew?) At one point, someone in front of me shifted how she was sitting, and I had a direct view of the speaker. And I had one of those moments I sometimes have, where the world seems to break open for a moment, and everything feels different. It's hard to describe, but it happens to me sometimes, moments like this. I have come to think of them as grace, maybe. Time slows down, and everything sounds different, clearer, and the world seems to glow. Or maybe vibrate. Anyway, at the meeting, I had one of those moments, and in that moment, I felt like the woman at the table in the front of the room was speaking directly to me. And I was listening.
Of course, she was speaking to everyone. Soon the crowd shifted slightly and I couldn't see anymore, and the room settled back to normal. Then some guy talked, and he was annoying, the way people sometimes are, and that was fine, too. Afterward, I didn't stay and chat with anyone. This was enough for me for one day. I think I will go back though. There is something here for me to learn. And I think it's a kind of physical learning, something I just can't get from reading or writing, as good as those things are. I know we are a social species, and there's a lot about the non-verbal ways we communicate that's not so well understood. Of course, I would like to understand it. But the most important thing might be for me to actually experience being with others, being a part of something they are also a part of, and not trying all that much to figure out how it works.
I've been reading a little of the Belgian philosopher, Isabelle Stengers, and in one interview she talks about the "care of the possible," something she takes from William James. I like that a lot. Her point, as I understand it, is that we pass over so much experience, but a different approach might be to consider the possibilities that our actual experience opens for us, rather than only acknowledging what we accept as the facts. (I have not at all done justice to Stengers' wonderful work here, but I am making sense of the world with it as best I can, and I'm OK with that.) I used to care a lot about what was called addiction and what wasn't, and whether I was an alcoholic or not. When I thought about those things, I thought about them as if they were somehow real categories, things that either applied to me, in truth, or did not. I think this is the way we are taught to think. Now I am trying something different. It seems to me that "alcoholic" is a pretty good concept, in that it opens the door to a new way of life, once you accept it. If you don't like it, don't worry. Find a concept that works for you. And in going to a meeting, I'm not worrying too much about any single version of the truth. I expect the truth is more in the practice, in the experience of getting together with people and listening to them (and yes, one day maybe even talking to someone there!) What I need to learn from it is more in the experience of being with the others, and feeling a glimmer of belonging. The experience of that, not the objective proof of it's efficacy.
I'll see how it all goes. This feels like a new kind of acceptance to me, one that includes other people: their wisdom and their follies, yes, but mostly their very presence.
This was a bit more complicated to write about than I had thought it might be, and I'm not sure it's all clear, even to me. I'm just figuring this out. So if you're still here, thanks for reading! Peace and joy to you. xo
People have said that things shift once you get a little sober time. And they do. I'm less reactive than I was. I feel myself getting caught in problems, but it's slower, and I have some time to pull away and think. But a few months ago, I got kind of swamped by the emotional tensions in a group situation that weren't all that much of my own making, and I didn't see it clearly until well after the fact. I tried to talk to a counsellor about this, but I felt like I talking wasn't going to be the answer on this one. The thing is, I think I don't much know how to be with other people. There are exceptions, of course. My partner and I have a great relationship, and I get on well very with his family, and I have some friends who I genuinely feel close to. But these all seem like exceptions to me. In the general run of things, when I am in a group of people, I often feel as though I am somehow a little off to one side, as though I'm somehow not really there. Classes are usually an exception to this, because then I'm engaging intellectually, and I'm very comfortable in that realm, as long as it stays there. But when the situation is more social or emotional, I don't quite know how it's supposed to go. I used to call this doing "people as a second language," and I have probably written about that here before. Like lots of people working in a second language, I can do it, but I'm not completely fluent. I don't always know the idioms. What happens next?
None of this is new to me. But now, I've been sober just over a year. (And that only came after kicking against the fears and the wisdom of other people on the folly of drinking again and then realizing, after drinking, that it didn't much matter what they said. Booze was sucking the life out of me. The very life.) Now, sober, I'm feeling that my sense of alienation is a restriction I don't much need anymore. I don't quite know how to get rid of it, but I do think that's the next thing I need to work on.
Blogging has been amazing for me. It's let me learn from others and figure things out for myself and get to know some amazing people online. Still, when I'm here, I am sitting alone in a room, typing. I have laughed and cried and felt real warmth from people online. But that's not the same thing as being in the same room as other people and feeling that. It's not bad, and it's not fake. It's just one step removed, somehow. When sober bloggers have met face to face, and talked about how amazing the experience has been, I've felt envious. And when people who attend meetings talk about fellowship, I have felt a longing for something like that.
Anyway, I decided to do something about this, something more direct than thinking about it or talking about it. So I went to a meeting. And it was all right. Yes, I was nervous. But it felt pretty good to sit in a room full of people, all in different stages of dealing with pretty much the same problem. People had all different kinds of ways of listening to the speaker. Some were entranced. Some fidgeted. Some smiled in recognition at different bits that were said, and some looked at each other significantly. As it happens, I liked the main speaker, and felt a kind of connection to her story. She was talking about living in her head for so long, and how she has had to learn to live in her body, too. Now that doesn't sound like much when I repeat it. But it was powerful, sitting in the same room, feeling connected. There were a lot of people and I was nearly late, so I sat near the back and off to one side. I could barely see the front of the room, as there were maybe a hundred people there! (So many alcoholics! Who knew?) At one point, someone in front of me shifted how she was sitting, and I had a direct view of the speaker. And I had one of those moments I sometimes have, where the world seems to break open for a moment, and everything feels different. It's hard to describe, but it happens to me sometimes, moments like this. I have come to think of them as grace, maybe. Time slows down, and everything sounds different, clearer, and the world seems to glow. Or maybe vibrate. Anyway, at the meeting, I had one of those moments, and in that moment, I felt like the woman at the table in the front of the room was speaking directly to me. And I was listening.
Of course, she was speaking to everyone. Soon the crowd shifted slightly and I couldn't see anymore, and the room settled back to normal. Then some guy talked, and he was annoying, the way people sometimes are, and that was fine, too. Afterward, I didn't stay and chat with anyone. This was enough for me for one day. I think I will go back though. There is something here for me to learn. And I think it's a kind of physical learning, something I just can't get from reading or writing, as good as those things are. I know we are a social species, and there's a lot about the non-verbal ways we communicate that's not so well understood. Of course, I would like to understand it. But the most important thing might be for me to actually experience being with others, being a part of something they are also a part of, and not trying all that much to figure out how it works.
I've been reading a little of the Belgian philosopher, Isabelle Stengers, and in one interview she talks about the "care of the possible," something she takes from William James. I like that a lot. Her point, as I understand it, is that we pass over so much experience, but a different approach might be to consider the possibilities that our actual experience opens for us, rather than only acknowledging what we accept as the facts. (I have not at all done justice to Stengers' wonderful work here, but I am making sense of the world with it as best I can, and I'm OK with that.) I used to care a lot about what was called addiction and what wasn't, and whether I was an alcoholic or not. When I thought about those things, I thought about them as if they were somehow real categories, things that either applied to me, in truth, or did not. I think this is the way we are taught to think. Now I am trying something different. It seems to me that "alcoholic" is a pretty good concept, in that it opens the door to a new way of life, once you accept it. If you don't like it, don't worry. Find a concept that works for you. And in going to a meeting, I'm not worrying too much about any single version of the truth. I expect the truth is more in the practice, in the experience of getting together with people and listening to them (and yes, one day maybe even talking to someone there!) What I need to learn from it is more in the experience of being with the others, and feeling a glimmer of belonging. The experience of that, not the objective proof of it's efficacy.
I'll see how it all goes. This feels like a new kind of acceptance to me, one that includes other people: their wisdom and their follies, yes, but mostly their very presence.
This was a bit more complicated to write about than I had thought it might be, and I'm not sure it's all clear, even to me. I'm just figuring this out. So if you're still here, thanks for reading! Peace and joy to you. xo
Wednesday, 7 January 2015
One year sober!!!
Yesterday was my 365th day in a row without booze. By now it's a habit, of course, just as drinking far too much was a habit for so long. A year ago yesterday, I woke up early and planned to quit that day. But I had a day off, and instead I went for a long walk and bought wine, and came home and drank some. Nothing dramatic happened. I'd quit the previous summer, and then tried drinking again after four months away, and it was obvious to me that it mostly wasn't working. Nothing terrible was happening to me. Still, I was miserable. And I knew I'd felt better when I wasn't drinking, before that siren song called me back yet again. The next day, I woke up with the same idea. And that day, a year ago, I really did quit. It stared out as a modest plan: one week, no booze. But I'm still here and I'm staying.
These days booze has no appeal for me. I can't stand the smell any more. I have no interest in the fuzzy mind I know I'd have if I drank. I've figured out how to make interesting drinks that are so good, sometimes the drinkers wan to try one instead of having wine or beer. At this point, no one could convince me that drinking was a good idea. No matter what.
When I was thinking about quitting, I strongly resisted the idea that I had been somehow escaping from life by drinking. Now I see that I was. And I resisted the received wisdom that I would find myself changing once I quit, that without booze, I would change emotionally. But I did. I wasn't interested in most of what people had to say about recovery, and I was always ready to rail against talk about "alcoholism" or "addiction." But I've found that some of it applies to me, and some of it is helpful, and the rest just doesn't bother me any more.
I used to do too much of my thinking about quitting in the abstract, impersonal mode. Eventually, I found that didn't help me much. Instead, this time, I paid attention to myself--what worked for me, what didn't, how I felt, what I thought might help me get through the next minute or hour or day. Mostly I read lots and wrote lots and walked in the park and rode my bike and talked to my partner way, way too much about how it was all going. I fulfilled my school and work obligations, but for the first few months, I wasn't exactly a star in either domain. It didn't matter. When I started to feel stronger, I was able to do more, but I took my time.
A lot of the advice people gave didn't work for me. I tried the whole "treats" thing that gets talked about, but I never did get the hang of it. I did buy myself a lot of books, but only when I saw one I thought I might read, never as a reward for anything. I developed a fondness for the gluten-free carrot cake at the local bakery, and had to put myself on rations on that score. (Once a week is fine. Twice if I'm on a big deadline. Any more than that, I figure I'm just escaping into cake instead of booze, and I eat some yoghurt with honey instead. Which isn't so bad, you know!)
This was supposed to be a big happy celebratory post about how happy I am to be sober, and here I am writing about what didn't work for me! What gives? The thing is, I am happy. I feel a whole lot better without booze in my life. My mental health is better (and it was really pretty darn bad a year ago). I avoid doctors, but I think I'm physically healthier. (I hardly ever get colds now, and I didn't get my annual December bronchitis, but winter isn't done yet!) I used to be pretty twisted up with anxiety, but these days I feel so much more clear and calm, and even when I do get anxious, I work it out without spiralling into the Pit of Despair. It's not all perfect all of a sudden, and it's been a lot of work. But I am figuring out how to live in the world, and I sometimes even feel at home here. That's new to me, and I'm holding onto it.
I guess what I wanted to say was that most of what I thought about getting sober was wrong, and a lot of what I believed about it when I started didn't much matter. But I was able to figure it out as I went, day to day, by being attentive to myself, and listening to others, and by leaning very hard on the support of the fine folks online who read and comment and write their own stories about getting sober, or trying to get sober. We're all in this together, and what a beautiful thing that is. Just a whole lot of people who used to drink too much, finding a better way to live without booze. Thanks for all your help and support and humour and friendship. I'm deeply grateful for it all, and for my life. It's been a great year. Tough, but worthwhile, and often wonderful.
Peace and joy to you. And many thanks. xo
These days booze has no appeal for me. I can't stand the smell any more. I have no interest in the fuzzy mind I know I'd have if I drank. I've figured out how to make interesting drinks that are so good, sometimes the drinkers wan to try one instead of having wine or beer. At this point, no one could convince me that drinking was a good idea. No matter what.
When I was thinking about quitting, I strongly resisted the idea that I had been somehow escaping from life by drinking. Now I see that I was. And I resisted the received wisdom that I would find myself changing once I quit, that without booze, I would change emotionally. But I did. I wasn't interested in most of what people had to say about recovery, and I was always ready to rail against talk about "alcoholism" or "addiction." But I've found that some of it applies to me, and some of it is helpful, and the rest just doesn't bother me any more.
I used to do too much of my thinking about quitting in the abstract, impersonal mode. Eventually, I found that didn't help me much. Instead, this time, I paid attention to myself--what worked for me, what didn't, how I felt, what I thought might help me get through the next minute or hour or day. Mostly I read lots and wrote lots and walked in the park and rode my bike and talked to my partner way, way too much about how it was all going. I fulfilled my school and work obligations, but for the first few months, I wasn't exactly a star in either domain. It didn't matter. When I started to feel stronger, I was able to do more, but I took my time.
A lot of the advice people gave didn't work for me. I tried the whole "treats" thing that gets talked about, but I never did get the hang of it. I did buy myself a lot of books, but only when I saw one I thought I might read, never as a reward for anything. I developed a fondness for the gluten-free carrot cake at the local bakery, and had to put myself on rations on that score. (Once a week is fine. Twice if I'm on a big deadline. Any more than that, I figure I'm just escaping into cake instead of booze, and I eat some yoghurt with honey instead. Which isn't so bad, you know!)
This was supposed to be a big happy celebratory post about how happy I am to be sober, and here I am writing about what didn't work for me! What gives? The thing is, I am happy. I feel a whole lot better without booze in my life. My mental health is better (and it was really pretty darn bad a year ago). I avoid doctors, but I think I'm physically healthier. (I hardly ever get colds now, and I didn't get my annual December bronchitis, but winter isn't done yet!) I used to be pretty twisted up with anxiety, but these days I feel so much more clear and calm, and even when I do get anxious, I work it out without spiralling into the Pit of Despair. It's not all perfect all of a sudden, and it's been a lot of work. But I am figuring out how to live in the world, and I sometimes even feel at home here. That's new to me, and I'm holding onto it.
I guess what I wanted to say was that most of what I thought about getting sober was wrong, and a lot of what I believed about it when I started didn't much matter. But I was able to figure it out as I went, day to day, by being attentive to myself, and listening to others, and by leaning very hard on the support of the fine folks online who read and comment and write their own stories about getting sober, or trying to get sober. We're all in this together, and what a beautiful thing that is. Just a whole lot of people who used to drink too much, finding a better way to live without booze. Thanks for all your help and support and humour and friendship. I'm deeply grateful for it all, and for my life. It's been a great year. Tough, but worthwhile, and often wonderful.
Peace and joy to you. And many thanks. xo
Monday, 29 December 2014
A "welcoming Something Dance" for the new year
It's been a beautiful holiday so far. Now my partner and I are heading up the coast to celebrate the New Year with his family. I've been thinking about time, as many of us do at the new year. For me it's more pronounced this year, as it's been a time of enormous change for me. When I quit drinking, I didn't really believe the folks who talked about getting sober as the beginning of a process, but it does seem to be what's going on here. Sometimes these days I'm not sure where I'm headed with it. (Except staying sober, which I'm pretty darn certain about!) But I do know what I need to do is to be open to the world, and to myself, whatever that looks like. Primrose wrote a wonderful post on this subject yesterday. And the other day, when I was organizing a bunch of paperwork, (it's not all fun and games and tea and cookies here on my days off!) I came across a poem by Charles Wright that I'd tucked aside a few years ago and then forgotten, and I thought I'd share that in lieu of my own words.
Wishing you peace and joy in the new year. And dancing!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bedtime Story
The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.
It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,
is hungry for food,
And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one.
The forest begins to gather its silences in.
The meadow regroups and hunkers down
for its cleft feet.
Something is wringing the rag of sunlight
inexorably out and hanging.
Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads.
Something is licking the shadows up,
And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in.
Something is inching its way into our hearts,
scratching its blue nails against the wall there.
Should we let it in?
Should we greet it as it deserves,
Hands on our ears, mouths open?
Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat?
Should we turn on the radio,
should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
I think we should, love, I think we should.
-by Charles Wright (from his book Scar Tissue)
Wishing you peace and joy in the new year. And dancing!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bedtime Story
The generator hums like a distant ding an sich.
It's early evening, and time, like the dog it is,
is hungry for food,
And will be fed, don't doubt it, will be fed, my small one.
The forest begins to gather its silences in.
The meadow regroups and hunkers down
for its cleft feet.
Something is wringing the rag of sunlight
inexorably out and hanging.
Something is making the reeds bend and cover their heads.
Something is licking the shadows up,
And stringing the blank spaces along, filling them in.
Something is inching its way into our hearts,
scratching its blue nails against the wall there.
Should we let it in?
Should we greet it as it deserves,
Hands on our ears, mouths open?
Or should we bring it a chair to sit on, and offer it meat?
Should we turn on the radio,
should we clap our hands and dance
The Something Dance, the welcoming Something Dance?
I think we should, love, I think we should.
-by Charles Wright (from his book Scar Tissue)
Monday, 15 December 2014
Acceptance, again.
I've been struggling with a whole lot of things that I think have to do with acceptance. You know, it seems like I figure some things out and then later I come back and figure them out all over again. Same lesson, just deeper. I guess we all have that.
A number of years ago, I was taking an art class, and I got talking with an instructor who was visiting from the east coast, where I'm also from. She'd always been a good girl: Catholic school, art college on scholarship, career making and teaching art. She'd done everything right in her life. Eventually, she started to feel so shaped by the forces around her who defined what "everything right" looked like that she didn't have much sense of herself. I remember her telling me that it took her a long time to get over needing some sort of approval from the world for everything she did. Needing approval is not the best road to making great art. For a time she stopped presenting her art publicly, and she ended up developing a whole new practice, returning to working with clay--something she loved, but that isn't exactly high status in the art world. By the time I met her, she was making art and teaching and enjoying it all again, and it felt more real to her than it had. She said her turning point had been a conversation with her husband, who pointed out that she was still acting like the schoolgirl who really wanted the teachers to say what a grand girl she was.
Ouch. I feel like that these days. At the time, it didn't much apply to me at all. I'd been one of those high achieving kids, but as an adult I'd quit lots of things that people thought I was supposed to be doing. Even sitting by a kiln chatting with an art instructor, as I was doing that evening years ago, would have been considered a waste of time by many of the people I knew. I didn't care.
But being in school somehow brings a lot of that old approval stuff back again. I love reading and writing and researching. It's interesting and intellectually stimulating, and I feel lucky that I'm allowed to spend my time doing it. But whenever I submit a project to be graded, I feel like I'm waiting for a God I don't entirely believe in to reach out and pat me on the head and tell me I'm a good girl after all. There is no winning this game. A perfect grade means I have to live up to that next time or I'm not so good after all. (And anyway, maybe the professor was being kind, so it doesn't quite count.) Anything even slightly less than perfect has me replaying all the problems in my work.
I'm embarrassed to be writing about this. It doesn't feel like an adult issue. I thought I'd got past this years ago. I guess not. Now I think leaving the whole academic and career world as I did was more like a giant workaround. I thought I'd given all that worldly approval a big old, "Screw you!" and gone off to do my own thing. (It might not be surprising that "my thing" ended up involving a lot of wine every evening.) But it's one thing to keep away from the world of approval altogether, and quite another to be submerged in it and not completely shaped by it. Now that I'm a full time student, I am judged and graded all the time. Trying to be OK with that is tricky. It's pretty darn draining, oscillating out there on the end of some approval system that feels like it matters. And it's hard to talk about, because I don't expect much sympathy or understanding. Maybe it looks like some sort of humble-brag. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like not knowing my way around in the world, and not knowing who to ask for directions.
And maybe it seems like this has nothing to do with drinking, either. But it does. It's been a bit over 11 months since I quit drinking. The semester was not only my first as a full time student, and my first in grad school, it was my first school semester ever (or since I was 19, anyway, and that seems like forever ago) without drinking to smooth away the rough edges of insecurity and panic. And I did it. I finished my courses and fulfilled all my teaching assistant obligations and sent out my conference proposals for the upcoming year. And I'm doing some interesting work. Interesting to me, and sometimes to a few other people. Honestly, I think that's pretty good. Maybe even great. It's true, I was wildly insecure at times, and many days I came home and wept, sure that everyone in the room had hated me. I think that feeling has to do with the approval thing I'm talking about. Being critical of ideas means taking a stance that's sometimes unpopular, and when I do that, as I do, I am keenly aware of the undercurrents of feeling in the room. And that's uncomfortable. I think I'm managing to stay with what's interesting to me, and that means going against the grain sometimes. So there's lots to be uncomfortable about, and being hyper-aware of the currents of social and academic approval doesn't make it smoother. Not drinking means I don't make it worse for myself, but it also means I don't get to hide from it, ever.
So that's the acceptance I started writing about. I really thought I was a punk rock rebel who didn't care what people thought. I'm appalled to find that I notice every nuance of what people think of me. And I care. Ouch, again. But that's exactly the thing I have to accept. You can't separate yourself from the world and live, protected and authentic and pure. Maybe that's what I thought I was doing, all those evenings drinking too much wine, staying separate from life. It doesn't look like much of a way to live, though. Participating in life means swimming in the wonder and the muck of the world. It's painful, and I don't know my way about in it. But I'm part of it. We all are.
Now it's mid-December. I have a little free time to enjoy here and there, and some Christmas plans (we're cooking a duck!). Then were taking a small trip to see family, which means late mornings sleeping in and reading and days hiking and lovely slow meals and evening fires. I bought some cordials at the farmers' market the other day, so I can mark the festive occasions with toasts that don't need booze to make them special. I'll raise a glass of blueberry-lavender fizz to you, my fellow sober bloggers and readers and lurkers. Thanks as always for your fine company. Wishing you all peace and joy, and happy holidays.
A number of years ago, I was taking an art class, and I got talking with an instructor who was visiting from the east coast, where I'm also from. She'd always been a good girl: Catholic school, art college on scholarship, career making and teaching art. She'd done everything right in her life. Eventually, she started to feel so shaped by the forces around her who defined what "everything right" looked like that she didn't have much sense of herself. I remember her telling me that it took her a long time to get over needing some sort of approval from the world for everything she did. Needing approval is not the best road to making great art. For a time she stopped presenting her art publicly, and she ended up developing a whole new practice, returning to working with clay--something she loved, but that isn't exactly high status in the art world. By the time I met her, she was making art and teaching and enjoying it all again, and it felt more real to her than it had. She said her turning point had been a conversation with her husband, who pointed out that she was still acting like the schoolgirl who really wanted the teachers to say what a grand girl she was.
Ouch. I feel like that these days. At the time, it didn't much apply to me at all. I'd been one of those high achieving kids, but as an adult I'd quit lots of things that people thought I was supposed to be doing. Even sitting by a kiln chatting with an art instructor, as I was doing that evening years ago, would have been considered a waste of time by many of the people I knew. I didn't care.
But being in school somehow brings a lot of that old approval stuff back again. I love reading and writing and researching. It's interesting and intellectually stimulating, and I feel lucky that I'm allowed to spend my time doing it. But whenever I submit a project to be graded, I feel like I'm waiting for a God I don't entirely believe in to reach out and pat me on the head and tell me I'm a good girl after all. There is no winning this game. A perfect grade means I have to live up to that next time or I'm not so good after all. (And anyway, maybe the professor was being kind, so it doesn't quite count.) Anything even slightly less than perfect has me replaying all the problems in my work.
I'm embarrassed to be writing about this. It doesn't feel like an adult issue. I thought I'd got past this years ago. I guess not. Now I think leaving the whole academic and career world as I did was more like a giant workaround. I thought I'd given all that worldly approval a big old, "Screw you!" and gone off to do my own thing. (It might not be surprising that "my thing" ended up involving a lot of wine every evening.) But it's one thing to keep away from the world of approval altogether, and quite another to be submerged in it and not completely shaped by it. Now that I'm a full time student, I am judged and graded all the time. Trying to be OK with that is tricky. It's pretty darn draining, oscillating out there on the end of some approval system that feels like it matters. And it's hard to talk about, because I don't expect much sympathy or understanding. Maybe it looks like some sort of humble-brag. But it doesn't feel like that. It feels like not knowing my way around in the world, and not knowing who to ask for directions.
And maybe it seems like this has nothing to do with drinking, either. But it does. It's been a bit over 11 months since I quit drinking. The semester was not only my first as a full time student, and my first in grad school, it was my first school semester ever (or since I was 19, anyway, and that seems like forever ago) without drinking to smooth away the rough edges of insecurity and panic. And I did it. I finished my courses and fulfilled all my teaching assistant obligations and sent out my conference proposals for the upcoming year. And I'm doing some interesting work. Interesting to me, and sometimes to a few other people. Honestly, I think that's pretty good. Maybe even great. It's true, I was wildly insecure at times, and many days I came home and wept, sure that everyone in the room had hated me. I think that feeling has to do with the approval thing I'm talking about. Being critical of ideas means taking a stance that's sometimes unpopular, and when I do that, as I do, I am keenly aware of the undercurrents of feeling in the room. And that's uncomfortable. I think I'm managing to stay with what's interesting to me, and that means going against the grain sometimes. So there's lots to be uncomfortable about, and being hyper-aware of the currents of social and academic approval doesn't make it smoother. Not drinking means I don't make it worse for myself, but it also means I don't get to hide from it, ever.
So that's the acceptance I started writing about. I really thought I was a punk rock rebel who didn't care what people thought. I'm appalled to find that I notice every nuance of what people think of me. And I care. Ouch, again. But that's exactly the thing I have to accept. You can't separate yourself from the world and live, protected and authentic and pure. Maybe that's what I thought I was doing, all those evenings drinking too much wine, staying separate from life. It doesn't look like much of a way to live, though. Participating in life means swimming in the wonder and the muck of the world. It's painful, and I don't know my way about in it. But I'm part of it. We all are.
Monday, 3 November 2014
300 days sober. I'm not always OK, but I'm not going back.
Something strange has been happening these past few weeks. I'll have a hard day--just being tired and busy and trying to work out how to do all these things that are new to me, which I know many people have worked out years ago and yes, trying to figure out how to do well in grad school is a first world problem, but this is my life and this is my problem and it's real, and sometimes it's really bloody hard.
OK. So I'll have a hard day, and I'll come home and think, "I would love a drink." Or, "Man, a glass of wine would be just the thing right now." Or, if I can slow it down enough to get hold of the thought, I'll think, "This is exactly the kind of time I would have looked to wine for comfort."
What's in those moments? I find it hard to describe. Usually, I feel sad and lonely and empty. I'm not sure if I'm enough for the world, or if the world is enough for me, and maybe those two feelings are the same thing anyway. I feel hollowed out, disappointed and disappointing, and lonely. The loneliness is curious, because I'm not actually alone. These moments hit me when I'm just through the door, just come home to my partner, and he's wonderful, and in all those times I've been talking about, he's in the middle of making some yummy dinner for us, and he stops that to welcome me and make me something nice to drink. So it's got something to do with closing the door against the parts of the world that I find difficult. And it seems like having a glass of wine is part of that, part of closing off the hard old world.
Some of this comes from being tired. I don't cope well without enough sleep, and I have had some short sleeps while I've been meeting some of my weekly deadlines. My sister was in town for a short visit, and although I love my sister and I was very pleased to see her, my family throws me into a tailspin of not being good enough, and even though I know that and I can feel it happening, I can't always make it stop when it is happening.
Last year, when I was about three months into my first serious spell of quitting drinking, I noticed something that amazed me: I was, sometimes, easy with people.
To know how big a deal this is, you need some back story. In my day to day, no one would ever call me shy. I'm not talking about being shy. But I have a kind of background assumption that people hate me and don't want to talk to me. I (mostly) know that's not true. It's just an old story left lying around from some old ways of being. It runs pretty deep, though. And it hurts. Usually, what I do is make a kind of triangle around it. I accept that I am feeling something awful based on something that probably isn't true. I can't convince myself it's for sure not true. Maybe some of the people do hate me. And I know that denying my feelings altogether is a bad road for me to go down, so there's no point pretending I don't feel what I feel, or telling myself feelings aren't real. They may be misguided, but they are real. So I decide to go agnostic: maybe people hate me, maybe they don't. Who knows? And then I try to work out, if people didn't hate me, how would I feel? How would I act? And then, even while I have something that's a bit like screaming voices telling me that all the people think I'm an idiot/loser/jerk/pick-your-insult, I can (partly) act as if things were fine, and that often gets me through the worst of it. It works, mostly. But that stuff is hard. Right?
So last year, I found that quitting drinking quelled a lot of that trouble for me. (Then I drank again. But then I stopped again, this time for good.) That particular kind of trouble isn't gone, but it settled down a lot. Except lately, it's back. Because I've been in what for me is a bit of a pressure cooker of new situations, and I've been tired, and feeling the stress. And I am a bit intense. I'm really serious about this school stuff, so I would prefer to debate a point to figure it out rather than take the easy way out and agree with what seems obvious to many people but seems wrong to me. If I didn't want to be a critical thinker, I wouldn't be in grad school. And in that, all the old, "Everybody in the room hates me," voices some back.
And they are partly true. When you disagree with a widely held point of view, there is real tension in the discussion. And some people probably wish you would just get with the program. Groups have their dynamics, and even in discussions that aren't obviously personal, often people don't like disagreement. It doesn't mean the people actually hate me personally. But in those moments, they think I'm wrong, and maybe a bit of an idiot, and they wish I would shut up. The thing is, I won't shut up.
So here's what I realized. Not drinking gives me a huge amount of help with this stuff. But it doesn't solve it. And when I get that awful feeling, that's one of the times I am really and truly back to longing for a drink. Because alcohol will make me feel different. It will, for a while, restore the disconnect, and let me wrap myself in a safe place where the world can't get me.
Instead, I've been trying something else. In those just-in-through-the-door moments, I say, "Oh shit, I really want a glass of wine, and I can't have one but I want one." And I cry and hug my partner and sit and sip whatever he hands me--it will be cold and fizzy, and it won't have booze in it, that's all that matters here. And I just feel bad for a while. Really bad. But only for a while.
But also, I've been talking more with people about this sort of thing. The other day, I had a conversation with student whose feelings had been hurt in a class discussion--not anything to do with me, except that I'd heard something said to her that she didn't, so she asked me about it. And when we talked, I said, "Sometimes I get my feelings hurt because of some mishearing or misunderstanding, and then I feel like everyone in the room hates me, and it's really hard to get past that and stay with the discussion." I don't even know her, we've only spoken once before, but we had a really great chat about being sensitive, and how that's not always bad because it does mean you notice a lot of things that other people miss, but it can make for some terrible moments. We both felt better after our talk, I could tell. A few days later, sipping soda water at the pub with some students after a school meeting, I had another conversation with a student I'd never met about the same sort of thing. These hyper-sensitive folk are everywhere, apparently. And I can talk to them.
It does me no good to tell me I'm not chronically unique, or that I need to kill my enormous ego, or whatever. That just feels like being berated, like some mean coach is yelling at me to get over myself, telling me I don't matter. And I need to matter to me.
What does seem to work is talking with people, trying to be open and connected enough that I don't feel hated (or not for long), but I don't deny either that there is some tension in the room and it's directed at me sometimes, and I can stay with the conversation despite that tension. And other people feel that too, sometimes. I don't have to go make up a wine-cocoon for myself to hide in. I just have to keep on going out into the world, even when it doesn't seem friendly. As I write that, the rain is whipping against my living room window and I can feel for a moment what it's like to be out walking by the sea in the roaring wind and driving rain, and my face stinging from the cold. I love being out walking in a lashing storm. It makes me feel like I'm alive. And maybe, I'm starting to think, that the pain of that particular loneliness that I feel when I'm in a group and it's not going well, I can take that like the feel of cold wind and rain on my face in a storm, something fierce and wonderful, proof that I'm alive and life is a grand, glorious, and sometimes painful mystery. That's the joy of it, right there in the pain.
Yesterday was my 300th day without drinking. Hooray for that!!! Sometimes it gets easier, this sober gig, but it's hard some days, too, that's for sure. But I am NOT going back to drinking. I have not been blogging much but I think I might be staying a bit closer to the sober hearth now that the days are grey and the rain is lashing again. It will be a nice place to come into after I've been out walking in the blustery world.
Wishing you all a peaceful and happy November. xo
OK. So I'll have a hard day, and I'll come home and think, "I would love a drink." Or, "Man, a glass of wine would be just the thing right now." Or, if I can slow it down enough to get hold of the thought, I'll think, "This is exactly the kind of time I would have looked to wine for comfort."
What's in those moments? I find it hard to describe. Usually, I feel sad and lonely and empty. I'm not sure if I'm enough for the world, or if the world is enough for me, and maybe those two feelings are the same thing anyway. I feel hollowed out, disappointed and disappointing, and lonely. The loneliness is curious, because I'm not actually alone. These moments hit me when I'm just through the door, just come home to my partner, and he's wonderful, and in all those times I've been talking about, he's in the middle of making some yummy dinner for us, and he stops that to welcome me and make me something nice to drink. So it's got something to do with closing the door against the parts of the world that I find difficult. And it seems like having a glass of wine is part of that, part of closing off the hard old world.
Some of this comes from being tired. I don't cope well without enough sleep, and I have had some short sleeps while I've been meeting some of my weekly deadlines. My sister was in town for a short visit, and although I love my sister and I was very pleased to see her, my family throws me into a tailspin of not being good enough, and even though I know that and I can feel it happening, I can't always make it stop when it is happening.
Last year, when I was about three months into my first serious spell of quitting drinking, I noticed something that amazed me: I was, sometimes, easy with people.
To know how big a deal this is, you need some back story. In my day to day, no one would ever call me shy. I'm not talking about being shy. But I have a kind of background assumption that people hate me and don't want to talk to me. I (mostly) know that's not true. It's just an old story left lying around from some old ways of being. It runs pretty deep, though. And it hurts. Usually, what I do is make a kind of triangle around it. I accept that I am feeling something awful based on something that probably isn't true. I can't convince myself it's for sure not true. Maybe some of the people do hate me. And I know that denying my feelings altogether is a bad road for me to go down, so there's no point pretending I don't feel what I feel, or telling myself feelings aren't real. They may be misguided, but they are real. So I decide to go agnostic: maybe people hate me, maybe they don't. Who knows? And then I try to work out, if people didn't hate me, how would I feel? How would I act? And then, even while I have something that's a bit like screaming voices telling me that all the people think I'm an idiot/loser/jerk/pick-your-insult, I can (partly) act as if things were fine, and that often gets me through the worst of it. It works, mostly. But that stuff is hard. Right?
So last year, I found that quitting drinking quelled a lot of that trouble for me. (Then I drank again. But then I stopped again, this time for good.) That particular kind of trouble isn't gone, but it settled down a lot. Except lately, it's back. Because I've been in what for me is a bit of a pressure cooker of new situations, and I've been tired, and feeling the stress. And I am a bit intense. I'm really serious about this school stuff, so I would prefer to debate a point to figure it out rather than take the easy way out and agree with what seems obvious to many people but seems wrong to me. If I didn't want to be a critical thinker, I wouldn't be in grad school. And in that, all the old, "Everybody in the room hates me," voices some back.
And they are partly true. When you disagree with a widely held point of view, there is real tension in the discussion. And some people probably wish you would just get with the program. Groups have their dynamics, and even in discussions that aren't obviously personal, often people don't like disagreement. It doesn't mean the people actually hate me personally. But in those moments, they think I'm wrong, and maybe a bit of an idiot, and they wish I would shut up. The thing is, I won't shut up.
So here's what I realized. Not drinking gives me a huge amount of help with this stuff. But it doesn't solve it. And when I get that awful feeling, that's one of the times I am really and truly back to longing for a drink. Because alcohol will make me feel different. It will, for a while, restore the disconnect, and let me wrap myself in a safe place where the world can't get me.
Instead, I've been trying something else. In those just-in-through-the-door moments, I say, "Oh shit, I really want a glass of wine, and I can't have one but I want one." And I cry and hug my partner and sit and sip whatever he hands me--it will be cold and fizzy, and it won't have booze in it, that's all that matters here. And I just feel bad for a while. Really bad. But only for a while.
But also, I've been talking more with people about this sort of thing. The other day, I had a conversation with student whose feelings had been hurt in a class discussion--not anything to do with me, except that I'd heard something said to her that she didn't, so she asked me about it. And when we talked, I said, "Sometimes I get my feelings hurt because of some mishearing or misunderstanding, and then I feel like everyone in the room hates me, and it's really hard to get past that and stay with the discussion." I don't even know her, we've only spoken once before, but we had a really great chat about being sensitive, and how that's not always bad because it does mean you notice a lot of things that other people miss, but it can make for some terrible moments. We both felt better after our talk, I could tell. A few days later, sipping soda water at the pub with some students after a school meeting, I had another conversation with a student I'd never met about the same sort of thing. These hyper-sensitive folk are everywhere, apparently. And I can talk to them.
It does me no good to tell me I'm not chronically unique, or that I need to kill my enormous ego, or whatever. That just feels like being berated, like some mean coach is yelling at me to get over myself, telling me I don't matter. And I need to matter to me.
What does seem to work is talking with people, trying to be open and connected enough that I don't feel hated (or not for long), but I don't deny either that there is some tension in the room and it's directed at me sometimes, and I can stay with the conversation despite that tension. And other people feel that too, sometimes. I don't have to go make up a wine-cocoon for myself to hide in. I just have to keep on going out into the world, even when it doesn't seem friendly. As I write that, the rain is whipping against my living room window and I can feel for a moment what it's like to be out walking by the sea in the roaring wind and driving rain, and my face stinging from the cold. I love being out walking in a lashing storm. It makes me feel like I'm alive. And maybe, I'm starting to think, that the pain of that particular loneliness that I feel when I'm in a group and it's not going well, I can take that like the feel of cold wind and rain on my face in a storm, something fierce and wonderful, proof that I'm alive and life is a grand, glorious, and sometimes painful mystery. That's the joy of it, right there in the pain.
Yesterday was my 300th day without drinking. Hooray for that!!! Sometimes it gets easier, this sober gig, but it's hard some days, too, that's for sure. But I am NOT going back to drinking. I have not been blogging much but I think I might be staying a bit closer to the sober hearth now that the days are grey and the rain is lashing again. It will be a nice place to come into after I've been out walking in the blustery world.
Wishing you all a peaceful and happy November. xo
Sunday, 12 October 2014
A quick hello at 9 months (plus a few days) sober
The other day I received a kind email from the lovely Amy, recommending a great book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard, and also, I think, checking in to see how I'm doing. And I realized that I hadn't posted in over a month, and hadn't even responded (yet) to comments on my previous post. So this is just to say hello, in case you follow along here, and you maybe were concerned that I'd gone quiet.
I'm doing great! I'm in school and I am loving the intense intellectual focus of academic work. I am sober and happy and focused and clear-minded. And busy!
I can hardly express how happy I am that I quit drinking. I'm not going to try to catalogue all the reasons here. Thinking clearly is one. Feeling more accurately is another--my feelings aren't as distorted as they used to be, so it's not a problem when things het a bit intense at times, which they do. I really am upbeat and engaged with what I'm doing, even when it's hard and I'm tired and insecure and I don't know if I can do it all in the time I have to do it.
So much of what has often caused me grief, all that worry that used to be so familiar to me in my interactions with other people (Maybe they hate me! Maybe I talk too much! Was that a dumb thing to say?) seems to have just fallen away. No, that's not quite true. Those worries are there, but they don't have the teeth they used to have. They're just little grimaces some days. Some days they're not even there at all. I'm working on this, but it's getting a lot easier. It's all part of the practice.
Drinking isn't much of an issue for me these days. I can casually say, "when I used to drink," in a conversation without drawing much attention to it, and I'm more and more comfortable being open about that. It leads to some interesting conversations, but mostly no one notices. Yes, I occasionally romanticize the allure of a glass of wine or a wee tot of something, but these days that passes pretty quickly. I'm not especially working on being sober, as there's not much work to it just now. I just am sober. And I'm putting my energy into doing things that are interesting and meaningful to me. Life, in other words. I find the whole thing glorious!
(I know some people will worry that if I don't keep being sober front and centre in my life, it will all fall apart. I respectfully disagree. I expect there are many way to do this sober gig. I'm figuring out mine, and for now, it's working for me. So far so good.)
OK, I'd better get back to the massive pile of reading. Wishing you all peace and love and a happy Canadian Thanksgiving.
I'm doing great! I'm in school and I am loving the intense intellectual focus of academic work. I am sober and happy and focused and clear-minded. And busy!
I can hardly express how happy I am that I quit drinking. I'm not going to try to catalogue all the reasons here. Thinking clearly is one. Feeling more accurately is another--my feelings aren't as distorted as they used to be, so it's not a problem when things het a bit intense at times, which they do. I really am upbeat and engaged with what I'm doing, even when it's hard and I'm tired and insecure and I don't know if I can do it all in the time I have to do it.
So much of what has often caused me grief, all that worry that used to be so familiar to me in my interactions with other people (Maybe they hate me! Maybe I talk too much! Was that a dumb thing to say?) seems to have just fallen away. No, that's not quite true. Those worries are there, but they don't have the teeth they used to have. They're just little grimaces some days. Some days they're not even there at all. I'm working on this, but it's getting a lot easier. It's all part of the practice.
Drinking isn't much of an issue for me these days. I can casually say, "when I used to drink," in a conversation without drawing much attention to it, and I'm more and more comfortable being open about that. It leads to some interesting conversations, but mostly no one notices. Yes, I occasionally romanticize the allure of a glass of wine or a wee tot of something, but these days that passes pretty quickly. I'm not especially working on being sober, as there's not much work to it just now. I just am sober. And I'm putting my energy into doing things that are interesting and meaningful to me. Life, in other words. I find the whole thing glorious!
(I know some people will worry that if I don't keep being sober front and centre in my life, it will all fall apart. I respectfully disagree. I expect there are many way to do this sober gig. I'm figuring out mine, and for now, it's working for me. So far so good.)
OK, I'd better get back to the massive pile of reading. Wishing you all peace and love and a happy Canadian Thanksgiving.
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