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

Round 2, Day 77: Learning how to dance?

It's end of term and I'm in the middle of researching and writing a paper and deadlines and all that jazz, so I haven't posted in over a week. But I'm still here.

Eleven weeks! At the beginning of the semester, I set myself 13 weeks as a goal. I don't buy into the whole goal-directed life thing all that much. To me, it's better to have a general sense of where I'm going, and then stay open to what happens. But pointing myself toward sober meant reorienting what I was willing to be open to, and I'm glad I did set a goal. I won't start drinking at 13 weeks. Now that I'm here, I doubt I will ever drink again, though I'm not going to try and work out all the details of that plan before lunch today! I'm sticking with the foreseeable future, and there's no booze there for me!

At this point, in this second round of not drinking, I'm realizing some things about myself that surprise me. One is this: I'm actually not all that shy or anxious. How is this possible? I am plenty of awkward things, that's for sure. I am opinionated, and intense, a bit difficult. I'm not everyone's cup of tea. But I enjoy the back and forth of a good discussion, and I will neither give up my argument to appease someone nor bully someone into doing the same. Disagreement is uncomfortable, but maybe learning to sit with it will lead to better discussions. And I think that's part of what I'm learning, how to sit in the discomfort. Discomfort is a big part of what used to cause me so much anxiety, and that really is fading. It's not gone. But I'm starting to see that being anxious is not some essence of who I am, which I had long thought it to be.

Same with being shy. It's not that other people have thought of me as shy, but I have been so anxious in so many social settings, I just accepted that anxiety as some essence of myself, and I called it shyness, or being unsociable. But it isn't either of those things. I like being with people, bantering and jousting about ideas, or just being silly. And without being all tangled up in my anxiety, I can get out of my own way and enjoy being social. Now, my version of social will sometimes seem a little egghead to many people's. I'd rather talk about something I read (or something you read) than go dancing, so I'm not going to be the life of any party. But that's not being antisocial. It's just a different kind of social. I remember years ago being on a bus, talking to a friend about a George Steiner essay I'd read. She was embarrassed and shushed me. For her, taking about that sort of thing on the bus was "pretentious," and we had to stick to frothy commentary on trivial matters, or something like that. But I think that's just as pretentious, faking being interested in what's considered normal, and keeping your own interests locked up in private so no one thinks you're a geek or nerd or whatever the current term is for that sort of thing. Maybe sometimes I'm a bit egghead for my rural-born, down-to-earth family or the people at work, and I'm a bit down-to-earth for folks who can talk about ontology the way my people talk about hockey or the weather. So I'm not an easy fit into lots of the kinds of social events that crop up. But that's not the same as being shy or antisocial or anxious.

The other day I enjoyed going for drinks with some interesting people. Cran and soda for me thanks, to everyone else's beer, and I didn't care! Not even a twinge of wanting a beer (or the awful wine at the pub) for me. I was happier not drinking. I didn't have to talk all the time, and I didn't worry that I wasn't getting a word in. I wasn't monitoring myself at all. I took part in the conversation, and made the occasional witty comment when something struck me as funny. I was in it, enjoying it. I wasn't my (old) usual several steps outside, watching myself and evaluating how I was going. Man, that stuff was exhausting! I'm getting over being too caught in my small, separate self, and that leaves me more open to actually participating with other people.

I keep writing about this presence thing. I see now this is what I was writing about a few weeks ago. But I keep learning it, and it keeps surprising me. I say I'm not much of a dancer. But it occurs to me that what I'm talking about, enjoying conversation and interaction and participation, getting out of my own separate-self way so I can take part, it's all a big dance, isn't it? Getting over all that tangled mess that I thought was "me" lets me take part in the big dynamic mess of life. who knows? If I get comfortable enough with this, maybe I'll start dancing after all.

But for now, I'm off to write a paper. For anyone who read my last post, the thesis is more or less done and accepted. I have to defend, but the writing is done, barring some minor edits. Hooray for that! One last paper to go, and though it's a big one, I think it will be fun doing it.

Happy start of spring to you all. Peace and joy and sunny days to you. And dancing, whatever that looks like in your world!

Round 2, Day 64: Open

The past few days, I've started to notice that some things are getting easier. Thinking back to last summer when I quit drinking, I felt this around eight or nine weeks after quitting, but I wasn't sure I could attribute it to having quit. One big thing was, and is, being easier around other people. Instead of starting with an assumption that other people won't care much what I have to say (while at the same time hoping they find me fascinating!) I'm just more open. But without the background shenanigans I have to do in my mind when I'm trying to work around all that, I feel a lot more present talking with people.

That kind of talk sounds so abstract. Present and open: what the hell does it mean, right? Let's see if I can be a bit more clear. At my conference last week, I was able to walk up to people and talk with them, without being hyper-aware of myself or worrying about what the person might think of me. Most people were interesting and friendly, and we had super interesting conversation. For me, conversation is one of the great pleasures, essential to what I think of as a good life. Being able to enjoy that without isolating myself in my own insecurity was amazing. I'm grateful for it. Some people were not friendly, and it didn't matter all that much. Mostly they were just busy, or distracted, or focused on something else. I didn't take it personally. Now it's one thing to know that in principle, and it's quite another to feel it. That's the difference: I felt comfortable in my skin, and I was able to just let go of the little slights and hurts that often consume me. That left me open to what actually was happening, able to enjoy connecting with people who are interested in talking with me about things that interest us both. What a gift!

I felt that last summer when I quit drinking. I started the school semester at around 60 days, and I found myself able to chat easily with people, not get so caught in being uncomfortable that I close myself off. At the time, I thought maybe I had just changed. People change. But I lost that ease when I started drinking again, and eventually I was back in my old cut-off tensions. That was a big reason I quit this second time around. Now I'm starting to feel that ease and openness again, and I know it's because I'm not drinking.

A few years ago I was taking some writing classes. In one class, we had to write a scene from an early childhood memory. I don't remember a whole lot from when I was very young, though judging from photos and family lore, I wasn't a terribly happy child. I wrote about when I was not quite five years old, sitting in my kindergarden class, watching some kids sliding down a rail that I knew they were not allowed to slide on. There were a tangled little gang of them, shrieking and laughing, climbing the stairs and sliding down that rail over and over while the teacher was out of the room. I sat in my chair, completely still and silent, watching. It's not so much that I wanted to join them, though I guess I did. A better way to say it was, I wondered how they did it, how they got up out of their chairs and walked over to the group and joined in, shrieking and sliding. In my memory of this, I sat watched and watched, trying to figure out how to be like that, or even how to start.

We had to read the passage to the class, and it was only once I read it aloud that I saw how dark the story was. Before that, it was just the way I was as a child. After I read my writing, there was a long silence. I could feel that people were uncomfortable, and I thought maybe the passage had been really poorly written and no one knew how to critique it. Then the teacher said something like, "I don't know what to say about alienation in kindergarden. But I sure feel it." It was one of those moments when you realize something you think of as completely normal simply isn't the way things are for other people. My fellow students went on to read lively scenes about birthday parties and Christmases and new bikes and whatever it is people remember when they remember their childhoods. I sat and listened, wondering about what it was like to be like them.

The irony is, trying to connect with other people is probably what drinking was all about in the first place. You know how it starts, those drinks that help you relax and suddenly you can speak easily with others, be funny or charming or interesting whatever else you are. I loved that, the feeling of communion with people when we sat sharing food and drinks and stories. I wasn't used to it, but I was pretty sure I'd found that magic that lets you join in. For those of us who develop problems with drinking, that doesn't work forever. Maybe my drinking started out as something that dissolved the invisible barrier that let me join in, but in the end, it was its own barrier. I mostly preferred to drink alone, often with a book I would read but not remember much of the next day. Still, for years my vision of heaven came straight from the novel All Soul's Day by Cees Nooteboom. Everyone in the book is alone and lonely, which I think left many readers out in the cold, but it resonated with me. There's a recurring scene in which the main character drops by a restaurant where he and his friends have a regular table, and they eat and drink and talk about food and ideas, life and art, and everything in between. When I read it, I knew I wanted that more than anything, that communion with other people. That was my heaven. (In the book, there is a minor character, a Russian woman who always drinks too much vodka and the friends take care of her, and even when I read the book over a decade ago, I worried I might end up more like her than I wished.)

Sometimes I read a lot about how much we need to focus on ourselves, and I get it, but it's only a partial truth. An old friend, a psychologist, talks about how we have to get out of our own way so much of the time. I like that. I knew he was onto something when he said it, but I'm only recently starting to really get what it means. That's what I think quitting drinking is helping do for me. Me being in my own way wasn't caused by the drinking. And I've been working on this stuff for years, with therapy and reading and trying to find a way to be at home in the world. But I am getting glimmers of how it might work. For me, quitting the drink seems to be helping me clear away some of the tangled mess that keeps me isolated. And without that mess, I am more open to the world.

Writing about presence, philosopher Alva Noe says, "The world shows up for us. But it doesn't show up for free.... We achieve access to the world around us through skillful engagement; we acquire and deploy the skills needed to bring the world into focus" (from Varieties of Presence, p. 2).

I guess that's what I'm getting at here. Quitting drinking allows me to show up, too, and do my part. Showing up isn't just a magic quality some people have inside them. Engagement is a skill, and you can't learn new skills when you're drunk. The world is already there, showing up, and it's already glorious. It's a fine thing to be able to show up too, open to the world. I'm new at this, but I know this is what I was looking for. Not drinking in my fictional dream-restaurant with the other lonely people. I wanted this, to get out of own way, open and engaged, learning how to show up to the world that is always already showing up for us. I love it.

Peace and joy to you. Thanks for being open to reading my words, and keeping me company along the way.