Because I can speak

16 May 2011

Today is my 1^st anniversary of sobriety!  I’m amazed.  It’s hard to believe it’s true.  My life is so much better than it was a year ago.  It’s not my first 1^st anniversary, but each time you go out and come back it’s that much harder.  When you go out, you don’t know if you’ll get to come back.  There isn’t a revolving door for sobriety, if you’re really lucky you make it back into the rooms, the lucky you’ll end up in a psych ward or jail, and the less fortunate die before their time.  I’ve often heard it said in the rooms “Keep coming back,” and that “It gets better.”  And that when you get to your first year of sobriety you think it can’t get any better, but when you get to your second it’s even better, and to your fifth, and your tenth, and your fiftieth,  you still can’t think it can get better, but it does.  Today I’m happy to report that I can’t imagine what better might be, which means I’ve probably been doing a pretty good job of living in the day rather than projecting into the future and setting up expectations that would probably lead to disappointments.  Yesterday I spent the day in bed with a migraine, and as I was lying in bed it struck me once again just how happy I am with my life, that I wouldn’t change anything about my past if I could: every disappointment, every frustration, and every setback, has led me to where I am.  And I'm happy with my life today.  I wouldn’t choose not to be bipolar or alcoholic, for both for both diseases present constant challenges which are opportunities for growth.  I felt truly grateful to have a roof over my head, and to have a room no matter how small and inconvenient.  I felt grateful for all of the activities I have, to have a life that feels full whereas a year ago my life felt empty.

Today I felt well enough to reflect over the last year in greater detail.  Just a few days before a year ago, I was lying in bed feeling sick and tired of feeling sick and tired: I’d been in a depression that had dragged on way beyond it’s time.  While I was trying to figure out how to bring it to an end, I remembered that drinking on my psych meds makes them less effective, that once again I was auto-medicating depression with a depressant, and that therefore I wouldn’t have any chance of getting out of my depression if I didn’t get sober.  Oh I’d relapsed plenty of times all right, and I’d gotten sober plenty of times, but my last few years of drinking were different.  I was still regularly attending my alcohol support meetings, but two things were different: I’d started lying about my sobriety date out of embarrassment, and what was even more worrying, was that I’d begun to lose hope that I would be able to get sober again.  I’d been thinking of getting back into therapy for awhile and finally had insurance to cover it, so I called the S.O.S. helpline and got the name of a psychiatrist to see.

The psychiatrist asked lots of questions and took copious notes, maintaining a neutral demeanour until I brought up my alcohol history and current consumption.  She looked quite concerned, which was a great relief to me.  While I knew how serious my situation was, I needed to look at it straight in the face.  I don’t remember what her exact words were, but it doesn’t matter.  She said something about how over time, alcohol damages the cerebral cortex, making it harder to make decisions and to carry through with them.   Reflecting on what she’d said during the metro ride home, I remembered what I’d learned in my alcohol support group that you stay sober 24 hours at a time, and you can re-start your day at any time, I told myself: “I’ll stop drinking right now.  If I wait until tomorrow there will always be a tomorrow.”

I should correct myself a bit here.  The depression had actually begun to lift mid-November, immediately prior to visiting my older brother in Spain for seven weeks.  Peter pays my airfare, works on my wardrobe--buys co-ordinated clothes and jewellery in advance, and continues to complete my wardrobe while I’m there, he cooks great meals, generally spoils me, and is great company.  Not to mention that his apartment is beautifully decorated and peaceful, and is five minutes from the beach and the historical district of town.  Whenever I’m there I feel great, in fact I feel so good that I become convinced that I can do more than I can, and begin making overambitious plans for what I’ll do when I return to Paris.  Towards the end of my visit, one night on my way to sleep, I fell into a terrible self-pity mode about how I’d lost so many years of my life to bipolar disorder and alcoholism, that I’d failed--we’ll go into the importance of that another day.  (For those of you who aren’t alcoholics, you should know that one of the number one offenders for drinking and relapses is self-pity.)  The next night I was unable to sleep, I went into a manic mode of thinking: I lied awake most of the night, planning out in great detail how I’d catch up for the “lost years,” I visualized each of the series of photos that I would make for the next ten years, calculated how long it would take me to make each, and so on.  Shortly after my return to Paris I discovered that I was back in a masked depression.  I looked and felt well, terrific in fact.  I’d wake up feeling on top of the world, and wondering where to start with my day after my cup of coffee.  That was as far as I got, I was a brand new sports car with no gas in my tank.  Every time I tried to do something, I became paralyzed and frustrated.

With a little bit of sobriety, things changed.  I enrolled in a digital photography and PhotoShop class, a studio lighting class, and a gym class, in addition to my belly dance class, and increased my number of teaching hours.  And add in all of the meetings I get to, and you’ve got a pretty busy day.  And most importantly, after all these years, I’m really back into my writing and photography, which are two of the things that make me happiest.  A year ago, walking half a block down the street to the park seemed like an insurmountable task.  Today I spent a good deal of today reflecting on the progress I’ve made over the past year, feeling grateful.


I had a few hours hours to kill in a park, so I skimmed through a book on domestic violence, trying to remember what it was like.  I'm not ready to read it yet, I'm just dipping my toes into the boiling waters.  The task seemed a bit pre-mature, I’ll be able to go into greater detail on it when I work through my fourth step with my sponsor, and I’ve worked more with my new psychologist.  But from past experience I know that it will take me it will take me a bit of time to work on my own before I can work with them.  Some people will wonder why I need to dig though the past, will protest “But it’s been eleven years since you left your husband, it’s time to move on.”  It’s not that simple, there are scars, there are wounds, there are things from the past that I need to work through before I can move on to the future.  Today I know that I’m not ready to get into a new relationship that I’m still unprepared for men who want to control me or abuse me — the two words control and abuse are interchangeable. 

There are several reasons I need to address abusive relationships.  The first, for me, is that if I don’t, I’ll continue to repeat them, the second is that most women who have been abused have no public voice, and the third is that society as a whole continues to deny abuse, what it is, how it happens, how it continues to happen, and what the consequences are.  When you grow up with abuse it is what’s normal, so you don’t recognize it.  The fact that society directly or indirectly condones it, multiplies it.  Because I can speak, I must speak.  

Copyright © 2011