When Takeshi didn’t answer my email, I plummeted down from the lofty skies of hope. At first, with the help of the tools in the program and discussions with friends in the program, I “turned over” the situation, accepted that it was completely out of my control....I accepted that I shouldn’t try to control the situation by contacting him again directly or indirectly. Acceptance is crucial for an alcoholic because we try to control alcohol when we’re drinking, and we use alcohol to try to control ourselves, our emotions, and people, places, and things with disastrous results. once sober, this reflex to control things isn’t suddenly lifted. It’s hard to stay in a state of acceptance--you have to keep working at it actively. It’s easy to slip out of it and have to work hard to get back into it. I’m mourning a years long dream of love, and a sudden and unexpected vivid dream of participating in that love as a woman similar to the healthy young woman I once was. I’ve been going through the process of mourning out of order, I went from acceptance to anger--anger at myself.
From acceptance, I slipped into trying to control the situation by trying to imagine all of the reasons why he hadn’t answered. I can try to guess why he didn’t answer, but I can’t know, and act in accordance of that knowledge--I can’t try to control the situation. But I can take it out on myself. I kept imagining the worst case scenario--that his wife had intercepted the email (it was an office email address), which made me feel like a total fuck up. I spiralled down into a negative abyss, calling myself names such as idiot, stupid, fool, and so on. At first the name calling was really harsh because one of my dearest friends asked if I really wanted her opinion. I repeated: “I’m a fuck up,” I’m a bad person” even though I’d declined her opinion knowing that it would have a strong moral overtone. I needed to talk through my feelings, and not to be judged, but just her offering her opinion was enough to open up the door to self-flagellation. Fortunately, all of my friends from the program listened without judgement, they suggested positive words to replace the negative ones with, for example; “stupid” became “courageous.”
Thank God for fellow alcoholics, they can listen and help in a way that others can’t. We have shared experiences in both drinking and sobriety, so we speak the same language. When you first get into the program, you have no idea that you’re in for a long slow physical, emotional, and spiritual healing process. You’re just trying to find a way to not drink. In some ways I’m still a toddler as far as emotional sobriety goes. I relapsed because I was having difficulty processing my emotions about not hearing back from Takeshi, but at least instead of relapsing on booze, I relapsed on watching re-runs of TV series compulsively. For that reason, I know that I’m not ready to be in a relationship. An emotional entanglement could lead me dangerously close to a drink.
After falling from hope to its nadir, I was emotionally hung over for I don’t know how many days. Long enough to get completely out of touch with day to day reality. I awoke in the mornings as sluggish and fuzzy as if I’d had a hard night’s drinking. I zoned out in TV land. The other day I started watching TV series re-runs early in the morning and watched all day and all night till 9 a.m. the next morning. It felt like I was drinking on a hangover. There was no high, just relief from the symptoms. TV had worked like alcohol: it shut up those negative voices. It took reaching that extreme of watching straight through from one morning to the next for me to realize I had to take a peep out at reality. When I did the negative voices returned. I started calling myself names again. This time, mostly fool. Fool to have held onto that dream, fool to get my hopes up, fool to have gotten in touch with him, fool to think I could become as happy, healthy, and creatively productive as I once had been, fool to have sent that email. A fool for love. How many love songs use the word fool?
Seeing the quagmire of negativity I was in, I crawled out of it as quickly as I could. (Sitting there enjoying the view doesn’t help anything.) I got back to replacing negative words with positive ones, until the negative words shut up, and back into a state of acceptance, which has allowed me to get back to living in the day, in the here and now.
Actually, I’m not a fool for dreaming of re-becoming the woman that I once was. Of course I can’t return in time--I’m no longer slim and athletic, my bipolar disorder is not going to go away, and the deep psychological wounds from which I’ve been healing have left scars. Though once fully healed, those wounds could become a source of strength. I know many recovering alcoholics whose experience and recovery have given them tremendous strength and wisdom. They have gone through living hell, and are living lives beyond their wildest dreams. If that’s true for countless others why not for me? For a brief moment, I felt sad that I had no more dreams. I was dangerously close to self-pity, which is an ugly place that puts you dangerously close to a drink: “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.” So I returned to the here and now of acceptance, of living in the moment as it is.
Here and now It’s a new day, a sunny morning. I’m off to a meeting and then off to work with a newcomer to the program. There’s nothing like working with others to get yourself out of your own head!
From acceptance, I slipped into trying to control the situation by trying to imagine all of the reasons why he hadn’t answered. I can try to guess why he didn’t answer, but I can’t know, and act in accordance of that knowledge--I can’t try to control the situation. But I can take it out on myself. I kept imagining the worst case scenario--that his wife had intercepted the email (it was an office email address), which made me feel like a total fuck up. I spiralled down into a negative abyss, calling myself names such as idiot, stupid, fool, and so on. At first the name calling was really harsh because one of my dearest friends asked if I really wanted her opinion. I repeated: “I’m a fuck up,” I’m a bad person” even though I’d declined her opinion knowing that it would have a strong moral overtone. I needed to talk through my feelings, and not to be judged, but just her offering her opinion was enough to open up the door to self-flagellation. Fortunately, all of my friends from the program listened without judgement, they suggested positive words to replace the negative ones with, for example; “stupid” became “courageous.”
Thank God for fellow alcoholics, they can listen and help in a way that others can’t. We have shared experiences in both drinking and sobriety, so we speak the same language. When you first get into the program, you have no idea that you’re in for a long slow physical, emotional, and spiritual healing process. You’re just trying to find a way to not drink. In some ways I’m still a toddler as far as emotional sobriety goes. I relapsed because I was having difficulty processing my emotions about not hearing back from Takeshi, but at least instead of relapsing on booze, I relapsed on watching re-runs of TV series compulsively. For that reason, I know that I’m not ready to be in a relationship. An emotional entanglement could lead me dangerously close to a drink.
After falling from hope to its nadir, I was emotionally hung over for I don’t know how many days. Long enough to get completely out of touch with day to day reality. I awoke in the mornings as sluggish and fuzzy as if I’d had a hard night’s drinking. I zoned out in TV land. The other day I started watching TV series re-runs early in the morning and watched all day and all night till 9 a.m. the next morning. It felt like I was drinking on a hangover. There was no high, just relief from the symptoms. TV had worked like alcohol: it shut up those negative voices. It took reaching that extreme of watching straight through from one morning to the next for me to realize I had to take a peep out at reality. When I did the negative voices returned. I started calling myself names again. This time, mostly fool. Fool to have held onto that dream, fool to get my hopes up, fool to have gotten in touch with him, fool to think I could become as happy, healthy, and creatively productive as I once had been, fool to have sent that email. A fool for love. How many love songs use the word fool?
Seeing the quagmire of negativity I was in, I crawled out of it as quickly as I could. (Sitting there enjoying the view doesn’t help anything.) I got back to replacing negative words with positive ones, until the negative words shut up, and back into a state of acceptance, which has allowed me to get back to living in the day, in the here and now.
Actually, I’m not a fool for dreaming of re-becoming the woman that I once was. Of course I can’t return in time--I’m no longer slim and athletic, my bipolar disorder is not going to go away, and the deep psychological wounds from which I’ve been healing have left scars. Though once fully healed, those wounds could become a source of strength. I know many recovering alcoholics whose experience and recovery have given them tremendous strength and wisdom. They have gone through living hell, and are living lives beyond their wildest dreams. If that’s true for countless others why not for me? For a brief moment, I felt sad that I had no more dreams. I was dangerously close to self-pity, which is an ugly place that puts you dangerously close to a drink: “Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.” So I returned to the here and now of acceptance, of living in the moment as it is.
Here and now It’s a new day, a sunny morning. I’m off to a meeting and then off to work with a newcomer to the program. There’s nothing like working with others to get yourself out of your own head!
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