Hung over

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!

Hope

Just over a week ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and began praying fervently for God to lift my obsession with drinking (which has been hounding me lately), when suddenly I prayed for Takeshi to be sent back into my life.  I have no idea what made him come to mind at that moment--he hadn’t been in my thoughts recently.  During the two years I lived in Japan, we were very close and spent a lot of time together, gradually discovering what our feelings for each other were, without ever  expressing them verbally.  He's extremely discrete even by Japanese standards, and we had to be terribly discrete  because he's married and I was there with my ex, their desks faced each other at work, and most of the time we spent together was under the watchful eyes of colleagues.  We were discrete enough for our friendship to be accepted and respected by their colleagues, who always made sure that we were seated next to each other at office dinners, which were quite frequent.  (My ex, who didn't have as strong of a grasp of Japanese culture, blatantly chased after a Japanese woman in front of me, and got pulled aside and balled out by his colleagues, which infuriated him because he thought it wasn't any of their business, even though it was since it's a group culture.)  The last day that Takeshi and I spent together was in Tokyo, we were on our own, and when we met he was trembling visibly, I could feel his desire to reach out and touch me, and it was hard for me not to reach out to touch him.   It was a glorious sunny day and he took me for a long stroll through a park where lovers were lying on the grass entwined in each other's arms, we lingered a bit watching the lovers, then took a small path through a wooded area.  At one point we stopped to appreciate the sensuous beauty of entwined tree roots growing across a small path.  After a long dinner, we parted.  I was amazed that what hadn't been spoken for such a long time, had finally been expressed without words.  Where were we going with this friendship?  Shortly after, while I was in the States  for a visit, a catastrophic change of plans occurred.  My ex had packed all of our boxes for our move to Tokyo, and the movers were on their way when my ex got a call that his client had gone bankrupt, his job in Tokyo was off.  He gave me five minutes to decide whether to move back to France or the States.  The last thing I wanted was to leave Japan, and to make it worse I didn't even get to say good bye.  It was very recent that my ex had been violent for the first time, beating my head in so severely and for so long, that I thought he was going to kill me.  The only way that I knew to get out was to get to Tokyo, where I'd built up enough of a network to get my photography work going and get away.  I knew I would get little or no help from my family.  Tokyo meant freedom and independence, a chance to re-build my life.  Tokyo was also Takeshi's home.   I could build my career, get myself safely away from the violence of my ex, and Takeshi and I could spend the time that we needed to spend together.  In one short phone call all of that was gone, my life took another direction.  I was devastated.

I've spent years trying to track Takeshi down by internet, I even asked my ex for help tracking down his Japanese colleagues, and my karate master's translator tried to find a way to contact Takeshi from within Japan, without success.  Once I’d found an internet site that I was sure was for the office which Takeshi and his wife ran, clicked on “contact,” and sent a short message to which I received no reply.  So although our love ever remained present in my heart--as if it were yesterday that we’d seen each other--I was losing hope of ever finding him again.   In the middle of my prayers, I jumped out of bed and surfed the net once again looking for Takeshi, found the site for a colleague's office, got Takeshi’s number, and within a few minutes we were speaking on the phone together!  God had answered my prayers immediately!  Takeshi and I were stunned to hear each other's voices.  The first thing he said was that he missed me a lot, then he added that he was ten years older now, so I reminded him that I am too, actually it’s been almost twenty years, and then he said he gets to Singapore and Shanghai for his work, but can’t come here.  He’s extremely discrete and indirect when he communicates, so for him that sounds like a quite direct way of wondering aloud if there's a way we could see each other.  Immediately after we spoke, he sent a short email, so I'd have his email address.  I replied with an email that was for his eyes only, and after a few days had gone by without a reply, became frantic that his wife had seen it, since it was an office address.  Had I created a horrible mess after all of these years of being discrete and patient?  Did he simply not know what to reply?  Finally I sent a quick email asking if he'd received my first email.  And then I called but got his wife on the phone, so I can call again without raising suspicions, if I haven't already done so.  It's been more than a week now with no reply, so I'm no longer hoping for one.  It would be difficult and complicated for us to get together, but perhaps not entirely impossible.  First we would need to see each other, spend some time together before we could know what we want now.  I have no way of knowing what's going on in his life today, how he's feeling about his marriage, and if he would want to get out of it and be with me, and what professional hurdles he would have face if that were his choice.  A few years after my return to Paris, Takeshi was here on business.  He ran from the elevator to the front door and kissed me on the lips when my ex couldn't see.  I knew then that our feelings were still the same, but what about now, so many years later? 

The first days after we spoke, I was on a pink cloud, filled with joy and an overwhelming sense of gratitude.  I was filled with joy at the prospect of communicating regularly with Takeshi, and a great sense hope about getting my art photography going again.  The conversation with Takeshi filled me with a tremendous sense of hope, hope of being together with him, hope of doing my photography in Tokyo, hope of being the woman he knew and admired (along with some scars and maturity of course).  I felt that I could finally pick my camera back up, and start creating my artwork once again.  Once I've created the images which are already in my mind, I can make an internet site, get in touch with clients in Tokyo, go back, work, and get to spend the time with Takeshi.  Knowing the market here, I have no feeling of hope for a second chance, but the Japanese have a different sensitivity and openness to my work.  If I stay sober and do the footwork, I could be there in as soon as two year's time.  I've been feeling condemned to a life hemmed in by mental illness and poverty, a life in a tiny room, with minimal financial means, and just the hope of doing a bit of creative work which I might not even have the strength to share.  Since I spoke with Takeshi, I no longer feel condemned to bare survival.  I never would have guessed that the hope of seeing Takeshi once again would also give me this sense of hope in myself again.  Can I maintain that sense of hope, even if I can never see him again?  Why is that sense of hope linked to a person?  I'll have to do the footwork for getting together without knowing what he's feeling now.  Can I maintain a sense of hope?  About a year ago, while I was in Spain on vacation at my brother's, one night I suddenly got a strong sense of hope that I could get back to my photography and exhibiting.  I spent the night awake, imagining photos that I would take, new series that I would create.  Upon my return, I realized that my plans were manic and grandiose--I wanted to catch up for all of those years lost to drinking and bipolar disorder, to create the work that I would've been able to create had I not been ill.  I reduced my goal to completing just one series of images, only to discover that I still couldn't get past my photographer's block.  

When my ex beat me up so badly, I felt like something profound had broken in me.  When the state of shock wore off, I plunged into a deep depression, and began drinking as if there were no tomorrow.  And yet somehow I managed to continue to do my creative work, sometimes sporadically, but I was doing great work.  Later, while living in the room I renovated, a series of events led to my feeling broken again.  Actually, that feeling of being broken had never left.  The beating altered me permanently.  (Those feelings of being broken will be the subjects of other posts.)  The second time I felt broken, was when I lost all hope of getting back into galleries and doing my artwork again.  Humpty dumpty?  All of this reminds me of the process of getting sober.  You can pray all you want to get sober, but if you don't do the footwork, it won't happen.  You have to go to meetings, work with your sponsor, do the steps, take action.  When you first get sober, you start seeing how insane your thinking and actions were when you were drinking, when you remove alcohol from the equation, the insanity is still there, which is what working the steps helps lift.  I still have a lot of insane thinking and behaviours.  It's okay with me that it'll take a few years for me to try to get to Tokyo, because I'm in the middle of working the steps more in depth than ever before--I won't feel ready to be with someone until my insanity has been lifted.

In meetings, I've heard people refer to god shots.  I was never really sure what they meant until yesterday morning.  I checked my email and then called a friend from the program, we talked about my difficulty with accepting this new situation with Takeshi.  It's a Third Step situation, one that I have to turn over to God (or to the Universe if you're more comfortable with that term), because it's completely out of my control.  I don't know why the Universe put us back in touch with each other now, only that it did.  At the end of the conversation, my friend asked if there was anyone in Japan who could get in touch with Takeshi discretely in order to find out if he'd received my email.  "No," I replied: "There's no one."  Right after we hung up, I checked my email again, and a message had just arrived from my karate master's translator.  We hadn't been in touch with each other since he'd tried to track Takeshi down.  God shot.  God winked at me with a message of hope, just when I thought there was no way to get back in touch with Takeshi discretely, I got a message from a man who could do it for me.  I won't ask him for help now.  First I'll take the actions I need to take in order to get my life pulled together, to get out of  the ruts of my insane thinking and behaviour, to do my creative work again.  That is to say, to re-become the woman Takeshi knew, and the woman that I would like to become today, which I must do for myself.

Change

The theme of today’s meeting was change.  Getting sober puts you through massive changes, and in order to stay sober you have to continue growing, so you’re constantly in a process of change.  It was a great meeting with a lot of interesting shares.  As I was listening, it suddenly occurred to me that during the long years I spent years I spent in a very physically and psychologically abusive relationship, staying drunk didn’t drown my sorrows in the way people think--that you forget, the pain I felt was acute, but alcohol was the only tool I had for coping.  And as long as I was drinking, I couldn’t change.  I couldn’t ask myself, how do I, Sonia, feel about being treated this way?  And what can I, Sonia do about it?  Do I want to be treated like shit?  No.  Well what can I do about it?  

I shared about this thought in the meeting.  Afterwards, two men came up to me to talk about my share, and one suggested that I do my entire 4th Step on men.  It had occurred to me recently, that the in 4th Steps I’ve done so far, I’ve left out men in my resentments list, and that it would me necessary to deal with those resentments when I get to my next 4th.  I’m going to follow the man’s suggestion to make my next 4th entirely on men, though I’ll include my mother.  When I was married, I constantly made the freudian slips of saying “mon mari,” when I meant to say “ma mère,” and “ma mère,” when I meant to say “mon mari.”  For some reason, I mixed my mother and my husband up easily when I was speaking French.  If my husband had been exactly the same man, but we’d been in an English speaking environment, it would have taken years to figure out the connection between my husband and my mother.  Anyway, you can see why I’m including her in my list of resentments against men.  It’s not a purpose of this blog to explain the 12 Steps, but a brief explanation of the 4th will help here for those who aren’t familiar with the Steps.  The 4th step is likened to a shop taking annual inventory.  You go through the goods and see what should be kept, and what should be pitched.  I like to think of it as a gigantic spring cleaning.  Listing your resentments towards individuals, groups, and institutions, etc. and going through those resentments with your sponsor, helps you let go of them.  Letting go of them is essential, since resentments are the main thing that lead an alcoholic back to drinking.  That’s how I understand it at this point anyway.  It’s a major healing process, and an emotional one at that.  Going through resentments intellectually, on own, and even in therapy, hasn't helped much. 

During the chat with the two men, I mentioned for years that I thought I had a healthy level of self-esteem, even a high level of self-esteem, but that it was based purely on my photography, writing, and other achievements.  It wasn’t until I got out of my marriage and was going through counseling at a center for battered women, that it dawned on me that I had little or no sense of self-esteem, based on who I am, just being me, and not on what I do.  At the center, I took a psychological test for self-esteem, and “failed” it with flying colors--I’m a walking, breathing, door mat.  I remember my father’s surprise when I mentioned a bit about my marriage to him, he couldn’t believe that I, who had always been fiercely independent, and very rebellious, could have ended up so obedient.  I'll be exploring how that happened in upcoming posts.

What I need to do now, is what I’ve been avoiding doing since I began this blog.  While I’ve been avoiding writing about the abuse I went through as a child, I’ve been feeling like it’s imperative for me to do it, for myself.  This is what I wrote about a week ago that gave me an emotional hangover--a bad migraine: one of the people who was abusive to me was Peter, and in part I’ve been afraid to write about the way he treated me because he has changed dramatically, much more than ordinary people do. He generally handles discussions, disagreements, and arguments quite maturely.  And because aside from employees of the French government, such as my psychiatrist, psychologist, and payee, and from my sponsor and other members of my alcohol support group, he’s the only person who’s really fighting to help me today, who’s really ready to be there for me, who takes care of me.  He respects how hard I’ve tried to work over the years, and how gets how much I’ve struggled with bipolar disorder, and for my long fight with alcohol, which he has really searched to understand..  He wants me to move to Spain because he would like to be able to help more when I’m not doing well.  He flies me over twice a year, sets out breakfast, and my lunch which he’s prepared, cooks dinner, and loves to take me out clothes shopping....Staying with him is like staying in a 5 star hotel.  So I feel like a traitor in speaking about the past, but the problem is that it continues to be the present for me--I can see that in my relationship patterns. I’ve been reliving repetitive, destructive patterns, that I really need, and want, to break free of.  

When I was about seven or eight, Peter started pinning me down and beating on my breast buds, which was excruciatingly painful.  I was to small to fight back or get away, so I told myself I’d be stronger, I’d win, by not crying, not showing the pain.  As I got a bit older, that continued and he began to taunt me that my younger sister would get her period first, would have bigger breasts than I, and also that she was cut out for motherhood, whereas I was not.  My sister and I remember my mother joining in on the taunts about my breasts and motherhood.  If she didn’t also remember, I’d have a hard time beleiving it was really true.  Now some people might see this as being less serious than incest, since it was my breasts rather than  my genitals which were mauled, because the aggressor was a sibling rather than an adult, and because the abuse was as much or more psychological than physical.  Interestingly, in studies of battered women, the relationships start with a pattern of the man psychologically abusing the women, and belittling is one of the common forms of abuse.  A man can start with a woman who has self-esteem,  lower it and lower it, rob her of it, until she reaches a point where she doesn’t feel she deserves any better.  The results of the psychological abuse are often, if not generally, more destructive than the physical abuse, unless the physical abuse becomes life threatening. The belittling of my femininity has made it difficult for me to asume.

I firmly believe that what Peter put me through, put me in a position to be vulnerable to predatorial men.  It contributed to my not to be able to say “No!”  Even when I was shouting it loudly inside of myself.  It made me not be able to stand up for myself when my ex-husband had been putting off having children until the point where it would soon be too late. I dress up in feminine clothes now, but I feel like I’m in disguise.  Even my ex-husband, who knew me and got me better than anyone else has, would be shocked to see me disguised thus.  Shortly before I left him, I changed my hair color, bought sweat pants with a feminine cut, and started wearing nail polish.  He was worried that I was going through an identity crisis, which I was.  Peter’s abuse with my was definitely incestuous, although we never had sexual relations.  While he denigrated my femininity and glorified my sister’s, he abused her sexually.  While the ways he abused us were different, the results are remarkably similar from what I can see.  Though she will be telling her own story, in her own time and place.  When you shut up about incest, it propagates like an untreated cancer, and your chances of recovery are unpredictable.

I was eleven or twelve when  it became clear that something was disturbing my sister, and she was unwilling to talk about what it was, my mother who was to go on to become a therapist, instructed me to have my sister over to my room for therapy sessions.  I was supposed to get her to reveal the secret that was troubling her.  I felt bad because I couldn’t get my sister to talk, and I had no clue as to how.  My mother must’ve put two and two together, but gone into massive denial--otherwise why ask a child to play therapist rather than taking your child to a real therapist?  She didn’t want to know.  While writing this paragraph, I have repeatedly mistyped me and my.  I’ve been writing me instead of my, (and I think writing my instead of me?) for at least the past thirty years.  I have to be constantly vigilant to correct the mistake.  I wonder if it has something to do with my sister, after all this paragraph deals with her.

When I was thirteen, I went into a major depression overnight.  One day I was a “happy” kid, and the next day, I couldn’t stop crying, I got tinnitus which is a permanent and constant source of discomfort, and I started getting severe migraines on a daily basis.  The treatment available for migraines was primitive at the time: caffeine pills and high doses of aspirin.  By the end of the year, I had an ulcer, perhaps due at least in part to all the aspirin I was taking.  I was required to attend school but usually the teachers took one look at me and sent me to the nurse’s office.  I saw a parade of neurologists, ear doctors, and other specialists.  At the end of a the year, I went to see my pediatrician with my mother.  They had a long discussion in my pediatrician’s office behind a closed door.  Then my pediatrician came out and announced to me that the cause of my migraines was my guilt over having known about my brother’s incestuous relationship with my (me/my, again) sister and not having told.  I was outraged because I had learned of the incest through my mother, and I was convinced that my migraines were my own problem--not somebody else’s.  Then my pediatrician told me she couldn’t treat me any more.  I told myself that I wouldn’t let un-based guilt get to me, but it did.  Ever since, people have pointed out that I apologize for things over which I have no control, or had nothing to do with.  Right down to the weather!  Peter who was fifteen at the time, was kicked out and left to fend for himself, which I thought was a poor solution and terribly unfair.  I found myself trying to help my sister however I could.  For example, when she was having self-image problems, I convinced my mother to enroll her in a modelling school and agency.  Which probably wasn't the best solution--I was too young to have her well-being placed on my shoulders in the way it was.

The reason I was blamed was that when I was told of the incest, I was asked what I knew of it.  What I told them was that when I was six or seven, Peter invited Ingrid and I over to his room to play a game: we were going to make a porn film and he was going to be the director and we were to be the stars.  Uncomfortable with the idea, I left, but Ingrid stayed.  She’s a year and a half younger than I am, so would have had that much less of an idea of what a porn film was than I did.  When I was twenty-eight and back home for a visit, at dinner,  my father brought up how it had been my fault.  I was amazed that they hadn’t dropped the charges after all these years.  

When I was about forty-two, I ran across a bit of information in the press, which said that in the US in the 60’s, all of the porn came from Sweden.  Immediately I thought of that game, and the fact that Peter must have been introduced to porn by an adult, and probably by an adult who had abused him.  Quickly I deduced the family friend who was the most likely suspect, and called Peter to ask him if that man had abused him, he confirmed the abuse with some reluctance, which I can understand, since I still have my fond childhood memories of him.  When I called my mother and told her, she said that when we were children the man had been accused of pedophilia, but that everyone had told each other that pedophiles don’t strike in middle class families, they strike in the working class--that there kids were safe even if he was a pedophile.  They’d asked Peter if he’d been abused, and he denied it.  When the man had to go to court, my father, a lawyer, successfully defended him, apparently convinced by my brother’s denial.  When I told my father the truth, he was horrified.  But maybe they still blame me, who knows?  It’s still easier.  My mother still insists regularly that she would have prevented my marriage if only she had known, but she did know--I’d called her asking for help and telling her in detail.  Only to be met with the same denial that we were met with as children.

The thing is that when Peter was kicked out of the house, I felt strongly that it was neither the best nor a just solution.  Even though I didn’t know yet that he too was a victim, I knew that while at the time all of this story began he was too young to have any idea of all the potential consequences of his acts, he was tried as an adult.  He hadn’t been a good parent, but he had certainly tried, at a time when my parents were absent.  The abuse didn’t just stem from the abuse he’d undergone, but also from our parent’s emotional negligence.

When we were young, my  father had to put in long hours at the firm, and my mother abandoned ship when I was eleven or twelve.  Years later, she said that at the time she’d just wanted to get into a car and drive as far away as she could.  What she did instead was get a job with a long commute, and spend her hours at home in the garden.  (Not to say that she was present before that--my sister and I remember her as being very distant, not touching us, and the terrible loneliness we felt)   Peter, as the eldest, did his best to step in and take on my mom’s role.  I don’t say my “parent’s roles,” because my while my dad was around, it never occurred to us to go to him for help.  Her voice and opinions drowned out his.  He doesn’t have the dominant, controlling, and bullying personality that she’s got.  (Oh, now she’s sounding like my ex-husband!)  We kept telling Peter that we didn’t need two mom’s, and telling her that we didn’t need two moms.  He of course wasn’t in a position to take on her role, so that may explain why he was very bossy and often violent.  The bigger he got, the scarier he got.    Ingrid, Kristian and I each went individually to our mother, pleading with her to intervene, not knowing that the other had gone, only to be told that we were “ganging up on him to get him in trouble.”  We were met with a wall of denial.   Although I tried my best to be a model student, I made sure to get into trouble once a day, knowing I would be kept after school, miss the school bus home, and have to spend a lot more time getting home by public transportation.  It was a way of staying safe.

I often tell myself, “Lot’s of people have rough childhoods.  Was that all that happened?”  No it wasn’t, but it was enough for me.  It’s been twelve years now since I left my ex, and I’m not ready to be with someone else.  I need more therapy to work through childhood trauma and the abuse in my marriage. I also need more sobriety--I learn as much through the program as through therapy--the two serve sometimes different but always complimentary goals.   

Implosion

It’s happening again.  I’m rocking myself backwards and forwards.  This is one of my behaviors that my ex-psychiatrist described as typical of children abandoned in orphanages.  It's a self-comforting action. When it acts up, I usually try to figure out what set it off, with little success.  Today, it seems pretty obvious--though I’m not completely sure..  The day started with a session with my psychologist.  The main thing we talked about was the repetitive negative nature of my relations with men, which seem to have gone from intolerable--severe beatings and psychological abuse, to being treated as an object to be used and thrown away.  There wasn’t time to talk about where this comes from, but of course I left wondering about it.  


When I go back and try to figure out why my relations with men are so fucked up, I always go back to what happened to me when I was younger. Memories that are distinctive, vivid, and yet I recall them as if they were someone else's memories.  There may be other explanations, than the ones I have in mind, but I may well be a ways from getting to them. Peter asked me last year why I don't just leave my traumas behind me, in the past. He can't understand that they are here with me every day, not just as memories, but as causes of repetitions, behavior and situations I must escape from. But I'm not ready to write about it.

Well actually I did just spend several hours writing about it, but I still don't dare post it here. While I was writing I was overcome by an insane obsession to drink. It felt like I was going to implode if I didn't. Only another alcoholic could understand how difficult it was not to run away into drink.

I want to try to write here more often again. During my last vacation I had what I call "beach brain," and as a result couldn't write. Since then I've been feeling like a member of a clean up crew after a natural disaster. Only this disaster wasn't natural, it's just my life, what happens when I let my vigilance down. Day to day activities have kept me from writing. There's more work to be done before I can write, but I'll be back here as often as I can.

That Baby

How long was it?  A week, two weeks?  I don’t remember exactly.  When the sidewalk falls out from under my feet, time becomes fuzzy.  There were about three days that I forgot to eat, just plain forgot.  Whenever that happens, afterwards, when I try to eat, I can’t keep it down.  I barf up the food, and then I barf because my stomach is empty and the acids are eating away at it.  I barf and I barf for days, and the pain becomes really agonizing.  My thinking gets fuzzy because I’m running on an empty tank. I spend the day eating small amounts of simple foods, which is uncomfortable and difficult, and waiting to see how much I can keep down.  I become so weak that it’s difficult to even sit up and watch movies, but I try--with a barf bucket next to me--because I don’t want to spend all of the day in bed.  At the same time that I’m trying to get my stomach to calm down and heal, I've been doing two things which make it worse: I chain smoke on an empty stomach which is just plain crazy, and I drink water compulsively, which means that there’s that much more available in my stomach to barf.

I’ve been working for years on my issue with eating.  My ex-psychiatrist said that it wasn’t anorexia, but like anorexia.  I’m more than happy to eat if someone cooks for me, or if I’m in a restaurant, but I find it extremely difficult to make myself eat when I’m on my own--which is most of the time.  Years ago, after a session with my psychiatrist, Hervé asked what I’d spoken about, and explained this issue.  He said to imagine that I was a baby that was hungry, and asked me what I’d do with this baby.  When he said that, I vividly imagined a baby in my arms, and throwing that baby to the ground, shouting: “I don’t want this baby.”

While I was waiting to get better, I started to get really scared that I wouldn’t be able to do it by myself, that I would need help, I began to fear that I’d have to go back to a psych ward.  I asked a friend from the alcohol support group if I could check in with him each day about what I’d eaten, and if I’d taken my meds.  It’s working, because I can’t call and say that I’ve eaten and taken my meds if I haven’t.

I have other issues that seem to be intertwined with my eating issue.  I neglect health problems, letting them drag out for months or years before seeking proper treatment.  For example, once I badly injured both knees, and spent months barely able to walk, before I sought help.  I tend to get used to the pain and discomfort, no matter how bad it is.  About nine years ago, I went into a deep depression that kept me in bed for three years.  That was in my last apartment, which I’d renovated, nicely decorated, and kept spotless.  My personal hygiene was impeccable, and I went to great lengths to dress quite fashionably on a limited budget.  When the depression set in, my apartment went to hell, it became filthy, and I became filthy.  That’s not surprising since just getting out of bed to pee felt like a major accomplishment.  Curiously, as I got better, the sloth didn’t clear up.  I love a good hot long bath, or short of that a good long hot shower.  And yet, it has been a huge struggle to get back into the habit of showering and dressing nicely.  I’ve made good progress there, but my room remains disgusting.  Interestingly, I discovered in the bipolar chat room that many of us have issues with personal hygiene--we’re practically allergic to soap and water.  I guess that’s the depression end of the spectrum, and being better doesn’t mean being well.  It’s been a long hard climb out of that depression, and I’m not all of the way out of it yet. To make matters worse, the same problems with hygiene and cleanliness crop up for alcoholics--we have to build new habits when we get into recovery.




It’s clear that I’m not just dealing with bipolar symptoms and alcoholsim, since I’m throwing that baby, myself,to the ground, saying: “I don’t want this baby.”  Clearly I have a problem with low self-esteem. Learning to take care of myself when I reject myself that severely is going to be a long and slow process.

The Cow

The Cow

When the Eastern block first opened up, beautiful hand crafted items showed up in the street markets here at criminally low prices.  Amazingly beautiful pieces of work that had taken hours of work and a lot of skill to create sold at such low prices, that you had to wonder how the artisans managed to eat.  There was a beautiful Ukrainian doll that I coveted.  I visited her often at the market, but couldn’t give myself permission to buy her.  And then one day, without knowing why, I let myself buy her.  I took her home and hid her immediately, without even opening the wrapping to take a peek.  She remained hidden for months, maybe a year or longer.  I forgot that she was hidden.  And then one day I remembered her, and looked for that package, found it, opened it up  and I put the doll on my shelf, where I could see her, astonished by her beauty.  Now you may well  think that’s wierd.  shortly after I’d put the doll out, during a phone conversation, I mentioned it to my sister and she said she does the same thing too.  Why are we like this?  Why do we let men treat us like shit?  Why do we hide gifts to ourselves?  We don’t feel that we deserve to be treated better?  We don’t feel that we deserve gifts?

In the beginning of the month I went on a compulsive and manic spending spree on eBay.  I spent money that I didn’t have yet on things that I really wanted.  I tried really hard to get myself to focus on what I needed to spend that money on--new glasses, and computer repair for example, important things.  But I couldn’t.  I couldn’t stop myself.  I searched methodically all night long, night after night.  When it became daylight, the light nagged at me, reminded me that I needed to sleep.  It nagged at me and nagged at me until I went to bed.  By then of course I had to sleep all day.  And when I got up, I’d try to do something else but I couldn’t.  I searched for things that I’d loved when I was in Japan, that I’d thought I would be able to save up and buy, or that I’d simply enjoyed going to look at.  Objects that I loved.  The craftsmanship in Japan is amazing.  Just standing and looking at those objects was a form of meditation.  The time I spent in Japan was one of the happiest times in my life.  I couldn’t have imagined that it would be ripped away from me so abruptly, so cruelly.  Life’s like that, you can only be in the moment, without knowing what will happen next.  You can choose to live in the moment, or you can try to deny it, run away from it.  Anesthetize yourself with alcohol, watch TV reruns and movies compulsively, play checkers compulsively, avoid leaving your room because you’re terrified to even walk out the door and up the street to buy groceries even when you’re really hungry.  You can avoid life.  There have been moments in my life when I have been in the now, but mostly I hide.  I hide myself from life like I hid that Ukrainian doll.

So anyway, I searched on eBay for handcrafted items, folk toys mostly, folk toys, pottery, bamboo flower arrangement baskets, dolls, lacquer ware and so on.  I even searched by every material I could think of: wood, fabric, ceramic, bronze, paper maché....  I looked and looked and looked, until I found something I really wanted, and then I bid on it, with the money I didn’t have.  This isn’t the first time I’ve gone on a manic spending spree on eBay.  The last time I did it, it got me into a lot of debt and created a mess that I spent years cleaning up.  I swore never again.  For years I wouldn’t even let myself look at eBay, just like I don’t let myself go into shops, and even avoid window shopping.  Manic spending sprees are a typical precursor symptom to an upcoming manic phase, and I do my best not to tempt my fate.  But bipolar is a disease, and no matter how hard you try to manage it, sooner or later it’s going to kick you down to the ground.

I’ve spent the last month busting my ass to work to pay for those eBay items.  Made myself ill by pushing myself to work even though I’m not well enough to work.  I’ve spent years fighting to work, and failing again and again because my health wouldn’t permit it.  I was given full disability for a reason.  And it certainly wasn’t because I didn’t want to work.  After six years on a waiting list for job retraining, I went through eight months of exams, interviews, and tests, for it.  The French government told me that I couldn’t work, that I’m an artist, and I should do my art, that society needs artists.  That it’s okay just to be me.  And for this they give me just enough money to survive on each month.  But I fight to work, thenI accept that I can’t, and then go back into the ring for one more round.  I thought that I was done fighting, that I could accept my life as it was.  I thought that at last I could keep out the voices of people who can’t see my invisible disability, who say:  “You look great, you’re doing fine, you talentad and competent, you should be working.”  “You’re normal, so stop slacking.”  

Inevitably, bipolar kicked me to the ground again, I had a manic rip again, on eBay, using promises of payment instead of money.  And the day that manic rip stopped and the morning I awoke to see what I’d done, I felt lke I was inspecting hurricane wreckage.   I had to begin working to clean up the mess.  It’s taking everything from me.  It takes up so much of my time and energy, that I haven’t been able to deal with simple daily tasks or activities.  I haven’t been able to go to my alcohol support group meetings.  I’ve become increasingly disconnected from reality.  Some days I can see that it’s there, I try to grasp at it, but it’s just beyond the tips of my fingers.  

Now, I’ve almost finished paying my bills.  I can almost get back into daily life.  It’s there, I can see it.  Yesterday I managed to get myself out of my room to go to a meeting.  Every step and every minute outdoors was terrifying.  It was a beautiful day that I could have been part of.  Other people were out there, out in the streets, being part of life, and I felt like I was looking through a window.  It was terrifying, it was difficult.  I had dressed well and put on my favorite perfume.  I saw people that I knew, and I said that , “Yes, everything’s going great.”  I struggled to focus, to listen carefully to what people were saying, to be present for others.  Yes, it was hard, but I did it, I took those first steps out, back into the world, once again returning from some other place.  Terrified that I was just days away from having to go back to the psych ward, I asked my psychologist for help.  She introduced me to the psych nurses, so I can go in and talk as often as I need to, without having to go back to the psych ward.  And she gave me suggestions of other ways I can ask people to be supportive.  This way I can take baby steps out into the world, while learning not to be so self-destructive, which will do me a lot more good than lying around in a hospital bed bored out of my mind.

And then there is the cow.  The eBay purchases started arriving, and I could had a pretty good guess from the size and shape of the package, and the location of the sender, what was in it.  I’ve been stacking the boxes up, without opening them.  It would be difficult well nigh impossible to hide them here in this room, but I can ignore them, by staying compulsively in front of my computer.  I’ve been hiding the gift of life from myself.  In many ways, the most insidious way being through alcohol.  Alcoholism hides life from you.  People often think that drinking is your fault, after all, you’re the one who choose to drink and you should just choose to stop drinking.  “Just use some self-control, like other people do.”  Well some most folks can do that, but for alcoholics it doesn’t work that way.  Alcoholism is a disease, and not just any disease, it wants you dead with a vengeance.  Sure, lots of diseases kill, but not this way.  Alcohol turns you into the living dead, it wants you dead before you get to your grave.   It robs life from the living.  Methodically, it robs you of your dignity, your self-worth, your self-control, it takes your job, your spouse, your children, it robs you of everything.  It kills your soul.  It’s Evil.  Oh, you may not believe in God, or you may accept that there God exists, even if you have no clue of what God is, there is some benevolent force out there that gives our lives meaning and purpose.  But a force out there that wants to destroy meaning and purpose?  Oh no, we don’t want to believe in that.  But I am a witness, as are countless others, that Evil is out there, and alcohol is one of the seductive ways that it introduces itself into our lives.

Anyone, I stacked up the packages, all but one, because it surprised me. It was smaller than anything I was expecting.  What had I ordered that would come in such a small box?   I opened it out of curiosity.  Inside was a small Japanese kokeshi paper maché cow with a head that bobbles.  That particular shade of red which is so common in Japan, with abstract designs on it.  I put the cow on my shelf in a spot where  I see it often.  I gaze at it, and it brings me joy.  Real joy.  It’s been a very very long time since I’ve felt such joy.  It keeps catching my attention.  Sometimes I feel that it has answers to questions that I haven’t asked yet.  Sometimes I just observe it.  Sometimes I am in awe that a craftsman or craftswoman made this cow in Japan, with love and attention without knowing where that cow would go or who would love that cow. And now it is with me in Paris, on the other side of the world, a link between myself and someone about whom I know nothing.  Our lives are mainly made up of links between ourselves and people we don’t know.  We just tend to think that it’s the links we’re aware of that are the important ones.

There is a zen teaching that the best way to control a bull is to give it a very large field and just observe it.  I think this is the teaching that I should be paying attention to now.  I’m the bull who needs a very large field.  The best way for me to control this bull is just to observe it.  I’ve been fighting and struggling for years to control my alcoholism, to control my bipolar disorder, to control my life, and the harder I try to control these things, the worse they get.  I’m going to give myself a very large field now, and just observe.

One Step At A Time

I’ve just returned from six weeks in Palma de Mallorca, where I spent most of my time on the beach tanning, bobbling in the water when there were waves, and floating like a jellyfish when the water was flat.  When I visit, often the first two or three days I’m at the beach, my mind is busy thinking about all sorts of things and I find it hard to shut the thoughts out, then the effect of the sun and the beach takes hold and my mind reaches a relaxed and meditative state--I can be here now.

I had intended to blog at least once a week while there, but found it impossible to write.  I was just too relaxed to concentrate on anything.  Well, that’s not entirely true.  I did get to lots of my alcohol support group meetings, and spent a lot of time writing out my Step work. I was able to concentrate well on that, but unable to bring myself to think about the issues I want to address in this blog.  I don’t even know if I’m ready yet now.

The first week or so after I get back from Peter’s, it’s like I have jet lag.  My sleep schedule gets turned on it’s head.  I surf the net compulsively, and watch movies and TV series compulsively until dawn, then I spend the day sleeping.  That's typical addictive behavior. I avoid my daily reality.  I quite sure why that is, although there is a radical difference between being at Peter’s and being here. Here, I feel the imperative to rebuild my life, to get things done, and as often as not, I slip out of being here now. I've been living here and now more and more though, since I stopped working. Rebuilding my life is daunting--usually I'm courageous, but I can slip into fear and hide from it.

Peter spoils me rotten.  He pays my airfare, does the shopping and cooking (he’s a fabulous cook), and cleaning.  When I get up in the morning, he’s set out freshly washed beach towels, and prepared my lunch.  And he prepares fabulous dinners.  It’s like staying at a 5 star hotel, and then some.  Whenever I arrive, there are new clothes for me in the wardrobe, and he can’t help but buy me even more, even when he asks me to remind him to stop, which I do.  

It’s a real vacation for me, not only because I don’t have to worry about a single thing, but because I get a break from my head.  Peter doesn’t fully get how much of a vacation it is for me, since as he says I don’t work here.  Whereas he works quite hard.  When I’m here though, I can find my life rather exhausting.  Dealing with daily activities can be a bit of a struggle since I have no external structure.  I get run down trying to do things, and feel like I’m not getting anything done.  Yes, I’m sober now, yes, I’m not depressed, and yet I haven’t figured out how to lead a productive and satisfying life.  The real problem is that my expectations of what I can do get too high, and then I have trouble not beating myself up for not living up to them. Or I tell myself: "My life is in stasis," even though I've been growing since I've been in recovery.  I really want to be doing my photography, but it still isn’t happening. Instead of focusing on what I'm not doing, and what isn't happening, I need to focus on the opposite.

Peter used to think that two weeks was as much of a visit as he could take, then he extended it to six weeks in winter and six weeks in summer, which worked out quite well.  So this visit he proposed that I spend three months in winter and three months in summer, as a transition towards living there full time.  I was very happy with the idea of being able to enjoy both the advantages of being there and here.  But I just found out from my social assistant that in order to stay on disability, I can’t spend more than three months abroad per year.  Although I can retire abroad, so I have to go back to the idea of rebuilding my life here.

I can understand why I fought so long to work, why I didn’t want to accept being this disabled.  It’s so hard to let go of your dreams.  It’s an invisible disability.  People look at you and say you’re fine, you don’t have a problem, you should be working, and so on.  I try not to buy into that because it makes me feel guilty when I can’t live up to others’ expectations.  When I’m feeling well, I can look at myself the way other people do, and wonder why I can’t lead the types of lives they lead.  I can get impatient for my life to improve, saying: I want it to change now, I want it to be different.  I don’t even know if that’s possible, or if it’s at least partially possible, how long it will take to make the changes I want to make.  I just have to be patient and believe that it can change, one step at a time.  I keep reminding myself: One step at a time.