Self-Forgiveness

This is an update – of sorts – because I haven’t done any blogging for myself since June. I know I repeat this triviality more than you might care to read, but I’m a Virgo and I like (need?) a rough plan when I start a piece of writing. However, having spent the early morning drinking coffee and catching up on blog subscriptions/Tricycle magazine articles, I decided to go rogue and put my thoughts down with no plan whatsoever. Watch out kids, I’m wildin’. (Whatever that means.)

Does this mean I might actually be learning to relax? Ha! What a lovely thought. In all seriousness, I have been doing a lot of work on myself. These are not small victories by any means. You are dealing with a woman who has to make a conscious effort not to match her food to her plate. Just take the first plate you grab, is an almost-daily mantra. Yesterday, for example, I endured butternut squash pasta on an orange plate. Oh, the horror of two similar shades commingling together! Sure, I could buy white dinnerware and save myself the trouble. But I like my Fiestaware and I refuse to live a life devoid of color.

There are times when I simply cannot abide the spicy black bean soup in the orange bowl. There are times when it needs to be in the blue bowl. And it’s in those moments I need to forgive myself the most. I can control the blue bowl. I can’t control that my grandmother died in July. I can’t wrap a good night’s sleep in a box and gift it to my tired wife. I can’t divert the week’s latest nonsense to some mystical drama llama who exists solely to unburden me of responsibility. When I dig out that blue bowl, it means I am suffering in the Buddhist sense of the word. It means I am resisting the fact that absolutely nothing about our human experience is certain, and it’s causing me pain. And the only way out of that resistance is to acknowledge why I’m doing what I’m doing and greet myself with compassion.

If I were to look at myself objectively – as I might in a clinical setting with a stranger – I would certainly not respond with, “Wow, you are a piece of shit. Why can’t you be normal? It’s just a bowl. Use it. It’s just food. Eat it”. Never – in all my years of working with wounded people – have I found that approach to fast-track healing. That is the voice of a critical, abusive parent. So, if my inner two year old is feeling scared – and she wants the blue bowl – she can have it. Then we can talk about why she needs it. We can examine if there are other ways to get those needs met that don’t include obsessing over which vegetables match her plate.

I have been forgiving myself a lot lately. Over the past five years, I’ve set a number of bottom lines around so-called unproductive behaviors. This summer, I’ve steamrolled over all of them.

For instance, I bought more holiday decorations because my apartment is bigger now and, well, I can. And why not? My choices are in line with my minimalist values because these items bring me joy. Today, I believe I deserve joy.

I’ve also transitioned from a (mostly) plant based to pescatarian diet. If that mutinous diversion from my value system isn’t shocking enough, I also buy many meals from my favorite cafe. Consequently, I’ve put on a little weight. My cold weather jeans pinch my mid-section, and my bikini belly is more Buddha than Bali.

All of the aforementioned is okay. I was tired of subsisting on salad, processed fake meat, and pasta with red sauce. I am also tired of berating myself for not being a cook. (I bake like a mofo. Baking has rules. Baking is safe.) And I am so thankful for that cafe. Some weeks they provide the only nutritious food I eat. Long-term, I’d like to come into balance rather than live in extremes. Can I learn to cook a few simple, healthy things? That process is an on-going struggle – and a messy one at that. The other week, for example, I managed to bastardize a bag of frozen ravioli. That takes skill let me tell you.

Today, I’m allowed to be messy. I am a human being. I am no longer answering to that nasty inner voice telling me I’m not enough.

I am not advocating we all sit around and co-sign our own bullshit. I am merely acknowledging that I am doing the very best I can in this moment. I have to trust that when I learn how to do better (or have healed enough to do better), I will. Historically, that has always been true. In order to accomplish that, however, I need to love the woman I am today. She is not going to grow in soil embittered by self-loathing.

 

Fear

“I don’t know what my body needs right now,” I just said out loud, as I pushed my laptop away and reached for my steaming hot cup of tea. There’s a part of me that wants to write, but there’s also a part of me that just wants to finish season two of the Golden Girls…or even stare off into space. The part of me that wants to write won out. (It usually does.) The last couple of weeks have been intense and – through the overwhelm – the reigning emotion has been fear.

Fear might be “the big word” to talk about when it comes to addicts and alcoholics. I have never once met an addict or alcoholic who has not conceded to being a fear-driven creature. People say: “I felt like a square peg in a round hole”. Others describe it as a feeling of “not being okay”, “not belonging in the world”, or “being the only one missing the guidebook to life”. When we drink, use drugs, or engage in our compulsive behaviors, our sense of existential unease magically disappears. We suddenly “fit in”. We can be confident and interesting and appealing. We feel like “ourselves”.

Ugh. What a lie this disease spins for us. I had NO idea who I was and I didn’t want to know, either. Figuring that out would be way too fucking scary. I would have to leave the safety of my sick little comfort zone. God forbid I discover I was “just like my father”. Come to find out, I am like my father in that we share a disease. That’s where the similarities end. Today, I have healed enough to say that perhaps we would have had more in common if he had been able to get well. As it advances, addiction shrouds anything beautiful in ugliness. Unfortunately, my father died before he could break free from the shroud, but his suicide showed me where a fear-based life leads. Today, I understand that his children may be his only opportunity to show the world the light that existed underneath the illness.

I felt as if he was with me when I wrote that. “Hi Dad,” I said. “I’m still mad at you but that’s okay. I see you”. Obviously, I don’t literally see him. When I think of him in memory, I actually feel nauseated. It’s because I don’t see a man, I see the embodiment of total sickness. It’s repulsive and it is the very thing I do not want to become. When I think of him as a spirit, however, the disease is gone. He is whole again. I can honor that wholeness of spirit. In fact, that wholeness of spirit is what I strive for today, except I am able to do so here, amongst the living.

One of the first pieces of advice I was given in recovery was to “feel the fear and do it anyway”. I avoided fear like the plague for my entire life. I’m a lot better at feeling it now, but I’m still far from fearless. Take the past couple of weeks for example: First of all, I had an endoscopy. It wasn’t the procedure that freaked me out – although having a camera shoved down your throat isn’t a good time – but the idea of the unknown. I do NOT like the unknown. I also do NOT like feeling out of control. I like it when I get answers on MY timetable…not the timetable of medical professionals. Why do I struggle so hard against the things I can’t control? Well, sometimes I still feel like an undeserving piece of shit, waiting for life to punish me for merely existing. You see, I was just hired for my dream job, so why wouldn’t life laugh in my face and then drop the other shoe?

Wait. I was just hired for my dream job? Yup. That brings me to example number two: I was just hired for my dream job!(!!!) Out of the blue, I received a message from a local recovery center. They were familiar with my work on Human Too and they were interested in how I could bring my photography, writing, and social media skills to the table. It is everything I have ever wanted…but because I don’t have an advanced degree, it’s something I thought I could never have. So while I felt an overwhelming sense of joy, my silly, silly brain automatically conceived all the possible ways I could be an inadequate pile of manure. Ridiculous, right? Furthermore, I have to work my current job until the middle of June. So my silly, silly brain automatically freaked out about how to handle both positions at once.

Long story short, I survived my endoscopy. While I’m still not sure what’s wrong, I am comforted by the fact that it looks great in ye olde esophagus. I am historically predisposed toward muscle spasming and tension, so if the test results reveal nothing else, it could just be another delightful way my body internalizes stress. I also gratefully accepted my dream job… and I love it. It is not work…it is my mission.

I know this position is going to push me to grow. I feel like I have already evolved so much this year and I am amazed that my growth game is continuing to expand in such a profound way. I guess I am ready. As for the sheer volume of things on my plate – including the need to organize foot surgery for this summer – I am surviving by keeping my focus in the day. I’m not going to reach the finish line any faster by worrying about tomorrow. I will get there by doing what I need to do for today and then doing that on repeat. I’d rather be a speedy hare but, gosh darn it, I am a tortoise.

My list of fears is swiftly declining. I obviously have the big ones: Losing my wife, violence enacted on my person or loved ones, cancer, spiders, fire, drowning trapped in my car (or drowning, period), ladybugs (okay, so that’s not a typical fear), bats, the mere existence of President Trump (sorry, couldn’t resist), salmonella, cruise ships, a world without Stevie Nicks (oh, my broken heart), and etc. But the list of “things I’m afraid of that other people are good at” has dwindled down to a handful. I’m afraid of flying alone (being out of control, getting lost), driving in Boston (being out of control, getting lost, claustro-fucking-phobic traffic), subways and city buses (I still don’t know where the eff I’m going, I get motion sick, not to mention other people’s germs), and attending events with large groups of people (I am too introverted for that shit; small talk makes me want to poke out my own eye with a stick). Ironically, if I have a PURPOSE for being at an event, i.e. speaking or hosting a table, I could care less. If I have to be there just to “be social”, I’d rather eat a grasshopper. It’s too overstimulating. I like one-on-one interactions or small groups, followed by a week of solitude. 😉

If I need to overcome these fears to improve my quality of life, the Universe will gift me with the opportunity. There is no quicker way to gain confidence than to do what scares you. Recovery has provided one opportunity after another. Clearly I don’t like feeling lost and out of control, so these teachers will appear when I’m ready to learn from them. Also, just because I have these fears, doesn’t mean I can’t live a full life despite them. I can hire a car, get a direct flight, or ask a friend for support or companionship. I think one of the biggest mistakes we make – whether we’re in recovery or not – is pretending that we can do everything ourselves. I didn’t get well on my own. I received help and guidance from literally hundreds of people. I can’t take credit for any of my success, either. There have been strange angels all along my path who have opened doors I couldn’t possibly unlock myself.

Fear has no power over you when you view yourself as a member of a benevolent tribe.

After my endoscopy, I was sitting in an Olive Garden parking lot while my sweetie ran inside to pick me up some fettuccine alfredo. (The nurse told me to drink a smoothie. Ha! To be fair, I asked the Docs permission. 😉 ) The sky was melting into an ephemeral pink and purple painting. Relief washed over me. I felt like the Universe was laughing with me instead of at me. “See, Autumn,” it said. “Everything is going to be okay. It always was. You are my beloved child. I have work for you to do”.

“Okay,” I agreed. “I just need to eat first”.