The New Year: Never Abandoning Myself Again
Every year my spiritual family chooses words that reflect things they’d like to study or overcome in the new year. In previous years my words have meant a great deal to my self study. Past words include:
- Maturity: Growing up in order to be the adult in my own life and not relying on others to be the authority figures around me. Becoming responsible for my own self and actions and choices. Feeling my greatness vs. my smallness.
- Kartanya: This may sound silly to some but in my spiritual family we chose names for ourselves that represent our essence. We believe that there are two selves, the spirit and the ego, and that the meaning of life is to embody your spirit and abandon the ego. My word was my spirit’s name, Kartanya, and my study was to get to know that one better and explore a life living with my spirit’s qualities present. For example: my spirit is strong, deep, powerful, a warrior, compassionate, and deeply attached to the truth. My goal that year was to live as that, and to flag what got in the way of that.
- The warrior: After the study of Kartanya, I wanted to submerge myself in life as the warrior and so the next year I did a study of my strengths and how I got in my own way of that. My teacher lives a warriors life. She is absolute in what she says and does, giving her words weight and making trusting her effortless. Having her as an example of this has made all the difference in getting to know myself and my triumphs & pitfalls. The warrior battles for truth. It is the gift for everyone the warrior encounters. This is who I strive to be and who I inch closer to becoming every day I choose to do the work.
- Communication: When I first started doing this work I had to learn how to speak again. I had learned over time to shut up and abandon my needs because any attempt at getting them met seems countered by frustration and disappointment (hint: I was trying to get them met by the wrong people!). It was hard enough to meet my own needs, asking for something from others felt like breathing underwater. I would construct complicated sentences because I was basically fighting to describe why my needs mattered enough to be heard and met. I was embarrassed to tell people what I needed and would find round-about ways of asking, such as making my partner ask for me, or just suffering and hoping someone would notice. My job became practicing saying what I needed and wanted without a ton of unnecessary detail, and knowing that ultimately I didn’t need anyone to get my own needs met. Paying attention to my words was a powerful practice, one I still make the choice to do daily, and still struggle with.
- Impeccable: When I started to turn off the impulse for self-harm and replace in with an impulse for self-care, the success rate was not very consistent. I started by making a list of everything I wasn’t doing at 100% (nearly everything). I broke it down into categories; Home, Health, Hobbies, Step-work/NA, and so on. Then I put all the things I wanted to do better in under each category: keeping dishes done, walking the dog every day, meal planning, brushing my hair, homework, paying bills on time, doing something I loved to do, ect. It helped me organize all the things I wanted to be impeccable in (on a human level and a much deeper level) and helped me deliberate what categories I was lacking in. I wanted to study how far off I was because I know people who are impeccable with many or all of these things, why couldn’t I be? What would it look like if I was? Who would I be?
- Change: Finally we get to this year. This year was a year for changing and mixing up all of the stagnation I’d gotten comfortable in over the years of doing the work. I got comfortable in saying I was doing the work but not venturing into some of the major places I knew I needed to shine light on. I began this year by going deeper into the school majors I chose. I started this website and began writing my truths down which gave me freedom and exposed things I hadn’t necessarily thought were ok to share before. I became more dedicated to my chosen path in my career. I became more dedicated to guiding my son as he entered his more individualized years. I had goals of moving and getting a job I love. My grandmother passed ending a long and often difficult relationship that I learned from, but struggled with for many years. My closest relationships were changing. I finally felt like a grown up and began taking responsibility for myself, my son, and my actions by being less afraid of the consequences and more excited about the possibilities. I began choosing myself over others. I celebrated a decade of commitment to my sobriety and myself. This year has thrown me for a loop but it has been life altering in the best way.
Intentions: What to study this year?
On a particularly rough day recently I started calling and talking to friends as a way of working through some things. As we checked in, I mentioned how I had been setting and holding boundaries in my closer relationships and how some of those relationships were changing as a result. Because of these boundaries, things felt scary and exhilarating, but in the deepest way calming. I told this friend it felt like I was finally ready to start living. As if everything I had know before wasn’t living life, but me holding my breath in wait, avoiding the surface because of its unknown contents. But that didn’t feel right. I have been living, the struggle is living. It is a journey filled with reflection and just because the struggle’s been is omnipresent doesn’t mean I wasn’t living. There is some fear at the thought of thriving because my past-self tells me learning/making mistakes will cost me something (happiness, success, friendship, whatever) and that I am solely responsible for myself through my learning process. So by trying to save-face I disabled myself and my growth.
This year I unlock the prison doors (I’ve held the key to) for so long in order to experience everything this incarnation has to offer. I take responsibility for my self created prison and acknowledge that the “power” others held over me was not real, but in actuality my own mind making me the warden as well as the thief. I stole decades of opportunity, to learn & grow, from myself by assuming other people had so much power over me that I was subjected to their will. I became the warden to keep myself small which meant I had stagnated in this “safety”. This year I take back my power (from myself and others) and start taking some worthwhile risk. I will hold my boundaries with others and not freely give away my power to claim victimization by them. This year I will study where I still fall into this trap and hopefully take less and less time gaining freedom. What a gift to begin this new year, this new decade.
Have you, or will you, be setting intentions this year? Is there a certain word you feel like holding in your consciousness to study? What do you want from this year? Feel free to reply in the comments below.
If you want a updates of my journey in real-time (including my photo restoration, photography and more) you can follow me in many other places:
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The End of Childhood
Carolyn
I made the decision to go back to school when my son was 4 months old. When I completed high school 16 years ago I went to the same school I am in now to try and do something with my life. My father always said he was saving a college fund for when I went to college but I really didn’t want to go to college because I had NO IDEA what area of education to continue, so I went to the local Junior college. 14 years ago, I started my general education credits and spun through ideas of what I wanted to be when I grew up. And then my life took a turn when one of my favorite people died, my grandmother Carolyn.
Carolyn loved me. I was her jewel after a drunk driver hit and killed her adult daughter as she drove home from college in 1984. A part of my grandmother died along with her that night, and when I was born it was like the light came back into her life. She was proud of me and her love was a safe space. Carolyn’s passing was sudden. One day an obstruction in her intestine either burst or became septic and she died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. At the time, my father was living about an hour away and enjoying a few beers and watching the football game. The Rams were playing the 49 Whiners (misspelling intentional… It’s my blog #icandowhatiwant) that day, and my mother had been invited to go to that football game. So when I got the call from the hospital, she was in Candlestick Park wearing Rams gear and unavailable by phone. Before that call from the hospital, I was doing what any teenager would be doing in a parentless home, I invited all my friends over to watch the game. And then came the call. My grandfather was on the line, basically inaudible when he answered. He could barely get the name “Carolyn” out. A doctor quickly took over the call and said the words that led me on a mission to disconnect from reality for the next 10 years.
The Dr: “Your grandfather is here at the hospital.”
Me: …ok… “is he alright?”
The Dr: “Your grandmother Carolyn came to the ER and has passed, I’m so sorry”
I believe all that came out was a long “nooo” that trailed off as every little bit of air escaped my lungs. I broke inside and my friends became incredibly uncomfortable and quiet. I told them they could go and then tried calling my parents. I broke the news to dad (Carolyn was his step mom, that he loved like his real mother) and he felt it was unsafe for him to drive and told me he’d be there in the morning. My mother didn’t answer because she never heard the call over the cheering crowd. I tried my father’s two brothers, who both live 2.5 hours away. They both told me they would come in the morning. In my frantic search for an adult to come help me, I understood that I would have to show up and be the adult for my grandfather whose world had just imploded. I was a kid feeling the terrible weight of no control and the next 6 years I did everything I could to solidify the illusion of control.
What was left of my childhood, had ended that day. To fix that I bandaged the wounds my heart endured with distraction, food, drugs, and others. My version of control looked this way: I could eat and purge as much as I wanted and take any drugs offered up to get and stay high. I thought I felt better, because I wasn’t really feeling. But as time went on I couldn’t purge the bad feelings any more. Binging on food and drugs wasn’t enough anymore as my tolerance and anxiety grew.
Strong Self
That day I went to the hopsital and said goodbye to her body. She had been intubated and had a tubes in and out of her mouth and skin. I had never seen a dead human body before but it just looked like my grandmother asleep. I touched and kissed her hand and cheek and said goodbye and then I took my grandfather back to their home. I could see the path the first responders took out of the home. Things shoved out of t he way, Carolyn’s EEG paper tossed to the floor. I could see her heartbeat, as if proving she had been alive earlier that day. My grandfather wanted their friends to know she’d passed, so I called all of them, ruining each friend’s day and reliving the news over and over again.
One positive thing that happened the day Carolyn died was that I was able to show up on the most difficult day of my life and I went through that experience with grace. By showing up this way, I got to experience myself as capable and strong even through the pain and deep sorrow. I advocated for what Carolyn wanted; I was the one who told the hospital where to take her body to be buried. I mourned her the way I wanted to: I chose to spend time with her body and love and respect it the way I wanted to. I was the one who contacted the friends and family in her life and be the voice of truth to tell them that she had crossed. I never would have chosen that for myself at the time but the strong side of me showed up to do it, and did it well. So even in all my desperation to not feel, I knew somewhere deep within that my strong self existed and was waiting for me to pull my shit together.
Changing My Story
In a session with my spiritual teacher recently, we talked about how I wear the weight of sadness and pain that isn’t mine to hold. I hold it because I have taught myself to hold it and I tell myself It’s my responsibility to carry it. It’s not as easy as just stopping, so if that’s what you’re thinking, think again. I have existed this way my whole life. When other people I love are depressed, I try to fix their sadness. This is what the usual pattern looks like:
- Everything is fine and I am ok.
- Someone I love and care about is sad or depressed.
- I immediately feel fear and panic and want to stop their feelings so I don’t have to hold their sadness. I take responsibility for their feelings.
- The other person doesn’t want to “fixed” or told not to feel a certain way.
- I can’t change them or the moment so I get big to get them to back off, or I shut down and disappear (often by acting out in harmful coping mechanisms).
But other’s sadness isn’t my burden to carry. In my own sadness (like Carolyn’s death) I cared for self in the wrong way. But through my growth over time, I began learning how to be my own champion and count on that stronger self to go through the painful feelings and FEEL THEM instead of burying myself. If I can stay conscious when I get triggered by someone’s sadness, I can begin to make the choice to do it differently, altering the same predictable storyline. The way we change our story is consciousness around what we want to change, repetition of that same moment, and not forcing things to change before we’re ready. Also to be gentle with ourselves through the failures. If I could meet back up with my younger self 14 years ago, I would try to show her some compassion and understanding. I would hug her and hold her, knowing she had a hard but, in the end, rewarding road ahead.
So this is the new course of action. Get out of the predictable rut. Make the conscious choice to do it differently when I am triggered. Tell myself that I am in control of the moment and try doing something differently. See what happens. And above all else try to take care of myself and love myself through these moments. Because it is hard and I’m not great at it yet. There will most likely be many failures ahead, until there isn’t.
How are you changing your story? What do you want to do differently? What have been your triumphs? Failures? Please leave a comment below, lets start a dialogue!
Thank you for reading, excuse my extended absence as I have begun a semester in my filmmaking major in school. I am hoping to start updating my photography and photo restoration section of the website. In the meantime if you want a ton of cute updates of my life in real-time you can follow me in many other places:
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Family Fair Night at the Sonoma County Fair
Last night I went to the Sonoma County Fair, in Northern California, and brought my camera to capture some sweet moments with my son and husband. I recently took a digital photography class over the summer and got a better understanding of the tools I’m shooting with. This setting was a prefect place to practice working with exposure, shutter speed, different lenses, white balance, and combinations of it all. I really lucked out with a KILLER sunset to go with the lights of the fair rides! So below I am including a gallery of some of the images but you can also head over to my Flickr page to see the full album. All photos were edited afterwards in Adobe Photoshop and taken with my Canon Rebel. I also recommend clicking on an image to view it in its full form. Feel free to leave a comment or question! I love comments ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜 Thanks for viewing!
To find and follow my story of addiction, recovery, and motherhood, you can take a look through my blogs under the “addiction” section in the menu. My most recent addition to the story is Part 3 of my series on Death in Recovery. You can also find more of Colie’s Creations at:
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If you are inquiring about photoshoots for personal or events, please send me an email at elephantsinlove@gmail.com or leave a comment in the blog below!
Death in Recovery Part 3: Other’s Depression
The Two Selves: My Work
This post is dedicated to helping me work through an understanding I have been studying. I have a long and arduous relationship to other people’s depression and if I don’t go towards it to understand it then there will be no internal resolution. If you know me at all you know I have studied my character defects and my mindful patterns. Let me clarify, when I say “mind” or “mindful” what I mean is, it is the opposite of what love does, it is thinking (mind) vs. feeling (heart), and it is the ego or false self in expression instead of my essence or spirit’s expression. I believe we have two selves: the spirit which is the real self that works in feeling, depth, and love. And we have a second self which we each create when we are very young in order to maneuver and survive our earth adventure. The character defects are strategies to look, act, seem a certain way.
I’ll speak more personally now that I have some of the language down. When I was very young I thought I needed to be something, pretty, popular, a good girl, ect. So I became what I thought I needed to be in order to survive this lifetime. What I became was a victim to people and circumstances around me and I used that victimization to justify my self harm and my self soothing (drug use, eating disorder, smoking, disassociating, distraction through media or love, ect). Im my victimization, I had anger inside that I was being treated the way I was (much of which I was doing to myself), and I had entitlement to help me justify my actions. I felt entitled to self soothing because, after all, I was a victim to myself and others. This trifecta of Anger, Entitlement, and Victim is my core pattern that I came to break apart in this lifetime. I have other patterns my false self uses or defaults to, such as my Child pattern that is my immaturity and inability to be responsible or take care of myself. I have the pattern of Guilt & Shame which paralyzed me for years by being a constant reminder that I was a bad person and needed to suffer (through my own self harm) because of it. I also have a pattern I call my Nowhere Man, and that pattern would show up when things got to be too much and I would just shut down and disassociate. What all these patterns have in common is they were trigger switches to flip and leave myself so I didn’t have to feel feelings, face the truth, and illuminate the reality in my illusions.
I have spent 10 years in recovery and spiritual learning, studying these patterns daily. This work has saved my life by showing my who I really am and giving me a reason not to abandon the real self for the false self. In the last year or so the work shifted away from mere survival to actual prosperity of love and real comfort. I had an experience in a therapy session that helped me understand that I was the one in control of my own life (I know this sounds like a simple concept but there were many things in the way of my understanding this in a deeply, and digressing would make for a very long blog lol). I made a decision to go back to school and I chose something I really wanted to go towards. In the past my previous career choices were all someone else’s suggestions. They were great suggestions but ultimately I would get burnt out doing them and quit because it wasn’t what fueled my passion and so there came a natural ending every time. I needed to take control of my own life but it had to be on my own time, when I was ready. This decision ultimately led me to jump into a long list of experiences that flowed effortlessly somewhere I knew was right and trusted. I gave myself permission of be fully honest about who I am and what I think and feel, and thus this website became a reality. I knew I needed to write my story and I knew it would be a place to honor what I was learning. I knew it would be a launching pad for my business but I needed it to all be collectively united. By doing this I chose to not run away from who I really was. I chose to be fully honest and not hold back. I chose love and to trust myself over fear, immaturity, and numbing.
The Third Death
My grandmother passed in early June of 2019 after a long battle with cancer. She was a fighter and strong willed, it felt like nothing would ever stop her. She created a beautiful home and garden that she was very proud of. She loved becoming a great grandmother to her 3 great grandsons. She had some wonderful qualities about her, but there was also difficult things about her “false self” that made having a relationship with her exasperating at times. I want to make this clear: I loved her and she gave me so much, for that I will be forever grateful for, but she was also a great variable for me when it came to learning how to take care of myself.
I want to tell you about her because her death was not an easy death to be present for and let go of, but it was one of the first times, in my whole life, where I was able to feel all my feelings and stay fully present. In my past I would have experiences of joy, sorrow, embarrassment, disappointment, and so on, but I would stop those feelings dead in their tracks so I didn’t have to feel them. I would feel those feelings start to come in, and I end them by over eating, purging, smoking, going to movies, binge-watching Netflix, distracting myself. I always had a remedy for my feelings. But when my grandmother passed I kept trying to act out in my old patterns and nothing worked. Trust me I tried, but I was left to just feel my feelings, and you know what happened? I survived them. These feelings I thought would obliterate me just sucked for a few weeks and then I used them to keep growing. I finally stopped abandoning myself and I held my own hand through the rough waters to get to the relief of the shore. Upon solid ground, I began to walk again because I was whole. This experience has only multiplied in the last few weeks because I keep having to step up and stand up for myself, and it’s life changing.
Other People’s Depression
My whole life I have surrounded myself with people who are depressed. I know depression well because it is present in many of my most intimate relationships. But I have reached a point in my life and growth that I cannot continue codependent relationships with depressed people. Let me explain this better. One of the ways I deal with other people’s depression is to try to fix it. I do this because my whole life I thought others were depressed because of me. And so to stay in comfort, I would try to fix them so I could feel better. I know that sounds thoughtless, but that pattern of Guilt & Shame kept me persistently believing that their pain was my fault and in order to survive it I would have to fix it. Can you feel how heavy that is? And the depressed people in my life didn’t want to be fixed, so it led to me walking on eggshells trying to avoid their dark feelings because I took it on like water to a sinking ship. I couldn’t fix them and I couldn’t get out of being the target of the feelings, or I was expected to join in it… I. Was. Fucked… Until I understood their depression as having nothing to do with me. If I was not a part of their equation, they would still be depressed and I was only sustaining my victim pattern by staying and making myself be a victim to it!
What I am learning is that I need to put up some walls so I can exist without the constant pressure of that depression. I need to keep seeking out who I am and building a relationship to myself. By going towards these relationships the way they are, I am staying in a codependent and distraction-based partnership that I can’t maintain. If boundaries work then all is well, but to fall back into this routine is like doubling back on progress, and I can no longer do that. I am not ending these relationships, only trying my best to see red flags 🚩, put up boundaries, and leave if I need too. Or in some cases put a literal distance between us until my natural reaction isn’t to throw myself under the bus when things get uncomfortable. It is not my job to fix others. They are allowed to have their process and I have a right to take care of myself if I need to. This is just another notch in my belt to giving myself all I deserve and leaving old patterns behind.
There is a lot more to my story you can find in other earlier blogs. I have decided to do a fourth part to the Death in Recovery series, so stay tuned for that. You can find Part 1 and Part 2 here.
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Thank you for reading. ♥️
Death in Recovery Part 2: Pot, Dogs, & Friendship
My Problem With Pot
After the passing of my friend’s mother I had a period of mourning for her. A dull ache that I had one less person on the same team as me. That pang of disappointment visits me when I think of her or see her name pop up in my contacts list of my phone. I fleeting brief excitement to call and connect with her disappears when I have to remind myself that she is unreachable while I’m on earth.
A few months later I was celebrating my 10 years of continuous sobriety. I go to two different fellowships and so I went and collected two different chips, one celebrating abstinence from all substances and the other fellowship focuses on one of the hardest drugs I had to give up: Marijuana. Back when I still used, I LOVED pot. I had a love affair with pot and when I left to go to treatment in Arizona, I had zero desire to end my marijuana use. When I got into treatment, the councilors all tried to make it very clear that I was an addict and therefore needed to stop using all drugs in order to get better. And I thought they were all fucking nuts! I kept thinking: you want me to go back to wine country, CA, the beginning of the green triangle and not smoke weed and drink occasionally? My plan was to get off the hard stuff, mainly opiates, so why were these councilors making such a big deal about smoking and drinking? As I progressed through my 40 day treatment program I became more and more depressed. I had my first 420 away from my friends and wouldn’t be participating for the first year and I felt like nothing in the world could make me better inside.
My whole identity focused around being the best stoner there ever was. For a few years, on 420, we rolled a quarter pound blunt with toilet paper roll crutch, all rolled up in a Cheech & Chong blunt wrap paper from their Big Bambu album, sealed with honey hash oil. At Thanksgiving time I created a celebration called Special Thanksgiving where we collected donations from friends made green butter and then I proceeded to make an entire Thanksgiving meal with it. After the first year we realized we needed to make a second Thanksgiving dinner so after people got high they could move on to normal food instead of munching out on more green food. It was like all I lived for, getting high and finding ways to get high. It was a lifestyle and that kind of tradition and celebration only made it harder to leave.
Once I entered recovery and began talking to folks in the Marijuana fellowship, the biggest problem I heard from pot addicts was that they felt like they had wasted decades of their life. It wasn’t the fast bottom they were hitting that can happen with alcohol and harder drugs, but they said they had bought into this illusion that they belonged to this lifestyle and that they sobered up one day and noticed that 20, 30, 40+ years had gone by without them. When I returned from treatment and talked with my friends that mostly smoked and drank they couldn’t even entertain the idea of stopping bud for a month or two. They defended it and made excuses as to why they couldn’t stop and I eventually gave up trying to change their mind about it. Their using wasn’t my responsibility or job to control and I understood their reluctance. Things changed so fast and I began learning and living in ways I never thought were possible, and I wanted that for my old using friends. I was once in their shoes and then I found a way out, I hoped one day they would also find the freedom from addiction.
The Dog Who Hated Treadmills
I received a keyring for 10 years of abstained abstinence and threaded it onto my bulky set of keys. I chatted with friends I’d known and loved over the last 10 years and got into my car with plans to Netflix and chill for the night. This night was particularly exciting because my mom took my 1 year old son overnight so I could celebrate my recovery milestone in peace, and my husband had left California to drive to his friends bachelor party over in Moab, Utah. I was looking at a night of complete freedom! I drove to In & Out to grab dinner and while in the drive thru line, I get a call from someone I hadn’t received a call from in many years. This friend and I used prescription pills before there was an epidemic. We had no idea what we were doing at the time but it eventually led us both down a difficult path that brought us both to our knees. Im going to give him the name of Garrett. He got clean from opiates by moving away and I got clean and sober by going into treatment.
Garrett and I were close back in the day and he was one of my very favorite people. He had a dog with his long-time girlfriend, Angie, and they gave me a couch to sleep on when I was in the very early stages of my addiction. The dog was a little terrier with unlimited energy and personality and I grew to love her because she loved me when I felt the most unlovable. She had funny trigger words like “rats” and “treadmill” that would cause her to go apeshit. There was a treadmill in the house and if it was on she would viciously attack it. If you said “rats” she would go hunting for them until she was called off. She loved people and parties. When I started getting a lot of tattoos I asked her parents if they would care if I got a little portrait of her on my calf. They thought it was hilarious and agreed.
When I got this call from Garrett he sounded stoic and sad. I invited him over and when he arrived we sat in my backyard and talked, reminisced. He got serious and then told me that his beloved terrier was getting too weak, too blind, and too fragile to keep going and he knew it was time for her to be put to sleep. He could barely get the sentence out. He said how much I loved the dog and he wanted me to know so I could say goodbye or be there when the time came.
The Amends
When I picked up my chip I was in the midst of completing a 9th step, actively making amends to those I had harmed, and there was a small financial one I needed to make to Garrett that he didn’t even know about. I walked inside and grabbed a $50 bill and my newly acquired MA chip. I sat back down with him and began with the amends, something small but very necessary for me in my recovery. Then I gave him my chip. I wanted to honor everything I had learned after first meeting him. Garrett and Angie took me in and gave me friendship. They taught me how to be in relationship with others, and how to honor friendship. They taught me how to have fun and let loose when all I knew was control and anxiety. They loved me unconditionally when I couldn’t love myself and they trusted me in their home, alone, and with their dog. I felt my worth through their eyes at a time I literally self loathed and self harmed to disappear from the world. I took drugs and harmed myself to not feel, they held my hand through that time, we loved each other.
When Garrett left to get off pills he did something most people can’t. He white knuckled it through the horrible withdrawals and the emotional and psychological anguish of detoxing. He suffered, virtually alone, and came through it alive. My path was much different but essentially it was the same. We got clean around the same time, I did it through a program which required abstinence from all substances, he stayed off opiates but didn’t need the hard boundaries like I did. That night I gave him my chip because I wanted to honor his accomplishment and I wanted him to know how thankful I was that he’d made it. I didn’t care the specifics on how he’d gotten there but I was so grateful to have someone I loved out of the grips of opiate addiction.
Garrett called me that night to tell me that our dog friend was nearing the end of her life, and he thought I would be destroyed by it because of my love for our dog friend. What I don’t think he understood was that my love for the dog was a reflection of the greatness in them (and also myself). I told him that I did love our doggie friend but it was all she represented that made that I loved the most and wanted to honor. That dog was the mascot for our group of friends and she represented joy, connection, and fun. To me, she represented the love I had for my friends, and that love they showed that me kept me alive through my darkest times.
Remembering the Journey
While we grow through our recovery it is so important to remember where we started and how we got there. It is important to honor the whole journey. My job as a member of a recovery program is to stay in my lane, love, and live my life to the best of my ability while holding boundaries and caring for myself. My job is to not harm others through my character defects, and if I do, to clean it up right away by being accountable and conscious. My job in life is to create depth and love wherever possible and to foster imagination and creativity in order to make life on earth special. My job is to stand up for myself and continue to develop a relationship with myself. My job is to evolve and grow and lead by example and love others where they are. Cheers to 10 more years and all the surprises in store!
Feel free to comment with some of your lifelong connections through life twists and turns. What has your journey looked like?
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The 12th Step Call: Finding the Light When Darkness Surrounds You
My first clean and sober relationship
A few years ago I got a call from my buddy in recovery, Aaron, asking if I had seen our mutual friend, we’ll call him Andy. Andy and I dated for 7 months when I first got into recovery. He got clean a few months before me and was living in the SLE (sober living environment) I lived in and when I first saw him I knew I needed to know him. He was 21 years older than me, and being a 23 year old with no idea how to stay sober I jumped at the chance to get to know him and feel some stability. He was handsome, played music, and we had our drug of choice in common, so I felt like he understood where I came from. He absolutely respected the fact that I was newly clean and didn’t make any advances on me, so I went out on a limb and told him I liked him. We eventually started dating and it was the first relationship where using was off the table. I was so afraid of meeting new people my age and starting new friendships in early recovery and so we got to be isolated, and we liked it that way. As time went on I started getting use to people in my recovery groups. Naturally, I made some new friends and started acting like I was in my early 20s. It was great, except my relationship with Andy started to fall apart because I wanted to go out, go to new meetings, try new things, and he liked his routine.
Andy and I managed to stay friends but we definitely weren’t inseparable any longer. He really only had a few friends so I tried to keep up a friendship and check in on him regularly. He lived with our friend Aaron, and Aaron had longstanding some clean time under his belt. I knew he would look after Andy and we drifted over time. We really drifted when I met the man who would eventually become my husband. Andy took that hard but even through that we remained friendly. Years fell off the calendar and we checked in here and there but it wasn’t often. When we connected it was like old times. I still loved him, the way you always hold a place for your past long term relationships.
Super 8
So I get this call from Aaron asking if I had seen or heard from his roommate, Andy. I immediately got worried because not only is it completely out of character for Andy to be missing, but if Aaron was asking me if I’d seen him, that meant he had been isolating pretty badly again. I hadn’t seen him in probably almost 18 months by that point and I promptly knew something was very wrong. Aaron and I rallied together and tried to remember some general information. Full name, DOB, mom’s phone number, any other friendships he may have. I filed a missing persons report and found a recent-ish pic from my wedding day of him as a guest. I emailed those to the police and called his mother and asked her if she knew anything. She was scared and saddened and said she had seen this behavior before. I had flashes of memories of him talking about his last big binge was his using was at its worst. I remembered him saying that the last time he was off the wagon that was was held up in a Super 8 motel basically trying to use to death. I knew this might end badly but I didn’t know what to do about it.
One of the Instagram accounts I used to follow was a company who’s job it is to clean up people’s worse days. When someone dies, commits suicide, murders someone, have an accident, this company is in charge of cleaning it up. Almost every time there was a suicide you would see these people’s miserable existence in the hours leading up to their final moments, often held up in a shitty motel room. I couldn’t sit still imagining this being Andy’s fate. I imagined him over and over in these surreal and depressed last hours trying to reach the unreachable high. And just a head’s up for those curious cats out there, if you go looking for this account be prepared. It’s difficult, and often violent subject matter to see.
As I sat, breastfeeding my 4 month old son, telling my mom my fears for Andy, she says, “Did you call the Super 8 Motel and see if he was there?”, I blink a few times. Could he really be there? Would they really connect me to his room if he was there? I Googled the local Super 8 motel and dialed. I was welcomed by a cheery sounding woman, and like it was the most normal moment in the world, I ask for her to connect me to Andy’s room. I am 100% expecting her to say there is no Andy, and even if there was, they can’t connect to guests rooms without a room number. But that’s not what she says. She says “Sure, have a nice night.” and like that I’m being transferred to his room. My stomach turns, will he answer?
"Hello?" he says. I say, "Hi Andy," He responds, "Do you have my sandwich?" I reply after a long confused pause... "nope." And then he repeats my name, "N...I...K...I... Wait it this NIKI?" I respond, "yep!" He sighs and says, "Oh, you know I'm in a bad way then huh?" 🙁 "yea..." I respond.
I ask him if he think’s he needs a doctor. He corrects me and says a hospital is probably more appropriate after 5 days of no sleep or food and an array of substances. I arrange sitting for my son with my mother and call up Aaron. We meet at the motel and go in together. It’s thrashed and Andy’s thrashed. We help him to Aaron’s SUV and journey to the hospital. Before this, I had never been witness to a friends relapse. I immediately had visions of other people I had grown to love in recovery in this same situation.
Finding the Light
At some point, I had unconsciously made a decision to love addicts. People who could take their addiction to an extreme that was violent to their bodies and spirit and I knew Andy wouldn’t be the last friend I would see relapse. I had made a choice to love these people with all their flaws and exactly where they were in their journey. I chose to love people who had hit a bottom and desperately wanted to get well. Some would and some wouldn’t, and I had placed a bet on them to succeed. I had bet a piece of my heart that I would see them flourish and grow along side me until death do us part. I bet this way because I saw miracles happen in the rooms of recovery. If you’d have met some of these miracles, you would understand why that was a worthy bet.
The 12th Step Call is one we make when we are connected enough to help another struggling addict. We reach out without expectations for them to reach back, only praying for them to choose to help themselves. Sometimes these addicts just aren’t ready and it’s important to not blame ourselves. We can’t force someone to get well who isn’t ready but I know I choose to reach out to Andy and to other addicts just in case they become ready. Andy got into detox and cleaned up pretty fast. He moved about 90 minutes away and eventually got into a new SLE and got set up into the program again. I call him more often now and I think about how close he came to checking out of life rather than that shitty motel. I made this 12th Step Call because I really hoped I would be able to see him again and so I extended a loving and compassionate hand to my friend and he accepted. He made the choice to take the help. There was no forcing or threatening, only reaching out to someone in the dark and showing them it’s possible to get back to the light. And I pray he keeps reaching.
Have you ever reached out with a 12th Step Call? Even if you aren’t in the rooms of recovery, what is your experience reaching out to someone in desperate need?
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Celebrating Family: A photoshoot
Over Easter weekend I photographed my family and our kids spending time together. My grandmother treated us all to a 4 night stay in Bodega Bay, California. We rented a beach house next to a golf course and every person who attended brought a special element to share. We realized that this may have been the last family event that we all would be together, and so it was important to me to have it documented.
A few people I love have passed away recently, leaving me to become introspective and vulnerable to the aspect of death. In the other half of my website, I talk about my experience with addiction and bulimia because it is a crucial part of my life’s journey. My most recent blog is directly about a recent loss of a friend and how I experienced that in recovery. One thing I reflected on is the difference between a sudden loss and a loss of a loved one dying slowly. A sudden loss can feel quite traumatic making grieving painful and incredibly difficult, where there is an element of control and planning when someone gets a diagnosis. The beautiful gift in this beach house Easter trip was the offering of ceremony and time spent together with a deeper underlying understanding. Each family member brought food, favors, fun elements, games, toys, comfort commodities, love, appreciation and joy. We laughed, and cried. We celebrated the kids first Easter together by practicing traditions of dying eggs, setting up baskets, sharing candy and treats. We stayed up late commiserating and remembering times past.
Not everyone experienced the trip this way. Some threw back a few too many drinks, some endured the trip from one moment to the next. But for the most part, this trip was a true collaboration of the heart. It was what we chose to make it, and mostly we were able to have uninterrupted time together. The funny thing about family is that they aren’t chosen (at least when we’re down here on earth) and so its a combination of people who sometimes only have that in common. These events can sometimes become sticky as personalities clash, so to preserve the integrity of our connections, we look to the past to remind us of why create these times in the first place. This is why I photograph. I want to honor the moments and memories of those I love, so that when the time comes to let go and say goodbye (either suddenly, slowly, or planned) we have these sparkling moments to hold close that depict the wholesome truth of our choice to be together.
Above is a gallery of a few of my favorite photos from the trip, for a more complete gallery of photos you can visit my Flickr album dedicated to the trip. What moments have you created to honor a loved one? Do you have a favorite story or event inspired by impending death? Memories and stories are welcome in the comments below.
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Death In Recovery: Three Deaths & Three Lessons, Part 1
A few months ago a friend I love died. Then two months later my buddy put his dog down. And two days after that another friend died suddenly. All three of these deaths were impactful and I felt the need to process here on the blog because there are definitely “gems in the poop” as my spiritual teacher would say. The names have been changed for privacy.
Meeting Carol
Many years ago I had a friend who I use to buy weed from. He was a large and lovable guy and at the time I think I probably had a little crush on him. He fit the definitions of intelligent and gregarious. Anyways, he had his own struggles with addiction and got in a lot of trouble by making some terrible life altering choices that landed him in prison for a few years. When I heard about my buddy, Barry, landing in prison I empathized with him being in this shitty situation. I understood how my addiction led me to make bad decisions and where I could never see myself making that particular set of choices, I understood that just because Barry had made them, that didn’t make him a bad person. So, being recently clean and sober and knowing how much letters meant to me while I was in treatment, I began to write.
I wrote him almost every day. Mostly, it was a selfish thing because writing the letters was like processing my life and sending it out into the universe. But I wrote about other stuff too. I wrote down song lyrics to things that had moved me (I look back at it now and think how it would have probably been frustrating not being able to hear them with a simple google). I wrote about things I had read in 12-step literature. I mailed him books that I loved. Finally someone suggested I talk to his mom about visiting him before he was sent further away. I acquired her number and gave his mom a call, her name was Carol. She didn’t know I existed before that day, but I rang and asked if I could arrange a time to go and visit Barry. She was immediately straightforward and said, “I appreciate that you want to go and visit Barry. Many people ended communication with him after he got arrested. I will get you on the schedule to visit him but you need to be really honest with me, if you don’t think you’ll make it or cancel, Please let me know so I can visit him. I don’t want to give away him visitation time and then have him loose out on seeing anyone.” I was a little taken aback at first but I loved it. She was very honest and it was so refreshing. I told her I would definitely honor the commitment.
I visited him, it was my first time going to jail. We chatted and he gave me the low down on his situation. He said he would love another visit sometime and I agreed to come back in the future. About a month later I had to drop something off to his mother so she could mail it to him. I went to her home and she had her garage open. She had a little card table set up near the opening of the garage and she offered me a seat. There was an ashtray and I asked if she minded if I smoked a cigarette. She took one out herself and we settled in. We began a dialogue that stretched over the course of a couple hours. She wanted to know how I had managed to get and stay clean for the year I’d accumulated as if I’d done some kind of magic trick. I knew she was afraid for her boys who had their own struggles with addiction, she didn’t know what to do beyond love them and pray they’d find some peace inside and begin taking care of themselves. I only really knew what had worked for me and told her that most people have to hit a bottom in order to rise up. She was vulnerable with me about her feelings and concerns. She said it gave her hope knowing I had managed to get some clean time.
When mothers day came, I went to the store and bought cards and flowers for my mother, 2 grandmothers, and Carol. Anytime I visited my own grandmother I would go to see Carol because her house was right on the way. We kept in contact and created a beautiful friendship usually meeting for a meal and talking until the restaurant closed. Every time we met she expressed gratitude that I was still doing well and made a point to tell me she was so proud of me. Over time her other son Jerry managed to find the rooms and get cleaned up, a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders knowing her boy was finally safe. Jerry found a wife who had a little clean time too and they fell pregnant. A month later I found out I was pregnant too. I was excited because I knew it was the time to begin a family but I was nervous because I could only hope I was enough to bring a baby into the world. Carol walked me through it all, telling me hilarious storied about her own boys, her birth stories, and the love she felt for them immediately. Talking with Carol was always deep. We talked about life and death and afterlife and evolution and darkness and light. I told her I hoped I had grown myself enough to safely and responsibly care for an infant, she beamed at the upcoming experiences awaiting me. She was a mirror of the best qualities I unconsciously held, and this is why my heart grew so fond of her. She was the type of woman I wanted to be as I stepped into adulthood.
Things Got Busy
I had my son in an unusual way, during a natural disaster, and as things settled down in our community, I settled into motherhood. I got busy, but I kept trying to reach out and connect with Carol. We met for another meal when my son was about a month old and checked in. She told me she was elated to be a grandmother thanks to Jerry and his wife. And she checked in around some of the highs and lows in the flow of her. She let it slip that she was getting sick and that the doctor had prescribed pain medication. She had a little discomfort about me knowing that she was in need of these meds, I assured her I had no judgement and encouraged her to keep talking about it if the meds aren’t making her feel right. I didn’t really understand what the medication was for but a month later she went off the radar. Her boys said she was sick and in and out of the hospital. She stopped having a social media presence almost completely. Finally after a few months of this I called Barry and asked where she was. He told me she had been admitted to another hospital and was awaiting surgery. He gave me her location and I went to go see her.
Carol was very thin and staring at the blank screen of the tv mounted near the ceiling of her room. Her eyes were half open, and when I came in she came back into her body almost immediately. I had my son with me who was now walking and desperately trying to explore her blanket, call button, and bed pan. She was grateful I had brought him and we chatted for a short while before my son started maximizing his fussing. I held her hand and touched her forehead and told her I would come back after her surgery. She said I was welcome anytime. I told her I loved her and left. My brother-in-law was getting married later that week in Mexico so we flew down and had a great family adventure. When we returned my boy picked up some stomach bug and we all got sick. I waited before going to see Carol again because I didn’t want to risk getting her sick. When we were all finally well, I gave Barry a call and asked, “Is she at the same hospital or back at home?” He paused on the phone and said, “I’m so sorry to tell you this, but she died before having her surgery.” I was shocked. I knew she was unwell but this vibrant, strong-willed, beautiful woman was now gone, in a whole different consciousness, and I would not see her on earth again.
Bigger Picture
I believe Earth is our evolutionary playing field and that the purpose of life is to evolve. I had a hard time growing up and to cope started using drugs, binge eating, and purging. As I ended my drug use I started growing myself and learning how to take care of myself. I learned how to let go of shame and guilt. I learned how to stop perpetuating my victimization pattern. I learned how to love myself. But this all took years and years of dedication and compassion for myself during this process. Growing up I learned how to harm myself as a way to control feeling out of control, the work I did was to end the self harm and grow up so I could live a vibrant and peaceful life. When I met Carol, I met someone who understood my struggle, saw my victory, and was proud to have a relationship with me. Carol was a friend who really saw me in a way almost no one really did. She saw the struggle and the fight in me to become well, and loved me exactly where I was. It was a relationship I don’t believe I’ll encounter much again in this lifetime. To honor her, I keep fighting the good fight. I keep setting the example for others so they can see that it is indeed possible to change if you really want it. To honor her, I remember her inner beauty and soft eyes and keep doing the work so I can embody the parts of Carol I will always love and treasure.
I personally think that when we die we go back home, the universe, the big whole where all souls go to become one. I think the veil is actually quite thin between us and them and that they are all close and within reach if we are ready to listen. I believe when we go home we study what we chose to do in this lifetime and see how things went. There is a beautiful book called Journey of Souls that does a great job of describing this process in depth. I think we have many lifetimes on earth because life on earth is full of suffering which births countless opportunities for us to evolve through. In conclusion, understanding the world from this larger perspective brings comfort but we are all humans having a human experience on earth. I have peace knowing the deeper spiritual perspectives on death, but I can still be sad, as a human on earth, that I cannot commiserate in the evolutionary battle with my beautiful friend until we are reunited once again.
One Decade Clean and Sober & Inventory on Bulimia
Ten years ago, my life was very shallow and very out of control. On this day a decade ago I was on an airporter bus on my way to Tucson, Arizona, with my small bag of luggage, a huge bundle of letters and mementos from my friends and family, and an anxious pit in my stomach. It was 4:30am and I cried the entire way to SFO. I hadn’t managed to score anything for the night before and so I was already irritated and restless. I listened to mix CDs my friends had made me, clinging to every word they sang like they were singing my story. The Flaming Lips were dear to me because I knew Steven Drozd had struggled with heroin addiction too. There was comfort in knowing we shared the same habits and rituals and that if he had managed to clean up, then perhaps so could I. ⚠️ Trigger Warning: This blog talks about my eating disorder and some drug use ⚠️
My Eating Disorder
If you’re having trouble understanding people with eating disorders in relationship to food, try looking at it like this: One of the main principles in recovery from addiction is that you should not pick up, no matter what. If you don’t use then you aren’t perpetuating the using, which makes sense. But, for me, food was my first drug of choice and one cannot abstain from eating. If you take the alcohol away from the alcoholic they can’t use it. But if you put a shot glass with an ounce of whiskey in front of an alcoholic and tell them they can have one shot 3 times a day, no more no less, then you can imagine this being a set up for failure. So the eating disordered person needs to find a balance with their drug of choice, food, and they need to do the work to change everything about their relationship with food, and with themselves in order to recover. And, really, alcoholics and addicts who only manage to abstain from using without doing work to change themselves, will usually have a hard time staying clean for any real length of time.
Almost all of my friends were clueless about my eating disorder and when I told them I was going to treatment in a place that specialized in food disorders, they were confused. From my experience, most people don’t understand eating disorders and how someone can repeatedly harm themselves through food or restricting. Most people think it’s as simple as not purging after a meal for a bulimic, or forcing someone to eat who’s anorexic, or putting someone who compulsively binges on a diet. They don’t understand the complexities behind these disorders. When I was on my way to treatment I considered my eating disorder to be a feature of myself that would never leave and that I could not control. But I knew my drug addiction was bad enough where I needed assistance if I ever wanted to live a life without opiates, and that is the biggest reason I chose to go to treatment.
I was 9 years old when I started thinking my body was wrong and unattractive. I felt out of control because I wasn’t rail thin like the media said I should be. By the time I was 12 years old I was so stressed out about my body that I started purging, thinking I would have control over my weight and therefore my happiness.
At its worst, in high school, my relationship with bulimia was all-consuming. I would binge and purge all day long at school and when I got home from school, before my parents got home. A typical day would consist of probably 12 binge and purge cycles. I would feel uncomfortable and to dispel the discomfort, I would eat. Food was absolutely my drug. But then 10 minutes after a huge binge I would have this uncontrollable urge to purge and I would. And then I would have a slight euphoria from it, which I know probably sounds bizarre. It was my way of life many years until I found drugs. Heroin and Oxy were the only other thing that filled the void inside, and when I found them, my binging and purging diminished. I would still act out a few times a week but nowhere near the amount I did in high school. So as I traveled to the airport the morning of March 30th, 2009, I had zero hope of a life without my eating disorder, especially if I wasn’t going to using anymore.
Learning New Ways to Cope
When I was in treatment I mostly used it to help me in my addiction because it was the thing that was bringing me to my rock bottom hard and fast. Treatment gave me a few big gifts: they set me up with the foundation in my belief that I could live with out drugs or alcohol. It also gave me hope that I could find and choose a new way of life with some dedication and honesty. That’s not all I gained from my near 40 days there. I learned how to view food as nourishment instead of something I could disappear into. I learned about portioning and how to eat a diverse plate. I learned how to let go of some of my controlling nature around food and I grew a desire to figure out who I really was.
I had a lot of anxiety growing up and my eating disorder was like a destructive tool I developed that helped me feel in control. ***I AM ABSOLUTELY NOT SAYING THIS IS A GOOD WAY TO CONTROL ANXIETY*** What I am saying is that I was a child in immense distress and turmoil and without knowing what I was really doing, I created a way to feel in control. Even today, I still have a brain that immediately thinks that to feel comfort, I need to binge or purge, just like how in my addiction I would want to use. I don’t act out in eating disordered ways much anymore but every once in a while it still happens. I have done a tremendous work to combat these default coping mechanisms. I learned how to see the feelings that make me want to use/binge/purge as 🚩 red flags 🚩 so that I can identify them as a trigger before I act out. After they are identified I do everything in my power to work with the feelings, I journal, I call someone, I leave to do something that is a healthier option. Once I am in a safer head space I try to understand what it was that made me want to act out. If I have understanding of it, I can try to do something about it.
Let me give you an example. If I have a feeling coming on that I need to cook a whole box of macaroni & cheese, toast, some leftovers and whatever else, I see this as a red flag. I usually want to binge because I’m looking for comfort, or to not feel at all. If I’m eating then my brain sort of turns off, and I feel “comfort” from that because I don’t have to be in the moment that made me uncomfortable in the first place. If what I want to feel is comfort or nothing at all, I look at my options and start a dialogue with myself: “I’m watching my son so maybe we could go on a walk with the stroller. I usually put on a podcast or music, so I’m tuning out a little, I’m doing something good for my body and for my son, and I am leaving the house where I had access to the food in the first place”. Usually after a 45 minute walk outside I feel better and I can move on to the next moment, or try to find where the feeling of wanting to binge started. Maybe I had an argument with my husband that morning or maybe I have a big credit card bill due that I’m a little nervous about, what ever it is, I try to pin point it. Then I can try to understand what is real about that. “My husband is at work now, so I have some space to relax and get clearheaded about my part in the argument”. Or if it’s the credit card… “I will get through it no matter what comes of that. The worst that could happen is that maybe I pay some interest or maybe I need to put spending on credit on hold for a while”. But really that impending doom that I use to feel uncomfortable in order to act out doesn’t hold a lot of weight when I remind myself that I can, actually, get through this moment and really any moment because I have put in the work and I have finally developed some love and compassion for myself.
So What…
So today, I am working on fully understanding what it real about myself and my place in the world. I want to know what is real and be honest with the people I choose to have intimately in my life. To finally be open and honest about my eating disorder and addiction, I take away their power over me. Because I don’t hide this part of my past I get to be in process about it with others and continue my journey of becoming healthy and free. I have used a lot of tools over the years to grow myself but I feel like I need to acknowledge the work I have put in, and what better way than to do so on my 10th anniversary clean and sober. For me this day is not just a marker of abstinence, but the anniversary where I chose to get on the right path and thrive. Thank you to those of you who have seen me on my way through this journey. And stay tuned for more.
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10 Years Ago: This ‘ol Opiate Addict’s Rock Bottom
If you are an addict struggling with imagining what it would take to get clean, you’ve probably heard people talking about hitting rock bottom. I wanted to share with you the day that I consider to be my rock bottom because it was the moment in which I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I felt the sand in the hourglass of coping with addiction running out. So this is the story of my worst day as an addict. ⚠️ Trigger Warning ⚠️ This blog talks about suicide and drug abuse.
I couldn’t find any heroin or Oxy that day. I woke up and called around to everyone I knew looking for any kind of pills I could crush up or any dope to shoot and I drew a blank all day. By around 5 pm I was miserable and had given up hope of finding anything so I left the house and drove over to a shopping complex. I wanted to feel less alone and I felt so damn lonely. I had a couple tall cans of shitty Coors Light and a plethora of weed and I just sat in the shade of a maple tree drinking and smoking and watching people exist. I remember sweating out smelly detoxifying sweat. My skin was crawling and I cried and played loud and sad music.
I watched the cars shoot by my window at the edge of the parking lot. A semi crossed in front of me and I thought, if only that semi could veer out of the way of some rouge Honda and slam into my car, crushing me. I wanted to die but I didn’t want to kill myself and put my family through that kind of pain. I prayed for the universe to relieve me of this miserable existence and set me free without me having to create additional pain and suffering. Hours went by and I wrote a page in my journal that let others know I loved them and that I was sorry, just in case my prayers were answered. By dusk I gave up hope on God mercy killing me and made the conscious choice to give myself one last year to get my shit together. For many years I suffered through life and I would give it only one more year before giving up and taking the sleeping pills I collected just in case I needed a way out. So I opened my phone and set an alarm for one year later to “KILL YOURSELF”. I closed my phone, went home and took a sleeping pill and prayed Oxy or a baggie would find me in the morning.
The Letters I Couldn’t Write Myself
My mother was the one who suggested treatment to me only a week or so later. She saw me nodding off in a chair and thought I had smoked too much pot, unaware my addiction had become much more unmanagable. She asked me if I would be open to going into treatment for my bulimia (another deeply rooted problem I had) and I agreed that I would benefit from leaving my hometown and try to clean up for a bit. The place she found was in Arizona and it was holistic based and looked beautiful on the website.
I really must give my mother credit for setting up treatment with the insurance, collecting donations from other family members who could help, and paying thousands of dollars as a copayment to the insurance company. I know it would have taken so much longer had she not stepped up and taken charge of that. My one job was to get on the plane on the morning of March 30th, 2009 and take a flight from California to Tucson, Arizona.
The week before I left I begged every one of my friends to write me letters that I could open when I was in Arizona. Most of them didn’t really understand why I was going in the first place. The thing about the disease of addiction is that it wants to do everything it can to survive and so I remained incredibly secretive about my eating disorder and most of my drug use. The friends I used Oxy with had moved to Oregon to try to get a hold on their own addiction, but I still had a lot of friends who would smoke weed and drink, I called their household The Kids House. They had no idea I was doing much more than the occasional shroom trip/night drinking/bowl after bowl, so I came clean about the dabbling in pills and my trials in IV drug use. They were shocked but glad I was leaving to get help and wrote to me too. Amends to them were later made because of my choice to conceal the truth. Here’s another post about making amends in recovery to get an idea of the power of being accountable.
I asked everyone for letters, multiple letters, from any family or friends who would be willing to take the time to do it. Before leaving I managed to collect 60 letters from people (not including all the letters people wrote to me while I was there which was probably an additional 60). I was also given, maybe, 15 mix CDs of music from some of the people I was leaving behind.
I was afraid to go, too. The scariest part about leaving home for 40ish days was that I honestly thought in that short amount of time, everyone I knew would forget about me and I would come back and be alone. I thought that little of myself to believe relationships I’d created over 23 years would be over because I went away to take care of myself. When that morning to leave came, I got on the air-porter bus, cried as I put on one of those mix CDs, and left.
The letters people wrote me were heart filled and helped me get there and stay in treatment. But what I learned much later was that I was reading the words of encouragement and love I couldn’t give myself. I was reading a reflection of what others saw in me, that I was blind to seeing. The work I did on myself over the decade since has been the growing of self and the learning to love myself that I desperately needed to do. For the first 5 years after treatment, I treasured those letters like gold. If the house had caught fire, those letters would have been one of the few things to grab but as I learned who I really was I saw those letters as a symbol of the me I didn’t want to be anymore. I still have them but they certainly don’t hold the kind of value they did before, only because I grew the self love those letters held a space for.
My Fourth Step
About 10 months after leaving treatment I was in my bed at my mom’s house. It was raining outside, my favorite kind of weather for Northern California. I had some tea and was busy writing on my fourth step, in other words I was basically journaling about the resentments I still had over ways others had slighted and wronged me. My mind was busy bitching and complaining about small little “this” and “that” moments when suddenly an unusual beeping went off beside me. I look around, taken completely out of the moment, searching for the mystery beep. It was my old flip phone’s alarm feature, so I open it and read allowed, “KILL YOURSELF”.
How could I ever keep focus on writing petty resentments when my phone conveniently reminded me that one year ago was the worst day of my life? A little reminder that I had made it, beaten the odds and survived myself. Not only did I come back to the keen awareness that I had made it, but that I could never go back to that place inside, again.
As of this evening I have made it eight days shy of a decade without taking a drink or drug. The week before my annual sobriety birthday always reminds me of where I came from and what would happen if I ever went back to my old coping mechanisms and way of life. In eight more days I will be celebrating the moment I chose to love and care for myself. I will be celebrating 10 years! 🎉
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