Uppercase Woman

Scarred Hands

The Sunday after Easter is often the time, in Christian churches, when the story of doubting Thomas is told. If you are like me and are either a really shitty Christian or not a Christian at all you may not know that the phrase "doubting Thomas" comes from the story in the bible where the apostle Thomas refuses to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead until he, personally, "sees the wounds in his hands and touches the wound in his side." Naturally, as it works out, Jesus shows up yet again and the lucky bastard does get his proof and is gently admonished by Jesus who says, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe."

Of course, this is where the rest of us are. We are the ones who have not seen, whether it's Jesus or whatever form of God or God-like spirit you want to believe in. Imagine how much easier it would be to believe? It seems to me that the apostles had it rather easy, eh?

I've been a pretty strong doubting Thomas since the boys died. Worse, I've been all "Yeah, God might exist but he doesn't love ME." It's been an uphill battle changing my own mind about this the last few years. My minister on Sunday closed his sermon with a story that touched me profoundly. He told about a young boy living on the frontier with his grandmother, and how one night their house caught fire. Because it was a frontier town, there wasn't much of a fire department, so although the grandmother tried to rescue the boy on the second floor, she was overcome by smoke and perished on the first floor. The boy was upstairs yelling for help as a crowd gathered, not knowing what to do. Finally, a man in the crowd pushed his way forward and began climbing up the iron drainpipe to rescue the boy. The drainpipe, of course, was searing hot from the fire, but the man managed to get into the room, put the boy on his back, and climb back down while the crowd cheered.

After the fire burned out, and things had settled down, a town meeting was called to decide where the boy would live. The whole town came to see to the boy's fate. A farmer stepped forward, and said, "I'll take the boy; I can teach him a valuable trade!" Everyone nodded with approval. Then the town's teacher stood up and she said, "He can live with me; I'll make sure he gets a wonderful education!" More heads nodded. The town's banker stood up self-importantly and said, "I'll make sure he lives in the largest house in town!" Everyone seemed to think that was splendid.

Finally, the meeting leader asked if there was anyone else. There was a pause, and then, from the back of the room a man stood up and said, "I can't offer much. I can't teach a trade, or provide a big house or a great education. All I can offer is my love." Then he pulled his hands out of his coat pockets and showed the scars covering them and of course it was the man that had climbed the drainpipe and rescued the boy. The boy ran into his waiting arms, and the meeting was over, because the decision had been made.

...

This story was, of course, compared to Jesus. My minister compared the burns on the man's hands to the scars from Jesus being nailed to the cross. I must confess, while I remain steadfast in my refusal to fully succumb to the allure of Jesus-ness (Jesus-ocity?), I was moved. Deeply moved, and deeply humbled.

I realized that God doesn't promise us much; not big houses, not great educations, not even the rescue of our loved grandmothers that burn to death below us--or, if you will, the loss of our twin boys. But God did sacrifice something--I'm not sure what (Christianity says God sacrificed his son; interesting parallel there, no?) to bring us that love.

Oh, it's been such a long time since I could feel that so clearly.

I hope I'm telling this right. It's so hard to communicate it effectively. I've been trying to impart a tiny piece of this truth, or maybe this hope, to our friend Fred (remember Fred? the guy from my church that was working for us?) who is continuing to struggle. He's not struggling so much with his sobriety these days, but that's only because he has no money to buy drugs with.

I've been trying to explain to him the idea of pride, and the idea of humility. I've had some good lessons in humility lately, such as my unattractive reaction to the woman that attacked me last week (respond, don't react--I'll file that one away), and the gentleman that took me aside at one of my meetings and asked me to share more kindly about my husband (ack), among others. For me, my spiritual journey is a constant battle of humility and pride.

Fred's battle with pride seems unlikely, considering that he's homeless. He was kicked out of living at the church (for good reasons I won't get into here). He briefly went into a rehab, but left after a few weeks. He recently was offered a dishwashing job but had a communication issue with the boss (primarily because he doesn't have a phone and uses ours) and took that as a reason to not take the job), and actually said he was better off sitting outside on a bench than washing dishes.

I got so angry with him. When I told him to practice some humility, what he hears is he has to eat shit. When the jobs he wants won't hire him, he says to me, "Do I have a sign on my forehead?" and I think, yes, Fred, you do, you have one that says, I won't take any shit and that make bosses not want to hire you. He cannot see that the situation he's in is one of his own making and that he has to bow his head and act humbly if he wants his life to change. Even though the only time he eats is when he's here (I just found this out yesterday, and it makes my heart hurt). Even though he gets maybe five hours of sleep a night at the shelter.

He cannot see God's love. He does not see the scarred hands. All he sees is the lack of the nice house, and the good education, and the job. He only sees deprivation. He refuses to see the abundance, although it's hard to blame him--it's got to be difficult to see abundance when you only eat four or five times a week and you are living on the street.

I do not know how to give this to him. I do not know how to impart humility. I do not know how to give the gift I've been given--the ability to see past all the pain, and instead see the joy. I have been given a great gift! I have such an amazing life, and somehow, after all my railing against it, all my self-pitying bullshit, I still have God's love. What a wonder.

But no matter what I do, I cannot take Fred's face and force it into the light. I do not see good things for him right now. I do not want to withdraw my helping hand, yet I do not know how much more I can do. He sees our helping hand withdrawing and it only makes him more bitter, more sure that God has rejected him.

It's hard work, being the only tenuous connection someone has to God. Especially when you aren't sure if that is what you are actually doing; if instead, what you might be doing is helping someone continue to tread water when they should actually be swimming to shore.

But I digress. I wanted this to be a happy post about how I felt so sure that I could once again feel God's love; and it is, and I do. Oh man, I really, really do. But that makes it all the more clear that some people don't feel that same love, and that hopelessness I feel from Fred is so stark and awful I can almost not bear it.

So, I'll ask a favor of you all. Pray for him. Think good thoughts for him. Because I think the end of this road for him is coming; either he will turn toward the light or he will turn toward, well... the place that addicts and alcoholics go when they don't: jails, institutions, death. But I hope he turns.

Because MAN is this a great place to be.

Unbalanced

So, I've been fuming ranting and raving stewing considering the whole last 48 hours on this blog.

I've been thinking about what would happen if any of the candidates actually DID come and read my blog post about losing Nicholas and Zachary and why it made me even more a believer in keeping abortion safe and legal (and rare). Then I started to think about how it would be if they read the comments, and then what I posted the next day, and I began to feel, well, frankly... embarrassed.

I'm not embarrassed by you guys--your comments were fine. I'm embarrassed at my behavior, at my cattiness, and at my reactionary response to the few people that asked me that simple question: why didn't I get a c-section? Of course the answer seems obvious, on the surface, either to those of us that have been through a similar situation, or have watched women like us go through it, or have a medical background, or have the Google MD that comes from years of infertility and loss.

But you know what? That does NOT describe everyone who reads this blog any more. There are a lot of people who come here who never had any trouble conceiving (and some who haven't even yet tried) who might honestly just not know the answer to that simple question: why didn't I have a c-section?

Instead of being calm and rational, and what I like to call the "Good Cecily" that handles discussions of the loss of my twins in a reasoned and sensible manner and just answers the question asked, I instead reacted to what I perceived to be the unasked questions or the unstated judgments. I didn't hear a simple "Why didn't you get a c-section?" I heard, "Bitch, why didn't you try harder to save your son's life and have a c-section?"

And you know what? NOBODY SAID THAT. I leaped to conclusions--many of us did--and instead of responding, I reacted. I got angry. I behaved badly. I engaged in an email debate that got ugly. And worse, when the person I engaged with extended what might have been an olive branch I could have possibly grasped onto (admittedly, it was a small branch, slightly wilted, without any actual leaves), instead of trying to bring peace to our discussion, I set the fucking branch on fire.

Additionally, I turned my back on the 110 supportive and positive comments I got and instead focused on the single commenter that was negative. How rotten is that? How ungrateful? How small minded and stupid?

I can't give a reasonable excuse for why this happened; I'd love to blame the hormones (seriously, this is the worst PMS I've ever experienced, and WHERE THE FUCK IS MY PERIOD ALREADY?) but that's not the only reason. In general lately I have been focusing on the dark and not able to see the light. I find that when my surface is scratched these days, what is underneath is bitterness and fear. I'm not letting love in. I'm not letting God in. I'm not letting the light in.

So I'm not sure I should be representing ANYONE to our candidates.

I want to apologize to those of you that asked a simple question and got shouted down. Please, forgive me for not just answering what you asked and instead assuming you were saying something else entirely (and even if that WAS what you were thinking, that is SO not my business). I hope you will continue to come here, and continue to ask questions, and continue to express your point of view even if it differs from mine and from many readers of this blog.

Now, please don't give me a bunch of accolades and tell me how awesome I am for saying this. I'm not big-hearted, or brave, or tolerant, even, particularly. Truth is, I'm mostly kind of an asshole and sometimes I let it show here in the blog. This was one of those times. I'm working on it.

Now. Back to the puppies.

Take-the-baby-to-Prison Day, or Why Aren't There Any Rehab Prisons? (and this is the kind of post that will keep me from being elected to anything, ever)

So, on Saturday I was changing Tori's diaper in the bathroom of the visitors waiting room at prison and I got to thinking about this post I've been meaning to write.

Wait. Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Recently, we (we being Charlie, Sarah, and I) found out that an old friend of ours had gone down a rocky path. Once sober and happy, he'd hit a bunch of speed bumps--the brutal murder of a friend and business partner, the loss of a fianceé, the theft of his belongings--and it all added up to his choosing to return to using drugs and drinking rather than staying sober. In short order, this led to him being where he is now: behind bars, serving a two-year sentence. We'd lost touch with him over the years and had no idea he was in jail, but after exchanging a few letters decided to go visit him.

Visiting someone is prison is a nightmare in Philadelphia (perhaps it's more fun where you are). We arrived early, took a number, sat for a half-hour, then filled out a form, found out to our dismay that we couldn't take Tori to see our friend because we didn't bring her birth certificate with us (for fuck's sake), and then we waited. And waited. The room we waited in was about 100 degrees, and it took forever for them to allow us our visits (we each got a half-hour with our friend, and we had to wait 45 minutes between our half hours for some unknown reason). Once I was finally permitted to go back to see him, I was required to take off my shoes and shake out my socks, lift my shirt and shake out my bra, lift my hair and let the guard check behind my ears, let her put her hands in all my pockets, look "down" my pants, and also open my mouth and let her look under my tongue.

Our friend is lucky; he's managed to fight to get two years sober again in prison, but not because of any help the system has given him. He's in a special section of the prison dedicated to addicts and alcoholics and he only gets exactly ONE sobriety meeting a week (most folks believe in order to maintain sobriety, particularly early sobriety, you should go every day). He also gets to go to church once a week. Yet he says he could easily obtain drugs in prison, even in his special unit--in fact, he told me during our visit that most of his unit was "zannied out" (meaning they were taking xanax) and it was obvious to me that several of the other prisoners in the visiting room were completely stoned.

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 16%-18% of crimes are committed because of individuals either behaving badly while on substances or committing crimes (such as robbery) to get money so they can procure MORE substances.  I think that number is actually insanely low; this Drug-Related Crime Fact sheet put out by the government claims that nearly 75% of criminals tested positive for drugs when they were busted here in Philadelphia (compared to only 42% in Anchorage, Alaska--Philly kicks ass again; Woot!).

Yet drug treatment remains a low priority for our criminal justice system. This fact sheet claims that nearly 75% of the 6.3 million people incarcerated in the United States NEED some form of treatment, but only 11% get it. Of course you can't force people to get help when they don't want it--most of us addicts and alcoholics do NOT, in fact, ever get better--but while this sheet claims that prisons offer extensive treatment, it's simply NOT TRUE.

Here in Philadelphia, sobriety meetings are taken in to prisons by non-prisoners on a regular basis. But it's a challenge (people willing to bring meetings must go through a major certification process, must not be ex-felons themselves, etc, etc). Most prisons allow no more than one meeting a month, at most, and do NOT allow the prisoners to organize their own meetings. Why can't prisoners hold their own meetings if they are supervised by a counselor or drug treatment therapist? Because there AREN'T ANY THERAPISTS OR COUNSELORS AVAILABLE TO THE PRISONERS.

I have wondered for years why there aren't prisons specifically for individuals that have committed crimes but are serious about getting clean and sober. I had a friend in early recovery that went to a sober high school; it was just like regular high school, but they also held daily meetings and had an overall focus on staying away from alcohol and drugs (wish I'd gone to one of those). So why aren't there sober prisons?

I understand that prison is, first and foremost, PUNISHMENT. I am not suggesting that we change the prison experience from typical prison to the luxury spa experience that Brittney Spears and Lindsay Lohan enjoyed during their stints in "Rehab." A rehab prison should still be a prison. But it should offer daily meetings, and have more frequent drug testing, and work harder to keep the drugs OUT (I really think it's despicable that drugs get into prisons so easily--and it's clearly NOT coming from the visitors; I couldn't have sneaked in shit).

If prisoners came out of prison sober, don't you think there is a much better chance of decreased recidivism? If prisoners are used to meetings, they will have a quick and easy way to plug back in to society (by going to meetings OUTSIDE of prison) that can help them find places to live and jobs and keep them out of trouble (people in meetings help their own), as well as making them more willing to utilize the services provided by the prison system (our friend is plugged in to his social worker for help with jobs and housing when he gets out this summer).

Getting sober isn't easy, and it's not fun. Why do you think so many people fail at it? Learning to live without alcohol and drugs for the addict or alcoholic is like learning to walk backwards. It is so much easier, sometimes, to just keep walking forward. Being sober, to the alcoholic/addict, is as unnatural as being drunk all the time is to the non-alcoholic. Being sober feels wrong, bad, awkward, uncomfortable. Like you are naked, or like your skin is on inside out. It sucks, and it take forever--months and months--for that feeling to lessen (it never quite goes away completely). Along with that comes the humiliation of realizing the harm you've caused, the truth of what a shit heel you've been for years, and the hard work you have to do to become a decent human being. IT SUCKS. No one should look at the act of getting sober as a "gift" being given to a prisoner. Getting sober is a nearly impossible struggle and has to be earned and fought for, and is painful and agonizing--don't think it isn't. So I truly do not believe that providing prisoners with a chance to earn their sobriety makes their stay in prison MORE comfortable. Trust me on this one--being high on xanax is a WAY better way to do your time.

I realize this is all fantasy on my part; no one ever wants to view treatment as a way to solve crime instead of punishment; a hammer is always seen as more effective than a hug. But right now, prisons are full to the brim with individuals doing obscene amounts of time for drug crimes thanks to the mandatory sentences that were instituted in the early 1990's; the way the laws were set up, individuals caught with three grams of crack did as much time as dealers caught with 300 grams (thankfully, that rule has been tossed). Eventually all of those individuals are going to get out of prison no better than they were when they went in, and in many cases, much worse. They will commit more crimes, and hurt more people, and end up right back there, costing us more money and filling up more jail cells.

Isn't it time to try something different?

Gone Daddy Gone

Voting is still open until tomorrow on the blog title! Currently, Uppercase Woman and Writ Large are fighting for the top spot. Cast your vote now!

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According to the 2000 Census report, 20 million kids under the age of 18 lived in single-parent households at that time. 16.5 million live with single mothers, and 3.3 million live with their fathers (of that 3.3 million, about a third live with their unmarried partners, while only a tenth of mothers live with an unmarried partner). That's about 6.7% of all children living with a single parent.

In 1970, when I stopped having two parents, about 5% of kids lived with just one parent. I didn't feel like an oddball kid, not having a dad. For a year, my mother and I lived with a group of women who were all also divorced and raising a kid alone, so I was one of many kids without a dad. But once I started going to school, I felt the difference. My mother was treated differently (it seemed to me) by my teachers. Other kids made fun of me for not having a dad.

Of course, part of that was because while there were plenty of other kids of divorce around, they saw their dads on weekends. Those dads showed up at the band concerts and the teacher conferences. But not me, and not my dad. My father simply vanished out of my life.

My childhood memories of my father are nearly non-existent. I have a very dim memory of him visiting once when I was three or four years old, and I thought he was a fireman because he had a huge (to me) red pickup truck. (This is ironic, of course, because my father later went on to become a firefighter, and then died in a house fire he caused). But other than that hazy memory, I don't remember him as a young man.

I had a lot of substitute fathers. There were a few men around my mother and I that were kind to us (not men she dated--she kept her dating habits away from me), like John Pugh, an acupuncturist married to a beautiful Mexican woman and built adobe houses for the poor. But most of my substitute dads were famous--John Lennon (who my father did bear a passing resemblance to), Jim Henson (don't ask me why--it's not like I saw him on television or anything, but I cried like a baby when he died), and other singers like Pete Seeger, and even John Denver (any man with round glasses like my dad was a substitute).

When I was in high school I read an article about the psychological impact of not having a father. Girls who lost their fathers to death tended to be grasping and clingy in relationships with men, and girls who lost their fathers by divorce often push their partners away. Although at that moment in my life I'd only been in one serious relationship (Paul, my boyfriend throughout high school), I felt a chill of recognition-- only two days before I'd dumped Paul mercilessly, then let him walk about thirty feet away before running after him and begging him to take me back.

I've talked before about having a Daddy-shaped hole in my heart, and how deeply the absence of my father has effected me. Now that my father is dead and I'm a mother, that absence has become even more intense and overwhelming. Especially now. Now that Tori is the age I was when my father left.

Maybe Tori is too attached to us--after all, she's home with both of us all day. But if Charlie leaves the house, even if it's just to take the trash out, Tori cries loudly and intensely (although it only lasts a moment). If he's gone for the afternoon, when he comes home Tori's face lights up and she shrieks with joy.

If he was gone--really gone, for good--she would know.

Earlier in my life I comforted myself when I thought of my father by saying I didn't know what I was missing--after all, I didn't remember him. But Tori would know it if Charlie left, and she would grieve his loss intensely and it would effect her for the rest of her life. How could I have imagined that I was left unscathed?

I'm trying to acknowledge and accept the feelings (which have been constant and intense) I've been having about this. The feelings have been coming out all sideways, of course: I've been rotten to Charlie lately, fighting and bullying him for no reason. I did a photographic self-portrait about it for my 52 Weeks project on Flickr, and now I'm writing about it here. But I know I'm barely scratching the surface.

Tori is lucky. There is no way that Charlie would ever leave her. It's why I married him, and why I wanted to have children with him. She will never have a daddy-shaped hole in her heart; instead, her heart will be, god willing, full of love and hope because not only does she have a daddy, she has one that loves her beyond reason.

I wish every little girl could be so lucky. The truth is, there are 20 million other kids out there that are currently running around with parent-shaped holes in their hearts. I don't know what can be done about this--you can't force someone to parent, and frankly, some people shouldn't BE parents--but it makes me sad to think about all of us with our broken hearts, trying to live in this world and be in relationships with each other.

Not to sound like a completely ridiculous and trite romantic, but I do believe that love is possible, and that love can heal. After all, after years of floundering, I managed to find it. And when I watch Charlie with Tori, a little bit of the sadness I feel about not having a father is lifted away. I doubt that I will ever be whole in that way, but I can rest easy knowing that I was lucky enough to stumble on a good man that will love my daughter (and me) for the rest of our lives.

Broken hearts can be mended, after all. Even the hearts of little fatherless girls like me.

Pretend This Post is Accompanied By Festive Confetti and Balloons

Call me a whore if you must, but I have to say the following:

THIS BLOG HAS RECEIVED A MILLION HITS!!!!!

I am famous!

*insert maniacal cackle here*

OK, not really. After all, other blogs get a million hits a day. And many of those hits are looking for things like “fat cunts” and “big ass girls give blow jobs,” so I’m not all that. But it’s still pretty exciting.

I am grateful that any of you, ever, come here and read this and support me in this crazy quest. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I will never forget the day I was in the hospital, waiting to get the bad news about the last pregnancy; Sarah printed out every single comment you guys wrote and brought them to me. It made such a difference in my sanity during that tough time.

So, thanks. I couldn’t do it without you.

Now, bring me my goddamned coffee. Heh.

In regards to my last post, many of you asked, “What do you think started you down the path of drugs and alcohol?” I think many of you were actually asking, “Holy fucking shit, how do I stop my kids from being like you?”

Truth is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what I think. I believe, firmly, that Alcoholism/Addiction is a disease—an often fatal, and sadly, incurable disease. Because I have that disease—which I believe I was born with—my path was inevitable.

In other words, NOTHING could have stopped me.

Unlike most of you, alcohol and drugs fit my brain the way a key fits in a lock.

Let’s take a look at a not-so-random sample of alcoholics: Sarah, Charlie, and me.

Sarah grew up in a happy and loving home with happily married parents and an older brother. She lived in a good neighborhood in the suburbs, went to great schools, and then went to a good college. She was middle class, Jewish, and had plenty of  great opportunities.

Charlie grew up with a workaholic father and an abusive mother. They were upper-middle-class and lived in thriving urban centers, but moved often between major East Coast cities. Charlie’s dad died when he was 17, but he managed to graduate from high school and get into a prestigious Ivy League university, and graduated from there as well.

I grew up as the only child of a single mom, my father having left when I was an infant, when my mother was only 20 years old. We were horribly poor. While I read early and skipped a grade in elementary school, by middle school I’d already given up on school. My mother returned to college when I was in elementary school, and we moved across the country before I started high school. I screwed up both of my chances to get a free college education, and have yet to finish my degree.

The only thing we have in common is that NONE of us had a lot of alcohol or drugs in our homes while we grew up. Yet all three of us ended up in the same house, doing the same things, and getting sober around the same time.

Like every other disease, Alcoholism does NOT discriminate.

Could my life have been different? Hell, I don’t know. All I know is this: when I was a kid, I felt crazy, left out, like a freak. I was sure everyone knew my game and no one really like me. But one day, someone put a drink in my hand, and lo and behold, I felt normal. While you may have had your first drink and thought, “Ug, I’m so nauseous and the room is spinning, I can’t believe people do this for fun!” Not me. I thought, “Oh, god, FINALLY. That’s what I’ve needed all this time.”

I can see different turns my life could have taken; I could have stuck with my "no drugs" rule and ended up as a fifty-year-old bar whore. I could have chosen drugs over alcohol in high school and gotten sober at 17, or overdosed at 20.

But do I believe that a life without the influence of alcohol and drugs was possible for me? No. Not really.

As for your other question, “What will you tell you kids?” God. Who knows? We’ve talked about it, of course. If the child is genetically related to us, we’d want to make them aware of the fact that they are genetically predisposed to the disease of addiction.

And here, safe in the “we don’t actually have kids yet” zone, we can say we believe that  experimenting with drinking and drugs is normal, and it’s unrealistic to think that a kid is never going to come home trashed.

We’d like to tell our kid about the dangers and safety issues surrounding drinking and drugging. We’d like to believe we'd say, “Please call us anytime you are in trouble and we will help you without judgment.”

But how we’ll actually feel, and what words will come out of our mouths when that kid is actually sitting across from us? I have no idea.

A handful of pregnancy updates; I’ve developed the linea nigra (I never did last time; weird, huh? Oh, and my belly looks exactly like the one in the photo; HA HA HA HA HA), which is kind of cool. Also, this morning I was leaning back in bed (oh, alright, I was lying on my back. It was only for a minute, don’t shoot me!) and I coughed, and saw my belly develop an alarming point while I was coughing. I imagine that means my stomach muscles have separated (all the links I've found are fitness related, sorry) and I’m seeing my uterus and other innards poking through. It’s gross and cool at the same time.

Lastly, remember my constant complaints about my dry mouth? About how it’s probably just another pregnancy symptom and I have to live with it?

Did I also mention that I’m a fucking idiot?

A couple days ago I noticed a white paste on the roof of my mouth. Recognizing it for what it is, I went to see my general practitioner and sure enough: I have oral thrush.

Oral thrush, for those of you who don’t know, is a yeast infection of the mouth and throat. Nice, huh? I get it sometimes because the inhaler I use for my asthma contains a topical steroid. If I don’t rinse my mouth properly, the bacteria in my mouth can go all whacky.

Chances are I’ve had this the entire. fucking. time. Yeah.

So now I’m gargling with nystatin, the same medicine they give to babies with thrush (usually I have to suck on these lozenges that are basically sugar-flavored Monistat). It’s not bad, but I have to say this:

Do drug manufacturers actually taste the “flavored” medicines they give to kids? Cause this shit tastes like banana flavored ASS.

James Frey Made Me Write This Post

On Saturday night, Sarah, Pete, Charlie and I went to Elise and her husband's for dinner. We had an amazing time--laughing, talking, just enjoying each other. After dessert, we ended up just sitting around the table talking for hours. Something I haven't done since the days I was drinking and drugging...

Maybe that's why I found myself talking about my using days. Elise asked a question, and Sarah and I found ourselves talking about those last few months out there in the drinking world. I've been thinking a lot about my own using insanity lately, so it felt good to just talk about it, to bring it back out into the light and look again with the eyes of someone who's been sober over ten years.

What strikes me the most is how fucking insane it was.  I was crazy! When I look at it now, the things I did back then--almost all of them--seem like something only a suicidal lunatic would do.  But back then, they seemed completely fucking rational. Really.

Lots of people accuse us infertiles of being obsessed with wanting a child; but honestly, they have no idea what the fuck obsession is.

Obsession is using water from a toilet to mix up the drugs you are going to put into your veins because you cannot go one. more. minute. without it. Yes, TOILET WATER. In my VEINS.

Obsession is climbing your neighbor's fence to break into your other neighbor's house because you know he has some really bad cocaine hidden in there and you don't have any money and bad coke is better than nothing. And doing it more than once, even after you get caught.

Obsession is when your dealer tells you there are "things you can do" to keep getting the drugs when you run out of cash and you think, yeah, OK, that makes sense. You feel relieved that there is a way to keep the flow of drugs coming, regardless of how much it will hurt you or the ones you love to do those "things."

Obsession is sneaking into your place of employment to use the copy of the key you secretly had made earlier in the day for the petty cash drawer to get more money so you can go back to the bar and keep partying with that cute boy that will go home with you and never call.

Obsession is hanging out in an alley behind a bar stealing the empty liquor bottles and draining the last drops out of them with a group of friends thinking this is hilarious.

Obsession is going from bar to bar to bar seeking the best place, the best party, the best time.

Obsession is thinking "It's fine that he doesn't have all his teeth and works in a gay bar. And he won't give me his phone number. I can sleep with him without risk." And then that guy dies of AIDS two years later.

Obsession is draping all the lamps in the house with scarves so that your track marks can remain hidden from your boyfriend.

Obsession is using an elaborate makeup process to hide the damage to your arms; first, white clown face makeup; then foundation; then powder. And thinking no one notices at work.

Obsession is stealing a muscle relaxant from your employer, dissolving it into a liquid, shooting it up, and then discovering that you no longer have the muscle control to remove the tourniquet or needle from your arm and you have to sit there bleeding for twenty minutes until you can finally get it off.

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I think you get my point.  There is no comparison; the "obsession" with having a child that we infertiles may or may not have involves things like doctors and paperwork. Not toilet water and drug dealers and doing "things."

And, yes, I did every single thing I listed above (except the "things;" the overdose that led me to sobriety came a few days after that offer). My story is not unusual or rare or odd; in fact, my alcoholism is shockingly average, and my drug use pretty lame (my entire drug history fits into a six-month span).

When I first met Elise and I'd tell her these stories she's open her eyes so wide her contact lenses would fall out. It actually became a goal for me and Charlie; what story can we dig up to make Elise lose a lens? Sadly, that phase passed. Heh.

On Saturday night Elise and her husband were talking about what they'll tell their daughter about drinking and drugs when she gets older. They joked about using us as a cautionary tale.

But the truth is, I was an alcoholic and addict before I ever touched a drink. A story like mine when I was young would have sounded romantic and fun and adventureous--not stupid,  dangerous, illegal, and life-threatening.

I'm not saying there was no hope for me; that I was destined to take the path I took. I can look back and see several times in my life when I would have been open to the idea of recovery, if a chance had presented itself.

But I walked the path I did, and have come here to this place. To a place where I can sit in a circle of good friends and eat and laugh without a hint of drugs or alcohol around me. To a place where my skin feels, for the most part, comfortable and easy.

I wouldn't want it any other way. And I thank James Frey for reminding me that I don't need to lie; my truth is scary enough.