I Do Trust Time

May check-ins: feeling stuck, being patient, making progress.

This month, we’re thinking about time. How much longer until we feel better? If my insides were neither itchy nor numb, for example: how nice! Is that future coming, do you think? And if so, can you give me a date to circle on my calendar? How long, would you say, until this awful present has become the survived past?

I suspect no one has the answers to these questions. (But if you do … please write in.) What The Small Bow can offer, instead: some company; a metaphorical hand; a chorus of strangers saying I am with you, saying you are not alone.

Let’s go to the Check-Ins. —TSB Editor

If you are unfamiliar with our Check-In format:

All the Anonymous writers below are credited collectively as “The Small Bow Family Orchestra.”

The ***** separates individual entries, as do pull quotes.

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Trying to Unburden Ourselves

by The Small Bow Family Orchestra

As I write this I’m 2 weeks out from my first big breakup. People say I’m doing really well. And I guess I agree. I’m doing really well but I don’t feel well. I’m doing all of the work that one could possibly do to heal and move on after a breakup.

I started eating again after a few days of really having no appetite. I started exercising again, after pausing because I knew I wasn’t eating enough to sustain a workout. I’m journaling (A LOT). I’m sharing about it at AA meetings. I’ve activated every friendship possible and I’m calling everyone to talk about it. I’ve called people from the program that I barely know to sob about it.

The past two weeks have felt like early recovery. (Knocking on wood, god willing, blah blah blah.) In June I’ll be 10 years sober. This breakup is intense and it’s giving me the desperation of a newcomer. The other day I called 11 people before I got someone on the phone to cry to. Usually I’m a lazy, reluctant meeting-goer with enough sober time that makes me question why I’m even going to meetings. Because it’s not that I want to drink or use, I just have the biggest feelings and I can’t stand it and I need other humans to witness me and remind me I’m not alone.

I know relationships end and people break up. It happens. I’m not special. But I’m adopted so the abandonment wound is particularly deep.

Like I said, I’m doing everything I can do, and I’m reminded of steps 6 & 7. Those are the steps where you’re supposed to stop trying to control everything and let god (or whatever you believe in) do the work for you (to remove the parts of you that are causing you misery). For me, right now, the higher power is time. I’m struggling to be patient. Fifteen days in and I’m not completely over this?? What?!

But, I do trust time. So, every heartbreaking day he doesn’t email, text, or call, I show up for myself and I do my best, one day at a time.

*****

I’m reading Lord of the Rings for the first time and I’m really getting a lot of meaning out of the themes of addiction in the book. I’m redefining my relationship with alcohol right now and any time I get close to wanting a beer and sneaking a sip of whiskey, I’ll literally finger an imaginary ring in my pocket. I’m coming out of an intense living situation where my roommates drank heavily every night and had no sense that this was destructive and ungrounding. It was a real struggle to preserve my own energy and well-being; however, like in everything there was a silver lining, and this hardship taught me how to be strong in the face of desire and urges. It’s worth it to know what’s good for me and tend to myself, and these days choosing not to drink and smoke is allowing me to see what’s in front of me. If Frodo can have the strength to keep the ring off, I can too.

*****

In December, I got involved with a professional dominatrix. I told myself it was an investment in my mental health, that I was really adding a skilled professional to my care team. A couple of months ago, she started mentioning that she was interested in making it more personal — removing the financial component — and I’ve been spiraling and mood-swinging ever since. Some days I feel like a sucker and a mark — what better way to hold on to a generous, vulnerable client than by teasing a life-long fantasy? Most days I feel lucky and wanted and precious and valuable, when she checks in outside of the contract to see how big work events are going, or treats me to a massage at a day spa, or tells me how special I am. I don’t know what to trust, least of all myself — but I am definitely choosing the combined anguish of a dude with a crush and a man paying a gorgeous young sex worker to pay attention to him.

When I read the list of 20 questions, I see all the signs of compulsive, self-destructive behavior, especially since I’ve been down versions of this road before. I consider going to meetings, but my inner monologue reminds me that real addicts have real problems, where I’m just having a mid-life crisis. I already have a therapist, so at least I have two people who I have to pay to listen to me.

At a time when I need connection and mutual support more than ever, I’m paying to feel scared and isolated and anxious, and it’s glorious, and I hate myself.

*****

I once tried to have a conversation with my then five-year-old about karma or fate or something I can’t quite recall. It might have just been about the idea of tomorrow. I wish I would have written down the context but her interpretation was, “You never know if it’s going to rain until the next day.” Man that punched me right in the chest.

The past month brought the standard ups and downs. A high point? Both kids had birthday parties and seemed happy and nurtured. A low point? The overflow of life stress leading to discussion of divorce and resentment and just fucking fatigue, man. We’re supposed to get knocked down and keep getting back up, right.

Fuck sake I’m so exhausted getting back up over and over again. After I finally locked in on sobriety and got 30, 60, 90, one-through-eight years under my belt I had this sense that I can never relapse now because I don’t know if I have the strength to fight back again. I don’t know if that’s true. Sounds defeatist. I don’t know if I can lose five pounds again. I don’t know if I can do my part to save my marriage again. I don’t know if I can do another job interview and get rejected again. I don’t know if I can wake up at 6:45 a.m. and get the kids off to school again. I don’t know if I can vacuum the basement and take out the trash and blow the leaves again (electric not gas-powered #obvi).

It’s a good thing a five year-old reminded me you never know if it’s going to rain until the next day.

*****

I just visited two friends I hadn’t seen since we studied abroad 25 years ago. We reminisced about the utter resilience and daring we had to be backpacking about, figuring out train schedules, hostels, and budgets with no cell phones or credit cards. One friend is doing blissfully well and traveling, the other going through a divorce and involuntary job change. I found myself in the middle — nothing spectacular like the Scottish Highlands, but nor is my life so disrupted and challenging as the other friend is facing. I was less stable two years ago and feel like improvements to my program are a substantial part of that. Good visit, middle of the road self assessment — can’t say fairer than that.

*****

I reached 200 days without booze over Easter Weekend and I quickly told my dad in passing, as if it were a curiosity or piece of trivia. He gave me a fist bump and said he was proud of me and I immediately felt embarrassed that I am keeping track of how many days I’ve gone without drinking.

I tell my family and friends that I am “not drinking” and that I “don’t really have much interest in it anymore.” I do not tell them that I had been planning my days around my next drink for years and occasionally poured tequila into cans of sparkling water during family visits. I don’t tell them that one of the hardest parts of quitting was how simple it became to use binge drinking to “accidentally” compliment a nasty string of bulimia dotted over many years, or that my relationship with food had gotten so bad that I couldn’t really eat without being buzzed.

I was always the “easy one,” which is the most well-meaning albatross that parents hang around your adolescent neck. Those aren’t the types of things that the easy one burdens anyone else with. But I am proud of myself, even if nobody else knows.

*****

I have a complicated relationship with my Dad’s side of the family. On that side I have three half siblings. There’s an age difference: The oldest is nine years younger than me. There’s also a money difference. Their mom, my step-mom, was the daughter of a man I have come to call “the Donald Trump of Washington DC.” Actually that’s not fair to him. He was an actually successful real estate developer, and not an attention whore. But let’s say he was a difficult man. My sibs arrived in adulthood with enormous trust fortunes as his blood descendants. I did not.

My step-mom died of cancer in 1997, without a will. So in the nearly thirty years since, I have asked them for financial support several times. As a struggling actor and teacher with two kids (one trans, one in recovery) and an alcoholic spouse I divorced, there were some significant asks. Some were lovingly and generously granted, others were not. I’m leaving my Dad out of it because that’s a whole book on its own. Take my word though, this relationship to them and their wealth has bound together money, love, family, abandonment and shame for me. It’s the greatest hot-button trigger in my life.

In mid-April I made another big ask. I am moving from Philadelphia to Boulder, Colorado to take a three-year masters program in clinical counseling, and help my mom out who lives there alone and is 87. I asked them for $20K to pay for a moving company, the obscene one-month rent charge the management company is charging me to stay one month past the end of my lease, and to stake me for a couple of months in Boulder as I figure out how to make money there as I go to classes. They never responded, even to say, “Fuck off and stop asking us for money.”

I was delirious with rage, and was drafting a letter to send them to let them know what kind of assholes they were and how they had destroyed any chance of ever having a civil relationship with me. After a long convo with my AA sponsor (always check in with your sponsor!) he told me, “Write the letter, but don’t send it yet. Let it sit for a few days and then call me again.” I wrote the letter — 13 pages long. I prayed and meditated like a fucking monk. And then I did not hit send, I let it go. I created a GoFundMe and launched it last weekend. Then I get a text from my brother: “Ben, did you get our reply to your moving email? Or are you doing the GoFundMe too?”

There, for some weird dark magik reason sitting in my junk folder was their reply: We’d like to gift you the $20k, don’t worry about paying us back. I cancelled the GoFundMe, refunded a few donors, and texted my over-the-top gratitude back to them. I was nearly sick considering what a shit-storm would have resulted from me sending that letter. And I realized how important it was that I wrote it.

I do not believe in fate. I do not believe in a higher power that runs my life like a puppet master. But I do believe that it’s up to me to see, hear, feel HP in my life (step 11). It will take me a while to fully grasp the lessons I have learned through this journey. But I can say this: heard, HP, loud and clear.

*****

May marks one year since my life changed forever. I went to the bar, where he was sitting on a stool with a drink in hand for the first time in 3 years. His smile was a smirk to tell me, “This is all your fault.” Many other terrible things happened that make me sob every day (including as I’m writing this). A few months later I finally began attending Al-Anon meetings and I have met others like me. Others that are stuck between sympathy for the alcoholic (them) and sympathy for the alcoholic (me). If you too are feeling stuck, I am with you.

*****

I still haven’t found a job since getting laid off two and a half years ago. No job, no self-esteem. The prospect of small talk with other parents while having to acknowledge that I am an unhirable loser eats away at me before, during, and after each school-related gathering. I feel like no matter what I’m talking about, I can’t get anyone’s attention off the giant “FAILURE” stamped across my forehead in bright red letters.

My wife supplies 97 percent of the financial support. My paltry freelance gigs have dried up. I have nothing to do all day and yet I wake up every morning feeling like I’m behind schedule. Even with all of this free time I find it hard to make more than two meetings a week. I convinced a sought after sponsor to work with me only to be dumped a couple months later because of my inability to consistently meet up.

This sucks. Am I going to be stuck like this forever? I have a whole community of people telling me that I won’t, but it definitely feels like it right now.

*****

I quit THC after 31 years 60 days ago and have been suffering a soul cracking level of withdrawal. When I quit drinking 525 days ago, I was convinced it was going to disrupt my entire being. But I glided right through after a few initial sweaty days. It felt so easy. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t done it earlier, especially when quitting lifted an 18 month depressive episode like someone had shot the head of the python choking me to death. This ease was undoubtedly supported by smoking weed all day every day, and since I had been a heavy stoner for most of my life, I knew how to function through the days and relax at night.

But then, the man I love told me that my snoring and shallow sleep breathing was so bad it was scary and I knew immediately that my lungs had finally had enough of my daily supportive pre-rolls. I didn’t have a lot of options. Vaping always makes me feel vaguely ill and I lack the patience for edibles. So I finished my stash and quit smoking pot.

Withdrawal is much different this time, and this time it is excruciating. Smoking is all I can think about. I am angry all the time. My body feels crunchy with new pains every day, and right when I lay down at night for some relief, the agony restarts when my eyes snap open at 3am with no chance of going back to sleep.

My shrink says I probably have 4 more months before my body re-learns how to regulate itself. And how can I fault myself for taking time to figure out how to operate when I haven’t been truly sober since the opening whines of puberty?

*****

I visited family recently. We went to an outdoor pub on a perfectly temperate night and I ordered a nonalcoholic beer for maybe the first time ever. When I got sober 13 years ago I was taught that drinking nonalcoholic beer was very dangerous. About six years in I fretted mightily over whether or not it was okay to have kombucha.

A couple weeks ago I wasn’t worried at all, though it was disorienting at first. The taste was bizarrely familiar; a taste I never thought I’d have again. It was . . . good? I guess? I noticed I was expecting a buzz that never came. Halfway through I realized I didn’t really want any more, so I left the can unempty. (That’s how I know for sure it did not contain alcohol.)

The taste lingered a while and I was weirdly proud: I’d gotten to “rebel” in a safe way, didn’t have to, for once, sip on a seltzer. But I realized I prefer seltzer.

*****

I screamed at my wife yesterday. Like red-faced, smoke coming out of my ears, rage-blackout Yosemite Sam Kinison shit. Like a big angry baby. Because she expressed mild annoyance that I was going to an AA meeting in the middle of the day instead of figuring out a way to make some fucking money after almost a full year of unemployment so we can continue to live in our home and feed our kids. But I’m just six and a half months sober, really trying to do it right this time, and the meetings are pretty much the only thing keeping me from succumbing completely to the despair of being alive in my body at this particular moment in time. She’s a normie though, and doesn’t really get that. And I’m already so deep in the hole of amends I need to make for the years of my shit behavior towards her. So yeah, I don’t know, I just feel like a big dumb asshole. I went to the meeting, though, talked to my sponsor, made a stab at cleaning my side of the street, at least for the screaming. Progress not perfection I guess.

*****

It’s funny when you get on the other side of something you’ve built up so much in your mind and the threshold is just . . . dinky. I finally broke up with and moved out from a four year relationship that defined me. He was the saint, I was the mess. And now life is just . . . still life. But what hasn’t happened is everyone saying, “How could you? He’s the best thing that ever happened to you.” They’ve just said, “Okay.” Then we both move on.

*****

Tomorrow morning, I start school — a two-month course I went through successfully decades ago. Back then, I failed at doing the thing for money for various reasons. Life happened, and I never went back to it. It is now long past time to find a way to stop sapping my aging parents dry financially, but my confidence in my ability to make a career out of this with my dignity intact is quite low. I am good at school (and this is not rocket surgery), bad at succeeding.

There are legitimate reasons for this, some for which I never asked and some I could have avoided. The same goes for why I am completely broke, at my age, with dwindling options. It’s complicated, unfair, and I am more than a little tired of getting in my own way.

So, when I started writing this, I watched myself begin to tangle into the anxious thought-knots that were quickly multiplying: listing the reasons I’m bound to fail, railing against the fact that I have the odds stacked against me, and feeling sorry for myself because I don’t have anyone who could give me advice.

Uncharacteristically, I caught myself and wondered what I would tell a friend. I was surprised to rediscover some very basic things like Stay Positive, Don’t Complain, There Is No Reason You Can’t Do This, and some other (not so obvious to me) nuggets.

I mean, duh! You’d think it’s common sense, but I’ve had to figure that shit out on my own. And I quite simply forget to practice thinking those thoughts in favor of the copious amounts of readily available negativity floating around in my head.

I’m still feeling nervous, but it was nice to create a bit of hope, and to be reminded of gratitude.

*****

One of my best friends died three weeks ago. He gave his elderly parents a gift on the way out by having the official cause of death on the autopsy being "heart condition" so that they can pretend he didn't have a problem; in truth, he drank and drugged his way into the grave at 37. It hasn't helped that I didn't really see him too much in the few weeks before his death, as our friend group was trying to take the "tough love cold shoulder" approach, after he subjected our friend to some pretty abusive shit during one of his alcoholic rage moments. Was that the right call? Did I miss my opportunity to jump in and save him? I keep daydreaming about the (very) fictional scenario: I tell him he has a problem, he accepts immediately and gets help, and everything goes back to normal and I have my friend back. I always think of that C.S. Lewis quote, about grief being most like anxiety, in the way that it can just be triggered sometimes out of nowhere and force you to sit with this awful sensation. Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't I be a better resource and help my friend? I'm trying to be grateful for the time I had and honest about the realities of the addiction, but it hasn't helped me to get any closer to peace. If you're reading this, please hug your friends and tell them you love them for me.

*****

fin

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OTHER RECENT CHECK-INS:

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This is The Small Bow newsletter. It is mainly written and edited by A.J. Daulerio. And Edith Zimmerman always illustrates it. We send it out every Tuesday and Friday.

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Monday: 5:30 p.m. PT/ 8:30 p.m ET

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Wednesday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET

Thursday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET (Women and non-binary meeting.)

Friday: 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET

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If you don’t feel comfortable calling yourself an “alcoholic,” that’s fine. If you have issues with sex, food, drugs, DEBT, codependency, love, loneliness, depression, come on in. Newcomers are especially welcome.

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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:

[There is no Life or Death,]

by Mina Loy

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There is no Life or Death,
Only activity
And in the absolute
Is no declivity.
There is no Love or Lust
Only propensity
Who would possess
Is a nonentity.
There is no First or Last
Only equality
And who would rule
Joins the majority.
There is no Space or Time
Only intensity,
And tame things
Have no immensity.

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