Part 20 (is it a tome yet?)

So. “2007: The Year of My Dad.”

Have you ever seen a movie or something on TV where someone is having a really bad dream, and then right before something really super bad is going to happen in the dream, there is kind of a quick tunnel-zoom thing that ends on the person’s very scared – but safely in bed – face? That’s pretty much all I’ve got as far as being able to describe what it feels like to wake up mid-panic-attack, so if you don’t what I’m talking about, you’ll just have to use your imagination.

The first time this happened to me was around the middle of 2007. I had spent the first half of the year going to school and drinking a lot and going out to the bar and socializing with other people who drank all the time and things of this nature. This is the time when my drinking began to consistently go from fun to embarrassing – even shameful.

My ability to just relax and have a drink had shriveled up long before this time, but I did my damnedest to bring it back. I had quit doing illegal drugs years before, and I could not bring myself to consider that as an alternative to drinking. After all, my drug days were certainly no better than what I was experiencing in 2007.

And I needed something to make it better, not worse.

I had accumulated quite a bit of guilt as a parent by this time, too. Even when I was not drinking, I was constantly and desperately searching for something to make my brain not feel the way it was feeling. As a result, time spent with my kids was not what I would consider “quality.”

In hindsight (the 20/20 kind), I had never really been able to be a mom in the way I thought I should be. I was never really able to have emotional interaction with my kids, or with anyone else for that matter. I felt very loving toward my kids – I have always felt this way, and I did my best to be a good mom.

However, my relationship with my kids now just feels more real – like I am actually able to fully participate in their lives, mentally, physically and emotionally. I have always loved my kids – a lot – but I have been finding myself just enjoying being with the people they are growing up to be. No matter how obnoxious they can be, they never cease to be simultaneously, absolutely delightful.

I’m sure this has a lot to do with the fact that they are growing up – my youngest is 8 years old, so I don’t have any babies in my house anymore. I’m sure it also has a lot to do with me growing up, too. Basically, my relationship with my kids is just one of the things I can be aware of today, and aware of how wonderful it is.

Focusing on gifts like my relationship with my kids is what makes all of the shit worth it. It has been something that has occurred slowly, and I am not a big fan of delayed gratification. However, from day one of this process, I have been able to stop and look back at how I was when I first went in to the hospital and see that things are better.

I have actually had to do that a lot – stop and look back at where I was yesterday, or last year, or an hour ago, or whenever, and compare it to where I am now in order to get some perspective on the benefits of going through this hellish bowl of shit that is recovery from child sexual abuse and from alcoholism and from addiction and on and on and on.

Because how I felt at any given moment, especially for the first couple of years of recovery, was crushing. It is easy to drown in that kind of pain, and I often thought that I might.

But I didn’t.

One evening after school, or therapy, or a meeting, or something like that, I pulled into the driveway and got out of my car and just stood there – I could not figure out what to do next. I was stuck right there, completely overwhelmed by pain and by grief and by just being aware of what is actually going on around me at every fucking second.

Being present in the world is exhausting. Having avoided doing so for much of my life, beginning the process of living was horrible. It required removing of all of those protective layers – dissociating, anger, alcohol, food, drugs, paying way too much attention to other people’s lives – there are a lot of ways to buffer myself from real life.

And I had to strip all those ways off.

It felt like ripping a callous off of my hand – that skin had gotten thicker and harder and darker, and if I touched it, I could feel less and less sensation through it. It was tough and dead and it kept me from constantly feeling pain on that particular spot on my hand.

In continuing with this analogy, I will have to say that the callous got too big and thick for me to even feel anything or do anything with my hand. The only way to get around that was by ripping the whole thing off, down to the newest and thinnest layers of skin possible before actually removing chunks of living flesh.

And then the callous is gone – and my hand hurts like a motherfucker.

I have also compared this experience to what it must feel like to have all of my skin burned off, and then go out and walk around in the sun and wind and germs without anything protecting my body or my mind. Actually, this was the exact sensation I was experiencing when I pulled into the driveway that night and couldn’t move.

It just hurt so bad – so, so bad – and I was completely and utterly exhausted. My internal dialogue was something like this: “I…I…I don’t…I can’t…I don’t…I…I…eh…I…” – paralyzed. I couldn’t even form a complete recognizable thought that made any sense at all. The only thing I could feel was the real fucking world and everything that was in it and how it was all trying to consume me at once and I had no way of stopping it.

The ways I had stopped it before were no longer available to me – it is true that I could have very easily gone about one mile down the street to the liquor store and got a bottle of anything and jumped into it – and may be that could do the trick. But I knew it would only do the trick for a few hours, at the most, and I would probably just end up crying and drinking into a very brief reprieve of oblivion.

And I had already been through so, so, so much – all of the things I started out intending to write about in this post. I could not bear the thought of doing it all again, and I could not bear the thought of throwing away everything and everyone I loved and who loved me in order to check out for a few hours.

So I was just stuck there, on the driveway.

And then I remembered something that I told other people all the time – just keep putting one foot in front of the other. For some reason, I was miraculously able to apply that simple and healthy logic to myself. I thought, “Oh.” Seriously, that’s what I thought: “oh.” And then I put one foot in front of the other, and then I did it again, and again, and again, until I was all the way in my house.

And then I was home, safe and sound. And that day could end by my going to sleep in my bed. And then that would be another day I had gotten through.

Just getting through the days has really been the toughest thing to do – no matter how hard I try, I cannot make the healing that only comes with the passage of time speed up. Utter helplessness on the whole time front – time is my nemesis. But I have learned to do other things to make the time pass less painfully, and eventually, pass even joyfully.

And look at that – I have yet again avoided talking about what it was like to be where I was after I started remembering that my dad sexually abused me, and before I was safe in the hospital learning how to deal with it.

I guess I just needed to remind myself of how I got through it, of how I still get through it, and of just some of the beauty I am able to breathe in and out every day I am alive as a result of fighting for my own recovery.