Dear Friend,
Wine felt like love and relief and sanctuary to me for 5 years. I haven’t had a glass of wine or a glass of any alcohol for almost 700 days. Regardless of what external reality is – that I am loved and cared for by you and more friends and family, even supported in my efforts to stay abstinent by strangers – my internal reality is that I have felt loveless, strained and exposed for 700 days.
I find myself at Kroger almost every day picking up something I’ve forgotten. I’m only just getting my mind back. The produce section is by the wine aisle. I could buy a bottle of love and relief and sanctuary! This terrible state would end! And for 700 days, I have denied myself freedom from suffering.
One of the hardest parts of having become addicted to a substance and then abstaining from that substance and having the eye-popping, jaw-dropping, Edvard Munch silent scream-making results of abstinence is trying to explain to my precious non-addicted friends and family members what it takes and why it takes it for me to not have a glass of wine today.
Every day, I have to ask myself what inner feelings I need to have had most of the day to not behave in ways I don’t want to. I struggle to identify what those are. Today, I choose “love, relief, sanctuary.” For me, those inner feelings have to exist in enough quantity enough of the time for me to not drink.
Then I have to ask what I need to do during the day to feel “love, relief, sanctuary.”
Then I have to ask what I need to not do, or be wary of doing, in order to not deplete or destabilize the stores of anti-upset feelings I am accumulating to protect myself from doing what I don’t want to do.
For me, I have to answer all those questions in one moment and then in the next moment. And then I have to take immediate action. No probably, maybe, or soon for me. I have to do it right now.
I have to manage my feelings immediately or I will drink, or I will long for a drink so elementally that I will begin to wail with pain.
Making the full list of what it takes to keep me from drinking on an on-going basis would take thousands of words. Describing why and how would be tenfold that number. So I’ll just keep it brief.
To feel immediate love, I need to call or text someone in recovery from addiction. To feel immediate relief, I need to run now, I need to write now, I need to eat now, I need to take a nap now, I need to get out of here now. To feel an immediate sense of sanctuary I need to say calming words to myself, to be with two or more people who don’t expect or want anything from me, or to be at home, alone, with my cats.
Look at all the “I’s” – I need, I need. What kind of friend can that be who is all-I?
A lousy one.
A disappointing one.
I experience anguish when doing the I-thing to keep from drinking doesn’t include you. I can’t fix it. I’ve tried everything for it to be different. But it won’t budge. I feel such grief that I am missing out on your life and on the growth of our friendship. I am so very, very sorry.
I realize I am asking, maybe pleading, for forgiveness and understanding. And time. I have been primarily absent from my friendship with you, first because I was drinking and now because I’m not.
When will I be “back”? When will I be the Anne I was in 2006 when I thought my head and heart were my own? I think never. I miss her and long for her as if she had died.
That said, the wherewithal has arisen to make a bed in a guest room. I hope some day I can invite you to spend the night.
But if you say no, I will profoundly understand.
Love,
Anne
Anne, you are loved by me. You are needed by me. I need you where you are in life, literally
and figuratively. God sent you to your new home for at least one reason that I see so clearly now. I will never be able to repay you for what you have offered to do, but if I can, please tell me how. You are my eyes and ears when I can’t be there and for that I will forever be grateful.
Dear, sweet, loving friend. You are not disappointing me, you are giving me a gift.
I have had to learn a good, or different kind of selfishness in sobriety. I have to take care of me first. This is NOT optional. If I don’t take care of me, then how am I going to be able to take care of the people I care about and love? You’re included in that group, just so you know. I’ve missed you terribly, I really have. I’ve missed all of my heart family, and it breaks my heart to continually not be physically present for all of you. But for now, I have to take care of me, I have to heal me. In doing this, there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be around for a while, and eventually able to do for those I love. You know that my issue right now is pain, but the lessons I have learned in sobriety are applicable here also.
I believe that to take care of yourself, to truly love yourself, is a gift from you to those of us that love you. In taking time to love and heal yourself, you are giving yourself a chance at life, and in turn, you’re giving us a chance at that life with you. What better gift could you possibly give the people who love and care about you?
You are not disappointing me, you are giving me a gift, and for that I love and respect you even more.
So I’ll love you and I’ll miss you, and when you’re ready for a pajama party, I’ll hopefully be healed enough myself to join you.
What you write about a sense of selfishness, I read as self-care. I think one of the things so many of us do that prevent us from the depth of connection and life that we all so crave is feeling as though handling the I-Needs first isn’t valid when it’s the only thing that will put us where we need to be to create the lives we most want with the people we most love…