It’s Just Hard

One month ago, on the eve of my 58th birthday, I fell down a short series of stairs in the dark and broke my foot. That morning, as I had nearly every morning for a decade, I exercised. I ran 3 miles on so many days a week for so many years that I didn’t break a sweat or breathe hard. On non-running days, I swam 30 minutes straight, again, without losing my breath. I lifted weights each week with a trainer and didn’t get sore. I concentrated on consistency and form and, at 57, except for belly fat, had solid fitness, a low pulse rate and good muscle tone.

Today, I am deciding whether or not the trips around my house in a walking boot to gather my things, the trip to the car in the boot, taking off the boot, getting in the car and driving with a sore foot, arriving at the pool, putting on the boot, getting out of the car and walking to the locker room, taking off the boot, and limping to the pool to get in it, making my foot sore from swimming, and then going through the reverse is worth it. It will take about 2 hours to do a 20-minute swim. I’ve had chronic pain in my back and hamstring from old injuries that exercise manages. They’re aching away, along with my foot in its boot.

I feel like I’m decomposing, like a pile of leaves, little particles dropping off bit by bit from my structure.

People break bones all the time. Why am I having such trouble? I’ve known a long time that I’ve got some conditions in my life that aren’t helpful to handling the human condition, whether a stubbed toe or a broken foot. I’m partner-less, childless, motherless, and live alone. I work at part-time jobs primarily out of a home office. Most of my work involves process rather than results. I’ve had trouble finding groups and communities in which I feel a sense of belonging. In isolation, each experience can feel magnified.

Oh, yeah. And that other thing. Fucking alcoholism.

I have worked my ass off to not have this. For four solid years, I have longed to drink and not. I have tried every treatment I could access, tried every way of thinking and re-thinking and feeling and re-feeling and doing and doing differently and it just won’t let up. I am exhausted.

I didn’t know how much my daily freedom to exercise intensely to my heart’s content and my mind’s calming and my body’s relieving meant to me until I lost it.

I continue to marvel at how people who have this condition, and don’t have the resources I have, stay abstinent. I have employment, housing, transportation, health insurance. And a gym membership. Maybe they make it because they have someone who loves them? I have people who love me, of course, but at a distance. As it should be. They’re living their lives. I am to live mine, too.

How to live a solitary life with a chronic illness? Gee. It’s just not the question I expected to answer at 58. Barbie, Ken, Baby, Cinderella, Handsome Prince. That’s my paradigm!

Yesterday was hard, today is hard, and tomorrow will be hard.

That’s actually been mostly what it’s been like to be me during these four years of abstinence from alcohol.

For me, turning towards the truth, not away from it, is a relief. And the truth is that this is just hard as hell, harder than I ever could have anticipated, possibly harder than I have the capacity for. And way harder than anyone who’s tried to help me has found it to be. This just seems intractable. And it may be. I just might not triumph. Okay! That’s the deal!

I think it was my 8th grade math teacher, Mrs. Hooper, who first taught me how to do proofs: start with the givens. Given that 1) today will be a day of deprivation, i.e. no alcohol and no significant exercise, both of which would offer a blessed break, 2) today will be a day of above average physical pain, 3) nothing known today can make tomorrow better, 4) intimate, connected contact won’t happen, but general contact might, 5) the top recommendation for politics-induced anxiety is, wait for it, physical activity, how, Anne, would you like to spend the day?

I would like to write a blog post on my blog stating my truth, and I would like to say, yeah, I might relapse but it won’t mean much of anything, just a bout with a chronic illness after a pretty significant period of remission.

I would like to give swimming a go, I would like to try to use Uber to get to the Neuroscience of Addiction class I’ve been given permission to attend at noon, I would like to anticipate that my elder cat might sleep on my chest during a nap, I would love a post-nap Starbuck’s coffee but that requires the boot so I dunno, I would like to wait on my younger cat who has me on an intermittent but insistent schedule, I would like to (sigh, see, this is where the despair starts) eat a pleasant dinner at home, but everything makes me fatter and I have no groceries and wouldn’t know what to put on the list if someone wanted to shop for me, and I would like to try to just be there for myself today, moment to moment, truthfully. No demoralizingly simplistic slogans, no admonitions to serve others, no phony rah-rah. Just be there for myself and acknowledge to myself that, yes, this is really tough and it’s probably just going to be a moment-to-moment thing. And not push, or scold, or measure myself. Just keep myself company through a really hard time.