It’s your Ex’s Birthday! 3 Things NOT to Do

If you read my blog, you know that I have a thing about dates and anniversaries. For the past few months, I’ve been on a quest to reclaim days/holidays and keep my hard-earned peace. However, today is my ex’s birthday.

Anyway, I’ve been turning this over in my mind for weeks, trying to figure out what would be appropriate for me. Do I wish her a happy birthday? Do I intentionally forget? Do I do some ritualistic cleansing, reclaiming ceremony? Or do I just pray? I knew I wasn’t at the point where the day would just go by with a passing, deferential nod.

Instead of doing any of these, I decided to write this blog and maybe, just maybe, someone would benefit from my past (and present) experience. (Or I would just get it out of my system.)

So…if you are still raw from a recent breakup or you have some lingering, amorphous anxiety/feelings left for someone you haven’t seen in years…if you are feeling compelled to show someone you are over him/her…if you think it’s been long enough and you can just be friends…well, you get the picture.  The mind will make up reasons to justify what the heart wants.

Here’s my advice on what not to do on your ex’s birthday:

1. Don’t make contact.  Seriously, no email. No text. No seemingly insignificant birthday wish. You can rationalize it a thousand different ways. You can declare it’s harmless and convince yourself it means nothing. You are only being nice, right? WRONG. The stronger the draw is, the bigger the reason you shouldn’t. Whatever you are hoping for consciously or hiding in the corner of your heart, odds of your fairly tale, fated love story happening are stacked against you. At best, your ex ignores you, but then your ego has to deal with being ignored and rejected and abandoned and all of those wounds you have been trying to heal since the breakup are open once again.

2. Don’t take a musical (or video or photo) walk down memory lane.  This was my morning thought…I would listen to her music, our music, to celebrate her birthday. It would be a remembrance…I’d be putting good energy out into the world…blah, blah, bullshit, blah. Luckily, I decided against this.  A walk down memory lane can do one of two things:  it opens up a tender part of you – the part of you that misses the good things about the other person – the soft, sentimental part squishy with loss and regret. OR you have to deal with the residual anger that you have previously channelled into something productive. Yeah, I left the iPod at home today.

3. Don’t do anything out of spite. Even the simplest act, even if it doesn’t “hurt” anyone, can send out negativity. Not only does it send it out, but you are like a conduit for karmic reminders. Remember, for every action there is an equal, opposite reaction. If you shove the world, the world will shove back. For me, my rebellion manifested in wearing a shirt that she completely hated. My thought process, “Well, you aren’t around. I’m wearing my ugly shirt. Happy freaking birthday to me!”  Yeah…I shoved a little…and my car stalled on the way home, my light switch popped, and I got my tax bill. So yeah…the world shoved back. I know it’s a stretch to link these, but hey, there are no coincidences (at least not for this existential addict).

Two days from now is another ex’s birthday. She hated that shirt, too. (Obviously, I’ve got a thing for Pisces who hate paisley.) And I get to go through this emotional muck again…or not. Perhaps writing this will be the balm I need to soothe my flailing soul.

At least I have the reprieve of February 27th…

Scraps

I’m going to practice a little vulnerability here by posting a poem I wrote today as I was going through an old box I found. I don’t usually share my poetry…I am too harsh of a critic where that is concerned. But since I started recovery, I have been very cautious…too cautious in some ways, too hesitant, too safe. So this year is one of expansion…one of forward movement…one of taking life-affirming risks. Here goes…

Scraps

My past –
like Schrodinger’s Cat – both
dead and alive
known and unknown
until I open the box

Scraps of paper
poems saved
(You alone are my evil and my good)
random quotes
notes, letters, gifts of words

(Moving through my life one piece at a time.)

A shirt you wore
(and I saved for 15 years)
I clutch it to me – inhaling – your scent replaced
by the smell of time and cardboard
Do I keep it another 15 years? Tucked away
until I die and all meaning is lost?

(Another scrap from another life.)

First law of Motion – too late for inertia
(leave it at rest) But I didn’t.

Handkerchiefs and hair wraps –
I remember when you wore this.
I remember everything.
I remember nothing.
(I don’t have to.)
I just hoard it in this box.

Mementos of Helen – and Misa –
yet my cruelest month will always be April

(Some things are sacred.)

Photos of friends lost – allocated
to the back of my mind
bottom of the box
back of the closet
(Better not to remember.)

Second law of Motion – I shove back
Against this moment
Against this past
Against you (vague pronoun reference)
Against me (even more vague)
Against us (laughable)

I push back against the collective You –
Lovers each replacing the replaced – layers
and layers of Yous and yesterdays

(Some things should be forgotten.)

Postcards, ticket stubs,
Signs and slogans picked up elsewhere
(Beware of pickpockets, loose women, llamas, and lions.)

A card – the only card you ever gave me
(To love and be loved…)
Your childlike scrawl reminding me

The last scrap in the box – a fortune from a cookie
Lottery numbers and a reminder
             Treat yourself with the same dignity
             and respect you give others.

(Not everything is an omen.)

Third law of Motion – Equal and opposite reaction
(Karma bites you in the ass.)
I wonder if you have a box of me somewhere
Scraps of my life, my love

The box has less than it did at first.
A little more lost – thrown out
Each time I open it

(I kept the shirt, the card, the scraps –
Until next time.)

Enjoying the Holidays on your Own: #4 – You’ve been through worse.

Strategy #4 – Be thankful. You’ve been through worse than a holiday season alone.

If you are reading this, you have so much to be grateful for…not because of my words…but because you are somewhere inside with electricity and a means of communication.  It’s the little things that are the big things…and too often, we forget the little things, until we don’t have them.

I’ve spent nights outside in the cold. I lived in a place without electricity for months. I spent weeks without the ability to communicate. And I’ve gone through worse. What’s important here is not what happened or why, but that I’ve “gone through” them – through the tunnel – through the winter of my discontent – and I’ve come out on the other side. I’ve rebuilt my life, through a lot of hard work and a little divine intervention. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough. (Maybe that’s really the idea here – life isn’t perfect, but in this moment, it’s enough.)

If you are alone this holiday season, you’ve already survived loss. Whether it was the loss of your family, your friends, your love, or all of the above, you survived it.  Maybe your loss was your fault – maybe, like me, you made some really self-destructive decisions and you find yourself wading through the consequences. Maybe it was all beyond your control. Regardless of your story, you lived through that chapter.

The loss is not as important as the fact that you survived it. Not only did you survive it, at some point, you made a decision to live and not let the grief kill you. You made a choice, consciously or not, to live a better life than you were before (or you wouldn’t be reading this). You decided to go through and not get stuck. You have another chance.

So on this Thanksgiving, regardless of your holiday plans, take a moment to remember what you’ve been through. I’m not asking for your inventory. I’m not asking you to dwell, but to remember, for a second, what it was like in your darkest moment. Then, consider what you have now…where you are now…WHO you are now. Be grateful for the little things, the big ones…everything. Inventory what you do have, not what you’ve lost.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

My great-grandmother, me, and my wheelbarrow

The Problem with Love

“I don’t know what you saw in her.”

“How could you be with someone like that?”

“You don’t really love her.  You just think you do.”

Sound familiar?  The obligatory consolation speeches our friends give us at the end of a relationship.  They try to help by destroying the person or our image of the person, and shame us into denying our feelings and staining our grief with guilt.

There is no shame in loving someone, regardless of what other people want you to believe.  You shouldn’t have to explain it. You shouldn’t have to be forced to define it.  You love someone because you see something in him or her that maybe no one else does.  You are connected to that person – deeply, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually connected to them.  Don’t try to justify it.  Don’t ask why; sometimes the reasons for love are unknowable. Just accept the feelings and be grateful to that experience.

HOWEVER…

“All you need is love” is a lie.  Love isn’t enough for a mutually healthy relationship of any kind.  Love, actually, has less to do with sustaining relationships than you realize.  Love, in its truest form, is unconditional.  It does not matter what the other person does or how the other person acts; love doesn’t dissolve, nor is it explicable.  It just is.  Love with conditions isn’t really love, for conditions stem from a person’s need for gratification in some form or another.

Relationships, however, are contingent upon conditions.  This is where it gets tough.  You can love someone and choose not to be in a relationship with that person.  Sometimes removing yourself from the relationship is a matter of self-preservation.  The relationship has become too hurtful, too damaging to you.  You have the right to draw a boundary; you have a right to not participate in the life of a damaging person.  (I don’t want to use the word “toxic” here because it is dehumanizing; it demotes a person to something akin to hazardous waste, taking away that person’s innate value as a human being.)  Regardless, boundaries are necessary in any relationship.

In extreme cases such as abusive and/or destructive relationships, getting out of a relationship may actually save a person’s life – metaphorically and/or literally.  I have been in more than one of these, and much to my own disgrace, I have been both the abused and the abuser.  Tables turn and when the abuse becomes too much, the abused often becomes the abuser.  The controlled struggles to control. The abandoned will abandon.  I do not justify my actions; I accept that there was a part of me capable of crossing healthy boundaries (sanity) into the realm of abuse (insanity).

If you press me why I stayed, why she stayed, I can only say I loved her more than I loved myself.  Then things shifted. At one point, preserving my life-bound wounds was more important than preserving my life and infinitely, tragically, more important than preserving our love.  Not a justification. Not a rationalization. Just regret…

Anger has visited me again…

We were magical...

I wrote the following entry a few days ago, debating whether or not to post it. It seemed too raw, too emotional, too angry. I questioned the profanity, for I didn’t want to offend anyone. But if I have to censor myself here, I might as well quit writing. My apologies…

Addiction and recovery go hand-in-hand with suicide. I have never met an addict – active or in recovery – who did not contemplate, if not attempt, suicide. I know I did. When I was using, I thought I was unworthy, unloved, useless, worthless – I watched as everything I owned went up in smoke – literally. And I didn’t want to live. When I was first in recovery, after the pink cloud dissolved, I looked around at the wreck of my life, listened to the roar of self-loathing, and I didn’t think I had the strength to rebuild out of this nothingness. And I didn’t want to live. The only thing that kept me alive was knowing how much I would hurt the few people who did believe in me.

Things are different now, for me.

But not for the girl, once my girl.  I got an email from her the other night, reaching out.  She said she was on the edge and couldn’t take it anymore.  The email ended with “I loved you the best I knew how.” And she did – we both did.  We got derailed – we got lost – and as love masqueraded as hate, we pushed and shoved and ran from each other. But the memories haunt us…the dream still lives in our dreams, through our art…in quiet, angry moments we remember and we grieve…

And while I knew she was serious – desperate even, I didn’t believe she would ever attempt to take her own life.  She did attempt. Luckily, she didn’t succeed; she’s physically okay, but so terribly lost. My heart goes out to her, even if I can’t. (And like everything else, her family blames me for it. But instead of loving, supporting her, they rail and rage and degrade her.) When I found out, all of the anger that I had suppressed in the last week exploded…the guilt returned…the grief over everything, every loss, every second of pain surged through me.

The following was the result…

Us

She tried to kill herself because I wouldn’t go back to her. She tried to kill herself and I didn’t go back to her. Is that enough for you – the watchers, the doubters, the former friends turned judge and jury? Does that prove that I am committed to a new life, a clean life? Or maybe you won’t be satisfied until one of us is dead? Until she’s dead? Then you can forgive me? Then I get a chance at redemption? Or maybe really nice flowers at my funeral?

Fuck that.

Fuck this.

Fuck you.

You who I begged to just talk to me. Waited until I had been clean for months before I wrote. I begged you for love, for support. You who had once had your own problem – you know what it’s like to get clean. You – the only one I wanted to see – the only one I wanted to be around – the one I needed. The closest thing I had to family, for we had both lost ours.

You with your line. You don’t understand. You can’t understand. I know this. I know you’ve never walked this path. Waiting until I’m clean of all of my addictions.  I am clean. I am human. I am worthy. I am in pain.

Fuck that.

Fuck this.

Fuck you.

I’m angry. Yeah, I’m really angry. I’m angry at her. I’m angry at her family. I’m angry at myself. I’m angry at the people who I once prayed for their return. I’m angry at my mother for dying. I’m angry at everyone in my life who died. I’m angry at God or the Universe or whatever you want to call it.

This sunflower is flipping you off...

She was right – I am the imbecile of all imbeciles.

Death puts things in perspective.

And I have been surrounded by it for over a week. Death. Grief. Now this. My perspective?

Fuck that.

Fuck this.

Fuck you.

I know my path is my path…and I will walk it alone for now. But that doesn’t make me love her any less, pray for her any less, not want her to live a clean, happy life – even if it is without me.

I feel like everyone just expects me to stop loving her…like I’m not clean unless I kill that emotion…like I have to pretend none of this happened…like I have to think of her as a villain, instead of the struggling soul – still beautiful, still divine – that she is. I won’t do that…that’s not me. That’s not how I love.  I love with everything…with all that I am, all that I have, without condition. Now, I pray for her to live clean, to find happiness, to find purpose…to heal, to be as whole as she can be. And I will always love her…

So I surrender…this is who I am. Not good enough? I don’t care anymore. I’ve grieved all I will.  I give up the dream of reconciliation with the people from my past:  You win. You lose. I release you. I still love you and I release you. And I move on…

Another anniversary…

My mom, Lana, at 24.

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

– T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

Another anniversary, collapsing of time where my different lives intersect in this moment. How many lives have I lived since this birth? More than I remember. Some I cling to, unwilling to forget. All defined by a minute of memory, an image, feelings my body stores. Lifetimes can be lived in a moment, in a night, in a week – and each builds on the next, each choice changing the path, until we stop “at the still point of the turning world” (Eliot). We stop. We listen. I stop here. I stop there. I listen.  I witness my life. I witness my lives, many, rich with love and with pain. So many mirrors, so many attempts to find myself, so many attempts to love.

Today is my mother’s birthday. She would have been 63. I like to think my life would have been radically different if she had lived. I like to think I would have made better choices, would have been guided by her love and her wisdom. But I know better. I know I would have made many of the same mistakes, urged on by the illusion of love (a romantic dream that I learned from watching her life). Mistakes made by an addict’s arrogance. Mistakes made in addiction. Mistakes made, so many. But she would have helped me pick up the pieces, helped me rebuild. And above all, she would have forgiven me anything. That’s what I miss most these days: forgiveness. (Perhaps her forgiveness would have helped me forgive myself.)

Just memories. Moments. Lifetimes. How I miss her…

"Oh Alex...bless your little heart."

Today is also my anniversary with the girl. She reminded me of my mother, in many ways. Loved as my mother did…absolutely, without wavering, determined. (That’s how she treats dope now.) I like to think our life would have been radically different if I hadn’t relapsed. I like to think I would have made better choices, would have been guided by her love and her youth. We would have been together today, rather than infinitely distant. Chasms created through addiction, betrayal, desperation – all trust destroyed. Forgiveness impossible in this moment, for either of us, for each other.

Just memories. Moments. Lifetimes. How I miss her…

Lifetimes overlap on this day. Anniversaries. Time present and time past…every choice, every second leading up to this one. Imperfect. Perfect. Originating my future. Originating my forgiveness.

Hold me

“Don’t you love me? Don’t love you me?” her voice so desperate, begging. pleading. Of course, I love you. I love you. I love you. “Come get me. Please just come get me.” I can’t. I can’t. I don’t have  a way. There’s nowhere to go. I don’t have any money. I can’t.  I can’t. I don’t want to give up everything…not this time. So small, so small, she pleads, “Hold me. Please, hold me. Don’t you want to hold me?” Yes, yes, I do. I do. So small. I know. I know. I feel her – who she once was, pleading promises, reminding me of all I said, all I did. Nothing less than forever. This is my fault. My fault. I can’t. I can’t fix this. I can’t save her. I can’t. I have to choose me. I have to choose me. 7 months later. Out of nowhere, thousands of miles crossed and she came for me…and I’m supposed to give up everything and leave…with her…into nothing, back into that life. And she’s crying. And she’s begging. And she’s so young. So small. So very small. And I’m dying in this moment. And my heart is breaking. I have to choose me. But it’s all my fault. And I’m torn. And I’m sobbing. And a part of me wants to go and just let it be done…

Souls slip…

Before I fell in love, before I relapsed, I thought I was above certain things…defined by a faux-spirituality, “enlightened” I claimed. Like an angel, I soared in my own idealized, convenient world. But my wings were black…they always had been. Black with a curse that originated somewhere – another lifetime, some lost moment, my birthright. Soaring so high, above my humanity, to be lassoed by a slip of a girl, brought crashing down into reality. I felt the fall…it broke every bone, every idea, every ideal, every vow, every promise – to others and to myself, everything…broken, destroyed.

Lasso – noose – the same thing. And I hang, like the Fool in the tarot deck, too stupid to discern reality from illusion. Trading wholeness for a soul so entwined in lies that it disintegrated – and I am left, holding my hand out to the world.

Souls slip through fingers like water, leaving only the feeling of what was once held. I clench my fist, raise it to the heavens, demanding…nothing, for, perhaps, that is all I deserve.  I am the fool and I hang, twisted, distorted by a truth so damning I have refused to face it for months. And I curse, and I pray, and I wave my fist at the god, the world that deserted me – I guess I left first. I want out of this life…start over, somewhere else, so far away that it’s impossible to remember. Every inch of my home seems tainted…of all the gifts I have given, was given.

I never claimed to be a saint.

Awkward Moments

Recovery is filled with awkward, fear-based moments.  I cannot walk into a store, a restaurant – anywhere – without fearing who I will see.  It’s taken me months to reclaim some places – to feel comfortable – but always, being on the outside of addiction, fear seizes me, waiting for the awkward. The worst, for me, is running into the people who knew me before, watched during, left during…

And then the awkward happened…I ran into someone from my past, someone I had loved, worked with for years…in a coffee shop, the same one I’m sitting in now, recounting, writing, hoping it won’t happen again. Not today, at least. Let it happen tomorrow.

I could see it in her eyes as she saw me. She wanted to turn around – afraid of me, of what I might say.  Or perhaps it was her own guilt over not responding, making the choice to sever our relationship. It was probably me, though. From what she knew, I was…well, she didn’t know…so much radiated from her pained, tight face.

And me, immediately shaking, embarrassed, ashamed, but proud not to be the pathetic person she’d last seen…that cold morning, last winter, when I waited, battered and bruised, just to see her for a moment – to see someone who loved me – to feel connected to something “good.” I wasn’t THAT person in THAT LIFE anymore. I felt the need to prove to her – to her friends, once our friends – that I wasn’t sick or crazy or…needing to prove I was worthy of love, even if she wouldn’t (couldn’t) give it to me.

I dreamt of her only a couple of nights before. She had come to tell me that she had made her choice, about whether or not to return to my life. Fearing what she would say, I stopped her and asked her just to walk with me. I knew her answer. I couldn’t blame her, but I didn’t want to hear it, not even in a dream. Better to walk with her one last time…

Seeing her, in person, not the dream, seeing her…how I loved her for so long – I wanted it all back. And I wanted none of it. Push. Pull. Push again – HARDER this time. She can’t love me anymore. I saw it in her eyes.

If you are in any type of relationship with an addict – active or clean, whether you stay or go, dear reader, is entirely up to you. Maybe you can’t – too much damage, too much betrayal, too much fear. I can respect that. I respect boundaries drawn. But know, your decision will have a profound effect on us, the people in recovery, regardless of your choice.  We are human, are damaged, are…still here. Be kind. We aren’t used to kindness.

So much to say

in this awkward moment…

Fear fills me, fills you.

Waiting to see if we will go

to that place we would both rather forget.

Forget you.

Forget me.

Forget we.

This awkward moment…

When time slows unmercifully to stop.

All of the unsaid

is said this delicate embrace.

Like Humbert Humbert –

“Don’t touch me. I’ll die if you touch me.”

Look back as you leave…

and we both remember.

Voicemail

It’s not my fault.  (But it is.)

I didn’t do this to you. (But I did.)

I hear it in your voice, so lost…so fucking lost in your choices, in the haze, in the dope, in that life. THAT life – THAT FUCKING LIFE…get the dope, do the dope, find the money, wait for the dope, get the dope, do the dope…and lose more and more in between.

It’s not my fault. (I left to save you.)

You made your choices. (I left to save me.)

I can’t save you. (I can’t save you.)

I sit here in my comfortable chair, in a comfortable house, comfortably recovering from fucking up my own life (and yours – however, most would argue we destroyed each other). And you, you with whom I shared my life, my greatest joy and my deepest pain, shared my secrets, my bed…the moon to my sun…everything collapsed in you, even time – always time…you, thousands of miles away…you, so desperate…on the edge, always on the edge…needing to talk, needing to touch, needing to connect to something not in THAT LIFE. Needing me.

I hear your voice. (Recorded, not live.)

You say little…you didn’t make it home…you need to talk to me…call you. (Live, not rehearsed.)

You end with…I love you. (And I still do.)

Is it harder to be the addict or to love an addict? Having been on both sides, being the addict is easier; loving an addict is agonizing. As the addict, I lived in a vacuum…the cycle of supply and demand…using and wanting, wanting and using. Meeting that need was bigger than anything else – more important than food, sleep, birthdays, holidays…more important than love.

Addicts, we love our drug of choice – any drug, if desperate enough. We miss loving relationships…we miss the people we used to love (and still do in those moments in between). But addiction kills any and all love addicts have for themselves. I should know…and my sobriety didn’t instantly fix this – it just made me conscious of how much I hated (past-tense most days now) myself. Expecting love from someone in an active addiction is just setting yourself up for pain, so much pain…

So I sit here in my comfortable chair, in a comfortable house, uncomfortable in this love. Unrequited.