Reverse Engineering Your Humanity

The girls.

Despite your many defects, or just the one, the girls still wanted you home. You had evidence to support this. They didn’t mind nor were embarrassed you were a recovering alcoholic. They might have even thought it was cool. The night you drove Callie and her friends to In & Out, blasting Guns and Roses. Your girls respected your commitment to AA, and presumably to them. They knew you once were the shit in advertising; it still had currency, as both a point of pride as well as providing the means to pay for their horses, vacations and private schools. 

That said, you doubt they’d accurately processed your misadventures. One day they might understand. For now they were not even going there. Denial, forgiveness or something else their true feelings about your transgressions would likely never be fully revealed, and certainly not to you. Bottom line, they still loved you. And you would always love them.

Bill W. conceded that becoming entirely ready to remove our shortcomings may take time yet we should never say to ourselves, ‘This I will never give up!’ He underscored the word never. As in never shutting the door on possibility. For the path to right living lay just on the other side. There was a crack. You’d seen the light and were moving towards it, slowly. When Sarah went out for the night or on longer trips, you stayed home reading a book or watching a movie. When Sarah was home you spent time with her, talking about her day and yours, instead of retreating to your office. You forced yourself out of isolation, joining your family, for dinner or just conversation. Did you deserve a medal? Of course not. But doing the right thing did not come naturally. You must learn normal behaviors until they turned routine, acting as if they were natural until they became so. You had to reverse-engineer your humanity.

In the throws of your addiction, you couldn’t imagine stopping drugs and alcohol even though you knew they were killing you. The same for any addict, beneath the craving was a matrix of false assumptions. The first being that life wouldn’t be fun without booze and that you wouldn’t be either. But being an addict was no fun at all. You had also believed you would not be as creative straight, that your Libertarian right brain would go fallow without an endless supply of intoxicants, the same myth that wrecked a million artists, authors and musicians. In fact, you had to completely rewrite your first novel because you’d written it inebriated, its paragraphs rambling on like a drunken floozy at the bar. Had Ernest Hemmingway, Dorothy Parker and Charles Bukowski required spirits to write? If they hadn’t died ignominiously they might well have answered yes. But they were addicts and addicts have always justified their addictions. They had been blessed with talent before pouring alcohol on top of it. Not the other way around. Regardless, you were not Ernest Hemingway and would never be. Drinking like him only insured you would die like him, if not sooner. Countless other false beliefs permeated the drinker. It was a social lubricant, it helped you with the ladies, it gave you courage, and so on. Maybe for some people some of the time but for the chronic user those beliefs usually just lead to an ass kicking in the alley or whiskey dick in a motel room.

Epilogue: Recovering what you have lost.

Continued from previous post…

So, has your definition for winning and losing changed? Maybe. Money and position don’t beguile you as much. Fortunate, given you have less of both. Yet, you still crave that feeling you got overhearing those students. The yearning never disappears completely. The ego cannot be evicted. From the program: If you want self-esteem do estimable things. Helping others. Or in your case simply not hurting anyone. Taking things in stride.

Serenity will always be ephemeral but it’s not a pipe dream. It can be achieved. You once joked that serenity was a pole dancer in Sacramento. Now that you’ve acquired some would you mortgage it for a shiny new job? Sadly. Probably. But at least you would know better. And that’s a start.

Life needn’t be something you master or endure. Mastery was an illusion. Enduring is a consequence. Letting go is what brings you true contentment. Winning and losing, fine for business and the ballpark, are the wrong terms for right living. Beyond shaking addiction, the word recovery means finding what you had lost.

Falling off the Pedestal

You have been steeling yourself for this conversation, for this moment. Actually, the right time was two years ago, when you had been caught. Maybe neither of you was ready then, hard to know. Yet you cannot wait any longer.

You knock on Remy’s door. She doesn’t answer. But you know she’s there. Your daughter deserves her privacy. She’s a woman. Regardless. You crack open the door. Peek inside.

Softly, you say her name. “Remy?” Again. “Remy?”

She has on headphones. Beats by Dre that she got for her birthday. Bright red and cost a fortune. She’s listening to hip-hop, the language of the streets, the African American experience, rife with “F” bombs and the radioactive “N” word.  You can hear it pulsing through her sleek headphones.

Unseen, you take a moment to observe her. A small person, she seems half swallowed by the comforter on her bed. Her bobbing head reminds you of the gophers that occasionally poke through the grass in your backyard. You think it’s funny: this little white girl listening to rap.

Save for the blues, you grew up loathing disco and rap. You remember an ill-fated promotion called  “Disco Demolition Night” at Comiskey Park in Chicago. An unruly crowd of mostly white teenagers, incited by a local DJ, lustily roared as a mountainous pile of disco records got blown to bits in center field. An embarrassing spectacle, it caused a riot. They had to cancel the baseball game. You’re glad Remy has an open mind, even if it sometimes scares you.

Remy sees you and removes the headphones. She is genuinely surprised. Her eyes widen.

“Hi,” you say. “Can we talk?”

“Right now?” She asks. Remy bites her tongue, a habit she’d recently developed. Your request was unusual, as was your presence in her room. She braces herself.

“Yes, please,” you say. “If that’s okay.” You enter her bedroom and take a seat on the large ottoman.

Remy crosses her legs on the bed. “What’s up, dad? She asks. Nervously, toying with her headphones. Finally, she turns off the music, shutting her laptop.

“Don’t worry,” you begin. “You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I’m not worried,” she says, timidly. “I mean not really.”

“Let me start by saying you’re an amazing person, Remy. I don’t tell you that enough.” It’s true, you didn’t.  In spite of dragging her to California, disrupting her life, utterly, Remy had remained stoic throughout the ordeal. She has no friends! Her mother had cried. She doesn’t belong to a group! Feebly, you’d reasoned that Remy had sisters and that the move had brought them closer together. But you knew Sarah was right. The move had hurt Remy, thrusting her into a world of diffident girls uninterested in befriending a pale and diminutive child. A wound you’d made infinitely worse by betraying her mother. This is why you are here, to make amends.

“When I was a boy, I put my father on a pedestal,” you say. “Maybe even more so after he left us.” You pause, pulling one of Remy’s long brown hairs off of the ottoman, watch it fall to the floor.  “I don’t remember when he fell off it exactly but I do know it was painful…realizing my dad had flaws and weaknesses, a life that did not include me.”

Remy looks right at you. Her brown eyes remind you of your own.

“Anyway,” you continue. “I think we both know exactly when I fell off your pedestal. That is assuming you had me on one in the first place.” You force a laugh.

Remy smiles. Thank God, you think.

“The night your mother found those texts on my phone. When you and your sisters saw her yelling and crying. That was the moment.” Though you desperately want to avert your eyes from Remy, you do not. Doing this correctly demanded your full attention. And so you say the hard part: “When I betrayed your mother I betrayed you as well.”

Remy nods, uneasily. This was an adult conversation, maybe the first she’d ever had with you.

You press forward. “I don’t expect you to put me back on that pedestal, Remy. Or even to forgive me. I know what I did was wrong and that I hurt this whole family. And for that I am truly sorry.”

You stop talking. You’ve said what you came here to say. You will not provide reasons or excuses. You must accept that she may give you no quarter. The outcome was not yours to determine. Only that you own the mess that you’ve made.

Remy speaks and her poise surprises you. “Thank you, father,” she says. “It’s true. I did have a hard time when we moved here. I pretended it was cool but it wasn’t. And then what happened, what you did … that made it even worse. It was awful.”

You nod. “Yes, it was.”

Remy comports herself, sitting up straighter. “But in the last year or so I found my place. I have friends now. It’s not perfect but I like my life. I grew up.” She laughs. “Just in time for college!”

You had not expected humor. Nor would you have linked Remy’s maturation to your own bad behavior. But the dots connected. Your weakness begot her strength. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. But that’s exactly what had happened.

You are not glad hearing this, but reassured. “I was scared I might have lost you. And I would have understood it. But I want you to know that you will never lose me.”  You look down, contrite. Play with your wedding ring.

Remy sighs. “I’m glad you and mom are still together,” she says. “I know that it can’t be easy, for either of you.”

In that moment, gazing upon your daughter, you realize what you just did here was right, the words and the deed. If only you could continue down this path. Being intimate, vulnerable and honest. If only…

“At school, the sisters always preach forgiveness,” Remy says. “That we should even pray for the people that hurt us…”

You’ve heard that said before, in AA. It was a textbook example of something easier said than done.

“And so I prayed for you.”

You point to the ceiling. “Do you know every morning I ask God for help? And every night I thank Him for giving it to me.” You pause.  “For keeping me sober… For all of my blessings… And for you.”

Remy’s phone vibrates, lighting up. Somebody wants her and you don’t wonder why. She’s a remarkable young woman.

“It’s okay, I won’t look at my phone,” she says. “If you’re not done.”

“I am done,” you say, getting up. You don’t want the conversation to end. Yet, you didn’t want to push it either. In this family, intimacy was damn near a mirage, like water in the desert. Too much all at once could be detrimental. “Look, I know this is awkward but can we end with a hug?”

Remy rolls her eyes. All the same, she climbs off the bed, opening her arms.

In these tiny arms that you created. She squeezes back. Next time, would she come to you? It was more possible now than it had been ten minutes ago. Every year, their high school has a Daddy-Daughter Dance for its freshman. Proud fathers and their flowering daughters, everyone enjoys it. You recall being petrified. Holding your daughter that close felt so awkward. Yet, she was scared, too. Reluctant. Her tiny bones seemed to vibrate. Like father like daughter.

The thing about falling off a pedestal is getting back up onto solid ground.

Unthink.

“It was a beautiful day when I awoke but then I started thinking.” A great line uttered by a strange man. Dave is ex-military, ex-cop and now drives a canary yellow VW Bug. He still pines for his mother’s affection, though she’s been dead for decades. Dave is 80 years old. He has become a fixture at one of your meetings and not a beloved one. You see the others roll their eyes when Dave shares. At first, you did too. Dave’s a slow learner. He repeats himself. At his age moping about his momma is weird. Now you listen to the coot, searching for gemstones in the mud:   … But then I started thinking.

Nearly 60 years old, the last 17 of them sober, you’d like to think you’re past the point of criticizing organized religion. Hating on the church is a cliché, though it seldom feels that way at first. Disavowing the sacred, calling it profane. It’s empowering. Then you start sounding like that snob who derides TV as a vast wasteland, or the Internet. Best to just get it out of your system. The man who keeps harping on the religion of his youth becomes no less tiring than Dave crying for his mother. Let it be. Popular religion is an opiate for the masses… the Budweiser of Higher Powers. Nothing wrong with it on Sunday. Most people in the program prefer a craft-brewed Higher Power. Spirituality is different from religion. Better than. Have they forgotten how outsiders view AA: a musty cult of chain smokers and book thumpers…Twelve Steps versus Ten Commandments?

Burning Question

The non-addict asks what is the meaning of life? The addict asks: Is this all there is? You called this many things: frustration, dissatisfaction, expectation… the yearning. Desiring something else. More. These unmet desires found respite in drugs and alcohol, albeit temporarily. But it was better than the alternative, or so it always seemed at the time, all the time.

When you finally found a church basement full of others like you, you thought: At last I am not the only one asking this question! It was the right idea, this revelation – a solid first draft. Alas, the yearning remained, humming like a generator, at times hissing, demanding, always there, always on.

Nor could you placate it with a Higher Power, not sufficiently. Your God wasn’t big enough. Is still not big enough. Would never be. But then came a realization as central as the question itself. It wasn’t that you stop asking: Is this all there is? But rather that you begin answering: Yes, this is all there is. And so be it.