Recovery

In a room with bright white walls
Sit in a circle, down the hall
To your left and to your right
Strangers’ faces pose no fright
And there you sit and say your name
Down come your walls and all your shame
To face the past, and its today
There’s really nothing left to say

Laying on my bed one day, pen and paper in hand – I tried to sum up my experience going to an AA meeting with a family member. The lines above spewed from the pen in lyric form and I couldn’t help but hum them as each dripped onto the paper.

Since the event, over 5 years ago, I’ve felt a weight in my chest — as if by entering this club of addicts, I had found myself staring in the mirror. But that wasn’t an instantaneous revelation.

It took me years of questioning why the event had stayed so clearly and ever-present in my conscience for me to figure out why it had been so meaningful. At the time, and during the meeting, I had maintained my exclusion – my I’m not one of you stance by staring at the ground and wearing only my half-hearted smile: the smile that says, “I’m not against you, but I’m certainly not one of you.” This is typical behavior of a girl who has built walls of judgment to pretend her own feelings of otherness and exclusion are willed.

Because I have what two therapists have called “an inability to access [my] emotions,” I’ve found that singing is one of the few ways I can tap into that reservoir and release some of the repression before it turns into a Katrina-like flood.

So, I sing. And when I decided to turn the lyrics above into a song, I opted to record the song without rehearsal; to use the few lines written as a jumping off point and to simply feel the melody.

I repeated the words over and over.

I improvised melodies and additional lyrics.

I cried in the voice box.

The song never got finished.

Like the song, I’ve remained in limbo.

We can face our truths. We can face our pain. We can acknowledge, compartmentalize, analyze, repress, and beat knowledge to oblivion. Accessing doesn’t mean knowing. Knowing doesn’t mean dealing. And dealing certainly doesn’t lead invariably to recovering.

My accusatory line in the song – the one that got me to releasing the valve on the reservoir: There’s nothing, there’s no one, that you could love more than your recovery.

I had written those words as a jab to the alcoholic in my life. It was a child’s way of throwing a tantrum and saying “you never loved me! You were too busy being consumed by your disease!”

I didn’t understand.

It’s funny how legacies work themselves out. And it’s funny how we grow up and (hopefully) stop throwing so many tantrums and realize instead how all those things we’ve felt and fought and ripped to shreds were little pieces of ourselves that we’d encounter later – only to say “why, hello there. you look familiar.”

For the past year I’ve stared at Addiction in the mirror and commented on the familiar curves of her face, her shadow like a mime.

For the past year I’ve recognized that my addictive compulsions have been following me around for the majority of my life. Manifested for most of my life in the binge eating that led to my morbid obesity and kept me there. It laid dormant or at least somewhat repressed for years as the focus to healthily lose weight satisfied its need for control and physical transformation. However, for the past year, it renewed itself, and manifested in the form of bulimia.

Our addictions are shape-shifters.

We can’t choose the legacies and heirlooms coursing through the blood in our veins, or implanted like hand-prints on our hearts. But we can choose the legacy we leave behind. We can choose to recover.

I’ve chosen recovery. And, in a weird twist of fate, I’ve found solace in the angry lyrics inspired by hurt; I’ve found forgiveness for him and for myself.

I’m healing. I’ve gotten help. And I’m addressing that shape-shifter Addiction that’s been my shadow for over 13 years now. Without addressing her, head-on, she’ll invariably don another shape until I find her in the mirror, checking me out, and smiling, “don’t I look familiar?”

If you are suffering from an addiction or an eating disorder, please get help. I’m here, too.

<3,

The Cranky One