Layers of Emotion

Exactly what factors bring on alcoholism remains unknown, although genetics, trauma, and alcoholic role models often play a role. At some point in our early years, many of us were dealt more pain than we knew how to process, so when we discovered a “Get Out of Pain Free” card – aka alcohol and drugs – we rolled with it.  We drank or drugged away difficult feelings, muting them, taking the edge off. But over time, this card not only quit working; it morphed into a get out of happiness, dignity, human connection, and desire to live card.

That’s when we faced the two exclusive alternatives: “One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help” (p.25)

Coming up on 30 years sober, I’ve found that I eventually reach this same T in the road with every difficulty, except that now I find other ways to “blot out” what’s actually going on for me. Used to be infatuation, sex, self-pity, and jealousy topped the list. Today it’s anxiety, anger, and many forms of pointless distraction like online shopping, posting stuff, scrolling, etc.

Whatever. You get the idea. I stack secondary preoccupations and emotions on top of unwanted feelings about whatever bump in life has come up. 

Exhibit A is my life these days. Call me woo-woo, but I have an angel who gives me guidance.

About two years ago, he directed me that once my mom died and my son moved out, I should sell my home of 25 years and buy land in a place where I could create an animal sanctuary and retreat site for alcoholic addicts. Mom died. My son will move in with his girlfriend after graduation. So I said, Okay, I’ll do this thing, however difficult. 

As I write, I’m in the first stages, having rushed to get my house listed in time to meet the terms of my offer on 5 acres in rural Oregon. I’m between homes, living with my two dogs in an idyllic rustic cabin with a beautiful view of Puget Sound and distant mountains, surrounded nature. I got Starlink and built a foundation for it on the roof, though the trees around me mean it quits every 10 minutes for about 10 seconds, so I have to teach from outside the local store. No laundry or drinking water, extension cords everywhere, and I bathe in rust-water from the 15-foot well. But I’m set. I’m doing it. Hopefully, the next pieces will fall into place.

So what have my primary feelings been? Accomplishment? Excitement? Savoring all this beauty and simplicity? No. Try anxiety, constant fretting about the dogs, financial insecurity, criticism of my listed house, doubts about the new place, and just a general, pervasive sense that I’m doing it wrong.

Anxiety reached such a peak that I can’t leave the dogs in the cabin, even if I turn off the gas and unplug everything, because I’m STILL TORTURED with worry that the cabin will burn down while I teach, attend an AA meeting, or visit the post office. I also eat enough sugar-free cookies to hurt my stomach. With no one to talk to, I waste hours online and get riled up about the news.

But as I’ve continued to pray for relief from these unwanted feelings, something’s slowly shifted. I was scraping moss chunks off the roof the other day when I suddenly felt tears rising. Out of nowhere, a sob wanted to come up my throat. So I let them through. I set aside my tools, turned off my podcast, sat down on the shingles and ugly-cried – at first not even sure why.

But then it came: My home! My mom! Raising my little boy! My ex lost to alcoholism! My youth and its expansive, limitless future of dreams. All are passing from my life, and I loved them, I miss them. I don’t know anything – who I’m going to be, what my life will look like. Yet I need to grieve the life I’m leaving. My angel told me, You have a chapter left, so let’s use it for good. But who wants a goddam coda, however meaningful?

For me, the gift of sobriety is learning to recognize that it’s not about the cabin burning or Netanyahu kindling world war. It’s never about the big tizzy, whatever form that tizzy may take. When illusions fall away, it’s about facing the vulnerability that 99.9% of what happens is outside my control. It’s about knowing my fate is always in god’s hands more than my own, and trusting that god’s goodness makes up the foundation of what happens despite my human ignorance of the why’s and how’s. Faith and courage — these are all I EVER have to draw on. Ever, ever, ever. 

I remember the predawn hours after the first night I’d spent sober, when I felt so terrified of living with or without booze that I dropped to my knees by the glass doors and begged god for a sign. Across the near-dark patch of grey sky in front of me flew a lone bird, silently navigating from hither to yon with almost no light. I realized then that nothing thrives without faith in something, whether conscious or unconscious of that faith. My faith had lain in booze and ego, both of which had failed me. Now it was time to hand it over to god — the same god guiding that bird.

That was 1995, and it’s still true for me today. Over and over I wander from humility, forgetting, thinking this life is my show, but eventually I’m led back to that touchstone, and that has made all the difference.