More About My Childhood, Marriage, Divorce, and Sobriety

I'm feeling rebellious today. Rebellious in the sense that I don't care that this is a sentence fragment. Rebellious in that I want to just be totally honest. True to myself.

I've always been an "A" student. What that means for me, is, I want everyone to like me, especially those in power. You teach me, I absorb what you teach and spit it back to you just the way you want it, you give me an "A", and we're both happy...except that I just had to bust my ass to please you and your bosses, and that's no fun. And guess what: I didn't actually learn anything. I absorbed what you were saying just long enough to release it back to you the way you wanted it (yes, like a sponge...clichés exist for a reason), and I went along my merry way very grateful that you like me now.

I give you all the power in the world. You are God. You must like me, or I die.



Things have changed for me in that regard. With the help of a spiritual awakening, I've realized that you are not God. You are imperfect. Your word isn't Gospel. You have no power over me. All power comes from something greater than both of us. And yet we are all One, One with everything. My molecules and atoms, my keyboards' molecules and atoms...the hairs on my arm, the leaves on a tree, you - it's all the same.

And the only time there is is Now. When you talk about the past, you are denying the present, unless the past has some direct usefulness to Now. When you talk about the future, you are illusioning (I turned "illusion" into a verb), unless you are actually taking a step Now toward a future goal (and the "end" is not real, only the "means", right Now). (Eckhart Tolle)

I've been running around to various groups of people trying to get "help". "I'm not good enough." "I don't have the answers -- you must have them." "I can't do this on my own." Thank you, every one; you have helped me. Thank you for showing me just how fallible humans are. Thank you for showing me that the only real answer lies beyond us all. And yet, it's not beyond us. It's within us each. I can look within, instead of only looking to you. My own Being is worth something. The "something greater" doesn't necessarily mean something "beyond" or "without". The something within is connected to something greater. And the "something greater" isn't the words that come out of your mouth (I know, awkward noun-verb agreement), unless you connect yourself to it first before you speak. I know not to "listen" to you, now, if what you are saying isn't...True. If you know what Truth is, then I might "listen" to you, if I know what's good for me. But if not, I won't...if I know what's good for me. And I'm starting to know what's good for me = not "listening" to everything everybody says all the time. (The term "listen" I use to mean, "take what people say as True".)



I grew up with a neglectful, alcoholic mother and her abusive, alcoholic boyfriend. Then, I lived with my neglectful, insane dad and his abusive, meth-addicted girlfriend. In both households, I was a "stupid little bitch" who needed to "shut her goddamn mouth."

Teachers in school were the only ones who showed me kindness. They transmitted "knowledge," and if I was able to re-transmit that "knowledge" back to them just the way they transmitted it to me, I earned a mark of excellence that signified success, approval. Knowledge gave me the power to earn what I really wanted: Love.

I had few friends; kids who don't get good grades don't like kids who do. You have to make a choice - don't get good grades, and be "loved" by the masses, or get good grades, and be "loved" by the teachers. Teachers were the ones in power; their "love" was worth more. And their "love" more closely resembled the kind of Love I wished I could have gotten from either of my parents, the adults in my life who were supposed to Love me.



So I did my homework in the classrooms at lunch instead of socialize. Then, when I was 17, my younger sister, also desperately in need of Love (but who chose "love" from friends over "love" from teachers), came to live with me at our grandma's house. Because she was "loved" by friends, she was invited to parties. I had a job and a car, so I took her to these parties. There was alcohol available. I drank and I socialized, and for the first time in my life, people my age "loved" me, and it felt wonderful. My senior year of high school marked the beginning of my double-life. I still strove for good grades so I could be "loved" by teachers, but I still went to parties and drank so I could be "loved" by peers. I was accepted to UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UCLA, USC...and drove me, my sister, and my cousin home drunk nearly every weekend.

Then I met the alcoholic, heroin-addicted boy who would become my new best friend and later my boyfriend and later my husband. He Loved me very, very much, and I him. After I went off to (what in this blog I call SDSU, or UCLA; not sure which one I've chosen to falsely represent the real) college, my boyfriend got kicked out of his mom's house when she found some heroin in his drawer, and he came to live with me in my dorm room. I couldn't keep my grades up; I chose his Love over my teachers' "love" (it felt better, real), and dropped out, moved in with him at his grandma's house, went to a community college, and worked part-time. Later, he started to get his "Indian money" (his dad, who abandoned him and his mother after his birth, was from a tribe whose casino earned their members a good few grand a month; his dad enrolled him as a member before his dad took off), and we moved into a house together. My double-life continued, as I earned straight A's in school, tutored English, Algebra and Geometry for AVID at my high school alma mater...and was sometimes up til 3 am wandering the town as we waited for our heroin hook-up to bring us dope.



My boyfriend had been raised by a single, alcoholic, abusive mother and (because his dad was gone) her alcoholic, abusive father (although, his grandfather showed him Love and not the abuse he'd shown his children). When we were together, I became the alcoholic, drug-addicted abusive girlfriend/wife and he became the alcoholic, drug-addicted, abusive boyfriend/husband.

Then we had a child.

I couldn't let our child grow up in an alcoholic, drug-addled, abusive home. Absolutely 100% NO FUCKING WAY was I going to repeat the cycle for my son. It took a couple of years though, for things to finally change. We tried counseling, 12-step programs - but the one thing that we were trying to change - the fighting - was a result of the one thing we refused to change - the drinking (we had quit the heroin years before our son was conceived...and I managed to not drink while I was pregnant, but boy was I pissed).

I wasn't getting my husband's Love anymore, so - I needed to drink.  And I was determined that I could control my drinking, if only I just [insert anything imaginable]. Besides, my drinking wasn't as bad as his, so mine must not be that bad, right? It never occurred to us that the only way to control our drinking was not to drink in the first place. "To control and enjoy his drinking is the greatest obsession of every alcoholic." (Big Book, ch. 3). As alcoholics, we have an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. Once we take one drink, we develop what's known as the "phenomenon of craving". And that phenomenon is more powerful than we are.



I'm glad that I can report that we're both sober today. Unfortunately, we didn't get sober until after I left him and filed for divorce, two years and two-and-a-half months ago (on October 10, 2011). He's 5 months sober now, and I'm 22 months sober; he's had a harder go of it than I, but he also got started much younger: his mom offered him his first drink at age 8. He got into her marijuana by 10 and was using heroin, thanks to the local gang, by 12. But after 4 rehabs and a stint in jail, he's doing quite marvelously. We share custody of our son, who's now 4...and if we're lucky, won't end up nearly as fucked up as we.

I'm grateful to recovery groups, especially the one that shall not be named (per its traditions). My ex-husband is more involved in an outpatient rehabilitation program that focuses on chemical dependency and depression, and that's what's working for him. But for me, the 12 steps, meetings and sponsorship have been making possible for me to not drink or use, one day at a time. What I'll simply call "The Program" (in honor of the 11th tradition, which states, Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films) has also taught me how to simply "live life" (which is good, since I didn't have anyone else to teach me that while growing up...I was only taught to regurgitate facts or to do "bad" things).



After I was in The Program for awhile, I thought I'd try to solve other "problem areas" of my life by going to other programs. For example, I tended to spend way too much money and am in a lot of debt, so I joined a program for that. And after I left my husband, I had a lot of boyfriends and haven't stayed with any of them, so I joined a program for that. They don't have a "Mom's Anonymous", or I'd have joined that one, too; I really need a lot of help there.

But in all truth, I still spend too much money, and I still have boyfriends/dates/sexual encounters. But I work on a budget every month, and it gets better. And I do try to be honest with any man I get involved with at any given time, so I'm really not being a "bad person" there, either. The mom thing - well, I'm doing better than my mom did, perhaps, bless her heart...I just keep trying to do my best, every day. And my ex-husband and I keep Child Welfare Services (formally CPS) close by (i.e., we call them on each other at least once a month, lol); they're a big help.

I stopped going to the debt program, and am considering discontinuing to go to sex program, too. The program for alcoholics is the mother of all 12-step programs, after all, so why look any further for my development (in terms of 12-step programs)? Yeah, it's nice to go be around people with the same "problems" I have. But many of them aren't using the solution - the 12 steps -in the way that people do in The Program. The latter is a well-oiled machine. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?



The Program also has a set of 12 Traditions that keeps it together. In these other 12-step programs, even if people work the steps (and many of them don't), people have no idea that there are also set of traditions that helps the 12-step program work for everyone (unless they are also members The Program, the only requirement for which is a desire to stop drinking: tradition 3). I am glad non-alcoholics do have access to a 12-step program for whatever ails them. But The Program was the first and the basis for all of them. That's why in The Program we say we're "grateful" alcoholics.

When it comes down to it, though, all one really needs to do for a successful, happy life, I'm told, is be honest, kind, tolerant, and loving, and free oneself of fear, resentment, dishonesty and selfishness (but not to the extent that one hurts his/her self: "to thine own self be true"). Self-preservation is really a by-product of helping others and yourself, apparently. It seems paradoxical, but it isn't: You only "keep it" if you "give it away", a saying goes. That's why the truly enlightened are always teachers (although there are many "teachers", in the most basic sense of the word, who aren't enlightened, which is the reason for this post in the first place, if you scroll back up).



Just for kicks, if you're curious, I'll share here the 12 steps which are suggested as a program of recovery from that state of complete powerlessness:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So, it's really pretty simple. Admit you have a problem, clean house, make amends, and help others. If 12 steps seems lofty, check out the documentary that explains their evolution: Bill W. - Where do we aim what we thirst for? For more information, or if you think you may have a problem controlling your drinking, you can search online for a meeting (here is the website I used to find my first meeting: http://www.simeetings.com/LA/CalCountiesMtgIndex.html). The meeting is where it all begins.

If you aren't an alcoholic, Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book The Four Agreements (summarized here very well), also teaches us "how to live," with four simple commands: (1) "Be impeccable with your word." (2) "Don't take anything personally." (3) "Don't make assumptions." And (4) "Always do your best."



Then there's Eckhart Tolle, with The Power of Now. Here's a paragraph from his book that summarizes his philosophy for living quite well:

Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life -- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you. (Tolle, 35)

 

And "The Cave Allegory" in Plato's Republic is highly illluminating.

So anyway...this post may have turned into proselytizing. I've used the term "you" loosely. But I'm just grateful to be learning new ways to live and to be happy other than needing people to love me, and I thought I'd share it all. I've realized how much power I've been giving people all my life, and how little power I've allowed my own self. I've also now subscribed to Psychology Today and have begun reading The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul. I'm trying not to assign God-like power to any of these works of words by people...but they are helping (along with, my favorite, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous) to liberate me from assigning most people God-like power.

This is my Awakening. I'm 30 years old. Better late than never. I am so very grateful for those teachers who, however imperfect themselves, have taught me how to live as opposed to simply regurgitate information for their "love": Gautama Buddha, Plato, Jesus of Nazareth, Carl Jung, America's "Founding Fathers", The Oxford Groups, William G. Wilson, Ron Paul, Eckhart Tolle, Don Miguel Ruiz, Wayne Dyer, Rocco Versaci, Martha Margo Flores, Rich W, Christal Q....and last but always first, God.

And for the record: I'm still fucked up, and what I say isn't Gospel, either. I'm just like you. Hell...I am you. And I do Love you...because, for the first time in my life...I Love me.

My Mom, Her Boyfriend Harry, and My Son

The "what-I-don't-know-can't-hurt-me" approach to life is designed to help one "not feel pain" when reality - current or past - is (or seems) too painful to face. But whatever the ostrich is hiding from is sure to eat the ostrich nonetheless. It's time to take my head out of my - sand - and shine a light into that dark and scary cave of childhood.

Synopsis: A dragon keeps a damsel in distress hidden away where he tortures her nearly to death. Her children respond to her screams of terror with curdling screams of their own. The dragon stomps out of its cloister, heaves over to the eldest (the boy), grabs him by the neck, and violently flings him across the cave against the wall where he slides down into a motionless lump on the floor. The monstrous fire-breather then leaps upon the older girl, its weight atop her, stopping her gasps with its tight grasp around her neck, too, until her body ceases to quiver. The dragon doesn't see the youngest girl hiding in a dark corner, peeing her pants. It snorts and retreats to continue its torture of the damsel. The children awake dizzily and retreat into their fantasy worlds - the boy, Stephen King; the girls, Walt Disney.

The long-awaited knight in shining armor never arrived, but that didn't stop me from continuing to fantasize about being rescued by an older man into adulthood. At age ten, I started dreaming about strange grown men climbing through the window at night to whisk me away and take care of me forever. There were a few unsavory characters who entered the scene here and there, but none of them saved me: I was molested eight times from age four to age twelve, mostly by drug addicts and alcoholics (and once by my brother, when I was four, but he was seven, and I just don't think he knew any better).

I haven't written about the year my mom left our dad when I was eight, and we spent three months homeless and living on hot dogs with the aforementioned alcoholic-abusive Fiery Dragon (who was really, well, "The Carpenter on Peppermint Schnapps"...I'll call him Harry). My mother did leave him when I was fourteen and took our younger sister with her; my brother went to live with his heroin-addict best friend and I went to live with our dad and his abusive, meth-addicted girlfriend. So my reality, as a child, just wasn't all that great. But, unfortunately, it didn't stop there. After high school, I fell in love with a heroin-addict-alcoholic who wasn't really abusive until about two years into the relationship. Then, before I knew it, I was drinking and using heroin, too -- and now I was my mother. Once I saw that, I left him, after being with him for ten years. Then, I was back on my knight-in-shining-armor quest. The fairy tale really just turned out to be one long fucking nightmare.

There is of course a problem with accepting a myth-story (fake = "having a false or misleading appearance; fraudulent") solution to my problem. But it wasn't until I tried to apply that "solution", repeatedly experiencing disillusioned failure, did the reality fairy pull me from my blindness and blind me with its light (you'll get that if you read Plato's Cave Allegory from his Republic; there are no fairies in it, but it's quite apropos).

And further still, there's a problem with the problem to which I'm accepting a problematic solution. The problem itself is fake, atleast now. As an adult, I don't need to be rescued. And if I really feel like I do, well, I've got the roles all mixed up. I'm the knight in shining armor, not the abused princess or damsel in distress (unless I make myself those by continuing to chase these nasty Princess Charmers). And while I thought I'd be slaying dragons when I shone the light into the cave of my life, what I'm actually finding is a trove of treasure.

Many who come from dark childhoods are afraid to look (that is what fantasy is for). But one of my best friends just killed herself because of the torment she was feeling, not wanting to look at the upbringing that shaped her into the love addict she became (so she could change herself), and not able to cope with her Prince Charming leaving her for another woman.

I decided to brave it. I'm here to save myself, after all. So I started with my brother, because with him lies my first dark memory that tormented me long into adulthood. Surprisingly, writing about it gave me an immediate precious gift that I didn't expect.

I had my son with me a couple weeks ago, a day after writing that post (I share custody of him with his dad). I had written about my brother's dinosaur and space books, and then I realized that I had gotten my son a couple of dinosaur and space books for his fourth birthday in August! But -- having been so involved in my pursuits of Prince Charming the past few months (besides, um, the past 21 years) -- not once had I read them to him. I remembered how the things my brother used to do with me constituted my entire world, and the question, I am my son's world - what world am I giving him? came up and gently tapped me on the shoulder and begged for my attention.

So I read to him, intently. Later in the day, I was proud of myself. Because I have started writing about my childhood, I also thought: If my son grows up and writes about his past, what will he write about? It was a way for me to change myself here and now and be the kind of mother I need to be for him.

With resolve, I began to invoke in myself again The Knight in Shining Armor, for him. I do know this: he won't write about men beating his mother until she chokes on her own blood, or men choking him until he passes out. He won't write about his mother always being behind a closed door, or about her being asleep for most of the day, or drinking 100-proof Southern Comfort for breakfast. He won't write about jumping into dumpsters for cans, crushing them, and taking them with his mom's boyfriend to recycle for hot dogs, beans, cigarettes and Peppermint Schnapps. He won't write about his mom telling him that they were "going on vacation" and then leaving his dad and not seeing his dad for a whole year, or ending up in a shelter for battered and homeless women and children for a few months until his mom got back together with her abuser. He won't write about fending for himself and microwaving a couple tortillas with cheese or putting chili powder on a head of lettuce and calling it dinner. He won't write about having to wear dirty second-hand clothing and being teased every day at school for it. He won't write about only getting to see his dad every other weekend and his dad's meth addict girlfriend throwing kittens against the bedroom door and killing them. He won't write about how he got an F in Art in 5th grade for attention and asked his mom to spank him so he could see if she cared, but then have her say, "That's fine, honey, I'm sure you did your best." He won't write about having a 16 year-old girlfriend when he's 12, or a 21 year-old girlfriend when he's 16 -  at least, not if I can help it.

I let my son see his dad more than every other weekend. I have conversations with him, teach him things, and let him know how much he means to me. I have a job, a car, and I take him places. When he grows older, I'll be there when he gets awards in school. I'll be there to pick him up from soccer practice (or whatever sport he chooses, if he wants to play a sport). If he joins a choir, I'll go to his performances. I'll make sure he gets put in honors classes. If he gets an "F" in Art in fifth grade just to try and get my attention, I'll give it to him, and ground him for a week. If he gets placed in the 4th-6th grade county spelling bee as a 3rd grader, I'll take him myself instead of making him ride the bus with all the older kids and no lunch. I won't let us be homeless for a half a year and call it a camping trip. I won't move 600 miles away when he's 14 and only see him once every three years. I'll be there when he gets married, and when his wife has their first child. I won't be drunk every time he calls me on the phone, sometimes driving, and talk to him about my new alcoholic boyfriend punching me in the nose.

I was pushing my son on a swing at the park the day after. And I realized something else - I don't have even one memory of my mom ever taking me to a park. I have hardly any memories of being with my mom at all. It's no wonder that I've been so desperate to find some kind of love wherever I can. I thought of this just when, after pushing my son on the swing for 30 minutes and wanting to stop and sit down at the table and let him find a playmate to run around with, he asked me to do another "underdog" (my dad did take us to parks and used to do "underdogs" with us on the swings).

So I made myself keep pushing. Besides, I was really enjoying the conversation. My son was giving me a full synopsis of the movie The Goonies that he had just watched for the first time at his dad's house, and it absolutely tickled me (it was one of my very favorite movies growing up). But, finally, he did get tired of swinging, and he did find a playmate with whom to play with his three Godzillas and two dinosaur figures, and I could finally do what I'd been dreaming of - sit down. So I sat down and began to write about my mother never being there for me, but that prompted me to do something else - I called her. 

I know it sounds counterintuitive, but it's actually part of a weekly ritual. I call my mom once a week, at a minimum, to let her know I love her and am thinking of her. I got the idea from a woman who was speaking at a convention on spirituality. She said, "Now here's a prayer for you all; I dare you to try this: before you go to bed every night, say, 'God, please have people treat me tomorrow just the way I treated people today.' Do that for 30 days and I guarantee it'll change your life." I haven't done it for 30 days - and that was 34 days ago. But, it did change the way I treat my mom. All I want is for her to call me, to think of me, to ask me how I'm doing -- to love me. So that's what I do, every week, for her. Maybe I oughta do it every day.

Forgiveness is an exact science, really. You swallow pain and resentment and churn it into compassion and understanding before regurgitating it as patience, tolerance and love. It takes a lot of energy and practice, and can be pretty damn exhausting. But one thing she did teach me: "Two wrongs don't make a right." So no matter how difficult it is to swallow when she says has no regrets for the way she "raised" us, and forgives herself, I just let it come back up calmly as, "I forgive you, too, Mom."

And I could tell she was drunk and on pills and probably won't even remember the conversation. But if she's still alive next week, I'll just do that same thing. It's the death of the defaultus modus operandi -- instead of trying so desperately to be loved, now I love. I love my mom, I love my son, and I love myself.