Songbird

Yesterday’s writing was difficult.  Writing about times of pain leaves me searching for the right words and restless with the remnants of memories it would be convenient to forget.  But I don’t get that.  I’ve heard people refer to their past and say “I was a different person. I don’t know who that person was.”  Really?  Really?  I do.  That person is the person that is still capable of drinking if I'm not diligent.  And if I consume alcohol?…if I put my brain on drugs, that’s that person.  I don’t forget she ever existed.  That would be too easy, frankly.  Each day I move further away from those memories, but those years were not just filled with pain, they were filled with beauty as well.  Family, friends, child births, accomplishments, singing….always singing.  The regret lies in the fact that I know it was all even more beautiful than I was capable of seeing at the time.  As the years went by, my tolerance for happiness was just replaced by my tolerance for Chardonnay. 

Life is funny, and if you can’t laugh, you may as well resign yourself to emotions that will get you nowhere….that actually turn you around and send you retreating from the better part of yourself.

I was surrounded by some important company at my rock bottom.  Most people feel shockingly alone, but the reality is that even at that low, I was not alone, and I knew it.  There was my husband who drove me to rehab.  I drank on the way, at 10 am, the last stand in a fight that just needed a new battleground. “I’m not your battleground, bitch.”  Swigging that last small, plastic bottle of wine was the final railing against an intruder that had just taken too much of my time, energy, and ability to fully love.  When we pulled over to the gas station, he knew that I was going to buy something.  Clearly it was not recommended, but at that moment, it was too easy to think that I had nothing left to lose.  He chimed, “Okay………so I take it, you are going out with a bang, huh?”  “Yep,” I said.  “Yes, I am.”  And we smiled.  Yes, we smiled.  They were painful, forced smiles, but smiles nonetheless.  He was willing to fight alongside me, even in that darkness, with humor, and that’s what I needed at the moment.  The final two weeks had been something out of a movie, like I finally relented to the inevitable, knowing that the drama was almost over.  I could feel the rising cadences of the soundtrack, and I knew I’d be out in the sun soon.  Okay, okay, so I didn’t KNOW that, but there had to be some kind of hope present.  We are not capable of hopelessness in its absolute fullest form, as long as we still have breath. 

And the look in his eyes?  Well, this is a crucial point.  I never saw judgement in them, only fear.  I knew that he wanted the best for me, and I for him, and that was a part of what propelled me forward to find a new path.  And that happened to be on the road to Hunt, TX with a 4 pack of Sutter Home Chardonnay at my feet. 

He never threatened me.  Never tried to exert power over my disease.  He saw the ugliest part of me, and he knew that the beauty was still there.  I completely understand that loved ones of those in the throes of addictive behavior need to create boundaries.  A boundary is not drawn out of hate, but the challenge of how to show love while creating boundaries is quite difficult.  My best way to understand this, is how I parent my children and how I try to have boundaries for myself in this new evolution of jen.  It’s an important exercise, drawing these lines.  There are many things that I used to accept that I no longer will. I wouldn’t call it empowerment so much as I would call it, resolve. 

I tried this out during my stay in Hunt. I had to have boundaries, because I was there to do the work. It was easy to see, as I sat in a little microcosm of society, that there were people that I gravitated towards. They were people like me. People that wanted to smile, not all the time, but you knew the desire was there….waiting for its appropriate entrance. My roommate and I laughed so hard that we, yes literally, wet ourselves. Full on belly laughs that we couldn’t stifle. I remember almost feeling guilty for our laughter sometimes.  I hoped that its hearing didn’t shine a light on the suffering of anyone in a bordering room. 

But I love humor. Mostly inappropriate humor. It seems to come to me hard and fast, and I have a quick tongue that still works faster than my edit tool. Even that is a new part of giving a voice to what lies beneath. Evidently, it was there all along, but my need to be proper kept my shift button down, a slight alteration of what was in its original place. 

So even the day that I got out of rehab, I turned on my phone for the first time in 30 days.  Mike and I were driving home, and my feelings were swirling around me like honey bees.  The first message I opened was from a fellow mom and neighbor.  And it said that there was a rumor going around that I had been in an accident and that I was in a coma.  Ummmm……it was from three weeks before.  I hesitated at how to respond.  Oh, Jesus.  What do you say to that?  I don’t remember what I wrote, but I took three weeks to respond to that!  That shit is funny, ya'll, and if that kind of humor makes you uncomfortable, then perhaps you haven’t been at the depths where you need it to survive. 

And I sang.  I sang everyday during rehab.  It felt like a miracle.  Caroline Myss defines a miracle as “when God bends the laws of the universe for you.”  Finding my voice, finding joy, finding humor, and finding beauty within those walls was a miracle for me.  I found friends with awesome suffering, brilliant minds, and open hearts.

I sang during Community Time my first day out of detox.  Jacked up on meds and squinting from the light, I reluctantly agreed to sing that day, because a few people had heard that I was a choir director.  I hadn’t planned it, so I went with a tune that sits so close to my heart that you can’t see where one meets the other.  “Will there really be a morning?”  I shook so hard that I feared I might fall, because that kind of nakedness is nothing like what I had ever known.  That was probably my first good question.  Will there really be a morning?  Even its title suggests that someone has already said that there will. 

There was another client who played the piano.  I mean, played the piano.  And he sang with high tenor soul, man.  We didn’t have sheet music, so we had to function from memory and experience, and our collaboration lied in hymns and standards that we had known for years.  There was “When the Saints go Marching in” on down to “Carolina in my Mind,” and each offering was precious.  Eventually, others came out of the woodwork, people that hadn’t sung in years, or hadn’t played soberly in years.  “Down to the River to Pray,” sung acapella in 3-part harmony, “You are my sunshine” with one of the doctors from staff on banjo….  Just…Amazing.

I didn’t feel incarcerated.  I felt lucky, lucky to be surrounded by love, and lucky to be present in those moments.  My truest wish is that people close to me could have been within those walls.  Not to hear me sing.  They are probably tired of that.  But to hear others sing, their voices carrying through their pain, transcending circumstances of suffering and shame, into flashes of freedom and grace. 

They sang to me every day.  Not literally in song, but in the purity of their spirit.

I write this, because I didn’t do this alone.  I don’t think anyone can, and if so, they are making this business of life more difficult than it needs to be. 

Look around.  The help is there.  They are singing to you full of amazing grace. 

I was never a caged bird, although I know why she sings.  

I had good company and we were a chorus.