How to Have Regrets
If there’s any one regret I have, aside from the permanent brain damage I gave myself that brought with it a years-long anxiety disorder, it’s the fact that I didn’t learn how to connect with other people well enough to understand that the intimacy you experience in real relationships is a better high than being drunk. I was only having bad experiences with others, as sloppy drunks always do, so I was creating these long shame shadows that I had to constantly run from. I was a human bog. Anyone interested enough to stop and chat immediately felt the ground liquefying underneath them and ran. Maybe I was grabbing at their pant legs too much. Hard to say. I was drunk.
What I do know is that when I finally stopped drinking at twenty-seven, I’d only had two long-term boyfriends—no idea how I snagged them—and in my sobriety, I was mortified by myself at all times.
The hardest part about the first few months of sobriety is that your recent “party” memories come flooding back, most of which are comprised of cringe-inducing fuckups, that then replay in your mind on a horrifying gif-loop. I was horrified the first time I had to sit and listen to the white-wine drunk at the table next to ours talk loudly, be shushed, and then sloppily attack her tablemates. Yes, sister! You have a right to humiliate yourself and others! Fight them all! Fight! Fight! Fight!
I spent a solid twelve years in the bottle. And twelve young years. Years that I could’ve spent learning to play tennis or write fiction or flirt. But no. I chose to seal myself inside the glass medical jar of my fifteen-year-old emotional mind-set. I drowned myself in wine-cooler formaldehyde and put myself up on the highest shelf and kicked over the ladder. And it was a specialty ladder. You couldn’t just buy one of them at the mall. Oh, and then I put a sticker on the front of the jar that said, “Don’t ever look at this.” Then I smoked a Capri and did my best impression of the girl in the “Father Figure” video, even though I have never looked anything like her. The hair was similar, but not the same. Also, she was a model.
What I’m trying to say is that you can absolutely choose to live in a drunken, drugged-out fantasy world. Many do. It’s just that, when you’re finally forced to come up for air, seeing as it’s not a world but in fact a suffocating delusion, you’ll find that nothing seems to go your way. (Models are not included in the preceding generalization. Or really ever in what I’m saying. If you’re a model, go with god. Enjoy your endless flow of worship and have a great time for the rest of us. Reenact the “Father Figure” video. That’s what I’d do.)
People fear sobriety because without the booze, you’re forced to see—A Clockwork Orange–style—that you’re bad at relationships and bad at vulnerability and bad at honesty and your rants about life’s injustices are generally not cute. And if you see all that, you have to give up the dream that some brave soul is going to show up and extend themselves to you even though your arms are crossed and your back is turned. You have to stop pretending and start actually earning your keep. It’s basic human math. You gotta bring something to the table. You can’t just show up empty-handed and expect to be fed.
How to Get Out of Your Jar
The jar sucks. If you’ve put yourself into one, it’s time to meditate on ways to get out. Admit you don’t really like it. Admit you’re faking it. Consider that there’s actually more safety in NOT faking it. That makes me think of my favorite AA axiom: self-esteem is built by esteemable acts.
Why don’t they tell us that in junior high? Wanna feel good? Do something nice for someone else. It’s all very obvious and yet mysterious and deep at the same time. My fifteen-year-old self doesn’t trust it. That’s why I try not to let her run things anymore.
I didn’t even know she was in charge until I went to—sing it with me!—therapy. When you feel totally lost and don’t know what to do, it’s time to go to therapy. Shop around, find a nice therapist who makes you feel heard, and tell them all your bullshit. ALL OF IT. And then let them tell you what they think you should do. And then try to do it. It’s actually kind of simple. That’s why it’s hard for a lot of people. We’re convinced we have to suffer, especially if we’ve been on our worst behavior for half of our lives.
But that’s not a fact, that’s a coping mechanism you’ve (I’ve) created to make yourself (myself) feel better about doing bad things. It’s time to stop doing things that feel bad. But that’s going to feel worse because it’s new. It’s a change. And it’ll be rocky in the beginning. This is when you’ll really try to tell yourself it’s hot-tub time. You’ll think, My hot tub was always fun and great and never had human shit floating in it. If you’re in therapy, you’ll say it aloud to another adult who will then say, “I’m sorry. Let’s go back—you told me you shit in that hot tub on the reg.” And then you’ll have to say, “Ah yes. You are correct. I did. Even if I went back now, it would smell like bleach and everyone would give me dirty looks. Thank you for your input. I needed that.”
Then the hot-tub fantasy dies and is hopefully replaced by a hot-tub reality. I mean, that’s the ultimate goal, anyway. But the difference is, you have to build the reality hot tub by yourself, by hand, including the engine. So you won’t get to sink into it for a while. And you’ll need to consult with your hot-tub building specialist—the therapist—to make sure you’re not fucking it up. Then, after several years of hard work and hard crying, you’ll have this thing that will actually hold you as you float in its warm waters of self-acceptance and then “I Melt with You” will come on and you’ll feel just fine.
Have I ruined hot tubs for you yet? I really want to.
Ten Starter Ideas for Self-Care Beginners
• Buy any shirt you like that’s under ten dollars—you deserve it! (Again, only buy well-made jeans, but get any shirt you want.)
• Make a list of things you’re proud of. Continually try to add items to the list.
• If you do something you’re not proud of, say you’re sorry in real time. This one is hard.
• Practice not reacting to things. Life isn’t a three-camera sitcom. You don’t need to have a take. You can not know. You can also not care.
• Call an older relative. Generally, they love you and love talking with you. Tell them you miss them. Make them tell you stories from their childhood. Get some other narrative into your life besides your internal dialogue.
• If you’re going to a yoga class for the first time, remember you’re allowed to be new and not great yet. Try to get the good vibes and fight the need to criticize and compare yourself. Godspeed if you go in for hot yoga. It seriously just seems too hot.
• Work at a food bank, a homeless shelter, an after-school reading program. Extend yourself to others in need. This feels good immediately and gives you perspective.
• Adopt a cat or dog. Come on, you can afford it, you tightwad. Animals make good company while you’re learning to become good company yourself.
• Learn to play an instrument. It’s something to do when you’re alone, and it feels good. If you’re not musical, learn to draw. Start to write a book of essays (IT’S REALLY EASY). Put something you’ve made into the world. It’s a good way to practice vulnerability.
• In fact, read Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly. You’ll learn about vulnerability and maybe you’ll find your Georgia.
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The Top Three Swears and How To Use Them
1. Shit: A classic, utilitarian swear that lies on the mild end of the cursing spectrum. Best when muttered under one’s breath as a form of self-soothing; worst when yelled at the top of the lungs inside a Starbucks. That means someone who can’t self-regulate is sharing a confined space with you, and that is scary. This swear is most fun when spoken by the character Senator Clay Davis in the television series The Wire. Go look up a compilation of him saying it on that show and learn swear-based self-expression from the master.
2. Fuck: A straight-u
p red zone swear. This is the word you use when you want to be heard and/or upset your dad at Thanksgiving. Although the force of impact varies from family to family, if you’re throwing F-bombs, you’re kicking communications into high gear. Very effective with and on children. There’s something innately sinister about the sound of the F-word. Whereas shit is a quick, light hit, fuck is a low gut punch. I think it’s that U sound in the beginning. It’s guttural and threatening, bringing to mind the deep muffler rumblings of a Hell’s Angels rally. Dukes up, the F-word’s in town!
3. Cunt: Well, well, well. Look who we have here. The word that dare not speak its name. The Voldemort of swears. It’s the C-word. This swear pushes the cursing needle all the way over into crisis mode. It’s a fork-dropper. It’s a fight-ender and a silent treatment–starter. Saying the C-word in anger constitutes a verbal scorching of the earth. There’s no coming back. And yet, in the UK, I hear they’re required to say it three times a day to three different people as they’re having each of their three daily teas. (I’m kidding. Don’t write in; I know what tea means, ya daft cunt.)
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Georgia’s Top Ten “Holy Shit!” Moments in Therapy
“Georgia, you worship at the altar of doubt.”
My current therapist, Kim,2 a lovely, lithe ex-ballerina in her midforties who wears the most beautiful, understated jewelry, said this to me, and when I heard it I could practically feel a new neural pathway forming in my gray, squishy brain. These moments are the ones therapy junkies like me live for. They don’t happen often, but when they do, they remind you how much there is still to learn about yourself. Bombshells like this one, if processed correctly, can lead to becoming a happier, healthier person.
I’ve been going to therapy since I was six, which means thirty-some-odd years of new neural pathway revelations. Therapy has been a part of my life since I can remember, a lot like acne and that one black wiry hair on my chin. It’s actually a red flag when I’m not going to therapy, as it’s a sure sign I’m avoiding something in my psyche. As someone who’s introspective to a fault, I find it delightful in an absurd way every time I have a new revelation. Even after literally decades of being in therapy, I still have major realizations about why I behave the way I do or why my emotions do what they do. Having those “OMFG, I GET IT!” moments in therapy are really thrilling to me.
OK, because my OCD (legit diagnosed!) brain loves lists and organization, here’s a list of ten things I’ve gleaned from my lifetime of therapy.
10. It’s important to have someone to emote to, even if it’s someone you’re paying.
I remember in vivid detail the day my dad moved out of our house for good. He only took a few things with him—clothes and a couple of framed photos. Most of the furniture pieces were hand-me-downs from my mother’s side of the family, and all the decorative touches were made by my mom during the few years she got to fulfill her dream of being a housewife. That dream was over, but you could hardly tell anything had even changed, let alone that a family was being dismantled.
My heart broke a little bit a couple of times that day. It first cracked when he walked out the door. I begged him to stay. Then again later when I grabbed his pillow from off what had been my parents’ bed and clutched it to my chest as I lay on his workout bench. He’d later come back for the bench once he had a place to live. When my mom caught me crying while taking deep inhales of pillow, which still smelled like my dad’s musky, piney aftershave, she told me to put it back. “It isn’t your father’s anymore.”
Later that evening when he finally called to let me, Asher, and Leah know he was OK, all I could hear was the huge world he was now inhabiting by himself echoing through the line. I didn’t have the ability to imagine him anywhere but home with us, but he was out in the chasm of dark night, where danger lurked in every shadow. He was supposed to be home with us, watching TV with a can of Bud Light sweating in his hand until dinner was ready, then we’d all sit around the table eating and talk about our day. Then maybe we’d play a board game or watch TV as a family. If it was Friday night, Shabbat, we’d light the candles and he’d lead us in a melodic prayer, a blessing for “a good week, a week of peace” the words in a language I didn’t understand but whose power I still felt in my bones.
But over the past year those family evenings had happened less and less while the beer cans had become more and more, and instead of board games and prayers, our evenings were filled with a tension, the language of which I also couldn’t understand but felt even deeper in my bones.
When I said good night and hung up the phone the house felt empty and unfamiliar. My heart broke for the final time that day, and truthfully, I don’t think it’s ever fully recovered. Divorce, man, it’s a fucking bitch.
After he moved out and the messy divorce proceedings began, I took to hiding in the cozy closet under the stairs (remember how I Harry Pottered with Ray Bradbury under the stairs? Yeah, Harry Potter definitely didn’t exist at that point, so I’m not a copycat.).
The dim light from the bare bulb overhead was soothing and cast deep shadows off the shelves of dusty board games and extra bedsheets. It felt like a world all my own, where custody battles and sibling rivalry didn’t exist, and James and the Giant Peach wasn’t a fantasy but could maybe be my reality.
I’d make a comfy bed on the floor with the blankets my grandma Thelma had knitted, each in coordinating tacky ’70s colors—brown, marigold, maroon, you know what I’m talking about—and happily plant myself with James, the giant peach, and my trusty cat, Whiskers, for some solid “leave me the fuck alone” time.
* * *
I had found Whiskers abandoned as a kitten the year before, and she had quickly become my best friend and confidante. Looking back, my mom letting me keep her was probably a “fuck you” to my severely allergic dad, but I was still too young to understand spite. Whiskers lived to be twenty years old and is my touchstone for what a perfect cat is: purry, snuggly, sometimes aloof, sometimes needy, prim and proper, funny, and silly.
* * *
I guess the constant crying and locking myself in the closet for hours on end was a red flag even my mother, devastated and preoccupied with her own newly chaotic life as a working single mother of three shell-shocked kids, couldn’t ignore. So she made an appointment for me to see a child psychologist.
From what I’d seen in comic strips and TV shows I was too young to be watching, going to a psychologist meant getting to talk about yourself while you lay on a comfy leather couch and then someone would tell you why you did the things you did or maybe analyze your dreams. You know, like going to a psychic but for your present-day self instead of your future self. I was so excited. Going to a therapist felt like such a grown-up thing, and as the youngest child in any family knows, getting an hour of uninterrupted time to talk about yourself is an unimaginable luxury.
In walked Erma, a soft-spoken, poised woman who was pretty in an unassuming, kindergarten teacher way. She had a calming effect on me, with her flowing clothes draped off her in an unfussy yet classy fashion. She had an almost undetectable South American accent, and her soothing voice and dark, intelligent eyes made me want to speak to her in confidence the way I only had with Whiskers.
Looking at photos of myself back then, it’s hard not to feel sad. Rail thin with huge eyes circled with unnatural dark rings from the anxiety-induced insomnia that I’ve never been able to shake. The ill-fitting hand-me-downs that my skinny body practically swam in, stringy hair that I hated to comb (still do), an unconscious posture that screamed, “Don’t look at me!”
The therapy room was different from what I had imagined. Instead of a wall covered in framed degrees from fancy universities, there were children’s drawings and posters of kittens in baskets, which I found babyish and immature. Rather than heavy tomes, there were colorful kids’ books and puzzles and simple games. I had been hoping for something more mature, something more scholarly, something that screamed, “Mental health!”
/> But I’m pretty sure we didn’t draw, or read, or do a puzzle that day. I’m pretty sure I just sat on the small, child-sized couch and cried. It was never an explicit rule, but crying in my house wasn’t an option for me. I cried when I was frustrated with my mom who I now know was yelling because she was frustrated with me. But crying felt like I’d lost the battle. Crying in front of my older siblings didn’t draw out any sympathy either. It was just another reason to pick on each other.
So just crying, just showing my sadness to this person who responded with soothing, positive affirmations and comforting palliatives was a huge relief.
9. Not all therapists are alike.
In later sessions, Erma and I did do those puzzles and draw. After a few more sessions, which of course I didn’t understand at the time were a way to get me to open up and talk to her, I asked her why we couldn’t have a normal, “grown-up” therapy session. I think I even asked her if we could have a “real” session. “You know, like on TV. Where I lie on a couch and you ask me questions and study my mind and interpret my dreams.”
Guys, I was precocious as fuck. She obliged, and we had one session in the office next door to the children’s room, the room reserved for grown-up sessions, complete with framed degrees and giant books and not a single kitten poster.
No bullshit, I’d trade five years off my life to listen to that audio or travel back in time and observe that session with little me.
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