I awkwardly stood in the doorway clutching a red plastic cup full of seltzer and watching dozens of people laughing, chatting, dancing, and singing, doing everything they normally would have if there had been vodka in the punch. I could barely move from that doorway, staring at my phone which was not getting any messages or emails, looking out at a bunch of people I didn’t know. They looked like they were comfortable with themselves. The laughter was real. The friendship was genuine; you could almost feel the warmth radiating out of them. They all had this ease about them that, even at my drunkest, I couldn’t quite cultivate.
Best of all, none of them looked like they were dying to escape—but I was. I thought about booking it, right there. Whatever social anxiety I had managed to stifle was springing up like a Jack-In-The-Box, telling me that I needed to get out of there, fast. I could easily get more weed. I could easily get a bottle. I could try again next year.
But someone saw me standing there, in the bathroom doorframe, and they pulled me into the room, and they sat me on the couch.
Two hours passed in a happy rush, and I left feeling like I had just won some sort of award.
After that, Emma and I started meeting at a diner to read out loud from our own respective copies of another book, one that talked about what work we had to do to make me better, to make me stop drinking, but also, to try and figure out how to have a life without it.
How to have a life at all, I thought.
I had spent so much time just “getting through life” that besides being a good student, a good writer, and a loving granddaughter, I had no idea who I was.
“We’re going to get you back to the girl you were meant to be before 9/11,” Emma said. “Before you picked up your first drink.”
I hit that program hard—since I was only a few months out of college, I took to stepwork like it was a make-or-break senior work project, a final exam. I finished work in two nights that took some people months, dragging their feet along. I wanted this, badly. Emma called me her “perfect little student,” which felt a little condescending, but no matter. I’d take the compliment.
* * *
I learned the “one day at a time” mentality, which made life easier, and provided a lot of relief.
“Just worry about the next hour. The next few hours. Stay here, because you don’t have to worry about being sober tomorrow, or what’s happening tomorrow. Stay here.”
I went to a meeting every day. I called three girls every day just to talk. I stayed out of bars. I went to movies with Anthony and cuddled with his dogs more. When the Christmas season rolled around, I felt happy, going upstairs and trying to simulate decorating the tree with Grandma and one of the new, more caring home health aids my mom had lobbied for.
But I braced myself for the big night, because, during Christmas dinners past, you could always find me ducking into my room to hide between courses. I felt incredibly uncomfortable at the table. I usually held tight and counted the minutes before I could escape and meet up with my friends for a drink (or four). None of my new friends, either, punched the air and declared, “Yeah, I’m going home for the holidays!” It was more like a dejected sigh of resignation. Understandably, many of us either drank to get through it, or got through it to drink.
The weekend before the holiday, I walked outside to find myself in the middle of SantaCon, a weird parade of young people dressed up as Santa or scantily clad Mrs. Claus who were taking to the city’s bars and restaurants, later spilling out onto the streets where they continued drinking.
The original idea for SantaCon, I later found, started off as a very merry concept. People would dress up and parade through the streets spreading goodwill and good cheer, singing Christmas carols, giving out gifts to strangers, and collecting cans for charity. Unfortunately, whatever that once was had been completely overhauled into an event where adults acted like out-of-control kids.
That day, the “SantaConers” started early, and the neighborhood smelled like one big brewery. Last time I checked, walking down the street and drinking from clear, plastic cups full of beer was illegal, but it seems to be tolerated on SantaCon day. By 1:00 p.m., people were urinating in public, passing out in the street, keeling over on the sidewalk, screaming profanities, and throwing up in the park.
My elderly neighbors were pushed and knocked over, and children were shoved aside. As they dodged profanity-screaming elves and belligerent reindeer running amuck, I heard one little boy ask his father, “Daddy, why are Santa and the reindeer acting like that?” Another little girl hid underneath her mother’s coat, and others literally ran away crying, repeatedly looking back over their shoulders in terror as the crowds gained momentum. A bunch of drunks were shouting the words to Jingle Bells as though preparing to charge into battle—think Gerard Butler shouting “This Is Sparta!” in the movie 300.
All I could think was, Holy shit, I’m glad that’s not me. Not that it would have been me—I wouldn’t have been caught dead at a pub crawl. Still, as someone who understood the need to take a vacation from reality, I saw something familiar as I looked into the glazed eyes of one slutty Mrs. Claus: the need to get obliterated, and what a mess it looks like when you do.
“Hey, do you want me to cover this Santa thing that’s happening?” I called James on his cell.
“Yeah, go for it,” he said.
I went into a deli where a group had congregated, hoping to get some quotes from people who were actually standing still.
One young man dressed as Jack the Pumpkin King could not have depicted a Nightmare Before Christmas any better.
The command, “Don’t take my name,” indicated that there was enough self-awareness to cause some semblance of embarrassment.
“Okay, so, what brings you guys out here today?” I opened, not putting too much thought into the question. I had a feeling they would say whatever they wanted.
“Wait a second,” a slutty elf chimed in as I took notes on my iPhone. “You’re clearly not a recorder.”
I looked at her, confused.
“She said she’s a recorder, but she’s not,” she slurred suspiciously, raising her voice, looking at Jack the Pumpkin King. “Does she look like a flute to you?”
“Reporter,” I clarified. “I’m a reporter.”
After letting the realization marinate, she huffed her reply.
“That’s not a Christmas character!”
I had to admit that the tamer members of the bunch looked like they were having a great time, and that triggered something that I had struggled with my whole life: fear of missing out. Such a feeling was an evil Grinch that presented itself whenever something was going on without my involvement. The Grinch pointed a big hairy finger directly at my fear of what other people thought of me, whether I looked popular, cool, or pretty enough. Watching them parade by, erupting in laughter, I heard my aunt’s enabling voice in the back of my head.
“You’re young, you’re supposed to go out and have fun,” she would say. “When I was your age, I had one thousand friends and we went out every weekend. This is your time.”
Actually, it was not in the back of my head. It was right in front of me, on Christmas Eve. Talking to her and my mom together was often like going into the Shark Tank, but instead of hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment capital, you got “all in fun” criticism and unsolicited opinions. I braced myself. Throughout the day, my mind had replayed old tapes, churning up anxiety and forming negative expectations that created a nice big bubble of dread in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for the well-intentioned, unsolicited advice that would salt the wounds of my own insecurities.
“Are you going to any parties?” my aunt asked as she spooned her baked ziti onto my plate, knowing that I don’t eat pasta.
“Yes,” I said, with hesitation. “There’s a party at this girl’s house….”
“What kind of party? Is it on the Lower East Side? Where are the cool people going these days?”
In h
indsight, I know that telling her it was a sober party was a mistake.
“What are you going to do, have no life anymore?” she cried in response.
“Those people are lame. Go do something fun. Live it up!” my mom said.
Fortunately, I had been given one of my gifts early: nearly twenty new numbers in my phone, all belonging to friends and other women in my support network who would listen, laugh, and help me feel true relief. Calling in their support was more comforting than any amount of Baileys.
I furiously texted Emma, who reassured me, “Soon, you are going to be able to go anywhere and do anything you want. This is a very short period of time that you are using to get ready for the best years of your life.”
Throughout the night, I surreptitiously and periodically backed away into my room, reaching out to girls who knew how to turn off the valve that began steaming inside me when my uncle raised his voice. We ran through a list of what I was grateful for, because it’s easy to see what’s wrong and get annoyed, but it takes practice to start learning how to see the good in people and in each situation.
Perhaps even more useful was the advice to “Hum a little tune, and pretend that you’re watching and listening to someone else’s family.”
Learning to be patient and to accept my family as they are, instead of how I wished they would be, took time. They were fallible and flawed, just like me, just like all of us. When I stopped expecting them to be anything else, though, I started seeing the best in them, which wasn’t hard once I had the right lenses on.
Eventually, I was able to stay present, no longer jumping out of my skin or chomping at the bit to escape any given situation. Despite temptation, I continued making my own transition to adulthood, gripping reality tightly even when I wanted to let go through hot toddies and spiked cider. There were days that I wished I could drink up a bit of that warm, fuzzy feeling of relaxation to take the edge off, but I was to remind myself that I usually couldn’t stop at “a bit” and that the trade-off was better.
Eventually, I found what Emma said to hold true: I could go anywhere and have a good time, and I never felt like I was being short-changed just because I wasn’t drinking.
My nights started to balloon up with authentic laughter and fun, sometimes at a “normal” party, sometimes at a sober one, sometimes at a dinner party full of drinkers. Regardless, I knew for sure that I was definitely not missing out on anything, despite what my aunt liked to insist.
The realization that I finally knew what real peace and happiness felt like was a very merry feeling.
* * *
Emma and I hit a wall when I got to step five. She took issue with the fact that I took sleeping pills, something she had previously abused back while she was still drinking. I had long since stopped taking them to go back to sleep in the mornings, ever since Aaron was out of the picture; but she told me to tell her every time I needed to take one.
Before long, she decided to drop a bomb on me, at the advice of her own sponsor, someone who belonged to a sub-group of the program who encouraged people to throw away their medications and live their lives like foot soldiers who would forever be sick.
“You should go to a meeting for people who use drugs before we go any further,” she said.
“I don’t abuse them,” I told her. “I take them when I can’t sleep, which is most nights.”
“Then maybe you need to find someone who’s okay with that,” she said.
She still hosted my ninety-day celebration in the party room of her Upper East Side apartment building, just a block from Anthony’s building.
If you were there, it would have been easy to see how I put on six pounds in those first few months. There were tons of cupcakes with cartoon character’s faces on them, candy, cookies, pies, and more two-liter bottles of carbonated drinks than you could count lined up on a marble tabletop next to a bucket of ice and highball glasses.
Anthony sat off to the side and spoke to a middle-aged woman I had become friendly with.
“Do you see a difference?” she asked.
“It’s like night and day,” he said. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Just wait,” she said. “It keeps getting better.”
After the natural high from my party faded, the reality of trying to find a new sponsor set in. I was already sitting on this notebook full of what’s known as “moral inventory,” a giant list, with a bunch of columns, detailing everything from the past twenty-two years of my life that I felt bad about. The people who hurt me, the people I felt betrayed me, what they did, what I feared, family, friends, ex-boyfriends, everyone was on that list. I was supposed to figure out what my own “part in it” had been, which was a tall order.
Another woman in the program who also had PTSD said she would read it with me, if I wanted. Her name was Tina, and she always seemed a bit harried, thinking about something else, just a little bit ahead of where we were.
But there was also an understanding between us, the idea that, after what we had been through, we were a bit more fragile than the rest, and I trusted her to be honest with me, but to be kind, too.
“Your part in that one is selfish,” she said as she began ticking off my “part” in relation to one particular name on my list.
“Being self-centered. Dishonest, too. Write it down,” she said, pacing the room as I sat, open-jawed, across from her with my notebook.
“How?” I asked.
“You were so worried about your own needs and your own feelings that you didn’t care what it did to Vin. You stayed with him when you knew it was the wrong thing. You cheated on him. You tried to keep him away from other people. You told him what to do to try to make yourself feel safe.”
Oh boy.
“Yeah, but, he ruined my life.”
“Has he really ruined your life?”
I thought about it, but I had nothing.
“He hasn’t ruined anything,” Tina said. “If he has, I can’t see it.”
Five hours later, we had done “the fifth step.” She understood all of the baggage I carried around with me, the hurt, the shame, the embarrassment, the resentment, the traumas that had spawned from that initial big one, creating evil offspring that I had to learn to let go.
As we walked to the train, she left me with a couple of parting suggestions, which were “only suggestions.”
“You should try to change the voice in your head to something kind and forgiving. How would you talk to a friend if she told you these things? You have to be soothing to yourself.”
I nodded.
“And stop letting these things and these people have so much say. Consider the source. Consider the quality of the people who are bothering you so much. How much weight do you want to give those opinions?”
She had a point.
Before I descended into the subway station, she added one more thought.
“Something has definitely been looking out for you. After hearing all of that, I think you’re lucky to be alive. Have faith in something.”
* * *
The cravings subsided after ninety days, and that was no longer the harder part, especially not with a community and support network around me. It was being totally present in the mess of my mind, and being willing to clean it up, slowly and painfully, and the fact that I needed prescription medication to sleep was making finding another sponsor incredibly challenging. I didn’t really understand why, since the “rules” said that it’s perfectly acceptable—encouraged, even to seek outside help from doctors, which other people in the program are not (unless, you know, they actually are).
Right at the cusp of my wit’s end came Ava, who turned out to be just as life-changing for me as Dr. A, and who I butted heads with just as hard.
When I first saw Ava after we spoke on the phone, I thought, no fucking way.
She was stick-figure thin, wearing black leather leggings and four-inch red wedge heels. She was also wearing a big, shaggy white vest that looked like it was made from a
sick, old lamb, and had long, straight, jet black hair streaked with bright blue. Several tattoos stuck out from under her sleeve.
“I can’t lose another sponsor,” I told her in the beginning.
“I will take you through all twelve of these steps,” she said. “I promise.”
It was not an easy road. My first year was chaotic—being fully present and awake, with pores all open, was painful. That scared, invisible girl emerged with full force, with stronger panic attacks, throwing bigger tantrums, creating bigger fears, and there was no pacifier. I was saturated in reality.
“Taking your own fears and anxieties out on other people because of what you went through is not fair,” Dr. J said. “It’s one of the reasons that people left, quickly. You have to do your best to keep that anxiety from spreading to the people around you.”
I leaned on those first sponsors heavily, eager to do the work but also hoping that someone could talk me down from what was causing my urge to use, too. I was transferring this dependence off of alcohol, and off of Anthony, onto other people once again. Women, this time, so healthier, but still not ideal.
The program put a lot of emphasis on doing things for others to “get out of yourself.” That meant anything from volunteering to making coffee at a meeting or just listening to a friend.
“I love animals, but I can’t go into a shelter,” I said. “It’s too hard for me.”
“Well,” Ava offered. “Could you offer to help by using skills you have, like writing? Or maybe social media?”
So I began uploading photos and descriptions of animals coming into a Brooklyn animal rescue, posting them to two pet adoption sites every weekend. While some of the pictures upset me, my perspective slowly began to change, focusing on the people out there who cared enough to dedicate their lives to helping them. Because of them, these little guys would get a second chance at a good life.
After 9/11 Page 35