by Barb Rogers
Unable to return to sleep, I sit down at my desk to work on the book. Within seconds, doubled over in misery, I stand. I need to walk it off, to loosen up, but each step I take makes it worse. Standing in the middle of my kitchen floor, questions float into my mind. Why me? Why now? Aren't I in enough pain already? What the hell is happening? I've been good. I'm sober, working the program, pray every day, help others, and try to be the best person I can be. “Why?” I scream at God. As soon as I hear myself, I stop. What am I doing? I'd heard it around the meetings so many times: drunk or sober, life keeps happening. It's what we do with what happens that's important. For those of us who have chosen to live a spiritually based life, God is everything, or God is nothing.
It has been easy living a spiritually based life over the past ten years, when everything was going my way. How many times have I said to people in meetings, “If you believe one thing in your life happened for a reason, then you must believe all things happen for a reason. You don't get to pick and choose”? How easily those words came out of my mouth. Do I really believe it?
22
The Challenge
SOOTHING MUSIC WAFTS SOFTLY THROUGH A ROOM painted in soft shades of green, peaceful artwork adorning each wall. I'm lying on a padded table in the center of the room with skinny needles protruding from my ankles, wrists and hands, side, and the top of my head. This woman is good. She poked those needles right into my skin without inflicting any pain. I'm still amazed I'm here, considering my great fear of needles.
Since, as a child, I was forced to go to a ham-fisted ex-army dentist friend of my stepfather, the thought of needles evokes fear and pain. I can see the dentist's hairy hand coming toward my face, holding a needle so large it looks like it could go all the way through my head. He hurt me more times than I care to remember. I don't know if my bad teeth were genetic or if what he did to me all those years didn't work, but I ended up with false teeth by the time I turned 17. The one thing he did do for me was to instill in me such a fear of needles that he inadvertently kept me from becoming a heroin addict. God knows the people I ran around with over the years gave me every opportunity.
“Please, let this help,” I whisper to God. It had been a long, painful year since Sammi's death. At first I stayed in bed, living in fear of moving because I knew I would suffer sharp, debilitating pains that felt like someone had shoved a hot poker through my side. Every time I sat up it felt like a big fiery ball had lodged itself beneath my rib cage, which would send me reeling to a prone position, holding my breath until the pain passed. I wondered if I had one of those giant tumors growing inside me like people I'd seen on television. I knew anything that hurt that bad had to be something terrible. The worst part of lying around day by day was the silence, all that time to think. Thoughts began to creep into my mind, angry, resentful thoughts that brought me feelings of self-pity and finally depression—all things an addict in recovery can ill afford. It didn't matter that I'd been sober and drug-free all those years because at the end of the day, I was still an addict. I knew what would take the pain away, at least for a while.
One afternoon, as I wallowed in my misery, both physical and mental, another thought came to mind: you can live in the problem or live in the solution … it's entirely up to you. I'd heard it said many times in meetings, but had never needed to hear it as profoundly as I did at that moment. Jack used to say that attending meetings was like making payments on an insurance policy. I may not need something I hear at a meeting for a week, a year, or ten years, but when I need it, it'll be there. Then he would add, “Of course, if you don't show up, you may miss hearing the very thing that can save your ass down the road, and your policy could lapse.” I'd seen it time and again—people with years in sobriety who suffered a trauma and went back out.
When the fear of relapse became bigger than the fear of the pain, I got on my feet, determined not to let it happen to me. I talked to Tom about my decision. I knew that whatever choice I made, he would go along with it. One of the things I loved most about him was that he treated me like an equal with the ability to know what was best for myself. That was certainly something I'd never experienced in a relationship before. I said, “We're going to have to change some things around.” The pain lessened when I was standing or lying down, so we'd have to set the household up differently, just as a person in a wheelchair had to do.
The transition began. Tom moved a waist-high table into the corner of the kitchen and placed my typewriter atop it so I could stand to write. He removed my favorite chair, the one that hung from a beam that separated the kitchen from the dining area, and set up an outside lounge chair instead so I could lie back to watch my television. To eat, I'd stand at the bar. Tom carried a thick blanket and pillow down the hill to the car and arranged it in the backseat as a bed for when I was forced to ride somewhere. It felt good to get into action. That feeling was short-lived when I knew the next phase was at hand: calling the doctor.
After all I'd gone through with my Graves' disease, the mere thought of going back to a doctor sent a shudder through my spine. For six months, truly believing that death hung over my head, I'd made the rounds to one specialist after another. They poked, prodded, and ran tests, but I continued to get worse. Some doctors acted as if it was all in my head, others shook their heads and said, “I just don't know.” When I nearly died, eventually ending up in the emergency room where I was finally diagnosed, I had to deal with many doctors who'd never had a Graves' disease patient. They were not terribly sure of what to do with me. I got sick of hearing things like, “let's try this.”
I stood staring at the telephone for long moments, telling myself that it had to be done and assuring myself that to base the present on the past did no good. I made the call, and by the afternoon I was standing in a crowded emergency room in Sun City, waiting to be seen. Hours later, it began: doctor after doctor guessing what they thought might be wrong with me, grueling tests that showed nothing, pills that caused hives, itching, some that made me fall down, others that caused bleeding and low blood pressure, but nothing that helped.
My situation was similar to before, but I was different. No matter how bad the pain, I rose in the morning, got on my knees to pray—not for the pain to be taken away, but for God's will for me and the power to carry it out. I went to my typewriter each morning to write, even if a few sentences was the best I could do. I did housework that didn't require much bending and allowed Tom to do those things that caused me pain. I climbed in the backseat of the car. Tom drove me to meetings where I stood in the back of the room for an hour. I participated and continued to sponsor others, though I had to do much of it over the phone. I stopped focusing on what I couldn't do, instead concentrating on what was possible. At the end of each day, lying in my bed, I thanked God for my life, my husband, Georgie, clean sheets, a warm, safe place to sleep, the ability to stand, and so much more. They weren't simply words. I really meant it. I'd finally come to understand what step 12 meant when it said to use the program in all my affairs.
——
Kristina, the thin, attractive blond acupuncturist, is removing the needles. She sits on a stool next to the table and says, “The Asians believe that we store our pain and loss in the liver. Maybe you did that after your little dog died, and it triggered all those losses from the past.” An interesting concept. I figured I'd resolved all those issues as much as a person can resolve the death of children. A brown bottle of homeopathic drops and an appointment card in my hand, I lie down in the backseat of the car, mulling over what she'd said. If it's true, what's to be done?
I'd heard there is no problem, large or small, that can't be resolved by taking it through the steps. Back to basics. Standing at the bar, pen in hand, I begin to write: “I am powerless over the pain of loss, and it has made my life unmanageable. I believe that a God of my understanding can help me. I will turn this over to God, and accept that the outcome is not up to me but will always be for my best in the long run.” That wasn't so
hard. Next is my fearless moral inventory. I did that years ago. What if I didn't do enough? I know I had a hard time writing about my part in the kids' deaths because I didn't really think I had much responsibility for something so out of my control. Did I skim over that part of my life? Was I fearless? Did I search the deepest part of my soul, looking for the truth of my part in things?
During my first fourth and fifth steps, I'd admitted that I liked being pregnant because it made me feel special—I wanted to make my husband at the time love me; plus, he hardly ever hit me when I was carrying his child. Even though the doctors told me that I would have trouble carrying a baby to term after Jon tore me up so bad, we didn't use protection, and I got pregnant at the drop of a hat. I understood that I thrived on the attention I got when the babies died and that I used their deaths to excuse my addictive behavior.
Perhaps now I need to go deeper, back to that dark place where all my secrets hid out for so many years. Had I simply cracked the door before, let out what I could handle, and then closed it quickly for fear of the shame and guilt I'd have to deal with if I shined a light on the whole truth? After a restless night—between the pain and the questions whirling through my mind, I am out of bed before the sun rises—I get on my knees and ask for the strength to do what has to be done. Lying on the lounge chair in the middle of the kitchen, embracing the quiet morning, I close my eyes and imagine I'm walking down that long hallway full of doors. This time, instead of all the doors opening, I move toward a door at the end of the hallway. I turn the knob. It's locked. I pull a huge skeleton key off a nail nearby, but hesitate before I stick it in the keyhole. Imagining a white light surrounding me, the key pushed into the hole, I turn it slowly.
My eyes snap open. Quickly, I'm on my feet, doubled over in pain. Was I meditating, or did I fall asleep? Slowly, I straighten up and glance at the clock on the stove. Two hours have passed. I must have gone to sleep. I can rarely recall having a dream that real, with such clarity. When the door creaked open, what was behind it looked like a scene from a horror show: a veil of cobwebs clinging to my skin and hair, spiders hanging by a thread, pitch-black darkness. Like a drum, I heard each beat of my heart in my ears. Sweat trickled down my spine. The white light I'd imagined around myself began to fade. The urge to run nearly overwhelmed me. I stood still, and said, “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”
Bolstered by my belief that I was not alone, I stepped forward. Dark figures moved in the shadows, whispering words I couldn't understand. I knew they were watching me, talking about me. I wondered if they were the black ghosts with white eyes who haunted my dreams as a child. The sound of someone sobbing caught my attention. I moved toward it. A light flashed over a woman lying in a hospital bed, her face pushed into a pillow, weeping. I moved closer. It was me.
As if I'd flipped a switch on a strobe light, I watched in horror as the moments of my life were highlighted, one after another. I wanted to run, tried to look away. I willed my legs to move. Nothing happened. Babies in coffins, my mother holding a gun, Jon laid out in the morgue, dead dogs, myself beat up, beat down, strapped to a bed with a big rubber thing crammed into my mouth while a doctor shoots me through with electricity. The actions that led up to each event appeared and disappeared like a slide show. The last thought I had was that I'd died, and the time had come to face the truth. Naked and alone, with no one else to blame and nowhere to hide, I would be accountable for every thought and action.
Days pass by as I go about the business of living, but ever in the back of my mind is the memory of that dream. It reminds me of a time in therapy when the therapist hypnotized me in an attempt to help me regain some of the memories lost through childhood trauma, and later, months of shock therapy in the mental hospital. A doctor had once told me that as time went on, I would recall those things that my mind could handle remembering. I didn't expect it to happen this late in my life, or all at once. I tell myself it was just a disturbing dream, but wonder why it lives in my mind with such clarity.
23
Truth or Consequences
GEORGIE'S DEAD. SHE HAD A STROKE. In the early morning hours as I sat at my typewriter, thrilled to be pain-free, I heard her yelp. She fell from the chair near where I work. We rushed her to the vet, but it was too late. Logically, I know she was old, that she'd had over twenty wonderful years, but it doesn't diminish the anguish—that familiar burning knot that forms in the belly and reminds me of all the losses in my life. The emptiness in the house is nothing compared to the emptiness in my heart.
As much as I hate the person I've been in the past and regret what I did to cope with my losses, I know that in an instant I can revert backward, indulge the fleeting temptation of a shot of whiskey or a pill to take the edge off. My mind tries to trick me, telling me I've been sober all these years, that I could handle one drink, a couple pills—just enough to get me through the moment. But I know me—one drink, one pill, and I'm off and running again. Will addiction ever leave me completely?
I need to do something physical. Years ago, in early recovery, on a particularly bad day when I fought the urge to drink moment by moment, I called a woman I'd met at a meeting. Expecting a profound solution for my situation, she surprised me when she said, “Have you mopped your floors?” What? Then she said, “Mop your floors, and call me back.” I scrubbed the concrete floors of the garage with a brush and called her back. She said, “Have you defrosted your refrigerator?” I told her I hadn't. She said, “Do that, and call me back.” All day she gave me chores to do until by the end of the day, sore and exhausted, I didn't have the energy or inclination left to drink.
Outside there's a project I haven't been able to finish. Gathering up the wheelbarrow full of quartz rocks Tom and I have been picking up at the old mine sites, I use a sledgehammer to break up the larger rocks to the desired size I need to cover the old chimney at the side of the house. Hours later, after soaking in a bath, I'm feeling better. Slipping between the sheets, still missing Georgie next to me, I thank God for everything I can think of and try to picture my little dog in a field of flowers, running and playing with my son and my other dogs.
Like something out of a Stephen King movie, I enter the realm of my nightmare again. Without walking, I move toward that same door … the one at the end of the hall, the one that scares me. It's filled with the bodies of the dead. I fight back. My legs won't move. “No! No! No!” I scream. A voice, saying gentle words, wakes me. It's Tom. What am I doing in the hallway? Tom leads me back to bed. I can't believe I walked in my sleep. I haven't done that in a long time. Although it was a common occurrence in my childhood, the last time I did it happened after we moved to Arizona and my dad made his first visit. The night before he arrived, Tom found me wandering the house in the middle of the night, eyes wide open, completely unconscious.
In the morning, having slept through the remainder of the night, I swing my legs over the side of the bed. As quickly as I put weight on my legs, an excruciating pain travels through my side, into my back, and down my hip and leg. I fall back onto the bed. What have I done to myself this time? It crosses my mind that it might not be all physical. Like most addicts, I have a tendency toward self-sabotage when things are going well. In the meetings it's called keeping the drama alive.
Things had been going well for a while. After a number of sessions with the acupuncturist, the pain went away. Filled with gratitude for the ability to sit down, to ride in the car, to do my own housework, I pushed aside thoughts that perhaps I hadn't resolved everything from my past. Occasionally, Kristina's words passed through my mind, but I told myself it was silly. I'd done the work, faced my part in things, and it was time to let it go.
I overdid it yesterday. I need to walk it off. Carefully, I ease onto my feet, suffering with each step I take toward the bathroom. For days, I limp around the house, unable to sit, stand, or lie down comfortably. I finally give in and call the doctor. The neurologist thinks I have shingles inside m
y body. I've heard of shingles going in after a breakout, but I've never had a breakout. The gastric doctor says it's my gallbladder and quickly sucks that baby out of me. The back surgeon wants to do surgery to remove some calcification between two of my discs. I allow him to cut the middle of my back open and remove the offending piece. It works on the pain in my hip and leg. I can stand and walk again. However, the horrific pain in my side remains with no clear cause.
Frustrated by the situation, I need to talk to someone in the program—someone who understands. I call an old friend. I pour out all that's happened recently; Kristina's idea, the nightmares, the sleepwalking. The woman on the phone, who had known me for most of my sobriety, says, “When you did your fourth and fifth steps, did you tell it all, you know, leaving nothing out?” I am silent for a long moment. She says, “I don't know if it has anything to do with the physical stuff, but you know that when you have these dreams and start walking in your sleep again, something is wrong. Only you can figure it out.”
Unhappy with the conversation, I make several more calls to people who don't know me quite so well, seeking different answers to the same questions. No one can reassure me that I'm okay, that I've done all I can. Somewhere where the brutal truth lives, I know what I've done, what I left out when I worked the fourth and fifth steps. I think I've always known, but refused to admit it. How many times have I said, “If you work a thorough fourth and fifth step, leaving nothing out, and stick with the maintenance steps, you should never have to do them again.” Others argued with me from time to time, convinced I shouldn't be spouting those words around new people, but my pride wouldn't let me back down.