How to Be Perfect Like Me

by Dana Bowman

  He wasn’t fine. In the last ten or so years of his life, Chris started to slowly fall apart. His addiction to alcohol, which I think started for him much earlier than any of us in the family really knew, became more pronounced, more visible to those who loved him. He would gather sober time, and then he would relapse. Over and over. But, as usual, I always just figured he would get his life together.

  But then, he didn’t. He died.

  I could rack up expensive hours with noncreepy therapists about why my brother’s death still messes with me. I’m sure there are many reasons, including my fear of abandonment and my longing to control things. But ultimately, I think it’s because I am addicted to stuff, too.

  Alcohol, yes, but there are other things.

  Like feelings.

  Feelings make a great addiction. First of all, they are around all the time. Alcohol eventually runs out. But feelings? There’s an endless supply. And feelings can be really endearing. So that’s confusing. They love to be felt. They don’t ever say, “Oh dear, I think I’m not making your headspace healthy right now. So, I’ll just go over here, sit quietly, and leave you alone.” Feelings like to be the life of the party.

  Feelings are like that one kid whom the family takes out to the fancy restaurant. He’s adorable but easily frustrated by the lack of chocolate milk on the menu. You can’t acknowledge only the cuteness and filter out that he’s dropping 90 percent of his meal on the floor.

  Alcohol can be poured down the drain. Cigarettes can be thrown in the trash. You can cut up credit cards or turn off Wi-Fi, and, for a moment, the addiction is denied access. However, feelings are still there, sitting in a high chair, pounding on the table.

  I remember going to eat with a friend of mine recently, and we sat next to a table that had a mom and five children. My friend Cara spied her first and nudged me. Cara did that eyebrow thing that made me start gaping around like Beyoncé had just walked in the door. Instead, it was only an extremely tired lady and her million children, but it was still rather awe-inspiring.

  We both watched as all the children squirmed and asked their mom about fifteen thousand questions (five kids at about three thousand questions each; it’s a math thing). Cara and I both felt our uteruses shrink in horror as we watched. One kid was all Game of Thrones at one point, sitting in his high chair and demanding applesauce so loudly that some patrons in the bar offered to get him some: “SAUCE, MOMMA. BRING FORTH DA SAUCE.” I waited for someone to be sent to the dungeon, if there was a dungeon. I’m pretty sure Applebee’s does that, but not this place.

  And during all of this, the mom was so totally cool.

  She helped with the applesauce issue. She wiped mouths. She kept one kid completely contained even though he was kind of all Mission: Impossible, all the time. She quelled crying and played tic-tac-toe. Somehow with no spouse, friend, nanny, or anyone nice from the general population, this momma managed her kids and actually smiled a couple of times.

  And she didn’t order alcohol.

  When I first had kids and one made the tiniest of squeaks in a public place, I was the kind of mom who would pack him up along with the diaper bag, the toys, the blankies, the loveys, and any other “ies” that go with babies and hustle him the heck out of there, as if the baby was emitting some sort of deadly spore. I couldn’t stand to be annoying. I couldn’t stand for my children to be annoying. It would make me feel scared and sad, and everybody knows that scared plus sad is just the worst feeling.

  On the other end of the continuum, that mom was able to have children in a public place and not feel scared or sad. Instead, I think, she seemed kind of . . . happy. And she ate stuff, so she was also full.

  It was a glory to watch.

  I pay so much attention to my feelings. And sooner or later, my feelings and I end up outside a restaurant, pacing up and down, and getting really hungry. This is not good.

  When I relapsed, I put a choke hold on my feelings. Then, when I stopped, my feelings were unstoppered all over the place. This is normal for a person in recovery. Feelings get pushed down, and then they rush out, pell mell, and change you into a batshit crazy sober person for a while. But what was totally freaking me out was the unsettling realization that I had been pushing down on my feelings long before the relapse. I had thought I was being Super Sobriety Girl, but no. Basically, I was feeling all sorts of emotions about my failure to feel emotions. If you think about it too much, it will give you a headache.

  It’s a basic law of physics: smushed things must eventually unsmush. Once I was sober again, my feelings would spring forth and guiltily misbehave because they had been cramped and cranky. I felt bad for them, and thus they got a lot of attention.

  My goodness. I had been screwing up my sober walk long before December with all this feelings stuff. It was enough to make me feel even more feelings, which kind of made me dizzy.

  Once upon a time, I had figured that my life story would go like this: I would be a kid and then grow up, and all the time I would be a fairly good and happy person. And then, as I got older, I would continue being a good person, all the while becoming more good and happy until I died. Instead, it seemed I had been playing Chutes and Ladders with my life, scooting forward and then hurtling backward, with my feelings rolling the dice.

  No wonder I always hated to play that game with my kids.

  I am at the mercy of my emotions. I swing from steam cleaning my entire house to lying on the couch covered in Swiss Cake Roll crumbs. All this to and fro makes me dizzy, and I long to be cool and take in the world, just like my brother would tell me to do. Instead, I live in the world through a looking glass. All my thoughts and events reflect off the feelings I have. I slice apples for my sons’ lunch, and all the while I see myself doing it, filtered through the weird light of my feelings. “I am bored,” I think as I slice those awful apple slices. “Being a mom and slicing apples for lunch while your boys bicker about who got more milk is boring. I am feeling so very bored. And that makes me sad. So now I am bored and sad. This world is empty, and I am a worthless apple-slicing mom.”

  Who knew an apple could cause so many emotions?

  I wonder if my brother had similar issues with his feelings. One of the final memories I have of him is a conversation we had at Thanksgiving dinner. I guess the word conversation is not quite correct. It felt, instead, like a poorly delivered monologue. I wanted to talk to him about my recovery because Chris was recently coming back from a relapse. I pictured it as a Lifetime Television moment with a sweet soundtrack that swelled at the end as we both teared up and went in for a long hug. “You’re the best, Sis,” Chris would have said. “I will never drink again because of what you just now said to me. Ever.”

  And I would have smiled and said, “Me neither. I promise. Look at how awesome we both are.” Then, we would go inside and happily transfer our addictions and eat ourselves into oblivion on Mom’s turkey and stuffing.

  The following year he disappeared, and then he died from liver failure. If I could guess, I bet Chris paid a lot of attention to his feelings. And then, at the end, maybe he couldn’t bear his feelings at all. Chris and I were so good at so many things, but feelings were not our forte.

  During the actual Thanksgiving conversation, I talked about getting sober as Chris looked out to the yard, nodding once in a while. I remember Chris was suffering from a bad skin issue at the time, and he was, quite literally, not comfortable in his own skin. He would shrug his shoulders, twitch, and pull at the collar of his shirt. He didn’t seem to be listening at all. That whole meaningful moment with my brother, where we bonded over addiction and the work of it and recovery, wasn’t really what I had imagined. That was not the moment I was looking for.

  After my relapse, I was the one looking out into the distance, shrugging and tugging at my life.

  My life wasn’t what I was looking for. I had really messed up and failed, and the cracks were everywhere.

  As I came to find out, that was a good thing. />
  Conversations with God: Part Two

  Me: (standing at the abyss) Why? WHY DOES IT ALL HAVE TO BE SO HARD?

  God: Dana, listen to me very carefully, okay?

  Me: (sniffling) It’s cold up here.

  God: I love you.

  Me: That’s it?

  God: What? You wanted some fireworks?

  Me: Moses got a burning bush.

  God: Dana . . .

  Me: WHAT!?

  God: I love you.

  Me: That’s great, but it doesn’t answer my question.

  God: I love you.

  Me: And you could at least shazam me with a sweater or a pullover or something.

  God: I love you.

  Me: Nothing is right with me anymore.

  God: I love you.

  Me: Oh, all right. Enough. I love you, too. I do. I really do.

  God: I know. Loving me gives you permission to love yourself.

  Me: Oh. Wow.

  God: No matter what.

  Me: I NEED A TISSUE.

  God: I love you.

  Me: Okay. Wait. Will that make me feel all better? Will I be okay? Will I? When? How? Will it be warmer then?

  God: Okay, let’s start again. I love you.

  * * *

  PART TWO

  more

  “Mom? This right here? I need it.”

  —MY SIX-YEAR-OLD SON,

  POINTING TO A 400-DOLLAR DEATH STAR LEGO SET

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  HOW TO

  shop at Costco

  AND NOT

  give in to despair

  I stared at a bag of quinoa that contained enough of the stuff to feed my family for over three years. I knew that I didn’t like quinoa, but I felt like I should.

  Charlie and Henry love Costco. They love the extra-largeness of it. They love the samples. They love that I can push them both in a cart, even though they have outgrown this, because Costco’s carts are the size of a Smart car. I push them along with the slow-moving determination of a barge. Two children are packed inside with some quinoa and a twelve-pack of Whisker Lickins.

  Costco is a place to contemplate one’s life choices. It’s the Grand Canyon of stuff. We have to stop and take in the scenery, maybe take a few pictures. Stuff is everywhere stacked high. Even if it’s a mountain of Pedigree, it still gives one pause. Everything here is so very, very big. Addiction notices me pausing at a backyard play set that is bigger than our living room, which would mean we obviously have to purchase it and then move. Addiction says, “You should get that. You know why? It’s so big. And you, my girl, are so very, very small. You need a big life because what’s inside of you has become small and shriveled. Let’s talk. Come over here and sit beside me for a while. Just for a while, I promise.”

  I give addiction a big, fat side-eye and just keep my cart moving. If I’m really feeling saucy, I call out addiction and say, “Back off. And that’s total crap. I am totally fine over here. I’m having some La Croix, see? I bought a pallet of the pamplemousse flavor, which is a fruit. I think. And I’m adding a twist of lime, from this four-pound bag, okay? I’m so totally FINE. OKAY?”

  A lot of limes have met a terrible end after all this fine behavior at the Costco.

  It’s important to note that this dialogue occurs in my head. I don’t actually engage in conversation with addiction at Costco. That is reserved for when I’m at home and only have the dog as my audience. He does not judge.

  I was back in therapy; Brian insisted on it. When Brian and I talked about the relapse, I could almost see the invisible clipboard in his hand as he ticked off the list of things I needed to do to get better. We were still circling each other: he with his clipboard and me with all my feelings about that clipboard.

  We hadn’t fought once since the blowup; however, our conversations were careful. We spoke in muted tones as though we became the background noise of the television. I wiped down the counters and folded some T-shirts while we scheduled an oil change on my car. He checked his phone and started a game of chess with Charlie. We never just sat, made eye contact, and talked. There was always something else going on.

  Sadly, there was not much else going on with Brian and me. My therapist and I talked about all the relationship things I had talked about in previous sessions. I felt like my own greatest hits compilation, rehashing all our old numbers. My therapist was kind but didn’t seem to like Brian much, which was weird because everyone likes Brian, including me. She kept suggesting that I was right and he was wrong. This was totally awesome, but I wondered if my words were so gunked up with feelings that right or wrong didn’t really apply here. I felt like the truth was out there somewhere, wandering about, and who was right about it didn’t matter. Just finding the truth, and taking it home to be safe with us, did.

  I was so not loving therapy. It seemed too easy. I talked about how I was dissatisfied with my life, and my therapist agreed with me. Also, she would say things such as “And how does that make you feel, Dana?” This was confusing because she had just told me, about two minutes earlier, that Brian was wrong and I was right, so evidently that was how I should have felt. She was the expert here, and she seemed to have a solid take on the situation, so why ask me?

  It takes work to organize and distribute the feelings in my brain, and so therapy feels like how I often feel about the state of my house: so overwhelmed by the mess that the only solution is to lie on the couch and watch Say Yes to the Dress for so long that when I finally stand up to go to the bathroom I get dizzy. I continued with my sessions because Brian asked that I do so, and I needed to do this for him. This is so totally not the reason to do therapy. When you agree to crack open your head and spill the contents, the motive should be assisting your brain, not someone else’s.

  Also, I needed proof. It’s like teeth-whitening strips without the selfie. If you don’t take a picture before you start applying the sticky Saran Wrap things to your teeth, then you just keep checking your face in your rearview mirror and peering at them with snarly focus, wondering if there is any change. I wanted a before and after shot with each therapy lesson. Instead, I got in my car, drove home, hummed along with the radio, and planned dinner. At no point did I notice anything gleaming in the mirror.

  I still wanted gleaming. I wanted the big life, after all.

  Big lives involve a lot of shiny.

  So, back at Costco, I bought my weight in quinoa. Quinoa is not shiny. It’s kind of dusty, actually, but it will have to do. Charlie sat at the head of the cart like the lookout at the prow of the ship. He pointed out various treats individually packaged in crinkly wrappers. It seems—with kids anyhow—that if food is in a small, crinkly wrapper, it’s tastier.

  Charlie and Henry both spotted a carton of teensy Oreos packaged in teensy bags, all in a box the size of a baby elephant. Their level of distress was high because I was not buying the cutesy Oreos.

  “But Mom! Lookit! THEY’RE SNACK-SIZED. They’re in the little bags, see? We can take ’em places!”

  Their statement was true. The tiny, crinkly bags beckoned to us, longing to be unwrapped from their aggressive overpackaging and put in a back pocket. They were so cute.

  I sighed and picked up the baby elephant and put it in the cart.

  The shoppers and I at Costco were choreographed in a sort of unrehearsed dance. We walked slowly, mainly due to the fact that we needed to hunch over the cart handles to keep the cart aligned so we didn’t run over displays of pool floaties or the small children near them. We kept our carts at a steady pace and pivoted around each corner, glancing at each other and lifting one side of our mouths in a “Well, here we are” kind of half-assed smile. We do-si-do’d around the frozen lasagnas and dispersed again to our separate aisles with water softener or lifetime supplies of Zyrtec. And then we all gathered again at checkout, the universal weigh station for the tired and heavily burdened.

  We really do like our stuff, don’t we?

  And we like
it in bulk.

  What a weird word . . . bulk. It means in excess or overly full. It’s how a twenty-year-old kid’s luggage looks like when he’s coming home from college, filled to the seams with dirty Led Zeppelin T-shirts and jeans that haven’t been washed for an entire semester. It’s doubly distressing because those T-shirts were purchased at Target by a man-boy who wouldn’t know “Whole Lotta Love” if it came up and smacked him in the ass.

  Also, when I hear bulk I think of constipation and bulk-forming laxatives, which is so not pleasant at all. Either way, it’s not optimal.

  And yet, we keep buying bulk. And we cart it home, lugging it into our houses and shoving it into closets and pantries. Then, we buy more storage containers in which to put the bulk. We have bulked our bulk.

  We live in a culture of more. I combat my perfectionism with moreness. More gadgets. More cute shoes. More toys for my children. More Zoloft.

  As I pushed the cart down the cereal aisle, contemplating enough Cheerios to feed a day care, I stopped. I just stopped, right in the middle of the aisle, in the way of all the other cumbersome carts, and I rested my chin on my hands.

  Henry pulled his eyes away from an enticing tower of Fruit Roll-Ups and looked at me. He said in his cute Henry way, “What doin’, Momma?”

  I straightened up and eyed him, and then I went all Scarlet O’Hara on my children.

  “As God is my witness,” I said with a tremble, clutching my Costco membership card in my hand and raising it to the ceiling, “as God is my witness, I WILL NEVER SHOP AT COSTCO AGAIN!”

  Okay, that’s not exactly what I did, but you get the idea.