Leave the Light On

by Jennifer Storm

  As I sat in my therapist’s office, crying all over myself and clinging to multiple wadded-up tissues, I looked at her and shook my head back and forth. “I don’t know what is wrong with me,” I said, and went on to explain that the previous night I had just been talking about my mother’s death, and suddenly—waterworks! As I continued to ramble about not understanding what was happening, my therapist gently leaned toward me and put her hand on my knee. “Jennifer, what you’re experiencing is very normal and, well, very long overdue,” she said. “You are grieving for the loss of your mother—finally!” I just looked at her with a blank face. Well, that explanation had never dawned on me.

  I thought I had already grieved for her loss. After all, I had cried in the hospital and at the funeral. During the weeks leading up to her death, I had somehow managed to not drink. I had been on autopilot, walking around like a robot doing everything I needed to do for her, but that was all; I was doing, but not feeling. Back then, I deployed my standard detachment defensive mechanisms to get through it all. Then, immediately after her funeral, I walked directly into a bar, took my seat upon my escape perch, and basically didn’t leave that stool for three months. That binge eventually culminated in my suicide attempt, which landed me in rehab, and eventually led me to this much softer seat in my therapist’s office. She went on to explain that I had never really dealt with my pain appropriately. I may have cried at all the right times and places, but then I went on to get high for three months.

  I began to protest, to tell her that I had spoken about it often, that in the halfway house I had even bought a balloon for my mother, written a letter to her, tied it to the balloon, and released it, thinking for certain that all of my emotions must have traveled away with the balloon as it launched itself into the sky. I went on to tell her of my annoying habit when I got high with friends of telling them my whole life story. Almost robotically, I would take them through the most horrifying, intimate details of my sexual abuse history, my mother’s death, everything. And I kept a straight face and felt strong when I did it. It was as if I was saying, “Look what I went though. See how easily I can talk about these horrible events and they don’t even bother me? I am a soldier. Can’t you see my strength?” I could recite my own pain with no emotion. In some twisted way, I thought I was healing and that talking about it in this way was good for me. But as my therapist explained, without the emotion to accompany the words, it was as though I was saying nothing at all.

  Emotional detachment was a not-so-good tool I had carried into recovery with me. I was the queen of emotional detachment. It was a survival skill I had developed and could perform on cue if need be. I talked a lot at meetings and in therapy about my past but still hadn’t reached the point where I actually felt my past. This was most likely because I never allowed myself to feel anything. When feelings came up for me in the past, I drank or used to cover them. I never indulged them, or even labeled them for that matter. In rehab and in the halfway house, I had some good breakthroughs, as they call them in therapy, surrounding my past sexual assaults, but had yet to fully grasp the concept of this new way of dealing with things. I had to learn how to pair my emotions with my experiences and do so appropriately. This was all so new to me and so incredibly hard. I could look you in the face, deadpan, and tell you everything about myself with vivid details, but to allow myself the vulnerability of showing you my feelings that stirred underneath—that was another story.

  And yet, here I was, crying freely in front of two people on two different days. This was serious progress.

  I left my therapist’s office wondering when I would stop crying. She had said that I could go through this for a couple of days, that I was experiencing a long-overdue mourning period for my mother and I needed to just settle into my grief and deal with it. So I decided to indulge my newfound sorrow and went to the store and bought more tissues and a pint of ice cream—mind you, I was still crying the whole time I selected the items and made my purchase. By this time my eyes were beyond red, puffy and swollen, and people were looking at me funny, but I didn’t care. I walked through the grocery store with a new badge of entitlement. I felt oddly strong in my sudden comfort with outward emotion, as though it were some shiny armor I had discovered.

  At home, I popped my copy of Beaches into the video player. I figured if I was going to be in this state, I might as well crank it up a notch and watch the most gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking movie of all time. Besides, I had first watched it with my mother, and it always reminded me of her. I cried even harder while watching the movie.

  Then I called my employer and said I needed to take a couple of bereavement days off to mourn the loss of my mother. My boss immediately was sympathetic as she told me it was okay and to take all the time I needed. I thanked her profusely, and then she asked how and when it happened. When I told her it was almost two years ago, there was dead silence on the phone. Still sobbing, I tried to explain that I hadn’t dealt with it before, and I was now finally processing all my feelings. My boss’s sympathy dried up and her tone grew angry as she began to recite the agency’s policy on bereavement and informed me that my current situation didn’t really fall within that policy. I explained that there was no way I could come in under my current circumstance and that I had no idea when I would be suitable for public consumption. Needless to say, I was fired. Great, I thought— just more reason to add to my already overflowing waterworks.

  So I settled in and spent the next three days mourning as I pored over pictures of my mother and me together, watched a video I had of us at Christmastime, and read over cards she had sent. I had saved almost every one from my sweet sixteenth birthday until the last card she sent me just months before her death. I avoided the phone when it rang, and I simply self-indulged. I didn’t shower or change my clothes. I just sat and cried and ate ice cream and watched sad movies and listened to Sarah McLachlan CDs. Surely it was a combination for a complete and utter emotional breakdown, and I was game. It was about time. My framework had stood tall and sturdy for too many years, taking in all the horrible shit I and others had put me through without ever wavering. Now it was all crashing down around me, and I was dancing among the ruins.

  I emerged from my apartment three days later, refreshed and with a peaceful calm that was unbelievable. I had thoroughly processed through my pain and emotions and felt lighter than I had ever felt before. This recovery emotional-cleansing stuff was tough, but the feeling of freedom that followed was incredible.

  18

  ANNIVERSARY

  SOME IN RECOVERY BELIEVE THAT IF YOU ARE NOT in pain, then you are not changing or growing. You have to physically and emotionally walk through your pain to get to the other side of it. While I was using this was never an option for me, because the emotional mountains I had created in my life seemed far too high to climb. Now in recovery, even though I cannot see the beautiful clearing on the other side of the mountain, I know it is there, so I just have to push myself up that emotional and at times very painful and steep path to get to the other side—one step at a time. As clichéd as that sounds, it is so true.

  After coming out of mourning for my mother, I had no idea what the next step would be for me, especially since I no longer had a job, but I put one foot in front of the other and it was slowly revealed. I spent that fall continuing to do the next right thing, going to meetings, sharing my feelings with others, talking to my therapist, and just plain enjoying the new energy I had for life. My parents were taking care of my bills with some of the money I still had left from my mother’s settlement, so I didn’t have to get a job right away. I felt as though anything was possible and that the world was at my fingertips. Truthfully, I had no idea what I wanted to do or become, but simply the thought that I could do anything was empowering and thrilling.

  I was coming up on the elusive one-year anniversary in the program, and I had a lot of anticipation about reaching it. In recovery, we count time because it is a valid and validating way to chart yo
ur growth. Everyone always knows exactly how much time in recovery they have—in fact, if you ask, some recovering people can even tell you to the minute. The year was a landmark. It was a full twelve months, fifty-two weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, or 525,600 minutes without picking up a drink or drug. It’s a birthday in many ways, and it becomes just as important, if not more important, than your actual birthday. For so many of us, it is when our lives truly begin to take form and productive shape, as opposed to all the useless drunken months, days, and hours we had spent withering away before. It is an accomplishment not to be overlooked but to be celebrated. In many meetings, the year is an indescribable goal that many try to achieve but few actually do. Recovery is hard, and the first year is often the hardest. So many people relapse within the first year that many meetings even have rules about it, for example:

  ° You shouldn’t date in the first year.

  ° You cannot share your story until you have a full year of recovery.

  ° You cannot lead a meeting until you have a full year of recovery.

  ° You shouldn’t sponsor anyone else in the first year.

  The rules contributed to making the first-year anniversary an incredible goal to reach, one that brought with it a level of respect from others in meetings.

  On or immediately after the one-year anniversary, meeting leaders suggest and sometimes request that a person share his or her story in a speaker meeting. It is recommended that the speaker share for the entirety of the meeting, which is usually an hour. This is a great rite of passage in many recovery places, and I was eager for my turn. I had been counting down my months, weeks, and days like a small child counting down to Christmas or the start of summer.

  The ritual of handing out the chips is an important part of the meeting. It is always done either at the beginning or the end of the meeting. Various lengths of recovery are called out, and one by one people walk up to the front of the room and claim their prized chip denoting the length of time in recovery. I collected all my colorful, plastic round chips along the way—twenty-four hours, thirty days, sixty days, and ninety days. As people receive their chips, the group always applauds and hoots and hollers, and a lot of hugging occurs.

  But the one-year chip—oh, that was a different thing altogether. First of all, it wasn’t plastic; it was a medallion of sorts. It wasn’t colorful; it was a solid bronze metal coin twice the thickness of other chips to represent the newfound stability in life after having achieved a year. Many meeting-goers have a saying when handing them out: “Put this in your mouth, and if it melts, then you can drink.” The round of applause is usually the loudest when people get their first one-year chip. As someone who often had dramatic scenes playing in my head with me as the star, I envisioned myself going up to the front of the room and graciously accepting my one-year medallion with all the humility of a starlet winning an Oscar. In my daydream, I dramatically thanked my sponsor and the rooms of recovery, instead of the Academy, before chanting, “You like me; you really like me.”

  This would be a really big deal for me.

  I was asked to tell my story at a Friday night meeting, which was always one of the larger meetings in town. I was giddy, nervous, and excited. I had never spoken for a whole hour in front of a group of people before. During the past few months, I had been sharing for three to five minutes at some meetings, and even then I always got sweaty palms and a shaky voice. It scared the crap out of me to open up my mouth and speak my truth in a room full of strangers. But that is what recovery is all about—sharing our experience, strength, and hope with others so that they may understand what the program is like and how it works. In essence, this is why twelve-step recovery works. Without the meetings and other addicts sharing their stories with one another, it would be much harder for people to understand how to make it one day at a time. We lean on each other; it is a we program, not an I program.

  Even though I had sat through hours and hours of meetings, I can honestly say that I took something positive away from every meeting I attended. I may not have always liked the messenger, but as my sponsor Rose always said, “Principles over personalities.” She repeated this slogan to me often—so much that I felt as though it should be tattooed to my forehead. I didn’t always like everyone in the rooms. There were all types of people at meetings, and I had a tendency to be a little judgmental. Every time I started talking shit about someone, there would be Rose saying, “Jennifer, principles over personalities. Hear the message and ignore the messenger.” And believe it or not, when I opened my mind up enough to actually listen, I learned the most from those I disliked the most.

  Rose was a great sponsor and really guided me through those months. I called her daily, chatting away about the events of my day, my frustrations, fears, successes, joys, and everything in between. She was always there to listen and offer strong, recovery-oriented advice. Being new in the program, I didn’t have the best patience. After all, most addicts have a slogan of their own: “I want what I want and I want it now!” When I was having one of my moments of utter frustration over something, her classic response to me was always “This too shall pass.” I grew to hate that phrase, not because it wasn’t true—it was the absolute truth—but because I was so impatient so often that Rose said it to me daily, sometimes multiple times a day. It got to the point where every time she said it to me, I would mimic it back to her in a childlike tone and then add, “like whole corn through my ass.” She always laughed off my defiance because she knew I was only joking, which I was. Rose had such a great sense of humor, and we laughed a lot. She had a gentle way of guiding me into the right frame of mind. Her sense of humor was so much like those of people I had grown up with that she instantly felt familial, and that worked for me. She gave me a daily devotional book that ended up becoming my saving grace at times when I needed it most. Each morning, I opened this book and it always managed to have the exact message or lesson that I needed that day.

  At my one-year anniversary, she also gave me another gift that I loved and wore daily. It was a little gold charm that held the Serenity Prayer gently carved into its thin, flat frame. It was a charm that all the women in our group received when they had a year of recovery. It was a sign of passage, if you will, among this amazing group of women who all cared for and loved each other so much. We were one another’s strength in times of great weakness. I placed it on a long, gold chain that my mother used to wear and that I inherited after she passed away. The charm fell slightly above my heart, which was exactly where I needed it to be at all times.

  My parents decided to make the trip to State College to hear me give my lead, which is another way of saying my sharing of my story for the first time. I was so incredibly nervous that I thought I might puke. In fact, as I sat there on a wooden stool in front of about fifty people, including my sponsor and parents, I started off my lead by saying, “I think I might puke,” which got a laugh out of everyone and put me at ease a bit. My palms were sweaty as I started from the beginning and talked about the reasons I used, the things that happened to me as a result of my using, the people I hurt, the things I lost, the trouble I got into, how I almost died, how I eventually got into recovery, and how incredibly different my life was today.

  It wasn’t until I sat there and told my story that I realized how far I had come. What a miracle I was! How amazing this program was!

  By the end of my story I was beaming with pride, and yet had humility so raw that I cried openly. The audience burst into applause, and I was enthralled with the response. Seeing the utter pride on my parents’ faces was indescribable. Their eyes glowed as they beamed at me. It was such an unfamiliar response—I had been so accustomed to placing pain directly into those patient and loving eyes and seeing it staring back at me. So this pride, this joyful look in their eyes broke my heart, but in a good way.

  As my parents and others began to swarm around me and hug me, I can honestly say that I had never felt unconditional love and joy like that before. It was overw
helming. In addition to my dad and my stepmom, my sponsor and my friends in recovery had become my new family. I felt so blessed. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better in recovery, I turned a corner or reached a milestone and things got better. I was beginning to live this life that had been beyond my wildest expectations.

  PART

  11

  MORE WILL BE

  REVEALED

  I used the Serenity Prayer

  in every aspect of my life

  and believed strongly in the part that says

  “the courage to change the things I can.”

  19

  APPLYING MYSELF

  I’D MADE IT TO MY ONE-YEAR RECOVERY ANNIVERSARY, but I still faced many challenges. I hadn’t found a job and my money was running out, so I had to make some sort of decision regarding my future. My therapist introduced the idea of college to me during one of our sessions. I had begun to think that going to school might be a good next step for me, although I wasn’t sure I would be able to go because of finances and my past horrible grades. My former grade point average was a 1.5; a scholarly asset I was not.

  My therapist introduced me to a guy from the Office of Rehabilitation Vocation. He told me that I could apply to Pennsylvania State University as a provisional student, which basically meant they would accept me as a student, but I would be placed on probation for the first year. I filled out the application and wrote an essay explaining why I wanted to attend college. I wrote about my past drinking and drug use and about why my grades were so bad. I wrote about my mom and how losing her was my breaking point. I finished the essay by telling them how I went to a rehabilitation program, then moved to State College to start a new life, and that I had been in recovery for more than a year.