I keep coming back

To when I came back

And don’t you dare think it is admirable.

This month, we are talking through the literal and abstract concepts of recovery. On the literal side - the inspiration comes from the annual celebration of my own recovery anniversary. A more subtle and less selfish individual might keep that to themselves. “Not I! Not I!” I say. Just as attempts at  wearing “dress up clothes”, and preening my behavior towards being whatever I have been told about “professionalism” or “adult” or “good enough” have failed me, so has subtleness about this most auspicious date on the calendar. 

Diving into the reality of my recovery annual marker has, in the last 15 years, looked a good deal of ways. Personally there have been a healthy amount of relapses, more than one performance piece, a vacation, a love affair, wellness adventures, athletic endeavors, intense therapeutic undertakings (of varying value), essays, and fictional tellings of the high and lows and in-betweens. Every year, I go to a group and tell my story. At this point, it is less of “telling my story” than it is repeating a very harrowing (and entertaining) monologue to move the masses and make me look pretty dang courageous and wise. As I look back and look forward at the rituals used to mark the passing of time, I see practices, certainly this far in, which are lazy, indulgent, lost and highly confused. Too easy. Too surface. Exclusive.  Removed. Wet. Limp. Arrested, distracted, and whatever other words of wicked ickiness the thesaurus might offer.

And then I stop.

I stop to note another kind of repeated practice - the criticism. What is interesting about the first and now with the former is that the second is something I deeply connect with. Something I do at all times of year. Kicking my own ass feels real and right and true, as if I was at some playland of positive antics, and then I see her. I see that old friend across the bar winking and buying me my favorite drink. She knows well enough why I have come here, because they know my name. Because being me in the world and dissing me in the world are like the breath and blinking that colors at every moment of every bit of my everything. Negativity is the fire below the furnace of self-abuse that I am still in deep medical debt to recover from. No yoga nor colorful essay is a just demarcation of my recovery, my life from death, the birth of my true self that is the self that I love more than I lust for self hate and personal doubt. This me, this she who walked herself across the finish line by not dying and ripped her soul from pits to possibility, she deserves expensive drinks and all inclusive Holidays for sure, but more so honesty that there are bad friends in thought and action that she deeply struggles to still shake away.

Recovery is all of it. Recovery is congratulations and it is showing up but not so much in the way I am accustomed to doing it. Go into the rooms. Attend the meetings. Do the journaling. And so on. But think of what is happening. See, I go out drinking a fair amount and I do love me some shopping. Nails and hair and massage and athletic whatnots. Give me - GIVE ME - some healing. And, therapy I hit up several times a week. But what goes down? And why?

Is it support or is it outsourcing? Sherpa or tour guide? The backbone of the beast of lifelong recovery and the best of what that part of one’s life can offer is agency. Presence to being present vs the easy dialing of tools learned in all the wrong places and taking on too dangerously often.

Going back to my last anniversary, circa the cold of pre-vax COVID winter one, and my monsters were hungry. Like so many other addicts, the circumstances did not visit my triggers kindly. Unforeseen as the pandemic itself, my personal headspace was all too familiar. Funny, though, it was one of the best anniversaries ever, most formative in a long time, for sure. The inability to recreate away my emotions and actions, I, even after all this damn time, saw a brighter shade of things. Better than the popping of any cork or ripping open of a package is the super-cool learning from the reassurance of the courage that got me well back-in-the-day.

In session, some of us have been talking about the ‘phenomenal disagreement’ that arises in a relationship. Perhaps it is an infidelity or mistruth or another kind of unpleasant disruption that prickles on a previously easy and happy enough relationship. This can be with a person, housing situation, job, anything and, as with my relapses, is only as well or ill as what we do thereafter. It is not that such occurrences are good - but, rather, that they are important, informative, and formative. What happens hence is not just what/who the parties in said disagreement are - but who they are unto themselves elsewhere and beyond. Don’t court them, they will happen. And should in big and small ways. Tend to them. Do tend to them well, but when they are weathered, I encourage me and you alike to carry into more easy times the kind of noticing crisis causes forth to times of lesser trepidation.

As opposed to dwelling in the perils of addiction or dancing in self congratulations, this year I am taking recovery as an encouragement towards awareness. We require recovery when we lose touch with those antennas of reality vs the familiar narratives that get us by. Too often, and the current social schism is this exaction a zillion times over, the narratives and stories are wildly removed from what reality actually is. They are interpretations of artificial identity and need that separate us from the humanity of ourselves and others to dangerous ends.

Lastly, if you are inclined to get a gift to mark this time for me or another anniversary celebration this year or any other - perhaps that could be to be here with us and ask us to be here with you in return.

PS: We have an extra  special blog-event going on this month, have you heard? 

Well, let me tell you all about it! We are seeking contributions for writings on the topic of Recovery - literally or figuratively, explicitly or implicitly. However the word speaks to you or what it sparks - I welcome to learn about. Shoot over an email and we are off!