gifts

last week was my birthday.  that, in my world, is an event.  my parents made a big deal about birthdays (and holidays) when i was growing up, giving my transient family a sense of tradition that would provide us with a feeling of home as we moved from base to base. as a result, i play up the birthdays of all my friends and loved ones... and i celebrate my own in the same manner.

this birthday was not one of the best. i got in a huge fight with a loved one that ended up disrupting a majority of the day's plans.  and a yearly call i was expecting from another loved one didn't light up my phone, despite my constant monitoring. these let downs seemed magnified on my birthday, and i cried and felt depressed all afternoon and evening as a couple of friends visited and others facetimed and called to try to talk it through with me.

all i wanted was to have a glass of wine.  or six.  i wanted to just go out with my best friend and shrug it all off; to pretend like i wasn't hurt and fucking celebrate my birthday.

but there was one additional complication: i gave up drinking for my birthday.

last fall i toyed, for this first time, with being sober.  i blogged about the journey as i started with 40 days, extended it as i was "assigned" an additional 40 days by elena brower (ex-life coach, present and eternal teacher), and then the lessons i learned about myself along the way.

but there were a few things i left out, even in my honesty: 1) the real reason i started the first 40 days, and 2) the depth of the concern i had that i couldn't do it; that i enjoyed alcohol maybe a little too much for me to give it up for even 40 days.

the real reason i started the 40 days?  the rape i didn't really want to talk about yet.  yes, i wrote a vague blog about it.  yes, i named it as rape and several days later even reported it.  yes, i was doing a lot of things to process.  but the initial motivator for the 40 days was when my research assistant asked me "do you think you're drinking more?" as part of a post-rape self-care inventory.

"no," i immediately replied, insistent, even to myself, that i was handling this.  but when i got home and got in the bath that night, i noticed there was a large glass of wine in my hand.  and i thought, "i don't normally automatically pour wine when i walk into the house." and my next thought: FUCK.

and so, the 40 days.  i wanted to demonstrate that my life would not be negatively affected.  i wanted to show myself i had the strength to do something i didn't think i could (thematic in my life).

and that's where that second omission surfaces:  i had concerns about my ability to stop drinking. in my first post about it, i even seem to minimize the sobriety aspect of the 40 days with the calorie counting moratorium i threw in to the challenge. (side note: the calorie counting was actually harder for the first several days... and that behavior had plagued me much longer!) but i had deeper, more secretive worries about giving up drinking: some related to social situations, but others were around the relationship (or obsession) i've cultivated with avoidance mechanisms.

i've blogged more openly about bulimia and dating as avoidance, but not about drinking.  drinking, with most of my friends, is not something we need to talk about.  because it's assumed that everyone is always drinking.  a lot.  you could blame it on the penn state influence, australian norms, or the single-in-the-city lifestyle.  but a majority of my friends are drinkers. so why would i concern myself with analyzing an avoidance mechanism that is an acceptable part of my life and relationships?

each drinking event i attended sober became easier and easier.  sober dates and sober holidays and sober vacations followed.  it was more recently that i came across some life planning notes, from life coaching work with elena, that hit home the non-named concern i had with drinking at the start of the 40 days.

excerpt from work written 5/5/14:

Things friends have said recently, but I tucked away due to denial:
Hal: Does your drinking every worry you?
Owen: It’s basically like rape when we have sex and you’re that drunk.
Matt: Yeah, I didn’t realize we always do that [drink so much when together].
Kitty: But we don’t have a problem, right? We’re young and single; we wouldn’t do this if we had families.

dare i say i'm thankful for the impetus to start the 40 day journey?  reading about my previous denial scared me. i wondered if the "sober thing" would have ever appealed to me.  emergency room visits and blackouts hadn't influenced me to change my behavior; who's to say that anything would have?

in the 7 months after the "40" days, i haven't had much to drink on any one occasion.  i've learned i don't like alcohol or its after effects on my body or mind. and i LOVE being totally clear in my life and intentions.

this is how i 37.

and yet i've been afraid to totally give up alcohol.  isn't it nice to have that one glass of wine occasionally?  isn't it therapeutic to have a martini with a friend when they really need it?  isn't it socially acceptable to have a glass of champagne while attending a wedding? i had a million reasons not to give it up.

and then, about a week before my birthday, i realized the problem.  i was looking at this from a perspective of lack, and the only solution to that was to re-frame it.  and so i did: this birthday i gave myself the gift of not drinking (ever again).  the disappointing july 6th had no wine; the party with all my friends the next day had no whiskey (well, none in my glass!); the birthday dinner the following night had no cocktails. 

but i have so much more. 

and this, my loves, is the how, the why, and the what of my 37th birthday. 

next destiny

tonight i got a text from my husband; it told me that i'm now divorced.  four years after our split, we are finally divorced.

i didn't know how to reply to the text.  i wanted to say something elegant; i wanted to process everything i was feeling; i wanted us to heal our wounds. 

i replied "oh my god."

*****************************************

i did a two day teacher training with elena this weekend.  upon arriving, elena had us draw cards from a deck.  each card had a quote.  mine was:

Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.
--FRANK OUTLAW

i like the quote; i like thinking that what we practice becomes us. i also like that we can create our destiny; and, that if we read deeper, we can change our destiny.

which is what i've been focusing on for the past 5 weeks. 37 days of no calorie counting, no drinking, no mood altering anything.   each day has gotten easier.  and now i feel better than normal about food and exercise. better than normal because i know what it is like to feel so undeniably obsessed with it. saturday i drank a juice without examining the calorie label.  sunday i'm pretty sure i had four full meals.  monday i ate some yogurt from a larger tub without measuring out a 1/2 cup serving so i'd know the calorie count.  these things all seem like actual miracles to me.

sunday night, at the end of the yoga training, i approached elena in a panic about my 40 days being almost up.  elena looked me in the eyes, grabbed my mala beads that were around my neck, pulled my face nose to nose with hers, and told me that she had an easy solution: she assigned me 40 more days.  i instantly felt relieved and thus knew that she was right in her assignment.

and i started to think about what it really was that i was in recovery from.  yes, the eating disorder; yes, i'm not using other substances right now... but was there a single addiction here? 

i think it's that i was addicted to numbing feelings and avoiding feeling hard emotions. and i do need another 40 days to continue to find my way without returning to any of the number of avoidant crutches i've used.

*****************************************

it's that addiction which i will now openly credit with accelerating the dissolution of my past relationships. 

processing the text tonight was surprisingly hard, despite the fact that the divorce was not at all sudden. friends questioned "is it because it's the end of a chapter?" "is it because you weren't expecting it?" "is it because of the way he told you?"  i kept saying that i didn't know.  lydia facetimed me from sydney, immediately upon receiving my text, and encouraged me to cry it out and try to determine what i was feeling.  when i still couldn't understand it, she prescribed meditation.

i meditated.  i sat.  i followed my breath.  i was present.  all the attempted processing, the breathing, even the meditation didn't identify what felt so hard about that text.  but, i did what i've almost never done: i sat with the hard feelings. instead of allowing myself to shrink inside a constricted breath, i was able to expand my breathing.

i would tell my best friend, who just soberly processed the death of her grandmother so beautifully: i'm proud of you.  I'M SO PROUD OF YOU.

so i breathe a deep breath, an expanded breath, into that pride i try to direct back toward myself. 

and i swear i can feel my next destiny inside that breath.

i don't need to suck my thumb anymore

i'll be honest. i don't know what this post is about yet.

my last blog entry was quite confronting. to me i mean. it was scary to post, and the reactions i received from friends were a bit anxiety-producing, even though they were gorgeous replies. but other scary things happened--like a colleague hugging me at an event and saying that i was brave (love you JMS!). oh--i forgot: my blog might overlap with my real life?

my sister called me saying a mutual friend of ours had read my blog and immediately called her saying, "oh, so spring told your mom about her ED?" oh. no. i hadn't. i've never told my parents. because despite them being compassionate, amazing people, i hate admitting any shortcomings to them. and, yeah, i see this ED as one of my biggest failures.

but, that whole blog-in-life idea was now becoming a bit more dangerous. if my mom read my blog, she might feel hurt that i had never shared something with her that i was now sharing with the world. solution? grow the fuck up, i suppose. so, i called my mom.

ok. maybe that doesn't sound like a big deal to you. but, umm, i've been hiding this from my parents for over eight years. it was a big. fucking. deal.

and guess what? it wasn't that bad. my mom was as sensitive and caring as ever. and she sensed that i was in a good head-space right now. she told me she wasn't worried about me, because i had always done whatever i set my mind to. and then she reminded me of what happened on my fifth birthday:

at four and a half years of age, i had a doctor's check-up. as i was wont to do, i sucked my thumb while there. i mean, i was always sucking my thumb, so that isn't interesting. but, what is interesting, is that the doctor told me that children who suck their thumb after five years of age often develop buck teeth. now, even at four, i must've been a bit vain, because that was the scariest threat i had heard in my four years. so i told my parents i wasn't going to suck my thumb anymore once i turned five.

they played along. they let me think they believed me. on my fifth birthday, i didn't suck my thumb all day. by that evening, my parents were a little surprised, but still not convinced. they were sure i wouldn't make it through my bedtime rituals without a thumb for support. but, despite their doubt, i went to bed, tucked my little thumb inside my little fist, and put my lips against the base of my thumb knuckle.

and i never sucked my thumb again.

did you read that? i broke a well-ingrained habit by deciding it wasn't serving me. at five.

my mom's right. i can do whatever i put my mind to. and you know what? any of us can.


and i guess that's what this post is really about. believing in ourselves. without doubt. without self-criticism. without judgement. let's all throw away our security blankets.

with a little determination and lovingkindness toward ourselves, we can break those cycles in our life that aren't serving us. even those thought patterns that drive us crazy sometimes (KR!). so put your mind to it. and do it. i'm doing it right along with you: i've got your back.