Stepping Up
This blog has kept me relatively regular in my non-academic writing, but it’s odd sometimes to turn to a venue with an audience for what basically boils down to journaling. I’m doing a little private journaling on the side right now, and that’s good, but sometimes the blog is a better incentive for putting it all out there, as it were.
Ok, this for Marshall in particular, in reference to the Celebrity Nanalogies post and “the process”. Grandpa, I’ll try to write about Frightmare next.
Facing up to an addictive pattern is a bitch, but it also brings this new, if delicate, feeling of honest dignity. It’s a cleansing. Right now I’m looking back at my life with a new lens, and not only do I more clearly see the intensely regular pattern I was cycling in (a pattern I was already pretty well aware of) but I also, maybe for the first time, feel less bewildered and helpless in the face of it. I see that the pattern has been, for real, a kind of addiction–and suddenly I understand why heroin movies are one of my favorite genres.
I always thought it was the other people in my life with the addictions–to work, pot, alcohol, food, exercise, anger–whatever. I never saw myself as having an addictive personality, but damn if that’s not true. My addiction played out in my choice of partners who wanted (needed) me for a set of qualities and skills I provided (heck, I’d spent my whole life building those skills and qualities), but who were for whatever particular reasons unable to rise to the kind of presence and commitment I needed (or at least when I needed it). I was addicted to people with certain kinds of wounds, addicted to trying to turn inequalties into equality, trying to take what was and turn it into something different, something deeper and higher and, I thought, healing for me. Trying to inspire others to change/grow/heal, while I was not the (main) problem; the classic marker of codependence.
Urp. Just threw up a little.
The good news is that I think I got incrementally closer to what I wanted with each relationship, which has to be an indicator of growth. And I started to learn how to articulate my actual truths, instead of stuffing them away and biding my time while putting someone else’s needs way before my own. I also began to notice and be able to restrain the urge to change/”grow” my partners. I learned a lot about being present, and about love, and about letting go. I thank God for all the lessons, even the ones that broke me in some way. I’m grateful that in this universe the fact is that if we choose the “right” path or the “wrong” path, we’re going to grow either way; it’s just a matter of how long we’re going to let it take and how much damage we’re going to wreak in the process. The good news is also that people, including me, do heal and grow.
But, screw it; this is not just an intellectual exercise. I’m doing the 12 steps. I’m doing it because it helps, and because it’s a concrete path out of unhealthy patterns (not to mention much cheaper than therapy). It helps to have a framework. It helps to hear people talk about their own addictive crap, which, in the meetings I’ve been going to (yes, you heard me right) is mainly about sex, love, relationships, or emotional avoidance. Some of these folks are WAY more f’d up than I am, some of them have done crazy, crazy things, some of them have the same core issues as the people I’ve partnered with, yet despite our differences I can find bits of things they say that I relate to or learn from. And it helps to own up to what’s happened as a product of my life experiences and my attendant choices, rather than feeling like, “why the hell does this hurtful stuff keep happening to me, poor, innocent me?” It’s a whopper of a consciousness raising experience, I’ll tell you what. It’s not inconsistent with the spiritual philosophies I’ve been embracing anyway.
Steps 1-3 are about admitting that whatever it is has become unmanageable and giving it up to a higher power. Step 4 is about taking a fearless inventory of how exactly it has impacted my life. That’s more or less where I am. It’s quite an awakening.
Anyway, little steps, little dignities.
