Peer In

I’m going through such a painful ending. It’s been ending for such a long time. It was ending already when we were in beautiful Rocky Point together… but sadly, the painful downward spiral took much longer and is still going. 

Our sweet Jesus has given me courage from unexpected sources as of late. 

Today I knew I had to make the best of what was coming. Endings are painful. Freedom has a price. Before the dawn the dark is the longest hour. 

Today, I found comfort in these. I ripped the bandaids off. I sought out what I needed for what is coming and met the onslaughts of the backlash head on, waiting for each, rather than turning to find it in a crouching position. 

I was boldly prepared without arrogance. I was patient with his questions and anger. I was still sad when my character was attacked as an act of desperation. 

How can a person that walked with me and been intimate with me know so little about me? That was worth a little sadness.  

I thought about you, and how Jesus has put us together. Oh Mandi, Mando…what would I do if I didn’t know this is the way? I’d be so lost and just in pain. 

Sure, I would always have the love of the light of our loving Father…

What I have instead is a gift of love that gives me direction and comfort like nothing ever has. I feel seen. It’s been over a year and half since we have been together, this man and me…in any real way. 

Just like it seems all of my relationships, not just man and woman but ALL of them; I am the “bad” person and just stay quiet and I’m usually screaming inside, but not today. 

I am good. I love that he feels like he ended it. I have been waiting for this to come. And I didn’t know how it would. This stalemate has been going on for far too long. 

Things just keep shifting and won’t line up no matter how hard I try. So I’m letting go. This is the way.

Mirror Image

She stands next to her bouquet of flowers feeling as if she is on top of the world. Beautiful is the word that comes to mind when I think about the way she felt about herself in that moment. A Polaroid was taken, and then tucked away in her desk drawer at work for years to come.

To say that this was a “moment” in time would be stretching the truth, because for 8 years she saw herself this way. She would look in the mirror and see what nobody else saw: a physically healthy person, just like any other, yet all the while she knew that the way she lived her life was going to take her to an early grave. With a glimmer of hope each day she rose from bed (had she chose to go to bed the night before) she would say to herself: “This day will be different. This will be the day that I begin to live my life, and end the spiraling path of self destruction.” Yet as each day came and went, she would repeat the mistakes of the previous day. Choosing to live in denial and pretending like everything is alright, she is only prolonging the inevitable: jails, institutions or death, as Narcotics Anonymous would say.

This photograph that I speak of is of me with an enormous grin from ear to ear, standing next to a desk with a huge bouquet of flowers. I found this picture a couple of days ago stowed away in my desk drawer at work. I am now 30 years old and have been clean for over 4 ½ years. To my alarming surprise, I was much skinnier than I had remembered. Reflecting back, I recall awaking each morning, taking a shower, throwing some clothes and make-up on, doing my hair and thinking to myself, “Dang girl, you’re looking good!” I must have been looking through a different pair of eyes, because when I recently came across this picture, I thought to myself, “If someone didn’t know any of my history, they’d look at this picture and think that I had an eating disorder!” Between the ages of 18 through 25, I abused methamphetamines, and methamphetamines had definitely abused me.  

There I stand in this horrific photograph, not weighing more than 90 pounds at the height of 5’2”, wearing either a size 1 or size 3 pair of jeans; in either case they were baggy. In fact, I remember wearing a men’s wallet in one back pocket and a pack of cigarettes in the other so that people couldn’t tell how skinny I really was (The idea was to make by behind stick out further, thus, looking bigger). Little did I know that it just didn’t work as well as I’d thought! My neck and collarbone are exposed with quite possibly each and every bone located in that area protruding outward. The indent in between each collarbone is so deep that you could easily set a ping pong ball there without it falling out. With a pocked face and dried out, fried blonde hair, I truly thought I was still beautiful, yet I was dying from the inside out; physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.  

Because I grew up in a home with two recovering alcoholics for parents with years and years of sobriety with the help of AA (Alcoholics Anonymous), I was shown a better way to live. The doors were opened to me at a very young age, for which I will always be grateful. With a couple of journeys through outpatient treatment and one through inpatient treatment, I still couldn’t (and didn’t want to) grasp recovery. It took me looking at losing my 2 ½ year-old daughter, my job and my home to open my eyes enough to want sobriety. I finally walked back through the doors of NA (Narcotics Anonymous), and just a couple of weeks later I decided to pick a clean date and kept it, which was on a Thursday: November 3, 2005.  

To this day, I still go to at least two meetings a week. For this addict, going out to the bar and having a couple of drinks sounds fun and even seems possible at times, IF I stay away from NA for too long. I seem to forget where my addiction has taken me for a moment. Sometimes it takes that newcomer who walks through the doors of NA with one day clean to remind me where I came from, and it reminds me that a couple of drinks is just never enough. As the members of NA would say, “One is too many and a thousand is never enough.” Another reminder, of course, is looking at this photograph that I speak of. I will always keep it, no matter how much I don’t like to see it, because it’s a reminder of where my best thinking takes me. Without NA or God in my life, I’d still be that false mirror image, merely a walking shell.  

This may not be a beautiful photograph to most people, but to me it represents something so important that it just may be the most meaningful photo that I possess. It represents freedom; my freedom from active addiction. During those times that are rough, and the times where I lose gratitude, it’s nice to have this photo to remind me just how much worse my life could be. To me, that itself is worth a thousand words.

2 July 2010

There is the law of the Land and the law of Love. The law of Love transcends the law of the Land creating space for it, for the sake of relationship. Within, the law of Love transforms it, calls it to rise higher and bigger.