You May Find Yourself
by The Small Bow Family Orchestra
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Our dogged, heartbroken, fed-up, found-out, whimsical, and wiliest readers check in for the new year.
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“The last time I attended a family Christmas gathering was 2001. My father was angry and mean because of a sports game or politics or for no reason at all. So I punished him by only speaking to him in a robot voice. I was in my mid-20s and thought it was funny. I still think it's funny because, you know, I was talking like a fucking robot to make my father stop acting like an asshole. I know I should try to become more serious in the coming year, or to take all of this shit more seriously. But then I'd have to say serious things like, Hello, how is the weather? in a normal voice, and that might be worse than anything. Either way, Dad will still get drunk and throw up in the front yard. Family is the hardest thing, and I don't think I'll ever figure it out.”
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“I'm trying really hard to build in what I need to survive another year of isolation because of everyone else's Covid denial, without diving into the quick and easy fixes that would just ruin what little life I have. So far it's cold plunges in the ocean, syncing movies to watch from afar with friends, my stupid little book club, and trying to be a pen-pal. I keep hoping to find the balance between hyperfixating on all my internal workings and hyperfixating on the state of the world by finding funner things to hyperfixate on (see above list) since apparently that's my brain's mode of operation.”
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“Last week at a party, my friend was telling her screaming son that he could have the cupcake if he finished his macaroni. I had to leave the room. I try not to portray food as bad or good, responsibility or reward, to my 2-year-old because that's how you're “supposed” to do it, and because I was bulimic from 18 to 36. Bouts of therapy and prescription drugs and recreational drugs and white-knuckled avoidance—they all worked to muzzle the compulsion for a few months at most. The trick that lasted? Getting pregnant. Codependence is a hell of a salve. Now I'm trying to learn to eat alongside my own toddler, but I still can’t swallow a bite of a pancake because I’ll have to keep it down in this post-purge reality.
I told my therapist I don’t think I’ll ever have a healthy relationship with food. I will always be recovering, always treading water. “What scares you about owning your recovery?” she asked. Who knows. It feels like I’m moving towards life, though, so maybe this is the year it’ll start to feel like mine.”
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“Last year was rough. Since June, I've been climbing up out of a hole I'd been sleep-digging myself into for fifty years. The work this year is to keep letting go of my shame, guilt, and codependency, down into that hole behind me as I climb up because it's in the past and it won't do me any good up in the fresh air of now. I'll continue to choose what I do, think, and feel, present and consciously, as often as I can. A selfishly good, powerful, secure, forgiving, and positive mess on the ladder of success.”
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“Recovery has been one ah-ha moment after another. A recent lightbulb: I spent years numbing myself out with alcohol, believing that my feelings were too big to exist in the light of day, too irrational and that I am not worthy of the care needed to tend to my feelings. Many factors contributed to this belief, and my life and my relationships reinforced it. The person I am dating often points this out to me and gives me opportunities to name what I am feeling, and what I need.
The other day in the midst of a conflict, they said something so simple to me.: How you feel matters to me... but even if you take me out of the equation, your feelings matter
My jaw just about hit the floor. Have you ever been told that how you feel matters? It is a fucking revolutionary thought to me. It's reparative. I realized I have only been told the opposite, on repeat, by the most important people in my life and probably more importantly, by myself.
In 2023, I don't have any grand plans except to stay sober and stay open. I know if I do, I'll continue to heal and turn on these types of lights.”
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“This is the first year since 2018 I didn’t say I was going to do “Dry January,” but I am also six days into it, not drinking. I don’t drink every day or even week, but when I do, it’s a bathtub amount of wine. Been working on releasing my grip on that. 2 DUIs and lots of humiliation wasn’t what made me start to assess it….maybe it’s just getting older?
2020 was actually fine (tons of drinking), 2021 was close to the worst year of my life (the least I’ve drank since high school), and 2022 was so-so (drinking uptick). Mixed messages over here. One thing I’m constantly aware of is how I talk to myself like I’m a bag of trash. That’s probably more important to work on than anything about booze right now.”
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“I had a long chat with my husband about this on the way back from a tough trip to my hometown in Florida. My mom is an epic narcissist, and I’ve been fighting uphill to recover from being raised by her for the past 15+ years. But I insist on trying to force some kind of relationship, even though it drowns me every time. So, this year, after this rambling road trip conversation, I boiled down the resolution: Find Me in 2023. Pardon the corny ass rhyme. But the little girl who hid inside this body because of an abusive parent needs to see the sun. I aim to give her some breath this year. I want it bad. She needs it.”
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“I have largely given up making resolutions. They seem so binding and invite instant disappointment in me. Having said that, I’d like to open up some little windows in my life to let in acceptance. Maybe give me permission to loosen up the reigns a bit, stop trying to control and influence everything.”
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“I'm so tired of thinking about my relationship to alcohol. Does that happen to anyone else? Like, I wish it could be chill.
I have a 1-year-old, and it's been a long/lonely year even though I love her more than the universe, and the day after Christmas, my partner and I were finally able to go out on our first date night since she was born because we could leave her at home with my parents. We hit up a dive bar in Southern Oregon and ordered a couple of Pacificos. It was a really nice night out. We made out under the string lights, it was raining outside, and I felt good. I felt hopeful.
But now we're driving back from Oregon, and I just drank an entire bottle of wine in a hotel room while my partner sleeps next to me, and I feel like shit. I have a Jekyll/Hyde relationship with alcohol—sometimes, it's this medium for connection and pleasure with friends and loves, and sometimes it's this horrible anesthesia that I seek out in the dark. I hope I'll feel enough conviction to break my solo drinking habit in the new year.
This artist I follow posted something recently: “Discomfort oriented toward growth is always preferable to stagnant comfort that keeps producing the same results and the same life again and again and again.” Please send me the strength to choose discomfort going into 2023. I want to grow. I don't want to be stuck here.”
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“I’m not good.”
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“I turn 40 this year, and I would be lying if I said I wasn't filled with enormous self-judgment and shame. Not successful enough, skinny enough, married enough, home-owner enough, you know the drill. I have been googling nose jobs and face lifts. I am trying to purchase a life coach and a personal trainer. Even typing all of this fills me with compassion for my sweet, sweet inner child who still feels like she needs to be perfect to be loved. So that's where I'm at—vacillating between compulsive self-improvement and finding moments of love for the person I have come to be. I have been self-isolating for a while, but this year I truly wish for more community, joy, pleasure, and ease for myself.”
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“I thought that I was so very special and unique in my issues. No one could truly understand why I was so comfortable using alcohol and other drugs to facilitate that mental band-aid. Then I began to hear my story in AA meetings, dictated nearly verbatim by strangers. And written with more flair in books published before I was born.
So much for being special. Now I just want to trudge the same road that is all on, and maybe not lose my shit while doing so.”
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“My birthday is two weeks before the New Year, and it always makes me overly reflective to the point of driving myself crazy (no pun intended). Since my first collision with an eating disorder at 14, I feel like I’ve spent my whole life recovering from something. I’m 28 now and coming up on five years without alcohol in May. I’m more stable than I’ve ever been, but I don’t know how to get beyond feeling so stagnant. I still can’t shake the feeling that I’m doing life wrong somehow, even though I can’t imagine what doing it right looks like. I don’t do things I want to do and feel like I should be doing. I rarely venture outside of my comfort zone. I don’t feel so afraid anymore, more wary and weary of everything. Cue Peggy Lee’s ‘Is That All There Is?’
(It was very hard not to end every other sentence with lol, lol.)”
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“This was the first year in my life I thought, “new year, new beginnings!” After losing my boyfriend in an unexplainable “accident” in rehab in November, I have been sharing our memories on my Instagram stories daily. I think it was a lame way for me to honor our relationship since I never posted photos of us. Even though we were together for five years and nearly engaged, we worked in the same place and knew the same people. I didn’t want people in our business until it was “official.”
My culture believes in mourning death for 49 days until the spirit passes to heaven. January 2nd happened to be 49 days, plus I had a big shift in work on January 3rd, in conjunction with the new year… felt like the perfect time to end my daily Instagram tributes and “move on.” Today is January 3rd … my first day of “moving on.” I don’t know what I thought 2023 would change or why 49 days would be the cure, but I feel more depressed and stuck in the past now than ever before, clinging onto anything I can. And I still can’t bring myself to clean out his stuff from our apartment.”
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“I've done nothing but hold my head in my hands lately. Rubbing my temples, hoping for some relief. I can't sleep worth shit. Night sweats keep waking me up, and having to change your shirt all the time seriously fucks with your deep sleep. So I start the day in a pit, and my meds aren't quite dialed in anymore to help me keep the anxiety manageable (working on that). And I keep fixating on my childhood lymphoma—because night sweats are a red flag and all that for a reoccurrence. But I've had every test imaginable to rule that out. But still. Right now, for 2023, I want a solid, straight night of sleep. Just so my head would maybe clear.”
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“While embarking on a week-long holiday with my siblings and niblings I told my niece 2023 was going my Year of Discipline, which to me means putting some actual work into things, something I've never actually done. When the younger one asked what I would be disciplined about, I came out with not being so mean to myself in my head and talking more kindly to myself.
At that the end of that week, which was trigger and resentment central, but during which I was able to discover gratitude for having a family at all, my niece said to me, “This is the year when you talk kindly to yourself” and gave me a hug and said, ‘I like you.’”
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“In April, I will be celebrating four years alcohol-free. At this point, I don't really feel many temptations to drink, and honestly, I don't think I could physically survive a hangover even if that temptation were there. The old me, the one whose entire identity was consumed by alcohol, doesn't really steer this ship anymore. Now that I am confident in my sobriety, I have had the time to sit and begin to notice the ripple effect it has had on my life. Since 2019, when I stopped drinking, I have seen three best friends quit, countless friends and acquaintances, my sister, my mother, and my best friend's mother. I can't help but wonder, did my decision to remove alcohol from my life inspire them to do the same? And has their decision inspired someone else?
I don't want to take all of the credit, obviously, but the seed must be planted by someone, right? This year, in an effort to be kind to myself, I don't resolve to change anything about who I am. Instead, I want to share who I have become openly and freely, with those who are curious about taking the same journey. I feel called to serve because despite how wonderful self-isolation feels, this is impossible to do alone.”
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“I once read it takes someone an average of TEN YEARS to get sober after they first start thinking they have an addiction problem. I thought that seemed ludicrous until I recently found an old journal from college where I repeatedly wrote about how I didn’t want to drink anymore. It then hit me that I have been struggling for just about ten years. 2022 was better, though. I was as close as I’d ever been to living a truly sober life. I did, however, on a couple of occasions, enjoy a (singular) cocktail while out with friends. But WHY? Why couldn’t I abstain? Why couldn’t I be wholeheartedly truthful in telling my old pals I just don’t want to inject my body with ethanol during dinner? Do I need new friends? Do I WANT new friends? After years of coming to terms with who I am, I am still looking to please others by keeping quiet about my own needs? The work of sobriety is never-ending. Here’s to giving it another go in 2023.”
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“In an effort to 'better' myself, I signed up for a 40 day meditation challenge that begins today. I bristled at the community questions, not wanting to entangle myself in the experiences of others even though that's part of the healing process. I want to do it alone. I've always wanted to do it alone. My parents remind me of my preternatural independence as I loudly proclaimed “I DO IT MYSELF” at those who attempted to assist me when I was under three feet tall.
I fight my creativity at every chance I get. I don't feel worthy of words or of the power they hold. Some twisted god bestowed a writer's grant upon me last year, and it's lording itself over my head. Though I have two years to complete a 'memoir' about being a chronically ill / mentally ill / neurodivergent person, and it seems an impossibility to commit my story to paper. Or bits and bytes on a hard drive. Beep boop, meep morp (those are the sounds of me avoiding emotional vulnerability).
My brain needs to slow its roll, so instead of rolling joints I stuff as much cannabis I can into a vape and use it as an anxiety stim throughout the day. It doesn't help but I tell myself it does. The little Jiminy Cricket in my ear that could just be tinnitus whispers words of wisdom to quit but I don't. If I quit I'll turn to bottles of wine white from Marlborough praising the new world and cracking jokes about hobbits. It's easier than writing about trauma (“It's Easier Than Writing About Trauma, and Other Lies I Tell Myself” coming soon to a literary agent near you!). Maybe a fidget cube would be more helpful than a Pax; it'd be better for my asthma that way, too.
It's become clear over the course of writing this email—and over the last thirty years—that wanting to do it alone is a trauma response. My pushing people away is an act of self preservation, and my rage at resolutions is a projection of the rage I have towards myself for not getting or being 'better'. For being unable to heal myself. For being unable to get over it and move past it. I want to find ways to expand around the Exiled Feelings and offer them comfort and support instead of a haze of grape-smelling vape plumes that obscure their self-loathing. Doing it alone doesn’t work, and I frequently forget that there are people I love and trust who want to help me. Therapists and doctors and friends and my cats and the man I love who loves me back and sometimes even family. I can commit to not doing it alone at least two per cent of the time, and if I can't do that then at least I can try.
Instead of resolutions and intentions, I'm focusing on commitments. I can commit to allowing people inside the swamp of my existence. I can commit to morning pages. I can commit to a daily writing practice (but not in a full suit like Nick Cave does it). I can commit to working with those feelings of unworthiness that come up when I try to articulate what it is to live within my body. I can commit to writing notes in thick black Sharpies on hot pink stickies that say things like, "THE WORK WON'T SUSTAIN ME UNLESS I SUSTAIN IT" and "ONLY THAT WHICH CAN DESTROY ITSELF IS TRULY ALIVE." I can commit to reading Jim Harrison and Anthony Bourdain, and the words they wrote before they were dead white men that my alive white woman-being idolizes. I can commit to slowing down my brain by embracing the 40 day meditation challenge instead of disparaging it for being a mindfulness practice. I could even commit to vaping less, but that's a Future [Name Redacted] problem; one doesn't simply walk into Mordor (confession: I've neither read nor seen LoTR).
In 2023, I can work on committing to myself so that I don’t need to commit myself. Self-commitment doesn't require resolutions or intentions—it requires a recognition of who I am, where I am, and who I want to be, where I want to be. Maybe by focusing on that, by committing to myself, I can be good in the future, even if I'm not right now.”
Great job everyone, thanks for playing, see you next month.
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