Be the Best at Doing Good and Shit
Boobs have a learning curve, okay? They just do. In the early 2000s, Seventeen magazine said that I should “fall into The Gap,” which also meant falling for the lie that is a camisole with a “built-in support system.” For those who don’t know, the “built-in support system” is just an extra flap of cotton/poly blend with an elastic band to anchor it beneath your meager chest. Which—when I started wearing those camisoles—my chest was, indeed, meager. It was perfectly appropriate to skip the pokey training bra and throw a magenta button-up sweater over a baby pink cami and call it a day.
Somewhere between 2005 and 2006 my chest when from pitiful to plentiful, fast enough to surpass my wardrobe, but gradual enough to elude my mirror. I didn’t realize that the elastic banded sheet of fabric wasn’t doing its job anymore until a morning in debate class, when our teacher assigned us partners to argue for/against scholarships under Title IX. I moved across the room and sat down next to the guy that I was going to be working with and I introduced myself.
“Yeah. I know who you,” he grumbled. “It would be hard not to notice the girl that always has her tits hanging out of her shirt.”
I think about that interaction every day. Every. Single. Day. The complex it instilled in me was not navigable because it belittled me in every possible way. It was high school… guys had to cross their legs and chug ice water whenever a girl teased some kneecap through her ripped Abercrombie jeans… yet, this stranger of a 16-year-old was annoyed by my cleavage. Not only that, but he didn’t think it was worth the effort to salvage my dignity and tell me politely that I was exposed. Not only that and that, but I had not lost a debate yet, and getting partnered with me would produce the easiest A he had ever earned (if he’d ever earned one before). Not only that, that, and that, but—and this is low, but he went low, so I can go low too—that guy was no Prom King/quarterback/valedictorian/teenaged dream. So, what about me was so revolting that a guy like that felt the need to disdainfully tell me that I was a.) slutty, and b.) unsuccessful at it? I still don’t know. All I know is that I went forward in life believing that something about my being was so off-putting, that it made my brains, my boobs, and my character irrelevant.
Multiple people in recovery have told me that year three was hardest phase of their sobriety. None of them specified why, but I have my qualified postulations. Early sobriety is hell on earth. It passes. Everything after that is magical. Every day without drinking begets another day without drinking and you keep doing it because you want to, because it’s right and it feels amazing. Other people bequeath you with constant affirmations and encouragement. You get endorphins from things like folding the laundry, scrubbing the toilet, and paying the internet bill because those impossible feats were not happening in active addiction. Year two is like a cool, lazy river on a hot July day. Sober feels normal. The heartaches and lamentations have reduced to a dull ache. You can’t even remember the last time that you felt the urge to drink, or wear a noose, or chew glass, and the absence of those thoughts seems like a delusion of grandeur. You know yourself. You like yourself. You have confidence in who you are and what you do, because if you can do addiction recovery for two years, you can do anything.
Year three, so far, is a discouraging plateau. Up from rock bottom, sure, but down from the Valhalla of surviving addiction. Remember all those bad feelings you’ve had about yourself since high school? The ones that you were drinking away in addiction, and browbeating away in early sobriety? Well… they’re baaAAaack.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a meeting regarding a project that I am privileged and lucky to be a part of. The director and I persuaded four men from the collaborating department to join us for a casual lunch so we could sell our directives and our methods, and they could ask any pertinent questions. Throughout the meeting, it became more and more noticeable that the associate professor sitting across from me was directing his questions to our research assistant instead of me. It wouldn’t have been so uncomfortable, except that she had told him multiple times already that she was not yet familiar with the scope of our work and couldn’t answer any of his questions. She told him that she was only there to take notes.
Still, every time he had an inquiry, he gave it to her. It became a pattern of him asking her a question, her looking over to me, and me answering the question without him even glancing in my direction. Then he would conjure a follow-up question and, once again, ask the girl who had already beaten the phrase “I don’t know,” to death.
I get it, okay? I really do. The research assistant is beautiful. And flawlessly toned. And demure. And blonde. And 20-years-old. She should be considered for her brains, not the surface characteristics that I just listed, but those surface characteristics are unignorable. I’m also not saying that she is stupid or useless or unimportant in any way. What I am saying is that she was there for the sole purpose of writing down the points and inquiries posed by the group with one of her milky, butter-soft hands, and eat an arugula and manchego salad with the other. That’s all.
The intensity with which he refused to acknowledge me was staggering. It sent me right back to high school, even though we were adults in a setting where maturity was assumed. We were discussing a subject that I knew up, down, backwards, and forwards. This is my vocation. This is my career that I am working tirelessly to cultivate. And it only took one careless Neanderthal to take me down by telling me to pull up my shirt while he drooled over a sliver of a debutant’s kneecap.
Two years is long time to spend sober, constructing a sense of “self,” only to have it demolished in a blitz attack. I was secure in that situation. I should have commanded that room because I did my due diligence, and I did it to death. I knew everything about the careers, education, and continued research of each of those four men sitting across from me at that table. Why? Because it would be unprofessional (and just plain rude) to ask someone to donate their time and attention to you if you don’t know the value of their time or the usual delegation of their attention. Instead, I sat quietly and stared at my beading water goblet, wondering how I ended up being superfluous at my own goddamn conference.
I’m really not a silly woman who estimates herself with an insignificant man’s yardstick. Neither his lack of regard for me nor my resulting insecurities are going to threaten my sobriety. The reasons why I drank may be eeking back into my psyche, but the reasons why I will never drink again are crystal fucking clear. I don’t know why it always seems to be men that disorient me the most, but I suppose it is mostly men. I miss the days of motivated sobriety when my perceptions were fluffed by my invincibility. Two years ago, high school did not define me, divorce was a magical quest sent by the universe to condition me for bigger battles, and something better was waiting around the corner if I could just hold on for one more day. The reality is not entirely bleak, but it is this: divorce means you aren’t worth the trouble you make. You’re not the worst in your vocation… but you aren’t turning any heads. The “better things” are there, but they are skeptical of you and what you are, and they need more time to decide if they want to be yours. But hey, its better than being drunk and dead in a ditch.
Before high school, I was a happy kid. I’d say that Junior High was the closest I’d been to self-assured before I quit drinking 20 years later. The reason, I believe, is that my mother drove me to school every morning and I was expelled from the minivan with two idioms to consider. The first was borrowed from her father, my grandfather, and it was to go and do good, my child. No, it is not supposed to be “go and do well,” I come from a family of literates. He meant, and she meant, to go and do good things: make good choices, be kind to others, and be an example of gentle benevolence that others will see and want to imitate. My mother enforced that one every single day as she saw me off. The second phrase was employed less often, only on difficult days (so, it was still used pretty often). If I had something to face that I did not want to face; either accepting the wrath of childhood drama, or the consequences of my own laziness or stupidity, she would tell me to just be the best person that you can be.
For all the years I have spent biting my nails and trying to figure out what’s wrong with me, little of that time was spent being rational. First of all, there’s a lot wrong with me. Gallons. Tons. Some of which I can change and some of which I cannot. I cannot change the way that a classmate shamed me 15 years ago and I cannot change the way a colleague dismissed me two weeks ago. I can, however, admit that I walked into both of those situations arrogantly, expecting to be venerated and the fall was intense because I put myself up so freakin’ high. Which is not the best example of doing good. I can also grow the hell up and accept that the world does not owe me a stipend for being sober. I am not better or more qualified than anybody else because I am sober and… Capitalizing on my insecurities and insults that I felt were underserved is how I ended up in a bottle in the first place. Mommy did not say to bend yourself to try and fit everyone’s taste just so you can have the gratification of being liked. She said to the be the best person that I can be. That won’t always be enough for some people, and I need to accept that. Quickly. I can’t fall apart in year three because drinking is the only way I know how to cope with acquaintances, and colleagues, and boyfriends that can’t or won’t love me.
The best I can do to get through the brambles of year three is to take the lack of sober motivation as motivation itself. Bite the leather strap, hook myself into the underwire bra, and put my heart and soul into everything I do so I can say that I did my best, even if someone else thinks that myself and my work are both mediocre products. If I add a little of my Dad’s advice into the mix, then I can start each day with the right encouragement by saying to myself: Go and do good, be the best person you can be, and stop worrying about shit you can’t control.
