It’s Not Wrong But It’s Not Right

This is not a grab at empathy, but it must be said that reality is discombobulating to an addict.

We lost time.  Years, usually.  Epochs sprinkled into a whirring Cuisinart.

We’ve said and done things that we have no recollection of saying or doing.  We’ll take your word for it, though, if you accuse us of committing any sin.  We probably did. 

Our relationship with time and circumstance is blurry and byzantine.  We’re still vivacious and we still enter a room by waving and then detonating, but we conceal a sea of hesitation.  We make a lot of timid approaches because we don’t trust ourselves to see a situation for what it really is. 

I can’t speak for other addicts in recovery, but I do my best not to lie.  I do a lot of pretending, though.  Pretending can wear the same outfit as lying, but there is a moral difference and I only pretend now because I used to lie.  A lot.  I pretend to remember people, I pretend to remember events, I pretend to remember incidents—even the unflattering ones.  … especially the unflattering ones.  If I was in a state that left me unable to recollect any portion of an evening, I guarantee I wasn’t winning any pageants or working my vigilante shift in Gotham.

My pretending isn’t performative, and I certainly never elaborate, but occasionally someone will strut up to me and say, “Kara! Hey! Remember me?  We met at [interchangeable bar/festival/wedding/party],” and I will nod and say, “Of course! How have you been?”  It’s not entirely honest and it’s certainly not my favorite jig to join in, but it beats the days when my mouth was just a hooch-hoover and a bullshit factory.

It actually bothers me that I can still feign as well as I do.  Slanting toward a false narrative must be akin to breathing because I do it all the time and rarely is it done consciously—unlike the days when patching together a cohesive alibi was my fulltime job.  Drunk Kara used to pick fights with her (then) husband almost every night, but Drunk Kara was also blacking-out every night, so… her prosecution kinda crumbled, come sunrise.  In case anyone is unclear on how sinister a person in active addiction can be—let me tell you how Drunk Kara “solved” the problem.  Drunk Kara would start making notes on what she and her husband were fighting about so that sober Kara could read it in the morning and still be pissed-off.  With panache.   

Keep in mind--now and forever--that just because I say something with a twinge of humorous hindsight does not mean that it was ever funny.  I put that man through hell with my drunk behavior, as well as everyone else in my life.  Drunk Kara had her family scratching their heads and questioning their own sanity because I was gaslighting the bejesus out of them.  None of them are stupid people—I was that good at playing the game.  All addicts are. 

You would think that our skill level and portfolio would qualify former addicts to be human lie detector tests, and you would be right.  And wrong.  When it comes to other addicts, we can absolutely tell when they are lying.  Its easy.  Are they breathing? Yup! Then they’re lying. 

However, we are terrible at sniffing-out lies and deceit when the person being deceitful has any other motive than getting drunk or high.  Ironically, there is no one easier to gaslight than a former gaslighter.  Part of recalibrating our brains back to sober thinking includes accepting all of our faults and mistakes instead of side-stepping them.  Not all of those faults were the results of addiction, oh by the way.  Some of those faults are just us as humans, and likely contributed to how we ended up in addiction in the first place.  For instance, I have always been restless and desperate to achieve comfort and pleasure, and I have always put that need ahead of everyone else’s needs.  Selfishly.  Very selfishly.

Many years ago, I was watching the movie Silver Linings Playbook with my sister (which is an insane occurrence because Maren does not sit still for movies.  Especially not a movie without dick jokes or fart noises.)  A scene came up where Jennifer Lawrence’s character just stands up in the middle of a perfectly civilized, quiet dinner party and says, “I’m leaving, I don’t want to be here anymore.”  Maren jerked her head toward me and said, “Oh my God.  Kara.  That’s you.”  She’s right, it just wasn’t something I noticed about myself until she called me on it.  I will dip out of a situation so fast, the second that I get uncomfortable.  I will leave people in the lurch, I will leave chores undone, I will stop applying pressure to a wound and leave someone to die on the battlefield if I get the sense that people around me are looking at me kinda weird because I have blood on my dress.

I am aware that I have deep character flaws.  I am doing my best (which still isn’t very impressive) to improve them.  Like all other recovering addicts, I have learned to believe the experience of other people before I believe my own intuition.  If you tell me that something I have said or done was intentional, malicious, wrong, lazy, or stupid, I will believe you first.  I honestly believe it’s the right thing to do and the right way to be.  Everyone’s feelings are valid, and if I hurt someone unintentionally, I want to know about it.  If it was a misunderstanding, let’s work it out.  If it was a behavior or phrasing of mine that caused the hurt, I can change that behavior and I can say things differently.  Its not a problem for me. 

I have also learned not to meet an accusation with an immediate, aggressive defense.  Its not just inhumane to argue that way, its plain stupid.  Imagine watching Court TV and seeing the plaintiff’s attorneys rolling in dollies with file boxes stacked three-high, and the defendant walks in alone, wearing a sandwich board that just says, “Nuh-Uh.”  By the way, you don’t retain a relationship that matters to you by being right.  You maintain it by being understanding and flexible when you can, and being firm, but kind, when you have to be.   

Since most people don’t have the privilege or pleasure of being in recovery and learning how to navigate disagreements in a way that leaves both parties feeling heard, acknowledged, and cared-for (and without the desire to drink about it,) and since addicts are used to being the fuck-ups, we will absorb the blame and the criticism for as long as someone wants to dish it out.  Because we don’t just have a skewed comprehension of time and circumstance, addicts have an esoteric misconstruction of punishment. 

We cannot make up for the times that we got drunk and treated people like shit, by allowing people to treat us like shit.  It doesn’t work that way.  There is no “making up” for anything.  You can apologize and show your sincerity by doing better as you go forward.  You can be—excuse me—*must be*—delicate, patient, and penitent with the people you directly tortured because trust takes time and care to be reestablished.  And for the record, the people who truly love you and want you in their lives (even after seeing your corporeal form become possessed with booze and commit inexcusable wrongs) want you to regain their trust.  They want to be able to rely on you again.  Nobody who truly cares about you and your recovery is interested in watching you perform the rite of boot-licking.

As for the people you didn’t torture and who don’t care about you, you’re just an easy target to them.  If they cannot muster accountability or empathy, then a recovering addict is perfect for them.  We will take the blame for anything.  You cheat on us?  Our fault.  You make a scene and berate us in public?  We deserved it, you didn’t have a choice.  Someone flicked a cigarette butt off a balcony and now wildfires are raging down the West Coast? We don’t smoke and we’ve never been to California, but we definitely probably started it.

There is nothing wrong with checking yourself first in a disagreement.  Its preferable, in fact.  But even a broken clock is right twice a day, so we can’t possibly be at fault all of the time.   I can’t say with empirical evidence that an addict will ever forgive themselves and get on with their better, happier, kinder, cleaner lives.  I could live to be 100 (now that my liver has restarted) and there still would not come a day where I look at my family and say, “Ok, that’s enough regret.  I’m over it.”  But acting as someone’s punching bag is not going to right any wrongs.  Its actually really irresponsible for an addict to stand still and take vitriol from whatever direction, just because we owe the world a pound of flesh and have no other way of giving it.  I can’t speak for everyone else, but the feeling of being insufficient is what made drinking so appealing to me.  I drank because it was the only thing that made me feel, for five minutes, like I was enough.  So, how am I helping my resolve to feel like enough without drinking if I nod my head and swallow every time someone tells me that I’m not enough?  I’m not helping it. I’m putting myself at risk, and for what?

I stand by my repeated statement that sobriety is a superpower.  Alcohol was my soulmate in liquid form, and it made love, food, sex, friendship, oxygen, and water all irrelevant to me.  My survival—my life—was only possible through drinking… and I committed to giving it up.  I’m not bragging, I’m emphasizing the impossibility of what recovering addicts make possible every. Single. Day.  Sober days, at first, seem a lot longer than drunk days, and we don’t even remember drunk days, so how long is 24 hours and what even is life?  Dunno.  I get confused a lot; about time, about place, about circumstance… but I am never confused about a gut feeling these days.  I’ve been trusting my gut ever since it looked at a bottle of vodka, wrenched and said, “Kara, that’s enough.” 

I trust my gut to tell me when I’m wrong, but I also trust it to tell me when I’m not wrong.  I think most recovering addicts have a similar instinct.  Regrets may come with a 100 year plus expiration date, but there is a point where the people we regret hurting get on with their lives and we need to trust that its ok to get on with our own lives.  Its too hard to survive and be sober under the umbrella of everyone else’s collective blame, even if we think we deserve it.  Part of our sober superpower is correct wrongs as they come, not letting them pile-up until we break another person or get drunk to avoid thinking about it.  If you trust your gut, then its ok to emulate your gut and say to a person who is as manipulative and flammable as a bottle of vodka, “Hey, I’ve had enough.”