It's a Process, Not an Event

I knew I was an addict long before the state of Texas told me so. In that knowledge, I made numerous attempts at recovery - some more sincere than others. At the first NA meeting I attended, I was convinced that I would have this thing licked in no time - after all, I am a fast reader, the book is short, and there are only 12 steps to the cure...right? I kinda figured, you know, 12 steps...eh, roughly one step a day... I would be done in 2 weeks at most - one if I doubled up. With a finish line all established (I am an extremely goal driven person), I bought the step working guide, a special little spiral notebook, and an assortment of pens and I was on my way to clean and sober living. Writing pages and pages of longhand in response to the questions offered by the step guide, I imagined the look of approval that would cross my sponsor's face when I presented her with my extremely organized, articulate, and thorough work. Somehow, I think I thought that she would look at my pages and say "Christy, this is awesome...I think you've got it and I really don't see any reason for you to keep coming to meetings." Instead, she took my prized notebook and put it in the trash can at McDonalds. When I expressed my outrage, she said "I want you to do step 1, and only step 1. We can meet next month to discuss it."

"Next month???" I whined, "I already know I have a problem, I am done with step 1. I'm done with them all and you just threw them in the garbage!!!"

She fired me. I continued to think I had completed the 12 step program and eventually relapsed. The criminal justice system stepped in to prove to me that I was wrong. Getting serious about recovery - serious about staying alive - meant redefining myself around these 12 steps and understanding that recovery is an active, changing, evolving process. It's not a task to be completed, it is a standard for living.

Over 5 years later, Steps 1, 2, and 3 are still a part of my daily journey. Old memories, attitudes, and resentments still surface and I find myself mentally noting them onto my Step 4 inventory - and at least a few times a day I find myself in the middle of Step 10 as new situations rise up to challenge my resolve to apply the principles of rigorous honesty and doing the right things for the right reasons in all of my dealings with myself and others. Often, I find myself sharing my story and my struggle with others - and I know that many of them, whether they know it yet or not, will someday remember my words and find hope in them when all of their own hope seems to have disappeared.

When I started living the steps instead of doing them, that finish line no longer seemed as important as it once did. The differences that it makes in my world have erased the notion that there will ever come a time that my life can go back to the way it was... or that I would want it to. It's a process, not an event...

Spring Cleaning

You know, I can't believe it is already April, springtime, almost hell hot Texas summertime...the days, weeks, months - they all just seem to fly. It seems like yesterday that I was shopping for Christmas presents.

When I was a kid, the edge of our front yard facing the road was sort of gulley like - for lack of a better term. To make walking to our front door easier, there was a little bridge across the gulley. It was white, and one spring, it became my job to paint it. I loved the idea - but what I wasn't that crazy about was preparing it to be painted. I really didn't understand why I couldn't just slap the new paint on top of the old paint...why all of that sanding and scraping was necessary at all. It has taken me years to learn the lesson that covering up something that you don't want to look at doesn't mean it is no longer there.

If you have ever watched the Style Network, you have likely seen the show "Clean House." It's one of those shows that the network runs marathon style - back to back episodes for several hours a day...and, believe me, I can watch every one of them over and over. The idea is that people who are living in out of control clutter call the show up and have them come over and go through their house to de-clutterize it. After taking all of the accumulated junk out of the house, they then have a yard sale and use the funds to redesign and decorate one or more rooms in the house. I never cease to be amazed when the crew first enters these people's houses. Who in the hell lives like that??? It's just crazy!! These people have so much crap that they can't even see their bed, or the floor, or the kitchen counters. When they begin to go through the house finding yard sale items, it is like pulling teeth. I remember one guy that had some sort of weird obsession with dead computers. He had a fantasy that he would repair them all and sell them on ebay. While he was not getting around to that, he had collected enough non-functional keyboards, monitors, towers, etc... to render an entire room in the house completely useless - and this grown man, no shit, threw a big ol' "I gotta go lay down" hissy fit about getting rid of that crap - EVEN when they offered him a completely new, fully equipped office space...he still put up a fight...he just couldn't let go.

I was thinking about that guy tonight. Often my life feels just like the inside of these people's houses. I've gone through life collecting the things that have made up my journey, and many of those things served a purpose for a while but then, for whatever reason, stopped working for me or maybe even started working against me. Some things never worked to begin with, but I just didn't know what to do with them so I tucked them away, vowing, with the sincerest of intentions, to deal with them later. Commitments have gotten lost, irritations turned to resentments...before I knew it, I had no room in my life for anything else. Eventually, I found myself overwhelmed by emotional clutter, chaos, and a complete inability to find peace. And yet, when someone tried to help me let go of the junk cluttering up my life, my basest instinct was to fight them...to hang on to it with everything I had.

So, it's springtime again. Time to pull out all of the crap, examine it, and sort it into bags marked keep, throw out, and donate. Time to get uncompromisingly honest about what works, and what doesn't ... what should be tossed, what might be worth the cost and effort to repair. Time to figure out a course of action for the things left tucked away, understanding that in order to have room for the things and people that contribute to my peace and happiness, I have to get rid of those that do not... scraping and sanding to make way for the new coat of paint...

And so my spring cleaning begins....