Then & Now: Grown Up

Sobriety is a magical place

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Growth Spurt

This picture is what sobriety looks like to me. That first one- the radical one? Right on. Then in the middle the hyper part. Then that taller wearing a hat part. Then the stretching up part . The shedding of the shell part. The look at my beautiful leaves part. And don't forget the roots. Extending. A little hairy. Just like life.

A seedling is such a fragile thing. So is a newly sober person. And then, sixty days go by. You start to get really really really great ideas about your life. You start to get unafraid. Suddenly there are chances to be taken. Dances to be danced. Hair to be let down. How cool.

I started thinking about how I want to spend my life. How to earn money since I need to work unless we want to live in the car. What will satisfy the bill collectors and my soul. Before I would have immediately told that little self to shut up, none of that "pie in the sky" stuff for you. Plod along. Make decent money. Good benefits. Give your soul to the "man". Be a minion. A playing it safe sycophant. Please- don't rock the boat.

But I started thinking about what I could do that would make me feel "real" on the inside. I got really brave and thought things like "go back to school" and "master's degree". I told my parents about it and they acted like I'd said I was abandoning my husband and children and going to join the circus with the bearded lady.

Things were said like "Too old" and "Children! Responsibilities!" There was crying. Yelling. Leaving.

I'm forty one years old. I know I don't need their approval. I was looking for encouragement and found quite the opposite. (Giant life clue: This could be part of my problem. Stop trying to get everyone to like you and what you do. Approve of self.)

So I left and didn't call. My mom wrote me and said sorry. We talked and I stood up for myself. I didn't try to soothe her, and it hurt to hear her cry over the phone, but I said my truth. Mine.

What surprised me the most of how strongly I felt that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. That I don't have to be afraid anymore. Life doesn't have to be this grand ship I'm waving to from shore. I don't have to wonder about all those lucky people, I can be one of them. Or I can be a total fucking failure at something and then hop on another ship. People on boats are especially friendly.

God. Sobriety is such a magical place. I can compare it to this: I have been a seed in a packet. You know a seed is just a seed. It can roll around in the bottom of the drawer just being a little round seed. Until you give it some love. Until you plant it with intention. You put it in the ground and grow it. You grow. You don't ask all the other seeds if you're doing it right. You don't try to be like all the other seeds. You don't settle. You push your tiny seed-y self towards the sun as hard as you can. You grow.

You grow. Up.

Sunday, February 4, 2024

Grown Up

I grew up over the past few weeks. There is a grown up in here now, running things. I have waited for this part of me to show up my whole life. I am excited she’s here, and kind of scared of her too. She says things like “That’s enough coffee” and “I don’t want the cat to bother me”. There are options and limits and guardrails and I like it even though it feels totally weird.

How did this happen? I let myself do what I was scared to to: feel not okay. Tell people. I stopped acting like nothing is wrong, I stopped believing that if I disappointed people they wouldn’t like me anymore. That if I was myself people would leave.

I’ve been a girl on a diving board. I have been on that diving board my whole life, standing there, dripping wet and afraid to jump. I look at the sky, I look at the water, I look at my feet, I cannot jump. I am too afraid of midair, I don’t know so I don’t just go. Grown up me is there, treading water, waiting to catch me whenever I decide to jump. But I don’t trust her and so we stay stuck in the stand off of my fear and her knowing. She has endless patience and will wait for me forever.

I know if I jump I can never go back to the way it was. If I jump I make an agreement with myself that I am in charge now, that I am responsible. If I jump I say to the world, my world, that I know what I’m doing and I can take it from here. That there are no more excuses, that I will agree to live in integrity and truth and I will care for myself with tenderness and also no bullshit. If I jump I am no longer the me I have known my whole life. I will leave part of me behind.

So I don’t jump, and I grow into a young woman, then a wife, then a mother, I get sober, run my own business, and I am still on the diving board. I am still afraid to jump into the arms of my grown up self. I feel silly, but now I’ve made this stand, so I don’t jump out of foolish pride. I convince myself that I don’t need to jump, that where I am is fine.

It is not fine. I am living on the end of a diving board.

Years go by. I want to jump, I want to fly. I imagine my dramatic leap, The loud SPRONGGG! of the board. The somersualts, twists, turns, flourishes. I picture it, over and over. I toe the end of the board, hang my foot out over the empty space, one and then the other, put them back, ashamed. Curl my toes around the end of the sandpapery board, flex, grab, flex, grab. I cannot jump. Grown up me is still there, still treading water. Waiting for me.

I begin to feel her belief in me. It grows inside me, slowly replacing the fear. She is so patient, all this time and she has never wavered in her waiting. I take her belief in me and I turn it into trust in her.

One day it happens. I just…step off the board and into the water. I sink. I stay at the bottom, my eyes closed. This is my depression. I feel the sadness of leaving the board. But I feel something else too- deep care about my struggle. Compassion for my hurting. I know what is happening and I decide to tell the truth to myself and then out loud to everyone. I love on and believe my hurt instead of try to hide it. I stay at the bottom until I am ready. It doesn’t take forever, it takes less time than I thought.

Something shifts. I open my eyes and see my grown up self still waiting, treading water, waiting for me. Her feet are my feet, her legs are my legs. This is comforting. I swim towards her, and fold into her easily. She is glad to see me. It is as if we have never been apart. I feel her welcome in my heart. The dramatic show offy entrance I thought I had to make was all make believe. There didn’t need to be somersaults, or flourishes. That one step off the board was enough. It was always enough.

The steady lesson of long term sobriety and recovery is this: it is enough, then it isn’t, then it is, then it isn’t. You don’t have to arrive at a place and stagnate, you can arrive and if you’re willing you continue to grow instead of standing at the end of a diving board for decades. The real lesson is it never ends, oh shit and thank god, the only thing that keeps you stuck is wishing it would. It’s the longing for certainty that kept me away from the next iteration of myself- from the natural progression that patiently tread water until I was willing to go.

The things I got misunderstood- thinking it had to be dramatic to count, not trusting my future self- those things were things I focused on, and they are why I stayed stuck. It can be so hard to find another perspective that could possibly be true when the old story you tell yourself is so damn comforting. It can be so hard to leap when you forget that a single step counts exactly the same.

I have wanted to be a grown up my whole life, and yet it was the thing I would not let myself do. Because I had a child’s interpretation of what a grown up was- they get to do what they want all the time- I got to the age of grown up but I could not match myself into the idea. I didn’t get to do what I wanted all the time, and when I did it messed up my life. When I let myself stop trying to be the childish imagination grown up and actually grow up I was able to step into my future as a continuation of a life rather than a performative side show.

Growing up is an action, not merely an idea. It is who I am, not how old. It turns out that being a grown up is not doing what you want all the time, it is being willing to see and feel what I need. It is loving who I am instead of who I think I’m supposed to be. And it continues, on and on. I won’t ever arrive for good, and for that I am so relieved.