Scared of the Dark

There's that swirling cognitive dissonance that happens in the mind of an addict. It's a kind of cascade where one disturbing thought triggers another, and you think you see patterns. Maybe those thoughts are real, meaningful and meant to be explored; maybe they're bullshit - the kind of epiphanies you think you're having when really you're just... high. Or insane. Like when John Nash sees secret codes embedded in magazines in A Beautiful Mind. That movie feels eerily like home.

I love Dexter, the TV show, with its serial-killer-as-addict metaphor, so I've been reading Dexter, the novel, to see where it all started. (Surprisingly, the book's far more disturbing than what Showtime allows on my TV screen.) In an uncharacteristically spontaneous killing, Dexter executes a serial killer who's abducted, sexually abused, and murdered four "light-haired" junior high girls. Children. And I start thinking that if I were a serial killer mine would be dark-haired, because my fetish is for Latinas.

What the hell?

I read Tim Allen's first book years ago (awesome title: Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man) and all I remember are his recollections of prison. He posits that men are essentially monsters - that without women around, men descend into a level of barbarism that none of us is comfortable acknowledging.

Junior high girls have been swimming in my pool and running through my house for days. I remember when American Beauty came out and I wondered if that would be me: a "sedated" father in a miserable marriage who ends up lusting after his daughter's friend. I sure had the stifled-rage-husband thing licked. But I figured I wouldn't notice Ashley's friends until she was in high school.

I was wrong. I'm sorry if that bothers you. I'm not a pedophile, but I've known a few and they need grace just like the rest of us. (And also they need to stay away from kids and schools, forever. That's just common sense.) But regardless of our society's rules, once a kid hits puberty, he/she is sexually viable. Not emotionally ready, or mature enough, but all the equipment's there, and it's hard to miss it when it's bouncing around your living room in a bikini.

When I was using and acting out, I read porn novels because they were easier to hide than picture porn. I stumbled into stories about incest, abduction, BDSM and "non-consensual sex." Anything to get more of a thrill than last time. That's how addiction works.

My addict (Dexter's "Dark Passenger") sees no lines between the man and the monster. What terrifies me more is that he sees no lines between fantasy and reality. Am I a monster? If I took it all away - women (like Tim Allen's prison), social mores, law enforcement, faith, recovery - what would I be? What acts am I capable of?

I'm working on a character reference letter for someone I worked with this past year. This person had sex with a high-schooler that I know. How does one end up in that place?

How does one not end up in that place? It just doesn't seem all that far away. Sadistic sexuality, suppressed monsters, vulnerable teens, forbidden affairs... all swirling together in that dark place where my addict lives. And I peer into that darkness and I think I'm seeing me.

But I'm the one here in the light, and I've been here for almost a year. It's okay to be scared of the dark.

Update

It's been a life-changing few months. I often want to post about the trees, but I don't think they'll make sense without the forest – so here it goes...

>>>New Therapist

When I woke my parents up and told them I was using in their home, I think the seriousness of my addictions really sank in. We talked the next day about what to do next. First came the difficult acknowledgement that I am, first and foremost, a sex addict. Chemicals are just icing on my porn cake. At this point, they happen to be willing and financially able to help, so we looked into inpatient sex addiction clinics. When we saw how much they cost, paying for a therapist who is specifically trained in sex addiction didn't look so bad, so that's where we started. After some research, I really clicked with a guy in Carlsbad, which is about an hour from my home. We jumped right into Patrick Carnes material, and I knew I was in the right place. So far it's been excruciatingly painful at times, and probably more helpful than anything else I've done.

>>>Marital Separation

I stayed with my parents until the middle of September and went home a couple of weeks before I wrapped things up at the church. The time away from my wife was amazingly helpful. Being there of my own initiative (instead of being “kicked out”) allowed me to grow instead of sulk. I don't think I ever realized how codependent I am with my wife. Even with the lost job and being separated from my family, I felt positive most of the time. Somewhere along the line, I had learned that I wasn't allowed to be happy unless Linsey was happy, which frankly isn't very often. This has been a huge change.

>>>Job Loss

What a complicated, confusing mess. Sometimes in life you have to look a list of truths and let them sit, side by side, even if they seem to conflict with each other. Here are a few of them:

-My (former) pastor (and boss) had encouraged me to ask for more help if I needed it. When I did, he fired me.

-My using had not really affected my job (in any tangible way) but at a church, it seriously affected my integrity.

-Many church members (who knew the whole story, without edits) were crazy mad that I was fired and were ready to fight the decision.

-Whether or not the pastor made the right decision is not what matters. That I lost my job to my addiction is what matters. Let me say it again, in the interest of thoroughly hitting bottom: I lost my job to my addiction.

-My wife told church members not to fight the pastor – that it was time for us to move on and that I needed to feel a consequence. She was right.

-I have been increasingly unhappy with the pastor's leadership decisions in the last few years. He's made some seriously destructive mistakes, become more and more dictatorial, and is showing significant signs of memory loss. He is unwilling to retire. That's not sour grapes, it's just what is.

-I've been in conversation with a few potential employers, but was too afraid of change to leave my position. If I'd been healthier, I would have left years ago. Instead I chose to do it the stupid way.

-Leaving my position in that church has been one of the best things that's ever happened to me and my family.

-Getting fired from my position in that church has been one of the most painful and difficult things that's ever happened to me and my family.

>>>Rehab

Two weeks at Kaiser's Chemical Dependency Rehabilitation Program. Very helpful – lots of good tools and connections. Good use of time in my first two weeks of being unemployed. As the name implies, it's a chemical dependency program, not a sex addiction clinic. But it's all good.

>>>Grief and Divorce Recovery

My aunt happens to run an amazing Grief and Divorce Recovery group. You don't have to be going through a divorce to attend, just grieving something. She told me I would be grieving the loss of my church, and that I should attend. Honestly, I think I've been grieving the healthy church I used to work at for the last three or four years. What I have never dealt with, however, is the gut-wrenching pain in my marriage. I carry debilitating anger and resentment for the first twelve years of our marriage, during which Linsey repeatedly explained to me that we didn't need outside help because there were no problems to work on. I've committed to doing whatever uncomfortable “grief work” this workshop tells me to do – drawing pictures, writing “unsent” letters, and other such things.

And letting go of old marriage-hurts is the right thing to do at this point. Because it's not about Linsey right now, or my marriage, or my career, or anything else. It's about me, a recovering sex addict. And I have hope right now. It feels nice.

Diving Into Memories During My Fourth Step

The first year Linsey taught second grade, she made friends with several new teachers. We got close enough to Karen and Lynne that they came with us for vacation to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. Linsey and I had been married six years. Ashley was a year old, and stayed home with my parents. Why would we bring a one-year-old on a vacation that involved walking around underground for hours looking at dimly lit mineral formations? I just don't get families who would do that voluntarily.

Since it was New Mexico in August, we spent a lot of time at the pool. One afternoon I was feeling frisky and wanted to spend time alone with my hot wife. I invited her to come back to the hotel room and take a “nap” with me. She wouldn't go – she said she felt rude leaving Karen and Lynne at the hotel pool. They knew what was going on and started pushing her playfully in my direction. Go take a “nap” with your husband, they said. We'll stay and read our magazines and swim – you don't have to babysit us. Lynne said “If I had him for a husband, I'd be all over that.” Lynne had poor boundaries, and kind of lost it a few years later. But that's a different story.

Linsey wouldn't budge. She stayed out at the pool with her friends. I went back to the room and masturbated.

Me and Linsey have played out this scenario many times over the years. Too many times to count, unfortunately. You'd think there'd be a limit to how many times I would let myself get excited to sleep with her again. You'd be wrong. No matter how many times she found ways to avoid sex, after the most romantic dates, in the most romantic hotel rooms, we'd “talk it out” and I'd find another way to let myself get aroused by her.

What stands out about the New Mexico day is that it was witnessed by other people. Obviously, not that many people really heard about our sex life. I thought I was imagining our problems but this made the rejection more real, and more humiliating. And I think most importantly, my feelings began to be colored by anger in addition to the familiar shame and disappointment. Because, what was that thing coming out of Lynne's mouth? I'd made sense of me and Linsey's sexual desert by reasoning that I was unlovable. If Linsey responded to my caresses as if my fingers were sand paper, there had to be something wrong with my “caressing technique.” But Lynne's inappropriate comment just hung in the air, “I'd be all over that” juxtaposed against Linsey acting disgusted about the prospect of spending time with me.

Whatever. I feel really fucked up inside when I write that stuff because it dislodges all kinds of searing pain from the dark places I've carefully buried it. But stuff's coming up lately, whether I like it or not. Like when I saw Karen at a dinner party recently. I had completely forgotten about the trip we'd taken ten years ago. Strangely enough, we were talking about taking Ashley to the caves this summer. I think now that she's eleven she would enjoy it.

Then boom. Karen. Carlsbad Caverns. Hotel. It all fell on top of me, like a sequence in a movie with black and white flashback photography and lots of echo-y sounds. Karen started telling old stories about our trip. It didn't matter because I didn't hear much after that.

I took Karen aside during all the goodbyes later. I asked “Do you remember that day” and she interrupted with “Yes” before I finished the question. Karen has been a sweet friend over the years. She's close enough to talk to so we traded a few memories. I told her that trip had been a beginning of sorts. Of many things.

Of marriage counselors and therapists. Of drinking some, then drinking more, then using, and doing whatever it took to turn off the pain. Of figuring out that Linsey had been sexually abused as a child. Of figuring out that I was an addict, no matter what was going on around me or who I was married to.

As we started unwrapping all the shit and looked for healing in therapy and books and in recovery I thought it was the beginning of the end. That we would get better, and that next time Linsey would come back to the room with me and we'd make love. But it's just never that simple. It's just not.

[Photo by Al_HikesAZ under C.C.License]

Restore Me To Sanity

What is your definition of “sanity”?

Last night's step study ended before we got to this question in our Celebrate Recovery workbooks. I didn't get to share my answer. So here ya go...

Sanity is stopping this relapse before the demon in my head possessed me again. Thank God I'm not in my addiction today.

Sanity is having friends like you, that I've never met, who encourage me and pour out heartfelt empathy and solid advice when I'm at my worst. I appreciated every one of your comments last week.

Sanity is leaving the most uncomfortable counseling appointment I've ever had, and knowing what to do next. I talked about it with people I trust. He's a therapist, but he's also a human. Some of his advice was good, some of it wasn't.

Sanity is looking at my depression and seeing it for what it is. I don't have to decide whether an upswing in my depression contributed to (not excused!) my relapse, or my relapse agitated my depression. There's a false dichotomy in that chicken-and-egg question. I'll keep working with my (wonderful) rehab psychiatrist on the depression, and I'll keep working my program for my addiction. It's all for the same goal.

Lots and lots of stuff in the last week. My head is spinning. I thought it couldn't get much worse, but yesterday the shit hit the fan at work. We're going through some growing pains, and the pastor and I have hit a pretty fundamental disagreement. But again, here's sanity: I have been (mostly) calm and appropriate, and I know that things will be okay. We respect each other. He's the boss, and while I'm here, I'll work within that framework. Heck, give it a couple days to settle, and I'll work with that framework and whistle while I do it. I just know in my heart that it's time to start looking around. There's probably something else on the horizon for me. Again, that's okay. I find good friends and good advice in the program and in my family, and I haven't really felt tempted to use over this.

I'm beginning to know who I am, and what I have to offer. As I face this dissonance at work, I'm discovering new boundaries that I didn't even know were there. I think that's sanity.

[Photo by Mark Grealish under C.C.License]

Forbidden Grief

I think I loved her.

There, I said it.

I want to put some kind of warning at the top of posts about Elena (the emotional affair) so that Linsey (the wife) won't have to read them. But why bother? Linsey knows everything anyway. I call her Sherlock Holmes because she's so freakin' hyper-vigilant. Over the years she's become a better and better detective, while I've become a better and better liar. The codependent vs. addict arms race.

Back to Elena. It's hard enough for me to express the officially sanctioned emotions, like gratitude or joy or excitement. So I guess I should go easy on myself for avoiding the grief I feel over ending a relationship with someone else's wife. But feel it I must, as I've been told many times by my therapist brigade.

Elena was a sexual abuse survivor, just like my wife. She was hard on the outside, desperate and scared on the inside. Like all the girls I've been drawn to, she was maddeningly hot and cold. One day she'd flirt, enticing me past my boundaries with warmth and danger, the next day she'd pretend she didn't know me. Women like this get under my skin, and I become obsessed with getting through their defenses. I've lived for this buzz since middle school. I've come to view it as my earliest addiction.

I can honestly say the prize I'm after is their trust. I want permission to tease and talk intimately with the most intriguing girl in the room, while other guys chase after the skirts. Yeah, I'm that guy. The one you can't complain about because he's been a friend to your wife, and you know he's not necessarily trying to get into her pants, but you keep tabs on him all the same. Except Elena's husband didn't know, or care, because he was too busy flirting with the girls at his work.

What made Elena different than all the rest? I'd been drawing bull's eyes on women for years, in classes, in choirs, at work. Basically, she was the first one who truly reciprocated. The rest had flirted back, then moved on. They knew that if you let a guy flirt for too long, he begins to feel entitled, possessive. Elena didn't mind. I was always trying to figure out exactly what was going on, what each of us was getting out of the relationship. My answer was: She likes that I pay attention to her. I like that she lets me.

You must understand where I was at that point. I had long given up on my marriage, and more significantly, me. I'd read the books I was supposed to read and tried the stuff I was supposed to do, and none of it fucking mattered. Each time Linsey tensed up when I touched her, every urgent phone call she remembered just as we headed to the bedroom, each little rejection left me feeling more and more repulsive. I must have been a pretty sick person to take all of her shit and conclude it was entirely my fault. Today, when I get paranoid about what she talks about in her support groups, Linsey likes to say “it's not all about you, Eli.” Oh how I wish somebody had told me that back then.

So it was a big deal when the Starbucks girl flirted with me, while I was buying hot chocolate for my son's preschool teacher, who happened to be Elena. (Who didn't like coffee, hence the hot chocolate.) And each day when I dropped off my son, the Starbucks was payment for Elena's affection and attention. And I ate it up. She was tiny (Linsey says “elfish”), Latina, a little psycho, and had poor boundaries – all the things that turn me on. We texted and talked on the phone, instant messaged, MySpaced. Then we each carefully covered our tracks, erasing our call logs and internet histories, so our spouses wouldn't find out.

Eventually it all came crashing down, but I'll have to tell that story another day. I'm exhausted emotionally, because despite my resolve, Elena still pulls strings in my heart. Don't tell me the difference between “love” (the mature commitment) and “love” (the high school feeling) because you know as well as I do that every human being yearns for both. Elena and I both grew during those years, and for what it's worth, she was a beautiful person. We laughed endlessly and she was kind to me when I was heartbroken.

I remember crying to Elena on the phone over a mess I'd made by relapsing. I understand it cost her nothing to comfort me, to tell me I was going to make it. I understand she didn't have to live with me. I understand our feelings for each other were illicit, addictive, destructive, selfish, reckless, and short-sighted. But they were real, and I miss them. I miss her, her voice and her eyes. Most of all I miss her friendship.