Stranded

I'm stranded in a parking lot in Anaheim, in front of a Spanish language health care clinic. I can smell Little Ceasars pizza, and there's a woman singing opera in the apartment next to me. She sounds like Snow White when she sings to the birds. I ran out of gas so Linsey's bringing me the gas can. Oops.

I am grateful for:

-My (mostly) sweet pre-teen daughter Ashley, who's braces-filled smile lights up my day. And that she still IM's me “I love u” on Facebook.

-That James still begs me to play light-saber fights with him.

-That Linsey and I filled Valentine's Day with love and patience, not hurt and alcohol.

-That every night I have chihuahuas nestled up against my head and my ankles.

-That I got to sing and play the piano for a living this morning. And I'm thankful for the song “Our God.”

-I have pink eye. I'm not grateful for that(!), but I'm thankful it's getting better. Man, it itches.

-For thirty days of sanity.

-That people I've never met bother to read my site and leave comments that have helped me through some awful times.

-For my rabbit Max, who's dug a cave system under my patio. Now that the rain has stopped, he's sunning himself outside my window.

-That I have bro's I can call – like my cousin who came and helped me patch my tire this week. For some reason that flat tire had me feeling helpless and depressed, but I didn't have to deal with it alone.

-For parents who live down the street and will loan me $ to buy antibiotic eye-drops when my bank account's totally empty.

-I'm grateful for Entenmann's donuts. I just am.

Chips off the Old Blocks

Familiar Scenario:

-Linsey tries to convince James to do [thing]

-James (the 8-year-old) resists

-Linsey pushes back

-James improvises, comes up with yet another way to avoid compliance

-Linsey tries various parenting methods she's read about in books

-James displays stunning array of varied manipulative techniques, exhausting Linsey's will

-Linsey gives up in exhaustion and does [thing] herself

-Eli smiles

You didn't expect the last one did you? But just substitute my name for Linsey's, and imagine I'm asking Linsey to do something, and you'll have the other most familiar scenario in our house. My wife is dazzlingly tenacious. I rarely proceed past step #3 above because, why bother? She will win. Oh yes, she will win. So when I get to see her in my spot, fighting that losing battle, some sort of evil happiness wells up inside.

Now just to be fair, here's another familiar scenerio:

-Astonishingly loud and high-pitched loony singing emanates from the car's back seat

-Linsey reaches tolerance level, begs Ashley (the 11-year-old) to stop

-Ashley says okay

-Blessed silence

-Ashley begins again to make noises that no sane person could imitate, laughs maniacally

-Repeat cycle several times

-Linsey sighs in defeat

-Eli smiles

You see, while James inherited Linsey's tenacity (read: stubbornness), Ashley inherited my bipolar personality. You did know I'm bipolar, right? Maybe not...I mostly show the depressive side on my blog. When I'm manic, I'm too busy annoying people and bouncing off the ceiling to sit down and post. Anyway, I like that both of these situations end with me smiling. It pleases me that our house contains two little opposite-sex clones of me and Linsey. There is much joy in being a parent.

Possibilities

They're cleaning out my grandparents' house – the rooms are full of boxes and the walls are bare. Grandma's a collector, of things beautiful or sentimental or remotely useful, so there's a lot to go through. The depression generation, or “The Greatest Generation”, according to Grandpa and Tom Brokaw, tends to save things that I would throw away. But they can only fit so much into their new “home”, an assisted living rental, so most of their stuff has to go.

Mom found a flower pot I made for Grandma in the fifth grade. Money was tight that year, so we bought a rainbow set of permanent markers and several white plastic pots, and did the homemade gift thing. We sat on the red brick porch of my childhood home and colored the pots together. To this day, I still get a little zing of excitement when I see a brand new pack of red and yellow and green Sharpies, like a kid opening a new box of Crayolas. Mom doesn't remember making the flower pots at all. She was me – parent of a ten-year-old, broke and overwhelmed, making the best out of what she had.

My Ashley is in the fifth grade, and I see her becoming a little person, moving out of my shadow and into her own world. At her age, I was organizing my desk and books and Star Wars collection, building my own little organized kingdom. I was winning piano competitions, composing music, getting straight A's, and making flower pots. I had my own clock radio and I set the alarm early so I could look handsome for school in my gray corduroy pants and button-up shirts. Like Ashley's, my world was full of possibilities. Like Ashley, I thought I was hot stuff. I knew I could accomplish anything.

I accomplished something this month. I directed a musical. Into this task I poured everything I know about arranging music, staging transitions, working with artistic people (not easy), scheduling rehearsals, audio and lighting and video projection, publicity. It was my magnum opus, so far, and it turned out absolutely incredible. We drew the highest attendance our church has ever seen for a single event, and everyone seemed thrilled. What I was most proud of was this: a few people who have never really connected found their place to shine, and truly became a part of our church family. That's what it's all about. That's why I work at a church – it's more about the people than the art.

Then I took a week off, and instead of going back to all the recovery meetings I'd been missing, I slept and tuned out. So halfway through the week I used, which shouldn't really be any surprise. I spent a month ignoring my sobriety, suppressing my anger and resentments until the show was over. What did I expect? If you've been reading me for a while, you might be sick of my broken record life story, but not as tired of it as Linsey. She asked me what I would do different this time, and I didn't know what to tell her but this: I have to keep doing the right things, even after the first couple of weeks. I can stay sober when I'm go to meetings and pray, when I do my step work and my reading. I can't when I don't. I'm grateful to be back.

[This post also at TheSecondRoad.org]

Snow Day, Delayed

Linsey got mad when I told her. I think I need to be home tomorrow. I promise we'll find another day to go to the snow. I could have just kept my mouth shut – been a good dad, a good husband. We were driving home from the office Christmas party, where I'd been a good employee and a good pastor, so why quit now?

On the other hand, a couple of days ago I was melting into the couch, summoning just enough energy to operate the mouse so I could play Chuzzle on PopCap.com. (Don't worry, I'm not getting any endor$ement kickback.) Pretty much being a sloth, you know? And Linsey's buzzing around the house, doing laundry and bills and dishes, and she says, “I'm glad you're listening to your body.” Which means “I'm glad you're relaxing.” And she was serious! At least I think she was...sometimes our conversations sound like that episode of The Simpsons:

Disaffected youth #1: Here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.
Disaffected youth #2: Are you being sarcastic, dude?
Disaffected youth #1: I don't even know anymore.

Hyper-irony rules!

We did find another day to go to the snow. It's become a tradition: We drive to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway and ride it up the mountain for a few hours of snow and breathtaking nighttime views of the surrounding desert. No mountain driving, no snow chains, and a chocolate shake from Bakers Drive-Thru on the way home. (Again, no endorsement kickback, just an attempt at local color.) Every year I tell James not to worry because they've fixed the cables and none of the aerial trams have fallen out of the sky for at least a month. He always says, “You're lying, dad. You're just making that up.” But I know that somewhere deep inside, I've made him just a teeny, tiny bit nervous, and this is the fun of being a dad, right?

So I followed through on my promise to reschedule the family snow day, which makes me feel even better about “listening to my body” the first time around, and insisting on down time. I relapsed during Christmas of 2008, because I did the good pastor/dad/husband thing until I was dead inside, resentful of everyone and everything. I'm committed to taking care of myself during these times that I tend to blow it – namely Christmas, Easter and vacation. After the snow thing Linsey just asked me to try and tell her earlier next time, so she wouldn't feel so disappointed. I'll try. But sometimes you don't know you're wiped out until you're in the middle of things.

Which is, I guess, what happened here on my blog. I just needed a break, and I took it. A heart-felt thank you to all of you who checked in on me and made sure I was okay. I am, I think. I'm sober, doing things one day at a time, trying my best to balance crazy-Christmas-program-times with chuzzle-on-the-couch times. And I'm grateful for both.

This post is also at TheSecondRoad.org

Falling and Not Falling

Day 68

Ashley fell off a horse last night and broke her arm. Actually, the horse stumbled and dumped her. (She made sure everybody knew this, from Grandma to the X-ray technician.) She takes weekly horseback riding lessons at a little stables. It's crammed between the freeway, some car dealerships, and the Santa Ana “River.” A little hay-lined hole in my asphalt-lined county.

At one point I kind of freaked out, realizing that the grown-up here was me, not my wife or my mom. I called our HMO and eventually got connected to the emergency room. The lady told me that I sounded pretty excited and anxious, and to be sure to drive carefully. I had to laugh. Calm down, me.

What mattered through all this was: I got to be her dad. I had the privilege of running out to her little crumpled body and putting my arm around her. I got to help her stand, wipe her eyes, and tell her that everything was gonna be OK. I got to sit next to her in the emergency room. We watched "Prince Caspian" without any sound on the little TV hanging from the ceiling. She made me cover her eyes when Susan shot the bad guys, because she couldn't stand to watch them fall off their horses. That's the kind of stuff you remember.

There is nothing in my life like hearing her call me “daddy.” Nothing. It's one of the first things on my gratitude list. Ashley's “daddy.”

When I was first getting high, I took both the kids into the pool in the middle of the night. It was freezing. James was only a few years old, and couldn't swim. They thought I was fun. I've driven them to school when I couldn't stand up straight. I've stolen DVD's with them sitting in my shopping cart. James once saw the pornography on my monitor. Mostly, I've been distracted while I made my evil plans.

I remember Ashley crying because her babysitter's daughter had been mean to her. Could she please never go back to that house? What she didn't know was that the only reason I took her there was to see that babysitter. She was the one who paid attention to me during the bad years. What if it had gone further? What if I'd slept with her? Then how much would Ashley pay for my selfishness?

In the pharmacy, I saw my drugs. The demons peaked over the wall. I heard their voices. They call it “euphoric recall.” The overwhelming warmth, the ecstasy in every nerve ending, the surrender. When I'm high I don't just forget my problems. My mind believes it's solved them all. I stop being anxious because nothing looks broken. But I “played the tape all the way through.” The lying and the loneliness, the knots in my stomach. Linsey, taking care of a broken child by herself. And Ashley, hurting and afraid.

I ignored the voices, like John Nash in “A Beautiful Mind.” Did they stop talking to me?

No, they did not.

They followed me around for a while. But that's OK. Because so did James – my bored little six-year old, tired of the emergency room. And I was sober, and I wasn't afraid.

On the way home I asked him how much he weighed. Sixty-four pounds, he said. He's proud to be over sixty pounds – this means he doesn't have to ride in a car seat. I asked him if he knew about the "chocolate bar law." I told him that he hasn't reached the eighty pound minimum for eating chocolate while riding in a car. If he didn't want to get a ticket, he'd better give me his candy bar. For some reason he wouldn't believe me, so no chocolate for me.

But I was thankful to be his dad.

Black Hole

Day 32

After tucking him in, Linsey laid down with my six-year old. James started talking, rather openly, about girls he had known.

James: Arianna was so mean to me in kindergarten. Yeah, inside, there's like a black hole and I wanna throw her inside. Jalene is so sassy. And she said she likes Christian in my class. She's a little bit nice and a lot sassy. Why is she so sassy?
Linsey: God just made girls more sassy.
James: Daphne is not so sassy, but she's a lot weird.
Linsey: If I were in first grade I'd like you.
James: Ewwww...you're my mom!
Linsey: If I weren't your mom and I were six years old I'd have a crush on you.
James: Yeah......good times, good times.

He really said that. The conversation was a big deal for James. Like his mother, he doesn't like to talk about his feelings. When I tuck in Ashley, she'll bear her soul to keep me there. “Why were my friends so mean today?” she'll ask. What does “catty” mean? How's your addiction going, Dad? Where's Andrew now? Did he molest anybody else?

It gets really deep really fast.

Of course, James also tries to delay bedtime. But it looks more like this:
Me: Good night little buddy. I'll see you in the morning.
James: (frantically looking around) Dad, how do they make walls?

I'm glad he opens up to Linsey. And, frankly, a little afraid of when he needs to talk to a man. Because I don't think I'll know what to say. Specifically, about women, sex, affection. That whole mess. I mean, I was fed the standard evangelical Christian party line all through my teen years. God's plan for sex is that it happens inside the loving commitment of marriage. That I can deal with. It's just the way they sold it to me: Trust us – if you wait, it will be SO MUCH better. So instead of spending my high school and college years learning about what sex really is, I spent them waiting for paradise. And then when I married, I walked into a pretty sucky situation.

It helped that we were best friends. That we shared everything with each other, dreamed about traveling together, laughed hysterically together. We were closer as newlyweds than any couple I've ever met. And our mansion of a relationship was beautiful, except for that one room we kept locked. We learned quickly to never open that door. Our physical relationship was tentative, careful, scary, and emotionally distant. All the things that add up to passionate love-making, to be sure.

What's it like to be married to an incest survivor? A while back I joined an online discussion group for partners of survivors. I stopped reading because it was too depressing and hopeless, and too close to home. Some quotes I kept:

"There isn't a lot more comfort I can offer to those whose relationships are falling apart other than to say: The rest of the world isn't like this."

"I exist. I am tired of being isolated and anonymous. I am 35 years old. I have a wife who will not talk to me and a little girl...who is 23 months so she can barely use words. I share your pain."

"Most of the time, our sexual relationship feels like a task to be completed less than a passionate act we both want to participate in. It's very methodical. I know she loves me and she says she's attracted to me but I never seem to see the passion she says she feels."

"I just thought she didn't want me or was no longer attracted to me. I began pulling away from her and wasn't flirty with her and didn't touch her, kiss her as much as I'd always done. I was tired of rejection."

"I have been told that L has no physical or emotional love for me, only a companionship love, or in other words "FRIENDS", I feel like I have been kicked in the chest, I have slipped into my own depression, its all I can do to go into work each day."

"She made it sound like I was the entire problem in the relationship."

"When we first began having sexual problems, I sulked, threw tantrums, got mad, withdrew, and made demands. In short, I did everything wrong; it seemed like an appropriate, and natural, response at the time…It's hard not to "take it personally." I tried to talk to her about it, tried to explain what it was doing to my self-esteem."

"Other couples hugged, they kissed, reached for the other's hands, laughed, etc. And it all seemed so foreign to me…SO LET ME ASK THE BOARD THIS: IF YOU SUBTRACT INTIMACY FROM A RELATIONSHIP, INTIMACY OF ANY KIND, EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL, WHAT'S LEFT? DOESN'T THAT JUST LEAVE, AT BEST, A FRIENDSHIP? NO SEX, NO HUG, NO KISS, NO CUDDLE, SO WHAT'S LEFT?"

James said, “Yeah, inside, there's like a black hole.” Sometimes, I don't know what to tell you, little buddy.

Escalators

Day 1
Linsey has a wicked scar on her left knee from a purportedly tragic escalator accident in her youth. You'd think her little blood-filled story, along with the remaining physical evidence, would be enough to inspire my children to politely step forward when they reach the bottom of an escalator, avoiding the otherwise awkward pile-up of strangers. It isn't. They don't.

I also try to keep them from walking up the "down" escalator, which apparently is enough fun to outweigh any threatened punishment. I do appreciate the opportunity for allegory, and when we've apologized (or avoided) the "down" escalator people who’ve uncomfortably squeezed their shopping bags past my totally oblivious offspring, I grab the opportunity and share this bit: Recovery is like walking up the down escalator. You can never stop. You might get ahead once in a while, buying yourself some time, but the AA Big Book is right in warning us to never “rest on our laurels,” instead recognizing that what we have is a "daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition." [p85] This is the terrifying thing to me. I cannot do anything today to guarantee that I won't fuck everything up tomorrow. I can only take today's steps up the escalator, and have faith that tomorrow I will do the same.

Roller Coasters

Day 1
OK. Sobered up. Kind of turned on and energized by this idea, of writing my life. Also kind of forcing myself not to edit the intoxicated ramblings of my first post, because that wouldn’t really be fair.

We’re on vacation: Vegas part 2. Part 1 was the G-rated version with the kids. Well, as G as you can get in Vegas anyway. Now it’s just the two of us, doing more R-rated things. I’m trying to remember why I thought it would be a good idea to bring a sex & drug addict into this environment. Or my kids, for that matter. Back to part 1:

There was really only one time that we officially split up during the week. I took Ashley to ride the New York-New York roller coaster and James went with Linsey to the pool. I try mightily to teach my daughter how to handle disappointment, something I never really learned to do. So each time her excitement bubbled up during the week, I reminded her that it wasn't a sure thing. As we neared the end of the week, I watched her bounce and fidget when she asked "So daddy, if it isn't too expensive, and I'm tall enough, and mommy will take the J-man somewhere else, and it's still open, and we have enough time, and if I've been good, we'll ride the roller coaster tomorrow?!!!!?!?" And my heart broke, because excitement tempered by this much caution doesn't really leave much room for joy, does it? At nine years old she's already learned not to let her hopes get up too high.

So we shared the delicious roller coaster anticipation of ratcheting up, then flying down, loopty-looing and roaring around the curves. It was, of course, over too quickly. The moments following were just a girl and her dad, no bratty brother in sight. And I wasted it looking for porn. I darted around the casino floor, nine-year-old in tow, looking for a shop where I could secretly purchase an overpriced magazine while I sent her to the bathroom or otherwise distracted her. After answering so many "daddy where are we going" questions with "just looking around" lies, I led her back up to the arcade which conveniently preceded the roller coaster's entrance. I told her she could only play two games, and after she pod-raced against Sebulba, we paced around the room for fifteen minutes deciding where to spend that second quarter.

And as I watched her carefully weigh the merits of the rip-off carnival games against the rip-off video games, I tried to get a handle on the familiar heart-breaking feeling welling up inside me. It didn't make sense – I had given her a boundary and provided an age-appropriate morsel of freedom, and she was merely consuming it. But like my mother before me, everything inside me wanted to protect her from my own cruel limits when her last quarter disappeared. Into that son-of-a-bitch prize-grabbing arm machine: It suckers every kid into fishing for an illegally produced Spongebob ripoff doll.

Here's the thing: She's young enough to get excited about an arcade, but old enough to remember how quickly that little cup of tokens ends up empty. And I'm crying inside because I just don't know how to tell her that the reason I'm not pumping quarters into these devices is that they're really not any fun! Once you get past the lights and sound effects, and the daze-inducing gestalt of a room packed with such machines, they just don't deliver. The promise is a lie. You just walk away an hour or two later, from the arcade or the mall or the casino, with your pockets empty, coated in a dirty film of consumerism and waste. Silly rabbit, you can't buy happiness! Instead, happiness sneaks up when you pause to hold your lover on a windy day between your eye appointment and a trip to the DMV. As far as the vast sea of happiness for sale out there, flashing and spinning and screaming for your attention, the truth is painful and simple. Sure it's cool and elegant that M. Scott Peck opened The Road Less Traveled with the phrase "Life is difficult." But festering in the day-to-day noise of rudeness and rushing is the unavoidable and far less gentle: "Life sucks." And anyone who tells you different is trying to sell you something.

Later, as Linsey listened to my memories of that day, her words were like a soothing balm on my psychic wound. Ashley will not remember that the machine stole her money or that I was a little distracted. To her, that noisy room wasn't a depressing symbol of life's disappointments or a reminder that getting excited just makes getting hurt feel worse. She'll remember a day with her dad, and a roller coaster ride that she was tall enough to ride. She probably won't remember that we talked about her sexual abuse and self-esteem on the walk back. And I'll remember that for one afternoon, my little girl was in love with me, not her boyfriend or her husband, but her broken, guilty, make-it-up-as-you-go father, who was discovering at that very moment where true happiness is found.