For years I thought my
emotions were destroying me. During the drinking years, the constant flow of
loneliness, despair and frustration wore me down slowly and persistently like a
stream over rocks. Like a stream, my emotions always felt cold and
inhospitable. As excruciating and piercing as they were, that unwavering
trickle of pain was often the only thing that reminded me that I was still
alive and human. During the brief periods (hours, maybe days) when I didn’t
feel like total shit, I usually felt nothing at all – unless you consider drunk
to be a feeling.
The release from
alcoholism bestowed upon me longer periods of non-shitty feelings and a renewed
and overpowering optimism that life could be good. When I was younger, I would
go hiking with my dad in the summers. I didn’t love hiking then, but I love
that I hiked with him now. In the middle of the Olympic National Park or the
Central Cascades we would wind around remote trails, and far out in the
distance – miles off the trails – I would spy large meadows and wide-open
spaces that looked like something from a Bob Ross painting. Happiness was out
there, and if I were willing to walk through wilderness, I could find it. That
sentiment returned when I stopped drinking. Happiness seemed possible,
confidence seemed available, and tranquility seemed visible.
Very quickly in recovery,
I began to notice the intense levels of fear and anxiety that seemed to be
baseline emotions for me. I would find an emotional connection, a new job, or
some financial security, and immediately react with self-preservation. Anything
positive was as unreliable as the fabled Scottish town of Brigadoon – here
today, but vanishing by night, and not returning for 100 years. I would clutch
and cling with ferocity to whatever I thought was delivering me from misery
until I smothered the experience with my own desperation. Life was better than
when I was drunk and high on the daily, but it had a narrative arc that was
impossible to sustain.
Two years ago, I began
therapy and started examining myself more rigorously than I had in the three
years of previous sobriety. Early on in therapy, I told my therapist that I
often thought of myself as a pile of raked leaves – beholden to any breeze, and
blown wherever the emotional winds wanted. I thought of myself as besieged by
the world’s negative experiences. I recall sitting in an al anon meeting years
earlier and describing the recent loss of a girlfriend (who left me for heroin)
and the death of a friend (who died from a heroin overdose). “I feel cheated, I
feel so fucking cheated out of love and friendship.” That sense of being
cheated, or abandoned, or misunderstood, or fucked over persisted for a long
time into therapy.
As therapy went on, I
explored my emotions to a greater depth. I hung the “emotion wheel” on my
refrigerator, and bought a stack of cards with emotions listed on them. I
didn’t notice for several months that nowhere on the wheel or in the cards were
cheated, abandoned, misunderstood or “fucked over.” In Marshall B. Rosenberg’s
excellent book Nonviolent Communication,
he draws attention to these specific words and argues that they aren’t emotions
at all. Rather, they are interpretations of how others are treating us. I
didn’t feel abandoned so much as I thought people were abandoning me. If I were
being cheated, it was because I had seated at myself at a card table with
cheaters. The deep irony of being born into a white upper-middle class family
and feeling “fucked over” settled in. Life had certainly been unfair in many
times, in many ways, but I can’t sit around waiting for life to become fair. I
don’t recall anyone telling me it was fair in the first place.
This began my new
fascination with perception. Smarter people than I have spent entire lifetimes
writing and pondering perception. Major pillars of philosophy and psychology
center on the role of perception. Trite Facebook newsfeed sayings treat us to
single-serving tea bag musings about how “our perception is our reality.” As
frustratingly reductionist as those multicolored images are, they are also
true. How I choose to view my life, is how I choose to feel about my life. To
view it as challenging, unfair, or cold is to feel challenged, cheated, or
unfulfilled.
My favorite scene in the
movie in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas has
Hunter S. Thompson and his attorney Oscar Acosta seated at a bar high out of their minds, when Acosta
slovenly slurs to Thompson, “I think I’m getting The Fear.” Lately I’ve been
waking up with the fear. I’ve had a year with much joy, but also struggle and sadness.
There’s been loss (suicides, job opportunities, relationships, financial
strain), and it’s been scary. My dreams at a night are an endless parade of
visitations by my dead friends and vanished lovers; usually I’m drunk in my
dreams. I usually wake in the morning with a start and clutch my blanket
wondering how much of it is real. Fortunately that fades quickly and by the
time my feet hit the wood floor, I’m restored to optimism.
This morning I stumbled around in disappointment over some
of my recent losses for longer than usual. I methodically made my coffee in the
glass pour-over carafe I love, and did a few dishes (a chore I somewhat enjoy
doing early in the morning). I set my mind to feeling better, grabbed a first
cup of my favorite coffee (Love Buzz,
an Equal Exchange medium-roast), set Pandora to my favorite morning station
(playing only piano solos) and settled into my chair with a view. As I sipped
and sampled from my coffee and recovery books, and looked at Lake Union and
Magnolia with streaks of blue between layers of clouds, I heard my favorite
song by pianist Brian Crain. A trudging melody, “A Glimmer in Her Eyes,”
progresses through beautiful key changes. At times sad, and at others hopeful
and content, it is always pretty. It is a song without words that is any story
I want it to be. I sipped my coffee again and glanced at the deck of emotion
cards sitting to my right. The top card is “fulfilled – satisfied,
self-actualized, at peace.” All the loss and disappointment reveals to me that
I am mature enough to handle it, and that the gains in my life have been a
result of tremendous hard work, self-sacrifice and incredible intelligence. I
have withstood withering storms, and emerged with new character and knowledge.
Happiness is still elusive, but safety is not. I no longer feel cheated, I feel
accomplished, worthy, and grateful. Thank you for reading this.
