Scars & The Pause

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B-Sides

Part of an ongoing B-Sides Collection series, where I’m resurrecting and reviving old things I’ve tucked in my journals, but have never shared. Each piece I write feels like a person to me; a character with a story, personality, and a personal history. It’s interesting and rewarding for me to revisit these old friends, and see how far we’ve come and how much we’ve grown since I wrote it, 4 years ago.

This one, though.
This one is special.
This is my favourite thing I’ve ever written.
And, it’s long.

Written February 19, 2019, on a private writing retreat in a tiny cottage in Washago, Ontario.

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Getting sober has been one of the most terrifying, wonderful, surprising and exhausting adventures of my life. It’s been a very long and winding road out of a very dark forest with more flying monkeys than I care to mention. And as varied as our reasons for drinking are, so are the paths we each take to claw ourselves out of the rubble.

But all our escapes start in the very same spot.

Ground zero.

Finally growing sick of our own bullshit.

For me, it took watching every last thing I cared about start turning to ash before my eyes, burnt down by fires I had set myself. It took finally recognizing the storyline I’d been telling myself – for years and years and years – and it took finally learning how to stop pouring fuel on those fires.

For you, maybe it’s heartbreak, or losing your home. Maybe it’s jail, or killing someone in a head-on collision while you’re flying blind and drunk down a highway. Maybe it’s liver failure, losing your kids, or finally growing tired of feeling like absolute shit every day.

Have you asked yourself yet, what exactly is it going to take?

To explain how I finally got sober, you first need to understand how I came to realize (and admit) I was, indeed, a drunk.

It wasn’t enough to bear the shame of the devastating crash of the recycling bin every week, overflowing with nearly 30 bottles of wine (I would never return the empty bottles for a refund, because the eye-to-eye contact with anyone in the shadow of my mountain of empties was too close to admitting the savage honesty of the truth of my addiction). Leaving them anonymously for city workers to collect in my absence was closer to my delusion that there wasn’t really a problem at all.

It wasn’t enough to fail miserably at coping each and every morning with the razors of regret that sliced through my veins.

It wasn’t enough to be so intoxicated the night my Dad died that I forfeited my opportunity to say goodbye, as I needed to wait for my friends who were en-route to arrive before they could drive me as fast as possible in fog thicker than pea soup, at 10pm. I arrived ten minutes too late.

To say goodbye and so many other things.

It wasn’t enough to start collecting bad business reviews online and watch what I had built with Hubs start crashing to the ground week after week, and day after day.

Imploding.

It wasn’t enough to be riding a downward spiral with such velocity that everything around me seemed blurred and impersonal.

None of it seemed to ever be enough to peel back the guise I had draped over all of it, casting every disappointment, every crumb of self-destruction, as simply how things were.

It was as though my entire life fit in a bathtub, and I was mesmerized by watching it all get sucked down the drain. Almost as though I was outside of myself, displaced, watching it all go down like a car crash you can’t turn your eyes away from.

Destruction can be fascinating to observe.

No, none of it had the strength to rise up enough to deliver the unforgettable (and necessary) slap across the soul I needed to once and for all step back into myself and choose to stop the drain from draining.

To try and salvage what was left, and use the rubble of what remained as a new foundation – for something, anything, other than one more way of heading downward to a deeper and darker rock bottom.

It took infidelity and the worst kind of dishonesty, and it happened the day I somehow managed to pull the earth out from beneath my very own feet.

It took one bottle of wine in a distant hotel room, the stars so aligning that it delivered to me every last ingredient I needed to concoct the ultimate and perfect bomb so I could finally blow up my entire life – and the lives of the those around me.

Everything except the strength of character and clarity of mind to make better decisions.

It wasn’t made of metal and nails – oh no. The shrapnel from this type of bomb is well-lubricated with liquor and disregard so it can seep right through your skin and straight to the core of your being. It’s the kind of pervasive blast that only an addict can deliver.

The kind that leaves scars on the inside.

It was never my intention to hurt anyone, and I am certain that applies to almost every living person, even the worst addicts out there. We have an innate goodness – it’s just that sometimes…sometimes we forget.

Alcohol made me forget a lot of things, not simply the events of the evening before.

It made me forget the innate goodness we are all born with.

It made me forget that there’s more than just what we remember the past as and our imaginations of the future. There is also an irreplaceable and limitless space we can all tap into right now that has the proven power to pluck you straight out of the loop of your storyline.

It made me forget that nothing is certain, and nothing ever will be.

It made me forget that the imaginary world inside my head looked nothing like what was actually really real, on the outside.

It made me forget that nothing is static, and all of my self-induced misery I kept pouring into myself every day was all in a sad and vain attempt to have some semblance of control.

Of something.

Of anything.

It made me forget that the only thing we have control over is how we react to what we have no control over.

Which is everything.

And that’s where the unquenchable thirst comes from – our need to swaddle ourselves in some form of security, some kind of numbness, because we can’t stand feeling out of control. We can’t come to terms with the idea that just maybe nothing is a big deal, after all – including ourselves.

And, it’s not really about forgetting.

Let’s be honest. We don’t really forget. We’re just too busy self-destructing to care.

I finally came to admit I was a drunk when I shattered Hubs heart so loudly it deafened me and left permanent ringing in his ears. For the first time in too long, something resonated louder than my own sirens that were blaring inside me.

It took waking up to the reality that it wasn’t all about me.

That’s the thing with addicts – we’re not only addicted to using – whenever your poison of choice is – but we’re addicted to an idea of ourselves, and we’re also addicted to defending it. We’re addicted to being self-absorbed, while hating everything about ourselves at the same time. Our addictions are never truly to things you can drink, or stuff you can smoke – it’s always to our idea of how things should be.

I finally realized that I was thirsty for something I couldn’t drink.

And, the harder we try to materialize – and freeze – that impossible ideal of the way things should be, the more unlike that way things become. It’s like pedalling a bicycle backwards and wondering why you’re so exhausted despite not actually ever going anywhere except backwards.

So, we drink.

We smoke, we snort, we shoot up, we shop, we have sex with strangers, we gamble, we lose ourselves in eating disorders, and we binge watch mindless nonsense just to distract ourselves from even getting close to looking inside at all our scars that need tending. We keep ourselves busy to stop us from looking outside to all the scars we have caused. We act as though we are choosing to be the way we are, instead of admitting that it’s our patterns and automatic reactions that have shaped – and continue to shape – our reality which we simply refuse to believe.

On the surface, it looks as though we choose to pour the wine, we choose to have just one more, we choose to inhale oblivion as deeply as we can.

But our actions are rarely the result of our choices.

The same way a path in the woods is beaten down and the earth is scarred from the same pounding of footsteps, our patterns scar our of behaviour. Without pausing and without conscious, sober choice, we simply repeat the same self-destructive actions, regardless of how we get the same unsavoury results every damn time.

Our emotional scars are our most valuable roadmap to sobriety.

They show us where all the hurts got in.

They point to where we need look, to work, to listen, and to what we need to let be.

They give us our personal homework, which is ours and only ours, and unlike anyone else’s. And the only way to learn from these lessons is to study them.

To get close.

To lean into them and learn their language, so you can finally read them a bedtime story and at long last put them to sleep. To know their language, so you can negotiate with all the monsters under your bed, and come to see you were the monster under other people’s beds, too.

These are the places where we need to start, as it’s only through getting to know them and comfort them that we come to finally “get it” so we can pass all the pop-up quizzes on our path.

So, look to your scars, if you have your eyes set on being sober, or healthier, or just happier to wake up every morning whatever your reason - they are part of you because they are your tools for learning how to heal

They’re the doors you need to walk through, one at a time, closing each behind you as you go.

It sounds so easy on paper, and yet in practice, even getting started seems impossible – just like what everything else feels like to an alcoholic.

Everything else other than drinking yourself under the table each day, of course.

How do you even start to identify your soft spots, the tender places that flare up and drive you to drink? Where is the 100 Proof version of the manual for How To Finally Start Healing Yourself, that gets to the point faster than yourself to blackout on any day of the week?

Well, there isn’t one.

All we have, and all we will ever have, is what I like to call The Pause.

And it’s through learning how to pause – to stop pressing all the buttons and fast-forwarding and rewinding our wishes and fears, looping and repeating our diaries of remorse and zooming in on our insecurities – that we can finally step back and see a clear picture of what actually is.

Pause before you spend your money, your time, and your words.

Pause before you pour a drink or your heart out, and learn to pause before you believe what you read, what you’re told, and especially what you’re thinking.

Learn to pause, always, just long enough to remember that you always have a choice.

It was ultimately through learning how to pause that I was able to interrupt my irresponsible, ignorant, impulsive auto-pilot. It was how I learned to not stop at the liquor store on my way home, and how I learned to begin questioning the truth of all the clutter in my heart and soul. It was through pausing that I came to lean in close enough to the really real me and finally hear what he’d been asking for all along.

How can you hear what it is you need now when you’re so busy blasting re-runs of your favourite highlight reel of regrets? How can you squint tightly enough to finally see in focus where you’re standing, while you’re so busy fast-forwarding to imaginary future nightmares?

You need to pause the non-stop dialogue and chatter in your head so you can hear what it is your scars are asking for, without the narrative, for a change.

Without the judge inside you telling you that you’re stupid or weak, or that you don’t deserve to be happy, or sober, or that your partner could do better than you and why don’t you just off yourself already and do everyone a favour, or that you’ll never get sober because you’re a failure and even your dog doesn’t like you, and while we’re at it here’s a list of all the ways your best intentions will once again fall apart in a heaping pile at your pathetic feet.

Or, maybe your narrative sounds more like the panel of American Idol, with a panel of professional judges critiquing everyone and everything but themselves.

That is the noise that needs to stop.

That noise is the knife that cuts open your scars and never lets them heal.

That’s the noise that bubbles up in your Prosecco then ferments all your sorrows inside you.

It’s that noise that keeps you stuck and all your scars weeping and sore.

You could simply not drink, after all.

Right?

There’s tens of thousands of books and apps on the subject that will most likely get you there, if you’re diligent and packing willpower. You can just not pour the next drink down your throat, and pour it down the sink instead. You can cut out your addiction like a cancerous piece of flesh so you don’t have to look at it anymore – but under your skin, it’s still spreading.

The sickness is still there.

But if you’re here and you’re reading this, chances are you haven’t excelled too greatly at simply not drinking. Or perhaps you have (go you!) and this is finding you as a timely reminder for why you’ve made the better choices to pay attention to your life and scars and all the work we all need to do.

I’m here to remind you that drinking is not your problem.

Yes, it’s likely the cause of most of your problems – but drinking isn’t the problem you need to remedy so you can heal - and in turn, stop feeling like you need to drink.

Simply not drinking is no different than taking Tylenol for a nail in your head.

Until the nail comes out, no matter how numb you try and keep yourself, the injury and pain will always be there.

And it will get infected.

Getting sober requires a level of personal honesty I never imagined was possible, and it only became possible when I learned how to pause long enough to start seeing all the nails in my head, instead of keeping myself constantly busy trying to find more painkillers to numb the pain.

xo SJ

Photo banner ©Flora Borsi.