“If you have made mistakes, even serious mistakes, you may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call “failure” is not the falling down, but the staying down.”
― Mary Pickford
Those who die young are denied so many opportunities: the chance to live out their lives fully, often making mistakes, hopefully learning from them, and growing into more mature, evolved people. Eventually, if we’re lucky, we arrive at an age of wisdom when we can pass on learned lessons to others.
Learning to live well is a skill that many of us aspire to, especially as we grow older. Some of us are aware of the wreckage we left behind if we were burdened with demons like alcoholism or other forms of addiction.
Since I was a teenager, I struggled with various forms of it: eating disorders and amphetamines, which I craved because they relieved me of my depression, the underlying cause of my misery.
I, nevertheless, proceeded through life doing what my parents expected of me: marry a suitable guy and raise children. My husband, children and I lived a privileged life in the Foreign Service. But I wanted a career, and my husband did not approve. Rather than work it out for the sake of us all, I insisted on a divorce and moved back to Virginia with our children.
And so continued a period of years where I received great satisfaction in the classroom. But I was a far less successful parent. The kids were hurting badly, but did well enough on the surface for me to rationalize their pain.
Annie, my middle child, however, turned to drugs when she had barely graduated from college, and has been in and out of that hellish life for twenty-three years. Hence, the wreckage I spoke of.
During my years of teaching, I met the man I’ve been with for thirty-one years. Both high school teachers, we weren’t looking for love, but love found us. I eventually traded my food obsession with alcohol and embarked on thirty years of drinking. Ironically, Gene was a recovered alcoholic, but he knew better than to try and stop me, that the desire to stop had to come from me. I was a functional alcoholic, but not at all healthy spiritually.
My real work was soon to begin.
Yet I needed to learn to let go of Annie. “Let go or be dragged,” they say.
I needed a change of scenery, so Gene and I left Virginia and moved to New Mexico. We enjoyed a decade of living in “the land of enchantment.” But Annie was still floundering, and I stepped up my drinking. I couldn’t bear the pain of losing her.
My son and his wife helped me to wake up.
“Mom, please move up here so you can be closer to the children and watch them grow up.”
I bought a home on Camano Island, an hour north of Seattle where my son had moved. Life was good. I had begun publishing memoirs while still living in Albuquerque, and the catharsis I needed to begin the healing process had begun.
Spending many weekends down in Seattle at my son’s house, I was regularly drinking in his basement. I was not ready to work on myself and give up my thirty-year habit. Then one day he and his wife confronted me.
We sat down together, and he minced no words:
“Mom, we know what you’re doing in the basement. All our vodka bottles are empty.”
Immediate shock, humiliation, and the realization that I had not been fooling them all these years.
I said very little, just that I was so sorry that I’d been behaving so recklessly. And from that day I’ve never thought about drinking alcohol. At last, this student was ready for the teacher, happy that I’ve remained teachable. I had to believe that I was worth the effort to stop drinking.
It’s a fortunate person who has evolved enough to realize that he needs to change in order to live his best life. I am one of those fortunate adults.
Starting over after a long life of substance abuse isn’t as daunting as it sounds. I feel blessed, on the contrary, to have a second chance at life, living sober and reaping all the accompanying rewards.
This is personal transformation at its best. Gratitude fills my heart every day as I move forward, doing the next right thing.
