The House That Built Me

On Christmas Eve, like millions of other people did, I went home.  I pulled up to the house, parked my car in the “no park zone” as I’ve done countless other times through my life when I couldn’t find a spot on the one way street, walked up to the door and knocked. The woman who answered was not my mother and looked surprised to see me.  “My name is Erin, and I grew up here.”  That should have been enough for her to embrace me, to swing the door open, to take my coat and whisk me in!  Needless to say I had to provide some credentials before I was let in.  Crazy people don’t show up on your door step every day.  She was gracious enough to let me take a peek inside.

We walked through the foyer….the spot where my teenage boyfriends and I would be able to sneak one last kiss goodbye from the watchful eyes of my parents, and I couldn’t help but smile a knowing smile closing the door behind us as those memories came flooding back.  The living room, completely different…all different!  This isn’t right! I wanted to scream.  The tree wasn’t in the right spot. There’s no way my sisters and I would have had the necessary room to open Christmas gifts where it was located. The furniture was all wrong- this was all wrong, I wanted to tell her.   The floor was now carpeted over the beautiful hardwood that my parents restored themselves as a young couple.  I wanted to tell her the carpets needed to go, you can’t have an 11^th birthday party here, you can’t put furniture polish down on the floor and let 13-14 giggling sleepover attendants run and slide down like baseball players on this floor until they crash into the couch at the other end of the room.  You can’t have dance parties with your sisters this way. 

I wanted to tell her the wall in the dining room wasn’t right either.  Where’s the piece of spaghetti that hung there for ages when Katie and I were learning to be cooks and went overboard testing the pasta to see if it was done?  The table was gone.  The table where we did our homework, where we had Holiday dinners and made important decisions as a family, was gone.  It was the table where we sat as my Grandmom came over shortly after my Dad moved out, and discussed our options with our mom as to how we would handle life.   There was no more closet with the makeshift door falling off of it, the closet that housed so many bits and pieces of whatever you’d need from batteries to your plastic wireless microphone (when you KNEW you were destined to be the next Debbie Gibson or Madonna) to fancy glasses Katie and I would drink out of pretending it was champagne.  

The kitchen was completely restored to the point of unrecognizable.  The cabinets the had installed were all wrong, how am I supposed to know which ones have spices I can throw into a bowl at 8 years old and make my own kitchen show?  The refrigerator my sisters and I bought my mom as a Christmas gift when we were old enough to all have jobs was gone.  The sink wasn’t clogged like it sometimes did in the winter when the pipes froze.  I wanted to ask her if that ever happened, and if when it did, she crawled under the house with a hairdryer trying to economically fix the issue like my mom had. 

The back room, the “mud” room had been turned into a powder room with more kitchen storage, and that wasn’t right.  How would the possum ever find his way home?  The possum who snuck into our house and made a home out of the back of an old cabinet, and who one day showed up sitting on our couch like he belonged there.  Okay, so maybe he was better off outside.

I didn’t venture up the steps.  I didn’t ask to see the rest of the house right then, I felt I’d intruded enough.  But I looked up those steps, the ones Sara, Katie and I would sit in sleeping bags and slide all the way down. The steps we would bounce down every Christmas to see what Santa had brought.  The steps I was sitting on with my back turned to my Dad when he told me the words I already knew were coming “We’re getting a divorce”.  And then, as graceful and classy as I was at 14, I went to run from him and tumbled down the stairs. 

I wanted to tell her that in the first room on the 3^rd floor, tucked away on a side wall in the closet, is a list of boyfriends I had.  I’ve often wondered if that’s been painted over.  In the other room in the closet is a sliding shelf, that’s exactly big enough to hold 3 small girls who are making up their own club.  I wanted to ask her if she ever climbed through my old bedroom window to sit on the roof and stargaze, and wonder what she’d be in five years, in ten years, in a lifetime.  I wanted to know if the bathroom on the second floor still had a mirror large enough to accommodate 3 teenage girls, all getting ready for countless Saturday nights, all in different stages of social activities, the mirror I always thought my Mom would be fluffing my veil in one day.

But I didn’t ever ask.  I thanked her and left. 

I’ve been kidding myself for a long time.  I’ve had one foot in the past, and one inches from the ground of the present, but moving forward has not been easy.  Going home….going back to the start, was my way of closing that chapter of my life for good.  I haven’t appreciated the home I have now enough because I’ve been so busy dwelling on the house I no longer have.   In this very room where I sit now, I got ready for my wedding.  Just above my head is the room where I showed Eric the pregnancy test and said “We did it”.   A few feet away from me is where I crossed the threshold and introduce my 2 day old son his new home.  There has been love here, there have been tears.  There have been good times and there have been not so good times.  There have been backyard barbeques, family dinners, New Year’s Eve parties and snowball fights.  There has been laughter, lots of it.

The house I grew up in was not what I expected it to be when I went back to it.  And that’s okay.  It’s someone else’s turn to make memories there, and closing that chapter of my life is the only way to make this stubborn foot hit the ground and go on with my new start.  The door of my old house, my old life, is finally closed.

A Playdate with The Beast

You know those people who you hear about, who died in the street with a needle in their arms?  And the women who whore themselves out, just for a fix?  The ones who go bat-shit crazy and rob a flower store and dumb shit like that?  They’re easy to point out.  Look at the person on your left, and now on your right.  I’ll bet my firstborn that one of them is an addict or dealing with a friend or family member who is.  It’s more than an epidemic, it’s a cliché.  They don’t wear signs and they aren’t as easily pointed out with a needle or a bent spoon.  They walk right by you, sometimes happy, sometimes sad.  But I know how to point them out.  Because behind their eyes, there’s nothing but a cold, dark tundra of what little soul they have left.

Think of your grocery store.  Picture a well-dressed, professional looking woman in a black and grey dress, black tights and heels.  Make-up and hair flawless.  She is smelling cantaloupe and smiling at her toddler, who wants to smell the cantaloupe as well.  She continues onto the vegetables and picks out mushrooms and carrots for dinner that night.  She keeps moving on, every now and then looking down and her son, doing something to make him laugh.  She is a flawless image of a working mom.

She is high off her ass on heroin.

Now you can judge me many different ways.

1.)    How could you put your son in danger like that

2.)    Aren’t you a little old to be experimenting with drugs?

3.)    You should wear boots with tights, not heels.

The game plan was never to get addicted to heroin.  Whoever says that? Johnny, what would you like to be when you grow up? ‘I want to be a heroin junkie and get so strung out on dope that I break into someone’s house, eat their dog food, and steal all their spoons! ’ Oh Johnny that’s wonderful..

I don’t know how I got here.  Well, I know…. But it still amazes me that I allowed myself to get here.  I’m not going to sit here and say I’ve been an angel my entire life and suddenly turned; that’s complete bullshit.  I’ve had a wild streak my entire life.  But I’ve really painted an appearance of “All together”.  Husband, kid, fenced yard.  Roast in the oven every Sunday, bagged lunches for Eric every night, sandwich cut in two.  All along, a beast lay dormant inside of me, waiting for me.  He was waiting for me for years, and he picked my most vulnerable moment to surface himself.  He turned me.  He saw me at the edge, and when I trusted him enough to reach out my hand to him, he pushed me.

I hear the phrase “I beat my addiction” and I want to laugh.  You never “beat” an addiction.  Don’t believe the hype.  Addiction isn’t a game you can win, it’s not a phase you go through and look back on one day and think what a dumb ass you were.  Addiction is always there, the linebacker two steps behind you waiting to tackle you to the ground.  Sobriety is a gift on borrowed time, it’s not a trophy.  Sometimes I’ll get through three quarters of my day and feel something missing.  Everything is in its place, yet something is off and I can’t quite put my finger on it.  It’s an emptiness that only the mourning feel.  The friend or lover who’s always been there and suddenly vanishes.  The day is normal, the work is done, and I am screaming on the inside for what I miss.  It’s him, my friend, my beast.  He’s the ex-boyfriend who calls you when you’re at your loneliest moment, yet won’t surface in your times of need.  He’s a coward, and you can’t get enough.  He’s the abusive husband you make up excuses for.  Addiction is a selfless, loveless, unfair prick, and you can never beat him.  You can step quietly around him and hope today won’t be the day he decides to lash out at you, but you never, truly beat him.

I don’t remember my first drink.  I do, however, remember my last.  It was Bud Light Platinum.  December 31^st 2013.  I drank a lot more than that that night, but that was the last sip of alcohol I had.  I wish it had been something more exotic.  A beautiful gin martini, a sunset margarita, something fancy in a coconut.  Have you ever sat on a beach in Waikiki and sipped a tequila sunrise?  Let me tell you, I have, and if you ever quit drinking, that should be your last drink.

Addiction is a habit.  It’s repetitive.  Wine was my evening date.  We would meet shortly after I was done work.  We’d cook dinner together, we’d laugh at the latest celebrity news playing on the TV as we cleaned the kitchen, and we’d play with Shane and show Eric affection.  Sometimes my date would stay late into the evening.  We’d sit on the couch long after Eric was asleep and troll the internet or cry together at old home videos.  Do I miss my date now?  Every waking moment.  Baking isn’t the same without my goblet of red.  Diet coke doesn’t fill my mind with calm and ecstasy.  I’m learning though. 

My day consists of getting though the waking hours.  I literally live till the next minute.  Then breathe.  Then be calm.  Be collective.  Be.

Natural happiness doesn’t come easily to addicts.  The warmth I felt with opiates was my happiness. They turned me into a better boss, a better mother, a better wife.  I won’t lie, when I wasn’t drunk, I was probably high.  And to say I saw nothing wrong with this is an understatement.  To me, it was a way of life.  And if I didn’t have anything to get high with, it became a second job to find something.  Pride is not something addicts embrace.  Mind racing, keys in hand, where do I need to go? 

And if I went days without anything coursing through my veins, I went dark.  Really dark.  My mind took me to places nobody should ever go.  I lay one night crying silent tears, my legs shaking uncontrollably.  I have never been so cold and hot at the same time.  Withdrawal is a personal hell.  Pray to God, pray to Ala, or McDonalds, whomever you believe controls your fate….it doesn’t go away.  Forget about sleep.  Couch to basement floor, back to bed, even snuck into Shane’s bed.  My cold sweat seeping through anything I touched.  And my mind, racing to Why am I here?  When sleep finally found me for a short and delusional time, I thought of how I would end it.  And I dreamt. 

Shane, now 27, is in a black tuxedo with a yellow rose pinned to his lapel.  Eric enters the room and sizes up his grown son, pride swelling in his chest.  “Your mom would have been so proud of you on your big day.” Shane’s eyes glassy and the beautiful blue I fell in love with the moment he was placed on my chest.  “Yeah…I’m sure she would have”. 

I don’t have the luxury of suicide.  Because I will dance with my son at his wedding. 

Going to rehab was the best experience of my life.  At first I walked in, my head high, I don’t belong with these people.  And there were all kinds.  People from the streets, girls who had whored themselves out, men who were there because jail was not an option, criminals, and housewives.  I learned quickly how faceless addiction is.  We all had the beast inside of us, and He had driven us to the edge of needing help.

I sat in a room with 25 strangers, night by sober night, listening, learning, and wanting to live again.  The people I lived with in those 3 weeks became my lifeline.  We all had a different story, some people had been through rehab before and knew the game.  Some wanted to get sober, others not so much.  A woman whom I had become friendly with gave me her number and told me when I got out I could call her for free Suboxone…I quickly threw it away and avoided her for the rest of my stint.  I would call Eric every night and choke on tears that the first time in 3 years, I wasn’t there to kiss Shane goodnight or hold him after his bath, a slippery goofball.  I’d confide in friends that I missed his smell….and then was told they hadn’t seen their kids in a year.  Some are still battling custody after all this time.  I am one of the very lucky ones.  Tonight, and every night, I will go and kiss Shane.  I will hold him after his bath until he’s dry and ready for warm PJ’s.  I will complain about his tantrums in the mall, and groan about picking up his toys night after night.  But I will have him.  Yes, I am one of the lucky ones.

I’m not going to say the past year hasn’t had bumps in the road.  I’m not going to say this is easy or even that it gets easier.  But I wake up, and I live another sober day.  I try to find a natural high in things.  A hug from my child, a monthly dinner with my sisters, a visit with my Grandmom.  The trick to sobriety is to never abstain from the highs you can get without drugs or alcohol.  Go back to simplicity of childhood, your favorite Christmas memory, or the tree you carved your initials into.  Kids seem to be the happiest people in the world, and that’s only because everything is new and beautiful.  They aren’t damaged or cynical.  Every day I try to bring out 9 year old Erin, who wanted to be a writer when she grew up, whose favorite drink was chocolate milk, and “high” was where she wanted to be pushed on the swings.  I go back to the start.  I live another day, and then I wake up again.

The Beast is no longer a match for me.  My shield is Love and my sword is Hope.  And even if I trip during the final battle, I will come out swinging. 

Sober since 1/1/2014