Marin

I am writing today from the Marin County Library located in the Civic Center building off San Pedro Road in San Rafael, California. Mike and I are here on business, Mike’s business. We have been here for five days now and he still hasn’t conducted any business. Marin County is not the place to boondock. We have spent two nights in the Sausalito dock parking lot, two nights in Marinwood, and one night in a Travelodge in Novato. Tonight we most likely park outside the Loch Lomond Yacht Club where our RV won’t look so out of place among some other RVs parked there. This is a tiring life. I am tired. I want to settle somewhere for just a little while, or perhaps a long while.

Patty Smith sings that “love just ain't enough,” and she is right. Love doesn’t keep you warm and fuzzy at night. Not when the love is lost in a haze of drink or drugs. Mike is an addict. Damn, how I hate that word. There is a one liner that says “I’m not an alcoholic, I’m a drunk, alcoholics go to meetings.” Does that hold true for addicts? Does an addict go to meetings and the rest are tweakers, cransters, rock hounds? I spent many years as an alcohol and drug counselor and am the last one that can help Mike now. So, I stand outside looking in. Or trying to because anyone who has lived with an alcoholic or an addict knows that no matter that Alanon tells you to stand back with love and don’t let the other person’s drinking and drugging control you it does affect you. Deeply. Darkly. How do you stand back with love while the one you love is committing slow suicide physically, mentally, emotionally, and financially? I know that I have a choice to stay or to leave. I also know that this is easier said than done. I know that this is a decision I must soon make, the decision to leave. Hoping that he will miraculously decide to stop using is just that-hoping. Wishing him to be the man I met and fell in love with is wishful thinking and deluded thinking because the man that he was is still inside him, he is just hidden behind this wall of drink and drug. So, my bags are packed waiting for me to at last pick them up and travel on alone.

My favorite passage from Melody Beattie's Language of Letting Go.

Letting Go of Those Not in Recovery

We can go forward with our life and recoveries, even though someone we love is not yet recovering.

Picture a bridge. On one side of the bridge it is cold and dark. We stood there with others in the cold and darkness, doubled over in pain. Some of us developed an eating disorder to cope with the pain. Some drank; some used other drugs. Some of us lost control of our sexual behavior. Some of us obsessively focused on addicted people's pain to distract us from our own pain. Many of us did both: we developed an addictive behavior, and distracted ourselves by focusing on other addicted people. We did not know there was a bridge. We thought we were trapped on a cliff.

Then, some of us got lucky. Our eyes opened, by the Grace of God, because it was time. We saw the bridge. People told us what was on the other side: warmth, light, and healing from our pain. We could barely glimpse or imagine this, but we decided to start the trek across the bridge anyway.

We tried to convince the people around us on the cliff that there was a bridge to a better place, but they wouldn't listen. They couldn't see it; they couldn't believe. They were not ready for the journey. We decided to go alone, because we believed, and because people on the other side were cheering us onward. The closer we got to the other side, the more we could see, and feel, that what we had been promised was real. There was light, warmth, healing, and love. The other side was a better place.

But now, there is a bridge between those on the other side and us. Sometimes, we may be tempted to go back and drag them over with us, but it cannot be done. No one can be dragged or forced across this bridge. Each person must go at his or her own choice, when the time is right. Some will come; some will stay on the other side. The choice is not ours.

We can love them. We can wave to them. We can holler back and forth. We can cheer them on, as others have cheered and encouraged us. But we cannot make them come over with us.

If our time has come to cross the bridge, or if we have already crossed and are standing in the light and warmth, we do not have to feel guilty. It is where we are meant to be. We do not have to go back to the dark cliff because another's time has not yet come.

The best thing we can do is stay in the light, because it reassures others that there is a better place. And if others ever do decide to cross the bridge, we will be there to cheer them on.

Today, I will move forward with my life, despite what others are doing or not doing. I will know it is my right to cross the bridge to a better life, even if I must leave others behind to do that. I will not feel guilty. I will not feel ashamed. I know that where I am now is a better place and where I'm meant to be.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation. __________________
You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart
Then people gonna treat you better
You're gonna find, yes, you will
That you're beautiful as you feel
~Carole King~

(This is what I am working on right now-gathering the courage to cross the bridge leaving another behind)

Where do I live now?

Where do I live now? I live nowhere and everywhere. In the past three months I have traveled through California’s Central Coast, San Diego Mountains, to Yuma, Arizona, back through the Sierra Nevada’s, and up through Nevada to the wild north of Idaho. I have lived in a nineteen foot travel trailer with my daughter, her husband, their six children, two dogs, and a cat, several anonymous motel rooms, and as of this moment a thirty foot motor home with Mike in South Lake Tahoe.

Moving around is not new to me. I have lived in too many places to name, moving because of love; domestic violence; divorce; school; or economic reasons. Six bedroom houses; cold dark cabins; weekly motel rooms; assorted campgrounds and rest areas; trailers, tents, and RVs. These are the places I have called home, sometimes alone, most often with some or all of my children and lately my grandchildren.

I long for a place to rest my weary self; tired of roaming, I long for a place to call home. I yearn for a room of my own, one strewn with books, writing tablets, and pens; a room in which beads (I love beads and fringe) sing in the breeze, candles flicker in the dusk and dawn, and Kohl and Gigi lounge languidly alongside me.

Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by his heart, and his friends can only read the title. Virginia Woolf

I was born in San Francisco

I was born in San Francisco. I always thought that I should be someone special to have been born in a place so magical, so full of life’s mysterious and sultry style. I always thought that, then I grew up and decided that I wasn’t special. In fact, I was rather the downside of ordinary. That is how I felt for a very long time. Teasing and bullying on the playground gave way to verbal and physical abuse in my relationships with men. I never thought that I deserved the teasing, the bullying, the abuse but it was there and it took its toll on me. I didn’t ask to be burned, to be turned into a “crispy critter” as the other children referred to me. I didn’t know who I was other than that monstrous looking creature other people were sure to see when they looked at me. So, I grew a thick skin, I brushed my hair over my face, covered my body in layers of clothes, and learned how to laugh at myself before anyone else had the chance. I grew bold and took risks that I shouldn’t have as a teenager. I left home at the age of seventeen to live on my own, to make my own decisions –right or wrong. Today I live with the results of the decisions I have made over the years. Today I still feel the downside of ordinary, nothing special. The specialness that could possibly have been part of me is only seen in my children. The intellect I could have been, the bold and assertive woman, the loving yet disciplinary mother, and the socially adept individual. These traits and more are found in my children. I long to channel these traits and perhaps one day I will, but for now I live in a cluttered numbness in which my feet and my mind stumble about lost.