The Rock and the Hard Place

We make choices every day. Usually, those choices aren't that important. Cream or sugar. The bridge or the tunnel. Wheat or rye. Occasionally they can be important, like choosing which school to go to or who to propose to. Usually, at least with those kinds of choices, you make them once and stick to it. That leaves me wondering why, every day, I have to make a choice. I have to make the choice between madness and sanity, between sobriety and inebriation, between shame and grace.

In my weaker moments, that's a difficult choice to make because it seems like I'm between a rock and a hard place. A catch-22. No matter what I choose, the path is difficult and wrought with obstacles and pitfalls; pain and suffering. I can struggle, and I can stay sober, but I'll have to keep struggling to stay honest with myself and others. I can give in to my addiction, and I can go back and live in that world again - at least I won't have to struggle. What's more, it'll be familiar. I won't have to be afraid of living without my crutches and means of coping, I won't have to wonder what change will bring.

In other moments, I know I don't really have a choice, because I know exactly what is waiting for me in the gaping blackness of my addiction. I lived there for years, as I know many of you reading this have. It's already taken from me so much, and that's all it wants to do - take. It wants to take until there is nothing left of me but a shell of the person that I could of been. Until everyone who loves me and cares about me wants nothing more to do with me. Until my self-destruction is complete. Until I am not free. Prison is a possibility, but the prison I've lived in with my addiction is a certainty - shackled by fear, compulsion, and guilt.

I look at the consequences that my addiction has wrought thus far, and I know the I need to take. I look at myself in the mirror, and I know the path I need to stay on. I look at Sarah, and I know why.

So why, then, is that a choice that I have to make? Because I am an addict - that is the madness. That is the madness for all of us. We are intent on deluding ourselves into thinking that this time it won't be so bad. That this time, no one will have to know. That this time, no one will get hurt. That this time, will be the last time. When, all along, deep down, we see those for what they are.

The fact is, there is no rock and the hard place. There is no catch-22. There is no reason for me to go back to where I've come, and that holds true for us all. We've all been there, and we've all seen what it can do to us...who else but a madman would want to see it again?

It reminds me of the 'built in forgetter' we have about the consequences of our addiction that they always talk about in meetings. In Buddhism and psychology, they call it 'conditioned behavior'. In my life, lately it resembles a rut. Awareness is a gift. For me, where I am at right now, to think about not doing the codependent rescuing behaviors that I have done all my life feels to me like I am standing on the edge of an abyss. How will I relate to people...what purpose will I serve in their lives if I am not rescuing and comforting someone. I mean, it's like the concept of just being liked and valued as a human being, for my contribution, for being 'a part of' is completely foreign to me. I know this is all childhood stuff, because I believe all of our addictions can be traced back to childhood issues. (Some disagree, to each their own). But for me to not swoop in with my 'wings of pity' when it comes to relating to other people, it feels, like a woman told me about how she felt of her early recovery, "like walking around in a blank space". I fear that I will be alone, that I won't ever have friends or another relationship if I don't relate in this way. And that makes me feel panicky, and that makes me feel fearful, and then I want to act out.

I also know that somewhere hidden in all of this fear of relating to people in an authentic instead of rescuing way is my fear of *real* intimacy, my fear of being real about who I am with another person. Sigh. So more me it is more like the rock and the black place, the big black abyss. I am reminded of something I read a long time ago when I think about this; it was in a book on Buddhism or another eastern religion. There was a woman who was doing some kind of religious retreat alone and she was staying alone in a room with open-air windows. One night a man slipped into the window while she was sleeping armed with a knife, and attempted to rape her. She had taken a vow of chastity as part of her religion and it was very important to her. In the struggle, she knew that she only had one choice to avoid the rape and that was to grab the knife, so that is what she did. Even though the blade cut into her hand deeply, it rendered the weapon useless and effectively disarmed the rapist, who realized he'd been bested and gave up and left through the window, the way he'd come in. That story touched me pretty deeply when I read it, even though it wasn't about recovery, that's how it feels to me sometimes...grabbing the knife, which is the steps, or not using, or whatever behavior that feels big and bad and scary and I fear will hurt me, rather than being raped again by addiction.