Gullible

Luca is a young man of my acquaintance whom I met while he was -- unbeknownst to me -- on house arrest.  He had crashed his car, injuring several people, while intoxicated.  During his year of house arrest, he attended mandatory AA meetings and eventually earned permission to leave his house in order to work at the horse farm where his girlfriend was employed as assistant manager.  Jenni is a sweet and beautiful young woman whose passion is horses.  She is an accomplished equestrian but has never achieved her potential.  When she met Luca, he was already in trouble:  he was selling and using drugs, getting in fights, and generally wasting his life.  The only person he was nice to was Jenni and eventually, after his accident and house arrest, the two became a couple.

When Luca first appeared at the barn, I didn't know what to think.  With tattoos from the neck down, he looked like a drugged-out thug, but was as sweet and polite as well brought up child.  He absolutely loved my horse and seemed like a peaceful and happy young man and soon I stopped noticing the "body art".  Fast forward three months to when the ankle bracelets came off.  The first thing he did was reconnect with his homies who were also newly off house arrest.  They went to AA meetings together not because they had to, he said, but because they wanted to.  Luca seemed sincere in his desire to live a good life, free of substances.  It made me happy to hear him speak of the happy place he found himself in. Around Christmas, Luca moved in with Jenni and the two made quick work of the stalls and other horsekeeping chores and seemed head over heals in love.

Last week, after the owner of the farm commented to Jenni that her work ethic had recently deteriorated, Jenni announced that she and Luca were moving out of the farm residence and into a place of their own and the two walked off the job to go house hunting.  In anticipation of a vacancy, the owner let herself inside the little house in order to measure for new kitchen cabinets and appliances.  The inside of the house, which had been mostly renovated just five months before, was a horror.  There were holes punched in the walls and garbage and dog feces covering the floors. It looked like a crack house.

One of Jenni's friends told the owner that Luca was back to selling and using drugs and was also becoming violent towards Jenni.  Later when the owner confronted Luca with her suspicions, he threatened to beat her too, but the owner reminded him that she had his parole officer's number on speed dial.  He backed off but Jenni stood paralyzed in a corner, sobbing.  The owner offered sanctuary to Jenni, but she declined without a word.

The two left the next day, but not before Luca greeted me in his usual sweet and innocent way and fussed over my horse.  I wanted to say something, to ask him why, to offer to take him to a meeting, but pretended that I knew nothing about his fall from grace.  It should not have surprised me, but it did because I wanted so badly to believe in the miracle that was his recovery.  How did I not see this coming? 

The owner of the farm, herself, is engaged to a man who is finishing his sentence for felony DUI.  The two started dating while he was on house arrest and she stuck with him during those long and lonely months because she believes in him, despite his being less than completely honest about what actually happened before the accident that nearly killed a nine-year-old child.  He seems like a sweet and good person who wants to live a good life.  He appears to have learned to live in a state of gratitude and to surrender completely in the face of addiction.  My heart will break for both of them if he throws away the God-given love of a good woman, the forgiving heart of his precious son, and the support of a whole community with a stake in his recovery.

Addiction is so powerful it blinds and numbs us to the divine light of eternal love that surrounds each and every one of us.  Living in a state of grace is a constant decision to move toward this light and to ignore the seduction of addiction's false promises.  Some days I feel like a child's soap bubble riding a gentle breeze, and on others,  like a leaf floating gently down a stream.  Fragile and beautiful and temporary. 

An Epiphany

In a recent "Dear Abby" column, a man in his 30s wrote to say that he had a lifelong problem controlling his anger and he was afraid that his outbursts were hurting his children.  Abby's response stated that "[w]hen a bigger person yells at a smaller person, the message is often lost because the smaller person (in your case, your children) simply shuts down out of fear that physical violence might follow."  I fought back an urge to vomit because of the powerful memories this statement evoked.

My whole life from the time I became aware of myself as a person, until I started taking Prozac and doing the hard work of psychotherapy, had been a time of terror.  My father routinely exploded with rage at my mother over her shortcomings as a wife, mother, homemaker, and person, and at his growing children for being "ungrateful little bastards," among other sins.  By the time I reached school age, I was completely cowed into submission, a victim ripe for picking.  All anyone had to do was raise his or her voice and I would collapse into a quivering, gelatinous mess on the floor.  Whatever beliefs or opinions I might have had disappeared before I could become aware of them.  The only thing I knew for certain about myself was that I loved horses.  Otherwise, I tried to be a chameleon and blend in but it never worked.

After college, I married a man who, like my father, had a violent temper but unlike him experienced and expressed great love and affection for me.  The angry outbursts felt very familiar as did my emotional collapse, but when the storm clouds parted, there was always love and tenderness and I found a way to pretend to be fully human, until I could figure out how to stop making my husband angry.  In my family of origin, there was never any demonstration of love and I grew up starved for it which is why during my young adult years I had sex with a handful of strangers, but avoided anyone that appeared romantically interested in or attracted to me.  It took a brush with my own mortality to shock me into caring enough about myself to allow someone else into my life.

If my father had been capable of loving me, my mother, and my siblings in a way that felt safe and happy perhaps I might have been better equipped for friendships and romantic relationships.  Instead, I trusted no one with my heart or my inner life, not even my husband.  I loved him deeply, and even more today, but was convinced that if he knew what was in my heart of darkness, he would be frightened away.   To a degree, that is still true which is why I will not let him read what I write.   Yet.

Dry Drunk

Alcoholics tend to share common traits, such as blaming others for their own mistakes, denying obvious truths, and rationalizing their unworthy behavior.  For example, a wife might blame her drinking problem on her husband's lack of sexual interest (when the reality is that she is passed out drunk every night and he finds this repulsive).  Teenagers who binge drink every weekend often fail to see a problem when they drag their hungover selves out of bed on Monday mornings.  Parents who regularly finish a bottle of wine (or more) every night credit their European heritage for their appreciation of the finer things in life.  Of course, there are much worse examples than these:  physical and emotional abuse, lying and stealing, and self-destruction, among others.

Not everyone who blames, lies to, or hurts others is an alcoholic or addict.  In AA circles, these people are called "Dry Drunks".  During my rehab and recovery process, I realized that almost everyone could benefit from a Twelve-Step type program because of the profound effect it had on my inner experience.  Each of us engages in denial and rationalization to some degree because being brutally honest with ourselves is often painful.  But, taking an honest look at oneself can be transformative because it allows us to stop pretending that we are whom we are not. 

Defensiveness has many faces:  anger, passivity, aggression, fawning, criticizing, and masking feelings are a few.  Anger, aggression, and criticizing deflect attention away from one's own shortcomings and serve to intimidate others.  Passivity, fawning, and masking feelings are a way of protecting oneself from angry, aggressive, and critical people.  Honesty is the key to being whole and healthy because it cannot survive defensiveness. 

In rehab, my counselor Chrissy often said that when someone stirs up strong (negative) feelings it is about some aspect of ourselves that we dislike.  This powerful insight allowed me to let go of anger and resentment I had toward some people in my life and confront my deeper feelings about myself.  Twelve-Step programs force us to examine our behavior over a lifetime and tease out the defenses we have used to protect ourselves from unpleasant emotions.  It is easier to hurt someone else than to admit failure or humiliation to ourselves.

If everyone could, from time to time, take an honest inventory of his or her behavior and forgive him or herself for wrongs done to others, we might all get along better.  On a global scale, this could foster a more peaceful world:  It's not you, its me and I apologize for making you feel bad because I hurt.  Amen.