A Christmas Miracle

At the risk of writing a sentimental sermon about the spirit of Christmas, I want to share a miracle:  Julia, daughter #1, volunteered to spend time with her grandmother. 

As a mother, GM was a classic narcissist.  She loved her three sons to the extent they reflected favorably upon her.  In other words, not very much.  Success meant being superior to everyone else in every way.  GM made this her life's work and was extremely good at it.  She was not, however, happy and the sad part is that she didn't know it.  When she felt upset, which was all of the time, GM went about "fixing" some aspect of her environment in the form of giving advice or criticism or picking a fight or redecorating a room or shopping or "having work done.". Somehow her sons managed not to murder her for her constant expressions of motherly love:  telling them who they should be, how they should look, and what they should (not) do.  Failure to conform to her wishes was an intolerable rejection which never went unpunished.

Son #1 did his best to conform, but in the end was unable to measure up.  He dropped out of Yale, married a nice (wealthy) Jewish girl, and lived in the style to which his mother was accustomed for a couple of years.  The marriage failed as did the next three.  He lost his psychology license because he engaged in a romantic relationship with a patient and then moved to Israel to become a militant Zionist.  Son #2 conformed up until he graduated from Harvard Law School (after Duke University) and then dropped out of law to become a professional psychic.  Son #3, my husband, refused to conform but became a successful business attorney, got married, and had two children.  Of the three, he is the son who reflects the best upon his mother, but she still doles out the "motherly love."

Grandpa is a classic enabler who allowed his wife to bully their children with her withholding of love unless they conformed to her wishes which they were never allowed to do.  There has never been a more co-dependent relationship than theirs and while they were successful in many ways, they are both emotionally crippled and disappointed in their offspring.

I never let it get to me when GM would buy me padded bras and lipsticks and force me to try on clothing which accentuated the negative more than my own choices did.  When the babies came along, GM had a fantasy about how wonderful it was going to be and bought a houseful of baby products for the week or two we spent with them.  Unfortunately for her, Julia had her own ideas from birth about what she wanted to do and how she wanted to do it.  The two never hit it off but once Julia entered puberty, the war was on and I was caught in the middle.  My daughter and husband would tell me to tell GM to back off and GM would complain to me about how horrible my daughter and husband were behaving, like I could fix everyone.  If anyone should have hated her, it should have been me.

As Julia grew from teenager to adult, she struggled mightily with depression, anxiety, mania, and ADHD.  Her grandmother had no ability to understand why Julia was so difficult to be around as well as her failure to fawn all over her like a good granddaughter.  No amount of explaining was enough to enlighten GM.  For the past decade, she has asked me the same twenty questions about Julia and I have given her the same twenty answers.  It's like talking to a stone.

Meanwhile, Julia has had the benefit of loving, supportive, and understanding parents who demanded no more than she was capable of doing.  The one time that we asked her to step up to the plate was on the occasion of her grandparents' 70th wedding anniversary, a dinner party planned weeks, no months, in advance.  Unfortunately, the dinner party coincided with a "cosplay" convention in which Julia and her friends hoped to win an award for their costumes.  Fortunately, the competition was held in the morning along with the photo shoot.  The winners -- my daughter and her friends -- were announced while we were attempting to enjoy the dinner and Julia made sure that each and every one of us suffered for requiring her attendance.  I nearly disowned her after that and it was a long time before I was willing to give her the time of day.

So, when the girls came home for Christmas and the grandparents came down to be with us for a week, Julia made a big show of hating her grandmother (who chose to ignore it).  Kayleigh, daughter #2, took her sister to task on Christmas Eve and said some things which caused Julia to realize that it was she who was causing the problems by being reactive instead of ignoring the criticism and acting like a civil and mature human being.  As Santa was getting ready to fill the stockings, Julia came in and apologized for her many years of being an asshole.  She said that she finally understood that she owned more than half the dysfunction in the family and promised to do better.  I hugged her and told her I loved her and that the past doesn't matter as much as the present.

The next day, after opening presents and eating a delicious Christmas dinner, GM mentioned that she needed to get a manicure and Julia volunteered to take her and have lunch with her.  I almost died of shock.  She seemed genuine in her offer and GM was thrilled.  It was the first time that Julia had said anything nice to her grandmother in years and she seemed sincere.  Just the same, I expected a blow-up and arranged to meet them for lunch.  When I arrived, they were chatting and laughing like a couple of old biddies and the only explanation I could come up with is that a God had performed a miracle. 

Serenity Happens!

Holy Christmas

Can we just fast forward to January 2nd?  The holiday season -- Thanksgiving to New Years -- is my least favorite time of the year.  It's not that I don't love the gift-giving and cookie-baking and turkey roasting, because I do, nor is it because I fear spending time with my nearest and dearest.  It is what happens inside my head and heart as I struggle to get everything done, be everything to everyone, and radiate joy for the benefit of others that does me in.  In recent years, the gap between Thanksgiving and Christmas has shrunk from a respectable amount of time to a matter of days.  Suddenly, it is Thanksgiving and even more suddenly, it is Christmas Eve and I haven't sent a single card or wrapped more than two gifts.  In years past, the best cure for this feeling was just a little bit (OK, a lot) too much wine.  Last year at this time, I was constantly on the verge of tears and wishing I could check myself into a psychiatric hospital.  Somehow I managed to make it through to January, probably through the grace of God.

2013 started out on a high note:  my youngest brother announced his engagement to a lovely young woman whom we had all met and decided to adopt.  The wedding happened in March and brought my entire extended family together for the first time in years.  We had a blast, so much so that my husband asked me if I was drunk (I wasn't).  The glow from this happy event didn't last, unfortunately, because shortly thereafter my sister discovered that her husband -- one of the pillars of my life -- had been cheating on her for years with multiple women.  The circumstances of her discovery were so bizarre that it made her believe in a punitive God because her soon-to-be-ex-husband was critically injured during his final tryst with one of her colleagues.  He survived but may never have the use of his "little man" again.

It felt as if we had had a death in the family but there was no body and there would be no funeral.  My grief was such that I began drinking in earnest every evening as a way to escape the feelings my soon-to-be-ex-brother-in-law had provoked with his narcissistic behavior.  And then I realized that I was reaching a point of no return, that I had to give up the drinking completely and forever or give in to alcoholism and lose everything I cared about in life. 

Call it God or a Higher Power or Big Fish, it really doesn't matter.  What matters is that I heard the message that I needed to live my life without wine and I acted upon it.  And thank God I did because 2013 wasn't finished with me.  Being sober, happily and voluntarily, enables me to embrace the challenges posed by each and every day.

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!  #LiveSober and enjoy the peace that comes from #recoveringlife.

Nature vs Nurture

Our two children, born three years apart, are so different we sometimes wonder if there was a mix-up at the hospital.  Firstborn Julia was a beautiful baby whom I showed off constantly in my effort to prove that I wasn't really a social pariah.  Pushing the stroller around the neighborhood gave me the courage to meet and converse with my neighbors, which I had studiously avoided for the five years before Beau and I became parents, out of a combination of fear and loathing (i.e., defensiveness).  Julia was so pretty that strangers exclaimed over her everywhere we went and for the first time in my life I felt like I could let go of the outermost layers of my psychic body armor; after all if I could produce such a beautiful baby, maybe I was capable of being normal.  I vowed to be the mother to her that I never had so that she would grow up happy, secure, and self-confident.

As I met other young mothers I became convinced that my baby was the one destined for greatness and glory; their babies were ordinary in comparison.  She learned to speak in sentences by the time she was fifteen months old and was completely toilet trained soon thereafter.  Only one other mother (a religious fanatic who regularly beat her little son with a paint stick in order not to "spoil the child") had her child out of diapers before his second birthday.  The rest let their children figure it out on their own which I found irresponsible.

Out of concern that Julia not grow up as an only child, Beau and I decided to have a second baby.  As the pregnancy progressed, Julia's personality became increasingly eccentric but we chalked it up to her extraordinary intelligence.  Every adult who interacted with her commented on how smart and funny she was, how engaging and creative, how insightful.  As her intellect became more and more obvious, so did evidence of inner demons.  By the time Kayleigh was born, Julia's tantrums were legendary.  I refused to believe that there was anything wrong even though her troubles were so visible I could no longer in honesty deny them.  I kept hoping that if we just continued believing in her and loving her and talking to her she would eventually grow out of her extreme emotions.  At the time I believed that nurture could trump nature.

Unfortunately, her tantrums worsened and in significant ways she did not keep pace with the "ordinary" children in her age group.  While her playgroup friends were able to count to twenty and recite their ABCs, Julia couldn't have been less interested.  She was too busy tearing the house apart to create a world of her own, narrating all the way, complete with imaginary friends and dogs.  Supervising her while caring for a newborn was exhausting and both children got less nurturing than I wanted to give them.  Meanwhile, Beau and I hit a low point in our marriage and we each blamed the other for Julia's increasingly troubled behavior.  I was beside myself trying to figure out how to protect her from the turmoil in her world and began self-medicating to an increasing degree with wine.

Kayleigh, meanwhile, developed on a more mainstream track.  She learned to count and recite ABCs by the time she was three, she sought out playmates rather than going off into her own little world of make believe, and she quickly grasped the concept of being rewarded for good behavior.  Like her sister, Kayleigh was a busy little bee, but in ways that seemed more "normal", in other words she made an effort to fit in with the other children.  This pattern continued through their childhoods and into young adulthood.

Today, they do not speak to each other in anything other than monosyllables.  Kayleigh is furious at Julia for being a self-centered whacko with a personality disorder.  Julia is furious at Kayleigh for being "perfect" and belonging to a sorority and studying business and being a high achiever in a conventional sense (i.e., making her look bad).  Julia is finishing at art school where she is majoring in sequential art, (also known as comics).  She can design and sew elaborate costumes for the conventions she attends with other sequential art fans, some of which are quite beautiful.  Kayleigh believes that Julia is an overgrown child who needs a reality check;  Julia feels that Kayleigh is mean and unloving and judgmental.  Beau and I hope that Julia will be able to live independently.  We aren't worried about Kayleigh being successful, but we do hope she can learn to be more accepting of her sister's challenges.

Neither girl wants to be home when her sister is there.  On those increasingly rare occasions that the four of us sit down together, Julia suffers because she feels that her parents are only interested in what her sister is doing.  Kayleigh suffers too because deep down she is heartbroken at having a sister she cannot love.  It seems that Beau and I have ended up with two only children. According to Tolstoy, every happy family is alike but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.  Our family is an exception:  we are a happy family but not when we are all together.  When the girls are alone with one or both of us, there is love to spare.  When the two are together, the best we can hope for is a restless peace.  Is this problem between the two of them the result of nature or nurture?  I would argue that the answer is both:  75% nature, 25% nurture.  Beau and I certainly made mistakes in how we built our family, but having two children who have long been completely incompatible can only result from demons passed from parents to children.  If we hadn't been fighting our own demons, we might have recognized and treated Julia's illness in early childhood, when it could have made a difference to her and to Kayleigh.  Or, maybe not.  We can only know what is.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Delayed Reactions

At some point in my early childhood, I became numb and by that I mean that I no longer experienced emotions.  I don't remember ever being happy or feeling loved and wanted, but there were things that delighted me, such as taking walks and riding my tricycle and later observing the natural world.  I remember clinging to my mother, even though I had no confidence in her constancy because she seemed so lost in the world.  What I felt for her was not "love" exactly, it was more like wearing a life jacket in a leaky boat adrift in an angry sea.  I learned the feeling of love the first time I touched and smelled a horse, but I had very little access to these magnificent creatures for most of my life.  Mostly, as a child, I remember people saying and doing unkind things to me and being incapable of responding because I would become paralyzed.   Rather than try to understand why I lived like a deer frozen in the headlights of oblivion, I distracted myself with obsessions and addictions.

My overarching problem was clinical depression, often quite severe.  When Prozac came into my life and put that beast in the dungeon, I then realized that I needed to face the emotions I had avoided by freezing away the pain.  After a couple of decades of acknowledging past hurts and learning to understand more recent feelings, I noticed that I was consuming a lot more alcohol than was appropriate for a woman of my size.  Problem or symptom?  Both, it turned out.

Until recently, if something made me feel angry or sad, I would "let it go" and look forward to happy hour.  Now that I have stopped drinking, I can no longer hide behind my evening buzz and this has given me the conscious choice of either speaking up about my feelings or allowing resentments to fester.  Hanging onto resentments is classic alcoholic behavior and so I am retraining myself, with increasing success, to let people know how their words and deeds make me feel.  The art is in not reacting negatively but rather in a way that assumes the other person did not intend to make me feel bad.  I remind myself daily to use this sentence, "When you said (or did) _________ it made me feel __________ because ____________."

Such a simple sentence and so powerful.  Try it, it works.

Happily Ever After

Sorry, girls, there is no such thing.  My parents wed in 1955 and immediately began begetting.  That's what Catholics did in those days because the church required a steady stream of new parishioners; the more the better.  Some families of size were great fun with siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles always available for company and games and adventures and trouble.  No so in mine.  Both of my parents were only children, ill-equipped for the demands of a growing household.  There were no aunts, no uncles, no cousins and the grandparents were no fun. When my older brother began exhibiting signs of severe emotional disturbance, my parents had no one they could turn to for support; and their inability to cope swept away what little comfort and security I enjoyed.  From then on, the atmosphere in the family home was toxic.

After my mother's suicide, I brought her wedding dress home with me and have kept if for thirty years.  Today, I finally let it go for nothing in the estate sale my husband and I held to empty his parents' winter residence.  The ladies running the sale oohed and aahed over the dress and told me I should take it to a vintage clothing consignment store, but I didn't want to.  Once I hung it up for the sale, I had the realization that I was carrying a relic of my mother's broken psyche and needed to get rid of it.  Why I had hung onto it for so long is a question I will spend some time discussing with my therapist.

It feels good to unburden oneself;  I highly recommend it.

Detox Happens

The first time I quite drinking, it was easy not to drink.  I had no cravings and was thus spared the soul-searching arguments with myself about why I needed not to drink.  The second time I quit drinking, exactly three months ago, it was extremely difficult not to drink.  At around five o'clock, I would begin thinking about making dinner and that would make me think about a nice glass of white wine while I examined the contents of the refrigerator and pantry and then another while I did the preparation.  I missed that part of my daily ritual and the way my world would take on a softer focus as the second glass worked its magic.

There were many days across the past 90 when I almost cried because I wanted to go back to my drinking life.  I missed the best friend and confidante who was always there for me.  At the same time, however, I felt so much better and achieved more without alcohol in my system.  A good analogy is ending a bad relationship with a great lover.  The difficulty with an addiction is that it is seductive and makes you want more and more.  "Just one glass, for old times sake," said my addiction night after night.  "I promise to leave you alone after that."  Fortunately, I had gotten rid of the wine rack in the kitchen and had recruited my husband to support my effort not to drink.  Being accountable to someone is key to successful recovery, whether it is an AA sponsor, friend, relative, or spouse.  It is easy to lie to one's self but much harder (and more painful) to lie to or disappoint someone else.

It was just a few days ago that I noticed I hadn't thought about having a glass of wine for an entire day and then I looked at the calendar.  Sure enough, I was reaching the end of the detox phase and that explained why my cravings had suddenly gone away.  It is a relief to have reached this milestone (for the second time in my life) and to know that I can live without wine even when people around me slug back glass after glass.  I smile to myself and look forward to having sweet breath in the morning.

Tweet?

After reading an article in The New Yorker magazine about Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter, I decided to give it a try.  The reason I did this is self-serving, of course:  I am hoping that lots of people discover and buy my ebook, Recovering Life, and given how nothing is on paper anymore, I figured that I should at least try Twitter to see what it was other than annoying.  The only instruction I could find on the Twitter site was to follow other tweeters.  Great suggestion, except that I know exactly zero people who tweet.  I uploaded my profile picture and blogger address and then tried to think about whom to follow.  The only one I could think of off the bat was Jack Dorsey, himself: @jack.  And then I decided to try various health-related tweeters like NIMH and NPR Health.  Suddenly my Twitter home page was a dump for everyone at those two organizations who spends too much time at their computers or on their iPhones.  I no longer follow those organizations -- #toomuchinformation.  And then, to my surprise and delight, a total stranger became my follower.  So I decided to take the plunge and become his follower.  We exchanged cordial greetings and now whenever I sign into Twitter, there is at least one tweeter who knows I exist.

If anyone out there reads this blog, send me at tweet @serenaenglander.