Recovery is a funny thing. You walk around this world with a nice face, your taxes paid and bad molars pulled out and nobody knows that not that long ago you fought a dragon and lived in a sewer of your own creation. Nobody knows that you almost died but you bounced back, and here you are with a good smile, with your mocha latte talking like a normal person and doing normal person things.
But then something small happens and you’re instantly reminded how not normal you are.
The “you” here is actually me, because it’s me who got really fucking upset the other day. Sorry for swearing (not sorry) but seriously. I missed a deadline because of somebody else and there was some personal stuff attached to it so emotions got involved. I couldn’t focus on anything, I couldn’t work, could barely speak when an editor called me, and then I went on Instagram to distract myself with stupid things… but then I did something else I would’ve never done in my past.
I sat. On my couch. Put my phone away. Stared at a wall. What I was doing wasn’t nothing. I did what many smarter than me people would advise me to do, which is to “sit in it.” That literally means sitting there with all those awful, upset feelings and letting them wash over you. It’s very uncomfortable and, of course, the human instinct is to do something to distract yourself, make yourself feel better, and if you’re an addict those thoughts might veer into dangerous territory. But I sat with it and it was absolutely-chest-tightening-wanting-cigarette-teary upsetting. I continued to sit in it, which at times seemed masochistic and thought the thoughts and felt the feelings. Later, I allowed myself to go on a walk. On this walk, I stopped at a bench and wrote an email that I will not send, and recorded a voice mail that I will also not send. The feelings persisted. At one pm, I phoned a friend. That helped a bit. My son came home from school and we had a strange fight, which I know was related to what was going on inside me. He picked up on my mood and I tried to tell him everything was fine. We shouted in raised whispers on our walk. Then he walked in front of me. I let him into the apartment in complete silence. We went to opposite rooms. We had a timeout. We made up.
By 6 pm I had another uncomfortable sitting sesh, and then I made a decision to stop checking my own email (I was hoping for them to write and explain) and I rejoined life. The making of the decision made me feel a lot better although I know this is not the decision I should be making. I should be getting myself out of the whole situation altogether and just stick to my own deadlines, stay in my own lanes, etc. But that’s a task for another day.
What I did realize that day was that I am still in early recovery and I am still not okay. That’s why I took the time to sit with the shitty feelings. The best thing would’ve been to go to a meeting but I couldn’t because it was my day with my son. I know it seems like a waste of time to sit there and do nothing but there’s no rejoining life for me if I don’t do weird things like that. For addicts it is life-saving. This is why we have rehabs where people are locked away for a period of time… so that they can sit. So that they learn to sit so it doesn’t kill them.
Another life-saving thing is to be beyond busy, no-sleep busy but I don’t have that in my life currently; currently I am in-between things and boredom and anhedonia tend to seep in. And with that comes fixating on situations that wouldn’t give me a pause in the past or wouldn’t rattle me much if I was a little bit more recovered.
I always wondered about that word, “recovered.” As if you lost something – your wallet, your pet raccoon, your virginity – and then, after setting on a mission, you were able to retrieve it. But recovery isn’t a perfect return, it’s more like a ruin rearranged. I think rearranged would fit me better since I see all those pieces as moving, responding. I’ve recovered nothing. I’m Rubik’s cube, or better, a kinetic façade, which is an architectural surface that moves reacting to changes in light, heat, wind, or time.
So because of that, and because too many pieces are moving still, I give everything too much gravity and when those things hit me, my still-fragile armour shatters. That day, it was just a hairline fracture but it was there. But later, when I was beating myself up about wasting almost an entire day on this – sitting, walking, moping around – I remembered that I had a responsibility to myself, and that responsibility is to put my recovery before anything else. And if that means I will “waste” my day and not work, that’s what it is.
Sitting doing nothing is hard work for minds that don’t cooperate. I get it, boy, do I ever. Was doing “nothing” just now in fact, sitting here with strange feelings, but under different circumstances. Then I saw your Substack notification. What elegant timing, as I needed to remember that the space between places is hard work too. Loved this essay.