Dream a little dream.

1:08 p.m.

Last night, I dreamt that I walked in an Emergency Room, opened a cabinet, took out a bottle of pain pills, threw back my head, dumped its entire contents in to my mouth. In my dream, the pills did their job – a growing numbness and then I was floating away on a literal cloud. It was cloud made of pillows and pills.

I also dreamed that I was “Me” – the super Me that takes charge, the Me that is going to save the world, one word at at time.

In my dream (the second half, the better half), I am a famous writer and am about to tour Amsterdam. Bear and I are walking arm-in-arm through Schiphol airport. We go through a tunnel that empties out in to a buzzing lobby filled with things I’ve never seen before although we have things just like them at home – food, chairs, people. Everything is the same, but a little bit different. Our feet barely tough the ground in that way you walk when you’re in love.

There is a lot of yellow.

People whisper as we pass. They have no idea who we are, but they know we are somebody. I lock my arm on to Bear’s as if it were a life preserver, push my shoulders back. I feel amazing. Better than I did in the first act of my dream – the drug part.

Schiphol Plaza

As we walk to the car waiting at the curb to take us to the American Hotel (in college, we once stayed there for two weeks straight thanks to Bear’s student loan and a few pounds of pot he and his roommate/travel companion grew), I stop at a newsstand to buy any English language paper I can get my hands on. Bear laughs as I make my way to the counter with a towering stack of periodicals and Haribo candy.

“Are you sure you got everything?” Bear says with a relaxed smile, the one I love to see.

I look up and there is a shelf filled with books. Big ones, little ones, purple covers, black covers, pale and bright. Then there is mine. My book. With its yellow and orange cover. A cartoon drawing of a woman boxer, blond hair falling over a smile with one front tooth knocked out. My book.

“Nope, I’ve got everything.”

---

I dream almost every night. I remember bits and pieces of almost every dream I’ve had (I think. Who’s to say I don’t just dream the same dream every night and just remember bits and pieces one, super-detailed dream?)

I woke up wanting pills.

I woke up knowing that it was only a want – an urge. I woke up knowing the second half of my dream was also a want, but a dream, a desire, a hunger to be better, not an urge to be less.

I can want both, but only have one.

1:35 p.m.

Today is Bear’s day off.

We had a meeting at the local preschool at 9:30 a.m. Bunny was crazy about the place and the other kids liked her. She walked right in to the classroom and started asking the other kids if they would play with her. The director of the school, seemed impressed with her confidence.

We now have a school for her, within walking distance since I don’t have a car during the day. Two days a week for five hours a day.

The cost, though. Where are we going to get the money?

Usually, something as simple as low funds in our bank account is enough to get me going – wanting pills. So, money issues combined with waking up with cravings is a perfect mix for a day of searching for a fix.

Then I think of this morning – I was bright-eyed, my skin had color and no pick-marks, my clothes were clean, my hair was brushed and shining. I was there for my daughter as a mother should be. I was normal, asked appropriate questions and was able to catch myself when I started to talk too much.

I’m realizing one of the reasons I take pills is to numb my personality. Sometimes, I laugh too loud or ask too many questions. So, I take pills to tame myself.

And once I trap myself inside of the cage that is addiction, it is feels impossible to get out.

When you’re in your sickness, actively using your drug of choice, you wonder how you ever lived any way else. You wonder how you can ever do the simplest things again without being high.

Today, I visited a preschool for my daughter, we got doughnuts and we took the kids to the park. I use to plan when I would take my pills around events such as these.

It is so cliché to say, but once you stop running from the person you are meant to be, things start to fall in to place.

Tuesday Afternoon – April 28, 2015

12:35 p.m.

I just made an appointment to get my root canal finished. My tooth does not hurt. Am I using this as an excuse?

1:19 p.m

I just canceled the appointment. Tomorrow is my husband’s day off. I don’t want to ruin it. He doesn’t need that now. He doesn’t need that, that Me, ever again.

One man’s treasure…

7 a.m.

Bear just left for work. I always make sure to wave at him from the kitchen window.

Standing there, looking out the window at the day just beginning, I see an older woman scurrying up the street with three white plastic bags slung over her shoulder. She is dashing between the garbage cans left out by the neighborhood; the recycling isn’t collected until later in the morning.

She is in a hurry to not only beat the garbage truck from collecting her daily earnings, but to also miss detection by the previous owners of the trash. People in this neighborhood would not be above shooing away this woman from their precious cans and glass bottles so that the city can have the instead.

Without really thinking, I go in to the garage and grab a half-full bag of empty soda cans and water bottles. I open the garage door and jogged down the driveway shouting, “Ma’am?”.

It takes a couple of times before I got her attention, but she looks up and I hold the white garbage bag in the air, gesturing it is for her.

I run toward her as she quickly walks to me. I hand her the bag and we smile at each other.

“Cheers, xièxie, thank you,” the three words run together when she says them.

“Have a good day!” I say to her as I jog backwards up the driveway.

We wave and smile as our paths go in opposite directions.

For this woman, the few weeks worth of recyclables I gave her means an hours worth of work.

But this isn’t one man’s trash is another’s treasure.

You see, in this house, our recyclables are our rainy day fund. It provides is with that extra $30 to get us through until payday.

And our bank account is getting low.

I used to collect cans myself. When my habit was bad and money was low, I would go around the park with a garbage bag and a grabber and collect. People would make fun of me and break glass at my feet as I picked through the trash.

I did not look like someone that would “normally” be picking through the trash. 

Then, as the economy got worse, competition started and territories were claimed. I didn’t go everyday, but enough to run in to s few of the same people. Some were homeless in the park. Some were immigrant grandparents making extra money to contribute to the household.

I had seen this woman in the park before – an immigrant grandparent (I assume by her age, looks and limited English).

This woman was one of the people that made me quit collecting cans. At about 2.5 times my age, this woman ran rings around me in terms of how fast she could get around that park, snatching up the recyclables like Mario collecting coins.

I’m sure she doesn’t remember me even though I sometimes run in to at the recycling station (she turns in her bounty up to four times a day, so says the kiosk’s manager.

I think it’s pretty safe to say this woman is not collecting cans to support a drug habit.

I’m not sure what point I am trying to make.

But I feel good. And hopeful.

Monday Evening Check-In

7:53 p.m.

I’ve made it through another day. How did you do?

I almost caved. I wanted pills. I wanted to let go, give in, slip away. But I didn’t.

And in my restraint, I find strength.

Jeesh. It is not easy. I fought myself all day long.

“C’mon. Just a couple of pills. Just enough for today. Just for today.”

“No, sorry, Evil Me. You don’t get your way this time.”

If I, a self-centered jerk with no impulse control, can do it, so can you.

My own private triumph

7:38 a.m.

It’s only 7:30, but so far, so good.

As my husband, Bear, left for work this morning, his mom messaged that they took his dad to the ER for a cough and fever. For most people, the side effects of a cold just have to be tolerated, but for those battling cancer and undergoing chemotherapy like my father-in-law, this could be serious.

Before walking out the door, he stopped at the fridge to take an Excedrin for his chronic migraine (brought on by the morning’s text) and dropped a gallon of blueberry lemonade, splashing sticky purple liquid all over the floor.

“I got it,” I said as he apologized, “It’s just lemonade, Bear. I’ll get more later when my mom takes us to the grocery store.”\

“Just don’t go crazy.”

Immediately the alarms go off in my head, my chest tightens, “We’re out of money?” I ask anxiously.

“No, no, but we can’t go crazy. We have 10 days to go until I get paid again” Bear says in an assuring tone.

I know this means we’re down to out last couple hundred in the bank. However, we’ve been able to make it to payday without getting a payday advance, thus we’ve been able to free ourselves from the Payday Advance Vortex. For so long, every one of Bear’s paychecks had $300 taken the same day for a loan we received to get through the past two weeks. About seven after payday, another loan would be required to get through the next seven days.

But, we’re out of that now and just trying to maintain a positive (although not exactly jubilant) balance in out bank account.

To call the automated bank line and not hear “Your account balance is negative….” is good enough for us.

What I’m saying is normally these things would ignite an itch. This itch would turn into a scratch and then I would be wanting to claw at myself. Let the drugs take me away so I will never have to think or worry or care about the people I love again!

However, I stop. I look at my face in the mirror. My skin has color. My eyes are bright blue and my pupils are open and alive and black and piercing.

I cannot give up now.

Bear is relying on me to be there for him. This is his dad’s fourth battle with cancer, this time lung.

We don’t have a lot of money, but that will only get worse if I start spending $30 a day on pills and $100 on doctor/dentist visits. 

Life is giving me lemons and I’m saying, “I will not rub the lemons on the cuts on my fingers and whine about it. I will make lemonade! And if my husband spills it, I will calmly clean it up and start again.”

I am understanding it is not about the lemons at all, but how I react to them. However, I actually like lemons a lot and will eat them like an orange (which Bear can’t understand).

Anyway, what I’m saying is I can see the signs. I know what sends me in to a tail spin and has me searching for a handful of pain pills. When I don’t want to deal with things, I just get high and let it play out, absolving myself of any responsibility.

Or so I think. When I get high and check out, it just makes things worse for everybody. Someone has to pick up the slack with my kids. The house becomes an absolute nightmare (I’m not that great of a housekeeper when I’m sober, anyway). A lot of stuff goes to shit and it’s my fault. Then cleaning up the fallout becomes my responsibility. Which I then want to run from, as well. Vicious, obvious, cycle.

It may be easy to see what your triggers are, but stopping yourself from reacting, even when you’re totally aware that you’re about to, is quite hard. It’s like watching yourself drop something. How it slips through your fingers in seemingly-slow motion and you can’t stop it even though you see it, right in front of you, clear as day.

But what about when you do catch something as it slips from your grasp? When you feel the object release from your hands, you lunge with all of your being, maybe fumbling a bit, to make sure the object stays in your hand and doesn’t tumble to the ground. Catching something you think you would have otherwise dropped is a triumph. Not a big one that everyone else notices, but you say, “Yes!” and marvel at the intact object.

Right now, my father-in-law is in the hospital. He will be kept overnight for low sodium. We are a few bucks from broke and I need to by grocery.

This morning, I felt myself start to let go. But I caught it.

And it’s not even 10 a.m.

I have a confession…

I have a confession – I’ve cheated on my husband. Many times. Sometimes, up to five times in one day.

I have no idea why I choose this affair over the solid relationship I have with him. Why I choose to be a slave to my fleeting desires when he gives me all the freedom that comes with true love.

This tryst, this lack of judgement and faith in us, is dangerous and expensive and comes with a cost.

What does it give me, but guilt and remorse? Nothing, but fifteen minutes of pleasure masking the pain.

I love my husband with all of my being…except for that one part. That corner of decay that wants to see me and us turn black and let the rancid ruin eat our love alive.

So, I won’t answer my would-be suitor’s calls anymore. It was an affair to forget.

One thing my affair with Addiction taught me is that love is fragile and can easily be overlooked.

Parenting 102 (The Class You Missed)

One of the hardest obstacles to overcome in parenting is realizing that your children are separate entities with their own free will and not projections of your ego.

“God, dammit, I need a sign!”

10:19 a.m.

Today feels like it’s already got me.

1:25 p.m.

My four-year-old has tried on eight different costumes in the past two hours. Among them a bride, a unicorn, a princess and now Batman’s Robin. There is a pile of dress up clothes in the hallway that I keep having to step over and around. Why I don’t just pick them up, I don’t know.

The 16-month-old is taking anything he can get his hands on and using it as a makeshift stepping stool. I now know he can reach the stove when he wants to.

I feel the urge. My brain begins to itch and then the anxiety comes and then I get fixated on a fix. Anything to stop the itch that is now a scratch. Anything to stop the pain in my soul.

I can feel the anger rising.

“Bunny clean up your play dresses now or they’re going in the garbage,” I say to my daughter with a growling order.

“You, Buddy. get down. Now!” I demand of the baby.

I am about to snap. I never spank them, but my words and anger can be just as hurtful

I feel the cravings tell me that a simple handful of pills could make all this better. The kids could do whatever they wanted, because I would be numb. I could get all this cleaning done if I had the power of opiates inside of me.

But I know that is a lie. Addiction is cunning and tells you what you want to hear like that friend in high school that wants you to be bad alongside them.

Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch sing too loudly on the television and the smell of burnt oil lingers from last nights’ failed attempt at chicken cordon bleu.

 I am a mother. Mothers do not get overwhelmed and cry while doing dishes to muffle the sound of their sobbing.

The kids sit quietly in my daughter’s room and I make my way in to the backyard to Bear’s broken-down 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, open the door and slip inside.

 I slam the Bug’s door with violent frustration and am left in a silent cell that smells of old vinyl and gasoline.

 “God, really, this is too much. I need a sign that I can do this,” I say to the air.

 I stare at the sky, looking for a dove or a hummingbird, some kind of symbolic birf – nothing. I listen for an audible omen from somewhere outisde these steel doors. Silence.

 “Seriously, God, I can’t do this. I want pills more than anything. I want to find them and take them and let them take me away.”

 I breathe in and out in three-beat intervals.

 “I need to know I’m not alone. I can’t be! There has to be someone, something, somewhere that can tell me what to do. How do I stop being an addict?”

 Silence.

 “God, dammit, I need a sign of what I should do. Please!” I am pleading for a literal lightning bolt to hit me and shock the addiction out of me.

Silence.

 Then I close my eyes and whisper, “Please, God, my kids deserve a mom, my husband deserves a partner he can depend on. What do I do?”

 Silence. Silence  broken only by the sound of my breath. I can hear my heart beating in my ears. Then it hits me. This is it.

 What am I supposed to do? Nothing.

 The only thing keeping me an addict is myself. The only thing stopping me from getting better is not stopping.

 In showing restraint, I am being the strongest I have ever been.

 Tears well up in my eyes and are about to spill forth when I breathe, deep, and the sadness turns to fire.

The sign I needed God to give me was in its absence.

I will show my strength through restraint.

All I need to do is nothing. Everything will fall in to place.

Two sides to every thing

Standing in the kitchen, I absentmindedly dry a glass I have just taken out of the dishwasher.

The rain has stopped after two straight days. A welcome deluge amidst the drought California is experiencing.

 

The sun is shining from the right half of the window while a look to the left shows dark grey clouds hovering above the foothills just beginning to turn green.

 

It is springtime. My daughter was born on the vernal equinox, the first day of of the season – the season of rebirth, of second chances to plant your dreams.

 

To the left are the menacing clouds, threatening to let their wrath rain down. But, in this case, the storm needs to happen for the growing to begin.

 

And, although I cannot see it, I know that somewhere, there is a rainbow.

 

[And perhaps, my storm had to happen to make someone else see the rainbow.]

My Better Half
I’d like you to meet

my darker side

If I’m Dr. Jekyl

then it’s Mr. Hyde.

It feeds on the frenzy

of sadness and pain

And once it gets in you

it’s hard to maintain.

 

Like a genie in a bottle

it comes when I call

Feeding me tiny, white oblongs

that have eaten my all.

 

It was put together

like Frankenstein’s monster

A pill, a line, then-

“Oh, no, now we’ve lost her!”

 

Like a cancer, it eats me

taking me closer death

But I can be cured with a

“No” and a breath.

 

I’m in the hardest battle

that I’ve ever fought

and, I pray, in the end

this wasn’t for naught.

 

So, I sing my own requiem

from the last of the pews

But which Me I bury

I have yet to choose.

 © 2015 Hitting the Ground While Dreaming (cr)