One Day At A Time
On August 28, 1988, I went to my first Cocaine Anonymous (CA) meeting. I started my new life over on that day. It was a struggle, but my stubbornness and pride kept me sober. I continued to see my therapist at a cost of $1 per session, because there was no way I could afford to pay the usual $100 per session. She knew how much I needed her. I went to at least four meetings every day. I went to all the functions: dances, conferences, anything that people did sober, I was there. It was hard at first, but I replaced my partying friends with sober friends. The problem was that most of them were even sicker then my using friends. When you take drugs and alcohol away, you still have very hurt, sad and angry people. That doesn’t change, in fact it usually gets worse. The truth is, I started hanging out with sober losers. They had no morals or ethics, they just were sober. These people were much worse than my old friends.
For instance, I needed a roommate because I wasn’t making it financially. So I took in a roommate who thought he was Scar Face. He was an ex-big time dealer in LA, who, at one time spent literally millions of dollars on his crack habit. I had been sober for about four months, and I went home for Christmas as I did every year. When I was home, my roommate started smoking crack again, so when I came back, I kicked him out because he started dealing again. I was not going to fall because of him. I really was worried about him though, so I called him all the time. If he didn’t answer the phone, I went over to his new place to check on him to make sure he was alright. I became a hindrance to his life. Instead of telling me to leave him alone, he made a plan to have me killed through his Mafia friends, because I was “interrupting” his life. He somehow changed his mind, and yet again I believe God intervened. Once again I was spared.
That brings me to a good subject: God, who was He? When I first got sober, I thought God was my car, because it got me to places I had never been before, such as CA meetings and sober events. You see, when you get into these 12-step programs; you have to find a God of your own understanding. Mine was my car until one day I was at the beach and I looked at the ocean and saw the waves. And no wave could be stopped, so I knew then that there was a power greater than myself and greater than my car! There had to be a God. I didn’t know him, but I knew he was powerful. However, I really didn’t want him in my life, I just wanted him to change my life.
While dating a guy in the program, I met two wonderful girls, Tiffany and Rachel, who were roommates. They were a gift from God, and they were different than anybody I had ever met. They were genuine, non-judgmental, loving, caring and non-addictive. Only God could have put us together. They taught me about true friendship. Shortly after meeting them, I ended up moving in with them for about three weeks. I then had an overwhelming desire to move back home, probably because of my $7,000 debt and having the desire to go back to school. The day that I decided to sell my stuff and move, everything was sold - all in one day. I call that divine intervention. I was going where I was supposed to go for the first time in my life. I think I was finally doing God’s will, not mine.
Thus, I moved home on March 22, 1989; another new beginning. This time I don’t think I was running, I think I was returning. Pain started seeping into my consciousness. Not more than a month before moving back home, I went to my usual noon CA meeting. It was actually my six month sobriety anniversary, and I was picking up my six-month chip. I was sitting at this meeting and a girl started talking about how she had been molested by her father and became pregnant. I felt something stirring up inside me. Then a guy started sharing how when he was younger, he had molested his sister. Well I was sober and didn’t have anything to stuff my pain, so at that moment I fell apart — the floodgates opened — and I felt that I was going to die inside. My body was trembling with pain as I started having the memories of when I was molested by my neighbor when I was ten. After all, I had literally blocked this out of my memory, and now it was going on thirteen years of repressing this painful memory. I was in so much pain, and I could only find one thing to help me feel better: food. I was too prideful to get high again and break my six month sobriety, so I decided that food would become my drug of choice. That way, when life got tough again, I could just eat my way to happiness. But I never let it get out of control, at least not externally. My weight never got out of control. Because you see, I was the one controlling my eating habits. I could control eating a lot, and I could control not eating anything at all.
When I returned home after five years away, I thought I was in control again, but in reality, I had only switched my addiction from drugs and alcohol to food. No one, except my sponsor in California and my friend, the eating disorder therapist, knew. I sometimes think that was one of the subconscious reasons I moved back home. If nobody knew, then they couldn’t call me on it and therefore I had my secret addiction that kept me together.
Then one day the pain of my childhood got so bad that I had to move out of my parents house and into a sober home. I remember being in so much pain at that time. I had started seeing another therapist, who stirred up feelings that I wasn’t used to. I was in this house alone, in overwhelming pain. I made some macaroni and cheese and gorged the entire bowl and was not even conscience of it. Then in the middle of it, I stopped and saw myself out of control and prayed to a God I didn’t know to help me - I needed His help so badly. Actually He was helping, I just didn’t know it.
Then about a month or so later I moved into my friend Amy’s condominium. She had been a friend of mine since I was in junior high school. We used to party together, but she never got out of control like me, and she totally respected my sobriety.
At that time I was dating a guy named Jason, who had about ten years of sobriety, but unfortunately he was an angry, insecure sober person. He was a very gentle, wonderful guy when we started dating. As a matter of fact, I felt like he really treated me like the lady that I was, but that didn’t last very long. His real personality started to surface, and it was not gentle or secure at all. Fortunately, he never physically abused me, but I feel he may have been capable of it, due to having been abused by his father while growing up. Instead of physical abuse, he emotionally abused me, a form of abuse I never even knew existed. He tried to make me seem that I was a very insecure little girl and for about ten months, I believed him.
At this point, I started going to Codependency Anonymous (CODA) meetings. I learned a lot about how insecure and codependent I really was. This was the first time that I really took a look at who I was, and what made me tick. I realized it certainly wasn’t going to be a walk in the park back to health. He and I played these insecurity games for a long time; until one day he said he didn’t know what he wanted. I’ll never forget it. It was a life changing miraculous moment in my life. I was working and he called me, and I said, “Hey let’s go out tonight,” and he said his usual, “I don’t know.” So I said “Do you still want to go out at all?” And again, the usual – “I don’t know.” Well my usual response to this game was, “Oh come on - what’s wrong. Did I do anything to hurt you?” Then came an entire list of wrongs I had done. I said “Well you know I can understand, but I can’t accept it anymore. Either you want to be with me or you don’t, and if you don’t know, well, I don’t know either. Have a great life, but were through.” I tell you when I think back on this boldness, I believe those words kept me going for many years. I actually took care of my needs and myself, and I stopped being a doormat for abuse. It was a monumental day that I cherish always. I never saw Jason, who I thought I was madly in love with, again. I’ve realized that my “love” for him was really just need. I needed someone to need me so that I could take care of them and they could treat me however they wanted. It was wake up time and I made a promise to myself that I would never get into a situation like that again, and I meant it.
Approximately three days later I decided it was time for a vacation, so off I went to the beach with my sister and Amy — no man, no responsibilities — just fun. I did not have any interest at all in men. But when I got to the beach, I ran into a very old acquaintnance, and his name was James. He came on that same vacation with Amy’s brother and his family. He and I hadn’t seen each other for approximately eleven years. We used to hang out in the same crowd of people, and we knew each other but not really well. As a matter of fact, he was seven years older than me. What he was doing hanging around a fourteen-year-old is a running joke. But his response was, what was a fourteen-year-old hanging out with a twenty-one-year old? No one would give in on this joke.