Chapter 8: Ashley

Chapter 8

Ashley

I met her at my very first meeting out of rehab.  I’m not even sure if we spoke at that first meeting but, she was there with her boyfriend, Christian. She had long stringy, thin, brown hair and was incredibly skinny.  She seemed happy but, her expression and her presence was one that had a muted emotional pain. I suppose no one walks into a 12-step meeting feeling whole and complete.  She seemed especially fragile but bouncy and happy.  I remember wondering if she was really happy. I remember that night being so very cold.  I remember wanting her to be my friend.  

Ashley and I ran into each other over and over at meetings those first few months clean. We began to talk and we began to form a friendship of sorts.  I was jealous over her relationship with Christian.  

I do not know when I began to think of Ashley as a friend.  I do not remember when I began to really trust her.  As I look back, I know that in several moves, she entered my heart and changed my perspective. In a few beautiful steps, she entered my heart and continued to hold a place there.  

One night at a meeting, I had gone in deciding that I wasn’t going to share.  I don’t know now what I needed or wanted to share but whatever it was I didn’t want to share it though I know I needed to.  I know that anxiety and overwhelming feelings were more than I wanted to deal with so, I pretended all was well and everything was ok.  As the meeting neared its end, my emotions began to take over and I realized, if I didn’t share, I’d want to use.  All I could think about was wanting to make the pain go away and the only way I knew how to do that was to use.

But I didn’t want to use.

So instead, I raised my hand. There were so many people at the meeting that I wasn’t called on. Tears began to spill over and I feared if I left there, I wouldn’t make it.  I wouldn’t be able to stay clean. Desperation and panic set in. The person who chaired the meeting was about to close and I remember Ashley speaking up “There’s someone else in pain who needs to share!”

There was a pregnant pause in the room. I realized she was talking about me.  The chairperson repeated that we were out of time and that I could share with someone after the meeting.  After it closed, I remember Ashley moving right next to me asking if I was ok and petting my hair.  I couldn’t speak and I didn’t even know exactly what was wrong.  She just held onto me until I got it all out. She voiced her annoyance of people following the rules so closely that people in pain couldn’t share.  She was annoyed for me.

To my known memory, it was the first time in my adult life another woman had stood up for me or tried to give me a voice when I had none.  She didn’t leave my side.  She wouldn’t go until all my tears were gone and I had talked it out. Afraid I might still use, she took me with her to eat—with no money really of her own and me, completely broke, she still insisted on getting me food and letting me eat.  I didn’t realize at the time how selfless and caring her act had been.  She was worried about me and cared enough to do something.  This act set the example for the rest of my recovery. I realized I could give voice to those who didn’t know how to speak for themselves.

Off and on, as time passed by, and we accumulated months, and even years, clean, our relationship often changed.  Ashley struggled on a fourth step and all the emotions that it brought about while I struggled with looking for a relationship and wanting to find one that would last. We were never best friends but I always felt safe enough to share my wants and needs with her and I liked that she shared her fear and frustrations with me.  It was a casual and intimate friendship that I adored.  

Once, just months into my recovery, I shared at a meeting how badly I wanted to use.  I shared how I wanted to run and how I was tired of feeling and I was tired of showing up for life and I was tired of everything. I was throwing a temper tantrum that could easily ruin my life. When I used, it was usually to hide from my emotions and, during times of great emotional outpouring or temper tantrum-throwing, I wanted to use again.  After the meeting, Ashley and Christian came up to me and promptly told me they would be kidnapping me for the night and I had no say in the matter. I told them I was really fine and just wanted to go home.  They said no.

They put me in their car, stopped by my house to pick up some things, and took me to their house.  First of all, for anyone to trust me in their house was a miracle (didn’t these people know what I was capable of?!). Secondly, that they knew me enough to know that, had I gone home, I would have been in intense emotional pain was huge.  They knew me, as a person, well enough to know that even if I didn’t use, I would be in pain so they did what they could to ease it. One addict helping another, in this case, was without parallel.

They opened their home to me, put me on the couch, put a feel good movie in the DVD player, and I fell asleep with Ashley in the room with me.  I was uncomfortable. I felt like a burden and was afraid that perhaps I should have insisted on going home.  Yet, despite all of that, I was fully cared for and loved and I knew it.

As time went by, I often talked with Ashley about my fears with finding God again.  I loved God even in my addiction- something that had carried over since childhood.  Yet, I couldn’t believe in a God that would send someone like Ashley to hell.  Ashley does not believe in Jesus. Ashley resents the church for various reasons and I just couldn’t believe that this woman who had saved me from myself, not once but twice, could go to hell simply because she didn’t believe in a man that so many had twisted.  She had shown me selfless love.  She had shown me mercy and understanding and had asked for nothing in return.  What was I meant to do? Was I meant to believe in a Jesus that would condemn her simply because she didn’t accept the forgiveness of Jesus? I couldn’t.

She had accepted a program of spiritual principles and God-based ideas into her life.  She lived a life cleaner and full of more Godly acts than many Christians I knew.  She lived a way of selfless service and gave of herself on many levels.  She had made a moral inventory of herself and had made a confession to God as she understood God.  How could that not be enough? How could God be so small not to see who Ashley was just because she didn’t like the idea of Jesus?  How could that be? She, this tiny, skinny, little, recovering-addict, vegan girl, had pulled me up from the depths of emotional hell, for heaven’s sake!

One night, after a meeting, Ashley described her God as a little girl who wanted to be held and loved and to give love.  She said that God was the most beautiful, innocent, little girl who just longed to be with her.  She said that God was what she thought being a little girl should have been like.  In a sense, looking back on it, her God was the sense that innocence could be restored.  Her God was the ability to be wrapped up in that loving innocence and peace again despite all that was wrong with the world and despite all that she had done in her past.  

In that moment, I knew.  I knew that my God would never send someone like Ashley to hell.  I knew that Ashley could never and would never be destined to hellish eternity.  She had envisioned in God what I had been looking for my entire time clean up until that point: restoration to innocence.  That is what my God is capable of doing.  That is what my God does and Ashley had created a mental and spiritual image for that action that I had so desperately been trying to find.  She had visualized the process that I had wanted to grab hold to for years.

My God, from that point forward, was bigger than Jesus.  Or, at least, God was bigger than the concept of Jesus that I had been raised with in my young life.  My God was capable of understanding the heart of the person and not just the physical act. Perhaps Ashley had not had some pivotal moment of salvation or public profession of faith, but she did have a process of change that led her to a power so much greater than herself.  It was the first time I’d realized that salvation didn’t have to come as an event but could take place as a process instead.  Her presence in my life allowed me the courage to point at the universe and scream “NO! I will not believe that way! I cannot believe that way and I don’t care what anyone says!”  I rebelled against the cultural concepts of my own faith background on a spiritual level for the first time.

There were many more experiences with her and friends.  We went to recovery conventions and swam in rock quarries in the summer.  I jammed out with Christian and sat next to Ashley on the sidelines while the guys played basketball.  We went to meetings and smoked cigarettes and had birthday parties and cakes and anniversary celebrations.  We did step work together and talked about life’s mysteries.  The summers are especially ingrained in my head—sitting outside the Tuesday night meeting in Perkasie, PA. We would sit on the low stoned wall in front of the church smoking and talking about our lives.

It was on one of those hot muggy Pennsylvania nights sitting on that wall, smoking, that Ashley and I talked about men and my lack of luck in that department.  I told her how easily I could love people.  I talked about how much I wanted someone to love me back and to stick with me.  I wanted a partner to walk through life with.  I wanted a man who understood me and still wanted me. After spilling it all out she simply asked me what love was.

I paused.  

I was left speechless.  I didn’t know what the definition of love was, but I came up with some idea that love was God and God was love and blah blah blah blah. I rambled on about it for a few minutes before she began to look bored.

When I was done with my verbose explanation of what I thought love was, she calmly replied, “Hannah, love is not a feeling.  Love is a commitment to making someone else’s life better.”  This statement wasn’t an opinion for her; it was a matter of fact. That moment, like many others with her, changed my life.  That definition changed my concept on relationships and what I expected from them.  In the way that she explained it, love wasn’t about how I felt any longer. Instead, it was about what I decided.  Love was about taking action and making a decision.  Someone once told me “you don’t choose who you fall in love with” and I knew, from that conversation forward, that they were absolutely wrong.  Lust wasn’t always a choice but Love always constituted making a decision. Always.

As I really began searching for a mate I began asking myself, “is this someone I want to make a commitment to making their life better?”  It’s a loaded question. Making that commitment is not a decision I make lightly. More than anything, it became the understanding that how much they turned me on or how handsome they were or how much money they had, did not influence my love. My love came down to my own decision and my own commitment. The realization was empowering and it changed how I perceived my relationships from that point forward.

Like many things that change my life, the change came into fruition slowly. It was a process. I went through an addiction to men later and it was having this viewpoint that made me realize it for what it was. I was often acting against my own will and my own belief system to feel something different. This perspective was the foundation for how I wanted to live my life but it took years of practice before I began to implement it fully.

Since then, I have used that definition over and over and over again. I used it when I told my story for the first time to a room full of people and I used it again when I was walking my first sponsee through a first step. Even now, it rings as true as it did on that balmy Pennsylvania night.

Love is the decision to commit myself to making someone else’s life better. Sometimes that person is me.

This idea permeated the next few years of my life as I moved to Bryn Athyn for college and later when I went to Thailand several times. If I truly loved myself, I must MUST make a commitment to make my own life better. It was those words that built a foundation of trust and understanding, development of faith and peace that I truly needed. Had anyone else said such things I might have brushed it off with little concern.

But Ashley spoke them, and I was able to hear them.

Interlude 7

Interlude 7

She had just returned home from a mission trip to Japan. The plan was that her family would go on to vacation in Canada and she would have the house to herself for a few, wonderful, quiet days. But when she returned, the church her father preached for had asked him to resign. She was angry. Her whole life had been the church and, then after returning from a trip that was meant for God, her church left her? Didn’t they know how much she needed them? Her heart sunk.

That night after she arrived, her mother told her that, because of what the church had done and not wanting her to be alone, they made plans for her to go with them to Canada. They don’t get it, she thought. All she wanted was to be alone. She had been surrounded by people for the last month and she just wanted some solitude, maybe a friend or two.

But noooo.

Now, she was off again.To Canada, of all places. Who cared about Canada, anyway? She marched off from the dinner table in all of her 17-year-old glory and moped. It was too late to change it now.

Two days later, they arrived. Her brother was still weak from cancer treatment and had trouble getting around, the whole family had to share one hotel room, and she was surrounded by the insurance agents her mother worked for. It was the epitome of awful.

Fuck this, she thought as she walked around the hotel. It was beautiful, but frustrating. She had to go walking around the resort just to get some alone time. She walked into an overpriced clothing store that was in the castle-like hotel and started looking around. An attractive guy who was working in the store saw her and walked over.

“Hey there, can I help you with something?” He smiled.

All of a sudden, the trip to Canada wasn’t looking so bad. She smiled back, started a conversation. He was flirting and she knew it. She enjoyed the distraction.  Before long, she found out his name was Scott and had made plans to meet him and his friends for bowling. She told him about her brother and would bring him along. He didn’t seem to mind.

They met up later. Her brother was in a wheelchair; she was in a cute, little outfit. Scott, and his friends, Rory and Megan, taught them the game. It wasn’t like American bowling. They hung out and chatted and bowled and decided to go out to eat after. Her brother got wine, she tried it, thought it tasted horrible, and then made plans to hang out with them later without her brother around.

She met up with the trio later that night at Rory & Scott’s apartment. She was fascinated by Rory. He was not as attractive as Scott, but he was artistic, a photographer, he was nice. He could hold a conversation. Scott was just pretty. Rory was sexy. They were drinking and, at that point, she’d only really drank once before and she wasn’t even sure if she’d been drunk. Rory poured her a white Russian. She didn’t like it, she drank it anyway. Then, she drank another.

Rory asked her about her life and she answered. He realized she was a virgin and still ultra-religious. He also realized her life wasn’t such a great one.  She adored that he felt bad for her. The other two were around and then they weren’t and her and Rory were alone. She was on her third or fourth drink and not knowing what it felt like to be drunk, she didn’t realize she was. Her face felt hot and she felt like she could melt into the couch.

That’s when he kissed her. She loved it. They kissed a lot. She loved it more. She was a thousand miles away in her own head. Foggy, turned on and numb she began giving him a blow job, he seemed to like it but she caught herself. Still a virgin, fresh from a mission trip to Japan, it didn’t feel right. She was trapped between two worlds and the world was spinning. Was she a good christian girl? Chaste and modest? Or a slut who got drunk and gave canadian boys blow jobs?

What the hell. She thought, then she stopped and mumbled something. She wasn’t even sure if it was understandable. He whispered, “You don’t even like being a virgin do you?”

She began to cry.

He sat up and told her it was alright. That he shouldn’t have let her drink so much. The hotel complex was massive and she wasn’t sure she could find her way back to the room so he grumpily got dressed and walked her back. He got her to the hotel elevator and watched her get on. As the doors closed, she said, “I’m sorry.” He gave her a reassuring grin and was gone.

It was late and her family was asleep in the room when she arrived. She lay down and cried for a long time, she didn’t even know why. But she knew it was their fault all this had happened. They were the ones that brought me here. I fucking hate everything and them and Rory and all of it. She fell asleep slowly with the taste of white russian and guilt in her mouth.

Chapter 7: Danny VanNote

Chapter 7

Danny VanNote

Danny was not a close friend of mine.  To state anything different would be a lie. Danny, however, was a good acquaintance and, in many ways, we had a lot in common.  In a lot of ways, we didn’t have much in common at all.

Danny and I had several classes together in college. We shared notes on classes and talked about tests.  We were both religion majors.  We were both very odd religion majors.  At the time, we both smoked and cursed ad nauseum.  We talked about our lurid pasts and about how odd our choice to major in religion must have looked to someone who didn’t know us very well.  Neither of us, at the time, were big on going to church, but we had a spirituality in our own way.  

After Rev. Cole’s Human Mind class we would hang out outside and smoke cigarettes and chat out the ridiculousness of the class.  I called it a waste of time.  Danny would routinely tell me that while Rev. Cole often went off topic that, if I listened to what he was talking about, I’d actually learn a lot.  Granted, it wouldn’t be about the subject that class was intended for but, regardless… I would learn.  He loved Cole’s classes and had taken many of them.  I, at the time, didn’t understand such things but accepted it anyway.

Our somewhat questionable pasts are what we reflected on the most.  Danny was still actively drinking and using drugs. A lot. He knew my story and I had talked to him about recovery.  We would have in depth conversations about the demons we had confronted in intoxicated states.  He told me how, sometimes, he would get fucked up and see himself doing things he didn’t want to do. On those days, especially after a weekend of hard drinking, he’d talk about how he hated himself.  More than once I invited him to a 12-step meeting.  I reminded him that while we weren’t especially close, I totally got what he talked about and he was welcome to come with me. No judgment.

He always walked away saying he’d think about it.  Then he’d crack some dirty joke and I’d roll my eyes and we’d part ways.  This was the extent of our relationship.  In the college, our classes together slowly dissipated and, though my school was small and I saw him around all the time, we didn’t talk much anymore.  Our common bond had been that class. I, for obvious reasons, stayed away from people who I saw as actively in addiction or participating in that type of behavior. In many ways, I still found it attractive and couldn’t be around it much.  Because Danny’s interests often lay in partying outside of school, we didn’t hang out in the same circles either.

One of the few times I made exceptions to going to a party was on Halloween.  I went to the party for several reasons but mostly in hopes of running into my ex.  He didn’t show and my cute purple firefly wings and stockings were wasted on guys I wasn’t interested in and others who weren’t interested in me.  Regardless, the party moved from my friend’s house down the road to a local establishment called the C & S Club.  There old and young alike partied the Halloween night away in an epic fashion.  

At some point, I ran into Danny.  He was highly intoxicated.  The crowd was having a good time and so was I.  But Danny’s persistence, while hilarious, unsettled me.

“Hannah I want to buy you a beer.”

“Danny, you know I don’t drink.”

“Oh yea. Oh yea. SO SOOOOO sorry Hannah. Lets just get you a light beer. Cause light beer isn’t even good so it’s cool.” He slurred and stood at a tilt that only a drunk could maintain.

“Um Danny, no that’s not how it works darlin’.”

“Oh ok how about half a beer”

I shook my head no.

“Alright, ok umm.. what about 20 8ths of a beer?”

“Danny, sweet heart… that doesn’t make any sense.”

At this point one of his friends started laughing and dragged him away, and I decided it was time for me to leave.  I’d had enough of the drunken revelry.

Run-ins with Danny were always like this. Sometimes he was drunk and sometimes he wasn’t.  Regardless, our acquaintanceship went from casual to non-existent by the end of my sophomore year into the beginning of my junior year.  In the last trimester of my junior year, we were once again in a Cole class together and I’d hoped maybe we’d start up our conversations again. I hadn’t seen him by the ashtrays lately and I occasionally wondered where he’d gone.  He seemed distracted and was never outside after class anymore. I saw him hanging out with a girl I faintly knew and realized why he seemed so distracted.

Danny found himself a girlfriend.  This surprised me slightly. The girl he was hanging out with was, in my perception, incredibly conservative.  This struck me as odd because neither Danny nor I was any type of conservative.  I also didn’t know her that well so maybe, she was an undercover liberal. Either way it was cute to see him fawn over a girl instead of chasing the next high.  He called me once during that time asking for some answers on one of our study guides for a test.  We weren’t friends but it was nice knowing he considered me when trying to get answers for class.

After lunch one day, I walked out to the school terrace. It was a big round patch of grass surrounded by a brick walkway that connected three of our school’s buildings together.  On one side, Danny was sitting with, what looked like his girlfriend, and he looked incredibly happy. It looked as if they were holding hands and they were chatting and the weather was splendid. Hints of cool from the winter lingered as the warmth of spring lingered in the air.  It was incredibly sunny.  I had to walk by them on the way to the library and I stopped to chat.

“Hey Danny, how are ya?” I paused to chat to get a closer look at him and his new girl. They were definitely holding hands.

“Hey Hannah, man I am so great!” he smiled and continued, “I stopped smoking and I stopped drinking and life is so awesome.”  Blunt. To the point, as always.

“Oh wow, Danny. That’s super awesome. I’m really glad for you.”

“Yea, yea most definitely. Have a great day man.”

“You too Danny” and looking over at his girlfriend “nice to see ya.”

And then I walked away. I’d seen it all before… probably a hundred times.  A guy meets a great girl and gives up his vices for said girl only to find that his need to act out on them outweighs the love he has for the girl.  It was addiction at its finest.  Him giving up the drugs only meant he would become obsessed with her and then she would run and he would turn back to the drugs and the alcohol again. It was inevitable.  I shook my head in frustration and walked off.  I went into the library and got to work.  The thought of Danny, his obsession, and his addiction faded as I began my homework.

A few weeks passed and I didn’t think about it at all.  Life was in full swing.  Between meetings, school work, and friends, my time was stretched thin.  I’d finally been able to go to a late meeting with Felicity but her car broke down a long the way.  A friend rescued me from the highway while Felicity waited for a tow truck.  I returned to school to see several friends congregating in the parking lot.  I went over to complain about my failed evening.  I walked over and started talking, said my spiel and realized a bit belatedly that my friends were rather stoic.  

“Um.. what’s going on?” Everyone was quiet for a minute. Silent. Looking at one another.

One of the girls finally answered in exacerbation, “Well, Hannah I’m sorry you had a shitty evening but Dan VanNote shot himself.” A pause. “He’s fucking dead.”

It was if I’d been punched in the stomach. My world reeled. It was just a few weeks ago when he seemed so happy.  What had happened? I knew he would crash but I had no idea it would end like this.  I looked around and realized that the people holding each other in the parking lot.  A ways away, I heard someone wailing.  The cool night air had turned frigid.  Slowly tears started falling and I looked around for something real to hang onto.  My friend Tungsten was in the group and I walked over and allowed him to hug me for a very long time.  We walked over to the dorm and sat out front and chain-smoked cigarettes.  

My heart cannot express the grief.  It was not grief because we were close necessarily.  It was grief because I knew the pain he must have been in to do such a thing.  How many times had I tried to kill myself and failed in my addiction?  I wondered if he had gotten high to do it or managed to stay sober.  I didn’t have the heart to ask. The rage I felt could not be expressed.  The disease of addiction and the web it weaves in the minds of those who are corrupted by it is so pervasive at times.  

I must state here that Danny never admitted or told me he was an addict or an alcoholic.  He did tell me he had problems with it. The reason I say that Danny was an addict was because when we had talked in the past and we connected because of our thought process around drugs and alcohol.  We had both had major traumas in our past and used alcohol as a buffer to stop the pain.  He was too much like me to assume differently but that doesn’t mean my assumption is correct.  

Within a few days, the school held a memorial service for him.  The funeral happened.  The air around Bryn Athyn was thick and full of sadness.  Just a year prior another student (one who had just graduated) had overdosed on heroine.  The place was deep in grief for two of its own.  The college only had 200 students.  And two were dead in less than a year as a direct result, as far as I could see, of addiction.  How had they fallen through the cracks of such a small place? How had noone seen it coming? How? HOW?

My rage, in the past, has often been turned inward and pressed into depression or self-destructive old patterns of behavior.  For the first time since I had gotten clean, I did not allow my grief to send me into a depression or into old patterns.  For the first time I allowed it to push me into action.  My school was in the middle of a huge building project, spending millions of dollars and yet the information on how to get therapy or emotional support was nowhere to be found. I saw my alma mater building buildings and yet their children were dying.  It was in that time between Danny’s funeral and the end of school that I came to a decision.  If no one else would step up and attempt to ensure the emotional safety of the school then I would do it.  On my own, if I had to.

In the next few days and weeks, news began to filter in about what happened.  Danny had quit drinking, doing drugs and smoking.  He had not entered into any therapy or 12-step programs.  His relationship floundered and they broke up.  Danny, for the first time, was faced with real emotions he had not felt in years.  He had a choice he could use again to stop the pain or he could end the pain, permanently.  Danny did not want to use, but he did not want to feel.  He chose the only way he knew to end the pain without ever realizing that the pain would pass. It was a sensation that I had felt many times my first year clean but the support system I had kept those feelings at bay.

Danny’s death created the first opportunity for me to look grief and destructive behaviors in the face and tell them to go fuck themselves.  It enabled me to realize I didn’t have to go down that path.  That path was a choice.  It was new territory for me and I took off with all the energy I could muster.  It was about a month into my summer and I had stopped smoking, the relationship with Jimmy and Felicity had fallen apart and my life was in chaos.  And then another suicide in Bryn Athyn happened.  

He was not a friend of mine. I had only met the man once.  But my friends from school and my church community knew him extremely well.  He had three children and a wife and his struggle with mental illness was known in the community. I was in the position of not being in grief but understanding and feeling the pain of all the people around me.  My life was in chaos but my purpose in my life was solidified. It was the grief that forged my newfound purpose.

Never again, I thought at the funeral, never again will a friend of mine die without knowing there was help for them if they wanted it. Never never again.

On that platform, I began my senior year in college.  I needed a senior project in order to graduate and I decided on a project that focused on the research and implementation of creating emotionally safe schools.  The research was painstaking but there were awesome amounts of material to work with and I began amassing enough research to write a small book. I realized that my initial plan of creating a peer-mentoring group wouldn’t suffice.  Most of the research suggested that you needed a spiritual component, a peer component, and the help of staff and administration for it to be truly effective.  

After three months of research and writing I submitted 30 pages of research and began a second trimester on implementing the ideas that I had researched.  There were a few things in my life at this point that kept me motivated so that I didn’t stop moving forward with the project.  My school chaplain, who had been with the students throughout the grieving process, fully believed in me and pushed me constantly throughout the year.  There were several friends in school with me that believed in my mission.  They supported me by being apart of every project I implemented and stood with me as I had moments of doubt and frustration. And lastly, I became incredibly close with Danny’s girlfriend.   

She and I began a friendship at the end of the previous school year. We all three had shared Cole’s religion class.  We had a paper due at the end of the year and her finishing it determined if she would graduate or not. One night, as I worked at the library she came up to me tearfully and asked if she turned in half of it if Rev Cole would pass her.  It was in her willingness to be vulnerable with me that I decided to support her the best I could.  In two hours sitting with her in the library she gave me all the information she could on the subject and together we finished her paper.  Our closeness kept me close the pain and loss of Danny throughout the next school year.  It was her raw grief that compelled me onward.

By the second term, the Peer Listeners and the Peer Listening Program was launched on campus. The program involved the administration, mental health awareness, and the chaplaincy department.  Within the first year the Peer Listeners had listened to over 15 students on campus who needed to talk through emotional issues.  The program worked hand in hand with the administration to protect the anonymity of the students while providing a sturdy support network.  Without the first four Peer Listeners who dedicated their free time and services, it would have never happened.   

Active Minds served to de-stigmatize concepts of mental health and provided mental health awareness. Within a few weeks of the Peer Listening program taking off a chapter of Active Minds began on campus as well.  The kids who took that program sprinted with it and we had one of the largest clubs on campus by the end of the year.  These people, many of which never had met Danny, knew the need was real and identified with the need through the services provided.  It was a glorious experience working with people who had the same drive and goal as I did. My life was incredibly changed.

None of this would have happened without Danny.  There is a 12-step saying that goes “Some of us must die so that many of us will live”.  For me, this was incredibly true at the time.  Danny’s death enabled me to see what I was fully capable of for the first time since I had been clean. For the first time I saw myself as truly living.  

Interlude 6

Interlude 6

She was working as a hostess at a Mexican restaurant that she hated.  She’d been working there for years and after one brother dying and the other one getting cancer, she just didn’t have the patience for it.  She didn’t deal with authority very well anymore. She put her elbows on the podium that stood in front of the restaurant where she waited and sighed. Behind her, Fernando was working the bar while Customers at tables to her left had soft conversations. It was a slow night and they would send her home soon.

“Heya lady.” Fernando called to her.

She turned around and smiled at his flirtation. “Hey there, mister”

He put a kids to-go cup on the counter and smiled.  She had been asking for a strawberry margarita for weeks, but he never relented.  She’d never drank before and he was afraid the managers would be able to tell if she got drunk her first time at work. It was a slow night though and the managers were all smoking out back. No one would know and certainly no one would care.

She smiled. “Really?!” She picked it up and started drinking.  She did not pause, she did not drink slowly.  She wanted to know what it felt like to be drunk.  She wondered if it would make her stop feeling all the shit that was going on in her life. She wondered if it would make her forget. Nothing that she’d been doing with church or therapy was working. Might as well try something new. She thought  

It went down quickly and smoothly.  She did not take her time.  Her face felt flush. She sat the cup on the bar expectantly, Fernando chuckled and as he filled up a second cup she as she sat a couple who had walked in.  She was disappointed because besides being flush she didn’t feel anything yet.  She walked over to the bar and got the second one.

“Take it slow, lady” Fernando said with a slight look of concern.

“What? I don’t feel anything at all yet.” She replied just a little too loud and little slurred.  Maybe you don’t feel drunk when you’ve never been drunk before. She shrugged to herself and she starting sipping down the second one.  

By the third she felt her face was bright red and she felt silly.  The managers came back in and didn’t seem to notice.  They looked around, saw the empty restaurant and sent her home. She had to call her mom to pick her up. As the phone rang she thought act natural act natural act natural,  “Hello?”

“Oh hey mom, can you come pick me up?”

“Oh sure honey, be right there.” She hung up and let out a sigh.  She picked up her margarita and finished a third one.  She walked over to the bar as she waited for her mother’s arrival and Fernando, now annoyed, filled up a fourth one.  

“I’m not doing this again.”

“Whatever. I can’t feel anything anyway.” She said it snottily and then stomped out the front door with her fourth drink and sat on the bench out front to wait for her mom.  This is stupid, she thought I can’t feel anything. She paused for a minute and rationally thought, Oh shit, I actually can’t feel anything. And she smiled to herself and enjoyed the fact that she didn’t feel anxious, annoyed or depressed.  She swung her legs back and forth beneath her as she sipped the fourth drink.

She stayed quiet in the car, afraid her mom would be able to tell.  They arrived home and she managed to get upstairs to her room before her mom asked too many questions.  She sat in her room and finished off the last of the margarita by herself. She sat for a moment looking at the white wall staring out into nothingness scared that the warm feeling would wear off.  She stood up decidedly and walked down stairs to the kitchen where her brother’s cancer medications were stored. I ain’t letting it wear off” she thought.  Her mom was already in her bedroom.  No risk of being caught.  She’d never had the balls to take any of them before, but for some reason she was fine with it now.

She opened the fridge where the marinol was stored.  It was medical grade THC.  He never takes ‘em all anyway, they won’t notice” and she opened the bottle and took two ,plopped them in her mouth, and placed it back on the shelf exactly as she had found it. She opened the apple juice and drank from the bottle to wash them down. She shut the fridge and smiled to herself, Not a bad first run huh? She giggled out loud and covered her mouth quickly so her mom wouldn’t hear and walked back upstairs as quietly as she could.

Her room was quiet and she  hated the quiet so she put on her headphones, shut off the light, and fell on her bed still fully clothed in her Mexican restaurant uniform.  Best night ever.  She smiled to herself, it was the last thing she thought as the music blared loudly and as the marinol kicked in. She drifted off into oblivion for the first time in her life- a half smile on her face

The next morning she woke up rumpled and incredibly groggy.  “Damn,” she said out loud “I’m so hungry.”  

Chapter 6: Pim

Chapter 6

Pim

If you had asked me a few years ago if I would find myself in Thailand volunteering and praying with a pagan woman, I would have told you that you were absolutely out of your mind.  But there I was, sitting in a small little shop in Chiang Mai, a large city in Northern Thailand with a woman named Pim who was praying with me.  I had a moment of incredulity and wondered how the hell I had gotten there.  It passed quickly as I sank into a pleasant prayer and meditation with Pim.

Reality is I loved Thailand.  This was my third visit doing service work since I had been clean. Praying with a woman named Pim who called on a Hindi goddess, meditated with Buddha and ended in “Jesus Name” was exactly the reason why I loved the country. This time though I was planning on staying for a year and had been in Thailand for maybe a month when I met Pim. My reason for praying with her in that moment started two months before I left for Thailand.

I had met a guy.  

I didn’t mean to meet a guy, but I’d done it and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it.  I fell quickly (as I always do) and this time, I fell exceptionally hard.  

The fear of being alone in a foreign country and the fear of facing the unknown had me running for comfort and, once he had entered my life, I felt driven to his arms and his reassurance. We talked a lot and I felt like we had an amazing connection and we had it incredibly fast. I’m not the kind of girl to get scared off by moving too fast and he seemed to be moving with the paces nicely.  At first, he didn’t seem to be the type to bolt: he met my parents and we talked about making it work while I was away in Thailand. In those moments when we talked, it didn’t seem to matter that we only knew each other for only a month.  When we talked it, seemed like I’d known him forever.

After a few weeks, I made the decision to trust him because I wanted to believe that he could rise to the occasion. I certainly would. I knew, by this time in my life, that I was worth rising for but I was scared that he wouldn’t rise with me. In my experience, they always, always ran. But once again, whether it was because of my fear of being alone or because I saw something in him I laid my heart in his hands and hoped for the best. Within a month, we said “I love you” and were talking about what our life would be like together in the future.

My fears of him running, however,  were actualized. Within two days of my leaving the country, he found a reason to break it off, to run.  In my emotional haze, it really seemed as if he just didn’t have the balls to tell me he was scared.  In retrospect, I believe it was that he just didn’t have the skills to tell me what he really wanted or needed. He ran in and jumped head first and, by time he realized that he wasn’t able to swim, he was already in, neck deep.  Instead of treading until he got safely ashore, he thrashed about and took me with him. Regardless of what was really going through his head, my heart was shredded up in tiny little bits just days before packing all that I owned into two suitcases and jetting off to another country...where I would be quite alone.  

We texted, one last time, the day I left.  He said he loved me and his text gave me hope that we might be able to maintain a friendship with potential for something more. I was foolish. I look back now and wonder why I would even want that with someone who so easily succumbed to fear. But I had no real reason to believe that he didn’t mean what he said or that what he said meant the same to him as it did to me. I hadn’t known him long enough to think that he was less than what he said he was. I would soon find that my heart and my rational mind are often miles apart. I landed in Hong Kong and had a three-hour layover.  I friended him on facebook, made a video update of my flight progress and waited for my flight to Thailand.  I was sure when I landed all would be well and we’d start talking again.

I landed. No response.

I emailed him a few days later.  No response.  

In this time, I began to go crazy. There was no way he’d not gotten either the friend request or the email.  I knew he’d gotten both which meant that he had blatantly ignored them.  I tried to pretend everything was ok and that maybe he was just processing his hurt or his own emotions and he would contact me soon. I, however, was unable to wait for him to contact me.  Caught up in my insanity, I stalked his facebook profile a few days later.  His profile picture was some other girl and him- they looked incredibly snuggly.

My heart was shredded.  There I was, on the other side of the world, hoping this man that I had fallen in love with would show the fuck up again in my life… and my hope was destroyed. There I was in Thailand with little support in the 12-step arena like I was used to.  I didn’t have women to cry on. I could not afford an emotional breakdown in a third world country. If I didn’t take care of myself no one else would.  So I called a few friends back home, cried on the phone and kept pushing forward.  Had I been in America, my reaction might have been very different.

My body moved forward.  I did the tourist gig in Chiang Mai and met some friends in recovery, got to know some people. I moved out to the country where the bulk of my work would be. But my heart stood still.  I thought about him all the time, it was obsessive and overwhelming.  I was lonely and scared and my heart felt incredibly hurt.  This was the guy who, just a few days before, had told me he wanted to give me babies one day.  My heart and my mind weren’t quite connecting.  I talked about it at 12-step meetings, I called my sponsor back home and I just kept feeling the hurt.  And it did hurt.  I felt abandoned on every level, I felt played, used and lied to, and there was nothing I could do about it.  Trying to contact him would solve nothing. Screaming would solve nothing. If he didn’t know how much of an asshole he was to me then he wasn’t worth yelling at anyway.

Even though I rationally realized I didn’t want a man who would treat me that way, my heart still held onto hope.  I do love this about me.  My heart hopes long after hope is feasible. This is probably because of my own life -- I was past feasible hope and I came back from it. Couldn’t somebody else? I find this a highly-attractive quality and yet, it causes me incredible pain.  I hope and, because people are fallible and broken, that hope is almost always ill-placed.  It was no different this time around.     

After almost two months of absolute silence I was beginning to let go of him.  Slowly.  I was trying to be ok with my own process of letting go what I thought was a sure thing.  

I lived in Phrao in the countryside but went to Chiang Mai almost every weekend for meetings. During this time, I had made some good friends in the 12-step fellowship.  Deedee, a particularly close friend of mine, had heard the obsession and frustration with the situation over and over and over.  Her presence and patience during this time was pivotal for me because, yet again, I had stalked him on facebook.  This time, however, I found the girl that was on his profile picture.  I clicked on her page and it said “in a relationship”. My heart did flip-flops as I realized he had begun a committed relationship with her just days after I flew off.  My rage, anger, and betrayal were so intense, it caused my already fragile body to implode on itself.

I had been experiencing stomach issues since arriving in Thailand; the food mixed with stress and jetlag had not been favorable to me.  That night, after confirming for a fact that he had begun the relationship just days after I had left the States, my stomach rebelled against my body.  I wound up in the hospital after several days of upset and Deedee was next to me the entire time.  It wasn’t until the next weekend when I was, again, talking about the situation that she suggested me meeting up with her teacher Pim.  At this point I was annoying even myself with the incredible amount time I was spending on him.  I asked her why I should see Pim.  Deedee simply told me how incredible Pim was and stated that Pim was her teacher.  Deedee explained Pim might want me to do some crazy things but it would be positive in my life.

Out of options and annoyed with my own behavior, I happily relented. I hadn’t prayed in depth since I arrived and I was truly missing God. Deedee, who had been a huge support in my life since being in Thailand, walked me over to her friend and teacher’s little shop and introduced us.

Pim is a classic Thai spiritual woman.  She wore all white, hre hair was pulled back from her face in a poofy spot on top of her head and she had makeup on that was soft and made her skin look lightened.  Her pink lipstick was pronounced but not offensive.  She was a soft-looking woman and, as such, she spoke softly but with authority.  She was the type of woman that fully believed that she heard direction directly from the Divine.  She did not doubt herself on any level.

Deedee quickly departed and left me with Pim.  In broken, but solid, English, Pim asked me to tell her what was wrong.  I told her an abbreviated version of what had happened and how I couldn’t seem to let it go even though a huge part of me wanted to be done with it long ago. I repeated myself. I told her that I could not let go.  She nodded solemnly.  I thought she would think me a fool for being so childish, to hold on for so long, instead, she listened intently until I was finished.  There was a pause as I told her my plight and cried. In that pause, she reached out and lay my hands palms-up on my knees and placed her hands on top of them. There was nothing about it that I found weird. It was a natural thing, it seemed, for Pim to do.

I’m not sure to this day if it’s because she was truly divinely-inspired or because caring and loving touch was so absent in my life since being in Thailand, but that genuine act of touch broke down my walls.  She said,  “Your heart and mind are divided. Your heart wants him to love you but his love is bad for you so why do you want it? He does not want you. Fine. He should not have you.  Let this go, throw your worries into the mighty Ping River and let it carry it away from you.”

I looked at her for a moment and like she knew what I was thinking she said “I know not so easy so we pray to my goddess Lakshmi, you can see her there” and she pointed to a picture of a Hindi goddess on the wall. “She is my goddess and she speaks me with because I am a messenger of the Buddha. We will pray.” It was not a question nor was it a command it was more a statement of reality.

So with that she pushed her hands down on mine with more pressure. Touch and warmth and care surrounded me.  I felt warm from the inside of my broken spirit and I felt safe. I felt so safe in that space.  And Pim began to pray in the most wonderfully caring and sweet broken English I had ever heard. I couldn’t tell you exactly what she prayed but I do remember, “allow her to be healthy and wealthy and throw all that is evil into the Ping”.  She invoked the name of her goddess before she began and in the middle she placed my hands in a Thai Buddhist meditation pose, with hands in lap, one on top of the other, thumbs touching, and we had a few moments of meditation with Buddha and then she began to pray again.  She ended with “and in Jesus holy name I pray”. I smiled at these familiar words that I had grown up with.  I opened my eyes slowly. I didn’t want it to stop.

She saw the smile at her closing words and with a wink she said, “We both know they are all three the Lord and the Lord is all three.”  And then she proceeded to talk to me about meditation and detaching myself from the world that told me I should love a man who was capable of loving me back.  Over and over she told me that every time I saw the Ping River that I should through my fears and hurt into its mighty waters and allow it to take them away.  “Remember” she said, “this pain is not yours to begin with. It is the Buddha’s to take care of.”  

The woman, in a few short moments had encapsulated my two majors beliefs in God: First, that God was one but that there were many paths. Secondly, holding on was silly because he was never “mine” to begin with. Therefore the pain that resulted wasn’t mine to begin with either.

When I left her little shop in Chiang Mai, I felt as if the world had become a thousand pounds lighter and that it no longer rested on my shoulders but was floating somewhere down the Ping.  I felt completely and utterly cared for on a spiritual level for the first time since leaving the States.  It was no work of my own.  Pim, in one moment, had reached into my heart and prayed with me and related to me on the spiritual level that I had not reached in a very long time.  My vulnerability, this time around, was well placed in the hands of Pim.  This divine messenger had reached into my depths and had addressed the fears of my heart: loneliness.  For that moment, that day and the one after it the loneliness abated and the need to hold onto a man that was not worth holding onto passed.

I won’t lie though.  It did not cure me.  I had been around in the spiritual world long enough that I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that it would last.  But for those few days my heart’s ache was eased.  In the succeeding days, the hurt returned but not to the level it had before I met Pim.  The obsession finally passed, and while I still thought of him often, it was not obsessive in nature.  This pagan woman prayed with me; she had no motives beyond helping me. She wished to help me because I was human and I was hurting. She had eased the pain of abandonment and hurt because her motives were pure.  

It amazed me how one human’s actions and the motive behind them can have such a profound effect on the healing process. On the hurting of my heart.  I realized now that it was when the motives were selfish that people get hurt.  My motives with him were just as selfish as his own. I was looking for comfort and I found it until it wasn’t mine to have anymore.

So, leaving Pim’s shop, I met Deedee outside and we walked away. “So, how do you feel?” she asked, but she already knew, I described it anyway and she nodded wisely.  We walked to a second hand shop on the other side of the Ping River. As I crossed over it, I couldn’t help but throw all my emotional and spiritual “crap” into it.  I let those muddy brown waters take every last piece of it away for that moment and, though the winds of emotional change brought some of it back to me, the acute pain in my heart was never again the same.

I never had to hurt over him in the same way I had ever again.

And that was enough.