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.