You can't hide the Tequila
My Honorary Friend of Year and newly minted roommate waded into the kelp-filled ocean alongside me. She chewed her lip, gazing at the curve of the horizon. Finally she blew out a breath and revealed her mind to me.
“Anika, you know how you keep telling me you want to drink less?”
“Yes.” I’d revealed this desperation to only a few others.
“Well, is there anything I can do to help?” I paused, weighing my options. Yet I already knew exactly which temptation beckoned to me. It lived on the top shelf of the flatware cupboard. It was my turn to sigh.
“Yes. Will you hide the Tequila? On the days I try not to drink I climb onto the counter and take pulls from the tequila you keep in the kitchen.”
She didn’t shame me. She didn’t even raise an eyebrow. She just said, “I can do that.” And she did.
Here’s the thing, though. Despite my best efforts, my drink counting, my star charts, my ambition, my comprehension that this had become a serious problem, I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready to ACTUALLY quit drinking… I merely wanted to drink less. So on one of those nights that followed a morning promise to myself that I wouldn’t get drunk that day, I found that bottle of tequila, buried in my best friend’s closet while she was at work and took just one pull off it…. Twenty minutes later I slugged down a second….. Before the night was over I’d taken six mouthfuls. I’d continue to drink and refill that same tequila bottle over and over again for the next stretch of months. Every time the bottle ran low, I’d spend the next few days sweating with anxiety, waiting for the opportunity to sneak into her closet and replace the “hidden” temptation.
In some ways moving the tequila did support me. Stealing from my best friend helped me see the full extent of my issue, yet when it comes to addiction to substances, behaviors, or even ways of thinking, you can’t hide the tequila! The self-harmer will find a way to keep using/drinking/blaming. You can’t face someone else’s demons for them. You can’t change where they’re at or decide when they’ll be ready.
Though your addict might steal your time, your sanity, your energy, or your tequila, they are also a fantastic being. We’re all fantastic beings. We’re also utterly uncontrollable.
You can, however:
1. Take care of yourself.
2. Focus on your own life and passions.
3. Seek support FOR YOU from people who’ve studied it or been through it.
4. Love them (without trying to do it for them or protect them from consequences.)
5. Tell the truth.
6. Set boundaries…. and enforce them.
7. Celebrate their successes.
8. Surrender. You’re not in control.
If you’re alive in America, you probably love or have loved an addict. Chin up, friend! You’re not alone. You can’t skip the grief but you can choose and prioritize yourself.
Tricky Triangles
My arms stick adhesively to the poisonous web. The black widow of martyrdom stalks closer. I’m glued to the web by shame, fear that it's all my fault. The web itself is woven of blame, a righteous certainty that others have created my pain. I’ve entangled myself in the web of Karpman’s Drama Triangle. We all do it, yet some of us ensnare ourselves more readily. The pattern feels inescapable. I know this, because I identify as highly susceptible. As someone who’s been held captive by this drama triangle, sometimes for YEARS, I can state from experience, this web can be escaped and circumvented. You can free yourself. It’s possible to preserve your sanity.
It starts with fearlessly and shamelessly holding yourself accountable. Then, re-writing the script of your life to align with the Empowerment Triangle.
When I catch myself in the Victim Role, it usually sounds something like: “Why me? How could you? Or Fuck you!” in my head. Sometimes it feels like righteous rage or wiggling, irritating resentment in my guts. Occasionally it’s a short or lengthy list of infractions.
The Empowerment Triangle doesn’t mean pinning yourself beneath the crippling weight of shame. If you can’t move beneath the heaviness, it’s not empowering. Stepping into the Creator role means asking, “How did I contribute to this situation? How have I been complicit? Knowing what I know now, what would I do differently in the future? What is my plan to execute that change? What do I need in order to carry that out?”
For instance, I previously harbored resentment towards the Modern Yoga Community. (What can I say? I’m a resentful girl.) Resenting whole institutions comes easily to me. When I flipped from victim to creator, I became accountable for my contribution to the institution. I could continue to perpetuate what I resented or I could align myself with the movement to make it better. The plan: to present myself as authentically and flaw-somely as possible, AND to prioritize individual well-being over tradition. In order to carry that out, I needed more education. To be clear, stepping up as the creator is FRIGGIN HARD! If it’s a romantic context, it feels impossible. It’s not impossible. It’s a rigorous rainbow ride to freedom.
On to my Savior Complex. (Aren’t I humble?) In my un-checked brain, I want to fix everything for everybody all the time. Until I get tired and then I will contemplate murder over a dirty dish in the sink. How do I step out of that role and cast myself as the cheerleader and coach? Rule number one: I cannot do it for them. So I don’t try. I can cheer them on or support when I’m asked, but I can’t do the work. If I am doing the work, I’m not actually helping. We call that enabling. Rule number two: Boundaries. If I don’t WANT to help, I can’t help you. Supporting the people I love and strangers feels amazing! (It’s kinda selfish actually. Oh well!) and when it doesn’t, it’s not my turn to do it. If my body gets the yucks over answering a phone call, the person won’t benefit from our conversation. They don’t need me. They need themselves. They need connection, which doesn’t have to come directly from this girl. If I give more than it feels delicious to give, I’m giving myself away… and then, I WILL RESENT YOU. Resentment is how the Savior/Martyr transfigures into the Persecutor, quite similar to the Veela in Harry Potter.
Which brings us to the Persecutor. When I have given you everything I have to give and thus I am drained, I will blame YOU for it. That is, if I take the high positioned seat of the persecutor. Often this voice sounds a lot like the Victim. You hurt me! You’re the villain! Other times, the Persecutor reigns down critical edicts like a morally superior judge. Sometimes the persecutor IS THE VILLAIN. We’re all villains in someone’s story. Such is life, a seemingly inescapable Karpman Triangle… unless you re-write the script.
When I banish the Persecutor and claim the role of Challenger, I become the Victim’s opportunity to become the Creator. I can’t do it for them, but I can trust them to rise to the challenge. Some days I’m the coach, the nurturer, the “good cop.” Some days I’m the challenger, the catalyst, the “hard ass.” Some days I’m a creative being learning to claim my place as Creator. When I view the person persecuting me as an opportunity to examine my choices and step up, I know I’m choosing the right triangle for my well being. When I cast the person struggling as a capable being, engaged in life, worthy of love and support, but fully capable of transcending their challenge, if I refuse to rush or steal their lesson, I know I’m in the right triangle for my mental health. When I’m willing to have tough conversations, hold boundaries, or even let people down, I know I’m in the triangle that tells the true story rather than a fictitious drama.
Sounds easy, breezy, right? Not so much, but the pay out is personal power and emotional freedom. Happy triangulating, my friends!
Wake The Dragon
To scale the tower, one had to ascend unvarnished slabs of wood, dulled by wicked winters and sturdy shoes. Practical footwear is an unspoken mandate in Montana. The texture of the wood so memorably close, far nearer than the faces of my adult comrades. Even more prominent, to my four year old eyes, than the weathered lumber was the space between each step. Between each stair nothing existed, just absence, just air and I felt certain that moving my fearful feet skyward would lead my small, young body to be suctioned through this emptiness. The black hole of uncertainty would surely claim me. I cried out, begging to be carried and refusing to take a single step, then burrowed into the illusory security of my mother’s chest. We rode higher and higher, rising to the top of the tower, on the highest mountain, in order to better see the valley below. This is why I write.
I write because I never graduated from being a scared little girl. I waited far longer than the rest of the children before I determinedly sat my tuckus on a bike seat. I pushed off one foot for hours turning circles through our spray painted basketball court of a driveway. I was ten. I’d missed a good many adventures in my caution. I wore a life jacket for approximately the same amount of time. My brothers shook their heads in vicarious embarrassment. I doggie paddled my way through puberty. Eventually, at the ripe age of twenty six, I became willing to swim with my face plunging beneath the surface. Better late than never they say. This is why I write.
There lives a magnetic void between the sturdy steps we take. It both beckons and breaks me. Destruction can be sexy, like leaving the door unlocked. Like dancing on top of graves. Like truth or dare. Like tell me something raw and rabid. Like standing here with my lips parted so I can taste our electricity, chin cocked towards the clouds which keep threatening to rain but can’t commit, just like me, daring you to ruin everything. Eat crackers in bed. Rub my eyes with sriracha fingertips. Lick my gasoline. Hold me by the throat. Convince me to gift wrap my sovereignty, and trample the woman you truly love’s tender heart. Fuck this. Fuck this. Fuck this. There lives a magnetic void between the sturdy steps we take. This is why I write.
My brothers conceded that they would bring me on the pirate adventure under the condition that I could be brave. Keep up! They wouldn’t be waiting. When my foot slipped through the moss and plummeted into the frigid mountain thaw, it stole my breath and my white shoe. My eyes widened, pulse quickened, my mind lunged to “whoopings” and quicksand and rodents of unusual size. I bit my lip while they chased it, running between window openings in the moss trying to scoop the shoe before it whooshed past on the icy currents. I didn’t speak, else my voice would crack and reveal the truth of my terror. The stipulation of the exploration demanded bravery. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t whimper. These were the rules. With all the fanfare of righteous warriors my brothers retrieved the delinquent sneaker and carried me home on their shoulders victorious. They spouted the action packed tale of the traveling shoe and sang praises to the girl who didn’t cry. The message spoke clearly. Pretend. Pretend. Pretend. Pretend you do not fear even when you do and people will bring you along on their grand adventures. In many cases this has proven to be true.
I write when I hear the fiery breathing of a dragon at rest. She slumbers on a hill close by. The magic is sleeping and when it wakes the words will come. I wonder if her dragon’s breath will fan the flames of my curiosity, incinerate my fears, or obliterate this flirtation.
I write because there is no one to carry me up the stairs. I am a scared little girl. I am also the one who carries her and her fear. On one of the many days in which news of gut wrenching violence rippled through our communities, I found myself standing in a room with thirty college students. I wanted to sit down and weep into my hands. I wanted to confess my fascination with the warped and weathered wood and the ominous spaces between them. I fear it will steal me. Perhaps it will consume us all. I scanned behind me in the subconscious hope that someone more equipped than I had arrived to bear the burden of cradling this blank space. Behind me stood a wall laden with mirrors. Me and my reflection, the adults in the room, the ones with the theoretical answers. I didn’t offer any. It did not feel like a day for pretending.
I write because I loathe being lost, yet I am often lost, even when I think I know what or who is next.
I write because at the top of the stairs sits a cot, and hot plate, and vantage point to view all the pines and the homes and the people. There lives a guardian. It is the task of the person on the top of the mountain, at the top of the stairs, to watch over the valley. That is the point of a watchtower. Perhaps it is the point of us as well, to stand in observation and preservation of this collective and individual rhinocerous ride of a life.
I write because my reflection revealed that I’m the only one in the room and someone must watch and guard the encroaching spaces. I write to tell the truth about the dares I direct at destruction. I write because I believe in sleeping dragons. Our mouths are beds for incantations and our lives are homes for slumbering magic. A stream runs beneath the moss waiting to steal your white, summer shoe so you can prove that you are ready to be the brave explorer. I write to pretend to be brave, to plunge my face beneath the surface of the water, to place my candy ass on the bike seat, better late than never. I write because I remain perpetually lost and enduringly scared but there is a set of stairs built from unvarnished wood and unyieldingly blank spaces. I write to Wake the dragon. To Dance on graves, and Climb the stairs.
Are you ready to Forgive?
How do you know if you’re ready to forgive?
If you know me well, you also probably know that I’m a huge advocate for forgiveness. Forgiving another human, even a group or institution, can heal the soul!
At the same time, Anger is a healthy, sacred emotion and an alarm bell. So how do you know when it’s time to move towards forgiveness? Here’s a few questions to consider if you think it might be time.
1. Are you safe, physically and emotionally?
Sometimes anger conveniently appears to let you know that you are being mistreated. Anger remains until the situation changes or you abandon and revolt against it. If you are living in a harmful situation, it is NOT time for forgiveness. It’s time to heed and honor your anger: talk about it or even make an exodus. Once the situation has shifted, you can reassess. There are often periods of time, after leaving, in which you may feel tempted to return to the familiarity or love, even if you know you could be putting yourself in harm’s way. Again, until you are sure you are and will remain safe, anger is serving a very real and healthy purpose.
2. Have you expressed your anger?
Feel to heal, baby! Anger loves to move. I highly recommend creating an environment where anger can more freely out of you, rather than at another. Supportive expressions of anger look like, venting to a friend, coach, or therapist who’s happy to hear it, journaling, exercising, yelling at the sky, karate chopping trees, belting along to your “rage” playlist, smashing coconuts or bashing in a pinata. Without taking this time for expression, you can miss the lessons anger is communicating or leave that anger locked in our own body, causing you tension AND increasing the likelihood of unintentionally lashing out at another.
3. Are you holding onto blame that’s limiting your well-being and sense of empowerment?
Anger unfelt brews. Anger unresolved rots. It rots into a resentment that disrupts the peace of mind of the one who carries it. Resentments can be alarm bells too but it’s a call to action and examination! It’s a call to renegotiate with your own beliefs, desires, or another. In other words, it’s a call to start the forgiveness process.
If you said YES to all three, you might benefit from moving towards forgiveness practices sometime soon. I know it’s been balm for my own emotive heart.
For Shits and Giggles
Near the end of my drinking career, I wound up shitting myself in public repeatedly. I shat myself WHILE TEACHING a yoga class. I defecated in front of two homeless men in a public park, obnoxiously near my house, and I once constructed a makeshift outhouse from cardboard boxes pulled from the recycling while in my best friend’s parent’s driveway. If only that were the end of the list. It’s immensely frustrating and humiliating to feel betrayed by your own body. Little did I know, my body was whispering kind encouragement or shouting critical direction the entire time. It first spoke meekly, but grew in fervor and intensity each time it went ignored. Eventually it ripped the reins right out of my hands and slapped me with symptoms I couldn’t gloss over, such as losing control of bowels mid-way through a multi-pitch climbing excursion. (Don’t worry! I got my pants down…… that time. In case you’re wondering, my climbing partner did not die that day.)
When I say, I couldn’t ignore them, what I meant was I TOTALLY ignored them. I wasn’t listening. After one particularly defeating episode of irritable bowels, I finally booked an appointment with a physician. She performed a basic physical and asked me questions about my symptoms. I remember the pregnant pause that followed the inevitable and high-stakes question.
“How many alcoholic beverages do you consume in an average week?” I scanned my brain feverishly for the “right” answer. Not the honest answer, of course. I wanted to answer with a number low enough to avoid chastisement, but high enough to relay that I was definitely a drinker. Just in case that mattered.
“Twenty?” I tried out. I bit my lip and watched her reaction. She stopped writing and looked up. “Dammit! Too high!” I scolded myself internally.
“You drink twenty alcoholic beverages in a week?”
“- Ish?” I stayed non-committal. “It varies.” The more honest answer might have been closer to double. I’d avoided counting. A bottle of wine, plus a pre-shift beverage. Maybe a shot or a couple glasses during my shift. Factor in your occasional celebration or brunch. Was anyone on the planet without religion or a heart condition seriously drinking less than twenty?
She set down her clipboard and approached me seriously.
“Binge drinking can destroy your digestive system’s natural flora. If you’re having twenty drinks a week, you probably haven’t been able to regrow the healthy bacteria required to process most foods. I recommend bringing your alcohol consumption down to less than ten drinks a week, as your doctor we recommend no more than eight.”
“I’ll work on that.” I lied. “Any medication that might help me along?” She prescribed me a low fodmap diet and probiotics, in addition to her recommendation that I reduce my drinking. I left her office sweaty and sad. No part of me felt willing or able to apply her harm reduction. I did start exploring with diet. Willingness is quirkily selective.
The body communicates wisdom. It’s certainly wiser than my mind which, at the time, thought twenty drinks would be the rational lie to tell my doctor. The body is wiser than most of our minds, in my opinion. For instance, our bodies tell us to eat when we’re hungry and sleep when we’re tired. Most of the people I know have minds that avidly disagree with these concepts. Our body shares insights such as “Don’t go in there!” or “This job is excruciating!” through gut twists or tension headaches. Sometimes my body tells me not to rock climb for a day or three. My mind frequently disagrees or questions it. Yet it speaks. This body is talking. Frankly, it rarely shuts up.
Sometimes my body speaks to me of pleasure and ecstasy. It tingles with loving awareness. It melts into the arms of friends. It adores contact. Some days it screams for space. My body merges with the wind and soars when it’s lost in a desert adventure or a mountain excursion. My body loves the woods. My body feels home there. My body curls away when it’s angry and won’t let me rest until there’s resolution. My body hates lying, even to doctors in defense of my loyal-est companion.
My body doesn’t lie to me EVER. I may not understand it. We may not be speaking the same language or I may misinterpret, but it never lies. Often I’m not tuned into the body’s radio station. I’m synced up with a different frequency. My mind and I, we think we’re so smart, so calculated, so realistic, but without the body, our best laid plans end up feeling, well, CRAPPY.
To be real, (authenticity is among my highest values) I still occasionally find myself putting a roomful of people into child’s pose, while I excuse myself for an emergency evacuation. Pizza is delicious and sometimes things get radically and frustratingly out of control. I’m still learning what is and is not worth it on any given day. Yet I no longer navigate my daily life in fear of a humiliating loss of consciousness or my body staging a public rebellion. It’s my strongest ally and my most honest friend. May I be a kind and loving friend in return.
concrete
My addictions are threefold: certainty, control, and chaos. I pour God like concrete, then I pound the earth when I’m denied entrance to the Divine depths. I can walk and skip atop this seemingly solid foundation, but if I stumble I will not be cradled. I’ll be left skin knee-ed and bleeding from the head. I am not concrete. I am supple, sensitive, porous by nature, shifting with each big breath and constantly in danger of being blown over. When this unyielding hunk of sand and mortar injures me, I scamper behind the nearest tree or person and suck my belly toward my spine. I pretend not breathing and squeezing my eyes shut will make me small, invisible, and protected. I cover my face and think “Concrete, you don’t exist! You can’t see me, if I can’t see you.” Then concrete is dead to me, until my next certainty craving comes along.
Control dances in front of me like a gypsy in silk skirts, hips tilting and hands raised. There is artistry and passion in the way she moves her fingers. She gazes back at me with chin lifted and eyes mocking. We both know I will never be her. I’ll never taste the salty sweetness of her bare shoulder. She’s so stealthy. When her hands and hips stop twisting, I think it’s my chance to get closer, but as I initiate my first step she disappears. I’m not certain if her dance is real or a figment of my imagination. In my attempt to court her, I’ve worshiped many imposters. During those times I never saw her. She didn’t even flick a wrist in my direction.
Control is often subtle and sly, but chaos never plays that card. Chaos is a gambling man. My gambling man! When the cat and mouse of control wears me down, I run to chaos. I crawl into his lap and let him nibble my neck. I peek at the cards he’s concealing on the table. He drawls into my ear, “How much you wanna bet, sugar?” The worse the hand the more likely I am to go all in, not because I think my bluff will take the pile but because there’s an ecstasy in complete and utter abandonment. I dare the other players to call so I can fly free and fucked on my wild ride. I want everyone to know that we reject the rules of their game. Chaos doesn’t like clothes or jobs or other people. He definitely isn’t fond of concrete or control. The latter rejects me and hides from me. If I’m desperate enough, flirty enough, or reckless enough, chaos always lets me in. Chaos tries to leave, too, but he beckons me to follow. Sometimes I follow him for days, weeks, or months. I see a lot on those journeys, but I rarely like where I end up. I start to crave sturdy and gentle. So much craving.
That’s the thing about being an addict. Craving can be thunderous. Perhaps one definition of addiction is to experience craving so intensely that the mind perceives it to be unbearable. I’ve been addicted to many things in my life. I remain sewn to many of them: sriracha, coffee, romance, rock climbing, and my current identity to name a few. Nothing pulls me quite so powerfully as a God that I can rub my hand over like rough and certain concrete. A God I can define with my mind and touch with my hands. A God that breathes like me, expresses gender like me, and eats large quantities of cheese like me. When I find that I cannot hold God in my hands, I reach out for something else to hold: a sense of control in a world ridden with trauma and terror. I rifle through pants and bags looking for a crumpled piece of paper that reads,“ Permission to Give Absolutely No Fucks.” It’s the kind of thing you pull out of your pockets along with lint, a paper clip, and wrinkled dollar bills when you’re trying to cover your fifth drink.
I spent a few years learning through Recovery. Recovery from the self constructed image of a hard, limiting, judgemental God. Recovery from fleeing to chaos and blinding denying its inherent order. Recovery from the cosmic joke of concepts like control and certainty.
This leaves me alone with mystery, floating in vastness. I discard chaos’s hidden rulebook laden with odds and ticking time bombs. I cease trying to catch control. I’m free to enjoy her wiggling hips and beckoning arms from afar. When God becomes a word that contains everything I can perceive, along with everything I cannot, it holds hardness and softness, darkness and light, power and love. God is birth. God is death. God is the space between creation and demise. God is nothing. God is everything. I don’t know what God is. I’m recovering from pouring concrete.
Needs / wants / deal-breakers
Lounging in what we affectionately called, “The Babe Cave”, my sassy, boisterous therapist friend gave an exasperated sigh. He squinted at me and my bestie while we bemoaned our dating woes. “Okay! Here’s what you’re gonna do!” He commanded, ever so shy about proffering advice. “Pull out a piece of paper! Make two columns. One needs. One wants. Get honest. Write a list of what you need in a romantic partner and list of what you want. Here’s the thing: anything that goes in your needs column has to be something you yourself can actually give or be. Meanwhile, the wants column can house anything you desire or dream.” He continued,
“Don’t describe a person, describe the ideal. After you're finished, if we look back at your past relationships, we’ll probably find that you were choosing people with qualities you wanted but very few of the qualities you NEED.”
But he was wrong. Not about the incredible impact that composing and REFERENCING this list would do for me, but about what I would learn about myself and my past partner’s through the process. What I actually saw (and my bestie did too!) was that I’d been viewing things I needed in a partnership as mere preferences or lofty, unrealistic expectations. In fact, it was a challenge to dream up the true luxuries for my wants column. I feared I needed too much or that such a person didn’t exist.
My babe cave bestie and I added a third column. We titled it: DEAL-BREAKERS and NON-negotiables. This. THIS! was a small, concise list or what we were fully committed to walking away from once recognized. This was the “Absolutely Not!” column. It was exceptionally helpful and bitterly annoying to have this particular column. In the dating years that followed I frequently found myself reading my commitment, IN MY OWN HAND, and still thinking “Oh crap! I have to drop this flirtation, person, situation.This is a deal-breaker….. And I forgot.”
This commitment led me to spend more time with myself and friends over romantic partners that didn’t make the cut AND it totally saved my ass from a good deal of self-torture.
Thank you! Thank you, Needs/Wants/Deal-Breakers List! Wanna try it? Pull out that piece of paper and compose your lists. What are your deal-breakers??
To Be Continued …
The Retired Saint
He slid into me like a nail in the coffin of my faith. I knew penetration rocketed me past the point of turning back. I wouldn’t return to Mormonism. It wasn’t my first or last intentional sabotage. After he and I buried the coffin, I crossed Canada to put emotional space between myself and this person who lit the match which burned down my religious ties. The flames of destruction grew more literal. I’d later set fire to photos, love letters, and possessions. In one instance, I burned an apron to prevent myself from returning to a nerve-rattling waitressing job. In the latter expressions of sabotage, I intended to disrupt the system, but in regards to burying my religion, I didn’t know at the time what I wanted. I was too scared of hell and isolation. Frankly, I was also quite drunk. I’d continue to drink down my fear and shame when facing the vulnerability of exposing my sexuality for the next decade.
Post burial, I officially dubbed myself a “For-Man,” a phrase I’d chosen to abbreviate “Former Mormon.” I took great pains to express and name myself as absolutely not a religious person! I dyed my hair black, drank copiously, and smoked in secret. I worshipped humans and the dirt. I courted vulgarity. Mostly I had a great time. I love my rebel. She saved me from a life that didn’t suit me.
Yet the sex part remained tricky. The sticky layers of my eroticism peeled back slowly, messily, sometimes angrily. The heaven of connection lay tangled in the hell of shame. I definitely didn’t know how to lay myself bare before another human without three to nine drinks in me, especially for the first time. It was too much. Unbearable. Overwhelming.
Eventually I found myself outside a dingy room, straining to catch a glimpse of the assortment of strangers. They looked…. and I say this with both love and respect… haggard. Not a single one of them hadn’t scratched and clawed their way back from death or ruin. I entered that room, repeatedly, over the next year and half. Those haggard bad asses showed me how to take accountability for myself. They taught me, through their stories and their tried and tested process, how to forgive the past and set down the bottle.
But nobody in those rooms taught me how to have sober sex. Instead they encouraged vigilance against my selfishness and previous patterns of sexual wreckage. I charted a course for how to be a better partner. I composed a list of relational habits to ward off. I pined for sexual satisfaction and relational bliss. I ached for it, yet I lived in constant vigilance towards myself. The thoughts rolled in like waves determined to pull me out to sea:
“What if I opened up to sexual pleasure and found addiction?”
“What if I barrel rolled down a hill of self-pity after a rejection?”
“What if I stink in the sack when I’m not drunk?”
“What if I can’t let go?”
“How, for the Love of Life, does one get down without a cocktail??”
“ What if I hurt someone?”
“ What if I hurt myself… again?”
Can you relate?
Two miracles arrived in a successive order. The first miracle was a painful one. It appeared in the form of a delightfully kinky partner matched with some blurry boundaries. (less delightful) The sleeping dragon of my rebel lifted her head, her hot breath fanned the flames of my hunger. The second miracle came from a talented coach inviting me to heal, explore, and expand my eroticism.
I eagerly anticipated accentuating my rebel and setting her free to roam in a realm outside of addiction. What I didn’t expect in my search for erotic expression was to reclaim my inner Mormon girl. Buried deep in my heart, hidden beneath my bravado dwelled an innocent. She’s shy, slow, sensitive, and spiritually obsessed. She’d been banished from my sexuality. I’d overridden her, shut her down, and commanded her to shut up. If she didn’t comply I’d drown her out or drug her up.
Now that I was fully awake to my life, there was no override button I could push to rush past my youthful, Inner Innocent. In order to let someone in she’d need to feel safe, loved, and connected. She’d require a gentle touch and a slower pace, some tender coaxing, and finally, deliciously, the ambrosia to my retired saint, temptation.
This may read like the Discovery of an Energetic Kinky Blueprint.(™) (If you’re curious about your blueprint take the quiz below!!) This is indeed that tale, but more importantly to me, this emergence ended the war and repression within myself. When both my Innocent and my Rebel took their rightful places on the Pantheon of my Pleasure, the vigilance towards myself receded. The fear of my own unraveling fell away. The war was over. Love and Understanding stood solid in its place and ecstatic expression danced freely, mischievously, and innocently on Love’s solid ground.
Erotic Blueprint Quiz Link:
5 Things I’d say to myself 10 years ago
Brightness, I promise you, that Love, yes capital L Love, it will happen to you and for you. You will experience love more deeply than you can possibly fathom, and you will learn things about life and about yourself that I can’t share with you now. Even if I did, you wouldn’t believe me. But believe this: Love will come. Love will change you and it will change how you see love. So enough with this fear that Love will stay absent. You cannot lasso it in with winks and drinks with bartenders. Just trust that it will appear. I know better than anyone because I am you. It’s coming. Know that Love is near.
Sing. And then sing some more, and never let your singing disappear. If you do stop singing (because you will) ask yourself what’s missing? As a child, you found your way into trees and atop fence posts, and yes, oh yes, perched on the toilet seat (great acoustics!) where all you did was sing. When you are unbound by duty, and expectations, and culturally contrived logistics, you will always sing. When you stop singing, take notice. There is some part of you that has been left behind. Check your wallet. Check your closets. Check for the pieces of yourself you gave away to old friends and lost loves (Yes I said Lost Loves. Don’t flip out.) Check your heart for what you’re not saying or feeling. It might be stuck. Sing it out. When you are connected to your soul, it’ll pour out of you through singing, regardless of whether you’re swinging joyfully through the trees or losing your shit.
Eventually, you will have to forgive men.You will also have to forgive yourself….. and religion. I realize that you don’t currently believe that you are pissed at all these things, but you are. Forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness is how you will set yourself free. Teachers will appear to show you how to do it. Listen. Lean in. Let it be arduous some days, other times easy and spontaneous. Don’t give up. Forgiveness will set you free.
Your depression and your anxiety are loyal friends and teachers. They are not trying to hurt you. They are communicating with you. There will come a day when you will say YES to your anxiety. Yes to it being there. Yes to it growing. Yes to not sleeping while it swallows you, and then my love, it will heal. Trust me, it will heal. When the anxiety swells, keep going! It won’t last forever. I’m rooting for you from here.
And lastly, babe, you’re going to be okay. You are stronger than you think. You also don’t have to do it alone. Ask for help. Take all the help you can get. Invest in it for God’s sake. You. Will. Not. Regret. It. Remember, in times of loss or terror or sadness, or even in times of mediocrity (I know how much that freaks you out) that excitement, joy and delight have merely stepped away. They’ll be back. They always come back. Emptiness is just an invitation. There’s nothing to fear. You’re just making space. Trust me, space is gorgeous, you’ll see. Learn to leave space for healthy love and new friends and creative projects. Let there be space to hear an intuitive whisper and to sit in a quiet room alone. Space loves you and I love you and you are already okay. You are not wrong or bad or stuck. You are ever evolving. I love you and it’s going to be okay.