Category: sober lifestyle

sober lifestyle

Season

jenwielgusjournalism
Post-run moon shot on Sunday morning, the first of October. When I learned that the word “lunatic” is derived from “lunar,” so much made sense! 🌚

I don’t really hang around much with other people, or consume any media made in this decade — the radio in my car is pre-set to the Lithium 90s grunge station, and my TV is usually tuned to some black-and-white Hitchcock drama or “Twilight Zone” rerun, when it’s not showing “The Sopranos” on a loop — so I’m pretty much oblivious to current events. Living in my out-of-touch bubble, I’m also susceptible to believing that I’m special. Different. Unique!

Or, completely and hopelessly f*cked up. It depends on the day.

In reality, though, most humans are feeling “it,” in some form. The strange atmospheric energy engulfing our planet as the seasons change is impacting everyone. I see it in my clients at the clinic, my grad school classmates (the ones I still associate with, amid the chaos of Year 3…), and the women in the “Helping Hands” support group I attend every other Sunday for two hours.

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sober lifestyle

Solidarity

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Some folks at work were talking about the first impressions we give to new people, and I involuntarily got looped into the conversation when one of them spotted me shuffling papers nearby. An easy target. Bullseye! 🎯

“With YOU,” they said, gesturing toward me, “my first impression was, ‘Whoa! That girl is overwhelmed!”

It’s moments like that when I’m reminded why I drank. Call me highly sensitive — no, really, go ahead; the shoe fits — but I think being pinned to a spot where you feel alienated and alone is one of the more excruciating aspects of human life in a civilized society. My instinct in those situations has always been to flee, whether it was lacing up my roller skates or hopping on my bike as a kid, beelining to the office door for a break-time walk every day of my professional life, or downing any “adult beverage” I could get my hands on to free my restless spirit from the anxiety-ridden pressure cooker of social gatherings/interactions.

Of course, when you’re four years sober, starting from scratch on the bottom rung of a brand new career and working in a fast-paced medical facility, all you can do is muddle through — and try your best not to lose your sh*t.

“Uh, yeah,” I replied, a baby deer trapped in a sudden flood of light, “I’m pretty sure anyone in my situation would be.”

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sober lifestyle

Competence

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Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I didn’t have enough time in sobriety and real therapy — as in, the kind where you’re not sitting there in a fog of denial, willfully spewing lies — before I decided to go back to school to become an addictions therapist.

Or, maybe I hadn’t “worked a program” hard enough in the time I did have, and I had no business thinking I could act like a normal person — much less a competent professional — while starting from scratch in an emotional occupation and getting a bottom-rung job in a high-stress setting.

These thoughts occurred to me this week as I entered my ninth month as a rookie drug and alcohol counselor, feeling out of my depth with no life raft in sight.

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sober lifestyle

Remembrance

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Denial, with all its cold, numb detachment, naturally came first — and it hung around for weeks.

While I intellectually understood that my great aunt had passed away in the wee hours of July 21, and we’d all more or less braced ourselves for that awful news since she entered hospice care, getting the call from 800 miles away seemed to trigger an old protective reflex: The truth can’t hurt me if I refuse to let it sink in!

(That’s, like, the primary coping tool for addicts, who learn to perform all sorts of complicated mental/verbal gymnastics to avoid acknowledging the obvious fact that their drug/alcohol problem is THE thing that’s driving them to destruction.)

Distance had shielded me from reality, as it pertains to my family, for my entire adult life. Moving away from my childhood home in my early 20s allowed me to keep my Aunt Mickey, my parents, all my caregivers and role models, cemented in my head as they were in my youth.

Auntie Mick (front and center, holding me), whooping it up in the whirlpool at my grandparents’ farm with my dad (back left), mom, little sister, and Grandpa Perz. 😢
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sober lifestyle

Influence

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My Aunt Mickey wasn’t one to sugarcoat her strong opinions, no matter who she was talking to, and this was her take on my latest blog post: “It just went on and on and on!” 😳 So, when I sat down to write her a letter of appreciation (see above), I tried to keep myself in check.

(Gotta say, it’s a really bad sign for long-form writers when even 90-year-old family members who ate up everything you created since your keyboard was a crayon suddenly throw up a “TLDR” in response to your work…😑)

Aunt Mickey has always been one of my biggest supporters, and given her declining health, I had an inkling that our most recent trip home to Chicago might be the last time I saw her in person.

She was, true to form, treating us to Cubs tickets — in a luxury suite — on our second day in town, and I was pretty sure that would be the last time my entire family convened at Wrigley Field. So, I spent 15 minutes the morning of the game banging out a little recap of her influence on my life.

When I saw a chance to deliver this message, with Aunt Mickey seated in our box at the stadium, staring quietly at the tarped (but still beautiful) diamond through a sheet of summer rain, I plopped down next to her and read it aloud. Really loud. Had to make sure she heard! 🗣️👂🏻

That was July 2. She passed away in the hospital on July 21 and will be buried in her family’s plot this coming Thursday.

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sober lifestyle

Commitment

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I couldn’t recite them verbatim, if you put me on the spot today, and our wedding video exists on a DVD we no longer have the equipment to play. But thinking back to the evening of July 21, 2007, when we stood in a modest-sized Chicago banquet room exchanging original vows before family and close friends, I remember feeling like we totally nailed it.

He pledged to be there to take care of my needs, running out for early morning Diet Mountain Dews or bags of Snyder’s Old Timey pretzels to dip in yogurt at night (such were my tastes at the time 🤷🏼‍♀️). I professed a desire to be more like him — patient, deliberate, slowing my motor to savor the moment — which marked a full 180 from my initial assessment: “I could never date this guy; he’s always #%^*-ing late!” 🤣

This wasn’t the schmaltzy, rom-com-esque attempt at poetry you might expect from such an exchange; it was the perfect combination of deeply personal and down-to-Earth, emotional and irreverent, sweet and silly. Our words were completely creative and totally us, reflecting the playful friendship and genuine affection around which this new marriage was about to be built.

Of course, like most 29-year-old kids, Hubby and I were totally clueless as to what being married was really all about.

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sober lifestyle

Home

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Being back in the land of my childhood has always felt a little strange, ever since I packed up the little green Saturn passed down from my dad and moved across the country for my first post-college journalism job in the spring of 2000.

This is what happens to all adults, right? The whole “you can’t go home again” thing? Your idea of a sacred place, and the people in it, seems to stay stuck in time, clouded by a mist of nostalgia, and it never quite matches the reality of your experience as you continue to grow, change, evolve.

This is not a bad thing, though it drudges up some difficult emotions. Growth and change are supposed to happen. Life is evolution, whether we like it or not. There are seasons we weather, lessons we learn, stuff we lose, other stuff we gain, and our perspective shifts based on what we’ve seen/heard/done on our journey after we “launch.”

Reconciling the past and present in your head and heart is never easy. Try doing it as a 45-year-old recovering alcoholic and graduate student. 😳

“Home” is an entirely different, bittersweet Bizarro World for me, now that I’m experiencing it at four years sober.

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sober lifestyle

Surrender

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Are you gonna wait for a sign, your miracle?
Stand up and fight!

This is it…Make no mistake where you are
This is it…Your back’s to the corner
This is it…Don’t be a fool anymore
This is it…The waiting is over

Kenny Loggins, “This Is It”

I’m one of those people who really hears lyrics when I listen to music. I think it goes with the territory of being a Highly Sensitive Person. And like most aspects of the HSP experience in a TMI world, this “gift” often seems like a curse/weakness/sick joke.

Once you find deep personal meaning in a piece of art — whether you were looking for it or not — it has a way of hitting you hard in the feels whenever you encounter it. That gets dangerous when the art is readily accessible on any random day of the week via satellite radio. I mean, you’re rarely prepared to weather a visceral attack of emotion on your way to work or school, and ill-equipped to explain to your spouse why you’re performing household chores with tears streaming down your face.

So it went this past weekend, when I decided to get in the spirit of Father’s Day by tuning in to Amazon’s “Yacht Rock” station. This is akin to raiding my dad’s old tape drawer and spinning the soundtrack of my childhood, the strains of “Sailing,” “Africa,” “Steal Away,” “What a Fool Believes,” “Love Will Conquer All,” and basically the entire Kenny Loggins discography tapping into my tenderest places, where I typically dare not go because I can’t afford to break down.

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