a series of small steps

the time we have been training for is here

There is so much to say. There is nothing else to say. More than words, what is needed is action.

(Image Credit: Twitter/Dai Sugano)

I published my first Slow Motion Sober post back on April 4, 2020. Eight weeks ago, almost to the day. Eight weeks. I’d been sheltering in place for two weeks already by then and though I’d been thinking about writing a weekly newsletter for a while, I, a single, child-free, busy city-dweller sitting at home, knew that now was the time to dive into some kind of project to see me through. Truly, I did not expect this to become a captain’s log of Pandemia.

It is unfathomable to me how completely the world can change in only eight weeks.

The following is long and rambling and it’s the best I can do in this moment.

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Teju Cole says:

In addition to being acts of truth-telling, demonstrations are acts of prophecy. On a given site, a demonstration imagines a change that until this moment was thought of as unimaginable. It doesn’t and can’t by itself bring such change into being, not usually. So, what does a demonstration “demonstrate”? It demonstrates a collective bodily imagining of that someday-to-come change. It demonstrates the persistence and unextinguished dignity of the “we” that the state has refused to see.

The demonstration occasions a reconstituted “we.” This imagining is achieved at high and sometimes shocking cost to the demonstrators. Yet, it is a cost willingly borne because the alternative—slow suffocation without voice and without end—is far less tolerable.

Six months after I quit drinking, still in the haze of The Pink Cloud, I was so curious—and confused—about the inner shifts I was experiencing. I could not wrap my brain around how was it possible that it was only by laying down what I thought was the key to joy-happiness-connection-relaxation-celebration that I was actually able to access all those things I’d been seeking since the beginning of time. In my seeking to understand, I pulled down a literal decades worth of daily journals from a dark corner of my closet and began to page through my past. My aim was to revisit and reflect on my relationship with alcohol and hopefully glean some insight around why I stayed so hooked for so long.

I made it through maybe two months and then I had to re-shelve the journals. It was too difficult. Page after page, day after day, month after month year after year, so many zillions of words of absolute hatred and shame toward myself for my troubles with drinking, or rather, my troubles with not being able to manage my drinking. It broke my heart to see my struggle spelled out so plainly. To see how deeply alcohol had poisoned my life, and the degree to which I spent so much of my valuable time agonizing over it. To see my pleading, negotiating, wishing, magical thinking wrapped up in the belief that if only I could moderate, I’d be normal. I’d be OK. I would stop making decisions and life choices that I’d later regret. I wanted to be delivered. I wanted some external force to swoop in and fix me.

I could not moderate drinking poison. It was only by quitting, and reckoning honestly with my past, that I was able to begin the work of my life. And that is where you find me now.

I often say that I had to drink every single last drink I did in order to be done. I had to bang my head against the door countless times before it finally opened, leading me into a room more spacious and free than anything I had imagined possible for myself. I had to wake up to the truth that the only person who was going to deliver me was me.

I was never going to arrive to the Land Of Moderation. Just like I’m never going to arrive to the Island of Sobriety. There will be no arriving. There is no end game, no goal. My recovery is a daily, forever practice. The quitting is the absolute beginning. It solves one problem, yes of course—the drinking. And. The quitting is the first problem. Then comes the work.

At the beginning of our descent into Pandemia I wrote about how we in recovery are perhaps uniquely prepared for this moment because we know how to sit in difficult situations and not run. There’s something else we know, too: We are uniquely prepared for this moment because we know that no one is going to deliver us from ourselves. Teju Cole’s above quote struck me because I see recovery as an individual “bodily imagining of a someday-to-come change.” Despite how awful and ugly and challenging and confronting the work of recovery can be, “…it is a cost willingly borne because the alternative—slow suffocation without voice and without end—is far less tolerable.”

After I quit drinking, and rebuilding my life from the ground up, I began to envision a new life for myself. Something big, and full, full of heart and life and vitality and freedom and honesty and truth and creativity. Sometimes I get little tastes of this life, small sips that carry me forward and sustain me in the neverending series of small steps. Since sobriety is a practice, I do not get set on some end goal. I stay in the process, in the becoming, in the chasm between desire and the fulfillment of said desire.

For white people, this moment in America is a centuries overdue wake-up call, a very first step. Racism is a poison. We’ve been moderating far far far too fucking long. Now we begin the work of laying it down for good, and stepping into what I pray will become part of the work of our lives, of black lives: Becoming actively anti-racist.

Waking up to one’s internalized racism is the first step. Perhaps you will fill pages of our journal with all the ways you are waking up, perhaps you will tell the truth about all the ways you’ve been complicit in perpetuating this violence, all the ways “moderating” never worked. Perhaps you will read all the books. This waking up is important. But just like quitting drinking is important, but doesn’t solve the underlying problems, the waking up is insufficient if we aren’t be out in the world, participating in this change.

We have so much work to do. The gap between where we stand collectively today and where we envision society is wide, and widening every day. If we get stuck in comparing where we are today with where we want to be, if we fixate on the goal rather than the process, we will quickly lose steam and what we desire will never be delivered. So this is a call to stay. To do the work. YOUR work. Part of that is dismantling our own internalized racism (and yeah, none of us are exempt with this one). Just like with sobriety, the inner work is important. But it’s only one part of the process.

Now is the time to be done banging our heads against the door of racism. Now is the time to break through into that new room. Now is the time for “a collective bodily imagining of that someday-to-come change.” Not an intellectual imagining. A BODILY imagining.

What change can we imagine “…that until this moment was thought of as unimaginable”?

I am imagining a new story. One that is based in truth, history, reality, humility, grace, forgiveness, and love. I want to release ourselves of this story that’s been rammed into our brains of what this country is, of what it means to be American. We are so hungry for the truth. I can feel truth fighting its way through us, demanding itself, scraping and crawling its way into the light. We keep saying we don’t want things to remain the same. I know some things about facing one’s demons. The longer we run from our past, instead of facing it, the longer it will continue to at best hold us hostage and at worst utterly destroy us. It is only when we face the truth in all its disgusting messiness, and allow it into the light, that we can be free. That we can all be free.

Of course I want the systems to transform. Of course I will vote. And, I have less faith in systems than I do in you and me. Here. On the ground. In our neighborhoods. If I am learning anything, it’s that we already know how to care for each other.

I also know that we are going to be here in this unknowing place for a very long time. Longer than we want. Longer than we feel comfortable staying. There is a wide gap between something breaking down, and something new rising out. And it is in this place that our actions matter most. It is in this place of not-knowing that we will rise or we will sink even lower.

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People. I love you. How are you?