love

The Ranking of Souls

~ heroin heroine

Many years ago my private school introduced DEIJ exercises (diversity, equity, inclusion and justice) during one of our teacher training days. It was a fairly new concept at the time and we prided ourselves on being progressive. It was my day off so I missed the initial session. I was told it began with teachers lined up in a straight line at the far end of a large green field. Questions were asked and if answered in the affirmative you took a giant step forward.

Questions like:
Did you grow up in a two parent home?
As a child did you have food security?
Has your family remained free of incarceration/justice system?
Do you feel welcome in most group settings?
Do you identify as white?
Did you receive a higher education?
Do you own your own home?

Yeses bred more yeses – exponentially. Looking around the field it must have been apparent that a secure upbringing reaped de-facto future benefits. Of course this was the reason for the exercise.

This part of the day I understood.

Later the teachers were handed a worksheet to rank whom they would choose to live with on a deserted island. People such as carpenter, doctor, professor, captain, Gilligan. Okay, it didn’t include Gilligan – but it did include two other distinct prototypes: violent criminal and drug addict.

I was told the drug addict came in last.

Logic must have escaped my fellow teachers. Who chooses to live with someone who is violent vs. someone who suffers from addiction? In a setting without laws or law enforcement why favor the criminal? And what kind of violent criminal are we talking about? If the crime was motivated by greed can they share limited supplies? If driven by power can they live within a democratic structure? Do they have a history of destruction of private property, assault, murder or rape? Do these tendencies evaporate on a deserted beach?

In all honesty, I wouldn’t rush to choose a person suffering from substance use disorder (SUD) either. The scientist, the boat builder, the storyteller – they have obvious benefits. But the person with SUD wouldn’t be last. Admittedly they can be violent: but it’s nearly always in pursuit of their drug. (Which, hello, makes it a non sequitur on a deserted island!) It is also true that active drug users are inconsistent contributors to a functioning society. But active addiction requires access to a drug.

At the time these exercises occurred my teenage daughter was in prison for her addiction. I was angry upon learning of my fellow teacher’s decision making process. It seemed curiously uncaring for a group of progressive educators. And if statistics ring true nearly every one of them knew someone suffering from the disease of addiction. Did they not believe in recovery? Could they not see the human inside? I understand the “eyes wide shut” response. Maybe they didn’t want to look too closely. And then there is the daydream of many a worn out caregiver: life on a deserted island! On this island we never bring our problematic family. We are alone, reading a book, tilting our noses to the welcoming sun.

I considered the human tendency to dislike in others what we dislike in ourselves. Many of us struggle with over-indulgence, keeping our word, consistency, making permanent lifestyle changes. So maybe it was as simple as not wanting to look at themselves.

I am not sure. I will never be sure. It’s too late now to go back and ask. And I don’t know if people would be honest with me. But I do know I was left with a vision: my daughter moving backwards across that green field; like a chess piece being cleared from the board. Thoughtlessly removed when she could still bring so much to the game.

Summer Porch

~ heroin heroine

I have come to my summer porch to take in the late afternoon sun.
The old porch is hexagonal and has two squeaky wooden doors, two ripped screens and a weathered mahogany floor.

In one corner I spy a robust little pile of mouse droppings. They betray a foolishly circuitous trail; a rodent’s version of the Hansel and Gretel tale.

Under the small wrought iron table I find two soft grey feathers. Feathers like those from the breast of a grey catbird. They lie discarded, side by side.  I can’t help but hope that she didn’t struggle too long before finding her way back through the opening in the ripped screen.

Around the old iron table sit four bright yellow chairs – one of which has a long black hair entwined tightly around a securing strut.  Was it yanked from the head of the person because they rose too quickly? How long has it been there?  Why do I not remember having a visitor with such long black hair?

And as I write this an electric green dragon fly encircles my big toe.
I want him to light down on my blue painted toenail. My mind silently chants “do it, do it, do it.”  He chooses not to heed my psychic call.

So now I turn my gaze to the hummingbird feeder. I have filled it with sweet sugar water in just the right enticing ratio. But no one has visited yet this year.  I used to have a visitor. He would frequently hover just inches from my face. We would study each other. The sound of his frantic wings would fill my ears and I would worry about the short distance between his beak and my eyes.  But it was always thrilling.

I googled Mr. Hummingbird’s repeat visits. It had to mean something, right? What I learned was that Native Americans believed a hummingbird was sent as a reminder to live in the moment.

I can see now that I have both missed moments and tried to control moments. And I am still doing both. I came here not to witness mid-summer beauty, but to distract myself from my preoccupation with wishing for another’s wellness. The nagging truth is that a wish, no matter how badly one wants it, does not create reality.

How can such a lovely thing, a wish, be also such a sobering thing?

As I write this I realize I have not learned a thing.  I flex my painted toes and scan the yard.  I am still waiting for that little green hummingbird to visit me again.

In Need of a Love Revolution.

~ heroin heroine ~ 1 Comment

Life is a love poem. Most days I am sure of it, some days I am not. The days I am not are usually because I am astonished by extraordinary acts of greed. Examples abound. Never in recent history has the wage gap been this large. Agribusinesses poison our topsoil with dizzying amounts of pesticides to increase corn yields – which are then used to sweeten our foods to a sickening degree. All in the name of profits. I can think of a dozen more examples. I am sure you can too. Currently I am dumbstruck by the amount of greed the Sackler family showed manufacturing oxycontin. As the death count mounted they hid money in off-shore accounts, bought doctors, manufactured fake safety studies, and fed illegal pill mills.  Personal fortune in the billions was apparently not enough.  They invested in a pharmaceutical company operating in China and India so that they could addict a whole new continent of unsuspecting consumers (they are using the same marketing tactics).  How has this corporation not been dismantled, their money confiscated, and the orchestrators jailed? I am convinced that someone is profiting somewhere from the injustice.

I am not a rube. I realize profits are the life blood of a healthy corporation. And I am not a socialist. But it seems to me that we have given our golden goose away to the business elite. We have forgotten that our constitution guarantees the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. We can not be healthy or happy if corporate greed continues to control our destiny. And as the Sackler’s have proven time and time again: we may not even be allowed to live.

I think greed is the only human emotion that is untouched by love.  It’s been sixty years since this country had a love revolution.  And I venture to say we are desperately in need of a new one. “Turn on, tune in and drop out” needs to be redefined. Hedonism, navel gazing and blissful ignorance should have ended a long time ago. It’s time for wide eyed collective activism. We need to “turn off (our distracting social/entertainment feeds), tune up and drop in.” Hard.

Maybe you can find yourself in a march against our current gun laws. Or petition to restore our clean waters act. Or question the profit sharing at your workplace.  Maybe just write a check to feed our hungry veterans. Or vote out of office those who are controlled by super pacs. Maybe you will be like Maura Healey, Boston’s Attorney General, and enforce the rule of law. She turned down Purdue’s offer of 600 million lame ass dollars since they will be based on future sales of oxycontin. (Yeah, I know I said lame ass –  it could have been worse).  Maura is holding fast.  She wants the money to come from profits already made. She wants justice for her fellow man now.

The rule of law and capitalism work: but only if we keep our eyes wide open and we play our part.

So choose to do something. And choose something everyday.
My mother once shared that her Buddhist friend claimed it was her “duty to perform three good deeds each day.” Let’s be like that friend.

It’s time to let our love light shine.

Paper Airplanes of Love.

~ heroin heroine ~ 3 Comments

Everything is a love poem.

Someone said this recently.
I think they were joking because their tone was a bit flippant.
But after he said it he let a long pause hang in the air.
And the pause felt like a challenge.

I guess I would like to believe that everything is a love poem.
I admit I embarrass myself. Am I just a silly girl?

Yet there is a whole lot of love tucked into nearly every day: A smile from a stranger, the cat that follows you down the driveway, the extra cheese someone put on your sandwich, the feel of the wind on your cheek, an evening swim, a pink sky, music on the radio, cold ice in a drink, the feel of a warm embrace. Right now my big old red dog is laying down under a tree and sniffing the air. If he catches me looking at him he will feel the need to come stand by me, and in doing so he will have to move his arthritic hips. I look quickly away so he will not struggle. Love, love, and more love.

Of course we can’t dismiss the broken hearts, the divorces, the deaths.
Yet these hurt because they showcase another side of love: the loss of it, the memory of it, the importance of it.

Then there is self love. Contrary to what our media feed may tell us self love is not a day at the spa or a healthy meal delivery from an internet box service. True self love depends upon unconditional love.

The first time I considered the meaning of “unconditional love” was after a text from our family therapist. She implied that I might have been lacking it. She sent it upon the aftermath of my umpteenth midnight run to pick up my screaming daughter from a police lock up. The therapist was wrong. Nothing my child did or said could have made me love her less. I was just not willing to equate loving her with letting her go. I was not willing to “live and let live.”

Sometimes I criticize myself for all the time spent “loving” her – often at the expense of the other members of my family, and my own. (If you think you are hard on yourself ask a mother of an addict how she feels deep down inside.)

I had a fabulous therapist for a year who asked the most ridiculous questions: what kind of wild animal did you see today? what is your love language? But she was also spot on. She brought me back to the love that was all around me (that old dog under the tree, that cheese on my sandwich, that pink sky).

Unconditional self love, however, is a strange concept. We misinterpret it. We think a self improvement regimen is as an act of self love. Or we recite our strengths to feel worthy of it. But self love requires something completely different. It requires accepting that mountain of other, quieter, stuff; our operating quirks, our bias, our mistakes. That mountain grows as we get older. Maybe that is why so many of us address it later in life.

My New Year’s resolution is to take time to sit quietly.   To sit quietly atop my mountain of stuff.  And I am going to write some love poems.  And I am going to let them fly.

Amuse-Bouche

~ heroin heroine ~ 2 Comments

 

An amuse-bouche is a single, bite-sized hors d’œuvre. You do not order it. Instead it is chef chosen. A single earthy escargot. Tuna tartare wrapped in a crispy beet slice. An heirloom cherry tomato filled with lemon infused goat cheese. You get the idea: a tiny surprise that packs a big punch.

Amuse-bouche: it has a nice ring to it. It’s advantageous to have a fancy pants word in your back pocket for use at corporate back-slapping parties and such. But its use is kind of limited. And it’s a shame to have a good foodie word go stale. What if we applied it in a broader sense?

A successful amuse-bouche is more than a single yummy morsel. It’s a clue to the ‘taste direction’ of the rest of the meal. It’s basically the “divining rod” of the unfolding culinary experience.

What if we asked ourselves what small moment, or amuse-bouche, has predicted our life’s path thus far? It can’t be a moment we were responsible for; like choosing the late train home and inadvertently sitting next to our future spouse. Instead the moment has to have been presented to us. A tiny morsel that, if we were paying attention, forecasted the unfolding of future events.

If you had asked me a few weeks ago what my amuse-bouche had been I could have come up with a half dozen. It might have been how my youngest daughter did not like to be held close when she was an infant. Instead she liked the isolated confines of her car seat. In response I took to putting her in a snuggly every evening and walking up and down the streets of our small town with her firmly affixed to my chest. I figured it was a way to give her the best of both worlds. This small moment now appears a microcosm of our larger struggles; hers to uncomfortably retreat and mine to forcibly show maternal love.

I might also think back to how she wanted to fill her crib with large plastic toys – rocking horses and dump trucks. I would ably assist: You want this one? You want this one? She would grunt and nod and only lay down her head when she was nearly buried alive. For the next twenty years i would become a witness to her unconventional, and frightening, methods to self soothe.

Another “amuse-bouche” could have been her night time ritual. Instead of singing ‘twinkle, twinkle little star’ she would tick off a long list of potential disasters on her tiny little fingers. With her eyebrows stitched tightly together she would recite “house fire,” “tornado,” “molly-dog dying.” When I would ask her to please stop she would insist on continuing because “if she said them out loud they would not happen tomorrow.” It was like watching her conjure up the prop gun at the beginning of a movie. The prop gun that always portends disaster. As adults we know there is no wishing away the bad stuff.

But none of these were my true amuse-bouche moments.

I learned this after hearing a friend speak uncomfortably about her down syndrome sister and the family burden it had created: their father abandoned them and her mother became consumed with her care. This friend smiled recalling how she and her sister would play simple card games over and over and over. She didn’t recognize that her “amuse-bouche” had not been the birth of her sister. The card game was. The words “over and over and over” were the clue – they highlighted what was to become her signature strength: patience and empathy.

Her story was a reminder that our amuse-bouche moments are not the big things. They are not the burgeoning substance use disorders and the undeniable disabilities. They are much quieter, much more subtle. A chef would explain that it is not the oyster itself – but the taste of the brine.

I know now what my amuse-bouche has always been. It was the kindness shown to me by my eldest child when she was just a toddler. I had been lying in my bed, crying. It was nothing more than new parent exhaustion. But she got herself up from her nap and toddled her way down the hall to check on me and with her little hand on my back she gave me tiny pats. And then she offered her pacifier to me.  She was comforting me the only way she knew how.

How could I have nearly forgotten that one amazing moment?

Stats… STAT!

~ heroin heroine ~ 7 Comments

Our children relapse. We are warned “relapse is part of recovery.” But I don’t think most of us believe it. By the time your child has a few years under their belt you get comfortable. You see a person emerge that you haven’t seen in years. Someone who is genuinely happy. Focused. Funny. Confident. Surely this person is here to stay.

But the fact remains. A mom I know confessed to returning to the days of sending canteen money to her son after his recent relapse landed him back in jail. She ended her dark missive with “why, why, why?”

It’s a rhetorical question I suppose. We know why. Giving up anything for a lifetime is a pretty monumental task. Giving up something you once loved more than life itself must be harder. Then throw in the added bonus of having an addictive personality or a mood disorder. Those are some pretty good whys. Sometimes I am amazed at the fortitude required to obtain 2-3-4 years of complete sobriety. It feels like a miracle. But I don’t want to think this way. I don’t want my daughter’s future to be dependent on a miracle.

Last week my daughter called me from detox. It was her third attempt in ten days. Her voice was hopeless as she numbly reported “only 1% of addicts ever make it mom.” I also have heard this number quoted. And I don’t like it.

We know statistics are manipulated to present a particular point of view. Is this one in existence because historically we haven’t cared enough to get the math right? Or has it been cultivated to justify poor spending on treatment?

This number was ringing in my head when I sat on an opioid forum last week. Beside me sat the head of a Massachusetts hospital emergency room department. He confidently stated that “involuntarily committing addicts to treatment is not recommended because we are setting them up for a higher rate of overdose death.” I am presuming his reasoning was based on the premise that this population is not interested in quitting drugs and therefore would return to using. I don’t question that deaths are higher among the involuntarily incarcerated vs. the voluntarily committed when treatment ends. It makes logical sense. But the data is flawed. The data is flawed because of “patient selection bias.” The doctor failed to include those who were NOT included in the data: those not forcibly committed to treatment. I venture to say that most of them are dead – or will be dead. Look at it this way: it’s like playing Russian Roulette with people who don’t want to quit the game. If you take away the gun some may eventually go back to playing with the gun. But if you DON’T take away the gun… well everyone is going to die. It’s that simple.

Are there better stats regarding relapse? Unfortunately there is a dearth of long term data. One of the few long term NIH funded studies followed 1,162 addicts for eight straight years. Published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Abuse it revealed that as the length of time in sobriety increases, so do the odds of continued sobriety. Those with less than a year have a 33% success rate. Those with over a year increase their odds to 50%. And those who achieve five years can expect an 85% future sobriety success rate. Data just doesn’t exist for those with 20 or 30 years of recovery time; but those who work in residential centers find their reappearance rare.

So we know clean time breeds more clean time. I remember joking a few years back with a local officer.  I asked him to handcuff my daughter to her bedroom radiator to prevent her from scoring. He smiled, but then seriously replied “yeah, I can’t do that…and neither can you.”

Since that day I have been searching for a legal means to success.  That searching even led to attendance at a spiritually based reading group (disclaimer: it is an act of desperation for me to turn toward faith for any sort of answer.)  What I found was that many of those in attendance were living a life of successful sobriety.  History, science, and society have not been kind to those suffering from the disease of addiction so we can not blame them for remaining in the shadows.  AA and NA use “anonymous” for a reason.  But by sharing their status this group become a living example of hope and, even better, a room full of positive odds!

It is still going to take a lot of unbiased research to get us solid numbers to stand upon.  Faulty statistical analysis, unfunded federal research, a lack of evidence-based treatment, and social stigma have led us to this unsettling place. To live within the world of addiction is to stand on shaky ground.

For now I will tell you what I can do. I can share a whole new set of facts with my daughter when I visit her at the hospital. I can tell her with confidence that the 1% success rate is inaccurate. And I will tell her with even more confidence that she matters 100% to me.

These are the only true numbers at my disposal and, for today, we are relying upon them.

Triggers Are Not Real.

~ heroin heroine ~ 2 Comments

“TRIGGERS ARE NOT REAL.”

My daughter stated this, firmly, when I tried to stop her from taking a bus through a neighborhood full of triggers. Addicts are supposed to avoid triggers….just like someone on a diet should avoid a bakery, and someone thinking about a new dog should avoid a pet shop. It’s good common sense.

This particular neighborhood, for three years straight, had replaced days meant to be spent at school. It was where she met her first, of many, older, opiate-addicted boyfriends. The neighborhood where she drank with her girlfriends until they couldn’t stand up. The neighborhood she went missing in for nights on end. The neighborhood she partied in to the point of hospital intervention, repeatedly. The neighborhood with the drug store street corner. All of this would be within memorable reach.

“I don’t want you to take the bus. I can get you in the car.  I would be happy to come get you… “

“No.”

Trigger has to be the perfect colloquialism for “classical conditioning.” I appreciate the way it brings to mind the image of a loaded gun to the head. When you are the parent of an addict it becomes that clear. That person, that bent spoon, that ball of singed tinfoil, that street corner…. all become sensorial reminders capable of triggering relapse. And relapse is nothing short of a game of Russian roulette.

To be clear, my fear of triggers isn’t a case of playing probabilities or trusting in a predictable pattern of personal weakness. Classical conditioning is scientifically proven. Most of us are familiar with Pavlov and his bell salivating dogs. This early study in classical conditioning proved that a learned process can change a previously neutral stimulus into a potent stimulus. This potent stimulus in turn creates real biological change in the body. Biological change where none existed before. Replace Pavlov’s bell with a street corner and excessive saliva with irrepressible craving and the problem becomes all too real.

“I want to take the bus. Triggers are not real. Like, everything is a trigger. A song. A boy. The bathroom. The sunshine. A nice day. A bad day. Even the breeze. You have to deal with your stuff, mom. If taking a bus makes me relapse then I haven’t dealt with my stuff. You just don’t understand.”

I am trying to. Classical conditioning is not equivalent to the loss of free will. Biological stimulus does not have to be a siren call to action. We are a little more complicated than a bell drooling hound. But how difficult must it be to retrain our rewired and tired brains to see each situation clearly and non-reactively? Can we be our own psychologists, neurosurgeons, life style coaches and cautiously present Buddhas?

In the end, she took that bus. And you know what?
She made it safely home.

Modern Love

~ heroin heroine ~ 2 Comments

There is a program on National Public Radio that does a spectacularly good job at deconstructing a word most of us feel we can confidently define: love.

In one episode Jason Alexander narrates his love for the family goldfish. The loss of someone close to him has forged his affection for this swimmingly simple little golden fish. Its presence represents an escape, and an embracing, of the crumbling reality of existence.

Can love be tempered by unpleasant realities? The program would say yes. Most of us, especially those of us with decades of life behind us, would agree.

We all have our own “modern love” story. Mine would be about my daughter, who many might describe as hard to love.  They would be wrong.

Admittedly, she was hard to snuggle.  She preferred the plastic embrace of her car seat. The car seat could be parked far from me: she was happy with any room, any corner. She tracked me with her eyes, but she tracked other things with equal interest. I took to forcibly putting her in a snuggly and walking up and down the street with her.

Glowering was also a specialty. She was a beautiful blonde baby with fat pink cheeks, green eyes, and a perma-scowl. Her mouth, right from the get-go, had a natural down turn to it. Glowering with the addition of defiantly crossed arms came later. When asked to give her name during her kindergarten interview she stood up, turned her chair backward to the teacher, crossed her arms, and sat down. She remained that way for the entire interview.

My husband and I remained enamored. (Why should she perform tricks like a trained seal? Maybe we have the next Hillary!) We affectionately nicknamed her “little black cloud.” We would mimic her mood in a dreary Eeyore voice – desperately trying to add some EB White levity to our situation. Sometimes we would just mime a “brewing storm”  by circling our fluttering hand over our weary heads.

But of course at this young age it isn’t about them loving you. It’s about you loving them.

Loving her could be exhausting. It wasn’t easy for my daughter to accept love. She appeared to weigh it, to quantify it – to find it lacking. She was often displeased. I came to see it as her natural default button. She screamed about sitting in the cart at the grocery store. She screamed at her older sister to claim the best barbie. She screamed if she could hear you chewing during dinner. She screamed for the last cookie, to hold mommy’s hand, to find the most Easter eggs. She screamed over minor transitions. It was relentless. Her ability to express love was buried under an itchy blanket of sensory issues, fear, jealousy, and an unshakeable sadness.

But she loved us too. It was apparent in the way she would fit herself to your side when watching a Disney movie. And in the occasional half smile with tilted head. In the way she kissed her dog’s bearded face. And the gifts of found flowers or crayoned pictures.

So, yeah, love is not only tempered by unpleasant realities… in can grow in them. It may even grow hardier. We are living proof.  We are the dandelions of love.

Broken Things Have Value.

~ heroin heroine ~ 1 Comment

I have a set of flawless china. It is Lenox and it has a silver rim like a lucky cloud.

I also have a morning coffee cup. It’s crazed from being microwaved just a little bit too much.  There is a chip that serves as a reminder to not sip on that side. When the handle breaks I will, most likely, glue it back on.

Sentimental? Not really.

I have been thinking about broken things a lot lately. How my daughter’s journey has introduced me to the fractured and hidden members of our society. I have been inside too many psychiatric hospitals, too many jails, too many police stations, too many emergency rooms and too many detox centers. I have seen too many people cry.

But now I can hold these experiences in the palm of my hand like an old coffee cup. They are no longer things that happen to other people. And I can see that they have added value to my previously flawless life.

Three years ago I noted in my journal the incongruities that were becoming our norm:

“I had to pick my daughter up from an in-patient psych ward this morning. She looked just beautiful in a black tee shirt and old jeans. Her blonde hair hung in a long braid over one shoulder. I could barely see the bruise on her cheekbone. As she gathered her things to go she insisted on saying goodbye to Carl. She knocked on his door on her tippy toes, and said, “Carl come out.” “Carl, come out and say goodbye to me.” And she waited patiently. I was expecting a young boy…. but an old man came out. Wizened, beaten down, shuffling. She gave him a big, big hug. And I just didn’t know what to do with the feeling.”

Somedays I still don’t know what to do with all the feeling.  But I know I am the better for it.