Skeletons in Your Closet
Have any? I do. Not as many as I used to. Mold all those bones into one BIG scary-ass skeleton. Now take a tiny bone–a pinky finger. Bury it. Make your peace, confess a wrong, admit a fault, apologize to someone, ask for forgiveness. Give it a proper burial. Say all the things you need to say. Wish it well. Say a prayer, and lay it to rest. Don’t try to bury the whole thing at once. That’s too much, too overwhelming. Maybe that’s why grief lasts so long after we bury a loved one. The rush to have a ceremony, a funeral–and all the planning that goes into it. Then the grieving begins. Maybe we should rethink how we handle grief of any kind. Loss of a person, a job, relationships, old habits, a pet. Hell, even a beloved car or old pair of shoes. Our world tells us to hurry up and get on with it. Couple days off work. Perhaps, see a therapist or grief counselor. Pray about it. But, make it fast. No time to waste. Life needs to go on.
Rehab is too short. Yes, Lindsey, who begged and pleaded after day 2, promising to never have another drop to drink, thinks rehab is too short. Let’s say the average stay is 28 days–this is not nearly enough time to begin to undo the damage that has been done. It’s a boot camp. A crash course. Stop doing the thing (drugs, booze, sex, self harm, whatever) is the easy part. To continue to stop doing those things and deal with whatever mental hairball is clogging up your mental pipes is the hard part.
The hard part lies between your ears. Wheels always spinning, hell, I can’t believe smoke doesn’t escape through my ears and nose. My brain probably needs a siesta. Fun fact: Siesta (Spanish) comes from the word Sexta (Latin) which means sixth hour of daylight. Hence, nap time often occurs around noon. ADHD Lindsey just crept out to rear her ugly head. Checked my ears in the mirror, no smoke yet.
The brain, your mind, your personal GPS system never really stops. At least mine doesn’t. I meet someone for the first time, they start talking, and I am already writing a funny story about them in my head. So, the vast majority of my conversations end with, “I am so sorry. What was your name again?” And, this goes back to rehab being too short. If I cannot remember a name (being of clean and sober mind) how the hell can an addict remember and use everything they learn in 28 days? This skeleton is a red-faced one and needs to be released from my at-max-capacity closet. It’s embarrassing. I was so out of my gourd in rehab, I literally got lost on a daily basis. Sometimes way more often than that. Our unit was a giant square block with 16 doors. I would end up in the laundry room, the activity room, someone else’s room (by the way, DO NOT DO THIS. It ends badly. Most people don’t buy the whole “I am lost and can’t find my room” bit even if it’s true. They assume you are stealing or wanting to get extra friendly if you know what I mean. I was neither of those things.)
I was assigned to a room kindly nicknamed The Dungeon by the frequent flyers at this particular rehab. I wish I was joking. It acquired this name by being the least appealing one on the unit related to its location and its lack of a television. Side note: Every other room did have its own television. My roomie, God love her, would try not to laugh and say, “Are you seriously lost again?” And then she’d lead me back to our room like a lost puppy or child. This was her second tour of duty in this particular rehab, so she was very well acclimated to the ins and outs and the do’s and dont’s. That was very helpful. Unfortunate for her, but very useful to ole Lost Lindsey.
Learning to feel again. I drank my feelings away. What I didn’t realize was that I was drinking away the good ones, too. Sadness, loss, loneliness, abandonment, anger, betrayal, pain–I think that’s why many of us turn to a substance. But, it also creates a numbing effect, an epidural acting on your feelings, blocking out all those belly laughs, and all the joy and excitement and love. Humans need to feel all the things to grow and mature and understand one another. Drinking (for most) creates this concrete roadblock that prevents us from truly feeling and appreciating our feelings. If you’ve never been sad or hurt, how can you appreciate what happiness feels like? It’s like a rich man who has never experienced poverty. Can the riches truly be appreciated? I wouldn’t know, but I don’t think so.
The femur is the largest bone in the human body. It’s the only bone located in the upper region of your leg. And it’s a BFD if it’s injured. For those of you who didn’t sit in nursing school with me, my instructor (the one with many-a-screw-loose) taught us that there are BDDs (Big Damn Deals) in nursing, and then there are BFDs. I am sure you can figure out what that stands for. So, when dismantling your skeleton–all those pesky bones representing your history, your mistakes, your story–the ones you need to let go and bury…eventually, don’t start with the femur. That will come when the timing is appropriate. It’s the big one that’s best dealt with when you are ready. You may not even realize it’s been buried until it’s gone. Life is funny like that. Sometimes you are working on yourself, letting things go, letting the course follow its natural path, and then poof–a weight it lifted. A bone is buried. It could be a resentment or a grudge you are holding on to. It could be self-love you’ve been withholding. I don’t know what mine is yet, but I will get to it eventually. Bone by bone.