There's something about the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that, as anyone who has experienced it knows, is somehow divinely inspired.
I can't explain why exactly it is that working the 12 Steps not only enables someone who compulsively drinks to stop, but results in a complete intrapersonal transformation the writers of the Big Book, AA's basic text, refers to as a "psychic change."
I hopped into and out of the program in varying intervals since I was 18. A large part of the reason I'd historically never benefited was due to an inherent inability to consistently follow through with anything until I was 31 and entered the psych hospital (yet again) and they finally identified my frontal lobe damage and executive dysfunction and put me on lithium. Finally, for the first time in my life, I responded favorably to medication.
The Lithium did something to screen out elements that prior to left me in a state of constant overstimulation which sent my moods bouncing from one uncontrollable extreme to another. It enabled me, over the course of the year that followed my picking up that white chip on January 10th, 2016 (what you do in your first meeting to signify that you've surrendered your drinking) to do something I'd never done before: get a sponsor (an experienced person in the program who serves as a guide) and work the Steps all the way through.
There was just something about this that gave me the first sense of stability and equilibrium I'd ever experienced.
If you consider the meaning of the word recovery, nothing about it denotes any kind of instantaneous happily ever after. In a coastal town that's been ravaged by a hurricane, the most important thing, of course, is to survive the storm. But afterwards? Inhabitants must contend with millions of dollars of damage that's been done, a monumental mess to clean up.
So this metaphor was made manifest for me. And I began my arduous ascent into wholeness, a commitment to sifting through so much wreckage and rebuilding my life.
2016: This was my first year of sobriety. I moved into a nicer apartment complex after living in a dumpy apartment in a bad corner of the city. I hired a lawyer and got every other weekend visits with my daughters. I worked all of my steps and struggled to maintain my commitment to the program when I lost one of my adjunct professor positions, and shortly thereafter, the other, when the school closed without warning. I found myself working at a daycare during the day and a grocery store at night and I was so exhausted. After being rejected by three imprints of PRH and HarperCollins Children and an unsuccessful rewrite, my agent dropped me. The amount of disappointment and setbacks were crushing. But I held on.
2017: This was my second year of sobriety. I went to work as a leasing agent for my apartment complex. I had enough money, health insurance. The custody of my children was moved from every other weekend into a 50/50 arrangement. I moved from a two bedroom apartment into a spacious three bedroom. That fall, I was laid off from my job and no longer had enough money to meet my needs. This disappointment threatened to take me under. I decided to go back to school and finish my Master of Arts in Teaching to become a secondary English teacher. More disappointments, more setbacks, but I held on.
2018: This was my third year of sobriety. I only had a semester of courses before I could do my student teaching. I relied on support from my parents and student loans to make it through. I spent that summer at my parents' in Tennessee scrubbing boats at a marina to make enough money to help cover my expenses. I drove three hours back and forth from my city to take the girls to stay with their biological father every two weeks. As my complex was beginning to be overrun with drugs and gun violence, I moved into a beautiful 1930's apartment in the nicest, safest part of my city. I completed my student teaching, finished my second Master's degree, and became a licensed English teacher.
2019: This was my fourth year of sobriety. I got a teaching job at an alternative school and for the first time in my life, I was making more than $40K a year and had health insurance. My girls' father had relapsed back into drugs and alcohol and was making poor choices. The courts awarded me full custody of my daughters and left him with weekend visits. The job with the school fell apart when a student assaulted me and I had to leave. Suddenly, I had no income and no way to support myself. I threw myself back into substituting but at a fraction of what I was making. I felt so overwhelmed and hopeless at even more disappointments and setbacks, but I held on. That summer, my partner of four years and I married. That fall, my daughters and I moved into his home in his city and our new life began. I picked up a job shortly thereafter as a SPED teacher in a middle school that was right across the parking lot.
2020: This was my fifth year of sobriety. When COVID hit and lockdown came, I was grateful to still be making my regular salary and be able to be at home with my daughters. We had endless days together, doing art, planting seeds, making up in so many ways for time we lost. I had the happy family in a beautiful home I'd always wanted. I was taken on that fall to teach 8th grade English. I began to experience troubling issues with bullying from my department chair and principal that weren't serving me. But I hung in. I pressed on.
2021: This was my sixth year of sobriety. I transferred into a 6th grade teaching position, but the stress and strain of the postpandemic world of secondary teaching in addition to the bullying I was enduring finally broke me. I had to leave my position in October and came very close to having a breakdown. It was a nightmare, losing benefits and pay again. But for the first time in six years since my agent dropped me, I returned to writing. I reimagined and rewrote the first two books in my series. I was re-evaluated by a neuropsychiatrist who added Ritalin to my medicine regime. This opened up a whole new world for me, and my family. My daughters switched to virtual learning. My husband stopped substituting in the public school and began to substitute at home. As continued to be the theme of my recovering life, anything that seemed bad could be a catalyst for things higher and better than I could have ever imagined. I had to keep myself grounded in faith that there was a God as I understood Him who knew me, loved me, had plans for me greater than I could imagine, that I was on my way toward as long as I didn't drink and kept working the steps. I was able to get into an online teaching position.
2022: This is my seventh year of sobriety. Everything about my life is more than everything I ever wanted. I have a happy marriage to the man who has been my best friend for seven years. I have full custody of my daughters. I have employment at home that gives me plenty of time to focus on writing. And I've made a comeback from the pain of the rejection I experienced during my first time attempting to publish that I would never have imagined myself capable. I'm now actively seeking a new agent for my book, and the amount of rejection that's hitting me over and over is just as disappointing and frustrating as all the other disappointments and frustrations that have come before. But just as each one of those were all leading me to something higher, something better, so I can confidently know that each rejection I face is doing the same. Every "no" is only pushing me that much closer to the only "yes" that's intended for me.
I'm not helpless, Paulina came to believe, and it was this belief that saved her. So it is for me. I'm not helpless. I don't ever give up. I haven't ever given up. And because of that, my daughters have their mother, and I have a life and a story that may be what someone out there, in time, is going to grasp onto to discover within themselves everything that I discovered...you're not helpless. You can survive.
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