Stepping Out of the Arena (Part One)

It was my first opportunity in 7 days to have a drink. My daughter had asked me to help her dry out and, with her doctor’s supervision, I'd agreed. I'd asked for two weeks vacation time from work. She'd started dragging herself to AA meetings. We'd made a plan to begin in one week. We did and this was day 7 of the  plan.




The trunk of my car had a box of old bottles of vermouth, vanilla extract, liquors in various unpalatable flavors, one open bottle half full of red wine, some gin and some vodka. . . oh yeah, some Listerine and a few designer beers a friend stores at my house for when we have a movie night. I had planned to drop them off somewhere but there hadn’t been time.

On the evening we began I locked the car and started carrying the keys belted to my body. I slept across the exit to her bedroom like an old hound wanting to protect her though I knew in that regard I was helpless as she. At least she’d have to crawl over my body to get out and maybe something about the sight of me there on the blow-up bed across the entrance, head lamp illuminating my book, water, Chapstick, alarm clock, battery-operated candle beside me would remind her of how much she was loved. Or at least give her a laugh. This was definitely an amateur operation.



The first week I attended daily AA meetings with her. She was titrating off alcohol (from her maintenance dosage of 32 oz of vodka a day) with a starting dose of 7 oz the first day. I gave them to her with water every 2.5 hours. After that we reduced the amount by one ounce each day and increased the time between. The seventh day we were in a new world. The first day of sobriety.



We’re moving through our two week island together in a hallowed state. It’s impossible to describe. A scenario that would be ill-advised under almost any circumstance, a mother providing detox services for her adult daughter, a process that could have gone wrong a dozen ways—even way wrong—turned out to be, as my gut was telling me it would be, supported by a mysterious and holy Something.



So sometime after the first week I felt I no longer need, or should, accompany her to meetings. I dropped her off. By then she knew people who were truly happy to see she’d made another meeting and who embraced her before she even made it through the door.



“Did your guard dog let you off the hook?” one of them asked. “Yeah, I think she’s having a kind-of hard time with it,” my girl replies as they walk in together. She has no idea. It was easier to let her get on the school bus for the first day of kindergarten than this. My vision was obscured by my own rain as I drove on to Wal-Mart for supplies we needed: E-cig’s, club soda, AA batteries. And I kept thinking about the little glass I’d stuck in the box of booze just in case I wanted to have a congratulatory toast to us while she was in the meeting.



I know. I know.



But, I rationalized, I could have it. I am not an alcoholic. I have my two glasses of wine or my martini at night before dinner but that’s all. And not every night. It’s a pleasant habit, a quick relaxer after work, a social lubricant when I’m with a friend. I don't drink during dinner. I don't drink after. I enjoy it but I hadn’t missed it at all during the last week. Still, the habit was there. And the question popped into my mind the minute I was alone.



If all this inner angst was happening to me the first minute I was by myself, what would it be like for my daughter?



I thought about it all the way to the store; thought about pouring that little glass of wine and enjoying it, maybe in the parking lot. The image of that scenario didn't do much to make it seem like a good idea. Then I thought about how wine smell would be on my breath. I’d have to get breath freshener. Did I think I’d have to hide it? That's not me. I also had this niggling sense that I would be breaking the bubble of whatever subtle protective energy, whatever synergy, we’d been floating through the whole last week.



I decided to shop first then see how I felt. As I locked the car I popped the trunk for easy access on my return. Crossing the parking lot the two ‘sides’ of the argument—because it had become an argument—were duking it out in my head.



I got a cart, pushed it into the store and stopped, listening to the sounds of combat. That’s the moment I recognized I was in an arena from which no one can ever claim a true win. Standing frozen with my shopping cart, as oblivious of the external world as a street person with delirium, I took tally.



Suppose the side of the angels won a round and I exercised my will power to refrain from drinking that glass of wine. I’d still think about it. The opposition would make certain I did. I’d feel virtuous, which is always trouble for me.



Or if I did drink it, would guilt launch the old self-hate tapes I can always tune into if I make a mistake? Likely so. Either way I would fall from the state of grace my daughter and I had been living in for 7 days. The rich, supported calm in which we'd been moving would be violated.



Still the fight raged on. “I deserve. . . I shouldn’t. . .Don't do it. . .I can if I want.”



No, this argument can not be won. Frozen, people pushing by me on both sides, I saw this struggle for what it was, a tragic form of entertainment. . . a tiny tug of war in a tiny arena in which I’d let myself be trapped. I decided to step out of the arena and not participate. I shopped. I didn’t win. I didn’t lose. I didn’t drink. I shopped in peace and carried my silence within me.



In AA when you reach a point like this you pick up a phone, make your connection and a person more experienced than you will pull you out of that arena. I am dumbstruck by the beauty of this organization. It's an amateur operation too, and as I have found, we are safest, and perhaps our truest, when we remain that way.



On my way back to my car with my purchases I closed the trunk lid.



Maybe all obsession is at least a mild form of addiction—something we prefer doing, no matter how miserable it is, rather than live our lives. All I know is that this time I was able to open an ongoing program in a new window, one with a wider view. And it made a difference. And while I’ve not had these debates over alcohol before I’ve certainly had them over other kinds of issues.



Obsession is an arena, just an area of inner space that we cling to instead of facing the next thing in our life. Even when it’s killing us, that obsession, even when it’s a massacre, we're there because we don’t know how to get out, because we keep thinking we can win, because we lack the imagination to live.



I know that my daughter and I are still moving in this state of grace. Still expanding into the quiet times, still swinging to The Commitments while we clean. Still making good food to eat. Sometimes this week, looking at each other, it seems like the first time we gazed into each other’s eyes all those years ago, before the heart breaks and the hundreds of betrayals. It is the naked look. “There you are. Who are you? You have my heart."