Shades of Alone

Tending to Endings (seventy)

This year John and I are spending the holiday season pretty much the same way we have since his surgery on October 1, hunkering down away from the various viruses that are out and about this season; his immune system is still drawn down to make his body more hospitable to the donor liver. Things are going well, and he will likely be able to stop many of the medications at the end of the month, but we don’t want to take unnecessary chances. For the holidays we plan to bundle up for walks with family members or connect over zoom.

While we look forward to the day when we can gather again, it feels like a festive holiday even with just the two of us. I even put up a tree, which is not something I do much now that the kids are grown. We are still basking in the afterglow of his having made it through a life-or-death story spectacularly well. He is even gearing up to (hopefully) play tennis in January!

We know we have a wide circle of friends and family who have kept abreast of our story and journeyed through much of this with us in spirit. All of this makes us feel less alone even though we don’t see many people and when we do, we are masked and six feet away, or outside in the cold walking briskly!

Thinking of all this during the holidays has reminded me of how some of my loneliest, most grief-filled days have been in December. The holidays didn’t cause the loneliness, but they certainly accentuated it, and this is true even though I don’t think I ever once was actually alone on Christmas.  

There was the loneliness of the first Christmas without my grandma Bedingfield (1983). Throughout my childhood, Christmas morning was defined by going to my grandparents’ house for cowboy coffee cake and oranges halved (each topped with a maraschino cherry) and gifts opened one at a time from youngest to oldest grandchild. How could Christmas even occur without my grandma?

There were the first holidays post-divorce (1999) when Gabe and Dylan were preschoolers and their dad and I entered the era of scheduling two Christmases in two different houses, each marked by absence and filled and with heartache and grief. That one took a long while to transform into something new, and the shadow of it still rears its head from time to time.

The loneliest of all, though, was in 1981. I was seventeen years old and had just returned home to Illinois after a failed attempt to move to Colorado for my senior year in high school to get residency so I could attend college in Boulder. Well, that was one way to tell the story. Another was that I moved to Colorado to outrun my drinking problem and the wreckage it was causing at school, at home, with friends, and even with myself. I was hoping for a reset, a new start in a new place with new people. A chance to do everything differently. Those familiar with addiction and recovery will not be surprised to hear that in Colorado my drinking and relationship problems only got worse.

That year, I sat with my parents and my two younger sisters, around the tree decorated with ornaments from our childhood. I opened a box from my mom that held a full-length puffy winter coat that I instantly hated because it emphasized how ugly and huge I was (I wasn’t ugly or huge). I am sure after Christmas I returned it the way I returned everything my mom gave me during those years.

What I felt was not the magic of Christmas or the love of my family, but shame and fear and loneliness so deep I couldn’t see a way out. I carried secrets, a tangled mess of my own risky behavior and sexual trauma from abuse and fear that I was pregnant (I wasn’t). I carried the terrifying knowledge that I couldn’t stop drinking even when I tried, even when the stakes were very high.

And, there was a deeper secret below all that. I didn’t see how stopping would help. Alcohol had been a solution for all my unsolvable problems: for anxiety, for an eating disorder, for a pervasive sense of self-loathing that used to come and go and now just stayed. Alcohol had stopped working; it no longer took away the pain. But where would I be without it?

I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone all of this on that morning. Certainly not my parents. I think back to that time now and wonder why. I knew intellectually that I was loved, even when I couldn’t feel my parents’ love. Was it fear of being controlled? Or of hurting them? Disappointing them? Maybe all of the above, though the last rings especially true. I also sensed that in the that telling, I would acknowledge the problem was real.

As it turned out, I didn’t have to start with telling those who loved me most, and I didn’t even have to start with everything. I called an acquaintance from high school who I heard had stopped drinking through a recovery program. On Christmas, he called me back and connected me with a group of people who were not at all baffled by the fact that I kept drinking even when I didn’t want to.

While 1981 may have been my loneliest Christmas, it also ended up being my first sober day, which is to say, it was also my best. It was the beginning of finding a new way of life and a community of friends and a sense of purpose and eventually a way to repair most of those damaged relationships. It led to a long string of sober days that continues today.

It might be tempting after all these years to view that time as a teenage stage that I was bound to outgrow. But overcoming addiction is no sure thing, even for a middle-class white kid in a home filled with Christmas lights and love. Alcohol poisoning, car accidents, suicide–all of them were quite possible. Not every teen makes it through such dangerous terrain. I never take it for granted that I have.

If you have been reading Tending to Endings for any length of time, you know I am all about sharing our stories. It is not because I think talking fixes everything. It doesn’t. But for me storytelling and storylistening with those who understand—whether it’s the experience of addiction, or what it’s like to share custody of kids, or the grief of losing a grandparent or a mom—is one way I find sturdier, more expansive ground for the next step.

There is a saying that has become popular in the recovery community in recent years: the opposite of addiction is connection. That seems right to me. Healing has meant connecting in an honest and imperfect way to people both inside and outside of recovery circles including my family. It has meant connecting to my own intuition and the natural world and a mysterious and creative thrum that is more than me, and also, me.

And it has led me to find new meaning and purpose in old stories. Sometimes they can be helpful to others who are going through their first post-divorce holiday season or their first sober one or the tenth where there is a particular, empty chair at the table. And even my own stories change with time. When I think back to that huge, puffy, warm coat my mom gave me, all I see now is how much she loved me!

This year while John and I hibernate in the warmth of our most recent story, I am wishing you communion with all that brings you peace and meaning this season. Whether you are worried about someone, or joyously gathering, or sitting this one out, or grieving a hard loss, or some combination of all these things, I wish you connection to community that understands and to whatever inner voice sustains you.

I wish you peace, and I send you love,

Laura

More Resources

Al-anon Family Groups at al-anon.org

Alcoholics Anonymous at aa.org

Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988lifeline.org

Resources on loss and grief: https://grief.com

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