I heard my critical voice today
like a wind-carried whisper
or a whistle from down a beach
a far-off squeak
a ticklish purr.

But this morning, instead of
reassurance within it
support and strength
and encouragement behind it
for the first time
I heard disease
in its thickest form
all sputters and judgments and growls.

Inside the simplest phrase
lay the covert beginnings
of countless drilling questions
waves of crushing inertia
bottomless bottles of shame…
“You should get up.”

The sun was just over the clouds.
The alarm had yet to sound.
“You should get up.”

My pulse quickened in defense
“What for!?” I shouted
down my mind’s foggy hallway
Was I to leap up, smiling?
Prepare steel-cut oatmeal
and caramelize bananas
for the still-sleeping children?
Fold the night’s laundry?
Write last week’s thank-you’s?
Recite thirty years of missed prayers
in these last lazy minutes?
Lose those lingering pounds?
Graduate college?

Perhaps with this ten-minute head start
I could dissect my family’s rage
reverse my years of despair
remember…discover? my strength.

“You should get up.”
Just eight minutes now.
Seven. Four.

I have seen addiction as a hyena
a slobbering beast in shadowed view
taut and pounce-ready.
But there is no such predator
no monster, no enemy.

It is me.
Just me
and this icy voice
which I am tuned to just today.
I am years into scratching
and fighting and writing and wailing…
today I am listening.
And instead of the oatmeal
the weight
the regret
I nuzzle back into the pillow.
I nurture myself. I pray.
I sigh for reprieve.
“You should get up.”

“Or not,” I smile…

Today
I hear what is true
It is not time for me
to get up.
It is time for me
to rise.

Note: I wrote this in March, after a particularly grueling week in my counseling group. I have Lee M. to thank for talking to me about my critical voice. Had he not told me what it sounded like — what everyone’s sounds like — I might never have heard mine.

Public Image Limited, Rise

There was a great piece in the New York Times magazine yesterday about addiction, about parenthood, about the truth as each person sees it. I was riveted as I read it. You can also click around and see the author of the piece in little video clips — he’s just as good at speaking as he is at writing. He says,

“To be an addict is to be something of a cognitive acrobat. You spread versions of yourself around, giving each person the truth he or she needs — you need, actually — to keep them at a remove. Let’s stipulate that I do not have a good memory, having recklessly sautéed my brain in fistfuls of pharmaceutical spices. Beyond impairment, there may be no more unreliable narrator than an addict. Recovered or not, I am someone who used my mouth to constantly create one more opportunity to get high.”

I’ve noticed this since being home and talking to folks who didn’t know of my issues with alcohol before I went to Ashley. My acrobatics were legendary, albeit largely unrecognized. I wouldn’t have considered myself a liar about who I was, but lies of omission are still lies in most camps, right? There’s still no real reason to tell people that while they were watching “Grey’s Anatomy” or peeking in on their sleeping children, I was drinking mouthwash in my garage; or that while they were at the pool this summer with their family I was in rehab next to the Chesapeake Bay praying for the strength to come home. If I don’t keep it green, though, I end up back there.

The mental gymnastics became exhausting after a while — why not just come clean to get clean and own it all? I say bravo to David Carr, who accepts both the gritty and the great, and writes the hell out of both.

Emmylou Harris, Deeper Well