Monthly Record: Six months post rehab

Dear Disease,
A friend who is an ER doctor says that she prefers her specialty because she always knows exactly what her primary goal is: keep the patient alive. To ease pain, diagnose illness, or dress a wound, that's important, but it all comes second to her prime directive. Keep the patient alive. The first months out of rehab felt like that to me: stay sober. Everything else was icing, had to be icing, because it took all I had to just address my primary goal: stay sober.

The past month has taken me beyond that one clear goal out into the world of shaping-up-my-act. I've gone back to work, had a birthday, navigated off-limits medication, started my spring project, had bad days and some very, very good ones. I've started some healthy habits. I've measured and recorded and kept track and made lists and other basic things that must have been taught the day I skipped class in People School. We go walking in our neighborhood on Saturday nights, and I have loved it, loved the quiet time with our two unruly hounds and our little girl zipping around on her scooter. I joined a Moms of Preschoolers group. I've gone to the movies with a grownup friend and we've met friends of Mimi's at parks for playdates.

It is scary out here, working without a net for the first time. I am no longer in full-fledged crisis, no longer just a patient. I am a wife, a mother, a sister, an employee, a friend, a daughter. Now it is time to apply what I have learned, to claim these identities and to show myself and others what I can do with them. I am learning as I go. It is definitely on-the-job training.

In the last month I've had moments as a mom that I wish I could bottle up and keep, and moments I so wish I could live over. I have had moments when I felt like a good wife, and moments when I was keenly aware of my shortcomings as one. I have done some things well and others poorly and in half a year I've compiled enough experiences to sift through them and look for patterns. I can start to build on what works and retool what doesn't. I can ask myself why I hurt someone and can have a reasonable expectation of learning from that and not doing it again. I can mend: I can mend me, and I can attempt to mend damage I have done.

Two strange things just happened. Yesterday, Jon and Mimi and the dogs and I were in a big pile on the living room floor and I suddenly exclaimed: "I love our house!" Jon looked at me as if I'd just announced that I love the Republican party. Since Mimi came home I have done nothing but complain about our too [small, old, hot, cold, etc. etc.] house. Then this morning we were racing around, communicating in short bursts when we passed each other in our various tasks, and I was starting to quiver with anxiety. Jon stopped and asked if I was all right. Stressed, I said. And I have yet another cold. And my shoulder hurts. But I'm happy, I said. I don't know why, but I am happy. Right here, right this minute, standing here in my kitchen, I FEEL HAPPY.

And for now, that is all I need to know.

Love,
Robin