starting over

On April 1, 2020, I walked back into the in-patient treatment center where I had previously spent 60 days.  I had walked out the same door just 100 days before.  I had been so confidant, so full of hope and surety, ready to return to my life as I knew it – but with more self-knowledge and less of the parts that had been making me crazy.  Those hundred days (and I only now did the math – it was, in fact, exactly 100 days) turned out to be some of the worst of my life.  I had done a lot of work, and uncovered a lot of buried trauma, but my world outside that safe haven had not changed at all.  It took just three days for me to start drinking again, though I hid it for a long time.  And as many times as I told myself I could stop, it got worse and worse, and then my cat died suddenly, and the world went into lockdown, and the threads that had been holding me together melted away.  And I fell apart.

By some crazy miracle, I ended up starting again, despite all the guilt and shame I felt at having to return.  Probably it was the fact that I was still quite drunk when the motions started for me to go back.  Nobody is as honest as a sad drunk girl at the end of her rope!  I think I may have even been the one to start everything rolling?  It is unclear at this time.  Those last days are… fuzzy, lets say.  And it doesn’t matter, because back I went, broken down into a weepy pile of despair that would finally do whatever it took.  30 days later I walked back out and got in my car and drove to Minnesota, where I would spend the next 6 months in sober living.  (I’m telling you, when you finally hit your own personal bottom, nothing is off the table.)

Rebuilding My Life, From the Ground Up

I arrived back in New Orleans in November to beautiful weather, a great new apartment, and the fanfare that comes only after a long absence.  I was home, and it was time to start rebuilding my real life.  My 10-year-old dog, Monkey, moved in with me.  I reconnected with some of my old friends.  I started volunteering at an animal shelter walking dogs, and planting trees around the city.  I lived alone for the first time in my life and fucking loved it.  I even got on the dating apps for the first time ever (I’d started seeing my ex-husband in 2007, when I was 23 and dating apps weren’t a thing) and went on some dates.  That was pretty horrifying at first, but I was hell bent on convincing myself and everyone else that it was so fun.  That first date I went on, maybe my first first date in my whole life (at 23, things would start up after hanging out with friends, and dates came later), where I couldn’t even dull the intense anxiety with anything because I was stupid sober… I think I almost had a heart attack from the stress of it!  But I was determined.  I would clean up the wreckage of my past here, find new purpose, fall in love again, or maybe reconnect and rebuild my relationship with my now ex-husband, and I would thrive.

This intense optimism carried me through that whole winter and into the next spring, right on past the one year mark that I had somehow locked onto as the point when my life would go back to normal.  Looking back, I can see the cracks that were forming, a bit of floundering about looking for purpose and meaning in my life.  But I was going to fake it until I made it!  It would all come together in the end, because it had to!

the one-two punch that nearly destroyed me

Then, on May 5^th, 2021, Monkey died.  It was very sudden.  When I woke up that day everything seemed fine.  As the morning wore on, it became clear that something was wrong – he was breathing weirdly, coughing a lot.  His distress became more clear, and I made him an emergency appointment at the vet.  Everything was still very restricted back then, covid style, so I wasn’t allowed to come in with him at all, but soon I was transporting him to the overnight animal emergency center where he would await the cardiologist that would see him first thing in the morning.  And a few hours later, I was rushing back to said facility as the end was imminent.  I didn’t make it in time.  All alone, I said my final goodbyes to my beloved friend and wept.

Up to this point, I’d been telling myself and everyone around me that “I still loved him, but I wasn’t in love with him anymore,” and other trite things, to convince myself that I was all good with the end of our 13-year relationship.  And while it was, in the long run, for the best that we split up, and it was probably easier that there was this very hard and clear end to any hope of us reuniting, it was still devastating.  All of a sudden, I wasn’t just mourning the loss of my Monkey, I was mourning everything – the loss of my entire life as I knew it.  In the course of 18 months, I lost my career, my husband and best friend, my social life and many of my less-close friends, my purpose and place in the world.  The life I had built was just… gone.

I don’t know exactly how long this went on, but I do remember later that summer a friend and I talking about everything, how I just couldn’t see the purpose of all this pain and suffering, or how it could possibly ever end.  I was always careful to make it all about the loss of my dog, my Monkey, because I felt like I wasn’t allowed to be so devastated about everything else, especially my Ex’s happiness.  But they told me about losing their own dog a few years back, and how similarly they’d felt at first, but it did get easier with time, the ache lessened, and they were able to move through it.  And now, they were using that horrific experience to help someone else, just like someone had told them they would when they were at their lowest.  First, I was mad about it.  Like, who the fuck did they think they were to tell me things could get better?!?  What absolute bull shit!  But it must have sunk in a little anyway, because I did start to turn a corner… or, at least, I could see the corner, and I started flopping along towards it, bitching and moaning the whole way.

coming back to life through travel

It was not long after that when I read about the re-opening of Kripalu after their covid closure.  It had been recommended to me while I was in treatment, a yoga retreat center in Massachusetts.  I didn’t really know what to expect, but I knew I had to get out of my house, and the idea of visiting family was way too overwhelming, so this seemed perfect.  Somewhere to go and sit with myself, meditate, be immersed in nature and healing.  Feel my stupid fucking feelings.  And with that as the focus of the trip, I decided to start it off with a road trip through Maine while I was at it – I’d fly into Boston and spend the night there, and then hike around the state for a week or so before grounding myself in spirituality at Kripalu.

Nothing went the way I had planned.  That first night, I finally got to my hotel and threw back the covers to get in bed, only to discover that the sheets were clearly dirty.  OK, I thought, got the inevitable hiccup out of the way!  I changed rooms and got some sleep, and the next morning headed for Portland.  I went to the most perfect farmers market, full of flowers and crisp air (it was August, and I was coming from a swamp, so this was particularly refreshing).  

Then I found a million-year-old oyster bar in sight of the harbor and had a delightful lunch.  So far, everything was better than I could have dreamed!  So, of course, because I am clearly not the master of poise and grace… I sprained my ankle.  As I was leaving the restaurant, there were steps down from the door that I did not see, and I went down hard.  As is my way when my clumsiness takes over, I popped right back up like nothing had happened, but by the time that I had hobbled down the half block to my car, I knew this was more than my normal embarrassing moment.  That shit hurt.

I was on a mission for nature and hiking and healing though!  This was my first solo vacation, ever!  Fuck that noise!  So I drove away from town thinking it would definitely be fine, maybe I couldn’t hike for a day or so, but I would adapt!  Dear reader, I was lying to myself again.  I had never sprained an ankle before, but there was no real hiking to be had on this trip.  I did adapt though – I got myself an ankle brace, and I drove to a lot of scenic overlooks, and a rock and mineral museum, and an old fort.  I went to the furthest point on the North-East coast, and then drove along it all the way south, stopping in little towns and Acadia National Park along the way.  I went up in a 420-foot bridge observatory at the Penobscot Narrows, the tallest in the world, and saw a waterfall that flowed backwards in Cobscock Bay.  I saw covered bridges and countless lighthouses, drove through enchanting forests, rested on deserted beaches, wandered in botanical gardens.  I stopped at quirky nonsense spots like Wild Blueberry Land and The Granite Garden Sculpture Park.  I ate oysters and lobster every single day, without fail.

I also had to call AAA twice – once, I locked my keys in my rental car, a thing I didn’t think possible in this modern push-start age!  And once, on a beautiful day when the sun had just come out after the rain, I got stuck in some mud.  That was a bad one. I had been looking for some tiny museum and knew I had passed it at some point, so I pulled onto the side of the road to look at my phone on this residential street with no curbs or sidewalk.  I didn’t realize how sodden the ground was, and when I tried to pull back out… well, the man of the house came out and screamed at me. So much that I cried, and a random passer-by yelled back at the man for being such a dick.  I never did make it to whatever museum I had been looking for.

And when I finally got to Kripalu, this mythical land of mindfulness and healing, I hated it.  I’m sure it could be wonderful in the right time, but it was the worst possible place for me at that moment.  So I left early!  This may sound like a simple solution, but for me it was revolutionary – I didn’t just suffer through something I hated because I thought I had to, or that I shouldn’t hate it, or that it would probably be good for me if I just stuck it out.  I didn’t like something, and without judgement or shame, I let it go!  Bonkers.  Fucking growth, am I right??

gaining perspective and freedom and hope

The whole trip was wonderful, though, bumps and all.  For the first time in months, I felt like I could breathe again.  It was almost like I didn’t just lose every single thing that had been important to me – I had lost a lot, but I had also gained a freedom that I had never known before.  It was like a switch was flipped and suddenly I could see the big picture.  My old life was over.  That was sad, and worth mourning, but now I could start again and dream up whatever life I wanted, with absolutely nothing holding me back.  I could travel on my own, and eat in restaurants on my own, and do whatever I fucking wanted all day, on my own, while I explored the world.  No one would tell me I was taking way to long in the museum.  No one would roll their eyes when I stopped at the random roadside attraction that was complete nonsense and silliness.  There was no one left to tell me I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, or had to.  And not just on this trip, but in my whole life.

When I got back to Boston, I found out Hurricane Ida was heading straight for New Orleans, so I delayed my trip home for a few days… but then that hurricane hit and knocked the only power tower for the entire city of New Orleans into the river.  There was only one!  For the whole dang city!!  Anyway, the power was out for the whole city for a month, so my two-week trip turned into six.  I stayed in Boston for a bit, then I took the train to New York City and explored Manhattan, then I spent a week with my sister and her family in the mountains of North Carolina, and then we drove down the Florida for a week at the beach with the rest of my family from St. Louis.  

By the time I rented a car and drove back to New Orleans, I might as well have been a different person.  My new life was starting.  I would leave New Orleans, after over 15 years.  Maybe I’d finally go to grad school for Food Science – I’ve always wanted to get my doctorate, just so I could be a doctor a food (which is obvi way better than being a medical doctor like every other woman in my family).  Maybe I would move abroad.  Maybe I would start some totally random new career that I hadn’t even thought of yet, like a vet tech or an artist or an astronaut!  (Spoiler alert, I did not do any of those things.  I moved back to Saint Paul, Minnesota, and am still here trying to figure out my next career.)

The point was that my life had lost a lot of its substance, but it had also lost all limits and boundaries.  I was in my late 30s, and I had a fresh start.  I hadn’t been able to see it before, the possibilities that came with this huge change in my life; I could only see the pain and the grief.  Travel had given me the distance I needed to gain perspective and see the whole picture, a picture that turned out not to be of a dismal swamp, but of a whole, bright, shiny world, where anything was possible.  I didn’t have to regret the past, nor shut the door on it, because I had made peace with it and found serenity and the courage to move forward.  I had stopped feeling sorry for myself and started feeling hopeful and interested in the world around me.  I could handle whatever came.  The world was my oyster, and I was free.