I wanted so badly to believe that I had found my Garden of Eden. I was sober and in a relationship with a good looking man who could make me laugh until my sides hurt. We were in love and already planning our perfect wedding. Although his impatience and subtle demonstrations of disrespect seemed slightly crooked, I told myself the very words that every woman at some point in her life has found comfort in, This Time Will Be Different.
Prior to Narcissus and the one year I took to "be single and focus on my program"- a piece of direction I took very halfheartedly during that period-I had ended a 3 year relationship with a young artist and musician who had a heart of gold and an intimate affair with Irish Whiskey. His name was Tom. Last I heard about him, he had walked into an elderly woman's home in a black out, took off his shirt and than knocked over a lamp well he was trying to find a place to sleep. Needless to say he was arrested. I know I loved him. In spite of how unhealthy we both were, we shared something simple. Our relationship was characterized by the kind of love and acceptance that grows over time and is not easily compromised. In so many ways that relationship was healing for me, but, like so many connections between two people that are plagued by alcoholism, it did eventually grow sour. I wanted to get better and Tom just wanted to keep on drinking. The end was dramatic, painful and filled with promises and ultimatums. But the final days left me sick to my stomach and heart broken for the both of us. Today I look back at that time in my life and know that, more than anything, I just needed to be on my own, but couldn't, simply because the idea of not having a boyfriend and facing, alone, even the most incidental moments that occur through out every day life, seemed unbearable. I needed men just as much as I needed to drink. I was a puppet attached to the strings of addiction-shopping, sex, alcohol, drugs, eating disorders-it didn't matter. I couldn't function without the misguided direction of some form of physical distraction to pull me out of my own self-perpetuating, miserable reality.
So, it turned out, that Narcissus wasn't any different, maybe different wrapping but the same broken gift. Really we were both broken, with me it was just so much more obvious. For 9 miserable months we fought and I held on out of fear that this was my last chance, that if I let go I would destroy an opportunity for happiness and the world would never give me another one. I didn't understand God's will for me in this broken relationship and I did not have faith that there was something better out there. Fear of loneliness and rejection haunted me. If our failed relationship was my fault and I let it go and risked losing what I thought was true love, than what would become of me? I learned three valuable lessons in that relationship; one, that if we are constantly kicking and screaming, begging for happiness in the throws of darkness, than all we will ever find, is darkness; and two, that if my senses are telling me that something doesn't feel right and I keep looking for rightness through the one person who keeps delivering into the palms of my hands, a sense of wrong, than I will never feel balanced; and, lastly, that if I don't know who I am and what I want, I will never be able to share myself with somebody else. So I said goodbye and it was not pretty, but it was real and it was a decision that was true to my heart and I did not ever have to question if I did the right thing. I knew that if this relationship was meant to work out, it would. So I let faith, my friends and family, and the people in AA carry me through one of the most painful experiences of my life.
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