I’m Doing This for Me
The greatest paradox I faced when I was trying to quit was that I couldn’t do it for my family. I have a wonderful, caring family that is the center of my life. Waking up each morning, in my shameful, “I’m a piece of shit,” “I did it again,” “I’ll try again today” moments before dragging my ass out of bed to face the day (or staying in bed for as long as I could), I would think about how I was letting everyone down. Why couldn’t I quit for my beautiful child? Would he tell his friends that his dad died from alcohol? Would I leave my wife without a partner because of my own selfish desire to get drunk every night?
These were the wrong questions to ask. They were valid questions, but they framed my situation in a way that I couldn’t do anything about it. Of course I loved them. Of course I wanted to continue to be a loving and supportive parent and partner. But that wasn’t working. I needed something else.
Saying that I was doing this for me didn’t help initially. I parroted the line “you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself first.” It’s a good line, and anyone who’s flown on a commercial airline has heard it, so it’s relatable. But it’s way too simple and ignores the really hard work that it takes to actually recenter the problem on one’s self. I needed something more (though I didn’t know that for a while).
My breakthrough was a loving-kindess meditation that many of us did together in a group meeting. When I first learned it (long before I made my “big” effort to get sober) it was projected outward. You would think about someone really close to you, someone you really cared about, and say
May you be filled with loving kindness
May you be safe from inner and outer danger
May you be well in body and mind
May you live with ease
May you be happy
Next you would think about someone who you’re not close to, maybe a person you see often, like the clerk at a store or an acquaintance at work, and recite the same meditation
May you be filled with loving kindness
May you be safe from inner and outer danger
May you be well in body and mind
May you live with ease
May you be happy
And finally (again, this is how I originally learned it) you would focus on someone who you have a difficult relationship with. This could be someone in your family or someone else you know very well–or it could be someone in the greater world. I would often choose a world leader with whom I was having issues.
May you be filled with loving kindness
May you be safe from inner and outer danger
May you be well in body and mind
May you live with ease
May you be happy
The “new” way I learned it (which was only new to me) put myself first. This was not an innovation. If you search online for loving-kindness meditation or “metta” (the sanskrit name for this meditation) you will often find that it puts you first. But it was new to me.
May I be filled with loving kindness
May I be safe from inner and outer danger
May I be well in body and mind
May I live with ease
May I be happy
This was astonishing for me. And it didn’t do much for me the first, second, third time. It didn’t penetrate. And words/meditations/mantras often take some time to seep in and rewire the brain. But one day the person leading my meeting positioned it like this: Think about yourself as a child. Think about what you’re wearing, what your hair looks like, the expression on your face. Maybe think about a school picture of yourself that you remember. Put that in your mind and repeat these lines
May I be filled with loving kindness
May I be safe from inner and outer danger
May I be well in body and mind
May I live with ease
May I be happy
I did it and I broke down, sobbing. I was giving myself loving-kindness as a child, as an innocent child who had never had a drink. Someone for whom the whole world was something not yet experienced. It broke me in the most beautiful way and I carry this memory vividly to this day.
I share this with you because I had a profound experience treating my unsullied self with unconditional love. Your childhood was likely different from mine (and everyone else’s) but there was a time when you didn’t drink, when you didn’t do things that made you ashamed in the morning and wanting to stay in bed all day. I found that moment, frozen in time in a photograph of myself as a nine-year-old boy, with my hair combed badly, wearing my favorite flannel shirt. I was smiling. And I made myself cry buckets when I gave that child these words
May I be filled with loving kindness
May I be safe from inner and outer danger
May I be well in body and mind
May I live with ease
May I be happy
Even now as I write this I’m overcome with a swell of emotion and affection for this child in me, this part of who I’ve become. But I don’t cry (OK maybe a little bit) and it broke down an internal barrier I had to realizing the love I have for myself. I’ve said in the past that I used to not love myself and that I had to relearn it. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m starting to suspect that I still loved myself but had forgotten how to tell myself. That I had put a ton of garbage in the way of that self-love that made it impossible to see anymore. But either way, I found that thread and followed it back to that nine-year-old David and closed the loop.
Take some time today to give yourself loving-kindness. If you can find a meditation group where you can sit together, it might be easier or even more powerful. But even doing it quietly, by yourself, wherever you feel safe from inner and outer danger, can be a powerful experience.
I love you,
David
