Wounded or Wise

I spoke before a group of police officers in my home town. It was their holiday party, and they asked me to do a presentation on addiction and an inspirational talk on recovery. The group contained some of the same officers that ‘knew’ me during my years of addiction. I give speeches all the time in my work in front of audiences of ten people to many hundreds, and speaking is something that I enjoy and look forward to.  However, on this afternoon, I found myself very nervous. Nearly sick, really; in fact it has been many years since I have been that nervous. Standing in front of this group of men and women, badges shining, hair combed perfectly and uniforms pressed with sharp creases, brought back all the memories and emotions from a hard time in my life. Then, the police were always the enemy.

I robbed homes. I broke into houses while families were away, and stole whatever I needed to pay for more glorious and necessary highs. To say I didn’t care would be untrue; I did. I carried heavy regret deep inside, which a clean bag of meth and a bottle of gin, might dull for awhile. I thought of the families more than I dared to admit, but as time passed I learned to push the thoughts and feelings away. The police haunted me.

So standing in front of these police men and women, some faces familiar some not, I was filled with ugly feelings of many years past. I did my best to set them aside, and began to tell my story. At the end, they stood and applauded. They asked questions, and one of the young officers asked me, “How does it feel to be wounded at such a young age?”

This question brought back many emotions. First I was enraged; how dare he judge me? It’s so easy to sit in your chair and call me wounded. I was ashamed. It has been a long time since I considered myself wounded. In fact I have spent fifteen and half years trying to heal my wounds from addiction. Then I felt sad. What if he is right and I am nothing more than a wounded person trying to masquerade as a healthy person?  Maybe, this is the tragedy of addiction, that I would never really be free. I will always be trying to get back to what I was never able to be. Maybe I will always be defined by my addiction.

But, in the middle of this spiral of emotion, it came to me:  I am not wounded. I am wise. I am wise in areas I never planned on being wise and I pray my children will never have to learn their wisdom the way I did.  I can tell you about the dark side of addiction. I can tell you what it feels like to sell your body for a gram of coke; I can tell you what it is like to see evil in the eyes of the man who is raping you in an alley; I can tell you what it is like to be on the edge of desperation, be willing to do anything just for one more hit of any chemical. I can tell you what it is like to feel hunger so deep that begging becomes an option and I can tell you what it feels like to be so cold that your body aches and your bones feel frozen. I can tell you what it feels like to miss your family so deeply that the human light inside almost flickers out. And I can tell you what it is like to face death completely alone, and being overcome with fear that it will not be a fleet of angels coming to take you home.

I can also tell you what it is like to recover from a “seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.” I can speak of the courage and tenacity it takes to stay sober one day at a time. I can tell you what it feels like to do an honest day’s work for the first time. I can tell you how it feels to come face to face with those I have harmed, standing in the doorways of every home I robbed. I can tell you how it feels to see my rapist and somehow come to terms with what he did to me and allow him the same opportunity to try to find recovery in the rooms of A.A. I can speak to the joy and exhilaration of becoming an All American swimmer only a few years after being an all American drug addict. I can tell you about how great it feels to be alive in the morning and how it feels to play with my children. I know what it means and how it feels to be in the grace of god and to be grateful for every moment that I am alive.

I said to the young officer, “I am no longer wounded. I am wise and I know how lucky I am to live the life I do, not because it is grand, but simply because it is. My wounds have closed and I am taking my rightful place in the world. I am a woman, who is a wife, a mother, a business owner, an author, an All American athlete, and All American drug addict with 15 years of soberity.  And I am proud to stand before you today, defined by none of them. I am truly free”

Sober and Shameless, Kw

Helping others

I posted on FB back in June about helping a drunk women outside a meeting I attended. This is the post:  

 

Tonight, I helped a drunk homeless woman get to the ER and off the cold street. She was outside a meeting; body shaking, tears rolling down her face, her belongings stuffed in a bag, completely alone, with no where to go. Wow, brings back terrible memories. I am grateful tonight, as a climb into my warm bed, so very grateful. But for the grace God go I...Sober and Grateful, Kw

 

The post on FB received great attention and many people commented and emailed me about the post and the extraordinary lengths I went to help her.

Over whelmed by the response I posted again.

 

You all give me way to much credit. I am not a saint, I am not even nice. Really I've been called many things over the years, intense, loyal, passionate, fierce, dark, wounded, but never nice. I could no more walk away from her last night, than my own children. She, as broken and lost as she was, is one of us. 'We alcoholics are like men who have lost their legs', we must stick together. I did what I did last night, because she is one of us, and by paying forward, I bought myself one more day of sobriety. Helping her helped me...that's way I helped, not because I am a saint but because I don't want to drink today and I never want to be in that place of complete despair ever again.

Sober and Shameless, but not nice, Kw

 

I have been thinking about the posts and the response that I continue to receive. I have been very humbled through the experience of the last year. I have been supported and encouraged to continue my work and my writing by thousands, most of whom I do not know, and most likely will never meet.

 

In my addiction, I was raped and beaten in a dark alley, in the late hours of the near freezing night. He left me, with my pants around my ankles, blood dripping from my face and a terrible ache between my legs, for dead. I remember laying there unable to move, frozen with fear and pain and an overwhelming feeling of deflation, as if he had torn a hole in my spirit and all hope or promise of a new day was leaking and evaporating in thin air. I felt invisible. How can no one see me? Why wont someone help me?

 

No one did. I pulled myself up from the ground, tired to put myself back together. I had no where to wash or clean myself, I stumbled back onto the the street and frantically looked for my next high. Oblivion, Sweet oblivion followed....

 

I have never forgotten that night, of course, not the rape. He, that, haunted me for years but what I remember most, what still sends chills down my spine, is that feeling of complete despair and hopelessness, of being completely alone. I am certain, that it was the loneliness and being invisible, that nearly drove me mad, not addiction, but the feeling that people were seeing right thorough me, as if I did not exist. I promised myself, that I would always see the lost hurting people, in the eyes of the drunk and addicted.

 

This is why I helped that women that night. She was drunk, completely, to the point that she could stand or sit. She actually fell off the bench and onto the ground. She could not speak. She mumbled. I had to look in her purse, to find an ID with her name on it. I found her DL with a beautiful picture of a healthy woman with clear eyes and brushed hair; a far cry from the woman who was in front of me. She was a shadow of the person she used to be. People from the meeting passed her, as if she was not there, she was sobbing, that drunk kind of sobbing, loud outside on the bench right in front of the meeting hall. 50 people walked right by her, in a hurry to get home or to the movie or to coffee or on a date or where ever they were rushing off to, as if she did not exist. She was invisable to them. My heart ached for her. I know that despair. I know how it feels to be bleeding, cracked wide open for all the world to see, with no one, willing or able to simply, acknowledge that you are alive.

 

Walking away from her, would have been walking away from myself.

 

Helping her, was making amends to myself and to the many addicts and alcoholics, I had to leave behind, when I got sober. Thank you for your undying support over the last year. Since Addicted aired, your support has changed me. I am stronger today. I take each of you with me into every intervention I have the privilege to facilitate.

 

You see me. You hear me. You support me. This has healed me more than you will ever know.

 

Again, I am no saint, please do not put me on a pedestal, I am just one, trying to make difference to the still suffering alcoholic. Each of you, have been a part of my healing and for this I am grateful.

 

Sober and Shameless, but not nice, Kw

The sounds of New York City bang my sleeping self awake. My head is aching and my eyes are hard to open, jet lag is wicked and the city garbage trucks don’t seem to care that I arrived late into JFK, checked in and collapsed into the hotel bed and fell fast to sleep, only four hours ago.

Stumbling to the window, peeking out the shade my eyes burn with the morning sun; it is a beautiful morning in New York and lucky for me there is a Starbucks right across the street from the hotel. I throw on my jeans and flip flops, and make my way to the familiar and glorious line of Starbucks.

I fill my large coffee with half and half, and sit, in the bar stool, facing the large window that looks out onto the bustling side walk of Seventh Avenue. I am overcome by a smell, one I know well. There is homeless man sitting next me, sipping water from cup, eyes down. The smell of homeless fills my nose and memories flow. I remember how it was to take refuge in coffee shops, early in the morning. The morning hours were the worst when I was homeless. The streets are cold and the passersby are busy, looking right through you. Form the second I opened my eyes to the moment I passed out, I was overwhelmed by the circumstances of my addiction and the hopelessness that I was going to die, out here on the cold ruthless streets: nameless and purposeless.

As I was lost in thought, there was voice that spoke between me and the homeless man, “The chairs are for paying customers only and you have only been drinking water. I am going to have to ask you to leave”

The barista could have speaking to me, 17 years ago. I turned to him and said, “Its okay, I will buy him a cup a coffee.”

I did. The homeless man said thank you. I said you are welcome. And then we sat, side by said without any words, worlds apart, and at the same time, more alike than different.

After he finished his cup of coffee he got up, walked out the door and disappeared into the busy morning sidewalk commute to nowhere.

I was asked later that morning, in an interview, “What it is important to you Kristina? Besides your children and family, what is important to you?”

“There was a time in my life where I would steal from you anything I could take as I was running out the door, and today, what is important to me, is that I leave something with you when I go. I had two choices this morning; ignore the homeless man or not. I chose not" That is it. I want to leave a footprint in the lives of those I come across, from the stranger in Starbucks, to the client in my office, to the lives of my children; I want to leave their lives better, when I am gone and out of sight.”
I am happy to be home. I am grateful to be living a life of recovery and for today, I am sober and shameless, Kw