addictions

 By the time I was a few years out of diapers, I was addicted to sugar. It was the only way I knew how to regulate my nervous system before I even knew I had a nervous system that needed regulating. All I knew was that the adults were unpredictable, sometimes smiling, sometimes raging, and I did not know which face I’d meet when I entered a room. Sugar calmed my pounding heart, elevating me several floors above the fear that nibbled away at my brain.

Sugar made everything okay.

I stole candy from the corner drug store, panhandled for spare change at the local movie theater, helped myself to a few of the dollar bills in my mother’s wallet. I traded the carefully wrapped tuna and pickle sandwiches in my school lunch box for Twinkies. 

At various times as an adult I’ve been addicted to cigarettes, pot, sex, and despite everything I know about nutrition – occasionally, still, sugar.

But lately I’ve uncovered another addiction, swimming silently in the black bottom waters of my psyche. I’m addicted to appeasement, to people- pleasing, to accommodation. To self-sacrifice. Saying yes I’d love to see you saying oh really how interesting saying yes tell me more. 

This may sound like good manners, like being a good friend, but under all that smile and shimmer is the child who feared unpredictable rage, ice cold withdrawal, punishment because Mama was having a really bad day. The child who learned to read the weather report on the face of the adult, learned to smile, to joke, to offer an arm, a leg, anything to feed the narcissistic beast. A child who learned to betray herself and hide in plain sight. 

 I became a master at rescuing others from their own discomfort. I’ve eaten meals when I wasn’t hungry with people I didn’t like. I’ve had sex with men who wanted me, and who I was afraid of offending by saying no. Three of them showed up in my dream last night – the car mechanic, the history teacher, the lifeguard, just in case I needed a reminder about how accommodating I could be.

This is the addiction that has been feeding off my life force and crashing my adrenals.

So. I’m working on it, but news flash: it’s hard. Setting a boundary means feeling the anxiety that the appeasement was meant to avoid. Holding to a boundary means resisting the burning impulse to take it all back. Feeling the anxiety leads to feeling the grief and the rage over having given myself away. Oh yes really I’d love to see you (lie) please come for dinner, honestly, I’m fascinated by your endless self-referring stories,(bullshit) and I’ll overlook the fact that you never ask how I am because the child still believes appeasement is the way to safety. 

Wasn’t that Chamberlain’s hope with Hitler?  

It took pot, mushrooms, acid and peyote to come down, to find the basement of my being where the bitch lived. The one who didn’t give a damn, who couldn’t care less about what anyone else was feeling. 

Hey, what about me? She was screaming in the dark. What the fuck about me? What? You have something against Jewish girls from Queens who grew up roller skating on cement, who stole all her clothes, tucked candy bars from the drug store in the front side and back pockets of her jeans. What? You’re only nice to everyone else?

She had a point. I liked hanging out with her. She hated most of the people I was being nice to and spared no words telling me so. She farted when she got bored in public, ate with her fingers, let the hostess do the dishes.

Listen, I finally had to say, we need to negotiate. Back off a bit. Get some manners for christsake. I promise I won’t shut you down into the basement again, but sheesh, be a bit polite when it’s strategic. 

She took the gum out of her mouth and pasted it behind her ear. OK she said. Deal for now.

And yes of course my heart has genuine impulses towards love and connection that have nothing to do with people –  pleasing. But it means discriminating between the best of me from the survival skills that no longer serve me. I am in the fairy tale castle, sorting grains of rice. What liberates me, what chains me. What makes my heart sing, what shuts me down. Who talks with me, who talks at me. Who do I appease and why.

Look out the castle window and count the stars scratching their way through the coal black night, yearning to shine. Radiant, pulsing, semaphoring the gospel: it’s not too late. It’s never too late to return home, to greet yourself at the door, to rest awhile in the warmth and comfort of your own true self.