Five Year Chip

I came to being a non-drinker in an unusual way, and I say that as if there's a usual way. Multiple motivations exist for eliminating alcohol from our lives: health, religion, civic responsibilities, spiritual reflection, treating addiction, or even required-by-law. A favorite story of how someone came to be sober is from my brother Michael, 61. I won awards for my humorous and poignant short stories written about our coming-of-age years as the unattended children of 1970's suburban privilege. ("Family Time" by Gillian Zed.) Much of that time I was covering up, cleaning up, or coping with, my idolized brother's escalating addiction to liquor. He, like our father, was a mean drunk.

Co dependency: we used to call it love.

When he was 37, Michael was ordered to do 30 days sobriety by the courts, and he did his time, attended AA meetings, got counseling, had his pee tested. He's a US Veteran, a former biker, and generally a 'Don't tread on me' kinda guy, so that demonstrated extreme tolerance for somebody else's rules. His bros at the bar had a calendar with red X's marking down his required time and when the highly anticipated day arrived, Michael did not walk through the doors. He had - in spite of himself- listened in those meetings, and some of it rang pretty-damn-true as to the potential source of his life's fuck ups. The drinking buddies hunted him down, wanting to know when the party was going to start??! But, without the blinders of alcohol, Mike had recognized the fork in the road ahead of him. He saw the choice for the second half of his life, building healthy relationships with his children, reconnecting to family, creating a useful existence, and by the grace of god, he took it. After a lifetime of booze being his best friend, that was brave as hell.

"You know what, guys," he said to the beer-in-hand crowd, "I'm gonna give it another day." He has not had a drink in 25 years. One day at a time.

Gillian Zed, brother Michael & Mum Fall 2019

If you'd told me in my early teens - when we were hustling pool on the boardwalks of New Jersey, selling pot at the top of our brick home's sweeping spiral staircase, and hanging out in a chopper shop - that Michael would one day give up drinking, for good, I'd have called you delusional.

I make a distinction for myself between being a 'non-drinker' and being 'sober' because I smoke a lot of pot. Aside from pregnancy, I've smoked weed my entire adult life. For medicinal reasons, for recreation, cannabis is my anti-depressant and coping medicine. I live where it's legal and at 59, a breast cancer - and now spine surgery- survivor, honestly I could give zero fucks if you think it's a bad idea. But, I also respect that to some people struggling with recovery, smoking pot is next door to drinking, or using, and I'm not about to welcome them on board my boat that does not float solidly on the 12-step program. I believe in, can testify to, the power of the program to, as the Avett Brothers so poetically put it, "Make men out of monsters", but I'm a spectator to AA. I'd never try to fly under the false colors of someone who is 'SOBER' because I recognize that's a whole level of work that I'm not doing, or interested in doing.

No steps for me. No higher power (I actually do believe in the power of the Universe, so box that up how ever you want,) No meetings, fellowship, sponsor, or sharing. Sorry, no.

The Forsyth Hotel, Georgetown, Seattle

Not drinking is a choice for me. Not a requirement. Sadly, after being raised and surrounded socially by alcoholics, I am very clear about the ugly physical and crippling mental addiction associated with the disease of alcoholism. Yeah, I don't have that. It was so unattractive to me after years of Mike's bullshit, I didn't really drink until my 30's, required as part of a 'show biz wife' Hollywood lifestyle from my first marriage. My heaviest drinking came during breast cancer recovery: a year living above a bar in a strange neighborhood. I made some of the best friends of my life on that bar stool.

Still, in choosing to remove booze from my life, I also, inadvertently, diverted myself away from a litany of bad behavior and some very depressing people. I lost weight. I also lost 'friends' who just weren't comfortable sitting across from a ginger ale. 

I've written previously -on this blog and else where- about the devastating and tragic loss of my best friend Terri and the subsequent fallout in my life of crippling grief and depression. (In comparison, it made surviving breast cancer look like getting a cavity filled.) It was that event- loosing a young, vibrant, funny as fuck, 33 year old woman to the decimation of full blown, untreated, addiction- that facilitated a dramatic, life-changing decision for me. People in recovery often speak of their turning points in terms of hitting rock bottom. Their breaking  point of no return, like my brother's fork in the road, the get-saved-or-die-place. 

Looking back, I'm devastated realizing the coping-with-cancer drinking phase of my late 40's, overlapped with Terri's early-but-ascending commitment, emotionally, physically and economically, to getting and staying drunk 24x7, which began in her late 20's. I never saw it coming. Even after all those years dealing with Michael, I missed it entirely. I was stunned discovering the depths of her fall in the five years since I moved away. I listened to everyone's stories, peeling back moldy layer after layer, in a Seattle hospital waiting room, while she lay in what I knew was an irreversible vegetative state. I swung emotionally between remorse at failing to know what was going on, unable to save her, and fierce anger that she was so neglected by those who were supposedly closest to her. 

So, in reality, it wasn't MY rock bottom that flipped the switch for me to walk away from liquor and all the lies it told. It was my closest friend's decent to a hell she would never recover from. 

People in AA - or any recovery program really- sanctify specific dates for what they represent: a personal achievement. The day of their last fix, sobriety date, 'clean' anniversary, often acknowledged annually at their regular group meeting, with a cake, or at minimum, a chip. A chip is essentially a small disc 'trophy' recognizing your accomplishment of time kept sober. Folks put them on key chains, or in their pockets as talismans and reminders. There are several versions of chips, often including the Serenity Prayer and the AA symbol. My brother's sobriety birthday is- no irony here- St. Patrick's Day. (I'm sure he has a good story for that one.) He was gifted a fancy metal coin chip for his 20th.

Terri with my 'Fuzzy Palmer', Georgetown

My 'stopped drinking' date is the same as the day Terri stopped breathing. Today. 3/26/15. So, as intended, I am forced to associate this horrible date, one of the worst days of my life, with one of the most powerful decisions I have ever made for myself. And today it is five years.

In breast cancer world, five years is a magic mark. No recurrence can indicate full remission for certain types of cancers: you're in recovery mode, not the 'will it come back' nightmare. It's a goal post to pass with flying colors and joy. (Passing the ten year post-cancer mark for me was like brushing my hands off after a stint in the garden, that's done, Mother Nature- take it from here!) But in grief, I'm not sure where five years has brought me. I cry less, true. I recall more Terri memories that make me laugh and less that piss me off. I have JC, her sister, in my life now, and she has me. I'm writing- and fucking sharing -about it all. So, sure, I'll take the five year chip. I've earned it.

People need support to ensure their success with big life changes that have the intention of improving health and well being. As it turned out, I had a running start on my non-drinking lifestyle because my husband had quit drinking six months previously, seeking relief from debilitating acid reflux. (It worked.) He continued to supply my pinot and I'd order a drink if we went out. It wasn't a big deal. But when this all went down I warned him on the phone to clean out whatever booze was still in the house: 'I'm not going to drink for a year. It's too much.' It's been a much easier path to maintain as a couple. It is not a decision we re-negotiate everyday; it's second nature now. We're still big fans of cuisine, but when we waive off the wine list, the server's disappointment is palpable. Being non-drinkers hasn't expanded our lives socially in Sonoma Valley, go figure.

Much like my brother's friends, my Georgetown crowd were astounded by my decision. I presented it as I felt it: a way to honor Terri for the next year. Mourning. Shiva. I knew every sad thought would be followed by the desire for a numbing elixir in the form of a rich red wine, well chilled vodka, or a frosty beer, and there was going to be a lot of sad thoughts.

The year arrived, and I visited Seattle to recognize the anniversary with folks, ready to 'toast' our friend. They were again perplexed at me saying I was going to continue to not drink, for an undetermined amount of time. There's no easier way to shake the foundation of a self-professed 'functional alcoholic' then to tell them you voluntarily gave up drinking. That weekend I watched, bored, as our circle of friends, in the name of Terri, drank themselves silly night after night. Weed would never catch me up to their booze buzz, and eventually I'd leave, unnoticed, to walk back 'home' in the dark, dampness of industrial Georgetown. 

Mementos in the cookie jar.

In knowing my recovery from the deepest of grief, with its abyss of pain and depression, is possible, I know also that I will continue to choose to not drink. I miss many aspects of alcohol, especially with its embedded presence in the community I currently live in. (It's not called 'Grape Country'.) But, like my brother, husband, and many other family and friends before me, when I lost Terri, I saw a choice and the potential consequences. I felt I had paid a big price for participating in a liquor-laced lifestyle. 

I'll never return to those painful times. 

Occasionally I spy a particularly attractive cocktail in a restaurant, or smell a olive-rich dirty martini wafting by me at a bar, or spot the label for that favorite pricey pinot noir we used to buy by the case because I was worried I'd run out, and I do a little double take. It's like a milli-second of 'Yummm!'. A very old habit. It goes away quickly, usually with a smile. 

But sometimes, often on an emotional trigger date, an anniversary, a birthday, the entire Christmas season, I will start to think about how good a drink would taste. Usually in the car, between destinations, it goes like this: I really want a drink! What bar is nearby, what would I order, what would it taste like, wouldn't it be delicious, isn't this a great idea, NO, no, no it's not a fucking good idea, why am I even thinking about this?

And then I'll see the date, often 26, Terri's number, and recognize the pain prompt my body felt even before my brain. Fuck me, that explains it. God damn subconscious. And I drive by that bar, go home and pop a ginger ale, smoke some pot, pet my cat, and I process the memories. I acknowledge the pain and try to move past it. Alcohol is the siren of self-destruction that depression tells us is comfort: a lie I can rise above, and refute, again and again. In my heart, I'm committed to my health, my recovery, my journey, and not drinking is intrinsic to that .

I'm gonna give it another day.

###
Dedicated with much love to Becca @reblouread who really did the fucking work to earn her 10 year chip January 2020. 

A Surprise Third Act

Niece Tabitha & Gillian Zed, Kailua  Photo @hoff96734

Six months. It can be a lifetime. It can be a deadline. It is one of those increments that's beyond subjective. It's a malleable timeline. It can go fast, or inch along at a glacial pace. It marks a half a year, or two fiscal quarters, and potentially two seasons. I lost Spring & Summer of 2019. Because, in March, I woke up unable to use my left leg or foot, finding it paralyzed, but not without excruciating pain.

I don’t want to recount the blow-by-blow on my injury because it won’t help anyone- especially me- to relive all the truly agonizing steps towards being able to have enough concentration to even attempt to blog. I started this post at the six month mark. It's now been ten months.

I was so smug, thinking a decade behind me surviving breast cancer, made me exempt from further health challenges. I agreed completely with an old friend who wrote recently, saying they felt I had ‘been through enough.’ But I ignored a gnawing backache for years. YEARS. In my late 50’s I physically flipped houses, moved furniture, painted walls and did landscaping, all the while choosing to work through the discomfort thinking it was temporary. In fact, it was the canary dying in the coal mine. I brushed the little yellow feathered body aside. There was more than one.

So, on a Monday morning, weeks after turning 58, trying to get up from bed, I screamed for my husband and said something I have never said in my adult life: “Take me to the ER.”

Support following a traumatic life experience looks like different things to folks. Similar to the ‘love languages’, care and concern can manifest in a variety of ways. I learned this to my joy, as well as deep disappointment when realizing that, although in my new community for several years, I did not have a true friend. Not. A. One. No one beat a path to my door with a casserole. I got a few texts. A funny card, mailed from a client, (after I'd run into her husband three months in, while wearing a back brace, with cane,) was a bright spot.  I asked someone considered a good pal of three years, to come hang out a few days post op because I had run out of family to keep me company, and she came for a few hours, but I didn’t hear from her again. Not. A. Word.

This revelation resulted in a great deal of self-reflection, wondering if I was, in fact, that undesirable as a friend? Or had I not contributed any energy towards these imaginary relationships, and this acrid desert of kindness, the result? I reviewed my actions. No, fuck that. I was present for these people. I listened to their family dramas. I helped them professionally for no monetary gain. I'd initiated social outings, given gifts. And, I tolerated their bullshit. It was not enough social currency apparently: I’d wasted that investment in several people.

That was another blow to my balance, beyond the shattered-into-pieces-disc between L4 and L5. I struggled for solid footing.

But there were shining lights at the end of my seemingly endless road to recovery. After losing my dear friend Terri almost five years ago, her sister JC and I have become very close. We’ve managed to usually spend the painful anniversary of Terri’s passing together, with me venturing to Seattle. But in 2019, I offered JC a ‘wine country weekend’ and she bought a plane ticket.  We were going to spend time smoking weed, eating good food and laughing till we cry. But three days before, about to go into emergency spine surgery, all I could think of was how I fucked up our weekend. My husband called to waive her off, but, no, she was coming anyway.

Sonoma Valley Sunshine

And this is where I will be a little ‘woo woo’ because in my drugged up, pain crazed mind, I still chuckled, thinking: Terri, you fucker, you timed this disaster so it would go down like this. That I would have a true friend, family,  full of unconditional love and good humor, to help the first 48 hours home. When I thought I would never walk normally or function independently again. And the kicker? JC is a nurse practitioner for a profession. She briskly set the household up for post-op success, created the medication schedule, made me protein smoothies and gave my exhausted and buried-in-work husband a vital break. 

JC did not get the promised wine tasting or farm-to-table-dinner, Sonoma-Valley experience and there were no complaints. (We'll make good on that, girl, I promise.) We still managed a few Terri laughs, and she let me read her the opening chapter of my first novel that I'm determined to write in spite of life's detours.

When I had to tell my family about having breast cancer, 11 years ago, everyone jumped in to offer help. But I knew I couldn’t take my mum’s nervous concern daily or interrupt everyone’s busy life with ease. But my niece, Tabitha, 20 years younger than me and a good friend, was who I needed to help. My sister bought her plane tickets and over the course of not one but two surgeries, she up-rooted her life (then in San Diego,) and came, missing work and income to be my nurse. After this recent mess, when I told my older daughter F. about JC coming anyway to take care of me, she humorously replied, “Well, that saved Tabitha a trip.”

Tabitha continues to be a rock of support for me. It was her that I called, hysterically sobbing, the night before the back operation, anxiety, and pain meds, pounding through me. Seeking escape from the fear of a major surgery, and all that came with it, trying to find an option I knew was not there, babbling on, she calmly offered: 'Sometimes science is the answer, the best choice. Trust it.'

It was the second weekend home, I was physically uncomfortable and struggling with my new reality and lack of mobility, when F. and her partner H. came to visit. This was the first non-holiday related visit to our house made by these very-busy-almost-30-professional-women, who drove over an hour in Bay Area traffic, to come sit on the couch and watch me do nothing. It meant everything to me. They had not made other plans “for later”, they did not linger on their phones, they were present and sweet and doting.
They fucking showed up.

F. told me she had called her younger sister, now unseen by us for about 10 years, to inform her of my brush with mortality, and ‘Thanks for telling me,’ was the response. I heard nothing from her. It was the same silence after my husband informed her I had lost Terri, someone she knew. That -painfully - revealed the depth of her contempt for me. I easily can drift into self-blame for being the awful mother she is so certain I was. But, at some point, you have to look forward, not back, or there is no movement at all. It strengthens her hate and resolve to remain aloof from us, but in reality, only deprives her of the unconditional love and support that family offers. The value of that has become clearer to me with every health hurdle.

(And if I was such a failure at parenthood, why did F. turn out so awesome? One out of two ain’t bad? Is that parenting today?)

Oahu Blooms

They used to say you can’t choose family. But anyone associated with the Queer community knows that's very old-fashioned thinking: sometimes the best, most loyal, is in fact, chosen family. That artificial-but-very-real connection is what kept me going through my self-destructive, often suicidal, teens and twenties. However, this debilitating  and life-changing experience showed me that blood family can show up for you too. It is a mystic, unbreakable bond that can keep people afloat in the worst of times, physically and spiritually. I'm grateful for it in my life, to be allowed the privilege to be vulnerable. To trust.

I asked the surgeon early on if it was possible for me to take a plane trip six weeks post op, a long planned trip to my beloved Hawaii, this time just a week to celebrate my great-nephew’s graduation from high school. The doctor was cautiously optimistic and I managed to go, even though I probably should not have. My husband flew with me and spent the weekend, arranging a first class (horizontal) ride home for me.  I wore a brace, used a cane and was perpetually exhausted. But I stayed with my sister and her hubby, in a swank rental at the end of a quiet road, and they treated me like gold. I felt like a Five Star spa guest as they handled food, chores, outings, and made sure I was comfortable at every turn. It was touching, appreciated, and also so necessary in order for me NOT to over due it- and undo all that expensive doctor work. Family.

Middle age is sometimes poetically referred to as life's Second Act. I was fully prepared, entering stage left, with my revitalized character, re-written as a patient and compassionate human following the wizardly transformation of cancer and reevaluation of my life's priorities. Formerly a power bitch in the deadline tight world of marketing and advertising, I'd just started to learn the rhythm and pace of my creative retirement gig: re-designing homes and curating people's crap. I loved the physicality, the 'before and after' accomplishment of that work. But, no, the (physical) reviews were in! My part was being cut entirely now. I had no more lines. My only hope for getting back on the boards of life was, in fact, to re-audition with a completely new set of talents. 

Honestly, I have no idea what those are. 

Writing, always my first love, is now subject to my random, volatile, levels of anxiety, comfort, inspiration, and yes, health. It's become a manic enterprise: there are hours of flowing, meaningful words, and then the blank page and dearth of ideas. (In other words: writing.) I don't allow myself self-pity in any way. Believe me, I know I'm beyond lucky. Dodged a bullet. Again. I have my leg under me. And I deeply appreciate my improbable life as a spoiled 'wine country housewife' (albeit, sans the wine,) that puts no monetary stress on me, and allows even my most complicated neuroses to be indulged, or at least accepted. Today, as we watch our parents age, and the little ones become young adults, I fully understand that family is also one of my blessings. That won't-put-you-through-BS-when-they-know-you-REALLY-need-them quality, the emotional short hand of a lifetime shared. 

Sunrise at Lanikai Beach, Oahu

My lucky stars have brought me back to Hawaii for some time near the ocean, far from town, quiet and peaceful. To reflect. To hopefully write. But this time, most importantly to heal.

Now, as I navigate the challenges of this surprise Third Act, I stare at the sea and follow the moon, ready for their messages. I continue circling this book I'm undertaking, often sneaking up on it, to sit and crank out pages before the self-doubt and editing that cripples the creative, begins. I often ponder: does it matters at all, if I continue with this work, especially now that it seems to be the only game I have left? 

Like a passionate lover, too good to be true, I want to abandon the words, first, before they leave me. But I've reached that place where I know, beyond a shadow of the moon, that now, I must press on. My future in this tentative theatrical planetary production is dependent on my willing, conscious, participation. If I don't string the words together and write them down now, tell my story, no one else will. I won't have any more lines in the play. And what then?

Exit, stage right.