There's Probably a Reason For That

 Today, I am sitting in the same recliner that I sat in every day during the height of my active addiction. Today I am writing this blog. 2 1/2 years ago, I was praying to God to help me find a way out of the secretive box I had trapped myself in. I had been stoned every day for 8 months at that point. Some days I would wake up and say I wasn't going to use that day, hoping for the click I used to have in my brain that told me when I'd had enough and it was time to be fully conscious again. But that click hadn't come when it used to at a couple of weeks, or a month, or even a month and a half. I could not stop using, not even until noon of a single day. I knew I was in trouble.

I have a post-it note on my computer monitor that says "There's probably a reason for that." The origin of the note comes from an old lady I used to sit next to when I first started my job reviewing medical coding denials for a government-funded health insurance company. Susan, who wore terrible perfume and often startled the entire cubicle section with her out of the blue exclamations over provider disputes she found ridiculous, kept herself going day to day with a steady diet of sarcasm. I'll admit, it was often entertaining, and sometimes contained a bit of wisdom.  On the day she gave me this gem, we were struggling to figure out why a claim denial was firing and Susan eventually shrugged in defeat and said, "well, there's probably a reason for that." We laughed about it at the time, but I'm glad I had the good sense to write that down. It's gotten me unstuck in my work a few times since then, and it's proven to be even more important for my life outside of work.

Since I started going to my energy healer in late July 2019, one of the many things that I have learned in my journey is the importance of sitting with darkness. Some people call it shadow work, most people avoid it. I avoided it for a long, long time. It's uncomfortable, painful stuff. The anxiety I have around some of those things bouncing around in my head makes me want to crawl out of my skin, and that's when I feel the most vulnerable to a hostile takeover by my inner addict. 

Addiction comes in many forms. It's not, surprisingly, about the drugs, or the food, or the people, or the sex, or the alcohol, or the shopping, or the gaming. It's about seeking some sort of elixir to mute the sharpness of feelings we can't face.  For people who have grown acclimated to this way of coping, once we take away that life-destroying mechanism, the sharpness of those feelings comes back, raw and overwhelming--even the little ones. It feels a little like going crazy for a while. When I first got clean, I had the good fortune of having the support of my energy healer, Christine, who guided me into scary places to give healing to who I was at 4 and 7 and 11, and when I became overwhelmed by the sharp presence of the past, said firmly, "Don't you dare abandon that little girl." My first lesson in courage came in that directive, because there was no way I was going to do the same thing to myself in that moment that I felt so betrayed by in the people who were supposed to care for me then. 

Not abandoning that little girl meant sitting with her in the darkness, because that's where she lived in that particular "Slice of Now." (More on that incredibly hard to grasp concept later.) I listened for what she had to say in that space, I helped her escape when she needed to, I gave her love when she needed that more. And at some point, that darkness began to reveal other secrets, layers of understanding about the place, or the time, or the people involved. Getting a wider perspective of reality in those moments changed things for me, little by little. 

The more I sat in the darkness with my pain and the child I was, the more I was able to understand and to heal. For a while, when what I was experiencing in being able to reach through to that child was so unbelievable even while it was happening, I told myself that even if it was just my wild imagination that was spinning out, I was still getting benefit of the change in perspective. And as I accepted that the unbelievable was real, I started to listen harder. I found myself feeling less afraid, because every time I sat with my inner darkness, I learned this:

    1. My feelings were not going to kill me.

    2. The information I was receiving was making me stronger.

Now, when I look at that post-it note stuck to my monitor, it has a much deeper meaning than it used to when I first wrote it. I think of the dark places, of the richness that waits for the adult me to come and sit and listen to the truth of my life. All of it, every little bit of it, helps me understand and helps me grow compassion for myself and for everyone I am connected to. "There's probably a reason for that" is a mantra that really speaks to the fact that there are no accidents. 

Every darkness has something to say.