Who Do You Think You Are?

Good Question

My decision to seek inpatient treatment last December signaled two things: I recognized who I was, and I wanted to become somebody else.

For ten turbulent years, my days were consumed with the minutiae of getting high. I spent hours hunting down drugs. I spent even more time coddling mercurial drug dealers to ensure they followed through on a promise to deliver them. 

Weekends became weeks spent in rooms without daylight with a cast of rotating strangers. I lost track of time at the hospital because of multiple overdoses. Minutes dragged by in a jail cell, awaiting my fate.

I was a drug addict. It's what I did. It's who I was.

I wasn't that person, however, when I left rehab six months later. I was a success story. I was equipped with usable tools. I had a therapist, a counselor and an outpatient program to lean on. 

But it wasn't enough.

That prior life was behind me… and I had yet to reinvent myself. Familiar sirens were beginning to wail:

Who do you think you are?

You're broken.

Why are you bothering with things that matter?

The roar of traffic makes a city a city. Birdsong makes a field a field. That chorus of unyielding incriminations constitutes me. I’ll never not hear those words. Recently, however, a fainter refrain has begun whispering at me through that static.

I’ve just completed an intense five-week course that involves writing. The program includes classes and idea gyms designed to help writers establish an online presence.

Central to that mission are a frantic few days in each of the five weeks when the student writers circulate their draft essays for feedback. Corrections and compliments whiz back and forth, nudging a final draft into the world.  

Here's a smattering of comments made about my writing:

You've got a gift, Andrew!

Whoah! This is devastatingly and hilariously beautiful. 

Everyone needs to read this.

I can assure you I'm not bragging. This is exposure therapy. By believing and now writing about those compliments, I'm choosing to sit with discomfort until the distress of praise disappears. 

Let me explain. 

I grew up with one parent, and she didn't have a good thing to say about me. Not at all. I was the enemy, always and forever.

That alone is hardly a reason for me to doubt myself for the length of my life and then go on to seriously fuck a lot of it up. 

But that changes once you consider this:

I was nine when my mother moved my younger sisters and me from Hong Kong to Dallas after my father's death. We spent five years neglected and in near isolation: no friends, no relatives, and no intervention by police, teachers, neighbors or social workers.

My mother's opinion of me was the only metric I had of myself until I was fifteen, and it only improved a little after that. Like it or not, I've spent the decades since then sliding effortlessly into the wrong of me and puzzled by the rest. 

That’s not all.

My relationship with my mother was unorthodox. It's no exaggeration to say I was a stand-in husband, even at twelve. The level of meanness I experienced was a failed marriage mean, and nice was never just nice. Affection bordered on illegal.

Despite all that, I've made a life for myself. On paper, I'm a success. But trust me, I don't look at that resume much.

Reading my peers' remarks about my writing, something I had become hopeful about, is disturbing validation. Their feedback has forced me to recognize and give credit to a me I’m oblivious to, but others see, then make an effort to like him.

My words. Their words. These words. 

Imagine standing on a beach ankle-deep in clear water, goggles on, snorkel ready. 

Imagine swimming as far as you dare from the shore, then dropping your face through the sea's surface. The beauty is breathtaking. It seduces you instantly. The coral. The quiet. The fish. 

You float face down for what feels like forever before noticing something twinkling below. It's so fascinating, you must have it or at least know more about it. 

You pop up for air, swallow a lungful, flip over and propel yourself down to the ocean floor, breaststroking as hard as you can, furiously flapping your feet.  

The shimmering draws closer. You're deep but not out of your depth. You're curious. Driven. You’re going somewhere. And you know it.

Imagine reaching the floor of that silent, dazzling world, grabbing the object of your attention, and soaring back up through the balmy blue with it firm in your hand. 

You explode into the fresh air, lungs gulping, breathless and happy.

Ordinary obligations await you on the beach as they did before, as they do for everyone else, but you have something more now.

You have a purpose. 

Finally, a reason to be.