It makes me so angry to read this now, and to see what I learned from a pair of alcoholics about who I was and what I should do with my life. From my journal for April 26, 1996:
Talked to Eleanor about the painful feeling that my failure to get better is some kind of choice, and my anger at myself for not being different. I wondered how it was possible to change that, to accept that I’m really damaged, that my failures are not conscious choice. She said that one thing that helps her is to remind herself that if she were really better, the things that are so hard now would not be hard at all — that’s the definition of healing. (Owl calling, probably great horned hu-hoo-hu-hooo) She said she can get stuck in not wanting to heal because she imagines that if she were better she would then have to do all the things that are hard. For both of us it is unimaginable that those things would be easy, or that we would want to do them, or the energy would be there, or else we would be able to say no and not feel guilty about it. I see that there is an enormous tangle here, between hope of healing and fear of healing, the belief that I am not damaged just willful and selfish, the idea that healing would only mean being able to force myself to do things I think I ought to do. And then to try to buy space for myself I tell myself that there is no hope of healing, instead of that healing is possible and I have no idea what it will look like, but it certainly won’t involve forcing myself in any way. Healing that’s really healing, and not just adjustment to a dysfunctional culture, would mean: 1) knowing what I want and what I need, 2) being able to ask for them and/or 3) having energy to do them, 4) knowing what I don’t want and don’t need and 5) being able to refuse them, defend myself. That’s what healing would mean.
I love that, in the middle of writing about something very important to me, I still am able to notice the call of an owl.