Can you die from feeling?
Sitting at yet another gas station in Southern Brazil. I still feel wet all over but I cannot tell anymore at this point. Google just suggested I open Pinterest, which was the biggest joke ever. Looking at clean-eating, eyeliner tips, and summer shorts and accessories when you are homeless, poor and considering leaving the one last speck of “home” you have, a trailer on two wheels, clean eating seems so fucking foreign.
Like I wish I could just not think about starving away my feelings right now, or going to bed, as if those are both solutions, because now when I wake I get those feelings of oh shit, yup this is real. Slumping into that state is something I felt a couple times this summer but haven’t felt the giant waves of it until now.
Do you ever get those feelings? They creep in right before you go to bed and hit you in the face when you wake up. It’s either that conversation, or the reality of your financial situation, or the breakup, or the … insert mild panic trigger here.
When I got sober, or how I got sober was by being overtaken by moments of mild panic strewn together like l cords making a dense blanket of fear that crept over, and enveloped me. I became covered in my own mess and alcohol-induced psychosis. I slept wedged in between a couch and a wall to avoid being touched. I will not disclose that story today, as there is another one to be told. But soon enough, more will be revealed.
I was 26, it was 2011, and March in the same musty heat that Miami has year round. I sat amongst cigarette butts unable to find one to smoke when by the grace of God, I had enough power in me to pick up the phone and call my dad. I need help.
I entered into a rehab facility whereon the first day the counselor said, “Isn’t it exhausting, trying to keep up, don’t you just want a break?.” The cloak of mild panic was now full-on delusion, and yes, it was heavy, and yes I would like help taking it off.
After 30 days I was transferred to a more intensive in-patient treatment facility. Everyday we woke up at 5:15 a.m., made our bed and organized our things to a tee, checked in by 6 a.m., walked over to the main building, checked in there, walked to the gym, worked-out, came back, had room checks, group therapy, one-on-ones, lunch, and again. They “broke us down to build us up” through intense and aggressive confrontation, challenging our beliefs, and examining our pasts. The last week in treatment, I found out via Facebook that my ex back in Miami was getting married. It was summer so it must have been a year since we had broken up but my heart still viscerally cracked open and I did not think I could withstand the pain that came flooding in, and all over my body. I needed to drink.
By that point, I had almost three months without taking in a drop of vodka or swiff of cocaine, a feat considering that both I had inhaled daily for 5 consecutive years. But this gig was up and there was no way I would be able to function, like how to process both thoughts, with movement, with reactions to things happening unless I got alcohol inside of my body. The next step was clear, the corner market was two blocks away and renowned in treatment for being frequented by the ones who sneak out, quit, try to not get caught or both. I could get a bottle of wine and in less than 20 minutes my body would be able to move fluidly again while articulating sentences all the while blurring the harsh pangs flooding my heart with each beat, Everything would be perfect. I love the word perfect
Perfect.
When you can't control your functions because you are in so much pain, you sob, jerk, make noises, and people notice. The first to notice my snuffs and gasps, that which were similar to the cat we knew existed but could never find was Kaci. I was sounding awful and drawn out like from a bad alley fight and just hemorrhaging everything I should but couldn’t stop.
“Oh my God what is it?!!” she gasped and didn’t hesitate to grab me gently by the shoulders. I loved watching Kaci write. We had to write a lot in treatment and sometimes when doing group work I would stare at her creation of bubble letters and maternal sentences and it was soothing. She was soothing. I was then no longer in my room but hers, she sat me on the bed and let me share the post on Facebook. What would we do without stalking our exes on social media Y'all?! Be happier??
Kaci showered me with words. I don’t remember the words but I remember that her speaking those words was just as soothing as watching her write. I shook and sobbed and doubled over onto her bed as she kept talking.
“Drinking will only make it worse”
“You’ve come this far”
“Feelings can’t kill you.”
Sentences popped out and my soul caught them and put them someplace in my heart buried deep enough to be considered a reality now.
I kept on demanding to go so she finally conceded. “Ok let’s go. Let's go outside and walk.”
It was July, mid-day and hot. We were in the middle of the University of Oregon Campus (yes it was tragic to be in rehab next to a fraternity) asphalt, wide streets, and no students accentuated the suffocating qualities of the moment. “Let's walk to the market,” she said matter of factly. So we did. We walked and a breeze picked up and she let me spill out stories of the blonde Eastern European bartender my Ex was now devoting his life to.
“One year Kaci! One year! How is that even possible?!” I breathlessly heaved through snot. I was trying to compose myself a little more because of my awareness we were now in public and my ego was stronger than my willingness to look deranged in front of college kids at this point. And then, as emotions do, the sadness morphed into anger and my tears became vicious.
“Let’s go a little farther down to the cemetery” Kaci suggested
“Yeah, lets.”
From then, each word tumbling out of my mouth, whether in anger or deprivation, took with it power; power from the situation, power from my ability to be out of control, power from the gigantic nature of this predicament. Power came spilling out my lips and like a balloon being sucked dry the desire to drink had been absorbed. The power was taken away.
We got back to our rehab apartment and chained smoke American Spirits in the narrow back porch. It wouldn’t be for another year until all the power had been sucked out of my desire to smoke. That was sweet relief against the tidal waves that continued to build up then mildly wash over me every time I thought about him.
I survived that day. I felt feelings and the feelings didn’t kill me. They didn’t consume me to the point of killing myself or someone else because I let them bathe me in newness; the new ability to feel.
I share this story today because those types of feeling have come up a couple times on this trip. Why am I here? Is this right? Pangs of resentment and memories. Change...
Feelings accompany their usual partner, change. The two dance together in our hearts bringing excitement, joy, and misery. Since 2011 I've had a few opportunities to practice feeling feelings. I recognize that this too shall pass and I don't need to drink over it. Still doesn’t completely obliterate their existence.
So I sit here in the gas station, alone, as the mummers of people build up with every tour bus coming through, then get swept away as they leave. equal to my emotions. I never thought that by removing a 9-5 job, a sense of concrete home and schedule would induce feeling so much but it has. There have been so many solitary moments to just sit and feel and nothing else. And just when we get comfortable in our new reality, of feelings, of being alone, of being in public, something happens...
That night alone, the second Instagram message came through and it shattered my meditation. As if the first wasn’t enough, this was a new one. A new woman with a personal story. He had actually done it.
