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I watched a poignant TV show over the weekend and found myself crying at the end. And it reminded me of the first time I cried in sobriety, and what a new, beautiful part of my life opened up that day. Because I really believe that I wouldn’t be able to laugh the way that I do now if I didn’t cry the way I do in sobriety, too.
About three months into sobriety, we woke up to find one of our cats, Cricket, appearing to be very sick. We had four cats at the time—two we’d adopted from shelters, and two wild cats we’d brought inside during a brutal stretch of winter. When she was outside, Cricket always was skittish when I’d put food out but she’d eventually come close to eat. Then I trapped her and her running mate and brought them inside, thinking she’d warm up to us.
She never did. In fact, she ran away every time anybody ever got close to her, and only one of us—me—ever had physical contact with her before that fateful day. And that physical contact consisted of me waking up in the middle of the night once and finding her, inexplicably, sleeping on my ass. As soon as I woke up, she scurried off. That was my one time of getting close with her, and it only involved a surprise encounter with my butt.
So that morning, she was moaning in a horrific way that indicated significant discomfort. I was able to get close to her and touch her, and I found that she’d peed on the floor and seemed to be in agony. I scooped her up and took her to the vet’s office.
Within five minutes, they came in and said she was dying. They couldn’t say exactly what was going on with her but she wasn’t going to make it. We had to make that awful decision to put her to sleep.
I cried like I’d never cried before. I just sobbed uncontrollably in a way I don’t remember doing in my entire life. In fact, I bet if you didn’t know any details, it probably looked pretty funny. I remember feeling like I didn’t even really know how to do it. I was almost like a robot trying to mimic human tears because I had never quite encountered an explosion like that, so I am pretty sure I got tears and snot everywhere.
I’m not going to lie and say I didn’t cry during active addiction—I did. But I hid it from others, or numbed it out with alcohol and drugs. If someone asked me if I had been crying, the answer was no. I just wasn’t comfortable crying, or acknowledging crying. I’ll spare you any pseudo-psycho babble on why that might be. That’s a different conversation.
I remember in the minutes after Cricket had died, the vet asked me if I wanted to stay with her for a bit. So I sat there beside her, my hand on her little body. I must have stayed in there by myself, crying, for 30 minutes or so. That’s more than I remember crying in the 20 years before that.
It hurt so bad. Just deep, deep sadness, with no real “look on the bright side” spin to put on it. And for the first time I could remember, I had to completely sit with sadness and process it. I cried a few more times the rest of that day, and then once or twice the next day, and then I officially had grieved her.
But I ultimately felt it, in its entirety, and was able to work through it and feel every sharp edge. What a beautiful thing. It’s not fun, that’s for sure. I still don’t want to feel sadness at its lowest depths. I’d rather numb it somehow, take the edge off, maybe not cry actual tears.
I’ll take this version of feeling feelings, though. The truth of my active addiction was that I didn’t really feel anything—good, bad or ugly—and ended up living a life of self-medication and avoiding the stuff that makes life life. I don’t remember any tears of joy, either, like I felt after watching that TV show.
This is a long way of saying that I love crying now. I feel no shame about it. I don’t do it too often—I mean, I kind of am still a little bit of a cold-hearted robot when it comes to acknowledging sad feelings. But when I do cry, I feel a weird sense of gratitude to be alive, truly alive, feeling everything life throws at me.
And as I put this together, I also had a funny moment of gratitude for that one night when Cricket hung out with my ass. I’m grateful that I will always have that to remember her with!
ALCOHOLIC/ADDICT JOKE OF THE DAY
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke.
The police officer had just handed him a drunk driving ticket, but the drunk was belligerent.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he demanded.
“Keep it,” the police officer said. “When you collect four of them, you get a bicycle.”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, March 2001, Jay C.)
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