Triggered

In the final days of my thirty day stay at the last treatment center I went to, we talked a lot about triggers.

I sat face-to-face with my counselor, a lean woman in her mid-fifties, with billowy silver-blonde hair and half moon glasses perched on the tip of her nose.   She asked me to make a list of situations that might trigger me - make me want to drink - so we could come up with strategies on how to get through them without succumbing to the obsessive thoughts, the cravings.

I wrote down the obvious ones - weddings, parties, the holidays, social events in town.   

"Dig deeper," she told me.   "Think about your drinking patterns, what made you want to hide from yourself?"

My hand trembled as I wrote two words on the page:    My kids. 

I burst into tears, sobbed into my hands and said, "What is wrong with me?   What kind of mother wants to hide from her kids?" 

She leaned forward, looked me dead in the eye, and said:  "The human kind."

~~~~

It took many months of sifting through guilt, shame and regret to figure out that my feelings about motherhood weren't there because I didn't love my children, or that I wasn't cut out to be a mother.    I love my children beyond measure - I always have and I always will.    

It's just that I don't always like them; there are days when I just want to hit the pause button for a while.   It's more than just the constant needs of two young kids - it's about fear, too.

Sometimes it hits me like a punch in the gut - how fragile the world is, how many bad things can happen, the myriad of ways to get this motherhood thing wrong.   The stakes feel insurmountably high.   My own flaws and inadequacies scream at me like sirens:  How can I possibly not screw them up when I'm so riddled with doubts, insecurities, and neuroses?   

It makes me want to hide, to withdraw from the center of their love.   Not because I don't love them, but because I do.   A huge part of my drinking was the mistaken belief that I was saving them - from me - by removing myself from the equation, bit by bit.

Admitting that to myself was the hardest part of getting sober, but without facing that truth I'm not sure I could have succeeded.  

~~~~

Yesterday was one of those days where I couldn't get out of my own way.   The sound of Finn's voice was sending shivers up my spine.   He was needy, clingy, whiny;  he spent most of the day pressed to my side or draped across my lap.     We had plenty to do yesterday; it wasn't boredom.    

He sensed something in me, I know he did , because he kept saying, over and over, "I love you, Momma.  I'll always love you, know matter what."

"I love you too, Finn," I dutifully replied, each and every time, but my insides were churning:  Don't love me, kid.   Don't need me this much.  I can't take it.

The needier and more clingy Finn got, the more the knife of guilt twisted in my gut.     I plugged him into a television show and snuck outside on the porch for some quiet reflection.  

Own it, I thought.  You don't feel like being a Mom today.   Just let it be what it is.  Let it go.

My counselor's words echoed in my head.   I'm human.   Being a mother doesn't trump my own feelings, frustrations and desires.    Just do the best you can, and wait it out. 

~~~~

Last night I had a drinking dream.   I was at a wedding, and I kept sneaking off to sip red wine from a hidden bottle in the bathroom.    At the end of the night, I went into the bathroom for one final sip before I had to go home, and I looked in the mirror.   My eyes were flat, dead.   I forced a smile - to practice looking normal - and recoiled in horror:   my front teeth were missing.  

I woke up in a cold sweat, and ran to the bathroom to check my teeth, make sure it was just a dream.  

My hands were shaking as I Googled 'dreams about missing teeth'.   The answer left me cold:  Tooth loss dreams are symbolic of the deepest fears human beings have.

Yesterday's feelings of guilt, inadequacy and frustration stirred the beast that lies within me.  It didn't trigger any active cravings or thoughts of drinking, but it woke up that deep rooted, fearful part of me that feels undeserving of my kids' love.

~~~~

When I opened my eyes this morning, my first sight was Finn's sleeping profile; he had climbed into our bed at some point during the night.

I studied the curve of his cheek, his long black lashes.   I placed my hand on his chest, slowly rising and falling with his breath, and felt his strong little heartbeat.

I waited for the fear.   It didn't come.

Today is a new day.