(Click ‘play’ above to hear me read this post)
In truth, it’s tough to say how much the alcohol had to do with it. It’s tempting to say it had everything to do with my addiction, since it was clearly my drug of choice. It’s also tempting to say it had nothing to do with it, except that when I was inside the life I was inside at the time I met alcohol, it was a random though perfect match. It could have been anything, after all. It could have—and I could have—been anything.
What I think (if that matters to anyone else) is that there’s no way to really say if it was the booze or not, or even if it was me or not, necessarily. The more you learn about the mystery of addiction the more you are confronted with the most maddening reality of all: it’s entirely, basically, regularly normal. There are a million factors that can contribute to addicting oneself to a thing, and yet in the end there’s only one: being human.
I’ve just finished reading The Urge: Our History of Addiction by the ever incredible Carl Erik Fisher, and thorough as it was, and brilliantly done (obv), I ended up skimming over a lot of it (it’s a very dense book!) because it seems there are parts of me that have now become exhausted of the extensive search for understanding where my addiction came from, why it happened to me, why our culture is so fucking fucked up about addiction treatment and recovery and blaming individuals for sicknesses, phobias, anxieties, disorders, and ailments that are so clearly the products of culture, society, ancient wounds, and the collective poison we make our way through daily just to get by. I guess simply put, in a nutshell my conclusion is this: it’s not just me—not by a longshot. It’s all of us.
I’ve been up to some other things lately, also. The trouble is that I’ve no idea if they are interesting or not because when you live inside your own deliberately-made-simple-thrifty-minimal-and-small world (as I do most of the time because I do not “work” in the traditional sense, and I do not “drink” in any sense of the word as it pertains to alcoholic bevs, and I do not shop unless it’s for groceries, and I do not “skin-care” or “self-care” and I just generally don’t buy into or live by the cultural capitalistic one-upmanship narratives shoved on us all around) you tend to lose sight of what’s important to other people out there, as it were. So for what it’s worth, here are three things I’ve done that feel really big and good and liberating to me, all from the privacy of my little online universe (which is my bridge to and from the majority of my creative work in the world).
I deleted all of my old posts from Instagram. I had been doing it gradually over the past few months but then one day last week I couldn’t stand it anymore and just deleted every damn last thing. I was so tired of wondering if I should keep some posts or trash others, or who I am now, and if I want everyone to see all my old stuff as I grew through my last two years of recovery, or before that when I had been a reasonably successful writer and poet before that.
Nothing fit me anymore. While the spirits and whispers of who I was still echo inside of me, I am not them anymore—they wander the halls of the house of me, but they are not the house—they are not the place where I live now. I am not who I was even just last year. Or in February. And while I remain forever grateful for all I was able to share, and I absolutely loved doing it at the times when I did, I didn’t feel like being tied to any of it anymore. And everytime I saw it sort of hanging out there like old shrivelled fruit on the vines of my past lives, I felt like tearing them all down. I do not have any existential lessons to share about this experience. It’s just Instagram. lol
People always talk about throwing old shit away out of their garage, basement, or attic as part of their spring cleaning, but what about we artists and creators? What about all of the digital junk (albeit lovely, wonderful, once-upon-a-time-meaningful junk) that just drags on out there long past its usefulness to anyone, including ourselves?
It feels so good to let go of old narratives, both in my brain and in my creative online world. Even here at Dry Humor Me, I’m making gradual changes that feel more aligned with where I am now. If recovery is anything, it’s minute to minute awareness. And with that awareness comes change if we dare to embrace it. In my past I’d think way too hard about changing, quitting, tearing something down off the walls. And while discernment can be good, a lot of overthinking is just a waste of energy. Even worse, it’s energy spent working against our own best interests. I don’t want to hold myself back anymore through doubts and fears of doing it wrong or making a fool of myself. Or even the fear that once I do something, it has to last forever. It doesn’t. It can’t. It won’t.
And to be fair, I haven’t had a drop of alcohol in nearly 800 consecutive days. I’m pretty sure I’m crushing the literal most important thing that matters, right. Isn’t the rest allowed to be DARE I SAY IT…. fun?
The second change I made was to drop the “Marie” from my name (online, that is; it’s still my middle name in real life!) and add (back) the “Taylor.” Before I married my husband seventeen years ago, my last name was Taylor. I always loved my name and it always bugged me a little bit that I dropped it in exchange for my husband’s last name. There was something special for me in making this update on my online platforms and digital presence. There can be a temptation in the recovery world to grossly oversimplify the story you tell yourself about your own life, and divide it into ‘before’ when I was an addict, and ‘after’ when I entered recovery, as though your past was just a fucked up scene all around, and once you got clean everything started to get good, miraculous, and ‘correct.’
But that isn’t true. The truth is that I now look back on who I was at every age and stage of my forty-five years and I love her, exactly as she was, with her fuck ups and her wild ideas, hopes, insecurities and dreams all intermingling in light and shadow all at once in any given moment. The old me was complicated. And while in some ways I’ve radically evolved, me being complicated hasn’t changed. It’s just that now I own all of what is here with me, as well as all of what was always there to begin with.
The third thing I’ve done is create a new logo for this newsletter! I am not a professional anything when it comes to design, etc. but I wanted something new. I want this place to embody a vibe that is still developing, but my hope is that I’ll have the courage to open up into more of my inner artist. It might sound crazy to say this but up until now in my recovery, I’ve been a bit afraid of embodying her again. My inner artist can sometimes want to go too far into escaping myself (there’s an invisible boundary between expansion and oblivion, and I’ve never approached it sober before). I’ll be taking it slow.
I want to spend more time with my artist-self not for the sake of ‘branding’ with intention to ‘grow big on substack’ (like substack keeps trying to get me to want to do because, of course, a platform is a platform) but because I want to honor the pursuit of purpose and meaning in my artistic life. I don’t want to try to sell anything. I just want to be here, with you, and let you see my vulnerable parts. In all the years and years I’ve spent writing, hoping to be deemed worthy by way of the likes, comments, shares, and follows of an outside audience, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so truly, earnestly, humbly willing to be seen. Not for my struggles or triumphs, not because I know a lot (or anything) or because I can teach or help or advise or entertain, but just for being me: alive and well, introverted, bookish, creative, in love with beauty and life; sometimes confused but mostly just hopeful, curious, joyful and wandering.
Because the truth is, even if you aren’t selling stuff on the internet, we are all selling versions of ourselves to those around us. It can feel (and actually become) transactional, unless we consciously choose for it not to be. Maybe what I am learning in addiction recovery is also the way I can recover my inner artist, too. By showing up and offering what I’m experiencing, noticing, and interested in, with sincerely kind intentions. Trusting that it’s safe for me to share my love, and that it’s safe to believe love will come back to me, too.
Thank you for being here with me. It means so much. x
"My inner artist can sometimes want to go too far into escaping myself (there’s an invisible boundary between expansion and oblivion, and I’ve never approached it sober before)." Omg, this! I resonated so much. My creativity has really been hard to access, perhaps subconsciously blocked since I gave up entering oblivion. Its been ok but I'm feeling ready to coax it back, slowly, slowly. Thank you for putting it in to words. 💛
Wonderful! On a similar mission, I've deleted 1000s of images and messages this week. I no longer need them, it's so therapeutic. Sending love ❤️