Triggers...

Sometimes, despite years in recovery, several years of therapy, and plenty of inventory, my inner "not enough" gets triggered and I find myself either feeling small and very "not ok," or in the "I didn't care anyway" mode. Neither is particularly comfortable, and remind me that "freedom from the bondage of self" is a journey.

I had a couple of interactions recently that triggered a "there are cool girls, and I'm not one of them" feeling that is a direct holdover from those dreaded teenage years when I was trying, on my own, to figure out my place in the world. I started high school with a dad newly sober, which was great, but there wasn't any magic wand that suddenly created a haven of communication and guidance.

My contemporaries and I stared high school on the cusp of the old order giving way to the new. At the beginning of freshman year, girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. We were wearing panty girdles to hold up our stockings, because pantyhose either hadn't been invented, or weren't accessible to the masses. We curled our hair, and some girls wore hairpieces to class.  At Christmas break that year came the edict that we could now wear slacks, generally with a coordinating sweater set. The following year, most of my group of friends showed up on the first day of school wearing jeans, the baggier and more lived in the better. Our hair hung naturally, or in magnificent "fro's", and many of us were bra-less, as we claimed our rights as womyn. We camped out across the street, or in the park, smoking cigarettes and the clandestine joint. The revolution was being televised, and we were living it on a daily basis in our corner of NE Portland.

Part of the old order were social clubs, sororities of a sort, complete with bids and rush week. I was only marginally popular, and had no older siblings to pave the way, and though I knew that having cool cousins and popular neighbors wasn't enough to earn me a coveted spot, I still secretly hoped to be included in the dawn ritual of pulling girls out of their beds to whisk them away to points unknown in their pajamas.

A few days prior to this event, several of us 9th graders were at the local donut shop, smoking endless cigarettes and sippping the one soda that would allow us to stay for hours. An older girl leaned up over our booth and, in a whisper, let one of my friends know that she could expect a bid from a particular club. I busied myself with my cigarette as my friend looked towards me with an unspoken, "her too?" I looked up to see the older girl give a slight shake of her head - "no." I was crushed, dreadfully embarrassed, and later that day declared that I had no interest in this club and wouldn't join even if they asked. So there.

This is hard to write about, nearly 50 years later. I have no problem writing about the too-many people I slept with, the illegal meth lab I assisted in, the lies I told my mother, but this incident makes me cringe. I'm not sure if I'm embarrassed because I didn't get chosen, or because it mattered so much. And I'm embarrassed that the memory of it still stings, and sometimes reaches up from the depths of my memory to again cause me to feel less-than, not enough, certainly not "cool."

What I know today about "not enough" is that 14 year old girls can be cruel; that without much guidance and direction, I sought my sense of worth from other people rather than from a place of knowing who I was; that I could never, ever have been good enough, or smart enough, or cool enough to fix my father's alcoholism and depression. Several speakers I've heard recently claim that the "not enough" feeling is a core belief of many alcoholics/addicts. One fellow said that the 12 steps are meant to get rid of all the defenses that we've built up to cover up or run from that feeling. He said that the 12 steps guide us to uncover our true nature - whole, enough, comfortable in our own skin.

So, when triggered, I did what we do. I talked about it with a trusted other, including a fair amount of pouting. I wrote about it. I did my best to turn it over. I reminded myself that I'm not 14 (way not 14) and that my sense of self does not depend on anyone else. As I was told early on, "what you think of me is none of my business." What I think of me is my business. I am powerless over my first thought, but not my second. I'll likely always be triggered by one thing or another. The good news is that today I don't have to give the negative emotions much energy. Lila R says that there is no good or bad in the spiritual universe - only experiences to learn from.

I'll keep learning, sometimes in spite of myself. What triggers you? How do you turn a trigger into a lesson?