Episode 4: Melanie F.

Melanie F. opens up about her journey to finding joy without chaos even when all she wanted was to disappear and isolate. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

February 2003. That's when my life changed. My name is John Knowles, and this is Keep Comin', a podcast about recovery from substance abuse. In the 12-step rooms, you get to share your story or you sit and listen. That's the format, and it works. But there's something missing. The conversation. The questions no one gets to ask. This is that conversation. So today on the podcast, we've got Melanie. Melanie and I have known each other for a long time in the Providence area. Melanie, how's it going?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

It's going all right. You know, I'm doing okay.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Your annoying friend asked you to do a podcast right after work.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

I'm angry.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Melanie, what are you recovering from?

SPEAKER_00 1:02

I am in a 12-step recovery program for alcohol, you know, specifically. Uh, that's what I do 12-step work around, but I do feel like it helps with, you know, I've dabbled in drugs over the years. I don't know. I think I've got some ill-equipped coping mechanisms that, you know, these program that this program helps with. Um, but primarily I would say alcohol.

SPEAKER_01 1:25

And what is your sober date?

SPEAKER_00 1:26

May 5th. I just celebrated 19 years last Tuesday. 2007. May 5th, 2007.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

What was the last week of being active like for you?

SPEAKER_00 1:37

I don't really know. Honestly. My brain is pretty foggy. And I can remember my very last night of drinking. The whole week, probably pretty par for the course of how I was doing that whole year or the year before. Not good. I had reached a place of kind of feeling very empty inside. Like I felt like a husk of a human being in a lot of ways. I went through the motions, like I had a job with a lot of responsibilities. I had a relationship, friendships. But inside it really was kind of a place of deep depression, sadness, feeling like unmanageable, even though, you know, I was going through the motions of living a pretty regular life. But I just felt, you know, specifically on my last night of drinking, I was out at a local club music venue. Uh, I had a lot of history there, and I had some friends playing music in a show. And I primarily missed most of that show because I was in the bar just getting tanked. And um, last call came up. Of course I went to the bar, and the bartender said she thought it was so cool that she drank more than pretty much anyone, that I drank more than pretty much anyone that she knew. And I just had this kind of out-of-body experience for a split second where I just felt like I was looking down and it was like if this person only knew what it felt like to be inside my brain and inside my body, they wouldn't think it was so cool that I drank as much as I did. And so that just lasted for like a second or two. And the next day, I knew that I couldn't keep doing what I was doing. I went to a meeting that day, and I've been coming ever since. There wasn't necessarily a spike for me. It kind of was like a long, continual downward degradation, I think for me, like a very slow, kind of torturous process.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Aaron Powell What was a tanked Melanie like? What was your behavior when you were tanked?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Well, I guess it depends on the year. But as I got older, you know, in my in my in my early years, I was like a lot of fun. Or I would say I was a lot of fun. But, you know, I can't necessarily say what others would think. But, you know, it made me feel like very uninhibited. I would do things, pretty reckless things. Um, I'd just start making out with at people at parties for, you know, with no it wasn't like somebody was coming on to me. I'd just be like, I'm gonna start making out with you. And, you know, I'd start making out with somebody. I I went to a lot of like kind of underground scene events. I kind of would like put myself in positions like I decided to like just start doing improv because somebody drunkenly asked me to start doing it with them. So I, you know, I joined this improv, you know, I would like be on stage in certain ways and like not really giving a shit what people thought. I kind of like to make people laugh a lot and just be ridiculous. So yeah, for a long time it was kind of like that, where I would just be very spontaneous and silly and ridiculous and more outgoing than I was as a sober person. When drugs kind of got into the mix, I started doing things that I thought were funny, but it really was like more kind of hurtful behavior, you know, making fun of people and just being very caustic with my humor. And um people didn't really appreciate that. So in my mind, I was like, I'm being hilarious, but like I was actually really hurting people's feelings and like doing saying and doing and saying things that were just super obnoxious. So I definitely like cut out drugs way before I cut out alcohol because of some of these things. Um, and feedback that I did get around that, specifically cocaine. As time went on, it was more like as I got older, I just became very kind of isolated in a lot of ways. Like I would still go out and do things, but like it became more isolating, I think, for me. And I kind of retreated more into myself as it went on.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Who do you feel was most negatively impacted by your drinking over the years?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

I kind of ghosted multiple roommates. Like I was living with people that I was friends with, and then I would just pick up and leave one day with no warning or any kind of accountability. I would just not answer my phone, you know. So that happened multiple times in my in my twenties where I did that to people that I actually was really pretty close with. I would say more, you know, my friendships definitely suffered in terms of, especially in the later drinking years, where I kind of just retreated a lot and I pulled back into myself and I wasn't really maintaining my relationships in a way that was healthy, um, just kind of popping in every once in a while. Just kind of, yeah, being largely an absentee friend, unless you were out drinking with me. And then it was like, you know, one of those times where if I was out, wasn't at home, I'd shoot the shit with people that I was friends with if they were out at that particular time. But like I wasn't showing up for people in a in a big way at all. That was largely, I think, most of the impact in my romantic relationships as well.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

When was your first drunk?

SPEAKER_00 7:11

I was in tenth grade. I know it was the summer of 10th grade, and I don't know. I was either 15 or 16. Like, I can't honestly remember how old I was. But I know it was the summer of 10th grade. Like a friend's older brother had gotten beer and his parents were away, and he had a little house party. Our friends all went, people were drinking beer, shitty beer, and I ended up by myself in the basement, just kind of like sitting on a couch, drinking by myself and just listening to music um while everyone else was kind of upstairs having fun. And it's not that it wasn't fun for me, but I definitely was not like in that place of like, I'm gonna be the life of the party. You know, it hadn't gotten that. So yeah, the first time I ever got drunk, it was largely like I was pretty alone within a group of people.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

When was the next time you got drunk?

SPEAKER_00 8:04

Honestly, I don't know. Like I do feel like a lot of my memory is very kind of like it jumps around. There's a lot of gray when I try to think back over time. But it it took off pretty much from there. Once my little friend group kind of like figured out how we could get alcohol, whether it's through older siblings or like stealing it from our parents, whatever it was. That's when the age when we started getting driver's licenses and being able to, you know, go out and like do things. And what we did was primarily um on the weekends, figure out like, okay, either whose parents are gone or where are we gonna go in the woods and just get a bunch of alcohol and like hang out with a bunch of other high school kids. You know, it was the 90s. There wasn't a lot going on in the suburb that I lived in, you know. So you just go to the big woods behind the church and uh, you know, drink till you pass out. It just went on like that pretty much throughout my whole high school. The last two years of me being in high school was that that's largely what we did on the weekends.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

When was the first time you said, huh, there might be something wrong with the way I'm drinking?

SPEAKER_00 9:19

I was still in high school. I think I was in my senior year of high school. And again, it was just one of those weekends. We were driving around, like we didn't even we were just driving around and drinking. Like it wasn't even like we were in the woods. I do remember this very specific time, and it was the first time I ever drank whiskey. And I got so drunk that weekend, I also had plans to go to New York City for the first time. I ended up getting so drunk, uh, I blacked out. You know, my friends dropped me off at a f at another friend's house who lived a couple blocks away from me. And I was just gonna walk home from there. Like I got out of the car and I immediately vomited all over myself, all over the other person. And then I kind of blacked out and and fell down on the ground. I don't even remember getting home, but I woke up and I was covered in vomit, and I had the worst hangover, like so excruciating. And obviously, like my parents, my mom and my stepfather had like let me into the house and saw the condition I was in, and they just put me in my bed, like covered in puke. And I had to deal with that shame like the next morning, waking up and and facing them, and also like just being in so much like physical pain that like nauseous and excruciating headache that I had to cancel going to New York City. And so it was like, I don't think this is normal, but I don't know what normal is. And so I just kind of let it go and I just kept going on my little journey. Um, but I would say that was probably the first time being like, okay, maybe I'm a bit excessive. Maybe this, but then it's like, you know, I created all these reasons why. Well, it was the first time I drank whiskey, that's why that happened, or I didn't really eat food, you know, all those little excuses. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

As you say this out loud and as we talk about how we drank, it becomes very obvious how much we're poisoning ourselves. Just listening to that story. It's like, yeah, you of course you're sick. You literally poisoned yourself for an entire night. Yeah, completely. Between that first realization that you're probably not doing this in a healthy way, to when you said, I officially have a problem, how approximately how long do you think that was? Decades?

SPEAKER_00 11:43

No, I would say probably was about 10 years. So I would say that probably happened. I think that happened in my senior year of high school. And I at the age of 28 is the first time I went to an AA meeting. So about a decade, I would say. I didn't stay in AA, but that was about how long it took for me to really kind of like come to some place of, oh yeah, like you're not, you're not okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:20

How did you hear about AA and that that was a thing you could do was to just walk into a meeting and see what happens?

SPEAKER_00 12:26

Well, I worked at a the club I had my last drink at. I worked there when I was in my late 20s into my early 30s. And there was a gentleman that was in recovery that worked there as well. And he got sober before he turned 21. And he had been sober maybe like five years, I think, at the point when I met him. And we worked together for several years. You know, I remember one time kind of just like crying, being drunk, like working and being drunk, because I was a bartender, so I could just drink. And um, I ran this little cafe and bar in the in the music venue. And I just remember him saying to me, you know, it probably doesn't help that you're putting depressants in your body every day because it was like moaning about how I was just so sad and things just don't work out for me, and just being in my in my feelings. He said that to me, and I was just like, fuck you, but okay. He's the person that actually took me to my very first AA meeting. Yeah, pretty soon after that. I kind of reached this place where I was like, I don't feel right, I don't feel okay, and I don't know what this looks like, but I got this dude over here. He's messed up, but he's got some stuff figured out. So let's let's see what an AA meeting's like.

SPEAKER_01 13:49

And what did you think of that AA meeting?

SPEAKER_00 13:51

I don't really have a lot of recollection. It's like I remember it was in it was a large meeting, relatively large. I just remember being really overwhelmed and terrified and regretting that I was there. But he kind of was like encouraged me to like raise my hand when they asked if there was anyone new. And I did do that. And then I immediately started crying after I introduced myself. And then I just kind of glazed over, honestly. Like I don't really remember a ton about was said in that meeting or anything like that. I think I just was like basically like kind of shut down and just like terrified. But yeah, I did it and I, you know, went to a handful of meetings after that, but I wasn't ready. Like I wasn't ready and I did all that comparing of like, well, maybe I haven't tried everything else. And so I proceeded to not drink for a month without going to meetings or anything like that. And then once I reached a month, I was like, oh, cool, like I could do this if I really want to.

SPEAKER_01 14:56

I went to a meeting and I went to an NA meeting. I knew nothing about them. I didn't know what the point was, but I was so naive about recovery, I went to one meeting and I thought, okay, I'm I'm good. I had no idea that meetings were a thing you regularly went to. I thought you went to one and then that was it.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, one and done.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

To what extent did detox or rehab facilitations come into play for you?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

They didn't. After that one month of me, you know, proving to myself, okay, I'm not an alcoholic. Like I can really stop drinking if I want to. I proceeded to start drinking again. And got into a relationship uh with somebody that drank very heavily and lived a life like I did. And, you know, fast forward several years, we're living together, and um, it's not really going well. Uh, I didn't get better. I had, you know, at that point kind of left the place I was at, and I got into working in social services, and then I eventually ended up like kind of running group homes for folks with disabilities, and you know, I had a lot of responsibilities. But towards the end, like the very end, it really did get to a place where I was like, I also never had health insurance, so this is a factor as well. And I don't have a support system in terms of family and financial resources. So I didn't have health insurance until I was in my early 30s. And so the idea of like trying to figure something like that out, I couldn't. I live paycheck to paycheck, and if I lost my job, like what am I gonna do? Like all these different things that if I really, really, really had wanted to, I'm sure I could have figured that part out. But my ego just being in a place of such depletion, like mentally and emotionally, it just seemed like such a mountain decline. I never went to rehab or any kind of structured facility situation. What happened for me was that again, I was working with somebody. I had multiple jobs, and I was working with somebody that had gotten sober like six months before by going to AA, and we had actually been friends that drank at the same place, were very good acquaintances. And um, I went into work one day on a Saturday and um told him, I'm just so depressed. Like, I just keep envisioning driving into a Jersey barrier and like I just want to be somewhere where I can't have a choice because I don't know how to stop doing this. And he's like, I'll take you to a meeting. And that was the day after that I had had that like spiritual thing at the nightclub. So that next day I was working with my friend and I told him what happened and that I just had this, like I just knew I couldn't do it anymore. And so later on that afternoon, he took me to another meeting, and this time it stuck. I do remember that meeting going in and seeing people that I actually knew and then being like, Oh, are you here for your partner? Because my partner was a heavy drinker. And I was like, No, I'm actually here for me. And they were like, you know, a little bit taken aback. You know, it's largely, and then, you know, hearing other people talking in meetings and hearing the stories and all this kind of stuff. It's like, I hear all those people going to rehab and and doing these other avenues of of getting to recovery. But for me, it really was just like cold into AA.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

How did your friends and family react when you actually started building up some momentum in recovery?

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Oh, I will say the other thing I did that week that I got sober was I started seeing a therapist for the very first time in my life. And she was basically like, unless you stop drinking, like I can't do anything to help you. So that actually happened in that same week. I think with friends and family, like I don't really have a lot of family. That's part of my story, is that I don't I've been largely estranged from 98% of my family since I was a teenager. I have two brothers that I see and have been a part of their lives and they've been a part of my lives. I think for a while they didn't really understand what was happening. But they also have families and like we're not the kind of people that like are talking like every week or it's like we hang out bi-annually. So it's like it's not, you know, they're largely not a huge part of my life. But when we were younger, you know, we would drink together, we'd like smoke weed together, we'd like do stuff together. Like that's what we did together. I don't have a ton in common with my brothers. I do love them very deeply, but we just we have very different lives. And so that was the kind of the commonality for us. With friends, I think I don't know how deeply like my drinking actually affected my relationships outside of kind of just distancing myself in a lot of ways. And the people that I did hurt by like moving and not telling them, like those kinds of things, I kind of had avoided the people that I did have negative impacts on, and they weren't really like in my trajectory a lot of the time. So when I finally got into recovery and started doing the work, and you know, you get to this place where you kind of gotta look back and be like, who did I hurt? I I did hurt some of my friends, and I had to make amends for that. And I think that people were just largely happy for me, I think. Because I was the kind at the end, it was kind of like I would just cry all the time. Like I'd be sad and just cry, kind of vacant. So I think people were largely happy for me. It, you know, I don't think there was a lot of trust issues in a lot of ways, because I didn't do a ton of stuff that was like directly to my friends anyway. Like I would steal and lie and cheat, but like not to anyone that I was like super close with.

SPEAKER_01 20:46

Getting sober and staying sober are, of course, two different things. How do you stay sober?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

In some ways it's luck, some ways it's work. I don't know how I got to AA in the first place, honestly. Like, there's so many people that don't make it, you know. I think that was the luck part of it, or this like outside intervention that happened for me where I was able to have clarity at a certain moment and um kind of grab onto that. Staying sober, I think, largely is I, you know, when I first came in, I didn't want to do shit. I didn't want to do the work that people or take the suggestions. Took me a while to get a sponsor. It took me a while to like start doing anything outside of like going to a couple meetings a week and playing kickball or doing fun stuff with people like you. And then I had to get to a place of like, oh, I feel fucked up and I'm not drinking and I'm not using drugs, but I feel like mentally deranged. That's where I really started begrudgingly taking the suggestions and like getting into taking service positions and getting a sponsor and doing the steps and like all those things. I still have to do those things. I need to have relationships with other people that are in recovery. Like, if I COVID really did a number on me. Terms of like, oh, could I just not do this and you know be okay? No, I I wasn't okay. Like I stopped going to meetings. I stopped, I mean, we couldn't go to meetings and I hated Zoom, so I just didn't go to meetings. I stopped talking to people largely, like, we couldn't see people in person. So it was like a lot of those things that I kind of had just like made a part of my lifestyle weren't accessible to me anymore. And so then it was like, okay, I really do need to keep doing these things because I I found out within a year that like I get real weird and I don't want to be real weird. And I also think that like a lot of the time I still have this feeling, like, I just don't want to. I understand that me not doing it is gonna take me to a place that I definitely don't want to be in. And then it's also like people are exhausting to me, but they're also the thing that bring me the biggest joy, I think. Like having true, authentic connections with people, especially people in recovery, bring me the most amount of purpose and joy in my life. But at the same time, I'm like, I hate people, I don't want to be around you. So it's like this, I gotta hold all that at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

What was the most challenging part about your early recovery?

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Feelings. I don't like them. And I had a lot of feelings. I had a lot of feelings that I didn't know how to identify, I didn't know what they were, like I didn't grow up in an environment that was nurturing or encouraged expression or processing. I like I grew up with people that did the best that they could with what they had, but there was just a lot of abuse and more ill-coping mechanisms. So it's like, don't talk until you're spoken to, be as perfect as possible and small as possible. Like if you're not needed for something, disappear. Like that, that's the kind of place I grew up in. Of course, not learning how to do a lot of those things or coming from a place where that was a priority or even anything that was really important. I turned to drugs and alcohol to like deal with my feelings at a, you know, as a teenager. And sure, it was fun. I had a lot of fun, but it also helped me just kind of like survive. I think when I got sober, it was really, really everything just felt like it was coming at me all at once. Just so many emotions that vacillated so quickly. This kind of like unearthing of things that I had just buried for like decades. And also, like I said, I was in therapy, so it was like I was starting to like learn how to deal with some of these things and like process my history, and it was a lot, but I do feel like like there was good things and bad things all at the same time. So there was no like, oh, this is horrible. I hate this. I had the highest highs and like really low low. So it was like it kind of all balanced out, but it definitely was a roller coaster. And I would just, I remember one time calling a friend and just being like, I'm sitting in my closet and I can't stop crying, and it I don't even know why I'm crying. And it's been like half an hour and I'm just like hysterical, and nothing had happened. So just like, you know, and I think that's the magic of AA too, is like you can just call people or like see people and just be like, hey, this weird thing happened to me or this is happening, and I don't know what to I feel insane. And they're just like, you're okay, just keep coming, you know. Okay, all right. I will try to believe you, and I'll just, you know, I'll let this go. I would say, yeah, that was definitely the hardest thing for me. I also went through a breakup of a relationship of five years within my first six months, and that had moved out, and that was hard too.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

I really like the authenticity of meeting people in recovery, and certainly early recovery, we're broken. We're meeting other broken people, and we're not celebrating the fact that they or we are broken. But even people that have many years in recovery can still relate to being broken.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

For sure. I I feel like my okay, all these things that I felt shame about or have felt shame about, or sometimes it's like you can turn it into like a purposeful thing, right? And like being able to help somebody else by relating your own experience or connecting in that way where it's like, oh yeah, I'm not alone and I'm not the only person that goes through these things, and I'm not a completely worthless pile of shit because of X, Y, and Z. I struggle a lot. And it's it's not something that like I don't think it'll ever go away, but that's just part of who I am as a person. My story has definitely been riddled with a lot of like existential mental health, financial struggles.

SPEAKER_01 26:47

What was the best part about early recovery?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Discovering I could have fun without being fucked up, I think. I remember one day that I think it was my first year of recovery, and we had a sober kickball team. I just remember it was like one of those days where it was like playoffs or something. So it was like the end of the season, it was like a whole day kickball day. You know, at a certain point we all went to Whole Foods. I just remember driving back from Whole Foods and driving back to the field to play more kitball. And there was some song on the radio that was like just blasting, and the windows were rolled down and it was really sunny and beautiful out. It was like the summertime. And I just remember feeling like I'm so happy. Like I'm so happy in this moment. Like I'm fully present, I'm feeling everything. I am having so much fun. I I just feel like that was a real surprise to me. Like I didn't, it had been so long since I'd really truly had fun, where I like really felt it inside. It just felt so freeing. I didn't feel self-conscious or like stuck in myself. Like I was just part of this thing. So I think a lot of my early recovery was like discovering things like that, where it was like, oh, I don't have to worry about kind of being a mess. Like just realizing that, like, unless I'm like doing something really fucked up, like people don't care. People don't care if I'm awkward, people don't care if I say the wrong thing, people don't. I had spent so long just kind of like feeling trapped inside myself and like self-conscious and just never really like I've ever fit anywhere. And so, like, this realization of like, oh, I'm just another person. Like, I don't walk around like judging people. I mean, once in a while, but like I'm not doing that. And to think that I just had this life where I felt like that was happening to me all the time, and then to like get sober and realize, like, no, people don't give a shit. They do not give a shit. Like, just have fun, be yourself, and like let the dice fall where they may, you know. So I think that that was probably the best part of early recovery. And I think also, you know, getting into therapy and really starting to like figure out some of the stuff, even though it was hard. It was very helpful and lifted a lot of weight off of me mentally and and emotionally.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

What would be a defining moment in your life? Maybe it's some trauma event, maybe it's a the opposite and it's a delightful event. But what would be something that you would tell me if I said, what is one of the more critical parts or moments of your life?

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Aaron Powell The first would be the passing of my mom. She passed away the year after I graduated high school. And she really was like kind of a little bit of a lost soul in a lot of ways, which I can, you know, as an older like now can relate to. But she was 43 when she passed away. I just completely shut down after that. So I had moved across the country to be with her while she was passing away. And um I didn't know when I moved out there that was going to happen, but it happened very quickly. And so once that happened, I didn't want to be there anymore. So I came back to Rhode Island and I had this delayed kind of breakdown. I kind of, you know, came back, got a job because I didn't have anyone, like I had to support myself. And so I got a job. I moved in with my boyfriend at the time, who had also gone with me for that experience. And uh I started working at a shitty job uh in Walmart. My brothers both came back and they started living with us. Probably about six months after coming back. I had a I had a breakdown. And I I my first like true like depressive, severe depressive episode. And I decided, you know, I could I quit my job. I couldn't, I couldn't do anything. I broke up with my boyfriend and I moved to Providence and got a like a studio by myself. My brothers both moved out. I kind of just cut off ties. Like I broke when I broke that relationship up, it kind of severed my friend group. So he got all the friends, and I kind of got to just go to Providence. But yeah, that was a major I've had multiple kind of like depressive crises in my life, and that was the first. And um I got through it, but it took a long time. Like I didn't really start to truly feel like I was okay for at least like a year and a half. So I just kind of worked and drank all the time and and did stuff, but like I was just really, really sad and and I didn't know how to process anything that was happening, and I just felt really alone because I I my mom was my family, and you know, my two brothers were also going through a similar situation. And like my friends went with my boyfriend, and I just kind of worked and met weird people in in bars in Providence, and you know, ended up making more friends, but it took a while. It took a while for me to kind of come out of that for sure.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Where was your father at this time?

SPEAKER_00 31:54

I have been largely estranged from my father since I was a teenager. So I grew up in upstate New York, and when my parents were divorced when I was very, very young, my dad got remarried. When I was seven, my mom couldn't support us. Like she was single, and I don't know what the money situation was with between them, but um she couldn't support us, so we ended up living with my father and his new wife, and it was not good. That's where a lot of the emotional and physical abuse came into play. And so this kind of segues into my second defining moment. But by the time I was a teenager, I had enough autonomy at that point to be like, I'm not staying here anymore. And my mom had gotten into a better situation financially and relationship-wise and all that kind of stuff. So it worked out that like me and my brothers could come back to Rhode Island. So just before I started high school was when I moved back to Rhode Island from upstate New York. And I didn't speak to my father. I think I I saw him one time the whole time I was in high school. And uh it didn't go well with my stepmother. We went on this family trip. It was horrible. And so I just stopped speaking to them. I just basically cut them out. And that went on largely, I would say, you know, for most of my adult life. Like I've seen them a handful of times, and about four years ago, I was able to, they came to Rhode Island, I was able to meet with them and have like a real kind of conversation about things that had happened when we were younger. And, you know, my stepmother, for the first time ever, I think she's having some I'm gonna die soon type emotional things happening. And uh she was able to make amends w uh to me. She's not in recovery or anything, but she definitely was like, Yeah, that was really messed up. And this is where I was at, which I never knew, you know, as a young person, like she was suicidal and all had a lot of mental health issues as well. And I was able to get closure by having some very deep conversation that she was willing to have with me. So I think that was another kind of like defining moment for me where it was like being able to let go fully all of this stuff that has like fuel of my drinking. I've been talking about this shit in therapy for like two decades. I'm thankful that that was able to happen.

SPEAKER_01 34:22

What's the day in the life of Melanie like now?

SPEAKER_00 34:24

I wake up and I sigh a lot. Um I drink some coffee. Yeah, I've got a pretty alright life. I I met, you know, somebody that I I fell in love with um in my 40s. And, you know, we're we're married and we have a good life together. I don't have kids, so I can, you know, I'm I'm pretty free in the things that I can actually do. You know, I've got a job that I I don't feel for a long time I worked in social services, and it gave me a lot of purpose and it gave me a lot of esteem in certain ways. And but it was also very, very difficult and was like kind of slowly killing me. And so a few years ago, I kind of switched to like a job that's not like that, where I just kind of go to my job, not saving lives, and then I can just come home and hang out with my two cats, hang out with friends like you. Like I have a really good friend network and I try to really maintain my relationships with people. I'm going skydiving next week, so that'll be fun. I still like to do stuff that's a little bit scary. I sponsor people, I still go to meetings, like I have a sponsor, like I try to be a service. That's one of the things that does bring me a good amount of purpose and joy is like helping other people or just being there for other people as much as it can be like tiring sometimes. It's it drives me just having that connection.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

What would today's version of you tell the younger version of you to spare them some suffering?

SPEAKER_00 35:51

You know, one of the things that comes to mind first is like don't fall in love with somebody's potential. And when somebody shows you who they are, believe them, in terms of recovery, it does get better. I do feel like it continues to get better, even though I've been coming for 19 years or been doing this for a while. I feel like the older I get, the more comfortable I feel with who I am. It's okay to have boundaries. It's okay to be who you are authentically.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

If I jump in a time machine and I go and observe Melanie at seven years old, what am I gonna see?

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Probably a real weird haircut because I think I cut my own hair around that time. You're gonna see somebody that had very large teeth and a tiny head. I wore a lot of sweater vests. I was like obsessed with working in a corporation when I was a little kid for some reason. Like I would pretend that the bathroom stalls were like office cubicles, and I would like imagine having my own little like office cubicle where I could like organize everything just the way I wanted it to. You'd probably see somebody that was very quiet and kind of shy, not confident in any way. I was kind of a an oddball as a kid for sure. I spent a lot of time outside reading in treats. I can, you know, look at those things and and and have like compassion for who I was and what I was going through and and how, you know, I was able to deal with those things and like move forward. But again, I think it's more of like, oh yeah, like you got through that shit. That's pretty awesome. I don't look back and and regret or hate any version of myself or at no point am I looking back and being like, you were completely unlovable. I think I've done enough therapy at this point to like really recognize that like none of that had anything to do with me. Those were just circumstances I was put in. And even when I was a younger person, like I wasn't cool. And so like I would get bullied and in certain ways, and like we were poor and we didn't have the clothes, you know. So it was like a lot of things that just made me feel like an outsider, but now I'm just kind of like, whatever, fuck it. Like who gives a shit?

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Shifting from pretty intense conversation into tell us a story of absurdity when you were drinking.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

So yeah, I think what I was saying earlier, I used to, when I was in my twenties and before I stuck drinking, I would go to like a kind of a there's a big art scene in Providence. There's a lot of like underground DIY, like spaces and and places like that. I was at one of those warehouse shows, and I had just started dating this guy that lived in this warehouse space and you were putting on a show or whatever. I decided to start smoking copious amounts of weed while I was also like really, really drunk. And I was out on this fire scape with a like a crush of people, like you couldn't move on this firescape, and I got so high, and inside there's just like tons and tons of people, and it's loud, and I just like it just freaked out. I scaled down the firescape and then down the side of the wall because it didn't go all the way down to the ground. I fell onto the ground. People are just watching and like yelling, like, what are you doing here? You know, and I'm just like, fuck you. And I'm just like so drunk and high. And now I'm in this courtyard that's surrounded by chain-link fence and barbed wire at the top. So I'm just like, all right, what am I gonna do? I gotta get out of here. I gotta get like I was just like, I have to get out of here. Like, I just have to get out of here. And so I scaled the chain link fence, I climbed over the barbed wire, I get to the other side, I fall off the side of the fence, and I see these people walking up the street who I know, and they're like, what are you doing? And I just it just started running. Like I just started running as fast as I could through Oneyville. And now this was like, I didn't even know where I was, like I barely knew the area. It's not the greatest. Was you know, at that time it wasn't so great. But like I'm just running, like I just start running. And I don't even live around there. Like I don't even so it was just like, where am I going? I end up in a Dunkin' Donuts like a mile and a half away, trying to figure out it was the only thing I could find that was open, like trying to figure out where I was and how I'm gonna get home. First of all, uh how where am I? And tell me step by step, how do I get to where I to my address? And I don't have pen, I don't have anything to like record. So I leave and I just start wandering because obviously I'm not retaining any information they told me. And I just start wandering. And I think I was out walking until like four in the morning, just trying to figure out how the fuck I'm gonna get home, and eventually I did, but it was like just this like spontaneous, like, I cannot be here. I need to do anything I can to get away from here. And then the next day I saw the guy that saw me in the street, and he's like, Did I was that you like running down the street last night? And I was just like, Nope, that was me.

SPEAKER_01 41:01

Nope, that was not what else do you think would be helpful for listeners to know?

SPEAKER_00 41:07

Yeah, I feel like I made it pretty clear that doing this work and being in recovery and like getting through the stuff is definitely like it's worth it. It gets better. And it's not as scary. I think this is one thing. I think it's that like, you know, coming into AA, it can seem so scary. It can seem so terrifying, but it's not. It's not it's not scary. The whole God thing, whatever it is, whatever your avenue is, like this idea of uh spirituality, you can find it if you choose to. I think especially the people and like forming relationships and doing things in in recovery can seem very, very, very terrifying. But once you do it a couple times, whatever it is, it's not, it's actually like really liberating and freeing.

SPEAKER_01 41:53

Thanks so much for joining the podcast today, Melanie.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

Thanks for having me, John. It was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

As we stay in recovery, keep coming.