On Recovery and Serenity

Trigger warning: Self-harm, mentions of addiction

My phone went off at four o'clock today to remind me to do something important. I paused the video I was watching and went to the window sill, where a small army of plastic bottles with childproof caps sit in the winter sunlight: melatonin, for insomnia, which I will leave untouched until somewhere around midnight so that I can maybe get to sleep by two; a plastic jar of Vicks, for when my sinuses decide the best thing in the world is to stop working, usually when I already have a migraine; Excedrin, for aforementioned migraines—it isn't my only bottle, either. There is another in my backpack and probably a third in one of my purses; vitamin D, for the severe and long-lasting lack of sunlight in the middle of Minnesota/Wisconsin winters; a multivitamin to try and make up for the foods I never remember to eat; and a small, orange bottle of antidepressants, newly prescribed to try and cure me of both my unending anxiety and my frequent loss of hope in the world.

I take one of each of the last three, and two Excedrin. The pills leave a tang of aspirin and pill-forming jells in my mouth, and for a moment, I'm filled with distaste. How can it be that I live in a world where I need to pump myself with chemicals just to function? I wonder.

But I'm quickly brought away from that idea by the thought of how much better I've felt for the past week. I've only been on my antidepressants for six days, and already, I can tell they're working. There is a good eight or nine inches of snow on the ground, and the temperatures have been easily under freezing for two days, but I don't feel like curling up into a ball and either crying or sleeping, the way I normally do when winter hits. Finals week has not driven me to frustrated tears or anxious pacing. I've been smoking fewer cigarettes by half.

It has also been four years today since the last time I cut myself.

It's surprising to me how easy that is to think about. There was a time when elevenths—monthly anniversaries, celebrated ecstatically by my best friends—made me uncomfortable and unhappy. They reminded me of how messed up I felt I was, and how little I could do about it, since I'd lost my most effective coping mechanism. There was a time when every eleventh made me feel unstable and on the cusp of a relapse, the thoughts of hurting myself brought to the forefront of my mind by the celebrations of my friends—well-meaning, but the last thing I wanted.

It's also interesting to me that I can no longer remember the reasons I stopped. I remember the decision, and the subsequent relapses afterward, and I definitely still remember the self-injury itself, but my original determination has faded from my mind.

I still struggle with it. There are times when I fight with it almost every day, and when I still need to go to my friends and literally ask them to keep my away from anything sharp enough to hurt myself with. At any given moment, I can inventory nearly everything visible in a room that would be capable of drawing blood. I still keep my nails short—usually bitten out of nerves—so I don't dig them into my hands or my arms when I have moments of roiling anxiety pop up out of nowhere. I'm still triggered by images of injuries that bleed. On the bad days, even Tumblr-artsy bloody nose pictures can make me feel tilted and shaky. (I still don't know why people like to post bloody noses and skinned knees, either, but to each their own.)

There are moments when the only thing keeping me anchored to safety is the ring I wear on the middle finger of my right hand. It was a gift for my two-year anniversary from my best friend, and engraved on the inside are the words Arise and Be. At the worst times, I take it off and watch the light reflect off the engraving. I think of the first time I heard the song, in a mostly-empty bar at the album pre-release party with my best friend, tears rolling down my cheeks and powerful shivers running up my spine. I think of the time I heard the band play it live, at a concert we drove four hours to get to, standing in the front row. Tears rolled down my face then, as well.

On the windowsill where my pill bottles sit, there is another memento, taken from my jewelry box a few nights before, and as I went back to my computer and started playing the song from my ring, I took it with me. Two years ago, a friend I still think of as my older brother went into rehab for drug addiction. The first time I saw him after he got out was my 21-month mark. Out of nowhere, he took something from his pocket and tossed it at me. I dropped it, and when I knelt down to pick it up, I saw it was a coin. About the size of a half-dollar, and bronze in color, it had writing on both sides—Physical, Mental, Spiritual on one side, and the Serenity prayer on the other.

“I got it when I got out of treatment,” he told me, and when I held it out to him, he shook his head. “I want you to have it. I want to give it to someone who knows how important it is.”

I kept it. I never went through treatment for my own addiction, and while I will never say I did it by myself, I can say I went through much of the worst of it alone. The coin has become a symbol not only of him, and the struggle we once went through side by side, but also of my own healing. I consider it now as much a symbol of my own recovery as it was supposed to be of his. I've often thought that someday, I will find someone close to me who deserves it, and I will pass it on. But until then, I keep it with me, occasionally taking it from the recesses of a box or a drawer and spending a few days flipping it between the fingers of my right hand. When I remember, I make myself read the prayer on the back—really read it, as if I had never heard it before. And when I do, I am nearly always struck by its truth.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.