All My Best Friends Are Strangers

Most of the people I am closest to I've met through recovery and that makes me feel alone. Peaceful John. William Irvine. W.H. Auden. Stellar recovery week!

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These Sunday posts are mostly paywalled. But I don't want to exclude anyone, so if the cost is prohibitive or you wish to send TSB to someone you love, contact me. I'll happily pass along a free annual subscription to those who need it most.

Come join us. — AJD

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Every year since I've been sober, I have tracked the disintegration of my friendships and mourned those losses. I also, every year, make a mental note, an earnest promise, that I will make a better effort to connect to the people in my life who don't practice a recovery program. Because the people I have met through 12-step – the humans I'm connected to most frequently – do they even count as "real" friends? They feel like the only ones left who can tolerate me.

It's a real puzzle. I'm energized and excited to share my whole damaged, disgusting self in a room full of strangers. I'm sad that my success in truth-telling to members of Al-Anon or AA – or, let's be honest – here in this newsletter, has only revealed a new emotional vacancy: an inability to show true, non-professional vulnerability in the real world.

On the latest TSB pod, I shared this idea with Peaceful John. I explained to him that if I expressed the same level of vulnerability I do in Al-Anon to civilians, I might come off as desperate or manipulative. Throughout the conversation, John, who is 74, said he felt similar but had since left that battle behind. He said he has only two or three people who aren't program friends in his life anymore, but that's okay. He said he's become "open, honest, and communicative" as he is in the program with regular people, even the people he meets in the grocery store, he said. His program friends are just real-life human friends now.

With all of my abnormalities and insecurities, I'm convinced I'm missing the necessary wiring to become that open with everyone.

I recently saw "A Real Pain," the two main characters represented my 12-step and non-12-step personalities. There is one scene where David, the neurotic, careful one (non-program me), played by Jesse Eisenberg, is having a heated, tearful confrontation with his cousin, Benji, the charismatic but broken one (program me), played by Kieran Culkin.

"Do you see what happens when you walk into a room? I would give anything to know what that feels like. To know what it feels like to have charm. To feel easy. To feel fun. To light up a fucking room what I walk in."

I had a great Friday morning men's meeting, and my share – man, oh, man – was pretty spectacular. Jarring, but clear-eyed, thoughtful and grounded. Pure magic! The room was lit the fuck up. At the end of the meeting, many men embraced me and lauded me for my honesty and bravery. "You spoke the way I feel!" said one man I hadn't met before. Another new stranger now loves me.

I realized, though, that perhaps the closeness I crave is not friends in my life who I can share my damaged, disgusting side with, but someone I can be quiet with. Say nothing and not feel like we’re drifting apart or disintegrating. I don’t want any stakes or tension, just a shared history and enough respect to hear each other breathing. I want someone who will come over unannounced and do nothing with me, who requires no entertaining, and that will be enough love for the both of us.

And when I got home, it was quiet. The kids had left, and the dogs were napping, but the buzz inside me hadn't gone away. And Julieanne was home. I had an opportunity to share what I had learned about myself with her, even though this usually makes me uncomfortable and hostile. "I love you!" I said. "I know it doesn't seem like it sometimes, but that's on me." I opened up. Then we talked some more.

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DAILY READINGS:

Last week I gave myself a 1.5/5 recovery rating for the week and it probably could have been lower, saved only by the fact that I talked to so many people on the phone, worried about or confused by the geography of the Los Angeles fires. I also haphazardly threw some money at random GoFundMe pages but other than that I abandoned almost every part of my normal weekly recovery routine and it showed. This week, though? Optimal A.J.