Chapter 09: Love or Fear

I had a good buddy in the Air Force named Gil. His family was Punjabi, so he had a different background from me. We took turns sharing our culture. We would go to his template, then my church. We would eat his food, and then some good old Texas Chili. I enjoyed listening to him share about his background and how different things were for him.

One summer, the weather was dry with a crisp breeze. We sat out back having a smoke break and talking about our plans.

“What are you going to do when you get out?” he asked me.

“I don’t know. I want to open a business. We need more tools to help people build web applications easier and faster.”

“How are you going to do that?”

“Break an application into reusable blocks. The application loads only the blocks it needs, making it faster and lighter for the user. Have a block designer on the web so that you don’t have to be a programmer to create new blocks.”

“Sounds complicated,” he said.

“Maybe. It would sure make a difference, though. What about you? What are you going to do?”

“My father has a shipping business. I’m going to take it over and run it for him.”

I twisted my face in confusion, “you like the shipping business?”

“No, actually. I hate it. I did it a little before joining the military, but I’m going to go back.”

“Why would you do that?” I was perplexed. Gill had a degree, a security clearance, experience as a project manager, and he’d worked in security. Just about any job he wanted was within his grasp.

“My father needs the help. He built this whole business by himself, and when he’s gone, there will be no one to oversee it. I have to take care of it for him.”

“It’s his business!” I scoffed. “Let him worry about that.”

“Dude,” he chuckled. One corner of his mouth turned up as if he thought I was making a joke. “Your family is your family. They took care of you. You take care of them.”

“I respect that. I still don’t understand how you could walk away from everything to live someone else’s life, but good on you, man.” We put out our smokes and went back to our shift.

I was amazed at his devotion, but I wasn’t sure that was the life for me.

My family isn’t my fault. Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born or not.

I said to myself.

If someone had asked me, I would probably have chosen not to exist. It seems unfair I should be relegated to taking care of them when I didn’t have a vote in the matter.

I’m aware that I saw things different from what most people are used to, but this book isn’t about how “right” my mind was. My mind has been in some grim places, and I share them with you hoping that if you’re in one of those places, then perhaps you won’t feel so alone.

I spent my nights thinking about what he said. Gil’s father wanted his son to continue the business. If someone wanted to give his father a gift, they could have given a car, money, or any number of gifts. Yet having Gil continue the family business was a gift that only Gil could give.

I only have one family.

I thought.

My father may have dreams too — dreams that only I can fill.

As I continued to ruminate about the relationship, I realized I held the power to do good that only I could do. I didn’t feel required to comply with his dreams, but I did feel empowered to help him realize them.

I decided to call my dad. Not knowing how to start the conversation, I told a cheesy joke.

“Hey, Dad! I went to Walmart, and they don’t carry fathers. It turns out you’re the only one I get. I want to do whatever it takes to make things right.”

“Okay?” He said as more of a question than an answer.

“I want to know what I have to do for you to consider me your son again.”

“I never stopped considering you to be my son. You’ve always been my son.”

And then everything was better! Actually that’s not true. Our phone call didn’t go anywhere else. We talked “around” the subject, but didn’t find resolution. He continued to say there was nothing wrong. I felt like there were things wrong, so it was kind of awkward.

As I thought through the situation, I realized I was trying to get Dad to validate my feelings. I wanted him to tell me that he was sorry that he hurt me. He wasn’t going to do that because he didn’t believe he did anything wrong. I had to get to a point where I understood what mattered. Did I want Dad to admit he did something wrong, which would gain us nothing? Or did I want to restore a relationship with my dad?

I had a conversation with Dr. Rodney Stodghill who helps people recover damaged relationships. He said sometimes people will tell you, “you put a bullet hole in me!” You may say “I didn’t mean to!” The thing is, it doesn’t matter. You were cleaning your gun (emotional gun) and it went off. Now I’ve got a bullet hole. Sometimes people are going to be hurt by things you say, even though you didn’t say anything wrong. We can find ourselves on either end of this emotional rifle, and neither end is pleasant.

So he and I talked about two fictitious characters: Bob and Sue. They were best friends and even grew up together. Another friend, jealous of their relationship, said Bob said mean things about Sue behind her back. Sue believed her friend, because Bob tends to talk behind people’s back. Now Sue is hurt, though Bob doesn’t believe he did anything wrong.

The first thing Dr. Stodghill recommends is to have each person list five amazing things about the other person. Sometimes when you get stuck focusing on an offense, all you can see is negativity in the other person. Finding five positive things unlocks your ability to be open-minded again. Reconciliation can be better with both parties present. But if you can’t bring both parties to the table, this step can still be done alone.

At this point in the conversation, Sue still believes that Bob The next step is to ask Sue to tell you what she knows about Bob. The hurt is right below her subconscious, and it’s a sense of correctness. She believe she was hurt, because Bob said something. So Dr. Stodghill will direct Sue to tell him everything she knows about Bob.

“Wait,” I interjected. “Sue’s just going to retell the rumor!”

“No, because what she knows deep inside is the truth. If she gets stuck, you can have her talk about what she knows about someone else. Then say ‘tell me everything you know about Bob.’”

Sue will be able to tell you that Bob is a nice person. He loves her very much. They have been friends forever, and he’s always supported her. Bob is likely the same person that she knows him to be. Anything she’s heard about him is the more likely liar. However, even if she can accept that Bob likely didn’t do what she believed, she may still have a hurt deep inside.

The next step is forgiveness. Forgiveness is important, because Sue isn’t the only one who’s been hurt. Bob is also hurt that Sue believes damaging information about him, regardless of whether or not it’s true. Forgiveness is easy, because it is one-sided and unconditional. If you’re a Christian, it’s even easier. Dr. Stodghill will have Sue turn to Bob, or an empty chair if Bob isn’t available. Then he has her pray a simple prayer:

“Father, I forgive him for what I know and what I don’t know. I release him to you that you would discipline him. I won’t.”

If you’re not able to pray this, you can still release your offender. That’s within your right. However, it’s important to let it bleed. Sometimes we are so afraid of the hurt that we will box it off and the information (truth or lie) sits buried in our subconscious, waiting to prick us again. Focus on the hurt and let it pour out of you. When you’re done, make up your mind to start over with a clean slate.

Next, you need to decide if you are going to try to restore things, or walk away. If the goal is restoration, then I need to move past my feelings. I’m entitled to feel any way I want, but if I require people to acknowledge my feelings, I hold progress hostage. My dad said that things are normal between us, and I can accept his statement and move forward. As long as there aren’t hidden feelings on his side, our relationship should be free of emotional landmines.

I started calling my dad more frequently, and even visiting him as I was able. There wasn’t a lot to chat about, so we just talked about work and often about Dora, my girlfriend. I always wanted to hear his opinion about how to best respect and honor women.

One cool evening I was standing on the fire escape of the barracks, talking to my dad on the phone. Why the fire escape? Because Samuel. Anyway, we were talking about the usual routine stuff and he startled me.

“Why don’t you marry Dora?”

I squished my face in surprise and confusion, “marry Dora?”

“Yeah, I can tell you love her, and you’re

always

talking about her.”

I didn’t feel like I talked about her that much. But perhaps I wasn’t even conscious of it. Being a literal person, I felt a need to answer his question “why,” and I wasn’t sure why. I thought about all the division caused by this relationship over the last six years. I thought about how it would affect Dora if there was a rift between our families. I definitely didn’t want a division between me and my parents.

“I want to make sure I honor you, and I don’t want to put Dora or my parents in an uncomfortable situation. Until our two families can get along, marriage is off the table for me.”

“I don’t have any problems with Dora,” he said with what sounded like a smile.

“Well… I would to ask to marry her, but I have a big favor to ask you. Would you go down to Mexico with me to ask for her hand formally?” I waited for the obvious “no” since going to Mexico would require him to take vacation, plus spend hundreds of dollars on travel. Not to mention he didn’t speak Spanish.

“I’ll do better. I’ll buy the tickets,” he said.

My dad has always supported me even when he didn’t understand me. Sometimes I failed to comprehend it, but as I reflect, I can see he has always been there. It’s like the footprints in the sand poem.

Over the next couple years, my wife and I got engaged and married. My family supported us so much in the process. For me it was a significant bonding experience. We had a wedding in Mexico, and my parents flew down to congratulate us. My parents gelled so well with my Mexican family, you would think they were half Hispanic themselves.

I was still in the Air Force, but now I had a house on base so that my wife and I could live together. It was awesome. I was within walking distance from everything, but I had the privacy of my own home. Plus, I had a wife, which was pretty cool. She found things to do on the base to keep busy, and Facebook was all the rage, so she could stay in contact with her family.

In spite of all the things getting better for me, I still couldn’t stop the noise in my head. Not only was there a ton of negativity bouncing around up there, but I hurt as well. It felt like someone was squeezing my heart all the time while someone else was yelling hurtful things in my ear. The only difference is that now that I was married, I couldn’t stay at the office all day to escape. I wanted to feel anything different, and alcohol made me feel different — at least for a moment.

I would come home from the office and try to adapt to married life, which was amusing. My wife didn’t appreciate me doing somersaults and turning on the lights at six in the morning. She didn’t understand that everything in the house had a place, and I wanted her to keep them in their places. She was adjusting to living on a military base, which came with its own set of strict rules. She was also trying to adjust to being married, and all it entailed.

I had never been quick to adapt to new situations or changes. I had a habit of drinking a wine or beer when I came home from work, as it helped me unwind. However, they were getting expensive. One day I picked up a bottle of vodka to know what it was like. I noticed it helped take off the edge faster. It didn’t have the notable after-smell of beer, and was cheaper.

It didn’t occur to me to mix the drink with anything. I would just come home and pour myself a four-ounce glass of vodka and carry it around with me while I did chores. I wasn’t sure why, but the vodka stopped working for me. I would come home and have a glass and feel like I hadn’t drunk anything. Fortunately vodka remained inexpensive, so I just drank a second glass. A year later, I made things simpler and carried around the bottle of vodka.

One day I woke up and quickly opened my mental checklist of my morning.

“Shoot!” Except I didn’t say ‘shoot’.

“What happened!?” My wife answered.

“I’m going to be late.”

I had thought through my night before. I came home, ate dinner, and started chores while toting my bottle of vodka around. I never finished getting ready. I shaved my head in the Air Force, which was time-consuming. I also hadn’t prepped my uniform.

“I have to take a shower, shave, iron my uniform, and get food ready. There’s no way I’m going to make it to work on time.”

“I shaved your head, honey,” she grinned.

Flabbergasted, I reached up and felt my head. It was shiny and smooth, but how did it get that way? “You shaved my head?”

“Yes,” she said slightly more concerned. “You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“I ironed your uniform, too.”

I was sitting on the side of the bed, my hand still on my head. I stared up at the door and saw my uniform prepped and ready, hanging where it goes.

“You really don’t remember last night?” She asked with increasing concern.

“No. Why?”

“You got drunk and started falling. You hit your head pretty hard, but I think it’s going to be okay. You couldn’t stand up, so you sat down in the bathtub and I shaved your head. You passed out while I was shaving you, so I dried you off and carried you to bed. You’re a little awkward to carry, by the way.”

I had no words.

My wife is a cute Mexican woman who stands five feet tall, including her hair. She’s a cheery lady who always believes the best and roots for her team regardless of how far behind they are. She’s not an adventurous woman, but she is brave. Given the choice, she would opt out of stepping into a cave that no human has been in.

This isn’t the first time she’s stepped up when needed. When we couldn’t afford a mechanic, she taught herself online how to change the oil without telling me. I came home one day, and she’d completely changed the oil in the car. I had no idea, other than the fact that she scratched it off our to do list. Obviously I asked about it, and she told me the story — grinning ear-to-ear the whole time.

When I think about the many things my wife has done for me (and she’s done a lot), this one always stands out to me. When I would shave my head, it would give her chills. Yet while I was asleep, she shaved my head, which must have been arduous to her. When she was done, she carried me to bed. I have no idea how she hoisted my hundred-fifty-point frame to bed, but she has my respect. To top it all off, she prepared everything for my next day of work while I slept off the booze.

She was visibly concerned, and I was as well. How is it possible that I had no recollection of the night before? This appears to be a problem. Yet a bigger problem to me was going through my evening with no way to make all the pain and noise stop. Fortunately, I knew that the military had a department that could help me figure things out.

I made an appointment with Mental Health again, and sat down with a substance abuse counselor. She got out a pen and pad and began a series of rehearsed questions.

“How much are you drinking a day?”

“About one bottle of Vodka.”

“A fifth?” she asked with shock on her face.

“No,” I said with shame on my face. “Not a fifth. The whole thing.”

She couldn’t hold back a laugh. “A fifth is the name for seven hundred fifty milliliters of alcohol.”

“Oh, then yeah, I drink a fifth most days.”

“Has alcohol ever impeded your ability to perform your duties?”

This question was intriguing to me. Although I was shocked my wife helped me out, it actually wasn’t the first time I’d passed out. I’d passed out from alcohol before, but I still woke up like clockwork in time for work the next day. I never showed up for work drunk, and never drove with a drop of alcohol in my system. I never got in any alcohol-related trouble. I didn’t realize that the technical term for this is “functioning alcoholic.”

“Never,” I replied.

“Could you quit drinking today?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” I replied.

To this day, I feel like that question was unfair, because I didn’t have a problem quitting the alcohol itself. The problem was that I didn’t know how to manage the pain without the alcohol to keep things in check. Still, the alcohol was kind of a problem.

“Would you like help with your drinking problem?” she asked.

“That’s why I’m here,” I answered with my shoulders slumped forward.

I try my hardest to be a good person.

I thought to myself.

How is it possible that I’m sitting in a substance abuse office on this side of the desk?

“We’re going to send you to a rehabilitation facility where you will be treated for alcohol abuse and given counseling.”

“Ok.”

I never actually knew what rehab was. I’d heard about celebrities being sent to rehab, which attracted attention. I was about to find out what it was about. I made arrangements with my supervisor and my wife, and she dropped me off at the facility.

Once in the treatment facility, they gave me some vitamins and injections to help with any possible withdrawal problems. Every morning we would be shuffled through medical routines. In the afternoons, we would listen to talks about addiction, and in the evenings we would have workshops to come up with plans for after rehab.

I learned something from all the talks that I remember. Which I assume is all the talks unless I slept through one. The talk I refer back to on a nearly regular basis was from a line in “Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living” by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross & David Kessler. The speaker,

whose name I don’t remember,

said that everything we do stems from either love or fear.

When I hear an absolute phrase like “everything we do” I lock up until I’ve processed it. Absolute phrases often lack scientific data to back them, which makes them opinions. Yet opinion or not, this phrase has done well for me. Do you lock your doors because you fear robbers, or because you love your family? Do you eat because you fear death, or because you love your body? In my wife’s case, it’s because she loves food (she’s still fit and healthy, though).

One of the things that I’ve learned in Mental Health is to avoid using terms like “good” and “bad”. It’s tempting to call

love

the “good” root and to call

fear

the “bad” root. However, when you use such simplistic words, you remove the meaning behind them. Why is love good and fear bad?

Instead of thinking of love and fear as good and bad, I ask myself what makes them preferable. I prefer love-based actions, because they are sustainable. Fear is a primal response, which is subject to change by nature. Love is something you can choose to do in spite of your feelings, making it more change-resistant. Choosing to secure your house because you fear robbers makes it subject to the level of fear you have on any given day. But your love for your family changes much more slowly — if at all.

Another reason I choose love over fear is because love tends to make me happy. If I drive the speed limit out of fear of the police, I feel stressed even when I’m doing it. However, if I drive the speed limit because I love and respect the surrounding people, then I feel more peaceful.

My goal, therefore, is to move actions from the fear bucket to the love bucket. My mom had a plant sitting on the front porch. The rain was driving so hard it was coming in sideways and knocked the potted plant off its pedestal. I knew that if I went outside, I was going to be soaked. I hated that plant, but I knew that when Mom came home she was going to be upset. No matter what I did, it would be a fear-based action.

I took a moment and thought about the plant and my mom. I didn’t want to love the plant, but I did love my mom. I went outside and picked up the plant. As I sat in the pouring rain, picking up the soil and putting it back in the plant, I was pleased, because I knew it mattered to her. I brought the plant around the house to a safer place, and went inside to change my clothes. Since the action was initiated from a place of love, the discomfort of the chilly rain-soaked clothes faded quickly.

It seems a bit weird that the thing I learned from substance abuse training wasn’t more related to substance abuse. I don’t have a magic bullet for alcohol problems, and I’m not convinced there is one. Some people in the program relied on check-ins with friends to keep sober. Other people took pills that made them less tolerant of alcohol. For me, the decision came from a couple factors.

The primary factor is that I choose to be involved in the Christian ministry. I don’t drink, because it sometimes causes problems for other people. I want people to feel safe around me, and by not drinking, I create a safe space where people can come to me at any time. Also, being in the ministry means I may be called at any time of the day to attend to the sick and dying. If I’m drunk or even drinking at the time, my ability to serve those people would be impaired.

Outside of the ministry, I have chosen to stop drinking for another reason. One of those afternoon talks was about the way that addiction affects the brain. When you get a buzz or high, it’s because your brain doesn’t have enough receptor sites. If you sustain your addictive behavior, your brain builds more sites, causing it to take more substance to get another high.

When you abstain, those sites are shut down, but not destroyed. So, you can get high again on one beer, but only the first time. I tried an experiment some time after rehab. I drank a beer and voila, I got a buzz. The next day, I drank a beer and got less of a buzz. The third day I felt nothing. However, after waiting a month, I was able to get a buzz from one beer again. All this managing of times and calculations to have a good time was a sign to me that it’s not really healthy.

I laugh at my wife when it comes to alcohol. I bought her a whiskey a week ago, and she hasn’t even smelled it. When I gave it to her, she smiled and made a bunch of girly sounds. Yet she has yet to drink it.

I think about that alcohol daily. It seems like a waste to leave it sitting there doing nothing. Yet she could throw it in the trash with no problems. I don’t crave the alcohol, but I still obsess about it. My reaction to the alcohol doesn’t sound healthy to me, so I choose to avoid it altogether.

My rule boils down to this: would I drink an alcoholic beverage if it didn’t make me feel any different? The answer is “no” I wouldn’t. I would drink because it has a euphoric effect on me. Since I know those euphoric effects have a cap, and inherently cause damage, I choose to simply walk away.

Having alcohol out of my life is wonderful. Every time I go to the doctor, and they ask how often I drink, I smile when I get to tell them “never.” My life is simpler, because I don’t have to worry about whether my actions are going to cause problems for me or for others. My mind is at ease, not ever having to worry about whether the alcohol is hurting me. I did have to go home and face life without alcohol, which had different challenges altogether, but I was happy that alcohol wasn’t one of them.