I apologized when I “forgot” to call her or when a suggestion she made “slipped my mind.” But I was starting to realize this routine was bankrupt. This routine got me here.
My sponsor pushed me to be honest. Don’t make excuses. If I didn’t want to talk in the meetings, tell her why. If I didn’t feel like calling her that day, admit as much. This approach made me tense. What was I supposed to say? “Hey, it’s Sarah. I didn’t call you yesterday because I didn’t want to call you.” But my sponsor said, sure, I could tell her that. It would be a great start. The point was: Own your own feelings, skepticism, irrational rage. Stop pretending to be someone you aren’t, because otherwise you have to go into hiding whenever you can’t keep up the act.
I didn’t think of myself as someone who didn’t own her own feelings. I had a few years when feelings were about the only things I did own, along with three Hefty bags of clothes, deodorant, and the sound track to Xanadu. I was all feeling, baby. Pour that Grenache down my throat and the emotion oozed out like vanilla soft-serve. But there’s a difference between blurting out every feeling you’ve ever had and simply acknowledging the relevant ones. I had two speeds, which often varied with my blood-alcohol level: fine with whatever, and never, ever satisfied. Where was the balance between these?
Although I was incredibly good at having feelings—inflaming them with drink and torch songs—I was incredibly lousy at doing anything about them. I kept flashing back to an argument I used to have with my ex. Every time I vented about work, he rushed to handcraft a solution, which was an irritating habit. All you want to do is fix me, I spat at him once. But I never thought to ask—Why do I have such a high tolerance for being broken?
OK, so: solutions. In late May, I gave notice at my job. My boss was quite generous about this. He asked if I wanted to work part-time from Texas, an offer I eventually took him up on, but on the day I gave notice, I only felt relief. Freedom. All those days of swallowing the urge to leave, and I finally got the satisfaction of coughing it up.
That afternoon, I left our drab office and walked into the weird no-man’s-land of the Garment District. I texted Anna. “Holy shit. I just quit my job!” I was standing in front of a strange window display made entirely of old-timey hats. I walked back and forth, jacked on adrenaline as I awaited her response. I paced a long time. No response ever came.
Didn’t she understand I was taking a victory lap right now and she was being very chintzy with her garlands? I knew her job was draining. She helped run a legal aid office in West Texas, and anyone in the business of saving the world can tell you it requires a rather long to-do list. But this had never been a problem before. Why had everything changed, the moment I needed everything to go back?
I went to a meeting, and instead of performing rehearsed lines, I spoke in a flood. “It’s like my best friend abandoned me,” I said. “I understand that she’s a new mother”—and when I said these words, an older woman in the front row let out a guffaw, which left me very confused. It’s humbling not to understand your own punch line.
Anna called that weekend. “I feel terrible I didn’t text you back,” she said. She had a work crisis and responding slipped her mind. And the longer the hang time, the more she raised the bar for herself on the response, which is how three days passed.
I understood. But I also understood our friendship had become another obligation to her, instead of a reprieve. And because I was holed up on my sad little island, it did not occur to me that she might be on a sad little island, too. Or that the entire world was full of people on sad little islands: people struggling with their children, people struggling just to have children, people desperate to get married, people desperate to get divorced. Like me, Anna was forging a new identity. “You don’t want to hear about boring mother stuff,” she told me. And actually, I did, but maybe she meant she didn’t want to talk about it.