Becoming Normal – An Ever-Changing Perspective – Mark Edick

I am working on my next book, which will be titled, Fear: Feel It, Face It, and Grow. My publisher, Central Recovery Press, has started the editing process. The book will publish in March of 2012 and we should have everything done and ready to send to the presses in the fall of this year.

I have written the Introduction, Dedication, Acknowledgments, and Table of Contents. Due to space limitations within the Acknowledgments, I certainly could not mention everyone who has had a positive impact on the book, so please know that if you are in my life, or ever have been, I have learned something from you and you deserve your share of the credit for the experiences I share in the book. I thank you all.

A graphic artist, who is working closely with my publisher, is working a cover design; if things go as they did last time, which I believe they will, I should be receiving two covers for my review. I can then put in my two cents about which one I think we should use. I couldn’t have been happier with the cover of my first book Becoming Normal, and I expect the cover of Fear to be just as wonderful.

I will keep you posted on the progress as things move along. And if things move forward like they did before, the waiting will be the hardest part for me.

I realized recently that this is, for me, a thirteenth year. And I have given it credit for the miseries--minor for the most part--that I have suffered since turning fifty-two. I’m not superstitious or afraid of the number thirteen. In fact, I rather enjoy Friday the Thirteenth when it rolls around each year. I consider it more of a consistent anomaly than anything else. It seems every thirteen years though I have a bad year.

When I was thirteen, I was caught stealing at the grocery store where my mother did her shopping. They didn't call the police, they called my parents. But that didn't save me from a well deserved punishment. I was grounded for a month but that wasn't the worst part of my punishment. My parents told me they didn't know if they would ever be able to trust me again. Losing the trust of my parents was a crushing blow, and it took a long time, but I did regain their trust.

When I was twenty-six, I was arrested on a drug charge, and while I won't bore you with details, suffice it to say that it turned that year into a bag of trouble. It was bad enough that it trickled into the next year, and even the one after that by the time I had finished my probation, paid my fines, and done my community service.

When I was thirty-nine, I got divorced for the second time. I didn't drink during that marriage, but when it ended I went back to the bottle. It was the worst of my drinking and this thirteenth year dragged on for nearly three years as I drank my way to my bottom. By the time I found sobriety, I was forty-three.

I am now fifty-two, have been for several months, and while I figured out the thirteenth year anomaly after my arrest and had it confirmed by my second divorce, I had completely forgotten it. I recently experienced one of my more depressing winters. I haven’t been as happy as I usually am; I haven’t been writing like I have over the past several years and life just seems a bit less enjoyable. On top of that, I lost a dear friend recently. Someone who helped me grow in sobriety. She was ninety-nine and I tell myself that she wanted to go because it is the truth. But that doesn’t make the fact that I lost a dear friend any easier to deal with--she was the last of my ties to my first sponsor. She was his widow, a wonderful, caring woman, and a dear friend.

Good has come from all the bad things that have happened in my thirteenth years; I have to give credit where credit is due. However, it usually takes time to find the good in things we think are bad. I haven't stolen anything since I got caught stealing. It took a while, but I don't do drugs anymore, I quit drinking, and I am very happy being single now. I feel no need to have someone in my life to validate me as a person.

On top of that, this has been the mildest thirteenth year to date. Mild depression doesn't stack up to the craziness of my past. But that doesn't make it any fun. And losing a loved one is a big deal even if they were ready to go and had been for five years.

But this is the first time I have been sober for a year thirteen. Of course, the first one I wasn’t drinking or doing drugs, but I wasn’t living a sober, clean life either. I was a troublemaker as a kid. This time I haven’t caused any of the issues I am dealing with--not yet--although the year isn’t over. And I know this will pass. Nothing lasts forever.

So I have decided that until I have another birthday I’ll just be cautious--and I’ll let things come as they may. I’ll write when the urge strikes me, but I’m not going to push anything. Since something good has come from my past thirteenth years, I will hope that pattern continues and look for good. Maybe I just need some time to reflect and God is using this as a way to provide it. I’m going to do my best to take time to relax and think. And, gradually, I will ease my way back into my normal activities and life.

When I was a kid--somewhere around nine or ten years old--my dad took me into an auto plant to see how cars were built. The way we build cars has changed drastically in the past forty-plus years.

While I don’t remember a lot about that trip, I do remember the air seemed to hang on me and around me. Noise shook the air and seemed to give it motion, yet the air tried to resist. One had to speak in a loud voice in order to be heard over the rattle and hum of air tools and hammers and the many assorted activities. Although I wasn’t working, it was hot but not unbearable. The workers were sweating.

The cars moved along as though they had found a traffic-jam all their own. Cars moved in line without drivers, in all sorts of unfinished fashion, depending on where we were in the plant. There were unfinished car parts moving along to meet and join with the unfinished cars. Engines and transmissions hung on heavy hooks that moved slowly and steadily onward; something called a bulkhead, which looked like the front of a car but stopped right behind the radiator, crawled along on carriers; fenders moved from worker to worker and from station to station. Everywhere people moved in patterns, repeating short dances that ended when each portion of a car passed them.

My dad pointed to one man who was pushing a button and said, "That’s what he does all day long." I wondered how the poor guy stayed sane through the boredom. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my dad was trying to get me to pay more attention in school. He wanted me to get a good education so I wouldn’t have to do that kind of work when I grew up. Maybe something in me sensed what he wanted because I said, I never want to work in a place like this. My father seemed pleased to hear me say that and he smiled.

I have heard many people say, "Be careful what you ask for." I have come to add, "Be careful what you say you will never do." About ten years later, I abandoned college and hired into that shop to do the work I said I would never do. I did that work for just shy of three decades. It wasn’t fun work. And although I don’t regret it, I know now that I could have done better if I had stayed in college. Today I do my best never to say Never. It seems that when I say I would never do something it goes right to the top of my to-do list. I consider it a part of the process of growth.

I vacationed in Florida recently to get some much needed sun and warm weather. I also went to shake things up a little. I remember when I was a kid and had a bottle of pop that went flat. I would shake it up. And while it didn’t make it as good as it was when I had first opened it, my pop got some of the fizz back.

For some reason, this has been one long, cold, and boring winter and I seem to have gone flat. I went to Florida to restore some fizz and it seems to have worked. I got some sun, which is always a good thing in my book. I read things that I don’t normally read--like a newspaper. I did things I don’t normally do. My brain seems to have gotten a bit of a jump-start. I can feel the electricity flowing again. The fizz is back!

It’s amazing how a simple change in routine can get things flowing again. I plan to change my routine around home as well--to help keep the fizz popping.

I will let you know how it works out for me.

I have been depressed lately; but not clinically depressed. As far as I know I don’t have clinical depression, but I am as prone to sadness and depression as the next person.

After nearly two months of feeling out of sorts, I had a talk with a good friend of mine. That was when I figured out the trouble I was in. I told him what was going on: I’m not as happy as usual, even though I feel okay most of the time; I can’t seem to concentrate; I have little or no desire to do much of anything--even writing and eating seem to be a chore. When writing becomes a chore--and when those words came out of my mouth--I knew I was dealing with something bigger than a simple bad day, bad week, or bad couple of months.

In December, I took a short break from writing--from everything actually. I decided I wanted some time off and took a sabbatical or vacation--but I didn’t go anywhere. I am now blaming that break for my misery. Not that I need to point fingers, but writing has made me so happy since I started writing that I can’t imagine why I would want to take a break from it. Now I am finding it hard to get back into the groove.

When I was writing everyday, I would wake up with fresh ideas. Often the ideas would feed what I was working on at the time. Other times they would be something that needed jotting down for future consideration and thought. Still, I had something to look forward to every day. This experience has led me to two conclusions--seemingly unrelated. First, I need to get back to writing every day. Second, I need to quit waiting to be happy.

In my days of active addiction, I was always going to be happy when. If I was at home, I knew I would be happy when I got to the party. When I was at the party, I knew I would be happy when I got home. I was looking for something to make me happy--something outside myself.

While I know writing makes me happy, and I want to get back to doing it everyday, I will not do it to make me happy. I will work on being happy all the time--I was happy before I started writing--and I will get back to writing because I enjoy writing and not because I expect it to make me happy. Writing, like being happy, is a choice. Today I want to make both choices--separately. While this may take some time and effort, it is my plan to push through. What I practice today--whether writing or being happy--I will do better tomorrow.

When I was in First Grade, I wrote with both hands. When the teacher said, Alright, children, pick up your pencils and begin writing, I would gather a pencil in each hand, write with one hand until it got tired, and then switch hands to write with the other. I was six years old at the time and thought nothing of it.

One day I was caught talking during class time and had to write, I will not talk in class, five-hundred times. I went home and began writing in my normal fashion, using my left hand until it began to fatigue, then switching to my right.

When I handed in the work, the teacher asked me who helped me do the writing. I promptly told her that I did it all. She accused me of cheating. I denied it. Then she pointed to two lines in the middle of one page and said, “These are written by different hands.”

Oh, that, I said. That’s my right hand, I said, pointing to one line, and then pointing to the other. I added, “And that’s my left.”

When she refused to believe me, I walked up to the chalk board, grabbed two pieces of chalk (one in each hand) and wrote two more times, I will not talk in class, one left-handed and one right-handed. I thought that settled the matter when she let me go.

A few days passed and my parents brought up the subject. At first, I thought I was in trouble again for talking in class. However, it turned out that writing with both hands was frowned upon at the time. I was told that I needed to pick one hand and stick to it. Being 1964”as I now look back--I am surprised that they didn’t tell me to use my right hand. And while I think it was wrong to make me choose, I give my parents credit for giving me the choice rather than forcing me to be right-handed, since being right-handed was considered so much more normal back then. I give most of the credit to my mother since I now know she had her own trials around this issue when she was a child, since she too was left-handed.

As we sat around the dinner table that evening, I asked each person in the family what hand they preferred to use. My brother, sister, and dad all said they were right-handed. My mom said she was a lefty. I thought for a bit as I ate my dinner, then announced, I don’t want mom to be the only one who’s left-handed. I’m going to be left-handed like mom.

Today I can still write with both hands, although my right hand penmanship is horrible--it’s much worse than my left hand. And while my tendency is to do most things right-handed--it is a right-handed world--I am quite ambidextrous. In fact, I again write with both hands. I just use a keyboard when I do.

Hitting bottom is talked about a lot in recovery. It seems people have to hit bottom before they can begin the climb back up (or out). I have been asked what my bottom was and the fact is that I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I was also in trouble at work and thought I may lose my job. That scared me enough to take a serious look at my life and to get honest. I discovered the ugly truth that I needed help and that I couldn’t make it much farther without cleaning up my act. This revelation was my bottom.

The strange thing about a bottom is that it’s different for everyone. I still had a job, could pay my bills, and had a driver’s license. My first sponsor said I had a high bottom and it took me a while to understand what he meant. It also took me a while to realize that a high bottom is no better or no worse than a low bottom. The only bad bottom was one where the person dies before they hit it. When that happens, there’s no chance for recovery.

Some people say, “You have hit bottom when you quit digging.” This implies the sad truth about addiction; that we participate in our own destruction and that things will only get better when we change our ways. Another saying is, “You know you have hit bottom when your quality of life is getting worse faster than you can lower your standards.” While this is a more humorous way of looking at a difficult problem, it does point to the heart of the problem. As long as the addict doesn’t see a problem, there is little likelihood he or she will want to change. Change comes when the last thing they lost (or gave away) is the last thing they wanted to lose or when the next potential loss is simply unbearable.

The addict is faced with two ugly choices: get sober or continue using. When getting sober looks better than or at least not much worse than continuing to use--and the person is ready to do something about it--that person has hit their bottom. The saddest thing about this process is that no one can decide where the bottom is except the person doing the drinking and drugs. Hitting bottom is a process that can also include bouncing a couple times or finding a trap door leading to yet another bottom.

The family can complain, the employer can threaten, or the judge can sentence. But the final decision on where or what one’s bottom is, lies with the person using. Loving and innocent people join us on a terrible ride as we discover our bottom. I took many innocents along for the ride when searching for mine. And although I do my best today to help others find their way--helping others is one aspect of my new normal--I can be of little assistance to anyone until they decide to grab on and hold on to a helping hand.

When I was growing up there was a pond across the street from my subdivision. In the winter my friends and I would shovel the pond, then skate and play hockey. We were outdoors all the time and often played outside in the winter until we were so cold the warm-up process was painful.

At some point in my early teens my friends and I decided the pond was a great place to throw snowballs at passing cars. The main road wasn’t heavily traveled and had a speed limit of 55 mph. The pond was far enough from the entrance to the subdivision that if someone who lived in the subdivision was going to turn in, they would be slowing down enough so we could tell who they were, and we would not throw snowballs at them. If anyone decided to chase us we had miles of fields and woods at our back in which to escape.

One night a car approached. We readied ourselves for the attack. The car didn’t slow down so we popped up from our hiding places and threw. As soon as the snowballs were in flight, I recognized the car. It was my dad’s.

I cried, Holy crap, that’s my dad! and we all ran. When we stopped running we tried to think what we should do. We knew the fun for the night was over and that we were probably in trouble. I had the idea that we should go to my house and see how much trouble we might be in. My friends thought I was crazy, but I managed to talk them into going with me. When we arrived at my house, my dad was sitting in his chair reading the newspaper. He asked us what we had been up to and we said we were just out walking around.

My dad said, Some kids just threw snowballs at my car over by the pond a few minutes ago. We did our best to look surprised; then inspiration struck. I said, I bet I know who it was, do you want us to go run them off? My dad looked up from his paper with a small smile on his face. He said, “Yeah, would you do that for me?” “With pleasure,” I answered. And back to the pond we went to throw more snowballs.

I can understand how someone may see that spending twenty-five years drinking and drugging is a failure. I saw my life that way when I first got into recovery. I wondered how I made such a mess of things for so long and how I might ever make it up to myself, to those I love, and to those who love me.

After thought, prayer, and discussions with friends, I decided to use my experience as an example of what not to do with your life. Helping young people understand that they could avoid my mistakes became one of my goals. I have worked with many young people and God continues to put such people in my life. I help them to understand the futility of living a life using drugs and alcohol.

Sharing my experience with others in recovery or helping a loved one to get into or grow in recovery, has been a blessing that could only have come from my failure of spending those twenty-five years the way I did. Of course, there are still days when I can’t help but wonder why it took me so long to find my bottom. I have learned to toss those thoughts aside and understand that today I am doing the best I can.

I can choose to believe my life was wasted because of drinking and drugs. I am sure many people look back on their lives and think, “If only I had done things differently,” but we can’t go back. The only choice we have today is to pursue our dreams, help others, and live life to the fullest. We can’t go back but we can move forward. I share this valuable lesson with anyone who wants to make up for lost time.

Soon after I got into recovery I began to hear people say something like, I went to a party last weekend with a bunch of normal people. Sometimes they called them Normies or said it differently. And nobody ever defined who these so-called Normies were, but everyone knew; they were social drinkers or recreational drug users.

I didn’t give it much thought past the fact that it sounded cool so I joined the band. I started using the term. I didn’t use it often. I didn’t have a reason to because I didn’t go to parties often or hang out with such people that much. However, I did accept the definition of normal offered in the saying. And I did so without realizing that I was defining normal for myself as a result.

One day I used the term normal people during a conversation with my sponsor and he stopped me in my tracks. He asked me why I called social drinkers normal. I thought about it for a moment--it took some time because I had never pondered the reason deeply--then I said, “Because they can drink normally.” It seemed like a good enough reason.

He went on to tell me that drinking doesn’t make anybody normal. Then he said something that would eventually lead me to a revelation. He said, “As long as I don’t drink, I can be as normal as anybody.”

Suddenly I had two conflicting ideas in my head; the idea that social drinkers were normal and the idea that as long as I didn’t drink or do drugs I could be as normal as anybody. These ideas began rubbing against each other in my mind. For a time I didn’t give them much conscious thought. I simply let them carry on their battle in the background mind clutter that occupies my brain in an area I don’t often consciously visit because I feel my brain needs that space to itself. But I did notice that it started to bother me when people said, I went to a party last weekend with a bunch of normal people. I also quit saying it myself.

One day I woke up with a new idea. I decided I was giving social drinkers too much credit when it came to being normal. Drinking or doing drugs creates an abnormal state to begin with. Even social users of mind-altering substances do this to leave normal behind, if only a little bit, and only for a little while. Suddenly I had reason to consciously ponder this new attitude toward normal and I began giving it serious thought. I would ponder it, then let it be, giving my brain time to work on the thought without my intentional interference. When the idea would pop into my head I would think on it some more and then relegate it to the back of my mind for more undisturbed debate.

Again I woke up one morning with a new idea. I have found that I do this quite often. The new idea was that as long as I considered normal to include drinking or doing drugs, I was excluding myself from my own definition of normal. This seemed a detrimental way of looking at life, one that needed to be changed, yet I didn’t know how to change it. I set out in search of a way to change normal--at least for me.

More time passed and again I woke up with an idea. This time it actually became the working title of the book, which was, Becoming Normal: The Next Step In Recovery. I liked the sound of it and even thought, “That sounds like a great title for a book.”

By this time I was already keeping notes. While I had kept notes I began writing even more notes with this title in mind. I wrote about everything that seemed to have anything to do with normal or becoming normal as well as other ideas that came to me.

The more notes I kept on this idea of becoming normal the more I realized that I could define my own normal. The more I came to see that normal is not a state one attains, like reaching a finish line in a race, and that normal changes, shifts, and is modified, whether by me, by others, or by the world. Since this seemed more and more true the more I studied it, the more I came to see that I would never become normal--at least not permanently. I would always be becoming normal.

Sure, I might reach the goal. I might hold onto normal for a time. But soon my idea of normal would shift and a new goal would be set. I would again go back to becoming normal as my perspective changed and my outlook on life was altered either by myself or the world around me. And I began reaching for this new goal.

Still, the seed for the book was firmly planted. I watched it grow until I put my notes together and decided to do the actual writing. And when my editor mentioned that the title might not quite fit, I listened. When he suggested we look for alternatives I did my best to come up with something different.

Being my first book, I felt a lot of pressure to come up with the perfect new title. This pressure kept me from thinking well about it. But when he suggested the title, I knew it was right and jumped at it. An Ever-Changing Perspective seemed perfect because that is exactly what becoming normal means to me. As normal changes, I change. As I change, normal changes. My perspective on life and the world have everything to do with how I see life and how I see normal.

Still, the most important thing to me today is that I fit into my definition of normal. I have to fit. If I don’t, I fall all the way back to the days when I didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere; when I never felt normal. And that is an uncomfortable place indeed.