Groundhog Day

Every Groundhog Day, on February 2^nd, I watch the news to see if the groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania will see his shadow.  Supposedly, if he does, winter will last for six more weeks; if he doesn’t, spring will arrive early.  I don’t know what the statistics are on the accuracy of Punxsutawney Phil, but every year, I think, “Worst case scenario is that there are only six more weeks of winter.  Spring will come!”  But not for Phil in the movie “Groundhog Day.”

“Groundhog Day” came out in 1993.  Bill Murray stars as Phil, a self-absorbed, grumpy reporter who, much to his annoyance, is sent to Punxsutawney to report on the big event.  When Phil’s alarm sounds to the tune of “I’ve Got You, Babe” on the morning after his long Groundhog Day, he wakes up and discovers that it’s Groundhog Day again.  This continues again and again—Phil goes to bed on Groundhog Day, wakes up to “I’ve Got You, Babe,” and finds out that it’s the same Groundhog Day he already lived.  He gets trapped in a time loop, living the same day over and over.  He tries everything to break free of the loop, but it’s not until he learns some important lessons about himself and his life and changes his behavior accordingly that he is finally able to move on to February 3^rd.  One of the promotional taglines for the movie was, “Phil is having the worst day of his life—over and over.”

I can relate.  If my life was a movie, then for ten years, the voiceover narrating it would have said “Renee is having the worst day of her life—over and over.”  There really is no better description of what it’s like to live with addiction.  For the entire ten years of my painkiller and alcohol addiction, this was my day: I’d wake up, and my first conscious thought would be about drugs.  Did I have enough?  How would I get more?  If I didn’t have them, I’d start the hellish process of withdrawal: sweating, freezing, shaking, vomiting, and feeling panic so intense that I thought my heart would beat out of my chest.  If I did have drugs for the day, I’d use them, fall into the arms of oblivion, and, if I added alcohol, eventually pass out.  Then the shame would come, and I’d promise myself and Monty and God that I was finished and would never do it again.  Until the next morning.  Then the cycle would start all over again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  My own personal hell—the Groundhog Day of addiction.

I did try to stop.  I bargained with God.  When I was lucid enough, I read book after book on addiction, trying to find a way to quit.  I promised myself at the end of every day that I would never use or drink again—and I meant it at the time.  But I couldn’t stop.  Even though I had driven everyone but Monty away from me and was so lonely I thought I could feel my heart breaking.  Even though I knew I was breaking the hearts of everyone who loved me.  Even when I thought about what the drugs and alcohol were doing to my body.  I was completely trapped in a cycle that was killing me.

It wasn’t until I began to pray the most desperate prayers of my life that I got a glimpse of the tiniest bit of freedom from those substances.  And when I asked God for more glimpses, He gave them to me.  I had this vision one day when I was praying of myself sitting in a cage—and the door to that cage was open.  I begged God to give me the courage to get up and start walking out of that open door into freedom.  He gave it to me—but I didn’t walk out.  I crawled.  My progress was slow.  I weaned myself off painkillers but struggled to stop drinking.  There were times when I felt like I was stuck in the open doorway of that cage—like I’d made it that far but couldn’t crawl any farther.  Somehow, God gave me the strength to go to my first recovery meeting.  And very, very slowly, I got to my feet and finally walked out of that cage.

I took my last drink on a February 2^nd.  It wasn’t until I celebrated my first anniversary of sobriety that I realized I’d quit on Groundhog Day.  And my heart swelled with gratitude so intense that I could feel it physically, the way I used to feel the pains of withdrawal—gratitude that God had freed me on a day that, to me, symbolized captivity.  Every year on February 3^rd, when I wake up clean and sober and don’t hear even the faintest strains of “I’ve Got You, Babe” playing in my head, I am so grateful.  So very, very grateful.

Painkiller

– Renee Adele Phillips

Today I’ll be a good girl.
I’ll skip down my yellow brick road, twelve steps at a time
toward the Emerald City of Sobriety
shimmering in the distance like a Technicolor mirage.
I will skip past the opiate fields of red poppies,
choking back the temptation to fall
gently, heavily, into the soft, welcoming arms of those poppies
where haze would descend and carry me into oblivion.
But not today.  Today, I’m a good girl.
I will clench my fists and set my teeth; I won’t even look at the poppies.

Today I’ll be a bad girl.
I’ll let the pain win; I won’t even try to fight it;
I’ll take pills by the handful, drink tumblers of whiskey, bottles of wine:
all of it, together, whatever it takes, I’ll take.
Yes, I’ll be a bad girl.
I will break promises and hearts;
I will live in a world where it’s always January,
where I welcome the darkness and shut out the light.

Good girl, bad girl.  Sober, wasted.
All my life I’ve been a tumbleweed—rootless, pointless,
blown every which way by my demon wind,
from colorless ghost towns of fear to deserted barns of shame,
tossed into irrigation ditches of sorrow, crashing again and again
onto weather-stripped fields of madness under sepia skies;
across dry prairies of regret, stripped naked
except for the dead leaves of my past I pick up
as I tumble over and over and pieces of me break, until
I am broken.

O God, I don’t want to live this tumbleweed life any more:
at the mercy of a merciless wind that breaks me and robs me of my choices.
Tether my dried and broken skeleton
to the barbed wire fence that is You.
Wrap Your wires of love around me; bleed me of my poisons.
Pierced and held by Your pierced hands,
I am bruised, scarred, broken—
but I am Yours.
Today I am done wondering who will win;
done letting my choices drag me across a wasteland of shame.
Entwined in You, I am rootless no more, at Your mercy alone.
Today, I will say with You, “It is finished.”