Where have you been? Cause I never see you out.
Are you hiding from me yeah, Somewhere in the crowd
– Rihanna
Trigger Warning: 2020 to 2024 aren’t very funny and include the topics of addiction and mental health.
2020 = Pandemic. So much chaos. So much time at home. I got to be home with my wife and kids. We were lucky to have a stable pod, even though it was extended by the kids’ other home. Everyone stayed pretty healthy and it took a while for any of us to get it. By now, we have all had it multiple times, and we are very lucky that although it was never pleasant, we are all still here. Hallelujah and pass the Mucinex.
2021 = Pandemic. Same as above, but less novel. My wife went back to Scotland for awhile, and I ruined the fun of day drinking by becoming an alcoholic. I am sure many of you are not surprised. I did start a blog to talk all about beer, didn’t I? That should have been my first clue. It took me until the start of 2022 to admit that I had the disease of alcoholism and to get help. Kind of like Fight Club, I’m not supposed to talk about the treatment that worked for me publicly. So, if this is something that you are interested in talking about, drop me a comment and we can take that discussion offline. Suffice it to say that it is Butch to get help. Be Butch.
2022 = Recovery. And every day since. I am so grateful for the changes that sobriety brought about in me. I am very, very clear… sobriety saved my life. I go to meetings, spend time with friends from those meetings, have a sponsor I talk to regularly and rely on, sponsor others when I am lucky enough to have someone ask me, call a friend when things are hard, and pause when I get overwhelmed. It makes a huge difference. It is impossible to put into words how grateful I am.
2023 = Mental Health Crisis. This was a real shit show. I did not feel right in my own skin, like it was an ill-fitting onesie. I was losing it and desperate for help. The day before my birthday, I got help in a psych ward. I own this because of the stigma around mental health. If hearing from someone else that they got help will help you, it is worth the risk that you will think less of me. This is how I know sobriety saved my life: if I hadn’t been sober, I might not have wanted to live. But I did want to live, which is why I got help. It turns out that I was on too many meds at too low a dosage and without a psychiatrist’s supervision. I had a severe reaction – that being the ill-fitting onesie for skin. It is a good thing that I got help. After the short hospitalization, I was lucky enough to do an extended program to support my mental health. For months, I learned how to identify my emotions, live with them, handle conflict, meditate to help my nervous system, and basically how to do life better. And to stay close to my medical professionals.
2024 = Blind. Just when you think you have had enough of the “bad times,” the universe goes and steals your sight. One Sunday in February, I realized that was having a hard time seeing, and indeed, had been having a hard time for a week or more – constantly cleaning my glasses to remove the smudges. Thing is, there weren’t any smudges. What was actually happening was that my retinas were detaching. Yes, retinas, plural. In a fantastically rare debacle, I was about to lose sight in both eyes because my retinas were quitters. No trauma or accident to blame. Indeed, no cause that we could identify. Monday morning I went to urgent care and they promptly sent me to the ER. We went to the ER and mid-ultrasound while we were waiting for a CT scan (I had already removed my many ear piercings to prepare for it), the ER doctor yells, “Cancel the CT scan. You have a detached retina and need to go to the eye specialist right now.” Carrying all of my piercings in a urine specimen bottle, my mother drove me down to the eye specialist about 20 minutes away. They called while we were driving there, “When will you be here?” It was at that moment that I started to worry. I had surgery Tuesday and Wednesday morning. Then, I was blind for a year. Like can’t-even-see-light blind. As time went on, some of my vision started to come back, but I was still blind and using a cane for most of that year. I would like to share about my year of blindness in more detail at another time. TL:DR My sight is back and almost perfect, much better than it was before.
2025 = New Eyes, New Knee and Buddhism. My vision didn’t come back to stay until I had cataract surgery in both eyes. That was done right at the start of the year. So I kicked off 2025 with eyesight better than I have ever had in my life. Amazing. Once I got my sight back, I was able to get my left knee replaced – the one we had been working towards replacing for 7 years. Thought it did not go anywhere near as badly as my right knee replacement did in 2018, it did not go smoothly and I spent two weeks in the hospital while they tried to stabilize my blood pressure. I am, sadly, still disabled, but I do have less pain now than before the replacement. I had hoped that the surgery would remove the pain along with the unsatisfactory joint, but it did not. In October, I went to a 7-day silent meditation retreat for Buddhists. I had started to learn a little about Buddhism from a dear friend that summer and I was intrigued. “Sitting a retreat” seemed like a great way to figure out if this was something I wanted to pursue. It was.
2026 = Pottery and D&D. This brings us current, and so much more joy and light. I still have (almost) all of the pains and limitations, and now I have a new way to view them. Instead of, “why me?” I have learned to ask, “Why not me?” I do not have a right to be free from pain. Good health or sight are not things that anyone is guaranteed. Stopping the “Why me?” refrain has been very good for me. After I went blind, I took a pottery wheel class. If it’s all about my hands, I don’t need to be able to see, right? I dabbled in pottery after that, until this year when I am able to spend more time working on my craft. It brings me absolute joy to sit at the wheel, playing with mud, and getting dirty beyond measure. I also play Dungeons & Dragons as often as possible. I started playing a handful of years ago, but now I am well and truly hooked. I sat a second silent meditation retreat earlier this year and continue to study Buddhism.
I know there is no one thing that has helped to make my life so much better than it was, say, before the pandemic. But all of these wonderful changes, and serious challenges, have brought me to this point now. So, in answer to the question that none of you has actually asked me: No, I was not hiding. And, I have been to hell and back several times over. I hope you will forgive me for not sharing during those soul-crushing journeys. But, I am back now, soul rebuilt and stronger than before. Not that everything is great, but I have survived the worst I could imagine, and that tells me that I can and will survive whatever is next. And the thing after that, too.
It’s Butch to survive. Be Butch.
