Fake it til you make it?

 I was taught something totally different than what people seem to interpret "fake it til you make it" to mean these days. As a newly sober/clean addict, I was told that sometimes you have to fake it til you make it. This was not intended to be in the spirit of F.E.A.R. (f*#k everything and run), but in the spirit of overcoming in the sense that I didn't have a clue as to how to live differently than I had before. It is a nice sentiment to say, overcome your F.E.A.R.  by facing everything and recovering. But I didn't have a clue as to how to live in recovery mode, facing life as it came to me. So through mimicking the actions of others who were successfully living a life I desperately wanted, I might be able to learn. But it will not be my first instinct or a natural response. Possibly not ever. But for sure as a "newbie" to recovery or in regard to any new challenge. In order to build muscle memory, I have to do the action. I have to fake it, when I don't really have confidence that my life will work out if I take this action, and take the action anyway. Because. Well, because I have done such a fine and upstanding job of making my life work out the way I have wanted it to by doing the same dysfunctional things over and over. In order to build new habits, instincts, and neuropathways in my brain, I have to repeat actions that are not instinctual to me at this time. I have to "fake it." This is often messy, embarrassing and occasionally humiliating. It is full of the Face Everything and Recover kind of fear. The John Wayne kind, being courageous enough to saddle up in the midst of my unknowing, the middle of being scared shitless. And not waiting until I feel brave or empowered of equipped. Just do it. 

This is different, however, than damn-the-torpedos-throw-all-caution-to-the-wind-and-act-with-reckless-abandon. This is doing the thing I know to be right, even though I don't actually know how. This is asking for help, accepting advice, and uncomfortably doing things in a way that I have not done them before. This is step work and taking my own inventory and realizing just how many times and how many ways I have NOT accomplished whatever it is that I have to become willing to face and act upon in the face of my fear. 

All of this "jargon" is stuff I learned in recovery. Some of it spoken with the intellect I hear all over the workplace today. And the talk of trauma and re-wiring our brain and all those education buzz words. Well, I have heard it before it became popular. Some of it spoken through the wisdom of others who told me, "you can act your way into a new way of thinking, but you cannot think your way into a new way of acting." Change requires action. And if I don't have the strength, knowledge or ability to successfully maneuver this path, I will have to borrow this from others who have gone before, who are willing to share their experience, strength and hope with me. I have to trust them and then saddle up and do this action that I don't understand or even believe in (yet), and be willing to do it over and over until I've built a new muscle memory and carved new grooves in my brain, lighting up new dendrites and growing new habits and instincts. But until I have uncomfortably faked it over and over, I cannot face it instinctually and be in a new path. 

Fake it til you make it is not bullshit advice. It is deep, it is real, it requires an action, even though I don't like the action, or feel comfortable with it. Until I know better, I cannot do better. In order to do better, I have to do the thing that is not natural to me. 

Today's rant is brought to you by this photo that facebook "suggested" to me. This photo has some amount of validity. But don't you think that "face it til you make it" requires you to fake it? It requires acting like you know something when you don't and just doing it until you do know it. In my not-so-humble opinion...

What is a Black-hole-Soul anyway?

I was what you might call....hard to handle. A handful and then some. I have a lot of "punny" descriptions. I took a self-help/self-improvement class once and this phrase has stuck with me: "She's fun to date, but hell to live with." Well, I was certainly the bestower of living hell on my family and I was not one iota willing to share in any sort of responsibility in the matter. 

I often wonder if this is a product of a black-hole-soul. I've known for eons already that my soul is a black hole. Suck-you-dry-and-leave-you-wounded-and-begging-for-a-reprieve kind of hole. The one that can never be filled. No amount of love, pets, alcohol, drugs, hate, adrenaline, sex, or thrill-seeking can fill it. Nothing. Every single thing leaves that Black hole unfulfilled and begging for more. Eventually, it also does this for the family, friends, support circles, and even acquaintances of the one who possesses the black hole in their soul. Because no matter how much one gives, the BhS (Black-hole-Soul) is never renewed or refreshed. And everyone knows that one can't pour from an empty vessel. So those in relationship to the BhS are drained, waiting for their giving to produce fruit and be returned. But it never, ever happens. And everyone in the wake of this tornado is damaged and broken. Not "just" the owner the BhS. 

This is me. Owner and operator of a BhS.

So having been born at the tail end of the 60's, raised in the 70's (and 80's), I was full of the whole F.U. culture that women's liberation was rolling out. (Please don't insert politics here, there are whole other stories we can debate conservatism or liberalism in). As I type this, I have Joan Jett on replay in my head.... "I don't give a damn about my bad reputation...." complete with guitar riff and even a little head banging action. Yep. As a teen, I carried this around like a badge, just daring someone, anyone, to fuck with me. Do not step on my toes, I will fuck you up and I will not care where the carnage lands. Your reputation. My reputation. Your nose, my toes. Your house, my family. Carnage. Destruction. Because if you somehow manage to offend me.... you know, maybe you look at me wrong, or you got out of bed today..... then my black hole is raging and that in turn angers me. With that insatiable anger that rolls out like desire but with a side of deadly destruction. 

I have a friend that talks about how he may not love himself today, but he no longer loathes himself. Ahhh. My brain lights up at this. Self-loathing. Loathing. Black and vile hatred spilling out of the BhS. I can relate. Occasionally today I can relate with the learning to love myself piece, but in all reality, my brain perks up at the phrase "self-loathing." Because hatred is just too benign of a word to describe what the BhS does to me, makes of me, creates in me. 

As a person who possesses a BhS, hatred of my own self is such a roiling, billowing cauldron of hot and stinking shit that it has no choice but to spill out. It stinks up every corner of your BhS life. My addiction to pain, to adrenaline, to anything that might make that BhS less formidable and more tolerable somehow, is real. Overwhelming. In my life today, I have stopped trying to either soothe my Soul or kill myself, taking as many down with me as possible, in the form of drugs or alcohol. But make no mistake, the residual affects of the BhS are still present. Strong. It lurks in self-destructive relationships, in brazen thrill-seeking, in larger-than-life self-pity and one-up-man-ship, self-sabotage, and just general irresponsible behavior. 

It's not something I've never worked to improve, but it IS at the very core the cunning, baffling, and powerful part of my addictive nature. The yin and the yang of my desire to protect my Soul from hurt and danger and hardship and the precise inability to recognize anything that is good for my Soul because of that damn blackhole. 

When I see other people's BhS spilling their stink onto me and my life, I am appalled when it is pointed out to me that I am not so different from them, that I have wreaked untold amounts of havoc on every life I touch. 

The BhS story is never-ending, but because this kind of honesty is exhausting, not to mention stinky, I am drawing this post to a close. I didn't tell you all this so you can send me hug emojis and emoticons and ask me if I am alright. I wrote this out for the sake of 1) purging it, and 2) trying to sum up unexplainable behaviors that accompany the life of this woman with a BhS.