“Your tongue bites like snakes.
Jameson Den Hartog
Heart erupts like Mt. Fugi.
I will master both.”
(post-it poem on my phone when I woke up)
One thing we learn in recovery is that when we were were using, we hurt a lot of people.
Sometimes by things we’ve said, done. Sometimes by things we didn’t do. Sometimes by the way we expressed ourself.
This doesn’t stop when we get sober.
“…and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.”
10th Step
Alcoholics Anonymous
(“The Big Book”)
What happens when we get sober is that we usually realize it sooner – sometimes right away – and we can then reflect and take corrective action BY BEING ACCOUNTABLE. The least and most validating thing we can do when we fuck up is say “I did this and that was fucked up – 100%. How can I make it right?”
When I was drunk in the early 2000s, I swung my arm way back. The momentum
Elle
I smacked my husband
at a bus stop.
With my clutch
small
thick
unmoving pink leather
on a Saturday night
in the bustling
north side of Chicago
my clutch
from Banana Republic on Michigan,
where I used his employee discount.
Yesterday
in 2022, sober,
I wrote and shared words
scribed
they bit my lover like a snake..
“Don’t look at me”
Christina Aguilera
Beautiful
Stripped album, 2002
Looking for Layla: an autobiographical account by Elle B. Hunter, dedicated to Jeff Littner and his “cheerleaders with black and gold hearts”. 