Walking the Road of life-Backwards!

Walking  the Road of Life...Backwards! (My steps of addiction)                                                     
Walking backwards down the road of life...,  it never occured to me that I should turn around.

As I stood there, nothing seemed right. Seven days in rehab and I was labeled fit enough to begin my forward walk.  I stepped slowly through the hospital doors. Fresh air! Gingerly I took a step forward.  "Uh-uh!"
My counsellor pointed the way I had come."First you must Look back down the road you've traveled, then you must Walk forward down that road and fix all you've broken. Otherwise you'll never be able to maintain anything like a good forward walk. " 
WHAT?
I wanted to turn around right then and there. Either I could walk backwards the opposite way or jump back into my hospital bed.  There was no way I could stand here and really look where I had been.  I felt ashamed and scared and guilty and humiliated.  I couldn't face anyone.  When had I become this way?  Why me, damn it?  No one else in my family seemed this wretched. The fear of actually making things even worse by not following the counselor's directions made me struggle toward a group of people who were slowly, slo-o-o-w-l-y backtracking forward.  Didn't they look like a bunch of assholes. 
"Welcome," one said, I wondered if he were the leader, "First time?"
"Yeah,"  I said, none to happily, looking around.  Most of the people smiled and nodded at me then they went right back to looking at their feet, as if without guidance, the extremeties would just up and run off of their own accord.  I couldn't help but stand and listen to the man who had spoken to me, he was, afterall, the closest to me. My initial thought that he was the leader slowly dissipated.  I looked further into the group to see if I could spy someone with obvious authority, all the while listening to the man,  "It takes some getting used to.  But at least you've taken the first steps, some people aren't blessed enough to get this far."  Blessed?  What the hell did he mean blessed?  I had basically been ruining my life little by little for years and he called that blessed?  He must be as wacky as the doctors. I looked ahead at the rest of the group strung out in front of me like a very long inch worm, alternately stretching out and then coming tighter together in intervals.  It appeared that the guys in front switched at random, some slowing down, others catching up.  Some people had stopped walking altogether.  One couple had hung their heads, backed up slowly, until they were finally past where I stood and I turned to see them walking backward the other way. 
"What are they doing?" I asked pointing to another person leaving the group.  He shook his head, "Hopefully they'll make it back...I guess they're just not ready."
Looking forward again I asked,"Where's the leader?  I need to ask him what I'm supposed to do."
The man smiled and extented his hand, "The name's James and I am a grateful recovering backward walker."  Politely I shook his hand wondering what exactly he meant.  I was grateful I wasn't dead but I sure wanted to walk backwards.  This looking straight ahead at things was making me very uncomfortable.  I tried to look down instead.  At least I looked better than I had. Clean clothes, clean body.  A little banged up here and there but still I probably looked better than I had in months.  And, I thought, I didn't stink. I began to look back... 

In the beginning I learned to walk.  I wasn't alone. I walked with an everchanging group of people.  This group were members of my family, friends, and people I met along the way.  Some people were walking slow and some were walking  fast. Some people were running.  Some were walking forward, and some were walking backward.  It didn't seem to make much of a difference at that time.  I walked the way I was told to walk.
As I  got older, walking down the road of life, I began to watch how my family walked.  My father walked backwards, my mother walked forward, my sisters and brothers varied.  The roads they took varied, meeting each other again at another juncture along the way. I  noticed that each person in my family chose friends that walked the most like them.  I wanted to walk like each one of them  and with each one of them. I was just a child, the youngest of four, seven years younger than the sister closest to me, and many times they didn't want to be bothered with my care. Who could blame them?  They had their friends.
I decided to walk like whoever I was walking with. Each one of them seemed to notice me more that way.

When I began to acquire friends, I chose to walk like them, having already established that this would make them like me.  When I became a teenager it seemed easier for me to walk with backward walking friends, easier to relate to them, and I wasn't given to working very hard at that time. My friends saw life the way I did and I felt more comfortable with them.  I began to walk more with other backward walkers instead of forward-walking friends, they had been nice too, there just seemed to be something missing from them.
I found, further down the road, that something was really missing from me. However, these forward walkers        had thought I was smart, funny, and a good listener when they had problems.
Listening came easy to me.
I was walking backward so I had time to focus on all the faces of the forward walkers.
I focused alot on other people.
Did focusing on certain things result in the way I walked, or did walking determine the way I looked at things? I wondered. I didn't know the answer to that, then, but I did know I could  help them.  I was in the right position and could get right up close, sometimes I broke into their space but they didn't see to mind. 

Why?

  I never disagreed with them
                                              (at least not so they'd know it)
                                                                                                  because I wanted them to like me.
I wanted to fit in.

I learned real early to say what people wanted to hear.

In turn, They thought I was special and, boy, did I want to be special. I knew I was different than the forward walkers, and being special would be a great reason why..
Because I'm smarter than them, I wanted to think.  I'm funnier, I know how to have a good time.  I have more imagination. 
I told myself these things but Idon't think I really ever felt that way, though, and never did I tell them that.
I would act as if walking backwards was the best way to walk and the forward walkers were to blind to see it.

I always felt out of place.

I wasn't good enough.

I couldn't manage my life perfectly.

          As I studied the forward walkers,  they seemed to have it all together, for the most part,  Yes, they sometimes had little troubles that I thought I could help them with,  nothing too serious. They walked the straight and narrow most of the time.  That was a bit difficult for me.  I thought walking forward would be boring.  First, I couldn't see where I was walking, therefore my life was more of an adventure to me.  I didn't realize that the obstacles I ran into were small and easy enough to walk around if you could see. I thought each one was huge and only blocking my path.  Second, though I told myself that life was more of an adventure walking backwards,I was really afraid of those bumps in the road.

Already I had bruised, sprained and broken parts of my physical and mental self just because I had walked too fast right into obstacles I couldn't see.  I had no idea how big or small they were, they were all BIG in my mind.  I'd get stuck and look back where I had been, waving my fist in frustration because I knew I wasn't getting anywhere.
 
If only they had MY problems, I thought, then they'd know why I walk backwards.

As time went by , I decided I would never fit in with the forward walkers. I had walked with other backward walkers, side by side, for too long.  We talked about OUR problems and decided they were much worse than those of our former forward walking companions who just didn't understand us.  I discovered, after awhile, that some of  my friends' problems were similar to mine, sometimes even worse.

That made ME feel alot better.

I continued to hide my true self, however, even from them.  I knew they did too.  The worse I felt, the worse I would act, the worse I would feel, the worse I would act... and I began looking for people who had acted worse than me, to consol myself that I wasn't ALL bad.  My family slowly walked away from me, they couldn't understand what I had become.
I found friends who were liers, cheaters, thieves. I was comfortable with these friends who couldn't be trusted, at least I knew I had my guard up for a reason.

I didn't trust a soul.

In the beginning, I acted like I belonged to these extremely backward  people, but after sacrificing more and more of my former values until almost none were left, I became these people.

We were an untrustworthy bunch, stealing from other unsuspecting walkers, lying, breaking promises, giving excuse after excuse of why we did  this or that, hurting the ones we loved. We really weren't able to love. We didn't love ourselves and eventually this made us hard to love.  We were irresponsible, unreliable, lawbreaking, selfish,  desperate people.
I belonged with these people.
I felt like I really belonged for the first time,because I didn't think I deserved much more,                                                                                                                                                                                                     

and I hated myself.

I walked on with false courage.

                          "Screw it!!" We'd shout bravely, clinging to each other for dear life.

Screw all those forward walkers who think they know everything, I thought.  I'd find my own road.
  I couldn't tell anyone that I was fearful of what was up ahead, so I became angry because anger was cool and brought respect from the people I now travelled with.
None of that changed the fact that I was a backward walker and couldn't see.

I was still looking at someone else or looking at the road already travelled. My past mistakes, shame and sorrow stayed clearly in view.  Since I could easily see where I'd been I would focus much of my attention on my past. It pained me but I kept looking because I couldn't turn around and also I was trying to see where I went wrong.  I kept looking at myself at a much younger age.  I thought I clearly saw the time when my way of walking started to change, becoming backward from that moment on.

I was six.

My mother was a forward walker and although she and my father loved each other with a passion unknown to most people,  she couldn't put up with my father's backward walking anymore after two marriages to him,  four children of his children, and countless fights, she couldn't take it any longer.  They saw things differently. She couldn't see things the way he did and vise-versa.  So, when I was six, and enjoying walking with them very much,even through the fights, they stopped walking together and set off on different roads. She, with me in tow.

I lost my father, my house and more than half of my brothers and sisters and my sense of security in less than five minutes.

Just the time it took her to tell me...
                                                                  and with angry resolve in her eyes, we began to walk away.

At that moment I thought I started walking backwards for good, always looking for my father, the rest of my family, my home and the secure life I once had.
As the road took me further away, I wailed in frustration and fear, never spying what was lost amidst the faces and heads of strangers.  My mother, very determined and more than a little bitter, tromped on dragging me forward, sometimes trying to twist my head around to see her version of a bright future.  A few really bad things happened to me during that time that I could have probably worked out better if I could've seen ahead, but I didn't know how to turn anymore. I didn't have the tools. I thought I'd feel the same for the rest of my life.

The older I got, the more resentful I became, and the more I longed for what I remembered being the perfect life.  As I began my teenage years I started tugging at my mother's hand.  I began to yell hurtful  things to her, I finally ripped my hand out of hers and walked my own way on my own two feet. 
It was then that I met the other backward walkers  and felt drawn to them.  These were people to whom I  felt I could relate. We walked faster, always backwards, not caring what the stretch of road ahead would bring. We'd blow the sucker up if we had to. I swaggered with these people as often as I could, giving the finger to anyone walking by who didn't like it.

  After a time, I walked backward along a road that did eventually lead to my father. Here I was, Dad, ready to make up for lost time.  I was exultant! Here was someone who loved me and could sympathize with my past miseries, but he was still walking backwards, still anticipating  his own obstacles, and I watched him fight with fierce defensive strategies.  I watched with adoration. I tried to ask him how I could do the same and though we talked he explained that he still had so much to do!  His time for me was limited. I tried to be okay with that even though I wanted to cling to him. Here was someone who could fight my battles- which he did when he had time.

He was a hero to me.

He was successful.

He didn't stay at home all day like my mother did.  He had MADE SOMETHING of himself. And he walked BACKWARD!  And he smiled and laughed and had fun. I wanted to be just like him in a big, BIG way.
Only I  never quite got there, didn't even get close to what he was in my eyes. Didn't even realize for a long time that he had his faults too.  He told me of some after I had, once again, fallen down on the road.  It just made me love him more.  For a long time I knew if anything happened to him I would curl up and die.  What would this life be, but a dry dusty abandoned dirt road without him?

  In the meantime I had two beautiful children... and in raising them, realized that my mother was a great mother.  The best mother and I wanted to be perfect just like her.

I thank God I got to apologize and make amends to her before she died, accepting her love, loving her, and believing finally that she did the best she could with her children and her life.

Which would be far more than I ever did for my children.

  I had wanted to be a good mother but not give up a career that would make my father proud.  I needed a career I thought and knew it would be good for the kids to see their mom  walking the road to success.  They would be proud of me and they were, though I wasn't around much to see it. I thought I was doing well for them at the time.  My father had said work was most important, and being single after a failed marriage, I worked my ass off.  My father said love was next, and how I loved them.  Too bad they weren't with me to see it.  I missed many firsts in their lives. I tried to put new men in their lives overnight.  I wanted to look like a good family, I wanted these men to pick up my burdens, but I resented them when they did. The men I picked, the backward walkers, were never good enough for my kids.

Never good enough for me.

  I wasn't good for any type of relationship or responsibility by then. I felt enormous guilt  that I hadn't been a stay-at-home mom, guilt over the failed relationships my kids had to witness, I felt like a failure in most all my affairs so what good was I in my children's lives? Eventually, I gave up being a mother at all.  Eventually, I quit life.

  My mother passed away first, then a year later my father died.  It was the beginning of the end. I began to wish I was dead.  Now I wasn't walking backwards anymore, I was crawling. Before, the people I met and worked with, the people now I loved, didn't seem to mind or even notice that I walked backward when most of them were forward walkers. They had seen many other backward walkers turn around after awhile, no harm done. However, they did begin to voice their concern when they noticed me crawling.  It made me feel as low as I was, insecure, and fearful that they would find out I really was a loser.  So now, not only was I crawling backward, I was crawling well to the side of the road, under low outcropping branches that did a good job of shading most of my shortcomings from the views of others. I wanted to hide.  Why couldn't I just get up and turn around.  I tried to do just that, many times, but it was like asking myself to fly.

  One day, as usual, I was crawling along thinking that I hadn't talked to my kids in 3 weeks and still didn't want to talk to them. They'd surely be better off if I were dead.  Let some normal forward walking person in the family raise them, I just couldn't. I thought about my husband, whom I had driven away so I could walk how I wanted when I wanted and how much I wanted. I missed his care.
 
I thought about how alone I had become.

I thought about the unpaid bills piled in my kitchen drawer, my purse, the coffee table, and elsewhere. I really needed to look at them sometime, I really needed to clean my filthy house sometime instead of just ignoring it, but not right now, I'm having all I can do to crawl...

Suddenly someone leaned down and hit my arm-"Hey girl!  See that sign!  It said no trespassing.  We're thinking of turning around before it gets too dangerous."
  I raised my heavy head.  All I saw was a blank, diamond shaped sign receding in front of my eyes.  I don't see anything!  I frowned.  They must be paranoid,  I thought to myself,  nothing is different and we're well past the sign.  Other forward walkers walked up to me, concern on their faces. "Won't you just stop?  Won't you just TRY to get up and turn yourself around so you can pick a new road with us?  Look at all the other backwards walkers who did!'"  I tried for them. I promised them I would walk differently, but all my sincere efforts failed.  Finally, exasperated and even angry,  they turned and walked away chosing a different road. "If she wants to walk right bad enough, she'll do it,"  I heard someone say as their voices began to fade.
" I TRIED,I tell you!"  I yelled after them weakly, I did try and I couldn't do it...I thought wearily.  I started to cry... I just couldn't do it!. I didn't even know what forward walking was about.
It had been too long.
I let the tears slide down my face and drop to the pavement.  It was so HARD crawling backwards, I was exhausted, but if I just stopped I wouldn't  get anywhere, I reasoned.  I became anxious.  Depression set in and a deep loneliness and hatred for all that I'd become and all that I wasn't.  I began to day dream about a better road, maybe tomorrow...
then tomorrow would be today and I'd think, well maybe tomorrow...
I was afraid.
I could feel, instinctively, that something REALLY BAD was coming soon.  It was just down the road.  I couldn't see it.  The forward walkers did ,so they'd have time to plan for it,  but I sure as hell wasn't asking them, they'd see my weakness. I kept crawling backward .  It felt safer. I was more scared now, and completely alone, and I needed to crawl, it felt safer, dammit. I couldn't stop, couldn'tstop, couldn'tstop...
I didn't know how.
I could feel the danger coming, though I didn't know what it was. Somebody help me, please. Somebodystopme...

My breath was coming in short gasps now.
  Sweat broke out all over my body.
I was quivering like a bowstring.
Suddenly the road disappeared out from under my knees and I grabbed at the flat pavement clamoring for a hold, any hold, but I was too weak and I began to fall. I screamed as my body rushed toward the ground far, far below...
  I'm going to die, I thought sickly as the air around me surged upward, rushing up my pant legs, forcing my shirt up under my flailing arms,  my breath back up my nose and down my throat.
I'm going to die when I hit the rocks at the bottom.
  Please! Godorwhoeveryouare! Help me! 
I saw the ground come rushing up and closed my eyes.............and then......


I felt the wind shift...

                                    and my descent was slowed...

                                                                                        as if a spout of air had shot up from the earth.

I opened my eyes just as the ground met me, hard, and I was mercifully knocked into blackness.

  A second later, or so it seemed to me, I awoke in a hospital bed, sore as hell, dirty as hell, wrapped in soaking sheets.  I shivered and leaned over, heaving most of my insides out then fell back on my pillow groaning. My body felt broken.  A nurse entered the room and asked how I was feeling, a groan was my response.  She nodded introducing herself, "You're a lucky woman to be alive after the fall you had, although you have done a nice bit of damage to your body." She gave me some medicine which I tried to ckoke down without vomiting again. She grimaced empathizing with me then smiled and talked on. " But I have to tell you, she said, alot of the altered walkers never make it here,
they get lost in the woods and starve,
they walk backward right into someone not so nice and get killed for their blunder,
they walk around in circles until finally they go insane,
they come here and leave thinking they can walk backwards just some of the time
those people are really the unfortunates."  She stopped and I just laid there looking at the ceiling feeling hopeless about everything. "I can't stop," I said softly bowing my head and averting my eyes from whatever judgement she would make of me.
" I walk backwards all the time, I can only remember walking forward a few times when I was real little, I don't know how. I've failed at everything."
"The powers that be don't  make failures, they make learners." She wrote something one her clipboard, "Besides, you need to realize that this is a disease. A disease that needs treatment like any other, and not a disease that you can treat yourself.  Like any disease, it has characteristics that help define it.  One, being the inability to turn around- even when it will save you.  If you could have turned around, you would have.  Am I right?"
I thought...
I had hit ROCK BOTTOM.
I had almost died.
  If I could have stopped myself, I would have.
Who wouldn't?
I hadn't failed at anything.
  I had no control.
As if reading my mind, she said," Most people do have limited control for awhile but there comes a point, at least with everyone we see, and we see alot of people, when the control is lost. And that point is different for everyone. There is hope with help, however, that you can regain your control and live a better life but you can never walk backwards again.  Just walking a little ways may be enough to kill you, the danger is so great.  Would you like to know how?"
Would I like to know how? 
"Yes, yes very much." I lifted my head of the pillow.
"Then that is your first forward step, you've already begun to turn and we are here to help you with the steps. You only have to be willing to do anything it takes and remember that you can't do it alone. And noone else can do it for you.  Only a  power greater than yourself can show you how to walk the right way.
I laid there quiet and then spoke,"When I was fallin' out there something...
slowed my fall...something ...heard...me."
Heard.
Me.
"My father or mother, maybe?"
She shrugged her shoulders," I don't know but I would think you'd be well advised to get to know that Something a little better. Our treatment here is limited and your going to need all the help you can get...literally."
I laid my head back on the wet pillow, feeling absolutely no better physically,
maybe even a little worse,
but
some tiny ray of hope inside flickered if only breifly.
  It was something.
As the nurse began to clean my vomit off the floor, I closed my eyes. Yes, it was something.


                                   
                                                                                                                                        written by Bonnie Howes
                                 
                                                                                                                                                                            February 2007