WELCOME to EMMA'S BED

Changing the sheets...

I’ve come a long way from the days of only having a single sheet on the twin bed I shared with my sister.

I was working with a newcomer yesterday who had recently spent long hours at what I call my “cool” apartment; mostly because it has air conditioning, seven low windows facing a dramatic view of the mountains, centered and overlooking the downtown life. We were sharing our war stories and trying to put simple meaning to life. She stood in my green and tan colored kitchen trimmed in dark blue with a splash of red for excitement. She looked around and then turned to me and asked, “are you sure you’re trailer trash?” I smiled.
 
Evidently my somewhat Crate & Barrel-type décor, matching plates, glassware, coffee bean grinder, Starbuck’s African beans, kosher salt in a special tray next to the olive oil/balsamic bottles – even the front room rug highlights the mustard colored retro couch and pink sitting chair (me, pink?) left an impression. Not exactly the type of furnishings you'd find in a 10X40 single-wide with four flat tires and a torn awning....not that there's anything wrong with that.

I was raised in a small dirt town that had two sides to it: the good side…and the side we lived on. Being on either side determined who you were and what the world thought of you. Our house (trailer by standards) cost $12,000 brand spanking new with a huge floor plan just under 900 square feet, perfect for our family of six. We were colorful people in a drab box. We came packaged with our very own family pedophile, violent outbursts with kids dragged out into the street screaming –entertainment for the neighbors – coupled with a constant sense of impending doom. Needless to say I grew up as a shrewd fighter – for survival.  

Often we had missing parents, even missing children. One Christmas Day the oldest brother was MIA, found across town with a heroin needle in his arm. After New Years the missing mother was found in the hospital after an all-night drunk and had fallen asleep at the wheel and had run into the back-end of a semi. As I walked into the hospital room she turned to me with an oh-thank-Gawd-you’re-here look on her face. I felt loved. Her words, desperate and pleading, “…get to the wreckage yard before your step-father does and get my underwear out of the glove box”.
 
It seems like a life-time ago. Actually, it is. When I got sober I was told I could do anything, as long as I didn’t drink. Riddled with fear at the shear thought of change, I dared to believe. Day by day, happy or not, sad or not, at times paralyzed as I attempted to change, even more frightened of not changing, I began to live – to live MY life. Not the raw deal my parents dealt me (slapped upside my head) or the one I “thought” I was supposed to live. Or even the one that my ex told me I would live without him: stupid and alone.

Up to that time I had lived according to what I thought “they” expected of me: “they” being drunks, slim balls, prostitutes (my sister-in-law was a pro-ho, my brother thought himself a lucky dude), losers and drug addicts. I demanded a re-deal; a sober reshuffling of the deck. Sitting out the hands of change, the odds of me being a winner were as good as anyone else sitting at the big card table of life.
 
Women in recovery told me I could change and be any woman I wanted to be. I didn’t have a clue what that could mean. Then time passed, I stayed sober, watched and listened to the women I admired – the woman who had been where I had been and were different now. They had good jobs, they were good moms and they had confidence. Some had gone back to school. So I went back to school. Some didn’t get into relationships in the first year of sobriety so they could focus on their recovery. Silly me. The women said “do the Steps” I thought they said do the room. 

As I sit up here in my big bed with my yummy 1,200 thread-count sheets, ahhhh…drinking fresh Starbucks and thinking of you while I write this letter. I am reminded that I love who I am today – what any woman can be no matter where we come from (boardroom or barrio), and we can love who we become in recovery. I love my life, just the way it is.
 
And that will change too, stay tuned.

Love, Emma

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