It was raining the night I first kissed my husband. The wind was hissing and howling through the bare branches of the trees, rattling the last of the dead leaves still clinging to their posts. Before we kissed, we twined our hands together and watched our arms weave against each other like snakes, mahogany and golden. And when at last, softly, lip met lip, I wanted to rush out into the wind and rain and throw my arms out and laugh wildly or scream at the sky, like Ophelia drowning or Lear going mad in the storm. I couldn't resist him, nor he me, and the intensity of the pleasure in that kiss rode the edge of being blinding pain. It was the kind of high that addicts seek to return to and sustain forever, that I, in my own issues around love and romance and sex, have always wanted to return to again and again with Mark.

Last night, the kids were asleep and after a long busy week, Mark and I finally had a moment alone together. We were lying in bed and he twined his hand into mine, a sweet prelude, just like that night we first kissed. Only this time the contrast -- between what magic I thought we had back then and all the craziness of addiction and fantasy and delusion and denial that overlaid it and everything else since -- was too much for me. I burst into tears and Mark said, "Whoa, you're sad. What's the matter?"

I fumbled to explain where that gesture, so reminiscent of an earlier time, had taken me and said, "You know, people who are just starting recovery sometimes ask me if it ever stops hurting. And I tell them it does, mostly. But I say that sometimes it comes back, just not as strong. This is one of those times. It's better, but the pain's still there. Sometimes I just miss that fantasy, that irresistible passion. I miss the person I used to be, when sex didn't seem so complicated."

I put my head on Mark's chest and he stroked my hair and shoulder while I lay there feeling angry and disgusted at myself for being so caught up in the past and in the unknown that I couldn't enjoy an intimate moment right here in the present. I worried that Mark would be angry at me and level the charges at me that I'd heard others had leveled at them (and that I'd even leveled at others myself): that I was "freaking out," being "neurotic" and "overly emotional," being a stereotypical woman "too uptight" to have sex. I mean, geez, why didn't I just say I had a headache while I was at it? I imagined he wanted me to "get over it" so that he could get his needs met without having to deal with my troublesome and annoying emotions. And I thought about a conversation I had with a friend who said healing from the violation and trauma of being in a relationship with a sex addict has similarities to healing from the violation and trauma of rape, and I tried (without much success) to be forgiving of myself for still struggling sometimes, even six years after disclosure.

Then Mark interrupted my thoughts as he ran his hand over my shoulder, sighed happily and said, "I love you, and I'm so glad to be here with you!" I looked up at his face, and he was beaming. "God is good!" he said, almost laughing with happiness. What? No sex and he, the sex addict, was still happy? To be here with me? Wow. I snuggled in close and kissed him, and then I started laughing. "You know," I said, "just a minute ago, I was missing that irresistible passion and addictive inability to say no. I was thinking it was the sexiest thing in the world and I was never going to be able to get moments like that back. Now, a minute later, I'm seeing the ability to say no as such a gift, and I don't have to get back there, because recovery is looking pretty darn sexy on you..."

I love House, not just because it's a clever, funny show, but because it does such a fabulous job of capturing some of the intimacy problems related to addiction. Regardless of the substance, addiction causes general problems in relationships, as active addicts shut the world out and give their hearts over to their first love: the high.

Like so many active addicts, House is depressed and can be mean, controlling and self-centered, but he can also be (like so many addicts) clever, strangely charming, reluctantly vulnerable and (at odd moments) even caring. He has walled himself off from true intimacy, but he tantalizes us with the possibility of what he could be if only... And that possibility — that glimpse of the sensitive person inside the addiction, inside the self-made shell built to protect them — is one of the aspects of addicts that has been so attractive to codependents like me. I'd tell myself that no one else has been able to break through and free the prince or princess trapped inside, but I'd be able to do it with the magic specialness of my love. Or they'd be able to do it for the love of me.

So, I seeing Cuddy play the role of the spellbound codependent in this week's episode really resonated with me. On the brink of an emotionally intimate moment, poised for a kiss, House crudely grabs Cuddy's breast instead, sending her storming off. Then Cuddy finds that someone (presumably House) has tracked down an object of great sentimental value to her and installed it in her office, but when she goes to his office to thank him, she finds him with another woman.

It's a pattern that has played out over and over again in my own relationships. He seems ready for intimacy but pushes it away. He show incredible sensitivity and thoughtfulness one moment only to demonstrate a selfish disregard for me the next. And I was always under the delusion that each sensitive, intimate moment signaled permanent change. "Now," I'd think, "that barrier is finally down and from now on he's going to be the real, loving man instead of the one that hurts me." It has taken me a lifetime to see that ebb and flow as part of a pattern and a whole: one that repeats without change until recovery breaks the cycle.

So, as my husband and I watched Cuddy walk off at the end without saying a word, we both laughed in recognition and said, "Yep, that's exactly what you can expect when you get involved with an addict."

Image credit: Photo by Jessica DeWinter on Flickr Licensed under Creative Commons

A friend of Mark's and mine fell in love recently. You know that intoxicating feeling of new love: the one where you feel giddy and anxious and excited all at once. Everything in your life is bathed in the soft glow of hope. This relationship is going to be special. This person is different, not like the other people in your life who have broken your heart before.

This friend is so happy, while Mark and I, rather than being happy for him, admitted to each other that we are both wary and uncomfortable. This girlfriend of his may seem to be different from the last one, but the fact that our friend is not any different than he was in his previous relationships leads us to believe the same crazy dance is just going to be played out to different music this time. For both of Mark and me, that initial feeling of attraction has come to signal, not the happy match of two well-suited personalities, but the irresistible pull of complementary dysfunction: the north pole of the codependent magnet reaching out for the south pole of the addict magnet.

I love my husband. I am happy in my marriage. But it has taken an unimaginable amount of pain and a lot of work to get to this point. I fear (and believe) that if (through death or divorce) I lost Mark and found myself falling in love again, it would mean going through that same valley of shock and pain and deep, life-altering grief just to get back to this new normal in which I find myself now.

And as I am finally starting to find my bearings in my life and marriage, Barack Obama enters, with flowers, wooing America. Charismatic, charming, handsome, smart, with warm latte skin, he reminds me of someone... Someone charismatic and charming, handsome and smart, with warm chocolate skin. Who could it be? Oh, wait. My husband.

Everything about me wants to love Barack Obama. And everything in me screams that he is like all the other charming men I've loved. He's going to break my heart if I give it to him. He's going to lie to me. He's not going to do what he promises to do; he won't be able to. He's going to hurt me. He has hurt me (through my political alter-ego, Hillary Clinton.) My attraction to him must come from my own crazy messed uppedness. I can't trust him. I can't trust myself.

So, I've been clinging to suspicion, fear and distrust because to let myself go and follow the frenzy of Obama worship is to fall in love again, and I want no part of that giddy intoxication of newborn infatuation. I'm not ready for it yet; I'm still too raw to touch. I'm working on letting go of those emotions, but for now, I need to keep my distance from Obama and keep working on the hope and the change that come from inside myself before I'm ready to embrace new love (political or otherwise) without fear.

Mark and I went out to see Hancock last night. We were really looking forward to this one: July 4th weekend opening, Will Smith, superhero antics and alcoholism. It was slated to have everything!

And the first half of the movie delivered on its blockbuster promises. Will Smith was delightfully hilarious in his drunken belligerence and blaming. Like a good active addict, he destroyed everything he touched. Jason Bateman as Ray Embrey, Hancock's PR man, was the movie's codependent, out to fix him right. It was actually a refreshing twist to see a codependent role played out by a male buddy character rather than a female love interest.

Hancock, at Ray's insistence, starts attending meetings for alcoholism. I appreciated the fact that these meetings involved less crosstalk and less of an active leader role than the typical Hollywood screen versions of 12 Step, most of which employ these inaccuracies as narrative devices. (I'll have to do a separate post sometime on Hollywood 12 Step.) And Hancock reminded me of myself in early S-Anon meetings: saying nothing and listening grudgingly, although I liked his first share better than mine.

Yep, the first half of the movie had it all. There was action. There were laughs. There were 12 Step meetings and redemption. Then, it seemed to Mark and me, the writer died right there in the middle of the script. It was like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Brother Maynard reads the last words of Joseph of Arimathea carved on a cave wall: "He who is valiant, and pure of spirit, may find the Holy Grail, in the Castle of... Aaaaaagggh." He speculates that Joseph died while carving and Galahad chimes in (in one of the movies many great lines), "Perhaps he was dictating."

It truly seemed as if someone new took over in the middle and wrote a completely different story, one which made no sense. It wasn't funny or dramatic or gripping. It was just jaw droppingly nonsensical. You'll notice, as I did, after you see the movie that every single scene from the trailer is one that takes place in the first (good) half of the movie.

So, here's my recommendation to you on Hancock. Go and see it. And when you are about halfway in, there will be a scene where Hancock puts on his new superhero outfit and is called in to rescue a female police officer. (I'm not giving anything away here; this is all in the trailer.) At the end of that scene, get up and walk out. You will have seen a complete story, from down and out bitterness to redemption. You will have seen everything funny and worthwhile and exciting in the movie. You will leave happy and feel it was money well spent, even if the movie was on the short side. You won't sit there for the rest of the movie wishing he were doing anger management classes with the villains (oh, that would have been delightful and funny) instead of "fighting" them, such as they are. You won't leave thinking, "What the hell was that about? And I wonder how that first writer died."

And for those of you girls and boys who enjoy ogling Will Smith's firm and well-formed behind, allow me to alert you to the fact that, like I Robot before it, Hancock did contain one gratuitous Will Smith bare butt cheek shot. It even came conveniently packaged with the line "my ass was hot," which allowed you to giggle and say, "Yes. Yes it was." And as with all good things in this movie, the scene even came in the movie's glorious first half, so you won't miss it if take my advice and walk out halfway through the show.

This past weekend, Mark and I left our kids in the care of our wonderful babysitter, who, next to The Junky's Wife is the love of our son's life. (Seriously, I don't even come close. I'm a distant fourth behind Daddy, JW and the babysitter.) Then we headed off to perform our weekly movie night ritual: stopping for take out at a local sandwich shop (where we are now officially regulars) before heading out to enjoy the latest blockbuster.

This week brought The Incredible Hulk starring Edward Norton. The "starring Ed Norton" part is important, because this movie wasn't on the original spreadsheet, where we painstakingly plotted out our summer movie watching. It was a late addition, after we saw previews in which Ed Norton flexed his acting muscles and looked just the right kind of tortured for the part, but maybe that's just those Fight Club overtones he carries with him. (What a great addiction movie that is!)

The Incredible Hulk was decent, as action movies go. The theater we were in had a good sound system, so the whole place vibrated as the Hulk walked. And the special effects -- the ease with which he broke and threw, um, almost anything -- really knocked home (so to speak) his size and power. They were the kind of scenes that make you exclaim things like, "Holy crap!"

But, of course, what Mark and I were looking for were some good addiction parallels. After all, there was Ed Norton with his Fight Club self in a life that was clearly out of control and unmanageable. And he did (I think I can tell you this, since it's hardly a spoiler) work on some (gasp!) breathing and anger management techniques. However, our hopes that the movie might explore this quest more deeply were in vain. It was not Bruce Banner grappling with his inner monster that kept the Hulk from going on killing rampages, so much as it was his outer codependent in the form of Liv Tyler. Sigh! (Poor Discovering Alcoholic -- waiting days for this, only to have me gloss the whole addiction subtext in one disappointing paragraph.)

My favorite part came during a cameo by the hot-in-recovery Robert Downey Jr., who was reprising his Iron Man role as Tony Stark. Mark did that comic book nerd thing and leaned over to excitedly whisper to me the movie makers were setting the stage for some future comic book thing I'd never heard of. I love that man. Um, Mark that is, not Robert Downey Jr. Well, ok, mostly Mark.

While Iron Man was not a great movie, it was an entertaining action flick with a wonderful addiction subtext. I felt the weight of its not-greatness when I had to step out to take a call from the babysitter on something fairly inconsequential (where to find a DVD my son wanted to watch), and found I was not torn apart that I was missing those two minutes. I wasn't afraid that something thrilling was going to happen in my absence or that I was going to miss some key component of the (deliciously simplistic) plot. But I walked out happy and had a good discussion on the car ride home, which I count as an overall success in the world of summer movie fun.

During the course of the movie, Tony Stark (Iron Man's alter ego, played by Robert Downey Jr.) spends most of the time that he's not working on or thinking about his engineering projects (primarily the Iron Man suit) drinking alcohol and hitting on or having sex with women. The first time he takes his Iron Man suit out for a spin around the skies of Malibu, he pushes the limits and nearly kills himself. His response is to whoop with joy and exclaim that he has to do that again. Mark and I turned to each other at that point in the movie, and Mark said, "Total addict." To which I responded, "Oh, yeah. Totally." Of course, after that high, Stark heads out to a party, to, um, drink and hit on women.

Stark also has an assistant, Pepper Potts (played by Gwyneth Paltrow), who takes care of (and generally anticipates) his every need, from doing dry cleaning for the women he has sex with to hacking into weapons manufacturing computer systems. The relationship between the two is a beautiful portrayal of a codependent/addict relationship: he does his crazy addict thing and she takes care of the details, cleans up the messes and worries about him. Both Downey (who has his own real life experience with addiction) and Paltrow play out these roles beautifully.

After the movie, Mark and I disagreed about how intentional the addiction subtext was. After all, addiction is never brought up in the movie, and not even implied in the ways one typically sees (e.g. falling down drunkenness). It was Mark's opinion that the addiction subtext couldn't have been as well done as it was if it were simply operating unintentionally based on stereotypical behavior. But it was my opinion that the aim was to portray a rich, self-centered, hedonistic playboy (there was even a direct nod to Hugh Hefner) and that the movie makers (like most people) didn't equate self-centered, hedonistic playboy with addict. (Yes, I think Hugh Hefner is a huge addict.) I believe that the codependent and addict personalities are so prevalent and distinctive that we all recognize them without knowing them for what they are.

Of course, Mark and I come to the superhero subset of action movies from a different viewpoint. I come in with few preconceptions, armed only with my life experience and whatever superhero lore has eked into the culture at large (which, in the case of Iron Man, was nothing). Mark, on the other hand, is a comic book geek, who knows what the characters and villains are supposed to look like. He comes into movies like this with a certain level of secret extra knowledge. So Mark pointed out: "It's well known that Stark is an alcoholic." (Well known, of course, to everyone with a closet full of boxes upon boxes of comic books, not to those of us who never heard of Iron Man before the first trailer for the movie.)

But Mark and I agreed that the subtlety with which the addiction was framed means that either it was done skillfully by folks who would recognize those subtleties or it was done by folks who intended to leave the alcoholism out, but portray the playboy, and accidentally hit upon the characteristics or an addict anyway. If it were done by folks without a knowledge of addiction, who were intentionally trying to portray addiction, Stark would have been flying his Iron Man suit clearly drunk out of his mind. And let's face it, sex addiction is still so far out of the public mind that no one sets out to portray sex addiction without having someone actually say the words "sex addict."

We also agreed that Robert Downey Jr., who is the star of two separate blockbusters this summer and is not exhibiting his former train-wreck, bottoming out behavior, must be working his program. Yay, Robert Downey Jr.! Sobriety looks hot on you.

Now see what happens when nerds get into recovery and go to the movies? I can't wait to review Hancock.* Will Smith as an alcoholic superhero? Be still my beating codie heart! Things are going to get steamy!

Next week: Speed Racer. And while the Racers are clearly dysfunctional (the eldest son ran away from home and the youngest smuggles into car trunks with his pet monkey?), I'm going to see that one purely for the kick ass special effects.

Image credit: Painting by Lynda Abromeit With a special thanks to The Junky's Wife for using her goddess-like image search skills to find it.

Yesterday, my daughter found a dollar on the sidewalk near our house while she was out walking with my husband. She came bounding up to me and said, "Look, Daddy and I found a dollar somebody lost!"

"Wow, I wonder who lost it," I said.

"I don't know," she said.

"Mama will hold onto it," said my husband as my daughter ran off to play some more. I put the dollar in my purse and said jokingly, "Sure, and if anyone comes around asking for their dollar, I'll give it to them."

I was out shopping tonight when I noticed a man sitting on a bench up ahead of me as I walked down the sidewalk. He was looking away from me, but I thought he must be handsome; there was something about his hair and the way he held his body. I passed him and he said, "Excuse me, miss." He said it as if he really had a question he wanted to ask me, some piece of information he needed that I might have. So I stopped and turned to face him. He had large, soft, brown eyes that looked kind and anxious. He was a little disheveled, but only a little, as if he were trying not to be, but his hair and clothes had gotten away on their own and messed themselves up somewhere without him. His leg was twitching, jumping up and down. He had one hand resting on it, as if he were trying to soothe it still.

"Do you have a dollar I could have for the bus, please?"

I did have a dollar, stuck there in my purse, not even in my wallet. I fished it out and handed it to him. "Thank you so much," he smiled with a warm sadness, "Have a nice evening, miss."

"You too," I said, as I walked away.

But that wasn't what I wanted to say to him. I wanted to tell him that I knew the dollar wasn't for the bus. It was for his dealer. I knew by the way his leg was twitching and by the way he kept sitting on that bench, nowhere near a bus stop, as I walked away. I knew by the way his easy warmth and politeness rolled over his anxiety and pain. I knew by the way I liked the back of his head, before I even saw him.

I wanted to tell him that even though we have had very different lives, even though I've never been where he's been, even so, I've been in dark places of my own and I know the darkness that he's breathing now. I wanted to tell him that I knew what he was going to do with that lost dollar, but I gave it to him anyway, and I'm not sure why, other than that it seemed to be his dollar. I wanted to tell him there's another way.

But I couldn't say it, and he couldn't hear it. Instead I went back to my car and cried. And I said a prayer, if you could call it that: I sent out a cry, a hope to the universe. I hoped that I did what I was supposed to do. I hoped that his bottom would come soon and that he'd live through it. I hoped that his next dollar would wind up in a basket at a meeting, and not in his dealer's hand. And I hoped that somehow that lost dollar would help him find his way home.

Before I realized that I'm attracted to addicts, I used to say that what I loved men who reminded me of Peter: men with a boyish vulnerability, a wounded child inside. So, in recent years, of course, I've begun to wonder about the two common threads connecting the men I've loved: addiction and Peter Pan. And I've found that Peter has some deliciously addict-like qualities about him (and Wendy some delightfully codependent ones).

Now, I have to be clear, the Pan I love is not the Disney version, he's J.M. Barrie's own original creation: wounded and cocky, lonely and thoughtless, fearless and needy. I love the boy who lies down in bed desperately wanting to cry after Wendy and the lost boys leave him, but decides it would be crueler to them to laugh instead. I love the boy who lets his tears cascade over Tinkerbell's finger when she lies dying and then forgets he ever knew her after she's gone. I don't love a happy little boy, I love a tragic figure.

I have heard it said that addicts stop growing emotionally at the age they began using their drug of choice; they remain frozen in time, perpetual children in adults bodies. And of course, that makes for a wonderful Peter Pan parallel, but mere childishness is two dimensional; it isn't compelling. For Peter Pan (or my husband) to capture and hold interest there has to be complexity and depth. It's not the childishness that draws us in (or at least draws me in) it's the wound that caused the child to remain behind, fearful of going any further. It's the way he needs and wants a mother's love and care, the way he brings Wendy to the island to fill that void, and yet he despises grownups (read: parents) and expects them to hurt and abandon him, to bar the window against him as he tells Wendy his own mother did.

"Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence. At such times it had been Wendy's custom to take him out of bed and sit with him on her lap, soothing him in dear ways of her own invention, and when he grew calmer to put him back to bed before he quite woke up, so that he should not know of the indignity to which she had subjected him."

What good codie could hear of Peter Pan crying in his sleep and not want to soothe him? And more than that, not love him for it?

But it's more than the refusal to grow up, more than the woundedness that brings addiction to mind when I read Peter Pan now, it's the ability to make fantasy a reality. Neverland begins as someplace entertaining and exciting Wendy, John and Michael dream about. It may come close to them in the nursery, but without Peter to lead them there, it doesn't break through into reality. Peter makes fantasy real for the children.

"In the old days at home the Neverland had always begun to look a little dark and threatening by bedtime. Then unexplored patches arose in it and spread; black shadows moved about in them; the roar of the beasts of prey was quite different now, and above all, you lost the certainty that you would win. you were quite glad that the night-lights were in. You even liked Nana to say that this was just the mantelpiece over here, and the Neverland was all make-believe.

"Of course the Neverland had been make-believe in those days; but it was real now, and there were no night-lights, and it was getting darker every moment, and where was Nana?"

And Peter, like an addict, makes fantasy real to himself.

"The difference between him and the other boys at such a time was that they knew it was make-believe, while to him make-believe and true were exactly the same thing. This sometimes troubled them, as when they had to make-believe that they had their dinners."

In fact, "make-believe was so real to him that during a meal of it you could see him getting rounder."

Like Wendy, I'm entranced by the beauty of the fantasy but I want to enjoy it from the safety of home. I want to protect and care for the boy who so clearly needs it and refuses to admit it, to take him home and tuck him safely in bed with a nightlight on. Yet this would destroy the very image I love: the boy outside the window, looking in at a loving family he can't be part of.

I watched this video (thank you, Dirty Bitch Society for sharing):

And I thought: Well, duh. How do entertainers get paid? Advertising. How was The San Diego Reader able to pay me to publish some of my pieces? Um, advertising. Maybe advertising is not inherently evil. It allows me to maybe get a little money for doing what I enjoy, while continuing to bring you all writing you (seem to!) enjoy for free, the advertisers get a new market, and you may even (one hopes) find something interesting or useful.

I am still working on integrating them gracefully into the site, so bear with me. I haven't figured the positioning out yet, so they clutter things up just a little, I think. And I'm finding them a little distracting myself right now, but I suppose that's partially the point. I'm not allowed to click on them, but because they are related to my content, I find that I'm terribly curious about some of them and am very tempted to just click over and see what they're selling. I'm a terrible sucker for marketing. I do things like end up with an extra Men in Black DVD after walking into a store with a big TV playing Will's Smith's music video. Mmm, potential addict sexiness sells.