the intersection

It’s been nine years since I was rear-ended by a drunk driver in Austin, Texas. I remember looking in the rearview mirror just in time to know what was going to happen next. Life provides so many of those moments, when we see and feel it coming and then have no control over the inevitable collision.

He was going at least twenty miles over the speed limit on a road where thirty was meant to be the max. It was like he had no idea he was coming up on a red light; or maybe his inebriation made him not care. Maybe he was on a mission to keep going until he was stopped. After he hit me, causing multiple cars in front of me to feel the domino effect of his actions; the ripple effect of alcohol steaming through lives, he went on to t-bone a driver at the next intersection.

You never know what might happen at an intersection.

Long story short, no one was terribly harmed, thank God. The young man was arrested. Cars were totaled but lives where merely shaken; the rest of us were able to move on with our days, not incarcerated or guilty. We were left with road trauma and another lesson about life’s surprises. Keep watch.

I was about four years sober at the time. Defining that is tricky though. I wasn’t drinking anymore but I wasn’t perfect. I was walking a safer road but still at risk for my addictive nature to rule my days. That’s true of all of us, and I had empathy for this young man whose recklessness could have ended lives, including his own.

I was a part of a an intervention recently and I asked the person if they wanted to live. The answer was honest and immediate. Sometimes.

Sometimes is dangerous territory and it calls for help. It calls for a willingness to accept the help. It calls for the laying down of your own will and following the directions of others. It calls for humility and a new kind of selflessness. It calls for radical acceptance and surrender.

Tall order. An intersection. You never know what might happen at an intersection.

When we lost my husband’s brother this past summer, we had known for a long time where he stood at every intersection. We loved him despite (and sometimes for) his fierce stubborness in many ways, but we saw it killing him. and then it did. And it was like that moment when I looked in the rearview mirror, saw it coming, braced myself. Every person in his life had to feel that and then live its aftermath, trying to remember there was nothing more we could do. Our seatbelts were on, air bags at the ready, our panicked prayers spoken.

And then the alcohol killed him and it was over and not over and we will live with the trauma for the rest of our lives.

On Sunday I sat with my recovery brothers and sisters and then by yesterday one of them was dead. The alcoholic/addict’s life is so fragile, often so fleeting. The news is no longer shocking but it still guts you. Those of us living long-term sobriety (there but for the grace of god go I) are left to remember we are just one choice away from the same demise. We are also walking around looking at each other saying how grateful we are for where we are and can we please somehow stay here with each other? Help me, and I’ll help you. Get my car out of the wrong lane if you see me coming, is that possible? Is there time? Is there space? That’s how dangerous it is every single day.

And we forget. We judge or get angry and forget we are them and they are us and we are all the same. But the minute we do, we can feel it in the deepest places within us. Oh, that could be me.

I was talking to a friend the other day about a totally separate issue that felt like sitting in that car watching the truck barreling down on me in the rearview mirror. And I was speaking my fears and the what ifs and she simply replied, Yes, but will you be alone?

The answer is no, and the only credit I can take for that is that I have opened myself up to the reality that I need help, every day, all day. Going it alone is not an option for me, or for anyone, but I get to know that and really know that because I’m an alcoholic. Pretty much anything can be a “slippery slope” for us. And that is not to say that I cannot live freely; that I have to hold back and look around like everything is a trap. It doesn’t mean I have to see my nature as bad and wrong and dangerous. It simply means I need to be aware and allow the helpers in my life to help me stay aware. It turns out there is more freedom in that. Far more freedom than living in the intersection with an unwillingness to seek another way, with help.

There are a million reasons people don’t seek help. Stigma, mental illness, betrayals, trauma…and that is why we can’t judge that either. We can only brace ourselves and try not to grow so tense that we contribute to our own long-term trauma of the impact; the ending.

With long-term active addiction, death is always coming, barreling up behind the person with no regard.

If you feel alone; like this is a fight you just cannot win, please remember you have not been abandoned. There are people in recovery in every place that would love you without judgment, and walk you back to yourself.

(You can find me on Facebook — Heather Westberg King, and Insta — heather_westberg_king if you’d like to send me a message.)