Page 62 of All the Way to the River

T here is one more gift of recovery that I have been offered on this journey—a gift that I have not yet mentioned.

As a result of staying sober and not chasing thrills or pushing the escape button every time I have an uncomfortable feeling, I have discovered someone who dwells within me—someone who had never before allowed herself to be fully seen.

When I finally stopped looking for love outside of myself, I was able at last to meet the child within me who has needed love— my love—the whole time.

When I saw her for the first time, I saw a beautiful but wounded little girl about five years old, with a mess of duck-fluff blond hair and anxious blue eyes. These were the eyes of someone who was terrified and lonely, and who had very nearly given up hope.

I’d first heard this child’s voice at the end of my last relationship, when she called out to me one night as I was begging yet another unavailable person to love me—when she said to me these powerful words: Please get me out of here.

Somehow, even in my madness, I had understood that the “here” this child referred to was not only this particular relationship but all of them .

She was pleading with me to stop my lifelong pattern of self-betrayal—because she was the one who was injured and reabandoned every time I threw myself at someone new.

She needed me to stop throwing myself away, because she needed my help.

She needed my attention. She needed me .

That voice—her plea—was the reason I finally came into the rooms of recovery for real.

That said, I must confess that I did not necessarily always like this child, once I met her.

She seemed to be a terribly big responsibility at first, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to take that on.

She had so many needs , you see.

In fact, I initially blamed her for every failed relationship I’ve ever had.

It was her clinginess that had driven away so many partners, after all, and it was her hunger for love that kept sending me out there looking for salvation in one person after another.

She was the reason I was oversensitive. She was the reason I experienced depression and anxiety.

She was the reason I could never find peace or stability with anyone.

She was often frightened and weepy, too—and that’s not hot. Nobody wants a crybaby.

It makes sense, then, that I had worked my whole life to ignore her or throw her away.

How hard I had tried to get rid of her! I mean, who wants to live with constant pain?

Without her neediness and suffering, I could’ve been so freaking cool!

I could’ve been amazing ! Without her hurt and despair, I could’ve been just the “good parts” of myself—the shining and appealing parts that everyone liked and was attracted to!

For so many years I had been abandoning this little girl (whom I have come to call Lizzy) or trying to make other people take care of her for me.

I had outsourced her needs to any stranger who would take me/her into their arms, demanding that they see this kid, protect her, defend her, and, ultimately, erase her.

But neither the child nor her pain had ever gone away, and we had never gotten healthy in the custody of others.

Then we had met Rayya.

And Rayya was incredible .

Rayya was the strongest person we had ever encountered—the apex predator in every room she ever entered—and Rayya would never allow any harm to come to Lizzy, not on her watch.

Rayya was so masterful at making Lizzy feel safe that this child had wanted to follow her all the way to the river and beyond—never letting go of her one trusted protector and guide.

That fearful child had needed a God in human form to worship and obey, and Rayya must have needed an acolyte, because she took on the job of playing God for me, at least for a little while, until it became too much for her, too.

Until I became too much for her. Then she pushed Lizzy away and sank back into her own demented darkness.

And then Rayya died. And the child collapsed when Rayya was gone—because who would take care of her now?

But as I became more emotionally sober in my program, and as my marbles started returning to me, I began to understand that protecting this little girl should never have been Rayya’s job in the first place.

It should never have been anybody’s job but mine.

For one thing, Rayya had her own wounded child to attend to (a child she abandoned every time she returned to active addiction or to the distractions of codependency). But it is also the case that this bright and frightened being who dwells within my own body is my child—not anybody else’s.

Mine, and mine alone.

Slowly, over time, I have come to believe that this child was given to me by God to steward safely and lovingly through Earth School. And God must’ve thought I could do a good job at taking care of this sensitive little creature—or else the precious soul would never have been entrusted to my care.

And here’s the beautiful part: As I have come to know Lizzy over these last five years of celibacy and sobriety, I have begun to realize that this child is not a problem at all.

She is, in fact, the solution . This innocent little kid is the source of all my creativity, all my light, all my curiosity and joy.

She always was a wonderful girl, full of love and dreams and sweetness and humor; it’s just that she was anxious and vigilant all the time because she never felt very safe.

But when Lizzy is in a good place, emotionally speaking, she is a delight .

All I have to do is meet her simple human needs (affection, security, rest, love, fun activities, good food, healthy friendship) and she radiates love.

But Lizzy is also vulnerable, and so she needs to be shepherded through her existence with the utmost gentleness.

I am only now learning how to provide that gentle care for her—and it is worth every effort on my part, because when Lizzy thrives, I thrive.

Conversely, when Lizzy tanks, I tank.

When I abandon Lizzy, I abandon myself.

When I take care of Lizzy, I take care of myself.

The measure of how well she is doing at any given time determines whether I am living in heaven or in hell—which means she herself is my path to divinity.

Lizzy, in short, is my everything—and when she is safe and calm and happy and loved (by me ), the world becomes a place I no longer wish to run away from.

A little creature this important deserves to have a responsible and sober adult looking after her at all times—and I am proud to report that I am gradually becoming that woman.

This kid needs to be somebody’s foremost priority, and that somebody is clearly me.

And the last thing she needs right now is for me to move yet another romantic partner into our house to drain our resources, confuse my mind, and redirect my time and attention away from her care.

So that is why I work my program with such focus and dedication, and that is why—for now, at least—I remain single and unattached.

It’s all for her, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

One more surprising gift that Lizzy has brought to my life is this: I have found that the better care I take of this tenderhearted inner child, the more settled and peaceful I feel about my relationship with Rayya—by which I mean my ongoing relationship with Rayya.

Because of course I have an ongoing relationship with Rayya.

The dead don’t really leave us when they die, right?

We all know that, don’t we? They continue to live within our imaginations, showing up in dreams and visions and memories.

Engaging with us in conversations that never end.

The only remaining question of this book, then, is: Who are Rayya and I becoming ?

When I envision Rayya now, I do not see her anymore as my protector or my passionate lover.

Nor do I see her as the one who broke my heart with her own addiction, nor as the one who abandoned me and caused me so much pain.

All that is gone now, for so many reasons—not least of which is that I have finally learned that I cannot be abandoned by anybody; I can only abandon myself .

And as long as I don’t do that—as long as I don’t throw Lizzy away—I will always be all right, no matter what anybody else does or does not do.

And so, as I have been slowly restored to sanity, and as my inner child spirit has healed, Rayya has returned, in my consciousness, to her rightful position in my life—as my friend.

As my best friend.

Rayya is my wonderful friend whom I loved with all my heart—sometimes generously, sometimes greedily—and who taught me more about the nature of craving, addiction, and relapse than anyone else, living or dead, ever could.

She is my friend whom I miss terribly, and always will.

She is my friend whom I wish I could go to the beach with for one day—for just one more afternoon beneath an umbrella, watching the waves and talking about everything.

She is my friend who always insisted that I learn to stand on my own two feet.

She is my friend who gave me the greatest gift of my life by showing me, through her vivid and devastating example, that the disease of addiction never takes a day off—and so I must never take a day off from my recovery, either. And with this gift, she may well have saved my life.

Rayya still comes to visit me sometimes in my mind, to speak with me directly.

She doesn’t show up as often as she used to, back in the heady, intense months right after she died, but she still makes appearances.

She tells me that she loves me and is proud of me.

She encourages me to stay sober and to enjoy my life.

She makes comments on other people’s nonsense and she makes me laugh.

She reminds me to tell the truth, to set boundaries, and to forgive.

She assures me that someday she will come and meet me at the river when my time comes to die—but instructs me to build a beautiful existence for myself in the meanwhile.

Hearing her unmistakable voice still moves me deeply. But she does not govern my life anymore, nor is she my source of light, nor is she the ground beneath my feet, nor is she my higher power.

She is just my friend—my brave, powerful, and still very human friend—and I love her with all my heart.

What could death ever do to interrupt such an easy bond?

I find these days that all I want for Rayya anymore—if you can be said to want anything for somebody who has been dead for more than six years—is that she be free.

Utterly and totally free.

“True love always liberates the beloved,” says my friend Martha Beck, and only now do I feel that I understand the generous, unfettered spirit behind these words.

I want Rayya to be free from the need to take care of me or anybody else—even from beyond the grave. I want her to be free to vanish into the eternal mystery with all her ancestors, and to become music—because that is what she always wanted to be.

And I can feel that Rayya wants me to be free, too.

She wants me to live autonomously and happily and peacefully on this side of the divide—in a world that I have finally come to accept as my own, and from which I am no longer trying to escape.

(It’s not such a bad world, actually, once you surrender to reality, and once you finally start showing up for your own care.) I will stay here in this world for as long as God allows it, and I’ll do whatever I need to do for the rest of my life in order to remain sane, sober, and well .

I’m one of the lucky ones, after all, who finally found her way to the rooms of recovery.

There is a prayer that we recite in those rooms that I love very much. It simply says, “Dear God—thank you for all that has been given, for all that has been taken away, and for all that remains.”

Like many gratefully recovering addicts, I stand in amazement at all that remains—astonished that I was allowed to keep anything , after all my many years of madness and acting out.

By all rights, I should have lost absolutely everything in the course of my various and sundry maelstroms and upheavals.

Many people with minds as distorted as mine have indeed lost everything.

Don’t get me wrong: I did lose a great deal—self-respect, time, health, serenity, security, multiple relationships, and literally millions of dollars—and other people lost dearly, too, just through their association with me and my addiction.

But God has allowed me to keep so many things.

I’ve been allowed to keep my creativity, my curiosity, my career, my friendships, my faith, and that precious little child within.

Most miraculously of all, I got to keep my life —and I don’t say that lightly, knowing that many people (especially women) do not make it out of sex and love addiction alive.

One of the other things that God has allowed me to keep is this beautiful old church in the middle of New Jersey, where I am sitting right now, writing the final words of our story.

I was once married in this church, and Rayya once lived in this church—but just for today, the only inhabitants of this sacred space are one gratefully sober woman in her mid-fifties and one beautiful spirit child who needs and deserves that woman’s constant care and attention.

That is all for now, and that is plenty.

That said, however, I have been promised in some recent prayers that very soon I will be allowed to acquire a little doggy for myself and my inner child.

Doesn’t that seem like something that would make a five-year-old happy? A sweet little dog of her own?

So perhaps when the hard work of writing this book is over, Lizzy and I will go out there and find ourselves a pet.

Something that we can love together and learn how to care for responsibly.

Something small but precious.

Let’s just start there , God suggests, and we’ll see how it goes.