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It would be impossible to pinpoint exactly which Steps made me feel less hopeless and which ones allowed me to like myself. But, by the time I was through all twelve, I was able to look at myself in the mirror without hating who was looking back. When I started doing service, that self-like turned to self-love and my ego made way for selflessness. I have found everything I ever wanted in CMA: friendship, purpose, connection, and the ability to love myself. Most important, I don't want to get high anymore. I just don't think I'd enjoy it. Not when I have so many other things to look forward to.
Being in that halfway house blew my mind. We had to wake up early for morning reflection and work, and then we had to do a Twelve Step meeting at night. And again, they were big on this God thing. I laughed and thought how lame it was. That's just the answer for weak people. That won't work for me. So again, I acted like it didn't matter, played the game, and tried to follow my plan. But when my plan fell apart, I took off. I left with every intention of not getting loaded. I wasn't going to screw this up. But after a few days, I ended up in that black hole, a place filled with chaos and turmoil and feelings I knew nothing about. So I went back to my friend alcohol, who led me back to crystal meth and running and gunning.
At this point, in my loaded state, I took stock of my life. I'd been locked up three times, tried halfway houses, detox, and rehab. I thought l'd actually tried a Twelve Step program, and I thought I had tried God, because I did a lot of foxhole prayers. I thought being in prison was going to be my life plan. In that car, I had an epiphany: I did not want to get high anymore! I'm not sure if you can relate to this, but with my whole being, I did not want to get high. But my arm would not stop bringing the pipe to my lips. If you have ever cried your eyes out while getting high, you know the powerlessness I am talking about. Hope was gone. I decided right then and there to kill myself. Obviously, I failed that mission. But I remember vividly that the thought of suicide gave me hope. I made it through the night, but something had changed. My main focus was to get back into rehab and give it an honest shot.
It wasn't until then that I realized I suffer from a disease. I get this obsession, and I get this feeling that I just want more. Its like I have this little guy in my head who tells me l don't deserve this good life. "You know what you want to do, go back and do what you do, 'cause that's what you do good, and all of this is for somebody else. It looks good on them, but not on you." That's what my head tells me.
Reviewers of Sleepless Nights were tempted to see the woman depicted as the mother of the narrator as the author’s mother. It is likely that “her weight on a stepladder washing windows, her roast and potatoes and fat yeast rolls” and the “peculiar, helpless assertiveness” that reflected “her profound acceptance of the things of life” were true to the facts. In Sleepless Nights, the narrator is perplexed that her mother was “so indifferent to the past. . . . as if she did not know who she was.” But Mary was simply living the life mapped out for her by habit and tradition. (A “relentless finality” haunted Elizabeth’s earlier autobiographical fictional character, Marian Coleman, when she considered the possibility that her life would duplicate her mother’s.)16 By removing herself from the narrative that had been handed to her by family and community, Elizabeth was obliged to reckon with the past and figure out who she really was.
a nice phrase
In Sleepless Nights, Elizabeth wrote that she was reminded of her father by the “handsome” workmen who came to the house she owned in Maine, with their “sunburned faces . . . their strong fingers yellowed by nicotine”—men who awakened “a flirtatiousness” on her part. What, she wondered, “would it be like to be married to such a man, to see him coming out of the shower, to sit at dinner at six o’clock, turn off the lights at nine, embrace, make love frequently in honor of a long day of working, get up at five, visit with the relations on Sunday, never leave town.” For both her parents, sleeping in their separate beds, “night is good because it leads to the day, to shoes and stockings, to coffee, to drudgery and repetition.” These are people, she is telling us, who do not question their lives or obsess about the past or the future.
alas
Little is known about Elizabeth’s romantic life during these years, other than her decision to break up with a boyfriend when she learned that his father was a coal mine owner. (“I felt they were murderers. He didn’t like me much either.”)56 Another boyfriend may have been the model for the devoted swain in one of Elizabeth’s early short stories, “Yes and No.” Although the narrator describes him as having a “generous, warm nature,” she constantly criticizes him, “from his soul to his clothes.” She thinks of him as her “sweetheart,” yet she never wants to see him when he shows up. Although he is a political science faculty member at the university, “his views seemed to me flat and impersonal.” What keeps her in his thrall is his unshakable affection for her, obliging her to duck his constant proposals of marriage while keeping him on a string. She confesses that his green Chevrolet convertible—in which they drive to taverns where she drinks too much and baits him mercilessly—is one of his major attractions. The kicker, at the end of this short tale, is that she acknowledges “what pleasure we have all received from someone we imagined ‘not quite good enough’ for us.”
omg lol
During these years Elizabeth had a string of lovers in New York—two affairs resulted in abortions, one of which she alluded to in Sleepless Nights61—but none were serious enough for her to contemplate marriage, and some of the men were already married. (The “Alex” of the novel is likely a composite portrait.) An affair was a risky thing for a woman in those days; in addition to the fear of pregnancy, having a male guest in her apartment at night could result in her being thrown out. Elizabeth once recalled how, “if a man left your place at three in the morning you felt quite nervous in case anyone had noticed.”62 Intriguingly, the Sleepless Nights narrator says, “In those years I did not care to enjoy sex, only to have it.”63
kind of a relief to hear this lol
In the same “Fiction Chronicle,” Elizabeth also delivered a harsh verdict on a story collection by the “mercilessly pretentious” Anaïs Nin. While granting her “a fierce foolishness that is not without beauty as an act,” Elizabeth snatched away this grudging praise by adding, “it is too bad her performance is never equal to her intentions.”71 The most noteworthy aspect of this review is its discussion of the way Nin’s penchant for using vague, mystical phrases to create a spurious aura of sexual revelation was typical of women writers of the era. They offer “the illusion of having opened the bedroom door without involving the performer in a recognizable scandal.” Elizabeth would have much more to say about sex in women’s novels in future decades.
oooo
Despite the inauspicious street name (Manhattan’s Bowery was a slum district), the apartment offered consolations. It had a private bath, a bonus in those days, and the kitchen—“the center of home life here,” Elizabeth wrote—had a new linoleum floor, a new stove, cabinets, and sink.63 She soon realized that in Iowa City, “the love of the spotless stove and kitchen floor is infectious.” Willing to do her part to maintain appearances, she drew the line at other “native folk ways, such as doing your husband’s shirts.” To Eleanor Taylor, Elizabeth professed being “quite content” with “the calm, sober, quiet life,” though “it is impossible to speak of liking Iowa,” where there were no bohemians.64 The other families in the Lowells’ building were always asking her if she had done “the week’s baking yet and other normal and embarrassing questions.” Even the students—“stolid, dependable people”—were married; husbands hung out at the Laundromat while doing the family wash.