Love in the time of recovery

The answer is yes.

You can tell how much you’re in love by how little you care what other people think. Which is why proclamations of true love on social media ring hollow for me.

Love is a quiet strength. It gilds every moment with grace. It doesn’t share pictures with a thousand of your closest friends.

So remember, if I ever go quiet on the socials, it doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve gone back to the crack pipe. As unlikely as it sounds, I may have just tripped upon another kind of drug. One that enhances every aspect of life — from how we treat ourselves and others to how music sounds.

Most critically, it tries to answer the gnawing question that we spend so much of our lives pondering: Am I lovable?

But boy, does it ever have a nasty comedown. In terms of quality, it’s a pretty consistent product. It’s the hangover that varies, according to the individuals involved.

It’s fair to say that for most of my life, I was not a suitable candidate. The next morning was too much for me.

It’s tempting to place the blame for my drug habit on heartbreak. Who wouldn’t want to blame their breakdown and subsequent spiral into addiction on being ditched?

Having suffered just such a break in my youth, I assigned that blame instinctively. You see, if I didn’t pin it on the other party, then I'd have to circle back to that nagging old question.

Am I lovable? I already had a sneaking suspicion I knew the answer. Rejection only confirmed it.

Later, when I went clean, I’d come to understand that the addict was always there — even before I took up the pipe. It was apparent in my behaviour, my sky-high needs, and a fiendish desire to have that question answered.

Over and over again.

Do you love me?

Either someone didn’t answer that sufficiently when I was a kid, or I was addicted to adoration. Or maybe both.

The truth is whatever was broken inside me had nothing to do with anyone else. Or even my heart, for that matter.

In any case, when I started treating my condition with crack cocaine, it didn’t matter any more. Nothing did. Crack is true despair. The anti-love.

I’d ask, am I lovable? And crack would coo, “You don’t love you.”

Not long before I went clean, I had a lucid moment and the clouds cleared in my muddled mind. In that instant, I wondered if just maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I was worth loving. Maybe I could try to answer that question again.

So I came home, not to fall in love and heap my issues and traumas on another human being. But to be loved and to treat myself to the healing I had long neglected.

It can be as simple as placing a hand over your heart and saying nice things. Usually, along the lines of, ‘You are worthy of love.”

My former partner actually taught me that exercise.

And, every day, my mother repeats the mantra in ways that are both subtle — her world-famous lentil soup! — and not-so-subtle. She’s big on hugging.

It all makes me wonder why I spent so much time fretting about romantic love. Sure, it can lead to the real stuff — and, sometimes, that’s worth taking a chance on. But often, as we see on the socials, it’s a sparkly cloud of nothingness. With a hell of a hangover.

Kind of like my former drug of choice.

But if I should stumble upon that other kind of love again — I do, after all, have an abundance of feelings these days — let’s see how this former addict responds. Will it be with neediness and insecurity? Or with the honesty, humility and gratitude I learned from living clean?

At the very least, let’s hope I’m funnier than the last time.

In any case, the answer will go a long way towards answering that lifelong question once and for all.

(NOTE: The song below doesn’t require you to be in love to enjoy. Only that you play it at a spirited volume on a quality sound system in a place where you can safely sing ‘ruh-ruh-ruh-demption’ at the top of your lungs.)