My Little Voice

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash

I’m going to share this, and I know it’s heresy. Don't tell anyone.

I don’t believe in God.

Well, that’s not entirely true. 

I would define myself more as a tangible agnostic. If I can’t see God sitting across the breakfast table, he doesn't exist.  

Pass the butter Buster, or why don’t you just levitate it to me?

At best, I'm conflicted about my belief in a higher power. 

Descartes once said, “I think, therefore I am.”

I say, “I think, therefore I am confused.“

My higher power does not carry a staff or remotely resemble Santa Claus. He’s centered inside of me, near my heart. Periodically, during crucial times, he tells me what to do. He doesn’t yell, but rather whispers in a very understanding way, sotto voce. He is my protector.  

Or maybe he’s a she! It matters not. The unwavering voice tells me which path to take when I come to the fork in the road. It never steers me wrong.

You doubt me? Well, I have proof.

When I was born, I cried at the sight of my mother with her perfect makeup, polished nails and coiffed hair. The little voice said, “This is who I’m sending you to...this is your path.”

I had the promise of my own bedroom situated next to my only sibling, a brother. My inner voice said, softly but resolutely, “Stay away from him, he wants nothing to do with you.”

80 years later, that voice is still correct on the topic of my brother. I recently invited him to come to my 80th birthday party. He declined, not politely. Like my parents, he is an empty well when it comes to emotions. My task is to not take it personally after a lifetime of taking it personally. 

I would have received more love from squeezing a turnip than I got from my family of origin. The turnip would not have hurt me, but my immediate family sure did (does, clearly).

They transformed an adorable, happy, loving little girl into a depressed child-turned adolescent-turned addict. 

For years, I was lost without my little voice. Should I go right? Should I go left? Should I stay in Berkeley? Should I go to UCLA? Should I rush a sorority? Should I live with my parents? (The parents who converted my bedroom into their den within weeks of my departure for college—no welcome home for Char.) I never knew. I made wrong choices, including choosing to stay at UCLA. I was a lonely fish, swimming in a deep pool of peers who looked through or past me. I had no friends to speak of.  No confidante, except the therapist I paid to listen to my bullshit. 

My then abusive beau certainly didn't qualify as a friend. He once, in a not-so-kind voice, insisted I walk ten feet behind him. It was a painful, lonely time and I coped by using drugs. I submerged myself beneath Valium and opiates for over 20 years, diluting, then silencing my little voice until the drugs, over time, killed it completely. There I was with bottles of pills and no internal rudder. I did everything wrong. 

Sure, I proved coachable, learning and internalizing my life lessons well, but I was slow on the uptake. I stayed in LA too long, until I nearly died. (Not an exaggeration.) 

When I was 35, I drove my car into not one—but two—parked cars in a blackout. I was ungovernable. I went to the hospital to treat myself with drugs for my bruises, scars and other injuries.  

Three years later, I finally heard my little voice again. It said, ”You've had enough.”

I stopped using and decided to channel my creative skills onto the page. I took a writing class. The teacher, pinched and downright sadistic, said “You would be pretty if you lost some weight." I weighed 135 at the time. She suggested I go to an Overeaters Anonymous ("OA") meeting. It was 1983. She knew my plate (metaphor for life) was empty. I needed to fill it with something other than pasta and pills. At the first OA meeting they talked about abstinence, a concept I couldn't grasp. Thankfully, someone there mentioned they were headed to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. I went along for the ride.

Forty years later, I'm still in that (metaphorical, go with me here) car. It was in that meeting I felt at home and at ease for the first time. The speaker told my story! I fit in, exhaled, inhaled, connected. This was where I belonged—and still do. When I left that meeting, a woman followed me out. 

"Are you an alcoholic?"

"No, but I am addicted to Valium. Does that count?"

"It does,” she responded, "and so do you." Kind eyes, open heart. She whipped out a piece of paper from inside her purse and wrote down her phone number. “Call me.”  

I called her the next day. I suspected she would charge me for her services, but she didn’t. I couldn’t fathom that someone would help me without charging me money.  This was a most welcome first. She helped me understand and accept that I couldn't go it alone. I tried to get into a rehab to no avail. 

You know the old saying: when the tough get going, the tough call their mother. After many years of being out of my parents' lives, I called my mother, with her unattainable coiffed hair, polished nails, perfect makeup. This time, she finally heard my pain, my desperation and my willingness to change. I told her I wanted to get sober and needed money for rehab knowing she didn’t know what rehab meant. 

“I’ll call your father,” she replied, matter-of-fact.

She called me back moments later. "Your father said yes." 

I was admitted to the St. John’s Chemical Dependency Ward that very night. I took my little yellow buddies, better known as Valium, out of my pocket and flushed them down the toilet. Never again, I vowed. The doctors and nurses didn’t think I would stay sober. “Too far gone,” they wrote in the case notes. My little voice knew better.  

And so did I—for the next thirty years—until I relapsed on opiates.  Where was my little voice then?

Just when I was close to the end of my rope, driving the hills of San Rafael, the little voice finally came through, crystalline: You really want to live here.

And I did.

A whisper in my soul that turned my life around. Divine intervention.