Pain Minus Mission Plus Hope

                                          Me, age four, in my favorite dress for obvious reasons


This dispatch from the intersection of terrified and tired of trying.

What really happens when you get sober?

You get life (whatever that entails).  

In my case, that meant that I got the layers of me.

During the first decade of my sobriety, I was severely depressed and I couldn’t function. It was suggested by the medical cognoscenti that I deal with my depression without prescribed drugs. I spent years sitting in my apartment in LA with my cats, vegetating. To their credit, the cats were really good listeners. To keep it somewhat interesting (for them), I added crippling anxiety to my woes. Staring at the four walls and sharing with the felines felt safe, so that's what I did. For years on end.

Beneath my anxiety and depression ("A&D" in my medical records) miasma and my substance abuse (including but not limited to pills, booze and food), I was the poster woman for a mental health PSA: What not to do. Captive and desperate, I tried to ride out the pain every day. It didn't become me but it governed me, just like the previous substances I used to keep it at bay. 

Of all the obstacles I've faced or co-created, depression is the killer. It wants you dead or at least thinking about dying. I still get depressed, and when I do it feels like a knife tearing my insides apart. It's visceral. Comprehensively debilitating. The glass is not half empty. It's not even empty.

There. 
Is. 
No. 
Glass. 

The new-ish layer of me is what I'm referring to as my Aging with Parkinson’s Epoch.  

A distinct and repetitive vision of the future foretold includes scenes of me in a wheelchair, then bedridden, then unable to swallow or eat. The upside is that in the movie, I have no memory of my inability to eat or walk, so I don't miss either. Until I do. And then I forget again, trapped in a loop as I grasp for my memory, which is already going, going, gone.
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They say in AA God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.  Well I’m here to tell you the author of that saying never had major depressive disorder. OR Parkinson’s. If she had, she would have said God doesn't give you more than you can handle unless God decided you deserved to suffer in which case God gives you a shit ton of shit to deal with.

Some days I want OUT. The pain, the depression, the Parkinson’s are all too much and I PRAY to end it all.  All I want is to not be in pain or depressed. 

The collective response of my medical team? What's a little pain? Better to die sober. Being drug free and sober will get you into Heaven. 

I’d have them know that I'm willing to take drugs and go to Hell because I’m already squarely situated in HELL. 

Is life really a test to see who can hurt the most and survive?

Memo to my team (who clearly had a meeting without me to stay on message): Please just give me some drug to kill the pain and the depression. Is that asking too much?  Call me a coward.  I hate pain.  I want some modicum of relief.  

They have slow-rolled my requests so far, which was likely designed to make me do some brutally honest, bootstrap reflection. 

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Alright then ... upon brutally honest, bootstrap reflection, I may know a path forward that doesn't require me to relapse. 

Before I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, I was the Coloring Diva.  A coloring what, you say? My life in Los Angeles was not stellar. Sure, I was sober for 30 years, but I had a litany of physical and mental issues that led to a life less than ... my intended, divine life.

So I pulled up stakes and moved to Northern California. (Author reaches around to pat herself on the back.) It was the best decision ever. Once here, the real me began to emerge. Every day was still a challenge—just trying to make 24 hours sober—but after several years of immersing myself in AA, I decided I heed the clarion call to do something to help others.  

Being in service of others was my saving grace. Peer-reviewed research confirms this and I was now a poster-woman for something positive. I’m at my best when I am helping others. It makes me feel good ands replaces all of my substances (except chocolate) thanks to dopamine.  

The notion of the Coloring Diva came to me over time. Art always helped me relax. People (like me) need to decompress. I decided to create a program to help people in need by giving them the tools to color. No wrong answers. No judgment. Just creating and committing to the page. I put together pictures, along with colored pencils, to reduce stress and anxiety while having fun.

The program was a big hit, and occupied a lot of my time, until I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s which put a monkey wrench in the Coloring Diva's good intentions. 

I have not colored since my diagnosis.  

I’m turning 80 on Valentine’s Day. in the meantime, I am writing a book and reviving the Coloring Diva. 

My time is running out. I don’t have a clue what my final journey will entail, but part of me knows it's mine to make—equal parts pain, determination, depression and colored pencils.*



​* The kind the girl in the favorite dress would have used.