The Haunting and Healing of Iris

Mike Runner brings a perspective to Wings Like Eagles that is unique and challenging. 

I normally cover topics relating to the horror of having someone else bring darkness into the home.  Mike covers the same topics, but from a completely different angle.  He was the one who brought darkness to his family.  Mike is an alcoholic.

It is my hope that the perception of what we think we know about Family Crisis is shaken up a bit.  Because there is far more involved than we think.  Much can be understood by examining the other side, and I deeply appreciate Mike's willingness to help us gain understanding as he shares with us the mind as it is affected by alcoholism.

He isn't just an alcoholic.  He is an intelligent mind, has a bright, hopeful future, and he is my friend.  And this is his story.

“And I don’t want the world to see me

Cause I don’t think that they’d understand

When Everything’s made to be broken

I just want you to know who I am”

The Chorus of Iris by The Goo Goo Dolls.

I heard this song on the way home from work last night and everything else that was going through my mind just stopped.  My emotional state changed as did my breathing and posture and I closed my eyes.

Music has the ability to take someone back in time on an emotional level the way nothing else can.    With certain songs, they don’t just remind me of my past, they actually put me in my past.  I am there.  The same hurt, joy, love, sadness, anger, brokenness or whatever the emotion might have been at the time overwhelm me just as they did last month or many years ago.  I am not remembering.  I am there. 

I am careful in the music I listen to because music has a profound effect on my state of being.  I can change from being in complete bliss to complete emotional despair if I listen to the wrong song at the wrong time.  There are some songs that I will never listen to again.  My best friend of 30 years knows that even when I was a teenager I would not listen to depressing love songs.  I still won’t. 

Brokenness.  This was my song and I am back inside it now:  

And I don’t want the world to see me. No, not the real me.  I am supposed to be somebody.  Everyone always told me that when I was growing up!  I’ve told myself.  Now I think, they can’t see me…that I have become…nothing. 

Cause I don’t think that they’d understand.  Of course they won’t understand.  I don’t even understand.  If they understood they would leave. I have everything going for me.  I let God down.  I let myself down.  I let everyone down.  I don’t want people in mass to understand who I really am because I don’t like who I really am.  I can’t be who everyone thinks I should be and I don’t know why. I can’t cut it.  It is too much pressure.

When everything’s made to be broken.  Fragile.  Just so very fragile.  I can’t take it.  I can’t take trying to be the person I thought I was supposed to be.  I am broken.  My soul is broken.  Why did God make me look like someone who would succeed…who acted so in control…with an inside that could be shattered so easily?  On the outside, the world is for me.  On the inside it is against me.  It is as if I have gangrene that is slowly eating me away from the inside.  Why slowly?  If I am to eventually break completely why does the process take so long?  It seems so cruel and I keep trying to pretend that I’m not breaking…that I’m not being torn apart. 

I just want you to know who I am.  Not everyone.  I can’t let the world know who I am but how about just one person?  Can I just have one person who really understands me?  I know it is not fair because I don’t let myself be understood…but can’t one person see through that and love me regardless of what I have become?  Isn’t there one person out there who knows me well enough to know how I am trying to come off to the world is exactly the opposite of how I feel?  PLEASE, just one person…can’t just one person see who I really am down underneath it all?  Because I don’t know how to show it.

To say the least, as I step back outside of that time in my life, I am left feeling some very intense emotions and raw wounds that I have not felt for a while. 

There is a strange story here, as my last intense memory of this song is of me sitting in front of a computer in my old house.  I had been drinking and I was playing the song over and over again.  

Strangely, because I played it so many times in a row someone ended up smacking me in the back of the head because of it.  It is kind of tragically humorous.  I was playing the song over and over because I desperately wanted the person to love and understand me.  I was sending a subliminal message very loudly to someone in the same room.  It seems rather fitting that instead of the song doing what I had hoped, it had the opposite effect and really annoyed someone.  So much for being understood.

Today when I hear the song it has both past and present meanings.  I still deeply feel the old meanings.  Yet, this old song is also a brand new song with new meaning. 

I have talked about miracles in my life and in sobriety. Somewhere along the way, I did want the world to see me, and I found that if I came out of hiding there were actually a lot of people who would understand.  The thing that was broken, my spirit, needed to be broken completely so that God could gently and lovingly rebuild it. 

On the I just want you to know who I am line, I did then, as I do now.  But now, I let myself be seen. 

What I desired before was unfair to others in a way because I didn’t show them what I needed, I just expected them to somehow know.  I show myself now and I have people who know me in the deepest sense. 

The song has gone on an amazing journey with me and I am grateful for both meanings.  That I was so lost, scared and broken.  That I am now at peace with myself and the world around me. I don’t need to pretend anymore.

Now that I am completely over an emotional edge, (I find myself still fighting myself here.  Maybe I’m being too vulnerable.  Maybe I will get hurt by sharing too much.  Old fears that I continue to push through) there is something that I have been meaning to say.  Thank you.  Thank you to everyone who reads this column, comments, re-posts, shares with people…thank you. 

I get an instant message about once a week from someone who has been reading my column from the beginning, and I had no idea.  I have been able to meet with some people one on one, pray for and with some families, and at times just tell people I am so very, very sorry for what their family is going through, but I understand, and that there is still hope. 

What you may not know, is that every single one of you is helping to keep me sober.  After 19 months of sobriety this time around I can make no guarantees that I will stay sober for the rest of my life.  If I am honest, I have to admit that I have no idea what is even going to happen in my life tomorrow.  I am staying sober one day at a time by doing a few simple things.  I am grateful for you because writing to you about my experiences, strength and hope, keeps me open and honest. 

Remember, for most of my life I stuffed my emotions, would tell you right to your face that I was doing “great!” even if I was dying inside.  And I would say it with a very convincing smile.

When I was deciding on whether or not I would write this Never Anonymous column weekly, I had to make sure I was willing to share everything, to go as deeply as I knew how, or else it wasn’t worth doing.  It wouldn’t have any effect on anyone, including myself. 

I cannot share my great joys without also sharing my deepest despair.  I can’t talk about what finally went right without discussing what kept going wrong for so many years.  You all are helping me to stay honest with myself, to remember where I have been, and to share the things that have worked.  I (and this is a trait of many alcoholics) can very easily delude myself into thinking things really were not that bad and that maybe I could handle a drink now and then to take the edge off.   If I don’t catch that thought it will build until it is acted upon.  When I share with you about what has worked (people, God, etc.) I am reminded of those things and I continue to do them. 

Without you I would be much more at risk of going back inside my shell.  It is my hope and my prayer that I can have an effect on hurting people and families out there but I am being helped more than I can express through the process.  Thank you, and I think you and I are going to be OK if we do this together.

Next:  My Worst Thanksgiving (It is Never Turkey Day in Jail)