Step 1: How I Found An Agent
The bathroom floor of beginning
In order to tell the story of how I landed an agent, I’ll have to begin at the beginning.
My book about sobriety started with me avoiding sobriety in a fashion akin to splash resistance at the pool on non shampoo days. All grimace and wound muscle. Steeling myself against what’s coming even though I know full well it’s touch is inevitable. Even though I’m standing in a goddamn pool. Avoiding water like a disgruntled sugar cube.
We try to outrun the predators of pain until our heels are bleeding. Until our lips are swollen. Until our ribs poke through the tattered ribbons of our most prized lululemons. Our faces are blistered. Our hearts are broken. And our minds are out doing what minds do best - trying to protect us in the broken ways only they know how.
Like I said, I got sober first by trying to outrun it. Step 1. I’d stay dry just long enough to convince myself I didn’t have a problem (maybe 48 hours). I’d teach yoga and go for 8 mile runs under the supposition that if I had a problem, I would not be able to complete such heroic feats of athleticism. I was functioning alright. In a deluded hypervigilant overfunctioning to the point of death kind of way.
What I didn’t know then, that I do know now, is that the thing I was trying to outrun was the thing trying to peck a miracle message into my thick ass skull to bridge me over to the other side. The carrier pigeon, but so much cooler than that. Let me try again: it’s the wolf at our backs that just wants us to turn around, look it in the eye, lick the sweat off our brow, and lead us back home.
Pain is the roadmap to purpose. Avoid it and the howl gets louder, grows fangs. You can’t outrun it. It’ll hunt you down eventually. But I certainly don’t fault any one body for trying. That’s just a primal mechanism passed down from our dino-dodging ancestors, trying to fortify us against the unknown. It’s just that the unknown is the eden of possibility. It’s where we’re all headed whether we know it yet or not.
When I was finally done flopping around on the bathroom floor like a flounderfish, I gathered up what pride I had left, moved one of my eyes to the other side of my face, and started swimming through life uprightly. The voice that said, “Give up alcohol and you’ll have the life you always wanted,” barely made it through my amphibiary excuses for ears, but once the whisper landed, it took up roots and never stopped.
Want to know what happens next? Stay tuned for step 2.