43 The Fuck-Its
FORTY-THREE
The Fuck-Its
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: addicts aren’t patient.
When we’re shaking, nauseated, anxious, lonely, or depressed, we need instant relief that sends us into that pain-free place called denial.
I call it the fuck-its. Alcohol let me say “Fuck it, I’ll deal with everything later,” and within thirty seconds, I was in the zone.
It was like coming up for air and breathing again.
In the fuck-it zone, I forgot everything: Brian’s abuse, Kaya’s absence, and a career I’d chosen to hide from.
Leaving acting hadn’t been a conscious decision; it simply happened.
In the process of running from myself and everything I loved, I’d gotten lost. Thankfully, I had denial to bolster me up.
The fuck-its made life full of promise, and there was no room to be bored or sad when I’d forgotten those feelings existed.
Trust me, if you stay in rehab more than a few weeks, you have lots of time to be bored.
When you’re sitting with your feelings, stone cold sober, there’s little room for denial.
But in those long, empty spaces, you start to grow.
I felt deep resentment toward Brian and every person in my life who’d caused me pain, but I began to sort through the anger and disappointment that resentment always masks.
Understanding replaced rage, and lightness came in and broke up the discontent.
While the shift was slow, it was unmistakable.
During my eight-month stint in treatment in 2020, I said goodbye to the fuck-its and started to hit real milestones.
At first, they were painful, but they were nothing I hadn’t experienced during withdrawal before.
As my nervous system tried to regulate itself without the depressant effects of alcohol, it went into overdrive, and my whole body shook, I couldn’t sleep, and my head pounded like it was pressing against my skull.
At least my eyes aren’t yellow, I told myself.
I’d developed jaundice before, and a doctor told me that if I didn’t stop drinking, I’d be dead within five years.
I didn’t suffer from hallucinations, and I counted my lucky stars for that.
Once during withdrawal, I heard voices that were so terrifying I got on all fours and crawled to my bathroom, where I lay on the cool, clean tiles and waited for the panic to pass.
Two weeks in, I started to feel calm. This was to be expected.
After your body adjusts to the lack of alcohol, your blood pressure decreases and your heart rate stabilizes.
Your nervous system remembers how to do its job, and your gut starts to heal itself.
But the calm I felt wasn’t just physical; it was also because I was safe.
I wasn’t lost in someone else’s hell or building up a hell of my own. I liked myself. What a revelation.
Two weeks later, I laughed. Not because of Brian or Wlad or Mom or someone else whose approval I craved, but because of something I thought was funny. That laugh was all mine, and no one could take it from me. It was the first glimmer of happiness I’d seen in a long, long time.
Three months later, I felt joy. I was in control and I’d gained back my own trust. I knew I didn’t have to be scared of myself anymore.
Joy made me cross the hump to true healing, when my brain could rewire itself and give my body permission to relax.
I knew I had energy, and I knew I could allow myself to be content.
Maybe I couldn’t always lift myself up into that feeling, but I could fall back to that baseline of happiness that was mine for the taking.
Joy was a feeling no one could bottle. Joy was a million times better than any drug.
Treatment is a strange place to meet new people because it’s not “real life.” But I met a woman there who’d been abused much like I had, and we started to talk in what was decidedly a “real” way.
I struggled with holding Brian accountable, probably because, despite all my resentment, I loved him.
And, sure, Brian was facing jail time for all that he’d done to me, but I saw it as a police matter, not mine.
My new friend made me realize otherwise.
“You can still hold him personally accountable for what he did,” she told me. “It’s okay to want him to accept responsibility. You can love someone and still see the need for them to pay.”
She gave me the courage to cooperate fully with the investigation. I didn’t want to see Brian suffer for the rest of his life, but I knew, in every inch of my heart, that he needed a long sentence.
I worked the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous every day while I was in treatment, and while some steps were easy, others were hard.
I landed on step four about six months into treatment, and I started to take what AA describes as “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of myself.
Through step four, I began to map out ways I would take accountability for all the behaviors and actions that had caused me to drink.
I knew it would be humbling, but I was sure at the end I’d find acceptance and forgiveness—for myself and for the people who’d done me wrong.
When I was on step four, my lawyer called to say that Brian needed to talk.
While I was in treatment, Brian had been sentenced to forty-five days in prison and four years’ probation, plus fines and mandatory domestic violence classes.
He’d served his time and was now in his own apartment, where he was living with our French bulldog, Cora.
Cora wasn’t even two years old, and I missed her every day.
“I won’t take up much of your time,” my lawyer said. “I just needed to tell you that Cora’s in the hospital. She’s fine, but she broke her back.”
French bulldogs have delicate spines that compress easily, but back problems usually happen late in life, after they’ve spent years running around, jumping off beds, and jostling their little bones.
Brian was a huge fan of Frenchies, and I was a huge fan of anything with four legs and hair, so I’d gone along with him.
Now I loved that dog more than I could tell you.
In my darkest times with Brian, she’d always been a wonderful ray of light.
“Please tell him to do whatever it takes to help her,” I said. “She’s too young for this to happen.”
I went back to my room, threw myself on the bed, and cried myself to sleep.
When I woke up a few hours later, the world suddenly looked different.
It wasn’t that I missed Cora or was terrified for her—which I was—it was that my brain was filled with good memories of Brian.
I saw us dancing in my kitchen, watching TV with Jansen, and holding hands as we walked through West Hollywood.
I thought of the look on his face before he rescued my poor, peppermint-burning behind, and I remembered how fit and tall he was and the sound of his laugh.
I pictured him holding Cora, cradling her on the way to the vet.
Somewhere out there, Brian was alive, in the world, existing as a human being does.
He had thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, regrets, and problems just like anyone else.
He also had a big heart full of pain, just like mine, and I had love for him—despite what he’d done to me.
Those were feelings I knew I’d probably spend my whole life working through.
Damn, it’s the fourth step again, I thought. I’ve been analyzing my failings for weeks, and now I’m thinking of his.
Every single day I spent in treatment, I’d wrestled with guilt over my life, and through the fourth step, I’d started to forgive myself.
What a gift it would be if I could offer that forgiveness to someone else, too.
Holding on to anger and resentment, expecting that Brian’s punishment would give me relief, didn’t get to the heart of the matter.
As the saying goes, resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
I didn’t want Brian’s life to be defined by his drunken, mentally unstable rage and abuse any more than I wanted to be defined by my many failings.
Brian had put in his time in prison. He’d been punished, and I was glad of that.
But I know that prison changes you. People who are sent to jail for an extended period of time often lose the ability to operate on the outside.
When I’d cooperated with police, I wanted Brian to be in jail just long enough to scare him, but not long enough where he’d become a worse person.
I needed him to admit his wrongs and change because of them, but I didn’t want to traumatize him in an irreversible way.
So I decided to do what I wish others would do for me. I decided to let go of my resentment and try to forgive Brian.