140. When Coincidence Feels Like Something More
I have learned a lot about myself in recovery, including things I wish I had never needed to learn. I have learned what makes me feel safe and what makes me want to run. I have learned which situations bring me peace, and which ones awaken something dangerous inside of me. I have learned that there are certain emotions I still do not know how to carry very well without wanting to escape them. Grief is one of those emotions. Funerals, wakes, memorial services, hospitals, cemeteries—places where loss becomes impossible to ignore—have always made me deeply uncomfortable. For most people, that discomfort is simply part of being human. For an addict in recovery from substance use disorders, however, uncomfortable feelings can become something much more dangerous. For most of my life, I did not know how to feel pain without trying to numb it. Alcohol and drugs became the exit door I used whenever life became too heavy, and even in recovery, I sometimes still find myself looking for that door. That is why I have made the decision not to attend a handful of funerals and wakes during my recovery. I know how that might sound. It can feel selfish to stay home when someone you care about has died, especially when the people they leave behind are hurting and could use your support. There have been times when I have wrestled with tremendous guilt over those decisions, but recovery has taught me that there is a difference between selfishness and self-preservation. Sometimes, staying sober requires a kind of selfishness that I was never comfortable with before. I must protect my recovery because without it, I eventually lose my ability to be there for anyone else anyway. I cannot be a good son, friend, coach, or member of my community if I allow myself to return to the monster addiction turned me into. Recovery has required me to finally accept that sometimes I have to put myself first—not because I matter more than everyone else, but because sobriety is the foundation upon which everything else in my life now stands.
Last week, however, I knew I needed to go to Lauren's memorial service. I had known Lauren for several years through coaching both of her daughters, Alice and Olivia, and her death at such a young age (43-years old) after a courageous battle with cancer was incredibly difficult to comprehend. Alice is one of my players, and I knew many of my other players and their families would be there. I wanted to be there for those girls. I wanted to be there for their father, Sean, and for Lauren's mother, Diane. Still, as the day approached, I could feel that familiar nervousness building inside of me. I knew there would be tears. I knew there would be stories. I knew I would see two young girls mourning their mother, and I knew there would be no hiding from the reality of what had happened. Most of all, I knew I was walking directly into the kind of emotions I spent years using alcohol and drugs to avoid.
I went alone.
That may sound like an insignificant detail, but for me, it wasn't. Walking into that church by myself meant there was nobody beside me to distract me from what I was feeling. There was nobody to whisper something to when the sadness became overwhelming. There was nobody I could lean on if my emotions became too heavy. It was simply me, my thoughts, my recovery, and a church filled with people mourning someone who had been taken from this world far too soon. As I walked through the doors, Lauren's family greeted me. First came Diane, Lauren's mother. Then Alice and Liv, her two beautiful daughters. Finally, Sean, Lauren's loving husband. I cannot imagine what any of them were feeling that day, and standing in front of them reminded me again how completely inadequate words can become in the presence of enormous grief. After greeting the family, I made my way toward the back of the church. I wasn't looking to be noticed. I wasn't looking to sit with anyone in particular. I just wanted somewhere quiet where I could take everything in and, if I needed to, collect myself. I chose the second-to-last row and sat down. As people continued filing into the church, I tried to mentally prepare myself for what was coming. Eventually, a large man wearing a black leather jacket sat down in the row directly behind me. Something about him looked familiar. I glanced over my shoulder once. Then again. I knew that face, but I could not figure out where I knew it from. I started mentally flipping through the different chapters of my life, trying to place him. Then it hit me. Goosebumps immediately shot up my arms and down my legs. I knew exactly who he was.
Unfortunately, I have been to many rehabs over the years. There is one in particular that I have been to more times than I care to admit: the New Directions Program at Bon Secours Community Hospital in Port Jervis, New York. Anyone who has spent substantial time in inpatient treatment probably understands how strange time can become inside those walls. You wake up around the same time every morning. You eat meals at the same times. You sit in the same rooms. You attend group after group after group. Monday begins to feel like Thursday, and eventually you sometimes must remind yourself what day it even is. There is something both comforting and exhausting about that routine. Your entire world becomes very small while, hopefully, you begin the enormous work of rebuilding it.
One thing I have always appreciated about New Directions is that people from Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous regularly come into the hospital to bring meetings to the patients. These are people who owe us absolutely nothing. They could spend their evenings at home with their families. They could go to their own meetings and then return to their own lives. Instead, they walk into a hospital filled with strangers battling addiction and share their stories with us. Some have been doing it for years and years. I have sat in those rooms at some of the lowest moments of my life listening to people tell me that recovery was possible when I wasn't sure I believed them. Sometimes I listened carefully. Sometimes I probably stared at the floor. Sometimes I was so consumed by shame, withdrawal, fear, or regret that I could barely process what anyone was saying, but those people kept coming back.
The man sitting directly behind me at Lauren’s memorial service was one of the Narcotics Anonymous members who had walked through the doors of Bon Secours Hospital countless times to bring meetings, hope, and the message of recovery to people like me. Of all the churches. Of all the days. Of all the rows. Of all the seats. There he was. I had never seen this man outside of the hospital before. Our worlds had existed together only in one very specific place: inside a rehab. He knew me as one of the addicts sitting in the room while he brought a meeting in. I knew him as one of the people who voluntarily walked through those doors to remind people like me that there was life on the other side of addiction. Yet somehow, years of crossing paths inside treatment led us to the same church on one of the saddest days imaginable. Even stranger, in a church filled with people, he chose the row directly behind me. We talked briefly after I finally realized who he was, and then the service began. It was so beautiful, and it absolutely broke my heart.
I wish I could tell you I handled myself gracefully. I did not. I was a mess. Tears were running down my face. My nose was running. I was doing everything possible to pull myself together and failing miserably. There was no polished version of grief happening in that second-to-last row. There was simply sadness—the raw, uncomfortable, uncontrollable sadness I once spent years trying desperately not to feel. I thought about Lauren. I thought about Sean. I thought about Diane. Most of all, I thought about Alice and Liv and how terribly unfair it was that two little girls were being forced to say goodbye to their mother. As their coach, I am accustomed to seeing them on soccer fields, running around, laughing, competing, learning, and simply being kids. Seeing them in that church was something entirely different. There was a time in my life when feelings like that would have terrified me. Actually, they still do. The difference today is that I am learning I don't have to destroy myself to make them disappear. That is one of the hardest lessons recovery continues to teach me. Sobriety does not make life less painful. Recovery does not protect us from cancer, death, grief, heartbreak, disappointment, or tragedy. If anything, sobriety sometimes makes those things feel even sharper because there is nothing standing between me and the emotion anymore. There is no chemical curtain I can pull across reality. When something hurts, I feel it. When something scares me, I feel it. When my heart breaks, I feel that too. Recovery has forced me to stop asking, "How do I make this feeling go away?" and begin asking, "How do I survive this feeling without running from it?"
That afternoon, I survived it by sitting in a church and crying. There is something remarkable about being able to write that sentence because, for so many years, I believed strength meant not feeling anything. I believed alcohol and drugs made me tougher because they allowed me to shut everything off. I could numb grief. I could numb fear. I could numb anxiety. I could numb shame. The problem was that eventually I numbed everything else too. Addiction does not selectively remove pain. It takes joy with it. It takes love. It takes connection. It takes gratitude. It takes the ability to be fully present in the moments that matter most. I spent countless years trying not to feel the bad parts of life and nearly lost my ability to experience the beautiful parts, too.
When the service ended, everyone began making their way out of the church. I was emotionally exhausted. Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the man sitting behind me. "Are you okay?" he asked. "You gonna be okay, bud?"
There are moments in life that are difficult to explain without sounding as though you are trying too hard to find meaning in coincidence. Maybe this was simply one of those coincidences. Maybe two families happened to know each other, two people happened to attend the same service, and one man happened to choose an empty seat behind another. I understand that explanation. It turns out his daughter had been good friends with Lauren, and the two families were close, which explained why he was there, but it does not completely explain what that moment felt like to me. This man could have sat anywhere in that church. I could have sat anywhere in that church. Yet somehow, on a day when I knowingly walked into a situation that frightened me because of what grief has historically done to my addiction, someone from my recovery journey ended up directly behind me. I choose to believe Lauren had something to do with that. Maybe some people will roll their eyes at that sentence, and that's okay. I cannot prove it. I don't need to. I simply know what I felt when I recognized him and what I felt when his hand landed on my shoulder after the service. I had walked into that church believing I was going there alone. Suddenly, I realized that perhaps I wasn't as alone as I thought. Behind me was a man who understood addiction. He also understood recovery. He had walked into a rehab weekly for years to sit with people during some of the darkest moments of their lives, and now, without either of us planning it, he was sitting behind me during another dark moment of mine.
Recovery has given me many moments like that—moments when the person I seem to need appears at exactly the right time. I don't always know whether to call them coincidences, God, fate, Lauren, the universe, or simply the extraordinary ways human lives intersect. Maybe the name doesn't matter. What matters is that I notice them now. Addiction made my world incredibly small. Everything revolved around obtaining something, using something, hiding something, recovering from something, or figuring out how I was going to do it all over again. I missed so much of my life because I was very rarely fully present. Recovery has slowly taught me to pay attention again. To people, to moments, to goosebumps, and to a hand on my shoulder asking whether I'm going to be okay.
Are you going to be okay?
I think every addict in recovery asks themselves some version of that question eventually. Am I going to be okay when someone I love dies? Am I going to be okay when life becomes unbearably painful? Am I going to be okay when the feelings I used to numb come roaring back? Am I going to be okay when nobody can fix what hurts? For years, my answer depended on whether I could escape. Today, I am trying to build a life where my answer depends on whether I can stay. Stay present. Stay honest. Stay connected. Stay willing to ask for help. Stay sober long enough to discover that feelings, even devastating ones, eventually move through us if we allow ourselves to feel them.
I walked into Lauren's service afraid of what I might feel, and I walked out having felt all of it. I cried. I hurt. I was uncomfortable. I watched a family and friends grieve someone they loved beyond words. I watched two young girls face something no children should ever have to face. My heart hurt terribly for them, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to make that pain disappear, but I did not drink. I did not use drugs. I did not run. I sat there. I allowed myself to hurt because sometimes hurting is simply the price we pay for loving people.
And when it became almost too much, there was a familiar man sitting in the row behind me. Maybe he was just there because his family loved Lauren too. Maybe his choosing that particular seat was nothing more than chance, but I have spent enough of my life ignoring the beautiful things happening around me. Today, I would rather believe that sometimes the people we lose still find little ways to take care of the people they leave behind. So yes, I think Lauren put him there. I think she knew I needed a little extra support that day, and perhaps one of the greatest gifts recovery has given me is that I was sober enough to notice.
The family kindly requests that donations be made toward Alice’s and Olivia’s future education via the GoFundMe link below:
And remember, if you’re struggling or know someone who is struggling, please don’t lose hope. If that had happened to me, I wouldn’t be able to help spread awareness today.
I.L.M.O.L.G. <3
