It’s October in Iowa City. That means it was 94 degrees a few days ago and 41 degrees last night. I just sneezed seven times in a row. The chipmunks are chirruping their little warnings all day.
I have been feeling weird and sad and grateful lately. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that it is libra season (happy borntime, fellow librans). Another reason is also mine for writing this newsletter, which has been dormant lately.
When I was 18 and living in Boston, I started dating an older guy whom, in recent years, my wife and I have given the moniker of “Bad News Boyfriend.” He had a sweet disposition, a lot of musical talent, and a longtime heroin addiction. Within a few months of dating him, I had developed the same problem and kept it for the next five years. This December, I’ll celebrate 20 years clean and sober.
There’s a lot more I could say about that guy, about the ways our relationship shaped me, about mental health and how illegal drugs are often a substitute for legal ones and addiction a survival strategy, but I’ll leave it at that. Instead, I’ll tell you about my dream.
Though I have not seen him in over 15 years, Bad News Boyfriend has been a starring figure in a recurring nightmare of mine for all of that time. In the dream, he shows up relentlessly, like a zombie or a stray cat, insinuating himself into my life where he does not belong. Sometimes he tries to persuade me to do drugs with him while other times I realize we’ve been doing them all this time and my sobriety is a sham. Sometimes he chases me. No doors ever lock adequately in the dream and my phone never works. The scenario plays out in an endless variety of settings and my feelings toward him range from devastating pity to perfect terror, but in every iteration, the stakes in the dream feel so high that I wake sweat-soaked, my heart pounding. Sometimes, I wake myself up talking insistently, or crying actual tears.
Jung would say that the character of the Bad News Boyfriend is me, that every character in every dream is me. I like that idea and I don’t think it’s always true, but in this case I believe it is. In Internal Family Systems therapy, the psyche is organized into different roles or “parts.” Kind of like stock characters. Most of these characters work to protect and isolate parts called “exiles.” These are the most injured parts of us, the ones we fear will consume us if we let them free, if we listen to them. Of course, exiling such parts only ensures that they will continue to rule us in their terror, anger, need, and pain.
In a way, I’ve cast the BNB in the role of one of my exiles. The BNB clearly wants something from me in the dream, something I don’t believe that I can give, and that to try will cost me dearly. This figure is combined with the feral, addiction-prone, inconsolable part of me that for a while in my early adulthood (with the help of drugs), and then again in my early 30s (through an addictive relationship) rampaged through my life. This part that can go quiet for spells, but she will never be gone gone. I don’t see my addictive part as an exile, but it works with my exiles in an unhelpful way. Probably, the dream arises when I have a need that feels unmanageable, when a howling part of me emerges and I wish to exile her.
I know the damage that a hurting part can do, that a hurting person can do. I know I have the potential to become a stranger to myself. I know that it is love, not exile that tames that beast. In his Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke writes, “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
I think BNB needed love, too, though not from me. Over these last near 20 years, though we have never crossed paths in life, he has regularly sent me emails. Sometimes they have been furious and frightening, other times sentimental, other times chatty and glib. He read all of my books and had…thoughts. These missives, like the dreams, generated a range of pity and fear in me. I sometimes feared that he might show up at a reading someday and try to harm me, though I knew it was unlikely.
When I heard that he died recently, I felt a weird mixture of sadness and relief. His sister, a woman I remember being very kind, sent me a message that said “he never stopped loving you.” That, too, was weird, because whatever he felt about me, I know it wasn’t love. I suspect that he had cast me in a symbolic role, as I had him. In his mind, I must have represented a part of himself with whom he had unfinished business. I don’t believe in an afterlife, but I do consider death a kind of peace, and I’m glad he found it. I haven’t had the dream since I heard.
I’ve found peace with most of my dragons, too. Twenty years of sobriety have done their work on me and it has largely been the work of softening. I am much more able now to act with beauty and courage than I ever could as an active addict, or any younger version of myself.
A dear friend came to visit me in Iowa this week, someone who traveled similar routes to her present life, which is full of grace. She was reading from her first book, a gorgeous account of those hard roads. We talked about the past, those years of rampage and running away from our soft selves, and we laughed so hard. I’m so glad we survived. More than survived.
Sometimes, as my sober anniversary approaches, I find myself praying for those who didn’t make it. There are so many—more every year. The prayer goes something like this: Take them home. Let them have peace. Let them feel loved. Let them feel nothing, finally, forever. Let me not waste this mercy.
On January 13, I’ll be teaching an online seminar: “Where Are We Going, Where Have We Been: Writing Into Creative Lineage.” There are scholarships. More info and register at Corporeal Writing.
I recently published an essay at the New York Review of Books about the film adaptation of Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret.
I reviewed Claire Dederer’s Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma for The New Yorker.