I intended to talk about my experience of working the 12 steps for recovery from emotional addictions but get sidetracked into discussing my preacher daddy, how my HD big screen tempts me, how I’m a genius and all sorts of other awkward topics.
Q: So who are you talking to? Who are you making the audience?
L: I’m answering a question about what it is like to work the 12 Steps and how that made a difference in my life.
Q: Whenever we talk, we have to know who we’re talking to. You can make the audience a friend or a 12-Step meeting but you have to know because that determines what you say and how you say it.
I also stopped you because I want you to notice when you’re feeling connected and when you’re rattling off. I want you to practice connecting. I want you to notice how you feel about what you’re saying. Start dealing with what’s happening as you’re being witnessed.
What was it like the first time you said you were an addict?
L: It was effortless because I’ll try anything that I think might improve my life.
Q: Why are you in a 12-Step program?
L: Because I progressively realized I have crippling emotional addictions.
Q: What do you hope will happen if you change?
L: I hope I will live free. It means I will never sleep with anyone that I regret the next day.
Q: What would be a happy life?
L: Where you build things instead of creating a life where you know that this is all going to end horribly. I’ve gone through my life knowing that everything is going end horribly. Everyone is going to feel burned by me.
Yesterday, I had all day to write and I only wrote for three hours. At a higher level of functioning, I would’ve written for five hours. A beautiful life means producing beautiful writing. That’s as important as anything.
I have this fear that life is passing me by. This is the sixth night of Hanukkah and I have not gone to one Hanukkah party. My feet hurt (plantar fascitis) and I’m broke. I sit at home watching Netflix and think that I should be out there living life.
For Hanukkah, my boss bought me a 32 inch high def monitor/TV.
So I’ve installed it at home and it makes me wish I still looked at porn. I’ve never seen porn in high-def.
I quit looking at porn two years ago. I never had a monitor bigger than 22 inches. Now I have this monster installed and I’m only using it for holy purposes. I could probably get so high if I relapsed into my bad habits, but praise be to God, I’m on the straight and narrow these days.
With my intimacy disorder, my big screen is just another excuse to avoid contact with people. My boss said to me, you like to watch. You don’t like to talk to people on the phone. You just want to email and fax.
In some ways, my social isolation and intimacy disorder are getting worse. I go out, I go to synagogue, and I want to go home. I’m not connecting with anyone. Unless there’s someone there I really want to talk to, I want to go home. I don’t really care about the prayers. I do them. I know I should do them. I see other people connecting. I may be there for four hours and not have one meaningful conversation. I may be there for four hours and I’ll eat my lunch with the old men who don’t speak English.
Q: What makes you observant?
L: It’s a commitment I took on. I know it’s good for me. It gets me out of the house. Orthodox Judaism is a terrific way to connect with people. It has been for me in the past. I’m not sure where the wheels came off on my Jewish journey. My vehicle is grounded. All the wheels are off and it’s up on blocks.
Q: Is this your tribe? What do you have in common?
L: A way of life. Certain ways of thinking and practicing. Text.
Q: How are they not your tribe?
L: If I go to shul and there’s no one I want to talk to.
I was telling my therapist this week that I’m a genius when it comes to writing and public speaking. Genius is just a metaphor here for solid confidence. Nothing anyone can say can shake my belief in my ability as a speaker and writer. I’m solid.
Q: Because you know you’re IQ or you decided that?
L: Because my mother when she carried me in her stomach, she confided to my father, “This one is going to grow up to do something great for God.” My parents told me this story often while I was growing up. They meant to encourage me in Godly ways.
In the year 2000, when I got the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, they realized they had created a monster. And so they stopped telling me that story.
I’ve always had that conviction that I was a genius. That I was slated to do great things for God. When I started writing at age eight, I got enough affirmation on that, I knew that I was a genius writer.
Q: When did you know?
L: In second or third grade, my class sat on this bridge across a creek and we were told to write about what we saw in the water, these pale ghostly logs. I jotted down my observations, frustrated that I couldn’t get them to cohere. When I read them aloud, people were moved. I was told I had written poetry.
I’ve had 5,000 experiences like that over the course of my life.
My dad was a genius public speaker. I had the same temperament as my dad. I knew I could be a genius public speaker like him. I saw him go all around the world. He’d speak. He’d mesmerize crowds. People would love him and they’d give him things — travel and gifts and hotel stays. I thought, I’m better than my dad. I could be a better public speaker than him. I’m wise and smarter than he is.
Q: What would he say about that?
L: He wouldn’t agree.
Q: But what would he say?
L: He’d get a wry smile. If he felt like I needed encouragement, he might try to encourage me. He might say, maybe you are. Go out and do it. Good on you.
Because I’m a genius, that entitles me. When I have girlfriends, they often volunteer to clean so that I can concentrate on my genius, on my writing. They love me and they want to support my genius. I get my girlfriends to read my books and my essays.
Q: Did your father teach you anything about writing and speaking?
L: My life is a deconstruction of everything my father stands for.
Q: Has his style impacted you?
L: Yes. I want to be the opposite.
Q: Did you ever try to be like him [as a Christian evangelist]?
L: No. It creeps me out.
Q: Why?
L: I think it’s a fraud.
Q: You don’t think it’s genuine?
L: He genuinely believes it.
Q: What creeps you out?
L: The over theatricality. The giving people what they want — assurance of their heavenly salvation. I want nothing to do with what my father does. I want to do the opposite.
Q: What’s the opposite?
L: It’s honest. It’s self-aware.
Q: What’s the fake part?
L: The preaching about love and forgiveness and putting your faith and trust in God and letting go of resentment and fear.
Q: How’s that different from the 12 Steps?
L: The 12 Steps sounds very similar to that, without the explicit Christianity. The 12 Steps is almost identical to the way I was raised. The difference is in preaching this message versus living this message. It’s easy to preach about having faith in God and letting go of fear and resentment but it is challenging to live a life free of fear and resentment.
There’s no preaching in 12 Steps. There’s sharing. You share what you struggle with and what you found useful.
Q: Is there love and forgiveness in Judaism?
L: Plenty. And in Christianity. It is one thing to preach about love and forgiveness and another thing to live it.
Intimacy is hard. It drains me.
Feedback from my class: “If you want to be the opposite of your dad, what does that make you? When you started to talk about your dad, this epic story started to unfold. It’s not about the 12 Steps. It’s not about Orthodox Judaism. It’s about somebody trying to escape from the shadow of their father. Growing up a Seventh-Day Adventist, you seem to be on this journey throughout your life to replace that, to give you those structures.”
“The one time you became physically invested in everything you were saying was when you were fantasizing about what porn would look like on your HD big screen. You’ve given up porn but that doesn’t mean the desire to see it is gone. That means you’re exercising ridiculous amount of self-control to not put porn on that 32″ screen. You lit up like a five year old at Christmas. You could do a five minute monologue on how great porn would look on your TV at home. This is the gift that was given you. It’s beautiful, hilarious and heart-breaking. You see a 32 inch HD TV and you fantasize about porn.”
“I wanted to see you doing your father more, becoming him.”
