Superhero: Part 2

In last week’s episode: Unable to fit in and finding life excruciatingly difficult I eventually worked out why: Born on a doomed planet and rocketed to earth as an infant, I had been found by an earth couple and brought up as one of them. But I wasn’t one of them. Awkward and fragile and very very out of place, I longed for my superpowers to develop. When they did (see part one) they were quickly eroded by my nemesis, my achilles heel: alcohol, my kraptonite.

My dual identities were causing me problems.

I could do the weakened-by-kraptonite alter ego easily. Alcohol robbed me of my presence, my warmth, my spirit, my self-esteem and my self-belief. I stopped being funny and empathetic. Honesty was a hit or miss affair. I was dull, unreliable and blamed everything but me for my woes. All of this required little effort.

No, all the effort had to go into the hero persona. To be reliable and just turn up at work (period, never mind just on time) required me to flex every muscle in my body. To engage with my clients and seem interested was as hard as defying gravity and, try as I might, I stuggled to maintain the impression of emotional invulnerability when everything inside was crumbling.

Yes, my costume helped maintain the illusion (suit, tie), and the Androclesmobile (shiny, new) may have diverted some attention. But the truth was I was dying and I did not know how to arrest the process. It didnt help that I had no idea that kraptonite was the problem.

In the end I had to be rescued by the Justice League of Recovery; a band of real superheroes who had defeated the demons of addiction and who knew a route out. Recovering heroes told me what was wrong and what I needed to do to get better. And better still, they showed me the way.

Letting go of my child’s explanation of why I did not fit in and letting go of the need to be something I am not has, paradoxically, allowed me to become a different sort of hero. A much more ordinary one of course, for there are many of us, but a hero nonetheless in terms of the superhuman achievement that recovery represents.

Bill White has framed recovery as a heroic journey and I think that it certainly is. It’s one that I could not make as a solitary “alien” struggling to fit in, but one that is much easier as part of a wider community where other heroes light the way.

Up, up and away…