A year and then some

A man who's been very kind to me since I met him around a year ago died last Wednesday night, not quite a year after his bile duct cancer diagnosis.  At the time of diagnosis he was told he could expect to live only three or four more months. We were fortunate to have him with us for several months longer.

Despite what the doctors told him, he got out of bed and got dressed every day. Each day he attended a meeting. Three of those meetings each week were at our "home group." The other meetings he attended were across town with the group from which our home group split many years ago. He continued to attend meetings even after hospice care had started. Toward the end, meetings were the only item on his must-do list. When he felt up to it, he and his wife also received visitors in their home.

The last time I saw him, on May 3, his beautiful Native American complexion had turned startlingly yellow. During that meeting he grew very sleepy and dozed off, but he came around when it was his turn to share. He shared his gratitude for another day alive, his gratitude for the program, his gratitude for all of the people in the room.

He attended his last meeting, across town, on May 4.

On May 8, at our home group, his chair was empty.

On May 8 the title of the selection from AA's Daily Reflections was "A Resting Place."


This is the man who assured me just over a year ago, after I'd explained why I was certain I am an alcoholic even if nobody else in the room believed me, that nobody would ever kick me out.

On the days when I wasn't so sure that I am an alcoholic, this man was often the only reason I attended a meeting. Sometimes I just thought it would be nice to see him. Other times, I went because I played the tape through. He is the first person I ever heard say, "Play the tape through."

This is my tape:

I've never been pulled over, arrested, hospitalized, or incarcerated and I have not lost everything; my bills are all paid.  If I stop at the store after this meeting and pick up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, I won't pop the cork until between four and five o'clock when the knife, the cutting board, and the vegetables come out.

When it's time to slice and dice, I will pour myself a glass of wine.

I will have another glass of wine with dinner, not because I want to, but because I drank the first glass.

By the time I go to bed at ten o'clock, the bottle will be empty.

Within mere weeks I will do this more days than I do not.

Very likely, by the end of the month, if while I'm slicing and dicing my husband pours himself a glass of wine from my bottle, I will resent him for it. I will resent him because it's my wine and I want all of it. I won't be able to sleep without all of it.

I may be a boring housewife.

I am an alcoholic.

This man had had a very busy, very productive life outside of meetings. The front page article about him in Friday's paper was nothing short of astonishing. For example, because of his race his teachers told him he would never finish high school. He received his masters degree then figured a way to use his education to help his People help themselves.


On April 24, I celebrated one year of sobriety at my home group meeting. On my way out of that meeting, I received a warm hug from a man who on February 14 1982 admitted he was powerless over alcohol, that his life had become unmanageable.

I am grateful to him, grateful for him.

I am going to miss him.

Eleven months

I spoke with my mother on the phone the other day. I had called her for an update concerning her best friend who is dying a thousand miles away.

When I first heard the news, during the call I'd made to wish my mother a happy birthday, I offered to accompany her on a trip to visit her friend, but she was  reluctant to go.

"If you would like to go spend some time with her, I can easily go with you."

"I'm not going. There's nothing I can do. Why would I go?"

I didn't tell her why she might go.

It's not my place.

It's none of my business.

I said, "Well, if you change your mind, give me a call and we'll make a plan."

Before recovery, I would have told her why she should go. Honestly, I would have judged her harshly for not going, then I would have spent hours upon hours ruminating my own regrets.  "You are not to come home for the funeral," she said to me more than once. "Keep your nose to the grindstone."

It is not her fault that I was inordinately obedient in my early twenties.

I found out during the recent call that her friend has admitted herself to a nursing home in order to receive care during chemotherapy. Her older son is significantly developmentally disabled and her younger son is looking after his brother and working as a high school principal, so a nursing home is their solution.

I feel sad about that.

"It's costing her four thousand dollars she doesn't have, but it's the only practical choice."

"Gosh, Mom. I'm sorry to hear that."

"So, how are you? Are you still going to those meetings?"


I was warned about this. "Be careful who you talk to about your recovery. You will probably lose some friends. Your family, especially, may take your decision as personal criticism."

I said, "Fuck it. I never hid my drinking and I'm not going to skulk in and out of church basements as if I have a dirty little secret. If anyone's got a problem with me being in recovery, it's their problem, not mine."


I told my mother I wasn't getting to meetings often as I'd like because I've been sharing a car and the weather has often been pre-emptively nasty, but I was typically getting to two or three a week rather than five or six. "That seems to work okay," I said.

"Oh. Well, come on, now. If you don't go, you won't really drink, will you?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, do the meetings really keep you from drinking?"

"Oh, hell no, Mom. Meetings don't keep me from drinking. God does that!"

See?  This is how I know I'm an alcoholic. A spiritually healthy, emotionally integrated person would never say something so passive-aggressive, and she certainly wouldn't provoke her own mother with the G-word.

"Well, what are the meetings for, then?"she insisted.

"The meetings are for sharing experience, strength, and hope with other alcoholics."

"I see."

"No, you don't. And I'm okay with that."

"Whatever."

"Whatever."

"Okay."

"Okay. Bye."

"Bye."


The truth is, in the last eleven months there have been only a handful of times when a glass of wine or a cocktail seemed like the best possible idea anyone could ever have -- only a handful of times -- and each of those times finding a glass of wine or a cocktail would have been grossly inconvenient. Of course there have been many, many more instances when alcohol has been within easy reach and I've just had no interest whatsoever. This is all I mean, and nothing more, when I drop the G-bomb. God, to me, is simply the collective forces of the universe, including me, working together toward whatever will be.

Sometimes I feel irritated when the collective forces of the universe plant me in the middle of other people's drinking. We truly are an alcohol-saturated culture, so it happens. It happens almost daily, lately. It's been a busy month for those who imbibe, what with St Patrick's Day and March Madness on top of the regular daily stuff of life. My inner irritation dialogue goes like this:

Me: Can anybody on the freaking planet turn a year older, go to a concert, finish a race, watch a basketball game, have a picnic, make a stirfry, end a work-day ... without drinking? Fercrissakes, why do people have to celebrate every goddamn little thing with a cocktail or a beer or a glass of wine?
Me: Are you minding your own business?
Me: No.
Me: Mind your own business. Apologize to yourself and move on.
Me: I'm sorry, Self, for paying attention to other people's business and allowing it to irritate me.
Me: Meh, you're a drunk. It's going to happen. Let it go. Turn it over. Say the prayer. You know the one.
Me: God, Bless them. God, fix me. Please. Thank you. Amen.
Me: Good girl. By the way, do we have coffee?
Me: Oh, shut up with the coffee-junky snark already, will ya?
Me: I see how it is. You said the prayer, but you didn't feel the prayer. Do a Fourth Step.
Me: Yes ma'am.

And then I do a Fourth Step.

*POOF*

All better.


Oddly enough, shortly after I stopped drinking, the foodie proclivities left me: I no longer identify with those who say "yum." It's not that I just don't care anymore which chef is now cooking where, or what fab new selections are on this or that menu, it's that food has become to me a necessary inconvenience.

When I'm with others I encourage myself to eat what they are eating, although I have an aversion to things like sauce and I'm lucky most days to get through half-portions. When I'm alone, I forget to eat and then force myself to eat organic raw nuts only as I'm approaching the passing-out point of a hunger that I never feel in my belly. I take vitamins and mineral supplements prescribed by my M.D. He calls my new attitude toward food "anorexia." He actually wrote that word on my chart. The fact that I'm 5'6" and 145 pounds allows me to laugh at his diagnosis. I call it what it is: An Absence of Yum.

Hoping to address the appetite problem, I started exploring Ayurveda. I attended a seminar a few weeks ago during which an Ayurveda practitioner (one who actually studied under epak-Day opra-Chay at his facility in alifornia-Cay) asked the question, "What is the number one reason that people who are sick do not ask for help?" Answers from the group were interesting and reasonable. Some of them came up with reasons further down the list, but nobody came up with the number one reason: people don't ask for help because they feel unworthy.  In fact, many people in the group seemed to find this reason astonishing and one asked, "Why do we feel unworthy?"

The seminar leader seemed to trip over her thoughts. She paused, frowned, looked to the floor, then looked up and stammered, "Well, the media, for one thing, teaches us that we are not worthy."

Another reason that I know I am an alcoholic is that her less than rigorously honest reply caused me to want to throttle her.

Most of us learn well before we develop an addiction to television or the Internet that we are "unworthy." It is the fact that we learn our "unworthiness" so early in our lives that advertising and news stories can effect us the way they do.

We learn it from our parents. We then, unwittingly and with the very best of conscious intention, teach it to our kids.

I know I am an alcoholic because after the break I did not return to the seminar. I told myself that I do not have time in my life to waste on those who avoid the truth. This is classic, black and white alcoholic thinking. This is time for a Fourth Step.

A day later, I felt ashamed that I had thrown out the baby with the bathwater -- that I ditched the remaining twelve hours of a very interesting seminar because I disagreed with the leader's answer to one question. I forgave myself quickly and moved on. Because that's what we do.

What I like about Ayurveda is that it provides a framework, a place to start. For each Ayurveda dosha, there are lists of foods to embrace or to eschew. These are not written in stone, however. Every suggestion is tempered by the possibility that it may not work for every individual. "Not working" is indicated by any number of possible physical or mental undesired (unhealthy) reactions including but not limited to heartburn, flatulence, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, headache, nervousness, mental fogginess, negativity, compulsivity, irritableness, and even sleeplessness or sleepiness.

Many people are surprised to learn that any food that causes them to feel sleepy or a little bit gassy is simply "not their food" and should be removed from their personal menu. Many of us are reluctant, too, to give up mildly bothersome menu items that make us say "yum." We're sometimes a little more willing when a clear relationship between eating a yummy food causes symptoms that are difficult to ignore.

The same common sense, balanced approach to eating the Ayurveda way is applied to exercise. There are different recommendations for each of the four doshas but there is a caveat that applies to all: if it feels challenging and leaves us energized, it is beneficial; if it feels painful and leaves us exhausted, it is harmful.

Simple.

It works.

I love it.

What I am not loving at this moment is knowing that it's almost time (30 days!) to address another problem behavior, all the while doing my best not to turn some of my healthier behaviors into unhealthy compulsions, which is a difficult trick for addicted/compulsive people like me.

I know a woman, for example, who was required, by her AA sponsor, to rid her home of books and magazines and newspapers because although she had successfully eliminated her drinking and pill-popping, she had been reading compulsively in order to numb her emotions and to isolate herself from community.

One behavior per year is considered enough; prioritizing based on the damages caused by the problem behavior is encouraged. I'm typing this after having smoked a cigarette half an hour ago. Not only that, I'm typing this with seven browser tabs open and one of them is making bleating, whinnying, clucking, and bawk-bawk-squawking sounds.

So.

Yeah.

First things first.

A note about the hair

I'm thinking about how at the back of each John Updike book I've ever read, there has been a note about the typeface. It is in the spirit of those notes that I offer this one, about my hair.

The last time I had my stylist color my hair was the first week of September in 2011.  When she was finished and I had paid, I mentioned to her that I would be taking a trip the last week of October and that I might need a touch-up before then. She said, "No problem. I keep Saturdays unscheduled in order to handle such things, so just shoot me a text and I'll work you in."

I had been resenting this issue of "maintenance" for years. Each time I crossed paths with a woman whose hair color was obviously natural -- obvious because there was some oh-my-god-GRAY showing -- I felt admiration and envy. Seeing women with gray hair doesn't happen very frequently these days, but when it does I often think their hair looks beautiful -- like it belongs to them.

I never sent the text to my stylist.

I went to my husband's event in Oregon and did the meet an' greet with a lovely salt and pepper stripe at the part. If anybody noticed, nobody said a word.

It was months after that trip before I let anyone near my hair. When I did, finally, the salt and pepper stripe was about three inches long. I started going to cheap, walk-in joints every four to six weeks and I just had whoever was holding the scissors that day start cutting the colored stuff away.  When I was sure the last half-inch of the color was ready to come off and I could be left with a decent looking short haircut, I returned to my regular stylist.


It's been a few months since that cut.

I don't do much with my hair. I'm loving the freedom from maintenance.

I'm sensitive to most salon products so I've started using Aubrey Organics, which I buy at the food co-op. They don't cost $40 for an eight ounce bottle, they don't make promises they can't keep, and they don't make my scalp itch.


Until election day of 2012, nobody -- nobody -- had ever stopped me in public to remark on my hair.  After I voted last November, though, a woman outside of my polling place stopped me and very nearly gushed, "Oh my God, I love your hair!" I'd already signed her anti-fracking petition and she wasn't selling anything, so, you know, her gushing confused me a little. I smiled awkwardly and thanked her.

"It's the color!" she said. "I just love the color!"

I said, "Thanks," again, and added, "it just, you know, it just grows this way."

Since then I've lost count of how many women and men have complimented me on my hair -- fewer than a dozen, greater than half a dozen. It still surprises me when it happens. The last time it happened was today, after my birthday massage. Loretta said, "You know, I really love your hair. It's the color. It's really beautiful." I'd already paid and tipped her. We'd been chatting about her man situation and how coyotes had smartly breeched her brother's chicken coop fortress, and suddenly, "You know, I really love your hair."

I said, "Thanks, Loretta. I love it, too, because it's maintenance-free and it, well, you know, it just suits me."



Photo on 2-5-13 at 2.48 PM #2, originally uploaded by coff33hous3r.

I was driving my husband bananas this morning, over-attending & making lame attempts at care-taking because he's irritable about a work issue and, of all the emotional states, irritability is probably the most difficult for me to weather, still.

It's not my fault and it's not about me.

It isn't my job to fix it.

It doesn't even need to be fixed. Resolved, yes. By him, in his own time.

Backing off now.

Oy.

Nine months

The college I went to was 60-odd miles from my parents' home.

During my freshman year, the father of the woman who has been my best friend since second grade was killed by a drunk driver.  During my junior year a high school friend of mine was hiking a canyon in Arizona, lost his footing, and plummeted to his death.

If I had been a more defiant young adult I would have attended funerals for both of these people. As it happened, I did what my mother told me to do. "You have midterms. You need to study. Do not come home for the funeral."

My boyfriend gave me shit for missing the first funeral. Then, when he was my ex-boyfriend, he gave me shit for missing the second funeral.

"You should have been there. I can't believe you didn't go. That's just ... cold."

Fast forward thirty years: my daughter attends college 400+ miles from my house. She has to drive across the Mackinaw Bridge and through hundreds of miles of wilderness to get there or back. When she's en route during the wintry months, I forbid myself from looking at the Bridge Authority's live web cam. I just can't take it. I get white knuckles and daggers in my shoulder muscles driving across that thing on a sunny and dry June day.

She called a couple of weeks ago, which is unusual.  Normally, we communicate by text. When I saw her name on my cell phone's screen, I knew something was up.

She got straight to the point: David's best friend hung himself on Sunday morning. We'll be going to Detroit for the funeral. I just wanted to let you know that we'll be traveling, but I'm not sure which days yet.

Suicide. Her boyfriend's best friend. Her boyfriend whose father died much too young from cancer and whose step-father killed himself. That's a lot of death on one nineteen year-old's plate. I was kind of ... wow... fuck.

I did remember to ask how David was doing, and I did ask her to keep me posted on her travel plans. Other than that, I just couldn't say much besides "I am so sorry."

Later, though, when she checked in with more details, and it turned out that they would be driving to The D in some of this winter's worst weather to date, I was able to say to her what my mother was not able to say to me: hold your people close and feel your feelings. Doing this is way more important than school.

She is sometimes a mouthy, defiant brat, and she would have done what she needed to do regardless of what I had said to her about it, but, because of my own experience, I knew what not to say to her, and I also knew, without a doubt, that she was doing the Next Right Thing, her Next Right Thing.

The second Promise of AA: We will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.

I no longer regret not being a more defiant young adult.

My 9 months sobriety anniversary was on January 24th, and I pretty much missed it. I looked at the calendar on the 25th to see if I had missed my youngest's 18th birthday on the 26th, and I was like, "Oh. Wow. I've got nine months and one day." Then, I took a feverish nap.

Today I picked up my 9 months chip.

It is purple.

What to do next

Sick since January 15th, I've neither finished my local remodel project nor started the remote remodel project. I have, though, had a lot of time for pondering. Pondering is good.

On and off I've thought about a conversation I had with Gerard months ago while trying to figure out What To Do Next. The conversation went like this:

He said: Imagine you're confined, alone, in a cell. The cell is bare, although it has a window. Outside the window is a tree. On the wall under the window is an image of the tree scratched into the paint by the previous occupant. You have no idea how long you're going to be here. It could be hours, it could be days, or it could be years. How will you pass the time?

I said: Hell if I know.

He said: You have no idea?

I said: None.

He said: Maybe you would scratch your own representation of the tree into the paint. Is that something you would do?

I said: I don't know. I might do that, or I might write a story about the tree, but more likely than not I would probably just watch the tree, hoping some birds might come by and perch there for a while.

He said: Hm.

I said: Hm, what? What do you mean by that?

He said: Just, Hm.

I said: Well, what would you do with your time, locked alone in a single-windowed cell and only a tree to look out at?

He said: That's easy. I would counsel the rats.

I said: Yeah, you'd counsel the rats, alright.


It finally occurred to me during a fever spike last week that the tricky son of a bitch hadn't given me complete information. I mean, when he originally presented the problem, he did not include the rats, but when it was his turn, poof: rats!

I would be remiss, now, if I didn't acknowledge, here, that, at the time, it was only my imagination that was lacking rats. I mean, how difficult is it to come up with rats in solitary confinement? Have I ever even read a single book in my entire life? or watched a crappy made-for-tv movie? Jesus. I should have thought of rats.

And if there are rats, the rats will probably have fleas, and maybe ticks! And what about cockroaches? Surely there would be cockroaches, and -- wait for it -- BEDBUGS!  Can you imagine what beautiful oeuvres d'art a creative genius like me could create from rat parts and insect pieces? And here is one truly magnificent fact: rats and insects reproduce at alarming rates, which means a constant renewal of art supplies. Or ...

What if I were to capture and kill a rat, then drain and reserve its blood for ink and tan its hide for paper?

The possibilities in solitary confinement are limitless, limitless! once you remember the rats!

At the time of the original conversation, I remember wondering, but not asking, why does the question specify solitary confinement? I know the answer to that now, too.

Solitary confinement offers no human audience. In solitary, it is impossible to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as people-pleasing or approval-seeking. Solitary confinement, then, allows us to be properly motivated. It allows us to express our authentic selves.

Now that all of the limits are gone and I have nobody to impress but myself, do I want to redecorate my cell with tiny shiny insect shell mosaics, or do I want to write -- with rat blood on rat hide -- poems about the birds that perch on the lonesome tree? or ... do I want to save up a big ol' pile of rat bones for a hot fire over which to cook a delicious rat curry?

How is it that I suddenly have coriander, turmeric, cumin, fenugreek, and cayenne pepper, anyway? Have I turned a few of the rats into couriers?

Do you think they would bring me some cardamom? Some asafoetida?

This, are my shoes

The room I'm in feels built from love. It is warm, spacious, expanding. In the center of the blond wood floor there is a soft, sisal-colored rug. On the rug there are three people: Gerard, a little girl, and a little boy. The children are toddlers, in footed pajamas, graduated already from diapers to the potty. The three of them are doing Ananda Balasana: Happy Baby Pose.

To my left is a well-crafted and immaculate wooden workbench. I see only a mounted vice and some neatly positioned hand-tools. There is no project in progress, which makes me feel a little sad.

Gerard and the babies, though, are experiencing joy. It shows in the ways their bodies move and in the expressions on their faces. Gerard, when he feels joy, appears fifty years younger, fifty pounds lighter, fifty lumens brighter; this is something I noticed in his office, months and months ago. When he is in joy, Gerard transforms from a 6' 6" salt-and-pepper leather-clad motorcycle tough-guy into a tiny, glowing, angel-child. I have watched this. I have wanted this to happen to me. Minus the motorcycle.

I don't know why I'm here.

I know it's time to go.

I need my shoes.

I can't find my shoes.

I go into the darker room on my left.  It looks like somebody else's grandmother's dining room, complete with dark cherry furnishings and olive-green sculpted wool carpet. My own grandmother would never have had a room so dark and musty-looking. I see a pair of shoes by the console table.

I walk over to them.

They are black felt maryjanes.

They look smallish, maybe a size seven.

They are not mine.

Have the children done something with my shoes?

A few people are arriving. They are women and men from the 1950s, wearing pencil-skirted dresses and smart, creased suits with impeccable neckties. They are chattering and laughing softly. They are holding lit cigarettes and carrying slightly sloshing martinis. The word "swanky" comes to mind, as does the impulse to flee.

I must go.

I can't find my shoes, though.

Maybe they are outside.

Oh! The house is on a small, lushly vegetated island. The water surrounding the island is dark. If the children have dropped my shoes into the water, I'll never be able to see them. I can see a school of tiny fish, though, and a few strands of scrawny seaweed reaching from the depths toward the sunny sky.

I could ask Gerard if he saw the babies playing with my shoes, or I could simply ask him to help me find them, but I don't do either because he would only say this: You know exactly where your shoes are. You have always known.


This, are my shoes.

Any answers?

"Any answers?"

The answer to that question is no. I weighed the cost:benefit conscientiously and in so doing realized it would not be worth it to me to inflict pain on either of the two people who have the answer just so that I would finally know.

Through the process of weighing the cost:benefit I also realized I was asking myself the wrong question in order to avoid asking myself the right one.

This is a pretty common defense mechanism, it seems, among those of us with dependent personality types. We also get wrapped up in other people's problems: we gossip, meddle, manage, and rescue. We allow ourselves to get sucked into games of He Said She Said. We gather information from between the lines rather than asking for it directly. We cast ourselves as victims. We accept crumbs of attention in exchange for our over-attending, people-pleasing behavior.

We do all of these things and more because we do not know how to love ourselves. We do not know how to love ourselves because as children we were too often and too harshly criticized and corrected rather than appropriately nurtured, guided, and affirmed.

When we did very well, it wasn't simply "Good for you!" it was "How could you have done that even better?" Some of us were trophies to show off -- the bumper sticker Honors Student often ends up by all outside appearances a very successful adult. Nobody sees, even in the presence of obvious telltale signs like overspending, overeating, overexercising, overmedicating, overworking, oversexing -- that she's a painful mess inside.


If we weren't trophies, or maybe even if we were, there was perhaps a heavy sigh or a muttered curse-word every time we skinned a knee, spiked a fever, brought home a C, lost our mittens, forgot our homework, dribbled spaghetti sauce on the church blouse, or soaked the P. F. Flyers. We were flies in the ointment, pains in the ass, crosses to bear, mouths to feed. We were often allowed to know the sacrifices made for us and sometimes we had our noses rubbed in those sacrifices.

We felt even the mildest resentments. We feel them still, today.

"Children are to be seen and not heard." Not only that, but the Family Code of Conduct applied to children only, not to adults: do as I say, not as I do.

Years ago I saw a kid in Drug Court, standing before the judge, turn to look his father square in the eye and say, "Every time I see you you've got a beer in your hand." Yep.

When our siblings failed, we took a portion of the heat for that, either directly or in the form of atmospheric fall-out. For some of us, the only thing worse than actually being dressed down was hearing someone else get dressed down. Personally, I still experience the Freeze Response when I hear my neighbors shouting at each other. When distraught mothers lose it with their perfectly normally behaving children in the grocery store, my heart races and I perspire and sometimes I have to leave.

My mother was displeased when I told her I was seeing a therapist. She, like many people, assumed that therapy is all about blaming the parents. This is not the case. Therapy is about becoming rigorously honest with oneself about what happened not in order to place blame and wallow in self-pity, but in order to get out of self-pity and take responsibility.


So, the question, When did it happen? served only to divert my attention from things I did not yet feel up to facing. The question I sought to avoid was How does this specific experience from my past affect my life and my relationships today? If I refuse to answer that question, I'm refusing to do the work that waits in the answer and thereby I doom myself to repeating self-defeating behavior patterns.

Answers

I wish I had been a more defiant child.

That's it.

That's all I would change.

But I was not defiant.

I was afraid.


I am compelled now to confront my family, namely my mother, as gently as possible, with no desire to cause her pain, but I know it would hurt her.

She's seventy-two.

She's had a hard enough life.

Orphaned at age seven.

Abused by her guardian.

Abused by two alcoholic husbands.


I have questions.

She has the answers.

This is not about curiosity.

It's about clarity.

It's about healing.

My questions are not "why?"

They are only "do you remember this?" and "how old was I then?"

I know how old I was when I experienced my first acute stress response.

I do not know how old I was when I first dissociated.

I want to know.


She may feel I am malicious, but I am not. I am no more malicious toward her than she ever was toward me, or anyone.

She did what she believed she had to do.

I believe I have to do this.


I could be written off and written out.

Am I okay with that?


Yes.

Yes, I believe I'm okay with that.