The Geographic Cure

"The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you." despair.com

Early in recovery, I struggled with the notion that the geographic cure -- trying to fix my life with a move to a new home, a new job or a new relationship -- is a fallacy. I know that I bring my problems with me wherever I go, lugging them around like so much unseen baggage, and yet... There's a reason why I've been tempted run away from my marriage at times -- to shave my head and join a cult or live in a shack in Montana or just head to the beach and elope with a cabana boy -- it's worked for me before!

When I left an emotionally abusive past relationship, guess what? I felt happier. When I moved out of a city where the cost of living was so high that I had to share a moldy basement apartment with someone I didn't get along with, guess what? I felt happier. When I quit the job with the insane, controlling boss and found something new, guess what? I felt happier.

Sometimes, I felt better immediately: lighter and more carefree from the instant I turned in my resignation letter. And sometimes, like in the case of leaving an abusive relationship, it felt like a fog was slowly lifting, like coming out of my post-partum depression, when I had been feeling so bad for so long that I'd forgotten who I was and what feeling good felt like. The problem was, I thought feeling better meant that all that invisible baggage had somehow been lost in transit and left behind me forever. So, when things got bad again, I'd do what worked in the past: up and leave. At one point I was so unhappy in my career that I was changing jobs nearly every year, sometimes several times a year. And each time it was a relief, but only temporarily. It was never long before dissatisfaction was eating at me again.

So, when I found out about my husband's addiction, my first impulse was to run, fast and far. I'd find some new place, some new person, some new life where this wouldn't hurt. I didn't. I stayed. And it's been a surprise to me to find that, in working on myself, the pain has started to go away for the first time without running. I've started to see that if I had run, I might have felt better for a time, but that invisible baggage would have dragged me right back into the arms of another addict and through the same painful cycle again, just as my own dissatisfaction with myself would eventually make every place, every job, every person tiresome once the newness wore off.

Making a change in external circumstances — leaving an abusive relationship, changing to a career better suited to my interests, moving out of a dismal, expensive apartment — has its place. Recovery has certainly helped me cut old, unhealthy ties and build new ones. It has helped me reinvent and re-envision my career. It has helped me rethink the physical space I live in. Sometimes those geographic changes are exactly the right thing to do, but the changes by themselves aren't a cure; the movement has to be the result of my recovery program, not a substitute for the program itself.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.