People in recovery (of the alcoholic variety) like to talk about how God has a “great” sense of humor. They say this with teeth clenched and faces flushed, fingers rapidly turning a Styrofoam cup into a lap full of confetti. They say it with anger and confusion and resignation, and you can see it in the way they sit: oh, how they want to run and scream and throw plates into walls but they are instead going to sit there and surrender every cell of their being if it kills them. It usually goes something like this:

“It turns out it is so difficult to feel life without using alcohol to help numb me out a bit. Even the little things feel like big things and I nearly cried in the bathroom this morning because I thought I lost my toothbrush. I can barely take how much I feel the little things. And then today, someone rear ended my car and now it’s in the shop for a week and I have no idea how I’m going to get to work in the meantime. Oh ho ho, God, aren’t you funny.”

It’s kind of a beautiful thing to witness, watching these lumpy, gnarled bits of humans start to turn into people again. It’s like a rebirth of sorts. Listening to them talk in meetings gives me the same feeling as when my kids were babies and starting to do something important for the first time, like walking or holding a spoon. It’s an overwhelming sense of awe, realizing that you are in the presence of some huge evolution. In my experience, the only thing that really changes as you start accumulating years of sobriety is being able to sort of master a sense of objectivity. The little things still feel like big things most of the time, and the big things still feel like they will most likely kill you in your sleep, but you have experienced enough healing to realize that at some point things will feel different. Not better, necessarily, but different. I worry that I come across as bitterly cynical when I say things like that; to those of you who didn’t nod your heads as you read that last sentence, just understand that for some of us, life is heavy. It’s not bad, it’s just heavy, like trying to carry a giant box of your most precious belongings up a long flight of stairs. You want to be doing what you’re doing, you like doing it, but damn the box is heavy.

I spoke with my friend Lauren last night. We talked about how weird it is to feel things all the time, and how most people probably don’t talk about things like this, and how it’s not fair for things to be so hard so often because honestly, we’re really very nice girls. Lauren was telling me how frustrating it is to be so aware of everything, and what it feels like to have this awareness about your own imperfect self. Then she said something that makes my top-ten list of favorite statements of all time.

“I like to picture this section of my brain as though it has been ravaged by wolverines. Then you just shove everything back up under your skull and hope for the best.”

“I LOVE THAT,” I said.

“That’s what the wolverines said, baby.”

Another friend and I were talking once about insight, and how having the ability to read people well feels like a huge responsibility. When you are able to see who someone really is, behind their walls and masks, they suddenly become very vulnerable. You sometimes see things they don’t want anyone to see. Possessing a keen sense of intuition can be a wonderful gift, I told my friend, but only if it is paired with great, great compassion. When you see someone for who they truly are, the only good and right thing to do is to love them in all of their glorious imperfection. The same can be said for self-awareness. It’s so rough to be aware of your weaknesses, your fallibility, your soft spots. It’s hard to sit in traffic on a road that’s under construction and know that there isn’t any shortcut- the road isn’t finished yet. You just have to inch along, a string of cars ahead of you and a string of cars behind, with the understanding that this particular patch of roadwork is only temporary. If you are aware of these things as they are happening inside of you, the only good and right thing to do is to love yourself in all of your glorious imperfection. Pair the awareness with great compassion and great love, like a mother watching her child clumsily grasping the spoon in her fist.

If all else fails, kill the wolverines.