Daily Reprieve

“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” ~ From the movie Inception.

I stayed up late last night, considering the two statements on failure that my guide had challenged.  There was something incomplete in them.  Was there a more fundamental idea that was supporting them?  Why did they seem to ring true to me? 

~ My failure is inevitable, and I will disappoint those who become intimate with me.

~ If I fail, my honor demands that I self-terminate.

It seems that if I held these to be true, I would not become so close to my children, or anyone, or that I would even be alive.  I had no explanation for this failure in logic. 

I sought escape, in the games.  A sickening feeling came over me.  I am not going to be able to do this.  There was only one thing that seemed to comfort me.  If this program failed to set me free of these and the other damning ideas, I would take a trip to Seppuku park in Anchorage, Alaska and find some peace feeding the beautiful ravens there.  The wind whispers, “Given, after Give.”  I made a plan to go there, if all else fails me.

With that I was able to lay down, and hide from the rising sun.

I dreamed…

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I had to break off the writing on this entry.  I knew that my mind was going to a bad place, that I was losing perspective as the guide had predicted I would.  He warned me that at that time I would need to reach out to the network to regain perspective.  I went to a meeting, and the topic was on the realities of relapse.  I opened up, let them know that I was hurting.  I was surrounded by people who I believe genuinely cared.  I walked out of the meeting feeling that I am not alone.

Someone told me that those who make it seem to share one thing, the willingness to stay and endure the suffering that comes with this process.  That seems to be true. 

I then decided to call someone who was familiar with this process, who I have seen in the program over the years, who I have learned to trust and appreciate.  The person reminded me of times I had shared in meetings and been of benefit to him.  He asserted that the fact that I am being torn open, and having a process of change invested in me shows a Higher Power willing to help, who will be there to put me together again.  It is funny, but as he spoke it, I felt I could believe it. 

I have decided not to “correct” the entry, but just to carry on with a more hopeful perspective.

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When I went to sleep, I dreamed of my mother.  This has happened a few times, and initially it seemed quite normal that she should be there.  Thus my quote from the movie Inception.  But unlike most dreams, I realized that my Mother had passed away, that her presence was a miracle.  I remember coming to her, and just hugging her, holding on, and weeping.  I told her how much I loved and missed her.  I woke up with my face soaked in tears. 

There are things I will say here that may sound like the traditional blame your parents parade.  That is not what I want to do.  I love both my Mother and Father, and there are things they did right, things they did wrong, and that is the nature of fulfilling the most God-like job in our culture.  We are guaranteed to fail at something.  It is then the young adult’s job to assume responsibility to re-parent themselves with the help of their Higher Power.  So, I move on.

Because my parents consistently covered me and smothered me in protection, I think I developed a self-image of incompetence.  The rules of success in my home of origin were never stable, never really clear, because they evolved around the threat of emotional blackmail from my Mother.  I learned and adapted with the idea that if I desire to be free of this emotional torment I have to accept that no matter what I do, failure is inevitable, and I will disappoint those who become intimate with me.  And the more I accepted it, the more it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I did hunger for freedom, or rather escape, which is the closest thing to freedom I could imagine.  I became willing to risk this inevitable failure.  I focused in on a coping mechanism that my Mother used to brave the demons of being an adult child of an alcoholic.  “I can try this, and if I fail, I can always kill myself.”  As a result of this courage forged out of embracing suicide as an option, she lived a powerful life against some extraordinary odds. 

But my Father said that he would not commit suicide and would rather opt for riding the Red Horse, meaning he would rather find some final glory in a blaze of violence.  We watched sacred, iconic movie presentations together such as the Godfather series, a movie on Lucky Luciano, a book on the Valachi Papers, the movie series Shogun.  My Father, when he was frustrated with my continued procrastinations and PT failures, said that you just have to get out there and do it.  And then he said something along the lines of, “Everything I have ever done has been for my family.”  He later told me that his Mother had said something along those lines.  And then I saw this quote by Tommy Gambino, “Me I never had the chance to say, Well, I’m going to do something I want to do.  I always did if for my family, for my children, for my father, for my mother.”  This is the gist of what I got from Dad that feeds into the development of these ideas. 

I developed the feeling that there was no getting out of the family and its demands.  Not really.  There was always some phantom hitman waiting for those who dared.  I knew that if my failures were exposed, what was left of my honor demanded my death.

Jesus once said that he who lived by the sword must die by it.  I saw in the final movie of the Godfather series that there are far worse ways to die, than by the sword. 

There is so much more I could talk about here.  The profound effect on my own parenting, to attempt to ensure that my children knew they had succeeded in my eyes, that they had intrinsic value that I recognized.  I could also talk about the lurking voice of the Assassin in my inner council.  The voice that terrifies me to my core and remains to enforce that call for self-termination, if I lack the courage to do so.  I could talk about why my creative voice took his day out and went on a Dead Tree quest, or visited Mom’s grave.  I could talk about my hypersensitivity to criticism, or my abhorrence of what I perceive to be agents of social control.  But that is probably all a distraction to my purpose here.

The two ideas on failure would better be expressed as;

~ If I desire to be free of emotional blackmail and manipulation, I must accept that failure is inevitable and I will disappoint those who become intimate, who get close to me.

~ If my failure is exposed, what is left of my honor demands my death.

I believe these ideas are fundamental and lethal.  I live with this suppressed terror every day.  For me it is real.  God, please help me.

This entry was posted on April 20, 2011 at 2:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.