Daily Reprieve

Did you ever just want to die…to have all this shit wrapped up and over with?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAsV5-Hv-7U&feature=related

Bye

Please don’t call 911, I’m just feeling this … I have no plans to self-terminate.

Again.  I’ve done it again.  People in recovery are starting to talk to me about going into detox so that I can get some space between me and the first drink.  My god I don’t want to do that.  I feel like such an idiot for not being able to stop.  I know that I have a disease, but it is so ridiculous.  Why can’t I white knuckle this thing down for just a short time so that the recovery process can take hold?  I told them in the recovery room that if I am not stopped by next weekend, I will consider going in.

What a horrid night!  That self-loathing I talked of in the previous post became a voice that I could express as if I was in spiritual contact with another entity.  I wanted to record what was being said to me, but the computer kept freezing up.  A bag moved in the room.  Other small sounds that startle.

“You might as well drink, you aren’t worth anything sober!  What the hell is your major malfunction boy?  You don’t have the guts to do what needs to be done.  You disgust me, you little pussy.  You can’t even devote yourself to simple daily disciplines, someone always has to cover your ass.  No wonder you disappoint everyone you are around.”

The desire to drink last night was the desire to stop hearing this voice.  Who or what the hell is it?

I have no idea why I am still sober this morning after dealing with that diatribe of reflective character assassination.  It is not with me this morning.  Well, not as a separate entity.  I retreated to my room last night and went to bed.  I did not even bother taking off my cloths.  I threw the covers over my head.  Shit! Another damn nightmare.  Three nights in a row now.  But I was physically exhausted enough to rest in the bosom of my succubus.  Good night, Lilith.

My personal mythology no longer includes special effects from “The exorcist.”  Demon supported theology pits human beings against one another.  It is one of the pillars of the religion I hate.  I can no longer embrace it.  Church attendance was turned into social quarantine.  There is a saying that has crept into the rooms that is so close to this religious concept, that I fear the possibility of a churchian hijack of our beautiful spirituality.  “Hang with the winners.”  Religion is effective at behavioral control, but only at the cost of your personal mythology.  That habit of dismissing others as losers tends to boomerang on its practitioner. 

A more scientific explanation for last night’s encounter would be that the chemicals are having residual effects as they are leaving my body and mind.  And in my anxiety I was doing something to cause problems with the computer. Yet in my heart, I feel there was more than that going on.  As I meditate on this I can hear my history professor. He said that like the journalist, a historian must be concerned with the questions who, what, where, how, and why…but the historian’s most important question is So What?  What is the significance and relevance.  If I have a way to escape, why measure the teeth on the predator?

I have found that one of the spiritual tools this program has given me is the power to walk forward without knowing.  Acceptance is the solution.  I am an alcoholic, and when I drink – bad things will happen.  Being able to move forward and take action without having a supporting religious dogma gives me hope.  I am alive today for a reason and I know this intuitively.  I cannot describe to you what that reason is.  I just know it is there.  But I could be wrong, and that is ok.  I will follow this unknown God, this undefined Higher Power, because it is able to restore me to sanity.  And sanity precedes serenity. 

I want to say thank-you to the unknown God.  I don’t know where the hell You’re going, but I want to walk this out with you.

I went to the candlelight meeting at the Hut.  My sponsor asked me to come with him to a smaller split off meeting, away from the newcomer’s meeting.   Topic:  Dealing with the character flaw of anger.  Interesting comments, but I have heard them before.  I know that my time in the second treatment facility we talked of anger.  I had identified several forms of it in myself.  Big surprise.  Anger is not wrong when it is within boundaries, when it is used to help facilitate some needed change.  But it can also be used to mask other terrible things that are going on inside.  I can be afraid or hurt and anger will hide that fact when I glance in the mirror.  A clinched fist cast a more impressive reflection than a cringing, weeping child.  All the guys, talking about how they desired to see this short-coming eliminated, said things like “I just wanted to punch his eyeballs through the otherside of his head,”  or “I used to be the kind that would retaliate with a knife in the kidney and be out the door before you knew what happened.”  My personal favorite was, “All my scars are on the front of my body, that’s just how I am.”  That need for bravado rushes in with a strong masculine desire for respect and significance, and stays because no one knows how to manifest strength and still deal with the reality of their own fears, the poisonous hurts that will not heal. 

My sponsor dropped a couple of interesting seeds;

I’ve got an I problem with a We solution.

Actions lead; the emotions will follow.

My disease has amplified my emotions in a way that I haven’t had to deal with in a long while.  I am dripping with self-hatred.  I cannot seem to escape this harsh self-judgment.  I’ve had nightmares the past two nights.  If I call someone, what do I talk about.  I don’t want to hear myself whining over the phone. 

My mind and emotions are working against me.

I’ll play computer games I guess.  Maybe I’ll go to bed.  Maybe I’ll call my sponsor.

I called in sick today.  I spent the day recovering.  My slave was with me this morning.  I called my sponsor.  Back off from the 4th step, and read from the BB certain passages.  I made two meetings.  I am so tired, and yes, the obsession has knocked on the door of my mind.  Alright, I am going to bed.

I relapsed last night.  I should have seen the signs, should have made different decisions.  I should have … I didn’t.

The signs became apparent when I saw an increased preoccupation with death.  A very morbid self-reflection.  My sponsor asked me when was the last time I had been to a meeting and I realized that it had almost been a week without one.  I was afflicted with that feeling that I am somehow cured, because things have gotten better.  The dangerous dance with self-delusion.  I went to a meeting last night.  Too little too late.  The last entry on this blog that shows my percentage of completion on the 4th step is the last time I even looked at it.

So here I am again.  I have been struggling with my inadequate performance in the military, but my guard was up.  I knew this had been my undoing last time.  Only a few within the recovery community knew the depth of my struggle to keep this disease in remission.  I thought that was best.  I wanted to talk with my slave about it, but I feared that it would put her in a role of nurse-maid, surrogate mother, fearful co-dependant that she tends to be. 

I want to let my strength manifest, but in the face of some challenges my slave was facing, all I could give her were nauseating platitudes of hypocrisy.  Her employer told her that she was “the weak link in the chain and that she should step down.”  She is the golden link in the chain, and gold is indeed malleable.  But it is not meant to be used for common purposes.  It is out of place in a chain.  It is meant to adorn the palaces of rulers.  What that bitch employer viewed as weakness is of great value.  She should kiss the feet of my slave for even being allowed in the same room with her.  Her employer is a squasher.  A squasher reduces human beings to units, cogs, and sees their personal mythology as unnecessary baggage.  They attempt to squash out all real inspiration and replace aspiration with fearful perspiration.  Such people only live because it is illegal to kill them.

But I have seen my slave talk to those who serve us, and she treats them as human beings, even goes overboard to recognize their significance.  When she is asked to manage others, she considers their lives, their needs.  And if you have ever worked in retail, you know that it is rare to have the significance of your life embraced.  In 500 years no one will give a damn if you sold enough credit cards to meet the stores quotas (credit cards – chains for an otherwise free people) or if you have gotten bodies to stand behind registers.  Someone you have be given stewardship over, a granted privilege from the web of the universe, can multiply your power into your species, and thus yourself.  Your personal mythology is only as strong as the honor you give to other’s personal mythology. 

My slave has gone silent.  She has always been obsessed with communicating with me.  But now she is silent.  I went to last night’s meeting early, and drove to her workplace.  Her car was not there.  Maybe it was an off day, and she needed it to herself.  I knew I was in trouble, because I was filling in the blanks.  I rushed to the meeting.  I was loved and recieved.  After the meeting, I was invited to my sponsor’s house for a pizza endulgance.  I left quickly and drove to his house.  I arrived before everyone else because I left the after the meeting meeting.   I found myself watching the cell, hoping for a text.  Nothing.  I left.  I went by my slave’s apartment and saw the blue light of the TV – which she uses as a monitor for her computer games.  I figured she was in her own escape and comfort mode.  I went home.  Hopeful for her.

I had burned the white sage that a Sioux had given me for the full moon.  I had lifted seven petitions for others, one of which was for my slave.  And look what was happening to her.  Why?  I know, I truly do have acceptance issues.

I returned home and watched a movie with my father.  What a magnificent human being he is.  God, I love him.

We watched the movie “Taken,” where a well-skilled father rescues his daughter from predators.  We loved the movie.  I hated myself.  How many people who depend on me are fucked because of my weakness.  My relapse was underway.

I looked across the internet for some contact with her.  Nothing.  I drank.  I blacked out.  I awoke this morning in my own bed, with my boots on.  Therre was dirt on my boots.  Where had I been?  I got in the truck for work this morning, and there was my Doors CD in the passenger seat.  It had been in my room.  I went out last night and I don’t remember it.  I have been straining all day trying to remember, and I cannot.  I think I remember being in the truck.  But I am not sure.  I must have been.  Where did I go?  What did I do?  I have looked for evidence of my nocturnal activities, and there is nothing. 

Now the obsession is back, the craving is alive.  I have got to start over.  I feel like such an idiot.  I know the solution, but chose not to use it.  That is not an ignorant response to my disease.  I am responsible.  What have I done?

And my slave is silent.  I guess she is suffering her own relapse.  All I know is that I miss her and I can think of nothing else.  And I am missing a meeting again.

THE CONNER CREED

Come with me if you want to live

{Step One}

Listen and Understand

That Terminator, our Disease, is out there

It can’t be bargained with

It can’t be reasoned with

It doesn’t feel pity

Or remorse

Or fear

And it absolutely will not stop … ever!

Until you are dead

Come with me if you want to live

{Step Two}

It was suddenly so clear

The Terminator, the HP, would never stop, it would never leave him.

And it would never hurt him

It would never shout at him

Or get drunk and hit him

Or say it was too busy to spend time with him

It would always be there.

And it would die to protect him.

This thing, this machine, this recovery process, was the only one of all the would-be fathers that came and went over the years

that measured up

In an insane world

It was the sanest choice.

Come with me if you want to live

{Step Three}

Our destiny was never to stop judgment day;

It was merely to survive it together

The Terminator, this God of my Understanding, knew, he tried to tell us,

but I didn’t want to hear.

Maybe the future has been written, I don’t know.

All I know is what the Terminator, GOMU, taught me;

Never Stop Fighting

And I never will … the battle has just begun

{Step Four and Beyond}

THERE IS NO FATE BUT WHAT WE MAKE

My daughter sent me this wonderful gift.  It is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRXt9sXg-aw&feature=channel_page

I wish that I could gain the ability to breath from it, that it would possess that magic for me.

Ritual.  It seems that the power of ritual protects us.  And my experience shows that we protect that which protects us.  I was taught ritual in the act of brushing my teeth.  I wanted to keep strong healthy teeth that would allow me to eat.  But as I grew into adolescence, I discovered that dental health was necessary to an appearance and mouth odor that allowed me to connect with my peers.  And as I became an adult, it started my day, and defined the fact that I was pushing myself forward, out there, and it was time for the show to begin.

I think I have discovered that my most devastating fears and guilt are derived from violating my own personal rituals, that flow out of my own personal mythology.  It is not a violation of some external written code that shames me.  It is the loss of faith in my own personal ritual.  Then I have that sense of impending doom.  

The military has had me do many things that are beyond my perceived capabilities.  I learned to do certain things to adequately face these fears of falling short.  I go through a ritual of indulgence leading up to the event.  Then, on the cusp of time to perform, I get very serious, and I shave.  I pack or prepare something that I am going to wear or carry.  I do this in a place away from my most intimate dwellings.  I put my gear in the center of the living room, and distance myself from it after I have put it in a quick-carry order.  It has worked in the past…to a degree. 

Powerlessness is a human condition, because it is the wrapped up in our self-awareness.  It is a flaw within our perfection that prompts spiritual evolution.  Death is the ultimate expression of this powerlessness, this disconnection from life and social energy, the rejection of our application for godhood, the insignificance of a lifetime devoted to…rituals.  My youthful appearance that I have spent a lifetime cultivating and advancing, will fade.  A caricature of who I am will replace me.  And then I will simply … disappear from this place of my primary investment. 

Humans, me included, are driven to answer the inevitability of death with various pursuits of empowerment.  The process of this 12 step recovery program  contains protective rituals that we promote and protect, to counter our own form of living death. 

I am going to take a PT test that, in all likelihood, I am going to fail.  My respiration, my bane since infancy, is working against me.  My left side hurts.  My left kidney area hurts.  Saliva leaks out of the left corner of my mouth.  Knee joints in pain most of the time.  I will have to invite new and more intense rituals to resist the inevitable.

There is some slimmer of hope that if I can ignore my limitations and embrace the pain, I will make it.  But I have never achieved that level of self-abandonment.

Last night,  I was thinking about when I first began having problems making my PT run for the Army, now the Reserves.  I remembered my last really good run was back in Augsburg, Germany.  Then it hit me, that is when my former wife and I lost our baby Josiah.   Then I remembered that was when I first got a computer, and discovered free online porn.  I was obsessed and overwhelmed.  My wife caught me, and I was so very ashamed.  It was inconsistent with what I believed, and she had her own baggage so she really lost it.  The only way I could keep things together was to grovel.  We went to the church minister and he could relate because something similar had happened with him.  This would be a common revelation as I would seek to regain some purity of heart.  Male ministers hurting and hiding and having to go through some sort of hurdle to keep their marriages from suffering, to prove they are still devoted. 

My former wife and I had make up sex and she got pregnant from that one shot.  I felt like I had been forgiven and that we were going to be strengthened as a couple.  About that same time my unit was being moved to central Germany and the base in Augsburg was shutting down.  I was apart of the team staying behind to complete that process.  We were left without much support.  An American liaison and German doctors who did not speak English.

My Christian buddy was visiting me and began having panic attacks taking care of my kids during this time.  He was obsessively selfish and broken.  But he tried I guess.

The long and short of it, a mysterious bacteria invaded my wife’s womb, and her body began rejecting the pregnancy.  The doctors began shooting her up with meds to prevent labor, to no avail.  They sewed her shut, but ended up having to remove the stitching lest she rip open with the pressure.  That process nearly killed her.  I was in the room and saw my little Josiah laid to the side, and I thought I saw his little body breathing.  I told him that I loved him, that his Papa loved him.  And he was gone. 

I could not bury him without paying a very high German tax, and they would not preserve his little body to take home.  He was to be cremated and we would could not even keep the ashes.  We had a ceremony with one of the hospital’s Lutheran ministers.  And the nursing staff did some beautiful things for us, pictures of the ceremony, a poem, a shoebox filled with the quiet celebration of the short life, the few breaths of my little Josiah. 

How could I not resent a god who had punished my child for my sins.  How could I trust him to give a damn about the other two beautiful babies I had brought up to believe in him.  My faith unravelled as my wife’s seemed to strengthen.  She said she felt the loving embrace of god comforting her through this all.  I guess the pain and near-death experience helped purge her.  This would be the beginning of the end of our marriage.  The beginning of walking two separate paths.  My Christian friend downplayed our pain, my pain and began going on about his pursuit of some woman.  This was the end of our friendship.  Is this some kind of ultimate cruelty?  The military was no help.  They had left us behind, because they had bigger things to think about, more important than my little family and our puny struggles.  I suddenly realized I could trust no one.  I determined to get my family back stateside and hide away.  And the next time my wife’s baggage manifested and cast judgment upon me, I did not stand for it.  As a result she turned to the the church who inflamed her PTSD and they joined to perform a witch hunt on me.  We went through exerocisistic counselling.  The ministers finally concluded that you cannot drive you out of you.

Josiah paid a price to set his Father free from religion.  His death set off a chaos storm in my life that has resulted in finding a faith again.  And it is stripped of all the religious muck and mire I endured for so long and is now filled with childlike magic.  It was the god of religion that was cremated in Augsburg, my son took him to hell were he belongs, and left me free to live again.  The parasitic relationships have fallen away.  My former wife and I are good friends now and she would probably tell this story differently.  And I am ok with that.  That is her path, and it is no less valuable than my own.  My two children survived it all, and even thrive in the new environment of spiritual freedom.  And I now live a life I have only enjoyed in fantasy, for I have my own consentual slave.  I do not hate my sexuality, but embrace it and all of its magnificent expressions.  I am no longer limited by the Judeo-Christian-Capatilistic business contracts that pass for modern marriage.  I have captured a unicorn.  And it has captured Me.

Josiah was a messenger from this Higher Power I now walk with and desire to understand better.  And his Papa still loves him. 

As you can imagine, there are a few resentments I have had to add because of this pain resurfacing.  But maybe this will free me to run again, and to proudly finish serving the country I dearly love.  I am supposed to take a record PT test on the 15th. 

I can trust this HP, and can understand Its use of order and chaos to build and promote individual personal mythology.  I am ok now; so thanks for listening…or reading, whoever you are out there.

So, I added four resentments from this story and have completed the first three columns on them.  My completion ratio on the fourth column now falls to 28.8% and it is 5:20am.  And I am grateful for one more day, because it is miraculous that I did not drink last night.