Daily Reprieve

Oh god, it’s already after 5pm.  Traffic.  Next meeting at 6 and a run after that.  I must get prepared for drill this weekend.  Camping out and using the night vision goggles.  My nephew gets married next week, so I will head south for that event.  A birthday celebration as apart of my amends.  I sure hope there is some validity to the tortoise and the hare story.

The amends went well.  I experienced magic along the journey, and the one event I dreaded the most turned out to be a very good reconnection.  My anger, resentment, hatred all melted away.  I know that I should be on a high after this has been accomplished.  I found myself initially very emotional with something that passes for happiness.  But underneath was a surreal world in which elements of the steadfast, a pillar of my existence, had been disintegrated.  Some of the furniture of my world has been carved out of the reality of this resentment.  With it gone, what is there to fill its place.  In a meeting this week, I said that void is what I am dependant on the Higher Power to fill. 

Anxiety builds as I move to accomplish the other 20 amends.  I find myself growing impatient.  I am wanting to argue again.  Slight altercation in the Bruno’s parking lot.  Obsessing over disagreements, hoping for confrontation.  I don’t want to scare the civilians, but…I don’t tend to trust love, or what gets tendered as such.  I find that I am in need for my connections in the lifestyle.  But I don’t want to lose this opportunity to get these amends behind me.  Self-control is so important for someone with my predispositions.  Suppression only increases the prospect of a future explosion.  I need a community where I can be me.  And the recovery community only partially answers that need.  It seems to be a yin-yang type of connection.  I can feel the internal clock ticking.  I have some time. 

“I have ceased fighting anything or anyone…”  Relax. Breath. Move forward.

I have 22 amends left from my trip through the steps.  I performed my last amends in January 2009.  July 2009 I was in jail for DUI.  I have since made a re-run on the steps and am left with these same 22 amends.  I am going to make a trip down to Florida this weekend and hope to set some things right, and to get my most horrendous amends completed.  My expectations are low for one in particular.  I grew up with him.  I have seen my hopes for his life replaced with the horror of what he has become.  My own love for him fuels a seething anger and hatred that I feel for few others on the face of this small planet.  If I could die and he would be saved, I would consider it.  It won’t happen.  I simply do not believe that he will ever change.  So all I can do is concentrate on my side of the street.  And there is plenty of my own dirt to deal with there.  This may be the last time I look on his face, if he even gives me that chance.  I will make the effort and leave the rest to the Higher Power to sort out.

Well, I’ve reached a new level of stuckism.  Which means that I have moved forward.  I am not in the old level.  You know, I never picked up my 18 month CA chip prior to last year’s relapse…just wasn’t interested anymore.  I guess that’s why.  January 2011 this time.  I’ll make damn sure I at least stay involved enough to remember to pick it up this time. 

Something has happened in me, and there are a lot of things that I just do not feel anymore, a lot of voices that used to cry out have gone silent.  And I have felt strangely alone, in a very different way.  I am not sure it is a negative.  Now I see this program as something to accomplish, and levels to graduate to.  I am not sure that is a positive.

I have asked my HP to remove a character flaw, a bad idea that causes my life to become unmanageable. 

THE BAD IDEA:  Failure is inevitable.  I will disappoint those who stay in a relationship with me.

THE UGLY TWIN SISTER OF THIS IDEA:  If I fail the only honorable course is death.

The resulting behavior is paralysis, procrastination, anxious over-planning, until I get to the last moment of a deadline, and then I rush in a panic as if there is a gun to my head.  By then it is usually too late, and a self-fulfilling prophesy gains credibility.

I am sick of talking about this for now.  But I will say that I found what I believe to be the mother of both of these:

MOTHER OF BAD IDEAS:  God is not interested in me as an individual, is only interested in controlling me.  He resists my individual expression, conspires to break me.  He is totally apathetic toward me, but desires to empower His purpose through me.  I feel like His presence is a rape of my soul, and that this amuses Him. 

In response, I have yet another BAD IDEA:  The belly up manipulator.  So I not only have problems trusting the HP, but I have problems trusting my own mind and motives.  Am I addressing a real issue or am I just manufacturing something to manipulate individuals into some form of protective alliance?

One by-pass that I have is to trust in a female Higher Power.  Primarily because these bad ideas were built around the premise of a masculine diety.  But I know that is a band-aid.  She has been helpful though.

I have heard that the program is not going to really work unless you have a complete surrender to the HP, not just a cease-fire.  From a military point of view, that sounds more like I am dealing with an enemy, not someone I want to trust my life to.  Someone I want to escape given the first opportunity.

I have not found a mention of surrender in the first 164 pages of the BB and I suspect a religious hijack in making that a big deal.  The 12 and 12 talks about taking our concept of God in piece-mill.    But I desire the intervention of a HP to overcome and eliminate these bad ideas, like It did with my drinking.  And I am afraid that it is not going to work for me, that I will become what I hate…a professional victim, because (whine, sniffle) failure is inevitable.

I was recently tasked by my sponsor to look for the root cause of my fear fever when approaching my military Physical Training test.  I came up with irrational statements of self-loathing that I could not find a reason for.  But then I was listening to an audio book, a fictional novel about a serial killer.  The book was called “The Bride Collector” by Ted Dekker.  Toward the end, as the detective faces the killer, he realizes something about himself.  He loved himself, and that this self-love had prevented him from being able to intimately love anyone else.  This resonated with me.  But hadn’t I expressed self-hatred?  How cold both love and hate exist together?  Then it occurred to me, that when love creates expectations, and those expectations become central, and they are crushed, I could see the passion of love giving way to the fires of hatred.  Does this not explain the cyclic nature of my discipline, my emotions, the roller coaster ride between isolated obsession and judgmental depression?  As hatred cools down into loathing, I am relieved that the unrealistic standard I have of myself has passed.  And as the loathing regresses, I give myself some introspective time to see “what went wrong.”  I begin to enjoy reviewing my dreams and once again look for a way to manifest my internal reality into the interactive one.  As I obsess, I fall in love with me again.  But life keeps interrupting my time with me.  And I cling to my expectations of me, build a standard that will be above reproach, invincible to invasion, impossible to misunderstand, and universally accepted.  This standard becomes an icon I can never truly fulfill.  I fail me, again.  I hate me.  And I hate this life.

By the way, the last statements do not reflect my current state of mind.  I am just following the cycle around.  Notice the arrows circling the core of my being in a clockwise direction?  That represents the propulsion of my will.  And this chart reflects my understanding of self-will, that there is bad self-will, which is the product of fear, and tends to isolate and cut-off.  Then there is good self-will that pushed me to pursue sobriety in the first place.  I wanted to live and was willing to do whatever I had to secure that end.  I would not be breathing without a good dose of this self-preservation.

“Do you have a sponsor?? I see a disconnect with the principles of the program and your conclusions and judgements. Right with you about the sharing of experience, strength and hope found in (nearly) every meeting.” ~ gangagirl

Yes, I have a sponsor.  And no I probably won’t ever parrot the party line.  But I wish I knew specifically what you are talking about here.  Which principles of the program do you speak of?  What conclusions and judgements?  This comment was made on my “43 things” web posting where I had, at that time, a goal to read the Big Book.  I accomplished that and that site wants you to tell “How did you do it” for others who may share that goal.  I simply ran a cut/paste from AA literature.  So I assumed that gangagirl had seen my actual thoughts concerning recovery here.  Otherwise, she was responding to the disconnect of AA literature to the principles of its program.

Ganga Girl, if you read this, please comment.

It does bring me to last night’s topic in the meeting on Balance.  In the context of our discussion on recovery, balance was finding the best answer to the question, “How much of my self, my time do I invest in recovery related activities?”  This question becomes even more critical when the disease is in remission, and you don’t feel the loaded gun of relapse placed against your skull.  Participation becomes more about keeping the sanity of sobriety rather than surviving the onslaught of obsession.  The urgency of the moment has evaporated and you step outside to smell the fresh air of a new freedom.

Yet I have heard many of us who have had long term sobriety talk about the “slippery slope,” the stealth of our disease to silently creep back in and the mindset that opens the door inch by inch to the possibility of eating dinner with our demon.  We forget that we are the dinner. 

I have heard something like this before.  “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added to you.”  I have heard talk of the slippery slope and the frog in boiling water when I was a traditional Christian. 

It seems to be that regardless of what my spiritual pursuit is, if my desire for it to free me of my personal demons, and empower me to live life, then “Seek ye first” seems to be the only real answer to Balance.  Then I am dependant on the magic brewing in my own particular cauldron of the 12 steps to add “all these things,” the other stuff that I need in my life.

The truth is that has not been the case for me.  Or maybe I just haven’t given it a good chance.  When I attempt to have a single-minded focus on the program, it feels like other very important areas suffer from neglect. 

I think maybe I have this too compartmentalized.  When I was drinking, it was a primary activity in my life that touched all other activities with its power.  From waking up to going to bed, my drinking was being called on to help me live life.  I don’t know.  This comparison fails, because my drinking turned on me when it consumed every aspect of my life and caused me to neglect people and pursuits that I valued.   Isn’t that the nature of obsession?  It consumes completely.  And isn’t balance a concept we use to avoid this destructive process?

Is recovery trading one obsession for another?

It is time for me to go to work.  And I haven’t found a neat package to place this in.  Damn!  That other stuff needs my presence as well.  But I love my job.  So off I go.

There is going to come a time, if you live long enough, when you are going to see a father grieving for his broken or mutilated daughter on a Monday after that family spent the day in church, paying tithes, caring for the poor, and praising their God. 

At that time, you will KNOW that God is a mean, ugly, Monster.  At that point, if you are truthful and refuse to close your eyes in a religious stupor, then you will either self-destruct because life’s terms ARE unacceptable,  or you will decide to become a better person than the God we know in this reality.

The cruelty that we play out with one another is often what we have learned from that all-powerful, all-knowing, Meglomaniac. 

Today, I am able to accept my relationship and dependance on the great What-ever, because I value myself.  The fact that I choose to love or be loved by such a Being speaks more for me than for the Higher Power. 

Can you love the great Cruel Bastard, and know that somehow, accepting the fact that God has issues, gives you the freedom to rise above it all. 

Maybe in some other context all this will make sense.  But right now, accepting life on life’s terms includes embracing a Higher Power that will do or allow (omnipotent allowances are the same as doing) horrible things in my life.

Spirituality takes a little bit of masochism to be successful. 

So my attempts to rise above god and religion, to find a truly spiritual path, will be defined by the following five words:

SIMPLE

POSITIVE

CERTAIN

FREE

FUN

We’ll see how this works.

I am truly grateful to have nine months again.  It is magical.  The colors of the elements are purple and green, AA & CA combined.  And I have decided that I am going to appreciate the fact that I get to be with fellow soldiers this weekend, and quit putting on armour today to face the shadow dragons of tomorrow.  If I make a habit out of hating myself and my life, I cannot help but to hurt those who draw close to me.  If I fear and prepare for evil with each waking breath, that is all I will draw to myself.  I don’t want to live that way.  Great Power, help me to be Simple, Positive, Fun, Free; but most of all, help me to be Certain of my own value.

How would an individual cell in my body concieve of me?  If that individual cell did concieve of me, how would it make contact with me?  How would I hear it?  Could my self-awareness ever expand to recognized the pleading voices of those microscopic universes that swirl daily within my being? Would my day be a thousand years to them?

When we humans interact, when we come to agreement, comune and connect, does our group conscieness constitute another living being?  Is this why military tradition recognizes the American Flag as a living being, and military personnel are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect it?  Is this why, those who come into recovery and cannot connect with a “God of their understanding,”  can find something more powerful than themselves through the group?  Something that goes far beyond “herd instinct?”

Is the concept of God our intuitive recognition that the infinite universe has a self-awareness of its own?  Is it communicating with the swirling galaxies within its Being?  And have we muddled up the pursuit to connect with this Being by the need to control one another?  Have we clothed the infinite one in finite human institutions such as monarchy, submission to a master, human systems of justice…so on and so on, so that we turn human beings into cogs in a machine? 

When I become sick, I take it as a signal from the universe to slow down and look around.  Listen.  Attempt to connect.  Be aware of yourself.  It is about time for me to step back into my interactive reality, now that the fever has passed.  But before I do, I am going to head out to Oak Mountain, and hear the trees and water.  They are powerful messangers to those who slow down enough to listen.  I am going to crawl through this day, listening.

I found this gem in the Magic City Moments and sought permission from the author to publish it here.  I have not been able to get in touch with her, so I went ahead published it since she already has it out there in the public domain.  Ami, wherever you are, I sincerely hope the very best for you:

Hi, I’m Ami
by Ami H.

Hi, I’m Ami.
The smile you see, it really isn’t me.
It’s all a facade – a mask to hide 32 years of misery.
It’s the way I was raised – a way of life
‘Baby girl, hold that head up high.’
Don’t let them know your business and
Never, never let them see you cry.
I learned to run that game way too well
No one ever knowing of my inner hell
Addiction is in my family tree
And boy, do we have a history!
As a child, never staying in one place for very long,
Never having a house we called home.
Having to sleep on strangers’ floors
I wonder what happened to the drug dealer that kicked in the door.
I’m now 16 and I over achieve
Always wanting people to notice and be proud of me.
I have a job and make straight A’s
A couple of colleges already have my name.
No one could believe teenage pregnancy
Leaving high school behind because now I have to work full-time.
I have a little girl all my own and a cute little place to finally call home.
At 21 no time for fun!
I’m going through a divorce and working 80 hours a week.
Taking college classes
Never missing Haylie’s gymnastics and cheerleading practice
Some days forgetting to eat and what is sleep!
My little girl has things that I only dreamed…
…stability and a ‘happy’ mommy
Staying too busy to frown even when my world was crashing down.
It’s the way I was raised – a way of life
‘Baby girl, hold that head up high’
Don’t let them know your business
And never, never let them see you cry
I didn’t show any fear and no tears were shed
When my little brother was on a coke high and put a gun to my head
Or when they found my favorite cousin in a hotel bathtub dead
Not even the night, the other put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger in his bed
Always being told that it’s just the way our family cards were dealt
No one ever knowing how I truly felt
I’m 26 and have met the man of my dreams…Prince Charming
I didn’t realize he was sick,
Now I am getting my ass kicked
Closing my eyes and praying for death
Because I felt I had nothing left
It is the way I was raised – a way of life
Baby girl, hold that head up high
Don’t let them know your business and
Never, never let them see you cry
I’m 29 – four PIs, three DUIs – all within two years time
Every mug shot I had bruises and black eyes
I still didn’t know I was unhealthy
Always saying ‘I’m nothing like my family’
Convincing myself I wasn’t an addict because alcohol is my D.O.C.
It was only a matter of time before that history caught up with me
Almost three years in treatment and I have kicked and screamed and resisted
But somewhere I picked up that it is okay to feel and I am here for a reason
I realized that I’m tired of running…fighting…hiding.
Despite the way I was raised – I am learning a new way of life
Making amends – paying for past sins
Learning forgiveness and letting go of resentments
Some days I feel the tears will never end,
But I know it’s okay because it is time to heal
It is part of filling my empty soul and mending my broken heart
Now I can hold my head up high
And look at you without guilt or shame in my eyes
I had to tear down the walls – built so strong and tall
I let people in and actually have a couple of true friends
Learning a new way of life is scary
But not nearly as terrifying as dying without living
Today, the smile you see – it’s me
It’s really, really me
Hi, I’m Ami