Daily Reprieve

It is 6:40 am Central time and I am now 45.6% complete on the 4th column of resentments for the 4th step.  I ended up adding 2 resentments.

It is 7:02 am and I am now at 46.4% complete.  I added another resentment.

It is time to get started for work.

“The bondage of self.”  This concept often sounded too religious to swallow for me.  But the burden of my alcoholism, the demands of the craving, and the mental gymnastics necessary to support and justify the obsession, are nothing compared to the bondage of self.  I look back over my military service, and how I diverted time away from necessary disciplines to make myself feel better, to pay tribute to desires that have challenged my health and my ability to be of service to younger soldiers who need me now.  My great possession of a consensual slave has been riddled with neglect so that I could appease this monster in the closet.  Family relationships dry up as I must protect my time and space from their intrusions.  And what is the fruit of this great devotion to myself?  I hate me.  I resent me more than any other human on earth.  But I know the buttons to push to make me do what I demand of me.  An exorcist once faced the futility of his efforts in my behalf and said, “there is no way I can deliver you from yourself.” 

I am fucked if there isn’t a power greater than me.  I cast a shadow over myself, and know there is no escape.  That is the true nature of my powerlessness.  What-ever you are out there, please help me.  I am so tired and exhausted.

Higher Power, what ever you are, I want to drop my guard.  Quit arguing.  I fire myself as my taskmaster and the builder of my life, and I consent to you taking over.  I have been my everything, and it leaves me with nothing inside.  I am powerless over the bondage of self-enthronement.  If your energy does not fill and move me, I will step in and take over, and die in non-consensual slavery to my soul-crushing designs.  I need you, really need you.  I am not going to make this, cannot face this anymore.  I believe that it is your will that I flourish as a person.  Don’t give me the freedom that leaves me alone and wondering and ignored.  Give me the freedom of intimate empowerment.  While you are loving others and working miraculous transformations, please let me be apart of that.  Should any of us die alone or live in tragedy if there is a way of life that is happy and free?  As you are helping me grasp this way of living, please let me also help others grasp it.  I am not just looking to obey you, but to be you in whatever way you chose.  If you are not my everything, you will become my great nothing.  Instead of my own voice dripping with self-judgment and screaming demands that echo in my skull, please let me tune into your will and guidance and take the action necessary to keep me out of my head and in this life.  I am tired, so tired.  Such as I am, I request that you empower and use me.  Whoever you are.

Good night out there.  whoever you are.

I really want to complete this 4th step.  I am in pain tonight.  shit.

It is 9:26 pm central time and I am now at 42.4% complete on the 4th column of my resentments.

It is 9:41 pm and I am now at 43.9%.

It is 9:58 pm and I am at 45.5%.

I’m exhausted…got to go to bed.

My new sobriety date remains 16th June 2009.  I am still alive.  I have been doing well, got to spend some wonderful time with both my slave and my daughter.  I am tired.  I made a meeting to escape the sudden appearance of the obsession.  I am trying to move forward with the 4th step.  I will load my progress here.  Remember that I am 100% complete on the first 3 columns, and am trying to finish the 4th column on the Resentments.  I have not touched Fear or Sexual Sanity yet.

I was at 28.8% complete on that 4th column.

It is 10:21 pm central and I am not at 30.3%.

It is 10:35 pm and I am at 31.8%.

It is 10:56 pm and I am at 33.3%.

It is 11:32 pm and I am at 34.8%.

It is 11:45 pm and I am at 36.4%.

It is 12:03 am, 22nd of June, and I am at 37.9%.

It is 12:42 am and I am at 39.4%.

It is 12:57 am and I am at 40.9%.

I have finished those resentments associated with God.  I think I am going to go to bed.

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.