Daily Reprieve

I am supposed to develop the habit of reviewing my day prior to surrendering to the slumber slut (I prefer that image over being visited by the sandman). 

“When we retire at night, we constructively review our day.  Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest or AFRAID?  Do we owe an apology?  Have we kept something to ourselves which should be discussed with another person at once?  Were we kind and loving toward all?  What could we have done better?  Were we thinking of ourselves most of the time?  Or were we thinking of what we could do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?  But we must be careful not to drift into worry, remorse, or morbid reflection, for that would diminish our usefulness to others.  After making our review we ask God’s forgiveness and inquire what corrective measures should be taken.” – page 85 Big Book

My sponsor said he heard someone in a meeting say that this is basically asking “How did my disease try to kill me today?”

I carry a fear that I will be misunderstood.  And that misunderstanding will disappoint.  And the disappointment will rob me of any attempt to clarify.  And I will be alone, quietly shunned, eventually by all have who truly known me.  Or that the misunderstanding will create expectations of me that I cannot possibly fulfill, and then I will be seen as a repulsive fake. 

I shared in the meeting tonight about the wonderful unity of people who normally would not mix.  Was I too frivolous?  I said hello to a new female insuring that she felt received after risking opening up.  Did she think I was marking territory?  Was I?  Did I seem perverted?  Did she perceive me as a threat?  I laid out expectations to My slave.  Did I inadvertently strike at the core of who she is?  Will she still love and worship me in the morning?  I was impatient with sponsee one rather than relating to where he was at.  Did that flaw in my sponsorship shine through?  Did I just create a dangling participle for those of you who are reading to discard everything due to a lack of grammatical integrity?

What a ball of shit to carry around.  I want to drink so that I do not have to feel that fear.  I want to become comfortably numb.

The 4th Step prayer dealing with Fear on Page 68:

“The verdict through the ages is that faith means courage.  All men of faith have courage.  They trust their God.  We never apologize for God.  Instead we let Him demonstrate, through us, what He can do.  We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be.  At once, we commence to outgrow fear.”

The Efficiency prayer on the bottom of Page 87:

“As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action.  We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day ‘Thy will be done.’  We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.  We become much more efficient.  We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.  It works – it really does.”

I have no control over what others think of me.  I have impact, but not control.  And when its time to walk the dog, it really doesn’t matter what others think or how well they understand.  Listen to me, voices in my head!  I am not the Higher Power.  I am not my own source!  Something out there is working on me.  Something out there wanted me to exist at this moment and time, to unfold and live and express me.  I am one of the inevitabilities of the universe.  I think the Higher Power just told you to talk to the hand.

Please slumber slut, take me away, before I truly embarrass myself.

Under intuitive inspiration I forged out a 3rd step prayer that I could honestly offer to the Higher Power, and still be true to myself.  I had to paraphrase what was in the book, because the book’s version was too religious for me.  My paraphrase ended with the phrase, “Thank-you for one more apple to eat, a bite at a time.”  I really found that curious, sense I am not much of an apple eater.  I like them.  Just don’t seek them out that often. 

I was watching the movie “Phenomena” with John Travolta a few days ago.  John was trying to comfort a couple of children about his upcoming death.  He had an apple in his hand and after taking a bite said that if he dropped that apple on the ground, it would rot, waste away.  Something of the sort.  Then he said that if you took a bite of the apple, it becomes apart of you.  He encouraged them to take a bite.  The little girl did so.  But the little boy could not release his hurt at the thought of losing someone again.  Then John told him, “Everything is going somewhere, everything.”  And the boy took the bite. 

There have been so many times that I have been given a fresh new apple by the universe, by this Higher Power that loves my existence, and I just let it drop to the ground.  I want to recognize each day as a fresh new gift, and learn to live in the moment of each bite, make it apart of me.

I have never successfully trusted my Higher Power in the financial arena, and I am afraid to do so now.  But I haven’t done such a good job at it myself.  Alcohol isn’t the only thing that makes me powerless.  The pursuit of money also strips me of the power to control my environ and it becomes a taskmaster over me, issuing its own code of morality.  I must be loyal to a company that doesn’t give a damn about me as a person.  Or I must spend my mental resources researching and perfecting financial skills even if that has nothing to do with the passions of my life.  And it doesn’t.  I am not a businessman.  I am creative and idealistic.  Yet I must put on a Richard Simmons smile and I must demonstrate that I am a good cog for the machine. 

If I succeed at marketing myself, I fail at being myself.  I am trapped, unless…

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over money – that our lives had become unmanageable.

Step Two:  Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to capitalistic sanity.

Step Three:  Made a decision to turn our financial will and our economic lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

Step Four:  Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of financial lives.

Step Five:  Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

And thus the Higher Power has another cycle of empowering the powerless one.  Of transforming a victim into a victor.

I try to remember that my Higher Power has helped me to stay sober for over a year now.  Surely this God of my understanding will not turn from me now.  But I am afraid that my expectations will turn to resentments and unravel me.

This appears to be the next step for me.  If I cannot trust my Higher Power here, how can I turn my life over to Him-She – It?  So, I surrender.  I have come face to face with powerlessness once more.  In that surrender, I can relax.

3rd Step Promises on Page 63:

“When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed.  We had a new Employer.  Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well.  Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs.  More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life.  As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter.  We were reborn.”

I love being able to live out my Dominant inclanations without guilt or the fear of witchhunts.  And finding a peaceful cohabitation with this program’s demands for self examination, with a religious hunger for self-efacement can be a very challenging balance to achieve.  But the reality that sobriety is like a glass jar that holds everything I value in it has driven me forward.  This time last year, I was in a treatment facility for the second time missing the very special birthday of my slave.  We were debating whether I should release her.  And I was bracing myself for this possible consequence.  But the dynamic has powerfully bound us together, and another reality surfaced.  If I go down, I will take my slave with me.  This shattered any thought that I could crawl off into a hole somewhere and be forgotten while I self destructed.  it was always a delusion, but this really brought it home for me.  Her birthday approaches, and I am here.  I am sober.  And I am Dominant over her.  Self-enthronement will kill me and leave its aftershocks of destruction ever after.  But self-manifestation, that which is strong and rewarding about me, must manifest.  I was not built for a sobriety monastery.  The sabbath was made for the man, not man for the sabbath.  So I’ve heard.

“Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.”  From page 417 of the Big Book.  It was prescribed to me in my first time through treatment.  I have acceptance issues.  I found many situations unacceptable in my life.  It was a declaration that I would not release the impossible to change category into that category.  I might still be able to undo this and make it closer to the way it is supposed to be.  The text goes on to say, “When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation – some FACT OF MY LIFE – unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment.” 

I am going to go to several military recruiters initually, following my intuitive understanding, and continue to knock on the door of opportunity.  Will it be answered by civilian or military officials?  I have impact, but I do not have control on how that impact will play out.  Letting go is a difficult process for me.  Going to bed and accepting that the day is OVER.  I cannot do anything else.  Slow down emotional responses if I cannot stop them altogether.  Become alert to the flow of things, move with them, grasshopper.  OK, goodnight.

Well, sponsee number two fired me tonight.  He said that he just wanted to let me know that he got a new sponsor and that the reason he hadn’t been calling me is not because he had gone back out.  I think he felt that I was neglecting him, not staying in contact as I should.  I was having problems with going to that Celebrate Recovery group.  My own personal baggage.  I was obviously taken aback, but I caught myself  to assure him that he was doing the right thing to realign himself with someone new if he felt he wasn’t getting what he wanted from me.  Yet I truly felt that he was attempting to control me, to judge me.  I guess I should talk to my sponsor about this.  I bought a book on sponsorship.  All I can do is work on my side of the street and do my best to improve.

I have updated the “Quips & Quotes” page.  I am still feeling a little woozy from this virus.  But it is definitely in remission.

I picked up a stomach virus, with all the wonderful symptoms of flu.  My sick mind reverts back to some of my old religious perspectives and I begin to wonder what I am being judged for.  Then comes the dark feeling of being absolutely alone.  I am judged and ignored, left to live out a tragic comedy for the royal assemblage in heaven.  Where the hell does this crap come from!  It took some work to get out of it.  Sponsee 2 called and left a message.  “I heard that you have gotten that stomach flu that everyone is coming down with.”  I am not being picked on.  And it is giving me some much needed time off from work to get my military records together.  To focus on life beyond Wal-mart.  My Higher Power may be working on a re-integration program.  Getting me back into life.  Either way, I really do have acceptance issues.

I heard in a sales meeting once that people are generally more motivated by the fear of losing than they are excited about the prospect of gaining an opportunity.  When I first put in my notice at this present job, I really sensed an intuitive nudge and an assurance in the rightness of time.  I also knew that I had totally lost heart in what I was doing, and my disease seemed to manifest when I could not give up on something even if it was killing me to hang on to it.  My life had been more strongly driven by fear than excited by opportunity.  I learned to appease and to hide.  This time, I am my own best friend.  I am who I am, and sometimes I am going to make mistakes.  But I am not going to hide out.  I may not be totally free of fear, but I am free of thinking fear is the same as morality.

I ask that any who read this particular entry from last night forgive my crass and insensitive remarks about a couple of members in my home group.  My slave says that when I get tired, I get all “crazified.”  Regardless, I am responsible for my words.  Again, my apologies.