Day 82 - I wish I could share all the love that’s in my heart

remove every doubt that keeps us apart
I wish you could know what it means to be me
Then you’d see and agree
that every man should be free.

I Wish I Knew How it Feels to Be Free, Jay Haggard

It’s funny how a few days of Lexapro and a little crush can lift one’s spirits. Despite the bump on my head (well, gash really) and the pressing need to see a chiropractor about my neck I feel more optimistic than I’ve felt in several days. I am grateful that the depression is lifting. The down side of type 2 bipolar disorder has led me to relapse more than once. I much prefer the mania. Mania is what I get from crystal meth. After being sober this long though even the mania seems scary. My grandfather used to say “look for the golden mean.” I’m closer to that today and it feels good.

One of the things that happens to lots of us in early recovery is that, when things start getting better, we find we’re interested in things again. We discover a whole wide world of joy and opportunity out there that we’ve been depriving ourselves of. At least that is true for me. The fog lifts and I can see everything I’ve been keeping myself from. And rather than stay on task something in my head says, “you’ve got to reach for the ring while you’re still on the ride. How long can the ride go on?” What I haven’t been willing to see in the past is that this feeling is not my recovery talking. It’s my disease. Cunning. Baffeling. Powerful. It’s my disease trying to take my focus off of recovery and place it somewhere else because then it might have a chance of taking hold of me again. In my case, my disease knows that it can get me by dangling the thing I value most in front of me. And that thing is love.

So about that crush . . .

He’s fortunately in recovery. Even more fortunately he’s 900 miles away. I’ve never been sure which is true, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ or ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder.’ I do know that unavailability, either by virtue of their sexual orientation or location, makes them more attractive. So since I beleive that strategy equals liberty I need a strategy. At the moment I think I’ll be friendly but reevaluate things in six months. See if he’s still shiny. He’s a great guy. Anyone would be lucky to be his friend.

There is a writer whom I admire above all other gay writers named Paul Monette. The thing I love about Paul is that throughout his writing he affirms over and over that gay or straight, all there is is love. And that is really the crux of my own spirituality. All there is is love. I’m just learning to love myself enough now. Taking the focus off of that would only impoverish the love I have to give. So that’s my plan. When the lover is ready, the love will appear. Right, Grasshopper?