November 2009

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2009.

I was thinking about an old post last night, Nothing You Can Find That Cannot Be Found, and about how lucky I was, that early in recovery, to have been protected from the worst of my temptations.  A little space for a little while can be a good thing while you’re getting your sober legs.  I was thinking about it because Daryl, who used to sell me drugs, and who has been in prison as much of his adult life as not, walked in to my home group last night.  It alarmed me a little, I suppose.  He’s not the nicest guy.  I was just thinking though that if he or any number of other people had been around at the beginning or if for some reason I found myself with crystal meth sitting in front of me, how hard it would have been to stay sober.

When I came to work this morning I found a loaded glass pipe on the side of the building.  I wonder at what point in my recovery the obsession and compulsion left me; at what point I became well enough to be confronted with a supply of crystal meth and to respond by throwing it in the trash.

“There’s nothing you can find that cannot be found,” goes the song.  I’ve found crystal meth on the street now.  I also found a way to not have to use it.

Sweeping

“Simply tell him that we will never get over drinking until we have done our utmost to straighten out the past. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worth while can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do. His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank, and open, we will be gratified with the result.”


Picture-6I’ve never gone into any detail about this part of my life but to mention it once here.  It isn’t something that I share, usually.  It has just been too shameful and painful and personal.

And it is complicated enough being a gay man without having to explain your marriage to a woman.  If I’ve left this detail out in the past it is part lie of omission, part simplifying an already complex story.  But there it is.  I was married once.

I met her in 1985.  She was a friend of a boyfriend.  I was leaving him and he was desperate that I shouldn’t completely disappear.  I would come to my senses and come home.  He was sure of it.  He asked her if I couldn’t stay with her awhile; just till our relationship sorted itself out.

Well, that relationship never sorted itself out; probably because MS and I got along great.  We had a perfectly great time together, liked each others company, each had something the other wanted, and we somehow ended up in bed together and were married in 1987.

It seemed like the perfect solution.  If I was married to a woman I would obviously escape the plague that was killing the men in our neighborhood by the dozens.  She had a little bit of money and a good paying job she had to go to for a day every three weeks or so, which freed me to do important things like learn to cook and paint the apartment.  Of course I didn’t have any real skills; nothing marketable.  I was 20 years old.  I dropped out of high school and ran away from home three years earlier.  Like all my other relationships of that period, she met the qualifications to be a rescuer, and I let her rescue me. Read the rest of this entry »

get userping