I am beyond furious and my sponsor is out of town. It happened again. I finally got last week’s paycheck cashed on Wednesday and today this week’s check bounced. Obviously, in spite of what my employer says, I need to find a new job. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’d really like a job offer from Current Media.
A fight breaks out in a slum after a heavy session of whisky, gambling and Ya Ba. The effects of this rather potent form of Methamphetamine are increased aggression, paranoia and then total melt down. Week after week Thai TV channels and the newspapers were showing pictures of drug crazed adults, often with a knife to someones throats. I one instance a man slashed a babies throat killing the child all on TV. Something needed doing until so the Thaksin Government declared a "War On Drugs". Then things got really nasty. (Ya Ba translates from Thai to English as Mad Medicine).
I hate confrontation, but I’m afraid I find myself in a position where I have to have one. With my boss.
My paycheck bounced.
I’m trying to save up some money so that I can declare bankruptcy and my paycheck is bouncing. I can’t stand it. My student loan and my car payments are due as is the bill for the attorney that kept me out of jail two years ago and my “Cost of Supervision” – the surtax I pay for being a dangerous criminal. It’s Christmas. And I’m barely getting by. And my paycheck bounced. I’m so mad I could spit.
This happened about this time last year, too.
You don’t bounce payroll. I mean it’s just not done. It’s probably time for me to be looking for a new job but with unemployment in my area at 3 times what it was 2 years ago, and not having graduated from college and being a felon, the chances of me getting another job at the wage I currently make are very slim. It might be a good time to think about going back to school, too, but it’s too late to get financial aid for the spring semester. Without financial aid it will be impossible for me to go to school. I already have $10K in student loan debt – what’s another 20 more, right? If I end up with a decent job that has health insurance? Seriously, I don’t think that will ever happen. I think I’m stuck where I am.
I’m stuck where I am and I have to talk to my boss about getting paid and worry about when this is going to happen again. I just hate that.
You know, the whole last year of my recovery I’ve been in the grips of the thought that I should be weller than this by now. I should be more comfortable in my own skin and the world should somehow be more manageable. Or if I’m feeling anxious or depressed or fearful or angry there ought to be something I can take to make it go away. The Big Book is rife with claims that as recovering people we should be happy and I guess the fact that I’m not, or that I haven’t been, makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong; that I am failing at the program. It doesn’t really register that life is sometimes difficult for everyone.
I’ve been reading an old Grapevine interview with Dr. Paul, the author of “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict” – the story that spawned the Cult of Page 449 (acceptance is the answer) and I really like what he has to say about overcoming stuff like this:
“I grew up thinking that I had to perfect my personality, then I got into AA, and AA said, no, that isn’t the way we do it: only G-d can remove our defects. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t be a better person simply by trying harder! Read the rest of this entry »
My sobriety anniversary is very important to me and it’s coming up here soon, but it doesn’t quite move me the same way December 13th does. December 13th, today, happens also to be my birthday, but my God, I’m 44 years old. My “birthday” is not really a big deal anymore. No, the anniversary I celebrate tonight, the reason this day is important to me, is that on this night, three years ago, I suddenly saw myself clearly and suddenly had a little hope that recovery would be possible.
The first two years were easy. This last one has been a bitch. There have been times recently when I have wished that I had died back in May. It would have been so much easier. I’ve even, at times, tried to tell myself that if that illness had killed me that I would be a hero. I would have died sober. I would have died doing the things that I was supposed to be doing. My family and friends would mourn me, sure, but there would be something happy underneath the sorrow; the knowledge that they had known me and that in my last years I had been sober.
Lately things have been much, much harder. I’ve had to return to being medicated to stop the insanity that has been going through my mind. The medicines are working, so that is good, but I still have a ton of stuff to face.
Somehow, in spite of everything, I have remained sober. In fact I’ve been sober longer now than I have ever been since I was 14 years old and I attribute it to that moment at the corner of 6th and Pueblo, under the street lamp, in the snow, when I finally understood that the pain I was in then was the very best that I could hope for, unless I got sober, and when I suddenly believed that it would be possible.
” God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always. Amen”
“I wish I was smarter. I wish I was stronger.” Patty Griffin
It brings me no comfort knowing I’m in a position I’ve been in before; hopeless, out of answers, hurting and not knowing why. And I am frightened to find that at nearly three years sober, the longest I have been sober since I was 14 years old, my brain is up to the same old tricks that have always ended every period of sobriety I’ve ever reached for in the past. I recognized that whatever was wrong was seriously wrong when I was sitting in the airport in Phoenix, coming home from another failed attempt to find love, and I found myself crying, listening to the Carpenters and googling “what’s the best way to kill yourself?“
I don’t need a reason to die, I thought. I need a reason to live. I have all the reasons to die I need. The recovery in me kept arguing, “this isn’t normal. You need help, kid. What about your family? What about your friends? Do you have any idea what this would do to them?”
“Yeah,” I replied inside my head. “They’ll get over it.” Read the rest of this entry »
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