First, I want to say how important blogging has been to my recovery. If I hadn’t had a place where I could just bleed and be supported, I don’t know if I would have been able to stay sober. It might have been different if I’d lived in a larger city; somewhere that there was a larger LGBT recovery community. But I don’t. I live in the Great Redneck Desert deep in the heart of Jesusland. So to no longer be able to write–to have something blocking me from doing it–has been an exceptionally painful experience. But it’s been about 10 months now and I think I’m ready to say what happened. Read the rest of this entry »
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I’m not only good at it, but I’m actually enjoying it. I think I should have gone back to school a little earlier in my recovery. As it worked out though,the 5 year mark between when I totally flunked out of college because I was high all the time and when I returned, sober, worked to make getting back in a little simpler.
If it hadn’t been clear enough before, it was certainly clear after my cousin died. I’m not where I want to be yet, and the only way to get there is with a degree. Probably at least a masters. Skating on the edge of bankruptcy is just too stressful. Read the rest of this entry »
A long time ago, when I was first getting sober, An Irish Friend of Bill told me she thought I was bright enough to go back to college, even bright enough to study law. So I’m back in college now and so far it would appear that she was right.
After my surgery a couple of years ago, when I really didn’t feel like I could go on, my dad flew up from Las Vegas to take me out for lunch and let me know he loves me. I can never tell him too often how much that helped and how much I love him too.
For two years now I have struggled against the idea of God, against the word God, against the proofs of God and His love that I hear people talk about all the time, and I have struggled against them to the point that in order to give myself some peace of mind I simply dismissed the question entirely and have considered myself to be an atheist. Atheism as an ideology and being an atheist inside a 12 step program is a dicey proposition. One must be very careful what one says at meeting level so as not to belittle the pious and in so doing dismiss the foundation of the very program that, though my convictions run against it, gave me back my life. Read the rest of this entry »
Twelve miles southeast of Boise is a dam on the Boise River called the Lucky Peak Dam. In addition to providing we Boiseans with recreational opportunities, the dam also produces a modest amount of electrical power and helps control flooding in our city. Riding a bicycle home from the dam is a really beautiful journey along our greenbelt. Over the course of 12 miles one drops in elevation by 96 feet. Not much really. Enough so that when you turn around and go back you really notice, but on the ride away from the dam the grade is almost imperceptible.
My heart failure is like that. I didn’t really notice what was happening because it all seemed like a slow progression uphill as I was healing from my lung surgery two years ago. It just seemed like I never quite got better but in truth, looking back I can see that my heart has been getting gradually worse for at least 4 years. So I’m taking a beta-blocker and my cardiologist wants to do a catheterization procedure because he’s found out all he can from the outside and all that is that something is wrong, both with the amount of blood my heart pumps (left bundle branch block) and with my heart rhythm (supraventricular bigemini). Needless to say, even with my precious health insurance, there is a cost and it will be painful. But unless I have that surgery the most I can hope to do is cover up the symptoms. Only surgery can correct it if it even can be corrected.
And recovery has been like that lately. Well honestly I’ve been noticing the slow but steady progression for a long time. I have noticed that the staying sober part has been relatively easy but that gradually, over time, the living has gotten more complicated; that placing my “trust and reliance on a power greater than ourselves” has become a distant, somewhat quaint idea. I can buy into the small “h” higher power of the program or of reality, but the God “personal to me?”
The last three months in particular the living part has been almost more than I can bear, and I can’t talk about most of it because it will all likely end up in court. I can say that my life is permeated with fear and resentment. I don’t even believe in that Higher Power that everyone talks about and yet I have found myself in the last couple of weeks praying that it would reveal itself to me in a way that I could understand again. I’m terrified of having the Mother Theresa variety of spiritual experience and not getting an answer until just before I die. I am afraid that, like with the heart surgery, I don’t have what is required for me to get what I need. I’m afraid I lack the faith required to have a vital spiritual experience. I suppose all of this puts me solidly back in step 2, doesn’t it.
In my condition, it really would be a miracle if I stayed sober. My sponsor told me that everything I needed to stay sober I learned in the first 30 days; that staying sober after that is like riding a bicycle. I just have to keep peddling.
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