Acceptance

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Coming Home

January 8, 2011 in Acceptance, Justice, Perseverance by Chris | 1 comment

My mom completed her treatment and came home from Minnesota last night, and in spite of walking into a month of mail, an imminent divorce, and more, she seemed OK.  It was very late in the evening, and I could see as she went through the mail that she was becoming more and more distressed, her voice tightening and her hands trembling.  In the best situations coming home is a big deal.  She isn’t coming home to an ideal situation.

Home for me is in many ways the kind of emotional sobriety that I usually abide in.  Home is serenity, sanctuary, stability, safety.  Home is the place where I can be myself; where I don’t feel like I have to meet someone else’s expectations.  I haven’t been to my emotional and spiritual home since before my mom left to begin her journey there.  I need to be home and I have been working to get back there with a fervor and I have only just begun to get back there.

Mom coming home hasn’t really caused me to get back here.  Coming home has been the product of step work and prayer and honesty and it has been the product of how a Higher Power works in my life.  In spite all I have been angry about and hurt by, coming home, coming home to that place of acceptance and forgiveness, has helped me see that I’m free now from the noose I alone created.  It has been taken away, root and branch, and even though I occasionally snap back into believing that the memory of it is the thing itself, my conscience is clear.  And I am free now of the intense burden and stress that I have been bearing alone for so many months; I am free of it and yet I have kept my side of the street clean.

It is clear to me, also, that I could not solve this problem on my own, that without some work and some people with whom I am able to be honest, I might yet be trapped in an emotional landscape that is a continent away from where I belong.

Now that she is back in the dangerous location where she lives, I am hopeful that my mom can keep using what she has been shown in her own journey to her real home.

The Best Short Prayer

December 19, 2010 in Acceptance, Honesty, Hope by Chris | 6 comments

Tony H. from Pacific Palisades was a guest on a TV show awhile back and he related the following story:

“I once asked a Jesuit priest what was the best short prayer he knew. He said, ‘fuck it,’ as in ‘fuck it; it’s in God’s hands.’”

I wish to God it was that easy to let go; to just say ‘fuck it’ and walk away, and resolutely trudge forward, not looking back at the city burning behind us like Mrs. Lot did.  It is so tempting to “defocus” from my own recovery and try to devise some machination to save the ones I love and thwart those against whom I bear a resentment.

A member of my family is doing everything she can to get sober and her husband is doing everything he can to avoid participating or supporting and I want… I want…  The enemy of my friend is my enemy.  At least that is how I justify hanging on to this, but the real leap forward would be the first step.  To pray anything like “fuck it” is to admit powerlessness.  “Fuck it” is a first step.  And I could use a first step about this issue about now.

I still think there must be something I can do.  I should be able to coordinate a detente or at least call a ceasefire, or play the shuttle diplomat and somehow protect her from harm.  I feel like not being able to do that somehow makes me a bad son.

So tonight I’ll get on my knees, something I rarely do, and I’ll say something like, ‘fuck it.  Its in Your hands,’ and then I’ll try to come to believe that’s true.

What still haunts me

October 31, 2010 in Acceptance, Living in Recovery, relationships, Shortcomings by Chris | 5 comments

I’m mostly okay now.  Most of the time it feels almost like none of it ever happened; like my life in addiction was a bad dream.  Looking back it is almost incomprehensible to me how far I had fallen, how much I suffered, how much effort and pain it took to get through to the other side.  It seems like an almost impossible feat, particularly in light of the fact that the real insanity that gripped me before has never really returned.

I have moments of it.  One shouldn’t think I don’t.  I am as susceptible as any addict or alcoholic to be visited by the “strange mental twist” that is the nature of addiction.  When I catch myself thinking, “When I retire in Italy I am definitely drinking wine,” I also find myself thinking, “It’s a good thing you’re on your way to a meeting.”  When I find myself thinking, as I often do, that there is no such thing as God; that believing in “God”  is as ridiculous as believing is Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or a magical kitten that lives in a tea-pot on the dark side of the moon, I also find myself thinking that not believing in those things should not keep me from having faith that there is in fact a “Great Reality” beyond my understanding, which has helped me stay sober and which I experience at times as “a new life, a new freedom, and a new happiness.”  Again then I find the desire and the willingness to stay on this path. Read the rest of this entry »

Still Beating Myself Up

June 23, 2010 in Acceptance, Faith, Fear, Honesty, Integrity, Perseverance, relationships, Resentment, Shortcomings by Chris | 5 comments

There will be an end to this, right?  I’m still beating myself up for having been blind to, or simply ignored, all of the red flags that went up with The Bullet That I Dodged.  They were there in front of me all the time, from the very first time we met, and somehow I managed to dismiss them from my mind.

It’s a tricky little machine, isn’t it, our minds?  I can be going along fit as a fiddle, right as rain, and ready for love and suddenly, WHAM!  I become blindsided by something that had been clearly in view; something obvious to everyone but me.  At 41 months sober I feel like I handle most things pretty well.  I’m not sure I “manage” them, but they don’t manage me anymore.  Then along comes something like the notion that perhaps romantic attachment may still be possible for me and I experience all over again the same kind of insanity that accompanied my drug use.  I think this time will be different.  This time it won’t hurt me.  This time will be worth it. Read the rest of this entry »

Some days just crap on you.

June 22, 2010 in Acceptance, Fear, Perseverance, Resentment, Shortcomings by Chris | 1 comment

Today, for example.  After an hour of being yelled at by an authority figure who didn’t know what she was talking about and who was under the false assumption that what someone worthless told her was true, I learned that earlier today my sister tried to kill herself.

By slashing her own throat.

And there is nothing I can do about either of those things.  If “by this time sanity will have returned” means that I’m not going to pick up over this stuff, then it is correct.  If it is supposed to mean that I am impervious to the madness around me, that I am immune to feeling angry, afraid, defensive, and confused then sanity has not returned.

Right now I am going to act like it has.  Keep calm and carry on.

A Memorial Day to Forget

June 2, 2010 in Acceptance, Death, Fear, relationships, Resentment, Shortcomings by Chris | 10 comments

“And those are the words of a gentleman. [Y]our arrogance and conceit, your selfish disdain for the feelings of others made me realize that you were the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.” – Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

It is always hardest to write when I need to most, and this time is no different.  I have done all the things we do and I suppose I have achieved something mildly resembling peace of mind about the subject, yet I am not entirely well at the moment; not even in relative terms. I am not too well emotionally and I am not too well spiritually.  I think the cramp in my back is a good indication that I may not even be too well physically at the moment.  All I am able to do from here forward is to wait and pray… and try to forget.

A good way to put a new relationship to a test is to take a little trip together and so I invited the man I have been so enamored with to join me for the Memorial Day weekend at my parent’s cabin on Payette Lake in McCall, ID, a beautiful, serene, relaxing place where I have always been able to put the clamors of a complicated world behind me and breathe.  I had packed a bunch of food; salads, rib eye steaks, etc., books, there are plenty of board games and satellite TV there.  There is a private beach.  There are trails and hot springs nearby. The place is paradise to one who can appreciate it. Read the rest of this entry »

Delusional

August 12, 2009 in Acceptance, Perseverance by Chris | 6 comments

For the last month or so I have been in the grips of the insane idea that I have outgrown AA.  I say it is an insane idea because 12 step recovery is the only thing that ever got me sober for any length of time.  And even though the idea is insane, it may also be true.  And while it may be true, there is no way to find that out without risking my recovery.  I have to simply trust that my place is in meetings.  My place is in meetings.

My place is in meetings.

In the 900-odd days I’ve been sober I’ve attended well over 1800 meetings.  I’m well versed in what is available to me there.  I feel like I’m in a place where I have to grow beyond what I hear in meetings and I haven’t the first clue about how to do that.

My rational mind knows, of course, that in all likelihood what I’m experiencing is still residual from my surgery.  I spent a good amount of time on pain medication.  I’m better now, but I’m still in pain.  I think I’m probably depressed, too.  I took the QIDS-SR and seem to be moderately depressed.  I’m not really sure if I need to find a way to kick myself out of it, or if I should actually seek help.  Rationally I know that depression would be consistent with my circumstance, but as with the question of spiritual path, I haven’t the first clue about what to do about that.

The thing about meetings, particularly meetings in a town this size, is that it doesn’t take long to hear everyone’s story.  It doesn’t take long  before you can predict what people will say.  You know who works at recovery and you know who pretends to.  You speculate about who is going to kill them self and who is going to kill everyone else.  And when it happens there is nothing you can do about it.

At some point recently I realized that inside the rooms I am never again going to hear anything new.  Sure, the details may be different; an idea may be expressed in a new way, but the idea isn’t new.  The story isn’t different.

Rationally — such an elusive quality for me so much of the time, especially with regard to me and my disease and a Higher Power — rationally I know all these things.  I know that my place is inside the rooms.

But I can’t seem to shake myself free of the crazy idea that I don’t need to be there.

Just for today, I’m not going to test that idea.

A Sinner Among the Saints

June 23, 2009 in Acceptance, Faith, Integrity, Resentment, Spirituality by Chris | 6 comments

It is so strange, and so strange that it is comforting to be again in the company of my family and among people who share my religious heritage. The Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons) take a very dim view of homosexuality and of drug addiction. Now that the addiction part is under control, and now that my father and I have both worked very hard to heal our relationship, I’m a part of this gigantic clan again.

I have a cousin, Nicholas, who I’ve hung out with a little bit, who only ever knew my name before, not my face, and he knew that my name was always attached to trouble or heartache. “THAT Cousin Chris” is what he calls me. The younger ones figure out who I am and their eyes widen briefly. The little kids, and there are a dozen of them, all think I’m great. I think I’m just better adapted to talk to little children.

Another cousin of mine, Nate, was 6 years old when I effectively left the family. Now he’s a giant man with several children of his own, a wonderful wife, and a really cool job in Washington D. C. that affords him a ringside view of our government. (He really likes Barney Frank, whom he knows personally, and he also really likes Larry Craig, whom he knows personally, and wishes Larry would “just come out already.”) We are polar opposites, politically, but because he came by his beliefs through work and reason (as opposed to being brainwashed by talk radio and Fox News) we are actually closer than one might imagine, and honestly I think he’s really cool.

Being around these people, being in this environment, is so comfortable, and I’m only slightly ill at ease with that. I have some anger about what the LDS church has done to my tribe. I’m even more angry that members of my own family share the political view that prompted church members in Utah (mostly) to pump $40 million into California to pass Proposition 8. I don’t understand how people who love me, who claim to want the best for me, could possibly believe that a world where inequality is the law is morally right. I don’t want to be married in their temple. I am happy to live in a country where they are permitted to practice the religion of their conscience, and I believe in protecting freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is one of the civil rights that our country is built on. Equal protection under the law is another of the ideas that our country is supposed to be built on and until I am truly offered equal protection I will not really be one of them – one among my own people.

So I’m part of our family – but not a full part. Here, in this place I love, among people I love, I am considered to be an inferior.

I’m no closer to coming to believe that “a power greater than myself” is appropriate to turn my “will and life” over to the care of. I still think that “Higher Power” is an unconscious, impersonal, greater good –indifferent to my personal circumstance–the law of cause and effect if you will; cause and effect in a system too large for me to grasp. Perhaps if I were omniscient I could understand all of what has happened and what continues to happen. At the moment the power, I think, resides with me and within the group, and in my relationship with my sponsor. I refuse to concede that the Higher Power resides with and favors the saints and not the sinners –no matter what they believe.

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