Perseverance

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A Speedy Reply

July 17, 2009 in Perseverance, Resentment, Roommates by Chris | 7 comments

Downtown_BoiseTo say that things at home have been tense is something of an understatement.  One of the roommates has some pretty execrable behavior involving other people that I have grown very tired of.  To paraphrase Elvis, a little less drama and a little more action, seem to be in order, yet there is very little hope of that happening.  I got dragged into the drama the other day and I feel I am owed an apology, and there is less hope of that.

My friend Nikki had assured me of the power of prayer and shared a recent experience with asking for divine help and receiving it.  As I sat on my front porch in the morning a couple of days ago I thought of what Nikki told me and thought perhaps I’d try it again.  I thought I’d ask for guidance in this situation.  I came inside, logged on to facebook and there was an email from a friend, sent to a good number of people, looking for a new roommate, fast.

Miss Marie lives in a very charming, newer house, not far away, with her 2 cats, and as she works in Los Angeles for months at a time, she needs someone whom she trusts her home and her cats to. I immediately sent an email.  “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”

I know Miss Marie through a mutual friend who has seen me through the worst of my addiction and through all of my recovery so I know she has had access to the unvarnished truth about me, but to be sure I shared the information that could give a sensible person pause.  Knowing all that, she didn’t hesitate for a moment.  She thought, as did I, that it would do both of us good.

My probation officer didn’t hesitate either, which is good news.  Miss Marie’s job starts back up the first week of August and I’ll be moving in on the 1st.  We’ll have a couple of days together for me to learn the routine and then I’ll have a few weeks of utter peace.  It is an extraordinary balance of accountability to another, which I find very motivating, and solitude, which I also treasure.

And all placed in my path 5 minutes after praying for guidance in the living situation.

Though I have no conception of “Higher Power” beyond “bigger than I can understand,” perhaps I’d do well to pray more.

Reunion

June 18, 2009 in Perseverance, Spirituality by Chris | 4 comments

It’s been almost 2 years since we were all together.  Grandma’s funeral doesn’t count, but 2 years ago my entire clan got together for a reunion (you can read about here) and we’ll be together again in a couple of days.  For the first time in decades I’ll actually get to SEE my father on Father’s Day.

The place we’re going to is right next to (what my sponsor says is) a great rehab, the Cirque Lodge. Considering my current state I’m not sure that my time wouldn’t be better spent there.  I’m sober.  I haven’t relapsed.  But the people that I’ve talked to assure me that it’s okay that I feel fucked up in the head considering what I’ve been through and the medication that was required.  I’m long off the opiates but my brain still isn’t working right.

Then there is the whole God issue. I went on a “mission” to Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of “Letting Go of the Person You Used to Be” and I think I’m gaining a little bit of peace with the whole “why me?” mind-fuck I’ve been trapped in.  Healing physically certainly is helping, too, and even there I’m FAR from back to normal.

My ribs feel squishy.  They ache.  I get shooting pains and flames in my incisions.  Breathing is still hard; deep breaths. I can’t even describe what that’s like, to take in a deep breath and have half my body feel normal and the other half feel like it’s a different size on the inside.

Maybe being reunited with my father will prompt a little more shift in being reunited with my sense of conscious contact with my HP.  Maybe the scenery will help. Maybe the suggestions in Lama Surya Das’s book will help me let the flame back in.  Maybe I’ll return to my spiritual roots and become an active Mormon again.  I doubt it, but it could happen.

All I know is that as long as I stay sober there is hope that things will get better.  For right now that’s good enough.

Time takes time . . .

April 1, 2009 in Early Recovery From Crystal Meth Addiction, early recovery from smoking, Perseverance by Chris | 9 comments

Probably one of the most important things I learned in early recovery; time takes time.  I was always looking for and expecting to see big changes, and I wouldn’t see any change or sometimes only little ones.  My sponsor would tell me that time takes time.

There is no balm for grief like time.  Even a little time has helped; a little time and beiing a little bit nice to myself.  I wore a shirt with french cuffs today, because I like cuff links.  Men in cuff links make me forget my name. (William Finn’s line.  Not mine.)  I checked QuitNet a bunch of times over the last couple of days to watch the money I’m saving by not smoking add up and watch days be added to my life expectancy.  I even figured out how many hours of life I’ve already gotten to experience by multiplying 5 minutes by the number of cigarettes I haven’t smoked.  Twenty-five hours.  I’ve lived twenty-five hours of my life instead of smoking them.

So I’ve gotten to be more present in my present, even if it’s been sad.  And time is helping.

I remember several occasions when I had significant loss while I was still using crystal meth.  Those feelings of grief never went away; they never resolved till I got sober.  Sure, I could push the pain away while I was high with varying degrees of success, but I never came out the other side.  The grief was always frozen in place, waiting to be reactivated.

It’s easy to think that drinking or using, or even smoking for that matter, would help me cope, but it never helped me cope.  It just kept me frozen in time.

I’m grateful today to be sober, and clean, and smoke free and I’m grateful that time heals.

Great Expectations

February 10, 2009 in Perseverance, Willingness by Chris | 11 comments

Great expectations can have the nasty ability to lead to great dissappointment.

I should have listened to my gut in the first place.  The second time he called while he’d been drinking; I should have pulled the plug then.  I should not have allowed this to continue when part of me was screaming out, “Hey! Hold on a second.  This is not normal.”

I should have, but I didn’t.  It’s so easy to get intoxicated by the idea of not being alone anymore.  It’s so easy to be seduced by the argument that I’m not seeing things in “context”, that what I think I see isn’t really there, that the idea in my head of what I want is just around the corner.  Read the rest of this entry »

My Side of the Mountain

February 1, 2009 in Faith, Perseverance by Chris | 7 comments

After a long and exhausting week I got to give myself a little break yesterday, and slip into a quiet and comfortable coma.  I laid down for a nap at noon, woke up at 9pm, ate, watched a little television, and was asleep again by midnight.

I didn’t get up this morning till 8am.  Picked up a sponsee and we went to a meeting at 10, went out for breakfast and did stepwork till 12:30.  By 2pm I was doing homework, and I just got finished at 10:30.  I went to the QuikeeMart and got a King Size Reese’s NutRageousâ„¢ which I totally feel like I deserve to have.  I’ve deprived myself of candybars for a while now.  I was at my shrink’s office last week and found that in spite of a month of deprivation I haven’t lost an ounce.  Not one.  I am a 224# lard-ass and I’m not going to be a suffering lard-ass.  After that many hours of homework I am going to treat myself with chocolate. Read the rest of this entry »

Ease & Comfort

January 31, 2009 in Perseverance by Chris | 3 comments

On balance it’s probably a good thing that OGL is conveniently located some 600 miles away – helps moderate the disparity between my instinct to run and his instinct to chase.  Kind of like getting two cats to live together peaceably.  Acclimate them slowly.  Take it easy.  Let them get comfortable.

That’s not to say that the bi-polar nature of “immersion dating” someone from out of state is any easier than anything else.

Whatever else it might be, it is an opportunity to grow.  I was talking to a friend about it the other night, one of the drier, more cynical people I know.  He said that the worst case scenario is that I spent $25 to get my dishes washed.  I guess that would put the fact that someone was willing to pay a few hundred dollars to come do my dishes somewhere on the possibility spectrum. Read the rest of this entry »

Hysteria

January 24, 2009 in Perseverance by Chris | 7 comments

I threw my arms in the air and allowed OGL into my cave and, if I were pitching this as a script I would say, “hilarity ensued.”

I sat on the bed in my tiny pied a´ terre burning with shame as my suitor bussied himself doing my dishes.  There was opening of gifts.  More cleaning, this time with participation on my part.  A visit to the meeting where I took my  2 year chip, and then out for pie with 4 of the people I’m closest to in the program and another 12 or so who wanted to come along.

And then home.  My freaked-outness had only minimally subsided. The lights went down.  Candles were lit.  OGL brought them.  He likes extraordinary candles.  We climb in bed together where OGL makes some kind of word sounds that I think were supposed to bring me to earth, I can’t remember, and . . .

my cat goes into heat.

Read the rest of this entry »

Running Up That Hill – 2 Years Sober

January 15, 2009 in Faith, Gratitude, Honesty, Hope, Perseverance, promises, Spirituality by Chris | 12 comments

After taking a coin for my 2nd year sober (today) in a meeting tonight I was surprised to hear descriptions of me as I was during the first part of my recovery.  My first sponsor’s wife said that she had been scared of me.  “Don’t let that freak in my house,” she had told him.  He’s not sober today and she has less than 60 days.  I’m not judging.  I”m just saying.

The book talks about the desperation of a drowning man.  I guess desperate people probably seem a bit crazy, and if I was anything I was desperate. Read the rest of this entry »

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