Willingness

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Day 3 – “Just one more day.”

March 22, 2009 in early recovery from smoking, Gratitude, Service, Willingness by Chris | 6 comments

Joe hasn’t been home in 3 days now, but he’s been seen and he’s terrible.  He’s every horrible thing you can imagine about someone who has relapsed on heroin (or other heavy narcotics).  His phone is dead so he can’t call anyone.  Jake gave him my number but he refuses to call because he’s still angry with me.  I guess he hates hearing the truth.  He also told Jake that he’s going to keep using “just one more day” before he asks for help.

How many times have I said that?  I’ve said that every day for years at a time.

I also see that I’ve been pretty codependent with my relationship with Joe.  I’ve been possessed by the delusion that I have something to offer him that will rescue him and that it’s my job to save him.  I got it today that I can’t save him, and that it’s not my job to save him.  I also recognized that it may have been impossible for me to be very other centered considering how sick I’ve been for so long.  (I’m hearing now that I’m not the only one who has had this particular horrible stomach virus and that the fact that it took nearly two weeks to be rid of is par for the disease’s course.)  Being that sick for that long didn’t leave me with much, and I may personally have failed Joe, but by the same token, the program didn’t fail Joe.  Joe failed the program.

In spite of all that I’ve made it, sort of, through just one more day without cigarettes.  That is not a completely honest statement.  I smoked half a cigarette this morning.  The smoking cessation literature that I’ve read has made a careful delineation between what they called a “slip” and a “relapse”.  This morning I had a slip.  I’m back on task.  I have renewed commitment.  I’m aware that I made a choice to smoke that cigarette, and I know why I made that choice, and I know how I’m going to handle that situation, which I am sure I’ll face again, the next time I face it.

Another of my sponsees came over this morning to do his 5th step.  He had been as thorough as he is capable of being right now.  I told him to go home, open up his book to the instructions for the 6th and 7th steps, and to do that, then give me a call.  Two hours later he showed back up at my house with tears in his eyes and reported what the experience had been like for him.  Everything he described was exactly what the experience was like for me.

And at that moment, I got it that this isn’t about me.  I may fall back into serious selfishness because of illness or because I have fallen prey to the delusion that I can save someone.  But I cannot save anyone, not even myself.  All I can do is be willing to do whatever I need to do to nurture my recovery and to show up for those who ask for help the same way people showed up for me when I was ready to ask for help.

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 »

Me, Myself, and You

January 21, 2009 in Willingness by Chris | 13 comments

Right after the Manhunt experiment, I tried another experiment that I didn’t talk about.  The OGL experiment.  On facebook I’m bombarded by advertising for dating sites and one of them intrigued me, largely because the name of the site was so toned down.  That, and the fact that they had a one month, non-recurring trial membership.  $25.00 – If I waste $25.00 and nothing happens  that’s totally fine, know what I mean.  Fine.  Not that I’m in the habit of throwing money away, but.

We always think of love being fantastic, right.  In movies we talk about “the ONE” and we use words and phrases like “soul mate”, and “my other half,” and “my better half.”  We fight for equal access to civil marriage.  For “the man who never was” the “hole in my heart goes all the way to China (Monette).” Read the rest of this entry »

A Million Miracles

January 13, 2009 in Ephemera, Gratitude, Humility, Perseverance, Service, Willingness by Chris | 9 comments

I feel kind of petty for making a fuss over my upcoming AA birthday.  Two years is nothing.  I went Saturday to the celebration of someone’s quinquagenary in recovery.  Fifty years is a whole lot of “one day at a time”.  If you’ve eveer been afraid that no one will show up at your funeral, stick around and stay active in 12 step recovery for awhile.

If you’ve never been to a big conference or convention or a big sobriety anniversary celebration then you may have never experienced participating in a “sobriety countdown.”  Typically everyone already knows who has been sober the longest in the crowd.  Easily the case at this party as, to my knowledge, no one in Boise, Idaho has been sober longer than “Big” Barry W.  So the countdown starts at 50.  Then they ask for anyone who has been sober 49 years to stand.  48?  47?  Someone stood at 46 years and was counted. 45? 44? For every year 43 and lower at least one person, and usually more, stood up.  As the years got lower more people stood and more people stood till they had to start asking people to stay standing so they could get them counted.  Read the rest of this entry »

Conversion – Honesty, Open-Mindedness, Willingness, and the Nativity

December 28, 2008 in Honesty, Spirituality, Willingness by Chris | 8 comments

I am a product of Western Civilization.  I occasionally joke that I am in recovery from Western Civilization.  I am still occasionally sarcastic.  But I am a product of my dominant culture and as much as I pretend to resist it that means that I am the product of a Judeo-Christian tradition.

I am also a product of being raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormon Church.  A childhood steeped in and a lifetime spent around certain ideas makes a permanent impression on one’s character.  I am not a practicing Mormon, obviously, but what I valued in my childhood closely mirrors what I value today, and if you’ve ever seen Temple Square at Christmastime or seen the Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas special, you know that Mormons do Christmas like few other churches, except the Roman Catholic, can. Read the rest of this entry »

A little “thank you” prayer that it all turned out this way

December 14, 2008 in Gratitude, Honesty, promises, Willingness by Chris | 14 comments

It was in the early hours of the morning of the day after my birthday two years ago that I was given my first step.  It didn’t feel much like a gift at the time, but that’s exactly what it was; a gift of grace.

Out of money and out of drugs, stood up on my birthday by the boy I was obsessed with, and hurt, and more afraid than I have ever been, I had set out to hunt down the object of my obsession and get fixed.  There wasn’t anything I was feeling that smoking a gram or two of crystal meth with a handsome sociopath who called me “buddy” wasn’t going to fix.  At least for awhile.  At least through the night. Read the rest of this entry »

Holiday on Lies

December 12, 2008 in Service, Willingness by Chris | 7 comments

Marc suggested that I start going to Al-Anon eons ago, even before this round of insanity began.  But since I’ve decided that I’ve been sober long enough now, and that it is what I believe my creator would have me do, I plan on being involved in my mom’s life, I think it’s also time that I actually add Al-Anon to the regemin.

I got up the other morning to the news that mom had been arrested the night before for DUI and leaving the scene of an accident.  After talking to other members of my family I learned much more.  My brother and I went to her house with the intent of talking her into going to treatment.  That was wildly unsuccessful.  My step-dad is talking about getting her committed; something I’ve been thinking about for at least the last 3 years.

She said the cops wrecked her car.  She said she doesn’t take pills.  She said she almost never drinks.  She said if we had any idea what she’s been through we’d understand.

The thing is, I do understand.  I understand all too well.  I know that she has no more idea about why she does what she does than I did.  She just isn’t ‘there’ yet.  I finally am there with regard to Al-Anon.

I’m getting over a horrible cold and it’s almost impossible to write when you’re sick.

Do I now, or am I even willing to?

November 26, 2008 in Honesty, Humility, Integrity, Willingness by Chris | 4 comments

I’m trying a little expirement in extreme practice of the principles in a specific area of my life that I requires specific behavior that very, very few people, addict or no, ever do.

Am I above the law?  The practice of humility requires that I answer no to that question.  And if I am not above the law then practice of the principle of willingness requires me to follow all laws.  Am I humble enough and am I willing enough to follow all laws?  Am I able to practice enough integrity that I can apply the answer to those questions to the small things as well as the large?  Can I practice honesty enough to be really conscious of what that all means?

Do I now, or am I even willing to . . . always observe the speed limit? Read the rest of this entry »

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