The Last Chance Texaco

Archive for the ‘Shortcomings’ Category

I guess one way to get a site redesign done is to get motivated by being hacked.  There are still things I’d like to change but I think I’m on the right track; and I really like the header photo.  God bless those stock photo agencies.

In the old days I would have just gotten mad and deleted the whole thing.  Or dicked around with it until it was dead.  It must say something about recovery if I find that I am able to look at the problem, work on a solution, and then execute the solution.  A design for living that works in tough going, right?

It hasn’t hurt either that I’ve been stuck in bed for a couple of days with an ear infection.  The antibiotics are kicking in and I’m beginning to feel much better.  The other health problem I am addressing, or readdressing, is the whole smoking thing.  I was actually off cigarettes again when I started dating that freak, who said he didn’t smoke, but did, and I’m afraid that I started smoking again.  Every time I fail at quitting, trying again gets a little bit harder.

This time I’m trying Chantix.  I’ve used a lot of outside help with my recovery from crystal meth addiction, so why shouldn’t I do the same with smoking?  I’m 1270 days off methamphetamines.  Hopefully I can get that last monkey off my back.

I’m still not willing to give up on the idea of a relationship, regardless of the reaming I received at the hands of my probation officer because she elected to believe a pack of lies she heard from a sociopath.  (At the end of the lecture I asked her, knowing what she knows about addiction, who she really believed; someone who was sober or someone with a pending DUI.  Of course she demanded a UA – which I passed.)

Back to the holding out for love.  Maybe it will happen.  Maybe it won’t.  But I’m not going to let this experience poison me on the idea.  And I’m not going to get high over it.

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 »

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.

Most of my family came to town for Peter’s funeral.  The night they arrived, my sister, her husband and 3 children, my brother, his wife and three children, my mother, my step-father, my step-sister, my aunt and I went out for dinner.  Only my sister in Alaska wasn’t able to make it.  It wasn’t an entirely sad occasion.  I did notice that John, my step-father, had to step out a couple of times to regain his composure.  For the most part, though, it was a pretty nice evening, breaking bread with each other and remembering Peter.

Afterward my aunt and I grabbed some coffee at Starbuck’s and went to her house to talk; commiserate really.  She is in the throes of a very nasty divorce from a man I usually refer to as “Skid Mark” – and I’m licking my wounds at having chosen so poorly again.  We both choose poorly.  We have histories of choosing poorly.  After awhile she confessed to me with tears in her eyes that she is afraid of becoming the “crazy old aunt.  The hanger on.  The one the kids are afraid of.”  I could completely identify.  I hope the worst case is that I become the eccentric, fun uncle; the one the parents are a little worried about but that the kids love.  And I guess it could happen.

And all that, particularly the disappearance of the Man Who Never Was, got me thinking about the last part of the 7th step. Read the rest of this entry »

“Many of us needed an overhauling there.  But above all, we tried to  be sensible on this question.  It’s so easy to get way off the track.”  Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 69

And some of us more than others, apparently.  After taking a good, long time off  from any semblance of serious dating, dating with the intention of finding a Lifetime Companion, I find that regardless of the work I have done, my “picker” is still broken.  I still find myself attracted to the sickest of the sick.  If it is true that water seeks it’s own level that isn’t saying much about my progress, is it?  Luckily I’ve been buoyant enough to bounce happily right out of the last debacle.

In the part of the Big Book that discusses our Sex Inventory we find the word “ideal” or “ideals” mentioned five times; five times in four paragraphs.

1. In this way we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life.
   
2. We asked God to mold our ideals and help us to live up to them.
3. Whatever our ideal turns out to be, we must be willing to grow  toward it.
4. Suppose we fall short of the chosen ideal and stumble?
   
5. We earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, and for the strength to do the right thing. Read the rest of this entry »

“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 »

Deep down at the bottom of happy, joyous and free lies fear; fear that if I were ever to throw my sobriety away I might never get it back.   It seems the older we get, the more times we relapse, the harder it is to come back and fully embrace recovery.  I suspect that, as with a drug, I would want getting sober again to feel like the first time.  I would want to feel the magic, and I don’t know how one could.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that, as a class, those of us in 12 Step programs die with incredible regularity. Read the rest of this entry »

I think I hate being in therapy.  I mean, they make you look at yourself!  And who wants to do that?  I thought I’d done well enough having gotten through the 4th step and, after all, I’m still sober.  I guess that isn’t entirely true.  After an hour and a half with Anita yesterday I realized that I still have a bunch of work to do on a resentment I didn’t think I harbored any longer.  A resentment toward my  mother.   Oh my God!  Can’t we just put that behind us already?  It’s bad enough that I feel like I’ve lost all the passion in my life, and lost it long ago, but to have this still be the thing that is blocking me is beyond the pale. Read the rest of this entry »