The Last Chance Texaco

Archive for the ‘Resentment’ 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.

“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 »

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 »

I am beyond furious and my sponsor is out of town.  It happened again.  I finally got last week’s paycheck cashed on Wednesday and today this week’s check bounced.  Obviously, in spite of what my employer says, I need to find a new job. Read the rest of this entry »

A fight breaks out in a slum after a heavy session of whisky, gambling and Ya Ba. The effects of this rather potent form of Methamphetamine are increased aggression, paranoia and then total melt down. Week after week Thai TV channels and the newspapers were showing pictures of drug crazed adults, often with a knife to someones throats. I one instance a man slashed a babies throat killing the child all on TV. Something needed doing until so the Thaksin Government declared a "War On Drugs". Then things got really nasty. (Ya Ba translates from Thai to English as Mad Medicine).

I hate confrontation, but I’m afraid I find myself in a position where I have to have one.  With my boss.

My paycheck bounced.

I’m trying to save up some money so that I can declare bankruptcy and my paycheck is bouncing.  I can’t stand it.  My student loan and my car payments are due as is the bill for the attorney that kept me out of jail two years ago and my “Cost of Supervision” – the surtax I pay for being a dangerous criminal.  It’s Christmas.  And I’m barely getting by.  And my paycheck bounced.  I’m so mad I could spit.

This happened about this time last year, too.

You don’t bounce payroll.  I mean it’s just not done.  It’s probably time for me to be looking for a new job but with unemployment in my area at 3 times what it was 2 years ago, and not having graduated from college and being a felon, the chances of me getting another job at the wage  I currently make are very slim.  It might be a good time to think about going back to school, too, but it’s too late to get financial aid for the spring semester.  Without financial aid it will be impossible for me to go to school.  I already have $10K in student loan debt – what’s another 20 more, right?  If I end up with a decent job that has health insurance? Seriously, I don’t think that will ever happen.  I think I’m stuck where I am.

I’m stuck where I am and I have to talk to my boss about getting paid and worry about when this is going to happen again.  I just hate that.

You know, the whole last year of my recovery I’ve been in the grips of the thought that I should be weller than this by now.  I should be more comfortable in my own skin and the world should somehow be more manageable.  Or if I’m feeling anxious or depressed or fearful or angry there ought to be something I can take to make it go away.  The Big Book is rife with claims that as recovering people we should be happy and I guess the fact that I’m not, or that I haven’t been, makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong; that I am failing at the program.  It doesn’t really register that life is sometimes difficult for everyone.

I’ve been reading an old Grapevine interview with Dr. Paul, the author of “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict” – the story that spawned the Cult of Page 449 (acceptance is the answer) and I really like what he has to say about overcoming stuff like this:

“I grew up thinking that I had to perfect my personality, then I got into AA, and AA said, no, that isn’t the way we do it: only G-d can remove our defects. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t be a better person simply by trying harder! Read the rest of this entry »

“I wish I was smarter.  I wish I was stronger.”   Patty Griffin

It brings me no comfort knowing I’m in a position I’ve been in before; hopeless, out of answers, hurting and not knowing why.  And I am frightened to find that at nearly three years sober, the longest I have been sober since I was 14 years old, my brain is up to the same old tricks that have always ended every period of sobriety I’ve ever reached for in the past.  I recognized that whatever was wrong was seriously wrong when I was sitting in the airport in Phoenix, coming home from another failed attempt to find love, and I found myself crying, listening to the Carpenters and googling “what’s the best way to kill yourself?“

I don’t need a reason to die, I thought.  I need a reason to live.  I have all the reasons to die I need.  The recovery in me kept arguing, “this isn’t normal.  You need help, kid.  What about your family?  What about your friends?  Do you have any idea what this would do to them?”

“Yeah,” I replied inside my head.  “They’ll get over it.” Read the rest of this entry »