I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the new year and wish you well in it.
If he just died I wouldn’t have to take the Al-Anon steps.
That I am not too well at the moment may not be the most obvious thing to those around me, but it is true. I am not too well at all. I have for some time now been trying to conceal the fact that I am enraged; that I wish for the slow and painful death of my enemies. I am so angry that my work is impaired, my life is diminished. I cannot fall asleep and once I do I have a hard time getting up.
I don’t remember being this unhappy at Christmas. Four years ago, maybe, but definitely not since. Maybe I’m just emotional, but God gave us emotions for a reason so I suppose there is something there that I can be growing from. So you’ll excuse me if I rant for a second, right?
I sent my mom off to rehab earlier in the month. My step-dad was trying to figure out a way to get her thrown in jail, but I managed to talk him into rehab and then I had to talk her into going. Hours of screaming. It took hours of screaming. He promised to do several things while she was away and he promised he would attend family week. He has done none of the things he said he would do and he is not attending family week. He is a flaming bag of assholes and I wish he’d die. But if he isn’t going to die, I hope my mom survives divorcing him.
The older of my two sisters has been a raving lunatic for nearly a month, (plus some 40-odd years, but who’s counting) and in spite of the fact that my other sister bought her a plane ticket to fly down from Siberia, she decided not to come and to blame everyone else in my family for causing her to not use her non-refundable ticket.
I have spent an inordinate amount of time defending myself against my step-father’s assertion that I am on the verge of relapse, an idea he is anxious to tell everyone. It is possibly a marijuana induced delusion, but he doesn’t have a problem with pot. He’s just an alcoholic. Ironic, isn’t it? That someone who claims to be sober, but isn’t, would be warning about the imminent relapse of someone who is actually sober?
I realized when I was barely able to keep myself from crying over it at a meeting tonight, that I am already fearing the day that my sponsor dies. He’s 76, I think. He isn’t going to live forever. I hadn’t realized before tonight, though, how strongly I feel love for him.
And just for a wacked twist to everything, I’ll throw this in. I haven’t thought about the Imaginary Future Ex-Husband in a long, long time. He crossed my mind briefly on the 13th which is the anniversary of the night he vanished on me, making my recovery possible, but except for that, he is not part of my consciousness. Tonight I ran into his brother at a meeting. He has been sober for 4 days.
All of these things, and more, have been weighing heavily on me and I have barely been pretending to be normal-ish, and I am only one more disaster away from bursting into tears and running away from home. I feel powerless to change any of it. I feel unable to even change my point of view or my attitude. I am not sure, but I don’t think I’ve been this fucked up in 4 years.
“But what’s to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?”
“No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so deeply and sincerely know yourself.”
-Feodor Dostoievsky, “The Brothers Karamasov”
It hardly seems like the fact that I am distressed is enough. I suppose, however, that it is a beginning of a first step on the situations that face me. I have been trying ‘The Best Short Prayer” for awhile now, and it seems to not yet be working. I suppose if I just said ‘fuck it’ I would get up and go paint my bathroom or something. Pink, I think I have gotten all the hideous wallpaper down so I suppose it is time to do something. There is plenty around here to busy myself ‘doing’ – and in that I might at least find myself ‘being’ productive or distracted. If I found something to do for someone else, like Zossima suggests farther along in the narrative, I might even grow to again have faith in a plan and a purpose for me and a connection to a Higher Power that can solve all my problems.
“But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”
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.
Wow. Here we are 4 years after the day I first saw myself clearly enough, and was in enough pain, to do something about my addiction, and my life today bears almost no resemblance to the life I had before. I am still me, obviously, with all the same flaws and all the same quirks. I just don’t have to act on them the way I once did.
It has been close, though. The last week in particular has been difficult beyond my imagining. The climax was getting my mom “exiled to the hinterlands” (getting her on a plane headed for Minnesota to go to Hazelden) the day before I moved into my new house. I don’t remember having stress like I’ve had that week since I still used. My eye was twitching for a week.
After stalling and missing the first plane, mom finally arrived in Minneapolis just in time for the airport to be closed, and I got moved into my home without too much drama. Only the garage door opener broke and the oven stopped working.
I spent Saturday unpacking and when I was done I went to the supermarket to buy milk. In this new store one has to walk down the wine aisle to get to the dairy – and I have never wanted wine (and a cigarette if you please) more in four years than I did at that moment. Fortunately I know what to do now. And there were people there to be with me.
And like everything else, it passed, and it passed quickly.
Its good to be sober. Its really good to be sober.
Peace.
My favorite cranberry sauce receipe calls for Grand Marnier. Some of my favorite cookies have Galliano in them. Pity. I don’t care what people tell you about “all the alcohol cooks off”. It simply isn’t true. Some small amount of alcohol remains.
Now it isn’t the tiny amount of residual alcohol that remains that concerns me. No, my real concern is over the act of going to a liquor store and purchasing liquor and then having liquor in my house. I imagine that I could do it and be fine, but I’d rather not find out for sure; not so long as there are reasonable substitutes that are available.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
On November 29th, 2007 is was 10 months and some days sober and in training for a job at McDonald’s; a job which, it turns out, I was barely capable of doing, my brain still healing from the years and years of crystal meth I did.
Ultimately I wasn’t even able to keep that job. At nearly a year sober I was still so fried that I could barely do anything but focus on my recovery; pray, meditate, write, work with a sponsor, go to meetings, etc. I imagine that most other people’s stories aren’t like that, even the stories of isolated, gay crystal meth addicts. I fell down the scale much farther than was necessary for me to be able to see that I was an addict. I just didn’t have enough motivation to do anything about it. I had given up and I had no hope that it would ever be better, so why not just stay high.
I imagine that other people’s stories aren’t as extreme as mine, but for me, getting to the place where I could hold down a job was a big deal. After a year sober I was given a scooter, which helped me get to a better job and hold that.
At 2 years, I got a car. A really decent car. Probably the best car I’ve ever had, and certainly the safest and most economical.
That was almost exactly 2 years ago. In between I’ve held down the same job, maintained the same residence (with a roommate who is out of town 8 months a year), keep the same phone number, buy the business I worked for and manage to not drive it into the ground. It hasn’t made any money but it has given a decent living to all of us who work there and in this economy that is a minor miracle in itself.
I’m a little less than 2 months away from my 4th sobriety anniversary and a few days longer that 2 years after the purchase of my car, and I have been given the opportunity to buy a house. Of course I don’t qualify for the home loan on my own, but my parents are very fortunately situated so the financing is taken care of. Still, honestly, I didn’t believe I’d ever get to own a house.
It’s a cute little mid-century (1959) ranch with 3 bedrooms, one bath, oak floors, a fireplace, on a quarter acre with a stone, wood-burning BBQ, apple trees, plum trees, and roses everywhere. There are no repairs the house needs. It has been beautifully maintained.
The only thing I’ve really done perfectly is not drink or use. I have been awake whenever the idea that “this time will be different” would sneek into my mind and vigilantly dismiss the thought as insane. I have done the best I can with what is in front of me – much of the time. I have learned a ton, but never by doing it right the first time. I have made every possible mistake along the way.
I’m not suggesting at all that if you stay sober for 4 years you’ll get a house. I am saying that if you stay sober, if you actually fix your life, everything will change. And even though some things will suck, and some things will hurt, and some things will set you back, your life will change for the better.
Perhaps the best thing I’ve done for my recovery in a long time is to start to sponsor a practicing Buddhist. It has added a sense of urgency for me to revisit all that 2nd & 3rd step stuff that I’ve struggled with ever since my surgery.
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