7th Step

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Chief Activator – Super-Villain

June 7, 2010 in Fear, relationships, Shortcomings by Chris | 8 comments

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 »

Stark Raving Sober

April 3, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 7 comments

First of all, thank God for the steps! I wouldn’t be able to tell this story without them. I wouldn’t because I would be trapped in the story; sucked in to the familiar familial drama of the tree from which this nut fell.

Last Friday night I had dinner with my sister and her two boys, my brother and his growing family and my aunt and uncle. I don’t remember the last time all of us were together to break bread. I was especially happy to see my sister as she is moving to Iowa City this month where her husband is doing his fellowship. Other times this opportunity has presented itself I have been way too strung out to show up. Seeing me would have been more painful than not seeing me. So to be able to show up for my family, sober, happy and present, was really wonderful for me.

As the sister and children of an alcoholic and her husband, though, the conversation took a dark turn almost from the very beginning and mostly stayed there. My family has been very protective of me and very supportive. Knowing the seriousness of my effort and knowing the gravity of my mother’s condition, they have been vigilant about not disclosing any specifics of my life to my mother. They have never passed along my phone number which she has asked for several times. They only answer her questions about how I am in the most general way. And perhaps more importantly, they spare me the details of the insanity going on in mom’s luxurious little rabbit hole.

I had no difficulty sloughing off the story of her arrest in her own driveway a couple of months ago. The scene that had been described to me was really nothing out of the ordinary – except that there happened to be police at her home at the time. I actually took a little (guilty) pleasure from it, particularly since part of her ranting had been about them harassing her when there were people like me out on the street. At dinner, though, the scene was illuminated more fully and details of the continuing downward spiral were revealed. It was not the police at her home, not in the usual sense, but rather the S.W.A.T. team. More recently there have been public urination accidents, car accidents, accidental falls down escalators resulting in knee replacement surgery, accidental falls at home leaving her husband with his femur broken in two places and passed out on the floor until the maids came in and found him (when he was admitted in the ER his BAC was .38).

By all outside appearances the gates of insanity have swung wide open and my mom and her husband have passed through, sprinted up the walk, gone through the front door, fixed themselves some drinks and gotten comfortable. For three days afterward I hoped that death wouldn’t be far behind. I imagined ways it might happen. I tried to figure out if you could get a wheel chair over the Lido deck and if a life preserver would be visible at night.

This time it only sucked me in for a couple of days. I was spared any direct contact with the dark side. All I had to endure was a 30 hour headache, an evening of plotting a final scene to the tragedy, and a few hours of step work and in return I was given a miracle, a change in perspective and the 4th step promise of being able to view my mother and her husband as spiritually sick and to think of them with compassion. Genuine compassion. I actually discussed with my sponsor ways that I might be able to be helpful to them without placing myself in the eye of the hurricane. On principle he agreed but we both though it would be better to talk to his sponsor and his sponsor’s sponsor who happens to know my parents and had parents like them.

After becoming willing to send people to my mom’s house to see if she needed anyone to go to the store or make dinner or bring in the mail I was given specific direction about cleaning up my part of this insanity in my head and in my mom’s life:

“‘Fuck off’ is an amend.”

I can live with that. I’m grateful that I was given the change in perspective from resentment to compassion. And I’m grateful to know that the most compassionate thing I can do is allow them to be on their own path.

Grand Illusion

March 23, 2008 in Hope by Chris | 11 comments

swc-index2.jpgThere is a light at the end of the tunnel.
The light is not an illusion.
The tunnel is.
-unknown

I noticed this sign above the door of a meeting I occasionally go to and it just struck me. It seemed profound enough, but it wasn’t till I woke up this morning and read Sweet Pea’s post where she said, “secrets. they thrive in the darkest recesses of my mind and heart,” that I began to see the truth in the idea that the tunnel is an illusion.

I don’t know very many people, even the most spiritual or religious people, who come into the rooms of recovery, that have something resembling a useful and healthy relationship with a power greater than themselves that they understand to be infinite love. That was definitely true for me. I came in with a pretty traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of the Celestial Father, the one I hear some people call the ‘bearded, bean counting, lightning bolt throwing bastard in the sky’. Sure, He was loving and merciful to those who groveled for his forgiveness, but there were things he wouldn’t forgive and I was pretty sure it was me – radical faggot political activist drug addicted rebel that I am. In the difference I perceived between me and everything else I perceived darkness and isolation.

Though it was never said in so many words, I was under the impression that God didn’t like little boys who wanted to grow up to be Mahalia Jackson and to bury their face in Parker Stevenson’s arm pit, which is a shame, really. People like me especially need God. In a world where getting love and acceptance from the closest members of your family is problematic, God can mean the difference between life and death. As a youngster I didn’t understand that my church turning it’s back on me was not the same as God turning His back on me and I responded in kind. I turned my back on God and began to move farther into the illusion of separateness from All that Is.

I realize now that experiencing this separation is part of the human condition; that “our stories align at the core, if not in the sorry details.” The book talks about alcoholics and addicts being extreme examples of living according to this illusion. It talks about self-will run riot, of problems being of our own making and arising in our selves, of a spiritual malady that centers in our minds. It also suggests that people like me reaching out for help need to choose between God being everything or nothing; at a certain point we have to accept spiritual help if we are to recover.

Many forms of spiritual instruction and many forms of religion inform my journey, one of them recently being A Course in Miracles. I am attracted to the course largely because at it’s core it talks about what we talk about in AA and in similar, almost identical, terms. It talks about God being everything. It says that what blocks us from God is a barrier created out of our own mind. It says “a cloud does not put out the sun.”

The tunnel is an illusion.

The light is not.

The tunnel is made out of me. “Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us!”

I found God in AA. I found God when I was finally “beaten into a state of reasonableness”; when I finally got still enough to listen. And that is where I continue to find Him; in the quiet space in between the demands of living a “productive” life in the material world. Demands on my time have increased and finding, or setting aside, enough time to get still has been challenging recently. I experience it as anxiety, frustration, sadness. I experience it as separation; as the tunnel. I wonder what people want from me and I wonder how my needs will be met. I forget that the real question is “what does God expect from me?”

As you already know, I am not particularly Christian. The God I have come to know through AA is described to me most perfectly in Hindu tradition as “the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe.” But the symbolism of Easter is not lost on me. It really is the sacrifice of self that leads to eternal life, freedom from bondage, salvation and enlightenment.

Happy Easter, friends.

What if I Was Truly Full?

January 18, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 10 comments

Ambler's Texaco - Rt. 66 “I wonder what it would be like if I really lived like I knew everything was going to be all right. Or if I really lived like I knew at all times I was loved and am love. Or if I really lived like I knew that I had access to a power that is unlimited and can do anything. I was considering it as I was making it through another cacophonous few minutes in my life where my thoughts were doing a victim conga line in my mind. I just know that life is not meant to be this way. But I also keep forgetting.” – My Agapic Life

We alcoholics and addicts seem to be especially endowed with that; with forgetfulness. In the absence of a complete restructuring of our psyches most of us have a difficult time telling the difference between what is objectively real and what is only real in our minds. At least that has been my experience. I forget that the underlying fabric of the universe is a part of me. I forget that my finite self as marshaled by my will is insufficient to solve my problems. And every time I forget those things I place myself a little farther away from Grace and a little closer to Destruction. Every time I forget to pick up the tools and balk at the work that leads me toward my Creator, I suffer. Every time I suffer, I forget that it is temporary.

On good days, on days I remember to pray, on days that I do an honest 10th step, the consciousness of the Love and Presence of my Creator is clearer to me. I seem, however, to go along in life thinking that I’m doing it; I’m carrying the message, my life is becoming manageable (ish) and I remain focused on the work I have already done. Inevitably something throws an unexpected log in my path and I have to exhaust myself trying to move it on my own.

The couple of things recently that have been particularly troublesome both involve entitlement. They involve my ego telling me that I should be treated differently, that I’m special, that I deserve better and they both involve the real (or I suppose imagined) wrongdoing of others. Good evidence suggests that doing the work provides me with a path to at least, at least, take a kindly and tolerant view. Yet, here I am, balking at the work.

I’ve been balking for some time on doing the work of my sex inventory. I had written so much on the other aspects of my fellationship with the IFX and in so doing had been relieved of so much of the pain that has plagued me these many months. It was a new harm, or rather just rudeness, that has prompted me to wallow in self-pity and animosity and to allow myself to forget that God can solve that problem, too. Stepping off the “I flippin’ deserve to be treated better than that” treadmill for only a moment allows me to see that there is a solution to the problem, yet I have been unwilling to take the necessary action. I’ve been enjoying the treadmill.

I have an astonishing need to be right, to be attended to and to receive the approval and acceptance of others. I have marched around being ‘right’ and soliciting endorsement of my ‘rightness’ since December. I have wallowed in my ‘rightness’ to such an extent that I went home from a meeting a couple of nights ago, climbed in bed at 7 o’clock and cried myself to sleep. I have considered ditching all my friends and changing all my meetings. I have half talked myself into believing that the only solution is to move away. By failing to pick up the tools I am hardly acceptable. It is hardly what God would have me do. I don’t approve of it and cannot expect others to approve, either. I forget that a little willingness goes a long, long way in this program. I forget where I put the willingness to act in faith until I’m out of ideas and have nowhere to turn but to God.

The other area I still think I can manage on my own stems from my indignation about the copyright to my work being infringed upon by an organization with a paid staff and whom I have offered a license to use my work for free but who have not complied with that simple request. Instead their paid staff are insisting that I spend my unpaid time to

“submit a notification pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) by providing our Copyright Agent with the following information in writing (see 17 U.S.C. Section 512(c)(3) for further detail)”

This is an arduous and time consuming task. Not only that, but they also assert that

“The compilation of all content on this site is the exclusive property of (unnamed site) and protected by U.S. and international copyright laws.”

All they had to do was ask me. That one bit of “I deserve to be treated better” has disturbed my serenity enough for me to march around being ‘right’ about that, too.

To some extent, perhaps even to a great extent in each of these situations, I am right. I do deserve better. I am worth more. It is not my ‘fault’. My fault lies in being miserable about it. My fault lies in the idea that I can manage these things without the steps and without God. I just know that my life isn’t meant to be this way, that I have a spiritual answer to these problems, that I do not have to suffer over things like this or to allow them to cut me off from the ‘sunlight of the Spirit’. I have unlimited access that connects me to the fullness and grace of my limitless and loving Creator.

But, I also keep forgetting.

Ambler’s Texaco Gas Station, originally uploaded by jimfrazier. www.dwightillinois.com/history.htm

Signs of Damage

January 6, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 6 comments

Texaco SignsI am a head injury patient. I am. There is hardly another explanation. I sat in a meeting and shared about it and of course I was told to work the steps. Of course there is some truth in that, truth I sometimes ignore out of an objective bias against people who ‘work’ steps rather than ‘take’ them. One ‘takes’ steps on a journey. Just the same I did listen and there is truth in the idea that some of the symptoms of traumatic head injury are also the symptoms of pathological selfishness displayed by addicts and alcoholics.

I’m back at work at the Clown Palace and grateful to have a job after my dramatic exit a few weeks ago. I’m especially grateful because I really need the (pitiful) income to keep a roof over my head, food in the fridge and the liberty to remain as involved as I am in working (there’s that damn word) for my recovery. I had my schedule. I recalled that I was supposed to go to work on Wednesday at 6 or 8 o’clock. Knowing that with that schedule the only meeting I would be able to attend would be the noon, which I went to. At noon. When I was actually supposed to be at work. I didn’t even realize this until 4 o’clock when I checked to see if it was 6 or 8. Of course I went to the 5:30 and ran into my boss who blessedly told me not to worry about it. I made sure I was there on time the rest of the week. I have checked and I have verified that I work tomorrow at 2 o’clock. I think. Yes. 2 o’clock. Very well then.

In addition to not remembering times and schedules I have had particular trouble with numbers, adding and subtracting, and especially if that includes fractions. I’ve ruined, well damaged, really, three meals in the last two weeks by not being able to add fractions correctly. I know how to add fractions, for crying out loud. So lately I’ve been struggling with anything related to dealing with numbers.

Historically I’ve had more trouble with names, both proper and common. I never remember actors names, even the ones I like. I have names in my cell phone for people I don’t remember. I don’t recall ever having met a Susan in my life and yet her name is in my phone. I have often forgotten what “that stuff” with “those things” are really called. “What?” and “where?” are the kind of stupid questions I would ask more often if I had not learned to wait a beat and allow the understanding to percolate to the surface.

I was pleased to learn that this phenomena is scientifically documented by much smarter people than me. It is encouraging to learn that in two more years the healing that can take place likely will have taken place. And I believe it is taking place, in spite of the symptomology I’m experiencing. I believe it’s taking place because last night, for the first time in probably 5 years, I suddenly remembered the name of the man I lost my virginity to. (There’s another stupid word. ‘Lost’. I didn’t lose it. I threw it away. I turned my back on it and pretended I didn’t know what it was.)

I’m taking that as a sign from God. Now that I have a point of origin I can start my sex inventory.

Photo Credit: Texaco signs, originally uploaded by naterade81.

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