Tuesday, March 8, 2011

fun for me.


Growth Spruts.

What a lovely day and how grateful I am to have been a part of it. One thing that recovery allows me or empowers me to do is to be able to be truly emotionally invested in another person and to feel their success as they happen and of course the mishaps. My friend Frankie is closing in on her first year after many years of trying to get the "One day at a time" thing down. Jamie and her Daughter celebrated Mardi Gras and wore these hats that were so colorful my eyes tickled. There are so many people, people I know by name that are trying so hard to live and love differently that I am inspired to try another day.
The more I talk and get to know addicts the more I am leveled by the facts that we are all terrified to make mistakes and "failing", and we are so hard on ourselves when it comes to accepting love.

My sponsor was the first person who told me "We love you just the way you are" in a way that I really heard it and believed him. I was complaining about someone sharing at a meeting that came off to me like a low low end televangelist earlier tonight. The fact is a lot of people vibe to him. Regardless of what I think of him I would never say he wasn't welcome in a meeting and I wouldn't try to get my little group to run him out. Besides the miracle of addicts living without using, the other miracle is the program was set up in a way the "principles before personality" saves us from ourselves. No one person can be so "right" that we run someone else out.

And what that really means to me is , I can go in and be myself and they can't make me leave if they don't like me. lol  For someone with social anxiety like mine, that social cushion of having a spot regardless regardless of group opinion of me makes me feel safe. I have to feel safe in order to grow. I wasn't safe growing up and I shut down to protect myself.  I try my hardest to make new people feel safe when they come in. I try to do for them what I needed and need today.
  All my life I just wanted to feel F E E L cared for. I get it today for a dollar a meeting and a little service on the side.lol

Highlight from behind this door of Facebook this week so far.

I'll try not to soap box here, but as children in America we are filled with a big line of BullShit where it comes to succeed succeed, win win , we're number one, we're number one. It sat up a fear in me so that I would rather avoid and not try than be labeled failure or looser. In the scheme of spirits on the planet there isn't such thing as failure. One way gives you this circumstance and lessons to learn and the other way gives you another set.
------------------------

Failure isn't fatal. In fact I'm not even sure it is failure. Only time will tell. Post it notes were developed from a highly anticipated epoxy that "failed" technically.-
---------------------

It was a momentous (not being a jerk here) day when I figured out I could learn from someone elses experience. I remember the folding chair I was sitting in at a Lambda AA meeting in Dallas. I believe someone growing up that told me "You just have to learn everything the hard way for yourself , Clinton). It was a big moment in my life when I saw that blond highlights really wouldn't work on someone with my coloring. Thank God, that tired queen showed me the way to learning from your mistakes.
I really did have that revelation in a Lambda meeting but it wasn't hair related.
---------------------------


It's hard for me to conceptualize how drawn I was to pills before I even new what they did or could . It wasn't like I had seen someone take one and trip out in front of me. It was just something that adults had that I wanted to be a part of. Maybe I didn't put two and two together like the antibiotic and earache eraser, but my genes are filled with old school drugs, maybe that was activated for me by DNA.
-------------------------------------------

When Britney Spears was buzzing her head and melting down, a hayseed friend of hers from Louisiana was interviewed about what she thought of Brits behavior and she came up with the "I think she has to fall apart a little so she can come back stronger". I honestly think she made that up on the spot. and new I had heard a universal law of spirit when she said it. She was right, Britney Spears did come back stronger and she came back a woman with life experience. I live in an unofficial "Antiques Capital of East TEXAS" and the thing that makes those pieces valuable to people that like antiques, is that they have withstood the test of time. Our experience, strength and hope are the only things that make up valuable as members of planet. I can compliment your on your shirt all day, but that isn't going to help you get through the day when all you want to do is medicate the fact your feel like dying... It's really the first time I feel like I have something of worth to offer anyone.. I love having a sense of purpose.

My love affair with pharmaceuticals.

It really IS that big.

by Clinton Rolen Gandy on Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 7:27am
Someone in the house was going through a junk drawer and found an old pill bottle of mine. It originally held a couple months of lithium I think. The bottle got moved from the draw to the counter top, in it's eventual trip to the garbage can. When I saw this GIANT pill bottle , to be truthful I felt an initial jolt of excitement. Kind of like when you see a good looking naked person for the first time. Just a tiny jolt of tititlation. It was a little like Pill Porn.
In my head I was suddenly back to being really little and I would carry sweet tarts in pill bottles and take "medicine" when I ate candy. I also love to carry coins/change in old pill bottles. Flintstones vitamins tasted like a slightly fucked up Sweet Tarts and I wanted to eat the whole bottle. If one a day was good then two or three--even better. At 4 or 5 I learned I was old enough for a headache and that meant asprin and attention. I don't think they make it but there was this Aspergum that was the best come I ever chewed.

Alice in Wonderland, the cartoon film, had the beautiful glowing liquid that said "Drink Me" and then the magic started.
I made the connection super super early (by 5) that pills were magic and they could do something for me that I couldn't do on my own. I had constant ear infections and I knew as day after I started taking the grey and purple antibiotic my ear ache would magically go away while I slept.
I was and am the product of the pill generation. They can save you from depression, relax you to the point you don't care if your own hair is on fire and it can make an 80 year old penis do tricks like it was a teenager.
But mostly what pills do for me is they treat symptoms without addressing the root causes. Pills mask the illness while they entertain the symptom.
I know today, just for today, there isn't a pill coming down the turn pike that will make me happy, pretty, thin or intellengent. Bradly Cooper has a new film coming out about a pill that makes you perfect and I laughed when I saw the trailer for it because the pill is very small and completely clear and it looks like something I would take ten of , because the dose was based on a normal person's size with the weight of 165lbs, and I'm nearly double that.lol (see what deal with daily)

So , this big ass amber/brown pill bottle has caused quite a little theatrical production in my head since I spotted it on the counter.. Is it wrong I want to fill it with skittles. LOL
I bought into my pill fascination long before I took what I would consider a "real Pill", like a pharmaceutical clairvoyant at 4 years old.....

I was a weird kid. I toted candy like pills and when no one was around I played "Alcoholic", "Mommy Needs a Drink". But that is another story for another day.

Keep passing the open windows!
Clinton.