Tuesday, April 30, 2013

I spent my first Saturday trying to properly heard 16 adolescents in treatment. The level on awareness to stay on top of all the moves and noise , wore my ass out. I took a 3 hour nap when I got home. I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night , I got up at 5am after laying down at midnight. I was paranoid I would over sleep on my first real day as an employee not "officially" in training. I did not make it to the gym tonight and I had to get my NA meeting covered by someone else. Instead of wasting time beating myself up over no gym, I'm just going to give myself a break and let it go. I'm paranoid if I don't do things perfectly right, I will be consumed by what ever it is I fear happening.

I'm watching Shawshank on a marathon and because of my super nap and the subject matter, I find that my heart is very full and warm. Relationships formed when you are in the lifeboat with someone else are incredibly special. I'm friends with you because I will be consumed by insanity if you are not here with me. Interdependence, is what we were designed for, not solo existence. "Hope is a good thing".

Hope is very hard to find when you lose it. If it is gone long enough, you forget there is/was ever such a thing and the dark becomes the norm.  
This is probably journal stuff but.... I have been really rocked by the death of our recovery friend. I'm a little stunned at the fact I can't stop turning it around and over in my head. I have first hand experience with having years clean and then slipping away into the darkness of relapse. The insidious thing about an addict in relapse is the disease robs all the memory of recovery ever working, of having friends of, having purpose.  It's as if it never existed at all, just leaving a World Trade Center size hole in your spirit and your only vaguely aware that something, some something used to fill that spot but with what you are unsure. You discover a new darkness, a new despair a new fresh depth of nothingness every moment your eyes are open. You can not see the hands reaching to help you, you cannot comprehend the concept of hope. I don't know if it was luck, divination or mere chance that the last time I ended up in this condition, spiritually dead and shut down, I heard the voice a man that was paid to take care of me in the mental hospital. He managed to wake up the dead part of me and I remembered who I was. The NA showed me the path to sanity and peace. I guess our friend never had that opportunity, no one was paid to wake him up and none of us could.  I will remember him and his recovery when it was alive and well and deliciously off beat. He is yet another heartbreaking cautionary tale about separating from the herd for whatever reasons I may think are valid. The further I get from you, the closer I am to forgetting who I am. When that happens it's only a matter of moments before the dark descends and I forget you were even here and that I ever saw light, and that anything ever mattered.

Monday, April 29, 2013


One year and 83 pounds later............I can't believe I have a gym membership. Someone a fat queen is grabbing her chest and yelling no.......

Thursday, April 25, 2013

That was a tough one.

I came face to face today with a caldron of pain that I sat fire three years ago. The last time I saw my Stepmother was 3 or 4 years ago. In a Xanax fueled rage I fired off several searing , scathing, bitter emails to her unleashing my father's secrets and any dagger I could hurl to hurt her. White hot venom spewed in me and hurt burned through me like a Salem Witch back in the day. I was angry, not just angry at her and the way she did or did not play a part in the ending of my parents 33 year marriage, I was taking out my anger at my dad on her too.
I was stunned today to find an old woman living in my fathers house. Her face completely shifted and gnarled. She had no makeup on so I caught her in a moment of non-concealment. I was just stunned and frightened that she had such a darkness about her, a dark unrecognizable distorted countenance. 

I knew from instruction what I could say and what I couldn't.
 I was only permitted to say I apologize for injecting so much pain and confusion into your life with my words. An excuse  would only invalidate the apology. It was her turn finally to tell me what she wanted to. For nearly forty minutes she detailed every single hurtful thing I had said , done and caused. Face to face. I saw each hurt come alive as the spilled from her unpainted lips.  The most surprising thing that happened as she went through this speech she had rehearsed for years is she casually threw in that she wanted in her mind to have my dad present when she let loose. No, I tell you what , the real surprise is how much compassion I had welling up inside me as I watched a bitter angry old lady account for all of the misinformation, gossip, misalignment I produced in her life. It was not shame, guilt or remorse I felt, it was the compassion I would have gladly given to a thousand strangers I had met. In the in end all I could tell her was above my apology I would never intentionally inflict hurt or pain to her life and that I would try my hardest only to be an asset to her. She then accepted my apology which was really neither here nor there, she got the chance to say the speech that she had been honing to a sharpened edge for years. I would have understood if she had refused to even speak to me, so the acceptance was very benevolent.

I wasn't responsible for all of the painful slings and arrows she told me to day, not by far. Some of the stuff she talked about had little to directly do with me, BUT make no mistake my toe was in that water. Since it is doubtful, she will ever get to address the rest of the cast list of assassins , I stood there and let her get it all out of her head and heart. This is the beginning of the real amends. I was able to stand for myself and for the others by proxy, the others  who hurt her so badly. 

I never felt like smarting off, I was completely encompassed by the love of spirit.  I feel like I can sit at the big boys table at NA now.. That wasn't a pat on the head and a "So glad you feel better" response. This was a real stand there and allow her to react however she needs to. It was hard and uncomfortable and I wanted to be free of this resentment more than I wanted to put myself in a favorable light by interrupting with excuse.


Sunday, April 7, 2013

Confused. Tired. Confused. I've got so many thoughts and emotions swirling that I am stumped. I worked the first two real shifts this weekend, where I was not "training", and I was expected to hold up a real part of the work. It's been 12 or more years since I put in 17 hours in two days. I know regular people do it all the time and I'm thankful  for shot, but it has me so off center that I'm wanting to over eat and sleep. It was uphill at the gym earlier this evening and I stopped  about 20 minutes early when I got to cardio. I do NOT want to gain my weight back but i feel so out of control. I missed the Men's Dinner this week for only the second time ever. I had to do some watering in the garden and I wanted to go work out. I have nothing to do tomorrow except a butt load of laundry