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.