I woke up me.

I got to watch someone last night completely tweaked and not only did in NOT look fun it was like watching the twitches, the final twitches of the dying. Using the tools of wellness, I allowed myself to notice it but not take it on personally. I slept really well and woke up completely in the zone. It's always a treat when I don't have to do my morning routine to remember who I am, to wake up as myself is great. This could be the best day of my life. It has all the makings to be fantastic and beyond the scope of what my addict mind could dream up for myself. To me , that is the essence of my recovery. When I do the basics I align myself up with what the flow of all that is life in the universe, verses what I feel compelled to scratch out and settle for on my own. I'm not alone, I am just as much a part of the universe as the moon is and the same power that can pull a plant out of a tiny seed can pull a life out of me. Not only can that magic pull happen, it's happening. I have undeniable proof all around me and it all starts with abstinence and surrender. After that, my progress is entirely dependent on my level of willingness and action. Some days it just comes easier and I'm going to enjoy this one and it may just mean that today is my day to be the strong one for the people I love and provide the stability and support for someone else who DIDN'T wake up themselves this morning.

Falling in to myself

I"m around a lot of young people. One thing that I have discovered  is that  the merits of growing older more than make up the things we leave behind to our youth. I was ask to go with a young person for a weekend retreat of sorts and I was going to go as a part of my push to get out of my comfort zone and live bigger. The planning though was sort of ramshackled and I realized, that if I am going to go somewhere, I need for my own peace of mind a general idea of when I'm actually departing and where I might actually be sleeping, and when I might reasonably expect to sleep. lol

Since geting clean every single day is an exploration of what it feels like to be in a a 43 year old body that for all intense and purposes has topped the peak. Weird allergies, neck and headaches, a foot that seems to get tired quicker than the other are just a few of the notations on my daily inventory of noticeable wears and tears. I'm full blown addict with regards to my thinking and feeling, everything is deep and everything is full frontal. I could easily be eaten back up with emotions and chaos if I didn't have a program and I wasn't of an age where I can balance my present against the experience I have had on the planet.

. The greatest benefit of being over 40 is I'm NOT under 30.

The first time I had a therapist who learned my story told me that I was a survivor. At first it had no meaning to me but now I do clearly see that when put in the situation that I could not possibly prepare for, odds are I really could manage to find my way out. A bonus I realized is, it doesn't have to be pretty either. You don't always have to look good when your saving your very ass. Save your ass and your pretty pretty face will follow.

I don't think the day will ever come again when a broken heart or unrequited love would make me think of ending it all. I don't have a the romantic fervor of a young person and I am GRATEFUL.

I know now, it's just as much or maybe more exciting to be a valued member of the team than to be the goddamn star. Look what we did is way more fulfilling than "LOOK WHAT I DID".

Celebrate progress. I'm learning both in recovery and in my 40's to celebrate the perspective shifts. When I see something in a completely new light, or see something from someone elses point of view I know that I am open and I am not only capable of change, but I am changing. I know old people. I know old people who haven't changed their minds in 20 years about anything. It makes it hard to like them sometimes. Living a life that doesn't contain room to evolve in thought and spirit is like a sad paralysis and it's very very unfulfilling. World history is clear, things that don't adapt die.

I've always been sort of embarrassed by the fact I don't have this overwhelming urge to live til I am a hundred. I don't have a burning desire for a long live. Maybe it comes from feeling so much devastating pain in my spirit so early on, but I will tell you want I want. I WANT  on my last day of life, whether that be today or 40 years from now, I want to have a life filled with so many people and so much love that I leave this world fighting for one more day, one more hour even one more minute. So I've to to get busy. I've got a big life that's only a quarter full of stuff I would find death for , for one more day.

I said the first real prayer the other day I've said in a few years. I asked that I be granted a life that I would fight death for.

Now, I ask you, is that to much to ask for ? lol

I love this lady and this song has rocked me for 4 days, even bought it on I tunes.

happy birthday to my friend lisa

Lightening it up.

I don't know the exact time , but it was early. I quit letting my family know what brought me joy because it was an effort to protect my heart. Somewhere, denying things interested me, made me happy, brought me joy in an act of self preservation, I stopped having things that interested me, made me happy or brought me joy. Those things were roped up with the red velvet curtains and I stood behind the ropes and forgot they once meant something to me. I have assumed it was a great quality that I wasn't burdened down with chasing things to own or possess, today the curtain has been held back and part of the reason my life is so flat and empty is because I gave up and having things, because I thought it made me vulnerable to pain. You have something to hurt me with when you know I love something.

This stuff is so deep and so tangled that I honestly don't see how it is possible to salvage anytime I have left and possibly "get a life I would fight death for , for just one day more".

It's been a lovely tearful night

I have a great deal of shame in the fact that I don't have a burning desire for "one more day".  I think about the people I know that have died that fought for one more breath, one more look at their loved ones, one more sunrise or sunset. I don't feel that. I think it would be nice to feel that burning desire for one more day of life but it could be a curse. I'm not depressed or courting death, I just haven't tasted anything in 43 years worth fighting for another 24 hours for.

I haven't lived very much I admit it, I haven't experienced shock and awe. What if I asked to have a leave I would actually hate to leave? What if i focused on creating a life I would actually fight not to leave.

I listened and watched to some great music on PBS tonight and I don't know what it is about the group numbers , but when they all join in with full voice, it makes me weep a weep that could seriously go into full sob. lol

(insert witty ass title HERE)

by Clinton Rolen Gandy on Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 10:22am

I was thinking about something I heard a friend say, If you don't have a sponsor and aren't working steps you can't really say you have relapsed- you just used. So for the unlucky bastards that keep picking up white key tags, I wonder if they realize there is more to recovery than coming to meetings, being their own sponsor and smoking on the porch. The reason I even was thinking it is there is a very sweet natured , older than me that re-tags periodically and I got the sense he may have never "heard" the part about the actual program in the time that it was right for him to "hear it". I'm kind of compelled just to talk with him a little because he is one of those people I run into time and time again that I am not real sure they aren't some sort of undercover spiritual creature sent just to see if I am paying attention and provides us all with the opportunity to love without judgement. lol You know that song "What If God Were One of US", "just a stranger on a bus". What if I was wrong and this guy was God, and he was "secret shopping"

Recycled Material Inside

Breakdown or break-through. It's so curious that in life we aren't given a crystal ball to see how things will play out in the long run. What seems to be a disaster today can ultimately be the thing that brings us to whole new level of living and loving. I've seen lotto winners run head on into their own demise with the freedom money can give. I've seen a 7th runner up in a big TV talent contest get tossed way to soon and end up winning an Oscar and Grammy, while the winner of her contest season crumbled with having to much too soon. Cancer survivors who fight the illness, come out on the other side and never see life the same again. A complete perspective shift is possible at anytime for any reason and suddenly life as we understand is gone forever. It is like exiting one world and being birthed into another.  Sometimes I get a prompt on the computer that Windows has another, ANOTHER patch or upgrade I need to take. I look at it and read it like i actually know anything I am looking at and hit update. Everything that I pull into my life has the capacity to be an upgrade, there isn't a problem in my life today that can't serve as a catalyst to make me more loving, more understanding more aware of the human condition. Only by making contact with a power, a loving power bigger than me every morning and keeping in contact with it through various ways through the day and night are real changes made possible. In our GREEN conversion, it makes me kind of tickled, that I am being recycled. A power and a program are taking my strengths , flaws, and weaknesses and putting me through the process of being wholly made useful. "No part left behind".  "Renewable Resources". What looks like a disaster to me at first glance isn't quite the big deal it was a year ago, because I know, that when i am willing, I can ask to see things in a different way. I am willing to see this from a different perspective and that is when the REAL Recycling begins on me. A perspective I might add a perspective not distorted through the bottom of a margarita (yes, I drank the girlie drinks) or  the amber haze of a plastic pill bottle.
If I had a Tee Shirt machine I would make us all Tee Shirts with the NA logo and a stamp of  RECYCLED MATERIAL on the chest of the shirt.  Gregg County Recycle Center. lol