light

Once you have felt the full impact of enlightenment, it is damn near impossible to find any comfort in returning to the darkness of being. We were built and designed to live in the light. We are not mushrooms that thrive in the dark and love to be covered in waste. Just for today, I don't want to live in an UN-natural state of being. I am light, and I'm "lovin' it.

More insight from Campout.

I am in that place this morning where I have had an experience and I must find a way to process it and get the most out of the effort. I am very disappointed that this weekend failed to move me in the way it seems to move others. Part of me wants to stomp and pout about how yet another time, I don't not fit in the groove that others do, the other part of me knows better. If anything was learned over the last three days is that my journey on the planet is going to always me uniquely my own. I have to find my own way of feeling connected and part of things. The thing I keep learning over and over and over again is that I'm not supposed to be like you. I am suppose to be me. I have to be me in order to get the things done, things the universe wants me to get done. I have to be honest, as I watched out the window of the rv at everyone running about, I was thinking, what is it in me that keeps me from enjoying the things that I am seeing through the plexiglass. So I think I am more assured now that there is nothing wrong with not caring for big functions, dances and campouts. It has nothing do to with me not trying to be "part of". Those just aren't my things and I am confident in that now. I'm not going to feel like I am not trying any longer. I know myself a lot better and I trust myself a lot more thanks to the 13th Annual Campout. Wasn't what I expected to figure out or learn from the weekend but, it's a pretty big shift in understanding and I will happily take it. The parts I did enjoy the most were the parts I could have driven out especially for like others. It is no big surprise that my favorite parts of the weekend were when I got to spend time with the people from the hall that have the "sparkle" I am drawn most. There are people in my recovery that I don't think it would ever be possible for me to get enough of.

Tried tried it , suspectd, but now I know. Camping is not for me.

I followed through with giving camping a try at my recovery groups's annual lakeside 3 day fest. Other than the food being good, and getting to spend some stolen moments with friends, it was difficult for me. If I hadn't got to get away for 2 hours on saturday, I may have just collapsed into a big piled of weeping, anxiety ridden gray haired idiot.
I was very very upset that it was yet another thing that "earth people" that I don't connect with at all. I really wanted to but it just didn't happen. If I could have talkeveryone without having to be at the lake I would have preffered that. My best times were the stolen moments with friends in the camping RV..

I didn't over eat once this weekend. I was afraid if came myself any slack on watching the food intake I would lose momentum. There was a sack fulll of mini-Hershey's on the table in the RV the whole time, and I knew if I even ate one, it was set up a compulsion I would be able to stop until I hated myself. Just like PILLS, one is to many and a thousand not enough.

Comfort from strange places

My whole life I have loved thunder storms. The make me feel small and insignificant  compared to the weather patterns that have gone on for millions of years. My god, I really could be Wiccan. The earth is the source of life, those other planets couldn't sustain us. We make things like the internet, and flat tvs but we never have been smart enough to change the course of the behavior of the earth. I like that i am living on a "LIVING THING" with it's own way of doing things to insure its own survival. We are the expendables. We can suck the crude out of the holes and fell every tree we can find but we will never have the upper hand. The earth can shudder for 15 seconds and do away with entire sea boards when it chooses to. The earth is certainly a power greater than ourselves. I love that my life and my problems are small compared to the vast power of the planet. If the earth is getting hotter, perhaps it's running a fever in a first attempt to rid itself of the parasites called humans.

Yuck

I'm completely disconnected with with the good stuff. I don't feel it today and all week has been me, simply going through the motions. I don't understand where the disconnect is coming through except I have really not been able to do anything but dread speaking tomorrow night at my NA hall. I just can't figure out how to make enough chronological sense about of my life to put it in story form.  People seem to have sort of high expectations for me and of course I hate that.  I'll go and share about it in the meeting today and then try to start interviewing people in my recovering team to figure out how to reconnect.

Alive and Hopeful. Two miracles I will list on the top of ye ole Grattitude List.

I'm telling my story Friday night at my NA group. I did not want to do it because so much of my story confuses me. I could not say no. I will hope that whatever needs to happen happens and I don't offend the christians. I can't not share that not being a christian and being very wary of them didn't keep me from coming back to recovery. I have good friends in NA that are Christian and they no that the place I come from is one of being beaten down by misuse of the bible. I'm 75 percent better already about that. But when I meet someone and that is pretty much there lead line, I usually retreat. I don't want to be around anyone who believes anything without question. I don't think my mom has ever once questioned the validity of the indoctrination she got as a child in the holy roller church.

The best part of 12 step recovery is you are urged to think, and question and find out how the principles can fit into your own life. I have to talk about God, and I have to talk about the 18 years or so I spent in AA. To share in a general way and still get my point across is going to be fucking tricky.  I have no message to deliever, just my little story of what it was like, what happened and what it's like now. Then let go of the results. I was a singer, I was a paid actor and to find myself running from being the center of attention is a real trip. I'm still all in! Doors of opportunity open and today I find a way to walk through them.

had a reality check.

A friend for 18 years , that lives two towns away ask me to pick him up to bring him to an NA meeting which I of course agreed to. He hasn't drank for 18 years, but like me, took the break from alcohol to become a drug addict.  He has such a tender heart and has never, never been treated with any real respect from his family and his friend. I drove up and he was on the porch. I was really horrified because I would have never known it was him. He looked like a homeless person and smelled pretty bad. I talk to him on the phone often and I had no idea he was in this shape. I don't know what frightened me so much except he wasn't my friend, or at least the one I last saw two years ago. I can't imagine people didn't have the same reaction to me when I didn't leave the house for 2 years and dyed my hair orange. I can't believe he was bleeding to death right under my nose. I know very few things for sure but I know beyond all doubt , if he comes to NA, gets welling and honest, he can salvage his life and find a new way to thrive like never before. I've always been in his corner and have never thrown him under the bus. I won't stop now. It just scared me.
Underneath his scare costume, he is a tender hearted man who NEVER not even his parents treated him well and no one ever wanted him to be happy in his life. Their all dead, and he has time for a great life. If he has a desire to stay clean and get honest. I will pull his ass up 80 in a red wagon if he wants to go to a meeting. If not, I'm just going to have to love him from a distance and hope he has a change of heart while there is still time.

It wasn't a leap of faith, I WAS PUSHED!

I have know idea what made me think of this, but nearly 20 years ago I saw this guy show up at a Lambda AA meeting with his suit cases. He had left his partner who did not want him  to have any life of his own and tried to disuade him from growing and changing. He said he told his older lover that "I will sleep on the sidewalk before I ever stay another night with you or in this house".  (When you don't have somewhere to go and you leave your house, that is sincerity)
When someone makes the decision the status quot is no longer and will never ever be enough, and they take bold action because of it, I find it the most thrilling thing in the world to be allowed to witness with me own eyes. I'd say 50 percent of the people of the world will never draw a line in the sand and say ,"I WILL NOT TAKE THIS ANYMORE". 
When I see people have enough and decide no matter how frightening not knowing what will happen, it makes it easier for me to embrace change in my own life.
Truth inspires truth and change inspires change. Through out the history of the world, things that didn't change and adapt, went the way of the dinosaur

In my life at 43, I have found the only way to enact change is to go "All IN"  with No Reservations. My resolve strengthens when I see others take the bold step of blind faith just as I have.

Despair, is that still a word?

I woke and and for some reason word, "Despair" came to mind. I have had days in recovery that weren't that great, and my emotional pain was not pleasant, but I have never been consumed by despair, since I had enough and tried a step based way to live. My life today, just for today is as opposite from from "Despair" as night is to day. Today there are pockets of light in me that I honestly haven't even realized are there, purging the embedded despair that I thought were original dark parts. I have been revolutionized and revitalized. Despair is the heart of the dark, and I never want to to be consumed by it again. Light-living is way more cool than trying to learn to love the dark.

I had a great moment today of seeing who I am and who I want to be.

There is a "recovery house" that visits the noon meeting at my hall in Longview several days of the week. It's partly where the county houses people with mental issues while they adjust to life on meds and part the place the state hospital sticks people when they need to empty a bed. There was an older black guy who came in and sat next to me and he was besotted with the problem many of the house residents have. He was sleepy. Very sleepy. I suspected his meds were kicking his ass but it could be just detox. A guy from his house  brought him a cup of coffee with cream. I was listening to someone share when I heard a liquid splat next to me. He had nodded off and dropped the full cup of coffee. I felt so sorry for him, his first meeting , new surroundings and now a full cup of coffee pooled between his legs. I flew up and got the mop and paper towels and told him "I"ll take care of this. He quietly asked for a paper towel to use on his jeans. The warm feeling i get from taking care of another human who is less than at there best is as good as any drug. I was so overwhelmed by my emotions tapping into his, I had to take a moment behind the locked door of the bathroom. I felt for a split second I could cry forever. I didn't even get his name but his presence today reminded me, that I was human. Not only that, I was a human with terrific capacity to love strangers and help them take care of needs they don't have the capacity for taking care of themselves.

It goes along with me talking the other night about the paradoxes we often mention. My favorite is the break I give you in good speed, in turns allows me to give me self one and faster. Is it possible that the reason the way I treat you so instantly comes back to me, is there is no separation between us all. We are all one spirit but believe we are separate because we think the body is who we are?