Just for today
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
I look to you.................
I've been sort of consumed in my thoughts by Whitney Houston. Yes, her most popular times were during my late teens and early twenties and I loved that music and the times they underscore to my life. I mostly have been thinking about the struggle she had. The world fell in love with this beautiful beautiful well spun image and towering vocals but behind the face paint and sparkle was a woman who couldn't live up to the hype that surrounded her.
In my own smaller version, I sort of tried to create a faux self that I sold to everyone including my family as being the real me. The first time I felt the relief of even for a short time admitting I didn't know what I was doing and didn't know how to make it look like I did any longer was when I was 27 and had drank a lethal amount of alcohol and took the only pills in my apartment, which were cold tablets I had to pop out of the plastic safety bubbles and his ginseng capsules. The combo is funny in hindsight, but what I was trying to say wasn't that I wanted to die necessarily but I just wanted help.
In the emergency room at Parkland, in a cotton gown, I drank the charcoal and enjoyed the warm air circulating like a tiny fan of warm was pointed just at me. The blue cotton gown was the softest I had ever felt against my skin. Mostly, and I know this now was it was my first taste of surrender. There is such a peace in the process of surrender that it is indescribable. It didn't last long, as the alcohol was neutralized by the gunky charcoal I had swallowed, I began taking all my stress and frustration back and immediately began to swallow to fill my soul back up with fear.
When I saw the headline that Whitney Houston Is Dead at 48, I was stunned ,I felt like I lost a friend or family member. I'd seen her struggle with drugs and obsessive love and while I may have commented on it without much compassion I never wrote her off.
When she released her "come back" album in 2009 I had so much hope that "Whitney Houston" was back. She didn't look like 20 year old Whitney but she was sophisticated and beautiful. I saw her make the promotion appearances to push the record sales up and her voice was like tumbling rocks and glass. She couldn't cancel because her her past behaviors without starting "OLD WHITNEY Canceling shows again" and she HAD to make the money back to the record company.
I sang for years and on a very very small scale I know when u wait for your name to be called for you turn to take the stage and you have an issue that makes you sound not the best it's soul killing. To know you are going to sound like a bad bad version of yourself or worse like someone else who has no voice. I never had million dollar deals breathing down my neck. I didn't have the specter of the glaring images of my 20 year self or memories of myself at the peak of my vocal ability to haunt me. She must of felt like the worst Whitney Houston imitator on the planet. IMPOSTER!!!!!!! I always felt like a bad Clinton Gandy imitator and always was waiting to be found out and exposed as an fake/imposter.
The fact that she died , alone. In a rented tub. sickens me a bit. She died on prescription drugs that I abused the hell out of but evidently never taking them in the exact combo that she did, connects me to her. It touches the part of me the still hurts from my separation from the the civilians of earth.
Whether it was bad taste or not, I saw the photo of her lying in state in Newark. I was really comforted by the fact she looked beautiful. She finally had the look of real peace about her. Her struggle with am a the daughter of Sissy, am I the daughter of New Hop Baptist Church, am i a mother her has repeated make disastrous decisions that my only child has witness all her life? Her struggle with self and ego are just like mine. The image verses the quiet truths.
In my life, in/around recovery for 20 years I have seen many many people over shoot the mark and die, i have seen the ones purposely do it and accidentally do it. It is my solemn and firmest belief that the universe is most kind and loving and when someone has tried and tried but cannot find their way out of the dark and into the light, that sometimes, the light reaches out for them. I think she struggled as much as she could and a universal kindness was bestowed to stop her pain. Sometimes we don't get the lesson in human form.
She survived, crack , coke and Bobbie Brown, only to be done in by some meds she took because she couldn't face going to Clive Davis' party and singing without help. Clive Davis' party for his Grammy people was going on 4 floors beneath the body of Whitney Houston, zipped up and on a gurney until 9:30 pm about the time she would have taken the stage. All the pressure she put on herself to be "good" for the music people and they didn't even stop the party in the same hotel she died in.
Today, I choose the people in my life, well, like my life depended on it. On some days my friends do save me, from my best thinking. The best I can be has to be enough and this little gem "All I can do is All I can do" continually saves my ass and my sanity.
I haven't turned to chemicals to ease my mind and calm my pains in a while, and as I watched the glorious exit and flame out of the creature named Whitney, I'm thankful that I lived to know better. I lived to learn how to learn and I wasn't extended an exit by the universe because evidently I am teachable even through the ball busting pain I created by living a life first as a drunk and then an all around drug addict and substance abuser. The miracle for me is not only that I am sill here, it is the fact I am GRATEFUL to be here.
In my own smaller version, I sort of tried to create a faux self that I sold to everyone including my family as being the real me. The first time I felt the relief of even for a short time admitting I didn't know what I was doing and didn't know how to make it look like I did any longer was when I was 27 and had drank a lethal amount of alcohol and took the only pills in my apartment, which were cold tablets I had to pop out of the plastic safety bubbles and his ginseng capsules. The combo is funny in hindsight, but what I was trying to say wasn't that I wanted to die necessarily but I just wanted help.
In the emergency room at Parkland, in a cotton gown, I drank the charcoal and enjoyed the warm air circulating like a tiny fan of warm was pointed just at me. The blue cotton gown was the softest I had ever felt against my skin. Mostly, and I know this now was it was my first taste of surrender. There is such a peace in the process of surrender that it is indescribable. It didn't last long, as the alcohol was neutralized by the gunky charcoal I had swallowed, I began taking all my stress and frustration back and immediately began to swallow to fill my soul back up with fear.
When I saw the headline that Whitney Houston Is Dead at 48, I was stunned ,I felt like I lost a friend or family member. I'd seen her struggle with drugs and obsessive love and while I may have commented on it without much compassion I never wrote her off.
When she released her "come back" album in 2009 I had so much hope that "Whitney Houston" was back. She didn't look like 20 year old Whitney but she was sophisticated and beautiful. I saw her make the promotion appearances to push the record sales up and her voice was like tumbling rocks and glass. She couldn't cancel because her her past behaviors without starting "OLD WHITNEY Canceling shows again" and she HAD to make the money back to the record company.
I sang for years and on a very very small scale I know when u wait for your name to be called for you turn to take the stage and you have an issue that makes you sound not the best it's soul killing. To know you are going to sound like a bad bad version of yourself or worse like someone else who has no voice. I never had million dollar deals breathing down my neck. I didn't have the specter of the glaring images of my 20 year self or memories of myself at the peak of my vocal ability to haunt me. She must of felt like the worst Whitney Houston imitator on the planet. IMPOSTER!!!!!!! I always felt like a bad Clinton Gandy imitator and always was waiting to be found out and exposed as an fake/imposter.
The fact that she died , alone. In a rented tub. sickens me a bit. She died on prescription drugs that I abused the hell out of but evidently never taking them in the exact combo that she did, connects me to her. It touches the part of me the still hurts from my separation from the the civilians of earth.
Whether it was bad taste or not, I saw the photo of her lying in state in Newark. I was really comforted by the fact she looked beautiful. She finally had the look of real peace about her. Her struggle with am a the daughter of Sissy, am I the daughter of New Hop Baptist Church, am i a mother her has repeated make disastrous decisions that my only child has witness all her life? Her struggle with self and ego are just like mine. The image verses the quiet truths.
In my life, in/around recovery for 20 years I have seen many many people over shoot the mark and die, i have seen the ones purposely do it and accidentally do it. It is my solemn and firmest belief that the universe is most kind and loving and when someone has tried and tried but cannot find their way out of the dark and into the light, that sometimes, the light reaches out for them. I think she struggled as much as she could and a universal kindness was bestowed to stop her pain. Sometimes we don't get the lesson in human form.
She survived, crack , coke and Bobbie Brown, only to be done in by some meds she took because she couldn't face going to Clive Davis' party and singing without help. Clive Davis' party for his Grammy people was going on 4 floors beneath the body of Whitney Houston, zipped up and on a gurney until 9:30 pm about the time she would have taken the stage. All the pressure she put on herself to be "good" for the music people and they didn't even stop the party in the same hotel she died in.
Today, I choose the people in my life, well, like my life depended on it. On some days my friends do save me, from my best thinking. The best I can be has to be enough and this little gem "All I can do is All I can do" continually saves my ass and my sanity.
I haven't turned to chemicals to ease my mind and calm my pains in a while, and as I watched the glorious exit and flame out of the creature named Whitney, I'm thankful that I lived to know better. I lived to learn how to learn and I wasn't extended an exit by the universe because evidently I am teachable even through the ball busting pain I created by living a life first as a drunk and then an all around drug addict and substance abuser. The miracle for me is not only that I am sill here, it is the fact I am GRATEFUL to be here.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
I had a bad night, the kind I haven't had in nearly two years. I tried to go to sleep at midnight , and shortly after I felt like I had an uncomfortable electric current running me. I got up hoping it would stop, then I slept in 5 minute intervals until 4 or so, then I fell asleep just in time for my regular get up Clinton time at 6. I cleared my schedule and went back to bed because I just felt crazy in the head and confused. I slept til 11. The moment my eyes opened up eye heard "It's starting again" and "you shouldn't have said the other day how well you psych issues were going". I do not want to return to not sleeping. It makes living impossible. The night before was off too but nothing like last night and the dreams have been so vivid and horrifying. I got up and worked my ass of cleaning and washing clothes, changed up my bed just trying to go something that makes me feel centered and more like myself. I do not want to return to the misery of not sleeping. Dammit. I've made it a productive day and it is only 4pm. I hit the ground running, shit I hope this isn't some strange form of mania. I'll keep you posted.
Monday, February 20, 2012
I don't think we are as important as we think we are
If we were the "superior" species, it looks like if we wanted to quit doing something we just would. Quit smoking no problem, quit over eating no problem. Learn to speak French, done. If the part of our brains that wanted to stop or start a behavior was all that was in charge it would be simpler. The remainder of our brains and thoughts are the parts that drag us miserably down to the level of animal. Desires and feeling fixes fuck us up always. There isn't a person on the planet that can turn things on and off permanently at will so I am just not going to beat myself up that I am terribly terribly human. I'm also talking to the folks that think behaviors that can simply be "PRAYED AWAY". Just doesn't happen.
Friday, February 17, 2012
I wonder if I'm ever going to have someone to show up to love me that is going to stick around a while. The plight of the gay man is we have a lot of close friends until they get married and then they are gone. I've made friends with a straight man and over the last 4 months I've really gotten to care about him, but it's just a matter of time before he falls in love and moves away too. Now if this is sort of some fucked up karmic position I hold where I love people until they feel good enough to find mates and partners then forgetting about me, then I a pissed I signed up for this crappy cruise. lol I do wonder if there is anyone on the planet that could love me and stay.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
The Truth Shall make them flee
I was watching some people I know today and the biggest division comes down to some are into "truth" and some are in to anything BUT truth. Truth either inspires the truth in others,, or it causes them to run away like a monster is after them. The truth about me is simple, I'm a work in progress. I'm not what will be yet, but thank god I am not what I was.
Telling my story to inpatient legal treatment center tomorrow night. I'm just going to share what I know as being the truth and hope that someone hears something that helps one day.
Telling my story to inpatient legal treatment center tomorrow night. I'm just going to share what I know as being the truth and hope that someone hears something that helps one day.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Curious, this is from exactly 4 years ago and my goal is the same, to be a bigger human. This is my journal from January 2009,
I was on a backroad of sorts. It was a highway but not traveled that often. I passed a run down, rusted out , falling apart home place and there was a puppy about to leave the driveway and get on the highway. Thin would be an uderstatement. He was very clearly a puppy but to old to be counting on mother for food. He was black and filthy. He was the sort of dog that would be given bad odds at the dog shelter because he wasn't "cute".
I felt my heart breaking as I passed. The clear thought when my eyes went back to the road was. "I hope he finds someone to love. I hope he finds someone to love who can feel how good it is to have the unflappable love a dog can offer. Someone to see all the wonder and funny quirks he was born with.
It wasn't my own dog I was seeing on the roadside in my mind. It was myself I saw. It was me, with battle wounds and scars and knowing no stretch of the imagination would I be considered pretty enough to go in the front part of the dog pound.
Sometimes, when I get an extremely strong and moving example of what is capable for us to experience as humans and we don't, it really feels like a punch in the stomach. I have a full body, spirit and mind encounter with humanity about 6 or 7 times a year. They are very profound when they happen. When without trying I can experience the way things are for someone else from their point of view it is really overwhelming. When I see the now/truth without filter it scares me. I've done my best not to let feelings overwhelm me in my life because I thought they made you weak. Feelings give us humanity. I really do like "feeling" like I am part of the human race because for so long I thought I was denied at birth.
Even though I am a dirty, skinny puppy on the side of a backroad in front of a shack, I have had a taste of what is possible and that gives me hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. Sometimes the least likley to leave the pound is the first to get a home. So I stay open, don't make things worse, and look for as many new ideas as possible.
My January goal for 2009 is living bigger. Bigger ideas and bigger possibilities, because trying to stay small and inconspicuous hurt alot and nearly killed me.
ClintonUnplugged.
I felt my heart breaking as I passed. The clear thought when my eyes went back to the road was. "I hope he finds someone to love. I hope he finds someone to love who can feel how good it is to have the unflappable love a dog can offer. Someone to see all the wonder and funny quirks he was born with.
It wasn't my own dog I was seeing on the roadside in my mind. It was myself I saw. It was me, with battle wounds and scars and knowing no stretch of the imagination would I be considered pretty enough to go in the front part of the dog pound.
Sometimes, when I get an extremely strong and moving example of what is capable for us to experience as humans and we don't, it really feels like a punch in the stomach. I have a full body, spirit and mind encounter with humanity about 6 or 7 times a year. They are very profound when they happen. When without trying I can experience the way things are for someone else from their point of view it is really overwhelming. When I see the now/truth without filter it scares me. I've done my best not to let feelings overwhelm me in my life because I thought they made you weak. Feelings give us humanity. I really do like "feeling" like I am part of the human race because for so long I thought I was denied at birth.
Even though I am a dirty, skinny puppy on the side of a backroad in front of a shack, I have had a taste of what is possible and that gives me hope in a seemingly hopeless situation. Sometimes the least likley to leave the pound is the first to get a home. So I stay open, don't make things worse, and look for as many new ideas as possible.
My January goal for 2009 is living bigger. Bigger ideas and bigger possibilities, because trying to stay small and inconspicuous hurt alot and nearly killed me.
ClintonUnplugged.
Monday, January 23, 2012
What are you soaking in?
I think part of the reason so many people are angry is because they sit around watching gruesome try crime shows with brutal reenactments then top it off with hideous dysfunction on Judge Judy, Judge Mathis, Steve Wilkos, Jerry Springer , Judge Janine 3 other "judge" shows. Combine these hours of bad for you TV with endless loops of purposely fear inducing new pieces on CNN and misinformation on Foxnews, and you have someone who easily spend an entire quarter or two of their waking moments marinating in soul and spirit killing tv waste. Why be a vegan or a health nut if you are going to create disease in your spirit or body by inviting poisonous ideas into your mind. "I think, therefore I am"... Fred Neitzche. I don't think for a second I can watch that stuff and get away unscathed. What you put in, you get out. What am I feeding my spirit/mind/body today? On another note, through out the history of time, the easiest way to control the masses is to whip them up into immeasurable fear. Just for today, I am not a cow and will not be herded by means of ball busting fear. Fear causes anxiety, and anxiety causes inflammation of the cells int he human body and inflammation causes disease like arthritis and cancer. Just throwing something out there to think about on a Monday , Monday.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
The next first day of the rest of my life.
I've been afraid to admit out loud that my idea of a power greater than myself is evolving. I have fought, tooth and nail the whole "God" thing because it I do not want to be linked to the crazy "God People" that have caused so much hurt in the world. I am in contact just by being alive and awake but I heard someone mentioning the comfort of prayer the other day and I felt something stir inside. I want to have a have a new way of communicating with the power out there and I am thinking that some form of prayer based on what I have heard others say may be it. I don't want a Santa in the sky or a magic "gimme" go to offer up a list of things I want. I accidentally said "God" last night when I was introducing my friend at an NA celebration and I realized that I wasn't using the word to just relay my thought, I realized as soon as the word left my lips I had connected to the word and concept in a way that I never have before. I have suspected I was evolving for a week or more and my "slip" at the podium kind of solidified it for me. In the area of spirituality I am changing. I've been the guy who rails about to much religion in AA and NA meetings since I cleaned up. I've used a nebulous life force as my power greater than me and I don't know if as I evolve I am ready to. I'm going to let this become what it becomes. I still hate religion, the practice of relating to a god. So I am going to try some sort of way to communicate with the power and try to continue to make it my own unique way. I am really afraid if I use the term "God", it would appear that I too have decided to "Drink The Koolaide".
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Why do we do the things we do?
Why do we attach stories to things and dates? Is it because we are afraid we will forget and the things we attach to some how make the memory or story more tangible? Dates, the odd dates I hear mentioned in meetings that have had sad and painful things attached to that keep the person forever looped into losing or hurting the thing the story tells.
Why is a death date important? Why do I see so many rear windows with decals of faceless storiliess strangers birth and death date on it. I heard a parent say once, regarding their dead child that they lose their daughter/son every morning when they first wake up and then they remember their child is dead. What function does decal window displays to total strangers play in the process of grieving and healing from a death of a loved one. I hear you, I am sorry for your loss, but get that fucking decal off you window or you will be lost in pain forever.
In recovery meetings I hear people say this is the 4 months death of a relationship, my dad was diagnosed with cancer on this date 4 years ago, I was dumped 7 months ago today. It's endless the tragedy and pain that can be tracked by attaching a meaning to a fucking date on the calender.
Is it part of how we humans are driven to pick at the scabs of our wounds. Does it makes us feel more alive to constantly resurrect the bloodiness of personal disasters? My thinking is they would feel some freedom if they let go of attaching a story to the date and not give a random number on the calender power to emotionally level them.
People get so freaked out over holidays. A story has been attached to a "random date on the calender" and we suddenly are compelled to have big feelings over it. Scholars say The Jesus was born in the summer, so why get so bent out of shape over a "dummy" birth date in December. Thanksgivings, seriously, have more stories been attatched in America to them than any other Calendar date. It's full face family and no presents to act as a buffer from the insanity we bring as we "gather together".
Feel free to tell me why you pay attention to odd and useless dates in your life. Enlighten me. Tell me why reliving a painful story is so tantalizing you must celebrate loss on a monthly date, every month. Do you ever quit noting and feeling the date you were dumped by someone who clearly didn't know what they were throwing away.
I don't need any reason manufactured by myself to feel bad. It is the most natural feeling in the world to me. If I don't actively choose to feel good and look for reasons to feel good, I fall into a hopeless state of mind and body and no bottom is low enough to satisfy my desire for destruction.
I have learned that I can feel a feeling, let's say ,,"Sad". I don't have to attach a tale to the feeling I can simply notice I am sad and function through it. If I tag dates on a fucking calendar of especially hard or painful moments I am stacking the deck against myself.
Don't attach a story from your history on your current moment. You never taste freedom that way.
I say this with love, Mary, it's time to let that shit go.
Why is a death date important? Why do I see so many rear windows with decals of faceless storiliess strangers birth and death date on it. I heard a parent say once, regarding their dead child that they lose their daughter/son every morning when they first wake up and then they remember their child is dead. What function does decal window displays to total strangers play in the process of grieving and healing from a death of a loved one. I hear you, I am sorry for your loss, but get that fucking decal off you window or you will be lost in pain forever.
In recovery meetings I hear people say this is the 4 months death of a relationship, my dad was diagnosed with cancer on this date 4 years ago, I was dumped 7 months ago today. It's endless the tragedy and pain that can be tracked by attaching a meaning to a fucking date on the calender.
Is it part of how we humans are driven to pick at the scabs of our wounds. Does it makes us feel more alive to constantly resurrect the bloodiness of personal disasters? My thinking is they would feel some freedom if they let go of attaching a story to the date and not give a random number on the calender power to emotionally level them.
People get so freaked out over holidays. A story has been attached to a "random date on the calender" and we suddenly are compelled to have big feelings over it. Scholars say The Jesus was born in the summer, so why get so bent out of shape over a "dummy" birth date in December. Thanksgivings, seriously, have more stories been attatched in America to them than any other Calendar date. It's full face family and no presents to act as a buffer from the insanity we bring as we "gather together".
Feel free to tell me why you pay attention to odd and useless dates in your life. Enlighten me. Tell me why reliving a painful story is so tantalizing you must celebrate loss on a monthly date, every month. Do you ever quit noting and feeling the date you were dumped by someone who clearly didn't know what they were throwing away.
I don't need any reason manufactured by myself to feel bad. It is the most natural feeling in the world to me. If I don't actively choose to feel good and look for reasons to feel good, I fall into a hopeless state of mind and body and no bottom is low enough to satisfy my desire for destruction.
I have learned that I can feel a feeling, let's say ,,"Sad". I don't have to attach a tale to the feeling I can simply notice I am sad and function through it. If I tag dates on a fucking calendar of especially hard or painful moments I am stacking the deck against myself.
Don't attach a story from your history on your current moment. You never taste freedom that way.
I say this with love, Mary, it's time to let that shit go.
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