pain

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union of friends

April 8, 2010 in afternoon reflections | 1 comment

I’m leaving tomorrow morning for the (very long) drive to my friend’s funeral. It is going to be a cold, wet (maybe even snowy) event.

His widow has asked me to read a passage from William Penn, called “Union of Friends.” When I read it at my rehab commencement ceremony, I didn’t actually believe I would never see Mike again in this life. I sent it to her earlier in the week, hoping it might give her some comfort, and she has tucked in his casket with him.

He was a meth addict. Not just like me, but alike enough that we usually didn’t have to talk to understand each other. He knew my pain, and I knew his pain. I’m glad his is over, but I wish he had chosen another way. I still feel connected to him, though, and I think I always will.

__________________________________________

They that love beyond the world, cannot be separated by it.

Death cannot kill, what never dies.
Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same
Divine principle; the root and record of their friendship.

If absence be not death, neither is theirs.
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas;
They live in one another still.

For they must needs be present,
that love and live in that which is omnipresent.

In this divine glass, they see face to face;
and their converse is free, as well as pure.

This is the comfort of friends,
that though they may be said to die,
yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present,
because immortal.

–

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ha ha

October 13, 2009 in up(on) awakening | 2 comments

is it really always fun until someone gets hurt?

I was first introduced to the concept of the ha-ha in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Ha-has are essentially a visual trick of perspective: ditches cut deep into the landscape to prevent cattle from grazing in the formal or pleasure gardens of estates, without the need of iron fences or brick walls to blemish the view. They were, by design, a hazard for all living things (falling into one frequently meant drowning:  Ha ha, you’re dead!).

I think relapses work sort of the same way…. That addiction becomes a permanent part of the spiritual landscape of the life of an addict, ever-present, and always a danger, but more or less a threat depending on my awareness and perspective. In that way, it is similar to other dangers, like red-hot stove burners or meat that smells bad, but unlike them in that there isn’t really a part of me that wants to burn my fingers or get ill. I don’t need a daily reprieve from many other things I know to be dangerous to me. But this thing, addiction, I do need a daily reprieve from.

I don’t think stasis exists as a part of the spiritual condition. I am either growing stronger or I am growing weaker through each choice that I make each day. Most of the time, I find myself doing the next right thing without thinking about it—telling the truth when a lie would be more convenient or interesting, helping when I could not help without being noticed, reaching out instead of sitting back. That was not my way of being for a very, very long time.

The obsession to get high, to get drunk, is no longer an active part of my daily life. But I do not believe I have been cured of the addiction, rather I have been made aware of its nature, and as long as I maintain my spiritual condition by following the suggestions given to me, I’ve been promised the possibility of keeping the new freedom and happiness I experience each day. And I believe it.

And considering how truly fucked up I was, that’s nothing to laugh at.

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the wrong embrace

October 8, 2009 in up(on) awakening | 1 comment

the only way to hold onto life is to embrace it.I was born with the wrong sign

In the wrong house

With the wrong ascendancy

I took the wrong road

That led to the wrong tendencies

I was in the wrong place at the wrong time

For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme

(from Wrong, by Depeche Mode)

It is easy to listen to this song and laugh today, but for most of my life it might have been my theme song. The video for it, on an endless loop, could be my perception of life during my years of active addiction: I was a victim of chance, of circumstance, of the things that God and other people did to me—I couldn’t change until someone made it possible for me to change. Someone finally did.

It was me. A year ago, today, I tried to kill myself. I really, really wanted to die. And, I got it wrong. My catalytic converter worked better than I wanted it to. But I tried. I was so ready for it all to be over.

A lot of it is over. The blame, the anger, the resentments, the fear, the loneliness, the depression, the paranoia, the uncertainty—most  days, they just don’t work here anymore.  Few of the externals of my life have changed. Same house, same job, same car, same big bed full of me and my dogs.

Some people think the “sanity” referred to in step two refers to our thoughts and attitudes about using drugs and alcohol. Maybe. For me, part of my insanity was that I was different, that I was alone in my suffering, that nothing and no one could help. About that, I was wrong. The weight of my world without meth, and without a solution to my wrong life, really was unbearable. It was unlivable. It was wrong.

But everything today is right. So right. There is still lots of work to do, but that’s true for everyone. And I know that because today I’m not alone, inside my head, thinking your feelings for you. I’m here for you, with you, in the world and a part of it, in the solution and a part of it, living the rewards of having a life worth living.

It has been an extraordinary year. A year of being in the right place, at the right time, for the right reasons, with everything happening like it is supposed to. And the only thing that has really changed is me.

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wheels on fire

September 7, 2009 in just random thoughts..... | No comments

Yesterday I spoke to my friend who recently relapsed, but that seems, somehow, to have escaped his mind. What he is focused on right now is how horrible his spouse is being to him, and so he has given her an ultimatum…. Either she starts treating him fairly, or he is going to move out and leave her.

If she were treating him fairly, she probably would have divorced him long ago. But in his mind, she’s the lucky one, because women in her demographic who get divorced almost never remarry and if he leaves her she will probably live the rest of her life alone, &etc.

By my way of thinking, she’s probably feeling very alone (among other things) right now, with him ostensibly in her life.

He is so out of control. I don’t know if he is using or not, but his thinking (or at least his thoughts being represented by his out-loud-words to me) is so actively insane that in a way, whether or not he is using is almost incidental. He acknowledged drinking “a beer” and engaging in some other inappropriate conduct, but there is no real way of knowing what is happening in his life, other than he is unhappy, and his family probably is as well.

I just sort of shelved that conversation yesterday so I could spend some time thinking about how my weekend-o-recovery had impacted me, trying to actively remember what I heard, so it doesn’t slip away.

But I can learn from his relapse and his behavior as well. The wheels aren’t off his bus, his wheels are on fire. I hope he notices soon.

And I need to work on my third step. Today.

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it just keeps comin’ at ya

July 30, 2009 in as I retire | 4 comments

and when exactly will this too pass? cause i shall soon lose my mind.

Sometimes I wonder how I ever accomplished anything at all when I was using. The answer is, really, most of the time I was just barely getting by, but would pull myself up just enough to hit some attention-getting home-runs every once in a while that would allow people to think He must be doing ok, despite the obvious truth that I was not.

Today I began to get some resolution on an ongoing situation in my life. The details are protracted and stupid, and I am (remarkably, amazingly) not at fault. Well, except for losing my temper a few times over the year and a half it has been drawn out by the other parties involved. It could be over, they want it over, but I know that is not the right thing. It would be the easy thing, and might be the right thing for me. It would be noble to carry on, but would it be wise? No one has an easy answer. Pray on it is not an answer. It’s a good suggestion, but so is Take a nap.

Today I actually got the angry high that I’ve heard people talk…. I was in such a rage at one point words were coming out in some sort of a jumbled order. My blood was racing. I never lost total control, though.

But it reminded me a lot of the night I knew things were over—that my using, that my relationship, that my way of life in active addiction had to change. My ex and I got a hang-up call on our unlisted number, and I don’t remember exactly what I thought happened—I was in the middle of intense paranoia and coming down from a weekend binge—but I blamed him for the phone ringing, and I started accusing him of I don’t know what, and I was so angry I threw a new and giant ceramic vase at a wall. Shards went everywhere. And I screamed. And screamed at the top of my voice until I thought my throat would bleed. Until I lost my voice. My ex tried to comfort me, and to rationalize with me, but all I could do was cry. And I was so scared because I knew everything was over. I knew then that I couldn’t go on that way, but it would take me another six months to put down the pipe, and another year to put down the bottle.

The next day I had to give a presentation to 75 people. I did it through a combination of mime and powerpoint, and everyone felt sorry for me because I had “strep,” and then I cried all the way home and whispered to him that he had to leave. Eventually, months later, he did. But we never slept in the same bed again. And I have felt alone ever since. Not always lonely, but really alone sometimes.

I’m actually crying right now just thinking about that night. So much anger. Today was not a safe place for me. I talked to my sponsor for a while. I bought a frozen pizza.

I’m officially off my pink cloud, but I’m still very thankful to be sober, happy to be alive, and I know I made the right decision to end that relationship. It is what I needed to do to be sober. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love or miss him, because I do. But he was not the life for me.

No relationships in the first year is bullshit. Come on, October! I have no interest in feeling this way or learning anything about myself or my feelings. I just want someone to hold and make me feel better again. Serenity prayer and goodnight.

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hurt

July 23, 2009 in afternoon reflections | No comments

Every once in a while I run across a song (or a shirt, or some tangibly ephemeral thing, a smell, a recognition) that brings back a flood of memory of time I had entirely forgotten. (Really, there are entire phases of my life that haven’t come back yet…..)

Johnny Cash’s final album was a big part of my life for a long time in active addiction. While I was in grad school, working endless nights on big projects, I would keep American IV: The Man Comes Around in a sort of perpetual loop…  for hours on end. It sustained me. When I had no hope, the camaraderie of the damned was soothing.

Hurt, especially, spoke to me in a way that few songs ever have. The bareness of it, the urgency of the pain expressed in it was my own. The welling up, the intensity… it was how I lived most every breath…  until I got a hit, and then it all went away, instantly, up in smoke. Until the binge was over, and it all started again, over and over. Days and weeks and months and years gone by, the repetition of the insanity masked by my apparent ability to cope with the world. In the end, I couldn’t cope, but until I realized that I couldn’t manage, I relied a lot on songs like this to distract me from how alone I really was.

Today it’s sort of hard to imagine being that person again if I just sit and think about it, but listening to Johnny Cash brings back for me the hopelessness of active addiction. I try to keep it near. Not near enough to feel everyday, but just within reach.

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