Consider this...

Life is good, and kind, and busy, and what got me sober now keeps me away from the rooms and people I need desperately to stay alive and well. An academic's schedule, and one meeting a week, and thoughts swirl around, creep in, speak to me.

Happy hour, Friday night. Delicious.

Music mixes with flighty moods, and for some reason, R.E.M. plays a loop, rarely interrupted. So, in succumbing and downloading and listening and dancing, I sing and recognize the truth.

Right before I got sober, in an unmanageable time of a hellish life, I was struck then by R.E.M., "Losing My Religion", and found what was slipping through my fingers. I found myself in the corner or in the spotlight, grasping at sanity, dishonest with myself and life about what I was really up to. I didn't intend to ever post words here that aren't mine, but these saved me.

Life is bigger than you, and you are not me. The lengths that I will go to, the distance in your eyes. Oh no I've said too much, I've set it up. That's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. I'm losing my religion, trying to keep up with you, and I don't know if I can do it.
I thought that I heard you laughing, I thought that I heard you sing. I think I thought I saw you try. Every whisper, every waking hour I'm choosing my confessions, trying to keep an eye on you like a hurt lost and blind fool.

I think I thought I saw you try. Vodka gave me those visions, made it all look so fine. But that was just a dream. I woke up screaming one night, I really did. I knew that to get out, I had to stop drinking, and I hated it all, me, him, life, love, false identity in all of it. Most of what was me was gone, drunk away, you hold the bottle upside down praying for a drop and nothing is there, I'm all gone, baby.

Shaking the bottle, shaking my head, shaking my fist, shaking.

When happy hour whispers, so does My Religion. A gentle, loving reminder of where I was, and how it was, and to never ever go back to that life again. A dishonest room full of dishonest people, me in the corner/in the spotlight, hurtlostblind. I set it all up to get out of there, I left that room and walked into another, and my rooms became my castle, and this is my confession, all of it. My blame, my responsibilities, my dreams, my sobriety, my songs, my life.

Few of us in sobriety thought we could face the truths and still be happy; we needed others to show us the way. Now, I'm no longer dreaming, I'm living, and so are those around me, in a life that is bigger than all of us, and just the right size.

What's Going On In There?

I don't know sometimes, I really don't get it. Me. Here is what I did today:
cleaned--quite a bit
My youngest kid--got her, took her back (hate that part, hate writing it, hate knowing it, she isn't here and I hate that)
pedicures for two
dinner for 3...roast chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, peirogies smothered in onions
Sunday night meeting with friends
homework...3 page paper, half of a 2 page paper, read
called my mother AND ex-husband
And now I am manic. It's not enough. I am behind. I will never get it done. Futility reigns. I am fat. Why did I say that? Why did I wear that? What was I thinking? I should live alone.

My dad's birthday is Tuesday. He always asked those questions. "What are you talking about?" "What did I tell you?" "What's going on in there?" (um, giggling with my sister.) Well, I really miss him a lot. I loved my father, and I know he loved me. He wasn't always the nicest guy, he could bite you to pieces, he could really shred you to bits. I don't know why he felt he had to do that, or why he would really want to if he had looked closely enough at it, but he did it, his whole life, right to the end. My dad could be loving, encouraging, supportive, funny. When he bit, though, he bit hard, and I really wish he hadn't. There are people here, now that he is gone, who only remember the teeth, and wear his toothy scars. My youngest kid is one of them. I'm so mad at him for that. I have enough apologies of my own to make to that girl.

What I really meant was...

So, the fourth step, still finished, yet unfinished, because I haven't done my fifth step yet, and all that muck and mire I took weeks to stir up now bubbles and stinks, and I walk around smelling my own shit all the time. I've got to dump this crap, fast. A new sponser is willing to hear it and help me package it up for the garbage heap. Time is of the essence; but I haven't had the time. But you and me we know we got nothin' but time.

What I really want to unload right here today is how the sober sex part is gnawing on my bones. How having sober monogamous sex with a self-centered recovering 51 year old man is crushing my frail ego. (Or empowering it, maybe? Because I have to learn to live really well on my own accomplishments without making someone else responsible for my self-worth through physical attention?) But I can't seem to go that far here. Fuck the total disclosure; my few readers include my daughter, and the 51 year old whom I really do adore and who snoops around my blog for sexual innuendo and references to himself. Neither wants to know that much about me. Let's just say this: I am frustrated. Classic.

I want to run away. Pack all my stuff carefully into huge cardboard boxes, rent a truck, and shove off. There is way too much responsiblity here in this town for a drunk floozy like me. Work and more work, school (with TESTS! and PROJECTS!), housework, and stroking the ego (let's call it "ego" for the sake of the children) of the 51 year old is tough stuff. For me. I want to read and write and walk and dance and practice applying the "smokey-eye" look til I get it right. I want to sit and pet the cat. I want to talk for hours on the phone with my mother. I want to hop in the car and shoot down to my sister's compound in Richmond so she and I can simultaneously kayak and birdwatch. I want to go for coffee with my girl crush, and laugh and cry til we realize we've been sitting in the stupid Starbucks for 3 hours. I want to have sex until the sun comes up and not be the one who has to wash the fucking sheets.

Guess what. I want to do anything BUT my fifth step.

I've Been Waiting For A Girl Like You

I balked at attending the fourth step workshop for three years. Thank God.

Now I am in it, working it, doing my homework, feeling all of it. Never before would I have been able to stick with this, and stay sober. I needed every meeting, reading, phone call I've made to get ready for this step. This is the tough stuff, friends. You get to unwrap those pretty little boxes tied up with satin ribbons (or nooses) that have been kept high up on the closet shelf throughout your life, your drinking life, your life when it was messy and ugly and not at all neat. The Big Book approach to your fourth step helps you wade through all that wrapping and padding without falling into and letting it eat you alive. I won't detail it; if you've done it, you know, and if you haven't, you will. Or, you will drink. Up to you.

So tonight I am reflective, but not victimized by whom I'm looking at. I am strongly moved by my experience, but calm in my emotions. I'm incredibly empowered by knowledge, but not ego maniacal. I am full of compassion for myself and others, without pity. With respect and gentility I have been shown how to take an honest look at myself. There is a beautiful truth about who I am, and I like this woman. Finally. You might, too.

Man Overboard

There is a loneliness, and isolation from man and world, that alcoholics can turn from a gnawing discomfort to a full-blown desperation given time in one's head and just time. I hurry to isolate myself from everyone around me when I feel small, insignificant, a non-person. Silly, right? But that is my identity, my reason to drink to feel comfortable, to drink to act out, to dance hard, laugh loud, mouth off, and let the world know that I AM HERE!

Look at my life since I stopped the insanity that came with my drinking. I am working in a field I love, my private business is taking off so much faster than I'd dreamed, my relationship is wholesome and loving. I continue my education with passion and love of learning. I am of help to others in the rooms, and my daughters can count on me at any time to show up with sanity. I have met two wonderful, dear, honest friends in AA, and have friendships, though few, outside of AA with women who are smart and funny. I have a deep and abiding love for the woman who sat me in my seat, and a new caring and commitment to my whole family.

I see it all, know it all is my life now, that the past is past, and yet...tonight I am just a lousy drunk, non-deserving, so so small. An impostor. A girl playing dress up with a beautiful woman's clothes, with her life. Pretending I am a professor when I don't have even a basic degree. Everyone else was invited to the party but me. I am sure that my life was meant to be fucked up, that to drink til I pass out is the real me, that I am supposed to giggle and beg and puke my way through life. I am unlikeable, certainly unlovable, by anyone half-sane, at least, including myself.

This mania is, I know, temporary, and will go away as soon as tomorrow comes, and I feel the sun on my face, and forgo my insignificance, my identity crisis, with a big "So what?". To be one of many, useful, helpful, productive will be enough. My gratitude for the life under my feet and around me will be enough. Oh, not that I don't have gratitude now! I have truckloads! And with that, right now, comes a steam train of guilt that my gratitude isn't the key to snap me out of my self-centered funk. See, I really do suck. I can't get gratitude right!

Alcoholics realize this as "the jumping off point", when a life fueled with alcohol is a desperate one, and life without alcohol seems unattainable. I know that if I drink, I will hurt someone. Maybe kill someone. Maybe kill myself, quickly or slowly, maybe I will. If I don't drink, I will have to keep my seat in AA. I then can hug my children, love my partner, learn my lessons, and tend my garden. So, I feel lonely in AA. I really don't want to belong. But without it, I would surely be alone. I must sit with the others in our life raft, and wait to see where we end up.

Bewitched

Just yesterday I picked up a copy of Augusten Burroughs' "Magical Thinking" from our employee book swap shelf, not looking at the title, just happy to have found Augusten among the autistic. The contents were not what I had hoped from Augusten; it is a collection of shorties and essays without continuum, and I prefer Augusten's writing when he is telling a whole story with his short stories. I like when he is really going somewhere, like in "Dry", and the chapters have connection. This book seems to be a money-making hardcover for the author and his publisher, resting on Augusten's popularity. Not bad, but not so good, at least to my taste. Anyway, the title has grabbed me, and thrown me around a bit, so
Dear Augusten, I am once again eternally grateful for your contribution to literature on the whole, but more importantly to me and my sobriety.
Loves, The Great "I"

The definition for magical thinking is given on a front page, and it really threw me. I have known a man who has repeatedly fallen into schitzophrenic mind benders, where he believes he has the capacity to will the world to do his bidding. This affects quite a few alcoholics while they are active, but this poor idiot (let's call him Leon for Mr. Spinks, because when this fucker didn't get his way with his mental powers, he would literally knock me down) hasn't had a drink in over 2 years, and still thinks he can make the wind blow. He really does... he called me one day while walking through the cemetary to tell me he had willed the wind to blow, and it did, and all the trees were applauding him. What do you say to that? Really? I said, "Good job."

So, I was remembering all his claims how Leon really could do magic, how he could read people's minds, make them look at him/scratch an elbow/break up with a boyfriend/answer a phone he had willed to ring, and I thought how much fun I used to have with completely fucking with that when I was a drunk, and how scary and sad it is now that I am sober. Once, a few years ago, he asked me to watch the crack under the front door while he showered, because he had just willed the spies who spied on him while he bathed to spy once again, and he wanted to prove to me just how powerful he was. Leon was actually manifesting the spies while he undressed. Now, I was hammered, and thought, yeah, this will be fun! Let's just mess with the bastard! (If you were a drunk, you would do it, too.) Leon positioned me crouched in the hallway (so "they" wouldn't see me through the windows) with my wide eyes two inches from the crack under the door. And, when I knew he was good and naked and soapy, I ran to the bathroom and whispered that yes, he was right, they were here just outside the door, I saw them! I needed to hide, too! I waited silently while Leon rinsed and got out, and then we had sex, that kind of sad, clutching, desperate sex a man will have when he thinks you are the only one in the world who believes/knows/cares about him. (I feel badly about this now, but I didn't then. Back then, the least that bastard owed me was a lay.) This happened a hundred times over four years of our crazy duet; I could write a book.

What scares me, really does frighten me now, is that Leon a. still believes that he possesses magical thinking, and b. still believes that I believe he has this fabulous gift. Today, Leon is a scary, cynical psychopath. I realize I've encouraged him to walk on that rail, and now he is dangerous to himself and others. I am not being dramatic by projecting some awful outcome should he go on a schizophrenic tirade and stab someone, possibly me. I'm just being sensibly cautious. We still cross paths, and I stay far to the right. I am careful not to cross the street, though; I know he wills me to cross the street, and his days of getting his way with me are way over.

I am also a bit thwarted by Leon. Without the booze (his or mine), he just isn't fun anymore.

Wait, wait, what was I celebrating?

I celebrated 3 years of continuous sobriety last weekend. My sober date is April 6, but our groups honor all celebrants from the month in its last week. There are those who celebrate in every group every night of the week; that's ok for them, but I can not take that kind of exposure. I prefer a warm-up at Night Owls on Saturday, because it is in the dark and that just rocks. No one can really see me, I share my experience-strength-and-hope and my heart's worth of gratitude and hurry back to my seat. Also, the struggling friend (found below) was there and gifted me with "Candide", and that was a beautiful thing. Really, Night Owls is a stellar part of Saturday, and on celebration, it is all that and a cake with my name on it. Sunday, however, is a very different story.

I have left and returned to the Sunday group more times than any other. It is an intimidating group of who's who in local AA sobriety, with at least a dozen members having 20+ years, and another half-dozen at over 35. All of my closest friends are there. It is also the most publicized, centrally-located open meeting of the week, so new drunks arrive each week and stick close to the back wall. Fortunately, there is a chair for them to sit in. Unfortunately, they don't get the anonymity clause right away, and I've found myself hiding from familiar (albeit swollen and red-faced) faces. I don't shy from admitting I am in recovery if I am in the right setting; a fund-raising function with colleagues and parents of our students is NOT the right setting. So, I guess I am picky about who knows what and when, and that must remain my problem. Those new folks can get me squirmy, but not psychotic. I leave that to the one I call "the red head".

On Sunday, my dearest AA friend and confidante, a man with 41 years, saves me a seat. If I don't sit in it, no one sits in it, even if I don't get to that room for 3 weeks in a row. Now, for 3 years, I have been sitting, on and off but mostly on, in that seat. So can someone please tell me why the fuck the fucking red-head transvestite had to sit in the seat next to the one with my friend's baseball cap on it last Sunday? And when she saw me coming, moved over only ONE seat but stayed where she could turn her head when she does that really fucked up twisty-braidy thing with her hair nonstop to catch a look at me? When last year she was the secretary and fucking took my name off the member list because I said I'd be away for my celebration? When she checks out what I am wearing every time I walk by, so she sat where I had to pass her? And her toes were skanky and I had to say "excuse me" to her so she would pull her nasty jagged toenails under her chair so I could get past? And she checks out my clothes all the time, although she wears the same fucking clothes every week, except last Sunday she wore a cheap see-through too-big dress without a bra and you could see her friggin brownies pointing at you? And then she popped a Lifesaver while my mentor was giving an emotional loving message, and she rolled it around that hole of a mouth against her teeth and chewed with her mouth open? Because her mouth is always fucking open? Seriously, she doesn't shut it. It is open. All the time.

I was told she clapped when I spoke, and that is nice. When she spoke a few months ago I told my mentor how I regretted missing that meeting. There has to be something in her story to which I can identify, some part of her docudrunkary to which I can relate. Any other day, I guess that is who I am and just how I feel; apathy and "live and let live" sharing the same AA umbrella. Tonight, like last Sunday, I am only disgusted with her. (Of course this leads to self-disgustion. Tenth step. Although, if I don't fourth step her soon, I won't have to worry about seeing her, she won't find me in the County Line.) She leaves a bad taste in your mouth like you've licked a frog out of a catfish pond. It takes me a mighty long time to spit her out.

Birds of a Feather

My heart is breaking for a friend, a crazy-ass drunk who's life is spinning away from him. Usually I don't have much sympathy for alcoholics who know how and where to get sober, yet choose to continue to drink dangerously and complain about "not getting the program" as a bigger attention getter. (I guess that's the German part of me, intolerant even while educated. ) I mean, really, why would you sit down, shut up, listen, and do what others tell you when you can swing from chandeliers, fall down stairs, swerve over the yellow line, and bang rails in the men's room of the County Line til 5 am? (Damn, when I think of cursing the birds at 5, because they were waking and I was NOT sleeping...well, that's why I'm here.)

So, my friend. Whom I took to immediately upon meeting him, because I recognized myself on his surface. He is searching religions for spiritual recovery, searching his sexuality for soul recovery, reading voraciously for intellectual recovery, switching up his exercise regime for physical recovery. This is where his spinning begins, increases, and hopes the end is coming pretty damn soon, or he knows he will whirl away to nothing, a no one, no where. He practices yoga while reading Voltaire. He stays up all night making an origami zoo, agonizing over the recipient, either the latina with the fuck-me smile or the young tough with the fuck-you eyes. He stays at home lately because he is tired of getting pulled over/beaten up/thrown out. He burns CDs with elaborate themes, like "If I Was Your Boyfriend", and "Volume Two", mixing Chicago with Zappa and The Hollies. Yes, Chicago. I mean, this kid is pitiful.

And I get it! I get him! The whole show! The search to try anything at all to bring sanity to life, except of course not drink. This guy gets nothing but sympathy from me, maybe because he tries so damn hard. He's not hopeless, he's got plenty of hope! "Life WILL get better, if only_____happens when I find ______ and can go ______ with ______!" His life is, like my life was, as meaningful as a blank Mad Libs page! And I love him. I wanna chuck him on the shoulder, pinch his cheek, "aw-shucks" him into recovery. Not baby him, so much as call him buddy and pal, and say things like "if-I-can-do-it-you-can-do-it". Which is all well and good if his name was Opie Taylor, but it isn't, and really, he is killing himself. And that is one really heartbreaking experience that folks in recovery have in common: We watch other people kill themselves daily. It's part of our collective recovery. I guess that is part of my impatience with so many drinking drunks, that part of me is freaking tired of watching them. Enough already! "If-I-can-do-it-you-can-do-it". It doesn't get boring, it just gets sickening. For me, at least. Except, with my friend, at least for now. My tolerance can turn on a dime. Maybe I will get bored, or sick, or tired of him. That might not be a bad thing--I got sober when I got bored, sick, and tired of myself.

Necessity is the Mother F of all Invention

It was suggested to me to write everything down. And I did. And I've lost it all, thanks to Limewire and a rabid rabbit. (Once the computer gets the virus, it can't be fixed if your hell bunny has chewed its wires.) And I am having a hard time, now, taking new action. See, I thought I was past all this, had written, forgiven, moved on. But that's only what I thought and not what is. Know this: I will always choose denial as my first option, rose-colored glasses second, negotiation third, and finally reality once I've met it head on and one or both of us is left tear-stained, beaten, and bloodied. And it's usually me. Which means, I guess, I win. Because then I've gotten it all, the life, the fight, the writing, the sanity. That's my regular path. You'd think I'd make that my first option. No. Just, no.

So, my daughter is in college and has a blog. (Is there redundacy there?) And her blog is so very good, and witty, and chi-chi, and all sorts of hip, but she is also smarter than most people I know, smarter than most people in this country. And in her blog, at Christmastime, she took a tiny bit of something I'd written, a short list, and posted it with few comments. Well, there I was. My words revealed the essence of me, to me, through my child's literary comments! In about 8 lines! Whoa! So, perhaps I can find myself in my own words, if I know two things: 1.) I keep it simple; 2.) I know they will be public. It's honesty, coupled with full disclosure! How New!