Hijacked hijacker.

My new favorite word. Lately, I can use hijack for any situation, as in:

My project at work got hijacked by a short woman with a big ego and a european accent. You can't fight that bitch, gotta let the project go. I picked my battles; actually, I picked no battles, and guess it all worked out in the end. The kids seeded flower pots for Earth day, which was my original plan, so everybody won.

Also as in:

My oldest child is living a life for which she patiently waited more than 2 years. She is about to graduate with a degree she wasn't sure she should want or could earn. She's rented a 2nd floor walkup over a bagel deli/Domino's pizza, and her new home is filled with light and scented candles and owl paintings. (Also in this new flat is a nice guy who is rather cute and very much in love with her, but maybe too old for her, but maybe not, it's not for me to say.) She helped out a friend in need a few days ago, and now her life has been hijacked by an angry drug addicted lesbian who has been tossed out of rehab due to her "problems with authority". My child came home to lie on her old bedroom floor, pet her left-behind cat, and cry. I used to love the angry drug addicted oppositionally defiant lesbian; I guess I still do. I'm just really disgusted with the bad-behavior-in-rehab spiel. Look, kid, this is your third go round doing 28 days. Swallow that shit that comes out of your mouth so you can get help, or move along so someone who deserves your bed can have it. You're like a punk holding a knife to a bus driver's neck. Get arrested, already, would you? Yes, life is hard, I get it. No, no one understands you, I get it. Get locked up, you may finally be the one who gets it.

Today I:

Hijacked my diet with a trip out to the Stewart's root beer and hot dog joint in Denville. I didn't order fries, but you know I ate 10 or 12 of Steven's. Feeding the ends of my chili dog rolls to the dog does not count as discounting the caloric content of the meal; I am only kidding myself.

My final example:

I am a recovering hijacker. I hijacked the expectations for a somewhat normal life not only from the above child, but her two sisters as well. I did hijack the idea of unconditional love from their dad. I hijacked my father's pride in a daughter who could rise above bad luck and poor timing. I've hijacked hundreds of people's plans to have a nice day. I have hijacked conversations, good intentions, and interventions. I took over that plane at gunpoint and turned it toward Mexico more than once, let me tell you, and I am more like the angry lesbian than I am my own kid. That is, I was like her. Now, I am more like my own child. I can hand over the controls and say, that's ok, I guess this flight will just take a little longer than I had planned. Does anyone have extra peanuts?

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.

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.