Today marks my ninth-month of sobriety. Let's see, 9 x 30 = 270, and there were 5 months with 31, so 270 + 5 = 275 days. Remarkable. But I never set out to get to 275 days. I set out to "control my drinking", somehow get it to only on the weekends or less than twice a week. And so I did.
The reward of this sobriety is not cash and prizes, but the simple fact that I am present. I have been there for my mom as she deals with my dad, and for friends as they suffer losses and learn lessons. Helping them helps me, even though it's as cheesy as a line from a Tom Cruise movie. It's completely true. I find myself giving advice that I need to hear -- life happens, stay strong, remember that you're worth it. In doing so, I am not only being present for them, but for myself as well.
By writing in here, talking to friends and sharing the love in a healthy, happy way, I am constantly reiterating my strength against this disease of self-obsession. More than that, I am creating an idea that I can be trusted, and I can trust; that I am strong and can give strength; and finally, that I know what unconditional love is, and can love others as well as myself. This is worth more than any showcase on the "Price is Right", any suitcase on "Deal or No Deal", any car or money anyone can give me.
Thank you for being a part of this journey, thank you for letting me share, and remember to be true, stay strong. You are valued.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
In a beautiful world...
For some reason, the words to "Creep" by Radiohead have been running through my head since the first alarm went off this morning. I think it's because I kinda feel like a creep myself, talking to my gorgeous sober, happy self that woke up yesterday. The Committee barely let me get into the shower when all of a sudden, they started in on me. "Don't you want to control this person? You should. She/He/It/They all need fixing. Where's their 12 Step Program? Why do you have to be in one?" And on and so forth. Relentless little fuckers. So what to do?
Well, I've always heard that the best way to get a song out of the head is to listen to it fully. I just put it on, and I think back to a time not too long ago when I sang it on Rock Band 2 and just fucking wailed. "You're so very special...I wish I was special."It's a tango, for me at least, between what I used to tell myself 90% of the time and what I have been telling myself lately 90% of the time. My old self relished telling me how I was never good enough, not worth anything. It was really good at coming up with several hundred ways to tell me that on an hourly, if not minutely or secondly, basis.
In these past few weeks, months, I have been working on a personal inventory, seeing where I'm resentful and where I'm responsible, so on and so forth. Trust me, it's rough. But through this, I have had a realization that really, despite what the committee has said to me for the past 28 years, I'm actually worth a lot. I'm valued, and I do "float like a feather". The only way to continue that feeling of being so very special is to help others feel the same way about themselves. And to be honest to myself and others about what I think, do, believe and want. Or at least I've been trying. It might be hard, I might want to protect others and make friends, but I have to know that the only way of being there for people is by showing up and sharing my experiences - not telling myself that I don't deserve to be doing any of that. By dropping these preconceived notions of what I used to believe, I become less of a Creep, and more of a girl whose skin makes you cry.
That's all I got. Thanks for letting me share. I believe in you and always will. Stay strong and be true.
Well, I've always heard that the best way to get a song out of the head is to listen to it fully. I just put it on, and I think back to a time not too long ago when I sang it on Rock Band 2 and just fucking wailed. "You're so very special...I wish I was special."It's a tango, for me at least, between what I used to tell myself 90% of the time and what I have been telling myself lately 90% of the time. My old self relished telling me how I was never good enough, not worth anything. It was really good at coming up with several hundred ways to tell me that on an hourly, if not minutely or secondly, basis.
In these past few weeks, months, I have been working on a personal inventory, seeing where I'm resentful and where I'm responsible, so on and so forth. Trust me, it's rough. But through this, I have had a realization that really, despite what the committee has said to me for the past 28 years, I'm actually worth a lot. I'm valued, and I do "float like a feather". The only way to continue that feeling of being so very special is to help others feel the same way about themselves. And to be honest to myself and others about what I think, do, believe and want. Or at least I've been trying. It might be hard, I might want to protect others and make friends, but I have to know that the only way of being there for people is by showing up and sharing my experiences - not telling myself that I don't deserve to be doing any of that. By dropping these preconceived notions of what I used to believe, I become less of a Creep, and more of a girl whose skin makes you cry.
That's all I got. Thanks for letting me share. I believe in you and always will. Stay strong and be true.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Doors Opening, ding!
Yesterday, my mom told me about how my dad doesn't want to get a biopsy, but how she's still trying to convince him. "Who knows if it will make this cough go away? Then what's the point?" I can hear my dad argue. I can also hear myself arguing back with him, in a moment of weakness -- it might make it better, it might reassure us, it might, it might, it might. Sometimes the "it mights" are as bad as the "what ifs". However, when my mom calls me and tells me about her latest plight to right him, I have to remind her a lesson I learned the other day, "We can't make him, Mom." We can drag him to the doctor's office, we can make him listen to the doctor, but we cannot make him go under the knife, no matter how many problems, or "it mights" we think it's going to solve. And that's okay.
I say that's okay because my dad has lived a long life, and told us his best part of his life was the past 30 years with us. But I also say that's okay, because who would want that responsibility? Of course we all want to force someone to do something for us, but in reality, would we really want to have the power to be able to force them? That could be dangerous -- if I could have made people in the past do what I wanted, I would have a very different, very unstable, possibly unhappy life but definitely unhealthy life right now. I would have been stuck in my first dimension, with that creature from it, and stuck in my old hometown, having never met any of my soulmates that have enriched my life. Hardly any lessons would have been learned, and this blog would definitely not be here. Wow, it's a trip thinking about it, but not a trip I can afford to take today.
This lesson, this one about not being able to force anyone to do anything is something I am sure might not stick with me. In fact, I know it won't, because I was trying to will someone into a new life yesterday. I don't want her to be in pain, I know she deserves better, but I also have to know I can't force her to choose what I think to be wisely. I cannot be her higher power, I cannot be my dad's, I cannot be my exes' higher power (collective sigh of relief, boys) , and I cannot be Chester's higher power. I can show them what I have learned in my experience, and I can tell them what I think would satisfy me, but if that lesson, that door isn't ready to be open for them, then I won't jimmy it open. I am a teacher, I am a recovering alcoholic, but I am not AAA who comes and opens doors for people with a tool. Their hands alone can turn the knobs that my crowbar is powerless against.
That's all I've got, off to school today again and trying to spread goodness to all. Thanks for letting me share, be true and stay strong. You're wonderful.
I say that's okay because my dad has lived a long life, and told us his best part of his life was the past 30 years with us. But I also say that's okay, because who would want that responsibility? Of course we all want to force someone to do something for us, but in reality, would we really want to have the power to be able to force them? That could be dangerous -- if I could have made people in the past do what I wanted, I would have a very different, very unstable, possibly unhappy life but definitely unhealthy life right now. I would have been stuck in my first dimension, with that creature from it, and stuck in my old hometown, having never met any of my soulmates that have enriched my life. Hardly any lessons would have been learned, and this blog would definitely not be here. Wow, it's a trip thinking about it, but not a trip I can afford to take today.
This lesson, this one about not being able to force anyone to do anything is something I am sure might not stick with me. In fact, I know it won't, because I was trying to will someone into a new life yesterday. I don't want her to be in pain, I know she deserves better, but I also have to know I can't force her to choose what I think to be wisely. I cannot be her higher power, I cannot be my dad's, I cannot be my exes' higher power (collective sigh of relief, boys) , and I cannot be Chester's higher power. I can show them what I have learned in my experience, and I can tell them what I think would satisfy me, but if that lesson, that door isn't ready to be open for them, then I won't jimmy it open. I am a teacher, I am a recovering alcoholic, but I am not AAA who comes and opens doors for people with a tool. Their hands alone can turn the knobs that my crowbar is powerless against.
That's all I've got, off to school today again and trying to spread goodness to all. Thanks for letting me share, be true and stay strong. You're wonderful.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Disagreeing with The Beatles
As I finished up a mature, honest conversation with my mom about my dad's condition, I heard the chords and remixed version of "You've Gotta Hide Your Love Away" on KCRW come through the speakers of my busted stereo. And I came to a heartbreaking revelation - I think I have found this morning that I disagree with the Beatles. Maybe not fully disagree, but if I could, I would love to have a word with the Lennon-Mc Cartney writing team that scribed those words.
Looking more closely at the lyrics, I can see the heartbreak and yearning that they experienced over someone of the female persuasion. I understand the value of being careful with who you share your heart with. I have found in my experience that it is a good idea to be cautious with who you trust with what, but I have absolutely no regrets regarding that idea. I figure what I've shared with people will either teach them or me a lesson, and that is invaluable, no matter how much the heart gets knocked from its comfort zone as a result of my expectations and projections. Furthermore, as you might notice from earlier posts, I'm a pretty firm believer now that things happen for a reason. And as such, I have learned that all I want is to be safe. But that has nothing to do with hiding my love away. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If I hide my love away, as Paul and John express they would like me to do in this song, then hatred and anger breeds. It festers, much like the mold on my dishes used to. By keeping this love hidden, by hiding the light inside of me, and covering it up with anything else or reacting to situations in the fashion of my old behaviors, that's when the Committee starts. The second I do something like reaching out to an old friend, phoning a newcomer in the program, asking someone how they're doing and sticking around to actually listen, or simply smiling at a homeless person, that's the second that my attitude changes. My thoughts of everything I'm lacking change to thoughts of everything I have, and my self-esteem emerges from the bottom of the polluted Los Angeles river to the fresh air above Griffith Park and the Hollywood sign.
I cannot resent Lennon and McCartney for too long, because I understand what they were saying. Be careful, be prejudiced with whom you share your heart. However, since things are often taken out of context, I hesitate to rally behind them on this particular song. What I have to choose to remember, though is that these are the same geniuses that told us, "All you need is love", a line I have always held deep and close to my heart, and something I believe I cannot disagree with.
Thanks for letting me share, keep reading and stay strong. You are valued.
Looking more closely at the lyrics, I can see the heartbreak and yearning that they experienced over someone of the female persuasion. I understand the value of being careful with who you share your heart with. I have found in my experience that it is a good idea to be cautious with who you trust with what, but I have absolutely no regrets regarding that idea. I figure what I've shared with people will either teach them or me a lesson, and that is invaluable, no matter how much the heart gets knocked from its comfort zone as a result of my expectations and projections. Furthermore, as you might notice from earlier posts, I'm a pretty firm believer now that things happen for a reason. And as such, I have learned that all I want is to be safe. But that has nothing to do with hiding my love away. In fact, it's quite the opposite. If I hide my love away, as Paul and John express they would like me to do in this song, then hatred and anger breeds. It festers, much like the mold on my dishes used to. By keeping this love hidden, by hiding the light inside of me, and covering it up with anything else or reacting to situations in the fashion of my old behaviors, that's when the Committee starts. The second I do something like reaching out to an old friend, phoning a newcomer in the program, asking someone how they're doing and sticking around to actually listen, or simply smiling at a homeless person, that's the second that my attitude changes. My thoughts of everything I'm lacking change to thoughts of everything I have, and my self-esteem emerges from the bottom of the polluted Los Angeles river to the fresh air above Griffith Park and the Hollywood sign.
I cannot resent Lennon and McCartney for too long, because I understand what they were saying. Be careful, be prejudiced with whom you share your heart. However, since things are often taken out of context, I hesitate to rally behind them on this particular song. What I have to choose to remember, though is that these are the same geniuses that told us, "All you need is love", a line I have always held deep and close to my heart, and something I believe I cannot disagree with.
Thanks for letting me share, keep reading and stay strong. You are valued.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Wise Words from a Good Friend
For your reading pleasure via Brad in SF, a brother in blogging and sobriety...
There is a curious, extremely interesting term in Japanese that refers to a very special manner of polite, aristocratic speech known as 'play language', asobase kotoba, whereby, instead of saying to a person, for example, 'I see that you have come to Tokyo', one would express the observation by saying, 'I see that you are playing at being in Tokyo' – the idea being that the person addressed is in such control of his life and his powers that for him everything is a play, a game. He is able to enter into life as one would enter into a game, freely and with ease. And this idea is carried even so far that instead of saying to a person, 'I hear that your father has died', you would say, rather, 'I hear that your father has played at dying'.
And now, i submit that this is truly a noble, glorious way to approach life. What has to be done is attacked with such a will that in the performance one is literally 'in play.' That is the attitude designated by Neitzsche as amor fati, love of one's fate. It is what the old Roman Seneca referred to in his often quoted saying: 'The Fates lead him who will; him who won't, they drag.'
Are you up to your given destiny? That is the challenge of Hamlet's troubled question. The ultimate nature of the experience of life is that toil and pleasure, sorrow and joy, are inseparably mixed in it.
And, of course, as everybody knows who has ever played at games, the ones that are the most fun - to lose as well as to win - are the ones that are the hardest, with the most complicated, even dangerous tasks to accomplish...but winning, finally, is not the aim; for as we have already learned in mounting the way 'rich in pleasure' of the Kundalini, winning and losing in the usual sense are experiences of the lower chakras. The aim of the ascending serpent is to clarify and increase the light of consciousness within, and the first step to the gaining of this boon - as told in the Bhagavad Gita, as in many another wisdom text - is to abandon absolutely all concern for the fruits of action, whether in this world or the next.
Life as an art and art as a game - as action for its own sake, without thought of gain or loss, praise or blame - is the key, then, to the turning of life itself into a yoga, and art into the means to such a life.
~ The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell
There is a curious, extremely interesting term in Japanese that refers to a very special manner of polite, aristocratic speech known as 'play language', asobase kotoba, whereby, instead of saying to a person, for example, 'I see that you have come to Tokyo', one would express the observation by saying, 'I see that you are playing at being in Tokyo' – the idea being that the person addressed is in such control of his life and his powers that for him everything is a play, a game. He is able to enter into life as one would enter into a game, freely and with ease. And this idea is carried even so far that instead of saying to a person, 'I hear that your father has died', you would say, rather, 'I hear that your father has played at dying'.
And now, i submit that this is truly a noble, glorious way to approach life. What has to be done is attacked with such a will that in the performance one is literally 'in play.' That is the attitude designated by Neitzsche as amor fati, love of one's fate. It is what the old Roman Seneca referred to in his often quoted saying: 'The Fates lead him who will; him who won't, they drag.'
Are you up to your given destiny? That is the challenge of Hamlet's troubled question. The ultimate nature of the experience of life is that toil and pleasure, sorrow and joy, are inseparably mixed in it.
And, of course, as everybody knows who has ever played at games, the ones that are the most fun - to lose as well as to win - are the ones that are the hardest, with the most complicated, even dangerous tasks to accomplish...but winning, finally, is not the aim; for as we have already learned in mounting the way 'rich in pleasure' of the Kundalini, winning and losing in the usual sense are experiences of the lower chakras. The aim of the ascending serpent is to clarify and increase the light of consciousness within, and the first step to the gaining of this boon - as told in the Bhagavad Gita, as in many another wisdom text - is to abandon absolutely all concern for the fruits of action, whether in this world or the next.
Life as an art and art as a game - as action for its own sake, without thought of gain or loss, praise or blame - is the key, then, to the turning of life itself into a yoga, and art into the means to such a life.
~ The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell
My Experience with Coincidence.
To me, it is no coincidence that I woke up at 6:35am, the committee rearing its ugly head and yelling at me to worry about friends and family. It's no coincidence that I got up and looked to see when the next meeting was before I went to try to go back to sleep, only to find that it started in half an hour right up the street. Nor was it a mistake that when I got there, there were only three other people in the room, and they were asking for someone to share about the literature. And while that committee in my brain starts talking about how my share wasn't good enough, and that I should never volunteer to share again, it was no mistake or accident that someone else started sharing about how they want relief from their disease and began to distract me from my own misery. I can relate to that feeling - that desire of relief has been me throughout the course of my sobriety.
This made me realize, the only relief I can get is from this program, from sharing, from talking to another group of individuals that have the crazy committee making them feel like less of a person and who want relief. Most people don't want that relief -- they want to stay with what's comfortable, whatever it is. That comfort can come in many forms -- gossip, weed, other people, dishonesty, control issues, clothing, blogging, caffeine, anger, food, yoga, running, the list can continue. The thing is that most of the time, one thing or another will cease granting that relief. And then we're back at square one, lost and uncomfortable until we find another pacifier to stick in our mouths.
Lately, I have found myself to be using caffeine as a pacifier. It's legal, readily available, makes me more alert, and deliciously tasty. What more could I want? Unfortunately, the drawbacks to me are a cessation of appetite, and a mind that also has become more alert and paranoid, armed and ready rattling off a list of my imperfections, fears and hatreds at any moment's notice. So now what? Well, I don't think it's much of a coincidence that I have some sort of infection in my excretory system. Obviously, something or someone, saw the damage I was doing to myself, emotionally, mentally and physically, and decided I needed to be in pain so I would quit the private funding of Starbucks and coffee houses in the greater Los Angeles area. Not to mention the rallying of the committee.
More than that, some force greater than myself saw that I needed to find relief in writing and meetings. This is very uncomfortable, quite jarring to myself, but I find serenity in the fact that that same jerk that robbed me of my daily fix also put people in my life that I can talk to. People who want to listen, and have been through this emotional acid burn of dealing with feelings. That force also managed to remind me of my writing ability, and the relief I get from that by reminding me through a song on the radio that sang "Come on and let it out". Truer words were never spoken. Thanks for letting me share, and remember that you are valued. Stay strong.
This made me realize, the only relief I can get is from this program, from sharing, from talking to another group of individuals that have the crazy committee making them feel like less of a person and who want relief. Most people don't want that relief -- they want to stay with what's comfortable, whatever it is. That comfort can come in many forms -- gossip, weed, other people, dishonesty, control issues, clothing, blogging, caffeine, anger, food, yoga, running, the list can continue. The thing is that most of the time, one thing or another will cease granting that relief. And then we're back at square one, lost and uncomfortable until we find another pacifier to stick in our mouths.
Lately, I have found myself to be using caffeine as a pacifier. It's legal, readily available, makes me more alert, and deliciously tasty. What more could I want? Unfortunately, the drawbacks to me are a cessation of appetite, and a mind that also has become more alert and paranoid, armed and ready rattling off a list of my imperfections, fears and hatreds at any moment's notice. So now what? Well, I don't think it's much of a coincidence that I have some sort of infection in my excretory system. Obviously, something or someone, saw the damage I was doing to myself, emotionally, mentally and physically, and decided I needed to be in pain so I would quit the private funding of Starbucks and coffee houses in the greater Los Angeles area. Not to mention the rallying of the committee.
More than that, some force greater than myself saw that I needed to find relief in writing and meetings. This is very uncomfortable, quite jarring to myself, but I find serenity in the fact that that same jerk that robbed me of my daily fix also put people in my life that I can talk to. People who want to listen, and have been through this emotional acid burn of dealing with feelings. That force also managed to remind me of my writing ability, and the relief I get from that by reminding me through a song on the radio that sang "Come on and let it out". Truer words were never spoken. Thanks for letting me share, and remember that you are valued. Stay strong.
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