i could not choose a better image for how i feel today.
clarity is funny. when you begin change, and this is more speaking of myself, but i'm going to speak as i choose to speak here, you can't see anything in front of you except what was already there. as in, beginning healthier eating, wanting to lose weight, wanting to get off medications, i couldn't see a smaller me any longer. i couldn't see a bag with less meds than i'm taking now. i could only see the fat that i've lived within all this time, my black sports bag filled with prescriptions, and a lifetime, however short or long it may be, of labored effort in the simplest of tasks. now, almost a month and a half into it, there is a different clarity. still on the same meds, but the insulin reduction is already happening. still in a fat body, but i am stronger, i have more stamina and i have more energy. these things present a picture, in fact, they present two pictures. they present a picture of what may lie ahead, a little more clearly than they did in September when this orbit began. they also present a picture of what lies behind me, and what i can return to if i don't keep moving forward.
clarity is funny that way. it's both subjective and objective.
my depression is trying to move in. like that storm that is pictured above. i felt it today. i actually felt it. and i saw it beginning to coalesce. all the things i've just mentioned play a part in this. i am actually writing this just before two in the afternoon eastern time, because i don't want to write it at all. i want to go back to my bed, masturbate and sigh while trying my best to go to sleep, or at least to shut the world out. and i'm not going to do that. i have decided to fight, and i'm going to fight. but it's so damn hard, and i think, like a woman who just got done delivering a baby during the most horrifying labor known to humans, with a few months past the depression i will forget it and do the things that lead me right back to it again. this suggests, of course, that this is a voluntary thing. it suggests that it happens in my conscious mind and i choose to ignore it until it is all the way manifest. i don't know that as a fact. i only know one thing. yesterday, i felt pretty damn good. today, i feel as if i've been wrapped in wet flesh and am hovering over a piranha tank. and it's scary to see it on the horizon.
but, there's a rainbow in the picture.
tell you about me and rainbows. rainbows are a specific promise from God that he will not again destroy the world with a deluge of water. that's biblical. spiritually, many people take rainbows as being God showing his faithfulness in regard to anything he's given his word about. but rainbows are also a long standing symbol of cultural and societal diversity. and, more to the point in the last thirty years or so, rainbows have come to signify the gay rights movement and gay/lesbian culture, with a host of new gender and sexual identifiers put in as well. i had an issue with rainbows when i lived in Columbus. my child's mother was in the process of modifying herself to be a lesbian. because she is a grown woman who happens to do many things in a childish way (as do many of us, myself included) she began in the same way that my child began: with covering herself in the symbolism. it is interesting to see. there is the change in clothing, the shortening of hair, and the presence of rainbows. it was something to see. by contrast, my youngest brother is gay. he is probably a decade younger than me, which makes him younger than my child's mother as well. as he was acclimating to life in a city that is very gay-friendly, he did not adopt any particular coloration. he did his life, he did his private things and he, though childish, did not upheave anything in the decisions that he made. but my child's mother did. and i lost a family, and i lost a lot of my tolerance, because there was a faction of lesbian individuals that did everything they could to turn my ex and either planned to destroy my home or gave little thought to it at all. now, i know this is not new age thinking. 'everyone has the right to make whatever decisions they want for their own life'. i can dig it. i agree. but as i was taught, being right don't always mean you're doing right. so, too late to make a long story short, but i can make the ending less taxing on your eyeballs. i developed a aversion toward the rainbow banners and flags. i came to hate the Pride weekend. i began to hate anything with a rainbow on it. i had to do a lot of soul-searching, a lot of self-analysis and a lot of praying to come to the fact that A: all gay people had not hurt me. a handful of bitches who would have been bitches of any sexuality or culture brought pain and upheaval into our lives. B: i had friends who were gay who were being treated unfairly by myself, and as they had done nothing to hurt me, i had no reason to take my resentments out on them. my resentments, which would have to be dealt with for my sanity's sake, were about my ex, her crew, and that was it. and C: i had my baby to take care of at that time, i had two other children who were being twisted up by the bullshit that was going down, and if tomorrow was going to be better i had to do better today, meaning right at that time of discovery. so i got my head out of my ass. i made apologies, i forced myself to see things in a bigger picture than just poor me, and i even had a hand in starting a gay/lesbian 12 step meeting at Stonewall in Columbus. and that's not me saying 'i've earned my P-FLAG status, it's saying that for a while the rainbow was like acid on my brain, and not the good, trippy, gratefuldead kind of acid either. the 'OHMYGODITBURNS!!!!' kind of acid. and now, i see it, my child and children of my friends have adopted it and the lifestyle that it has become part and parcel of, and though sometimes i still sigh, i am cool. it is a promise, after all, of things being better, of things to come, at least a promise that the world won't drown again.
i just talked to a friend of mine, a guy i go to meetings with. he's a brother, about my age (now, sometimes when i say brother, i mean he's black, other times, i mean kindred spirit, just so you know. i'm not going to tell you which is which) and we talked about an anniversary meeting coming up. he is, from all he says this is a conclusion that i draw, a food fiend as well. we didn't start out talking about this, but thankfully Jehovah knows where conversations should lead and gets them there as they need to be. we spoke, and i felt i couldn't really express why i didn't want him to just grill up a mess of chicken, why the people at the meeting had to be responsible for contributing because otherwise they were never going to see that everything in this program is a collective effort. it takes a thousand recovering drunks to help one active drunk get sober, and the next active drunk needs one thousand and one recovering drunks, that's how this is designed to work. it ain't brain surgery. but that's not the way it is, because just like the society that houses the 12 step fellowships, we have diverted our focus from spirituality to materialistic selfishness. sucks ass it does. but that's the biz. however, in the two meetings that i am still active in, i insist on practicing the program the way it is written, the way it was taught to me. and i want to make sure there are some who know how it is supposed to be done, so that if something happens to me, there are still people who can keep things moving in the right direction. that's not ego; i am no one. i am a drop in a bucket. but just like one drop in an empty bucket means the bucket ain't empty no more, one drop could spill the whole thing over. so i am just a drop, but every drop counts. anyway, we talked about how the pizza idea (since we've not gotten many anniversary donations) would only be for others because i don't eat pizza right now and wouldn't because the day after our anniversary is thanksgiving, and if i'm going to have a blowout day, that's going to be the one. and then we started talking about our weight issues. i didn't know he was about seven hundred pounds at one point. i didn't know that he has been struggling as much as he has, despite having the gastric bypass surgery. i did know that he is in a lot of pain over his separation from his wife, and that he is not going to let too many people see him vulnerable. but that didn't matter. i talked to him about where i'm at, about where i've been and about the principles of the program that sometimes we forget. that sometimes, I forget. it's one day at a time. that is how you get from a day sober to years of sobriety, by daily increments. and suddenly, the wet flesh wrap doesn't seen quite as tight as it was earlier. i can't micromanage depression. but i can try to keep moving, to stay out of God's way and do His will to the best of my ability. i think that's pretty much all any of us can do.
counseling tomorrow. should be interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment