...well, it's likely not going to get much better than this, physically speaking. the weather is as psychotic as ever, and though my cold/flu/death has been knocked back significantly, it's not gone and i'm sure it's just gathering its forces for another run at me. nonetheless, i think i need to get back to cleaning house. i've lived in this mess inside me for too long, and so has the part of me that i'm trying to nurture finally. so i'm going to get back to digging in the dirt, and maybe we'll actually get done with this before the faux pagans have their night.
first, let me say thank you for the morning. i got up a little before the alarm went off. i managed to slide off my bed and onto my knees and say my prayer to get the day started. it's getting kinda natural to just get into my gym clothes and be ready to hit the JCC, and that's a good sign. i came out into the living room, having heard Syd milling about before i managed to slide out the bed, and found her on the couch, with a bucket next to her. now, likely it's a fake sick. however, in this new world, kids have a slight advantage, because schools don't actually back up parents anymore and school nurses are not allow to actually treat shit. at least in public, taxpayer schools. so if i sent her and she got there and said 'i have to puke', they'd have called me to come get her, and there goes the day. instead, i told her go back to bed, i'll call you off, you're going tomorrow. then i went to the gym.
I WAKED A MILE ON THE TREADMILL TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
not a big deal for you, perhaps, but it was a very big deal for me, and i thank the little guy who helped me and allowed us to walk it together, as well as my God, because the treadmill has been hell for me. i also did some of the butterfly presses on the machine and some machine bench presses, and then i split. i saw my 'friend' from yesterday morning, went to Taco Bell and got him some food. i went back and he was stirring...and eating! but the thing is, i believe a person should do what they are moved to do. and i had to say a small prayer, because my ego takes shit like this and runs...'look how wonderful you are, feeding the homeless and shit!' well, i am able to go to the gym because VF and MLF happen to be kind enough to make scholarship funds available to me and Syd (and she is going to start going, trust me). i am able to ride around because my God keeps my rusting car going. that man is someone's son to be certain, and very possibly someone's father. i would hope, should my circumstances warrant, that someone would see that i am okay for that moment. and, as i was leaving, i turned around and saw a woman, a nurse or orderly judging by the scrubs, come out with coffee for the brother. and then i knew that God said it was okay, and i felt better and went home. i've got two eggs on to boil for breakfast, with a piece of toast and water to drink and i'm going to take my bath and get it together to roll out when its time to set up for the meeting. that's about the size of the morning. my blood sugar was 185, but as i said last night i didn't eat as i should have...not badly, but not great...and i know what i need to do to make that a better thing, and i'm going to do that. so i'm going to start my bath, finish with my breakfast and i'll get back to this in about an hour or so.
it's almost four o'clock. i've done my meeting. i had a good lunch (spicy chicken wrap with salsa, spinach, cheddar and sour cream and a small bowl of chicken soup) and i've decided on dinner. i saw my brother, i've spoken to my mom and i have the meeting's rent money straightened out. i was rather irritable earlier, sitting in the FSH by myself waiting for people to come to the meeting. i think, if you live long enough, much of the world becomes disappointing. i know its true for me, and i trust i am not unique.
i was reflecting on the nature of steps four and five. i'm not covering much old ground, because where amends have been made in my conventional recovery program, where relationships have been repaired and i've atoned for the harms i've done, i'm not going to go back to those people and make more amends. unless my God says it's necessary. i'm going to focus on what has happened to Tim on the inside (to be referred to from here on out as TOTI, but not in all caps) and what will it take to get him to work with me on becoming. so we're going to go past the college thing, because i knew no one well enough at ysu to have a resentment against them. i am going to bypass hitting my bottom on cocaine, because i have made amends to my family. i am going to focus on my early recovery and move forward from there.
i got sober in november of 88. on the 27th, though that may not be my actual sobriety day, but its the one i've used for 27 years, so it's what we're going with. i say that because, i honestly don't remember. wait, let me check real quick...
the 27th or 28th. see, thanksgiving of 88 was on the 24th. i was home thanksgiving night. i was at my brother's house over the weekend, smoking weed and drinking. i was convinced by that time that i only needed to return to youngstown and all would be well. by monday, the 28th, i was being checked into the care unit in salem, ohio. so, yeah, one of the two, and not enough of a difference now for me not to take the 27th. and my anniversary this year is on a friday, so there's that. anyway...
i was scared again, and i was angry and grieving. i was being taken away from my drug, and i was placed in a center with a bunch of older dudes who i didn't know. i was pathologically frightened of people when sober at that time in my life. i hid in my room the first day, like some scared, small animal. but the second day the nurses made me come out to eat. that was likely my first resentment, but it didn't last long.
i did twenty-eight days in the care unit. it was educational. i was a spoiled brat with great insecurities and a need to act to cover them up. but what i found in those recovery rooms...it was like i'd been looking for this all my life. people working on caring about other people. people talking from the inside. people who weren't being mean to me or laughing at me because i was fat or a monster. though, i guess i couldn't really even properly be called fat at that point, as i was a coke fiend of the first order and was likely about two-fifty. i did cut my mohawk back in while i was in treatment. i did go to all fellowships starting out. i loved the meetings. first just because that's where the coffee and donuts were...real coffee. we weren't allowed caffeine on the care unit. i used to sneak tea bags from the cafeteria when we went down to the big AA meeting, and when i made coffee for the care unit i'd seed it with caffeinated tea so it was closer to real coffee. people loved my coffee. i learned to listen. i began to learn to hear. i had been to meetings before, with my dad during his early recovery days. but none of that really registered with me at that time. i saw light at the end of a very, very dark tunnel. that was enough for me to want to try.
in that period, it was easy to hide. it wasn't hard because people in recovery want to believe in things that they think have answers. i was on a pedestal because i spoke well, but though i was intelligent, i didn't know shit. i'm not saying i didn't have anything at all to offer. in my current fellowship, back in those days, i had a part to play, a role i was in that i was good at. my intuitiveness was amazing. i could 'read' a person with barely any insight from them. it came from living so long on the outside of people and watching, always watching, playing out scenarios that never happened of the time when i'd be invited 'in', wherever 'in' actually was. so i was like the next to the last house on the block in those days. my sponsor was the last house on the block. if the usual means couldn't open up a person and get them to talk, they were sent to me. if i couldn't, and that didn't happen often, they were sent to my sponsor. it was unconventional, but we were at war against a drug and a drug culture that was killing people left and right and there weren't a whole lot of us at that time. so we had to do some things by the meaning and not the letter of the Steps. it was a good time, but i used that to become something sort of enigmatic in the eyes of members of our parent fellowship. and i paid for that. i was used as a sort of 'fetish' in the sense of the word as "an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit or having magical potency", according to Dictionary dot com. i was some thing, like a talking lizard or a bleeding stone, and i got off on it but it was so harmful to me because it kept me from looking at myself and working on the inside issues. and none of the 12 step fellowships, as they are formatted require that you do that. you have to work through the steps, which are about humility and ego deflation on a secondary level, and developing a relationship with a Higher Power and a spiritual life as a primary focus, but you don't really need to get to know what the damage is, the specifics of it, nor do you have to dig any deeper than far enough to be able to help other people. and i hid in that fine print. and toti suffered because of it. it was a wonderful, horrible time. that kind of sums up my early recovery.
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