a further journey

i used to actually tag these entries, so that if anyone was reading them and they were looking for something specific, they would be able to find those things quickly.  but now i just write, because if anyone is reading this stuff at all, i am happy just to have someone sharing a random thought of mine, a moment of their time, and helping me to stay honest.
i didn't write yesterday.  i am sorry about that, and i say that to toti, and to anyone who does read here, and to my god.  i am sorry because i've allowed the bullshit with the donation can linger farther than it had a right to.  i'm sorry because this orbit is about all circumstances, and being able to trace lines to where i am from where i've been and therefore to be able to plot courses with accurate information.  if i skip, if i miss, if i allow myself to break the process, then it's just one more journey of hubris, of pride, of arrogance and ego, as if to say 'i am so important that this is the only way you can possibly understand me'.  and that's not the deal at all.
so i'm going to cover yesterday, though it was pretty boring.  i just did a minimum because i'm hurting physically.  gout is flaring in my left foot, my ankle, and it makes it hard to get around.  i went to the store at one point and got stuff for stuffed peppers and cabbages, and i got lunch stuff that raised my blood sugar considerably, which i knew better than to eat that stuff anyway.  I didn't go to the gym yesterday, see aforementioned gout, and i didn't get much cleaning done, though there's still time for that.  i just thought about the missing money.  i thought about how i hate feeling as if someone can play me for stupid and get away with it.  i hate that my integrity is questionable, though i truly did not misappropriate these funds.  and for me that's an important distinction, because i have done so in the past.  not from live and active meetings.  not from situations where people were depending on those funds.  i've taken money left from a meeting closing, when people stopped coming and there was no opening the doors anymore.  and even that's not right, and even that required making amends for wrongs done to the fellowship.  which is why i've strived for bettering myself when it comes to being responsible.  because sometimes, the only amend that is available to you is to change for the better, to not be the person that you were when you had the reputation you had.  i'd owed this District of the fellowship i favor an amend for a lot of reasons, and I believe i've settled those accounts spiritually.  but that doesn't mean i'm willing to let someone undermine the efforts that we've made to instill a sense of fellowship and family back into our meetings.  i don't know.  it's kind of an issue with me, obviously.

other news, found out an acquaintance from some years ago is likely dead.  her name is Norene, and I'm naming her because if she's passed there is only the anonymity of a first name since we were in a bad place.  and if she's not, then I hope she gets her shit together.  she was my age, and she was around the meetings for a long time, maybe as long as i was in the meetings.  she was a chronic relapser, and she did heroin.  when i met her she was just getting out of jail and just getting back into life.  she started out putting down a good foundation but quickly started to deteriorate.  she was about cons and fast money, and working for a living just wasn't doing it for her.  before long, she stopped coming to meetings and not long after that came the word that she was back out getting high again.  i heard from her after that, when she was reaching in and i tried to take her hand.  evidently she thought i was going to be a landing pad for her, but that wasn't on my itinerary.  she didn't like the fact that she wasn't going to become the center of my life, but i wasn't in a position to really give much credence to that.  not long after that, she stole my bag and my meds from my car.
now, she was educational for me.  i'd never seen some of the worst effects that shooting up dope could do to a person.  she had open sores that i would coat with medicated creams.  she would come by to shower and just cry on the floor.  i can honestly say, a woman who is naked on my bedroom floor and i hold her while she cries and don't think about fucking her is a rare thing.  but that's the kind of deal it was.  and i genuinely cared about her, about her children.  so when she decided, during a gout flare up like i'm having now (maybe the universe taking me around and back through it?  crossing a previous orbit?) she comes in and pretends like she's worried while her ride robs my car...i hated her.  and i am not in the habit of personalized hate.  i hate this world, i hate what Satan has done to it.  i hate the institutions of racism and terror.  i hate hypocrisy and bullshit, Mendacity as Big Daddy would put it.  but i have not hated many people, regardless of what they may have done to me, or what i thought they'd done.  but i hated Norene for a while.  because she brought, knowingly brought, bad spirit into my home.  i had no use for her after that.  and it took me a long time to find any kind of softness in my heart toward even her name.  now she's likely dead.  and i am not feeling bad for her, but i do feel bad for her mother, who i know loved her and wanted her to get clean.  and i feel bad for her children, who just wanted a mother to be there for them.  what's done is done, though.
this gout is still killing me, but i can't worry about that.  got some cleaning to do.  got some writing to do and got some planning to do.  i'm going to write some more in this later, i'm sure, but for now, i think i need to get back to Mechanical Jesus.