ORDER

 an intriguing proposition.
I miss my sponsor.  to this day, that has not ceased as a pain when he comes to mind.  yesterday I was listening to a rendition of the song 'I've Been to Paradise' by the Tempts, and it made me want to cry.  Johnnie would always end his lead by using the lyrics from this song to depict his life before recovery back in the earlier days of my recovery.  his delivery was great at the podium, and it always made the audience think; he'd take you back.  and back is where i'm trying to go now.  soon enough, though.

been a minute again, but i'm not apologizing.  the world is a mess; my life is a bit unkempt as well, sorry.  changes are, however, occurring and they deserve a voice on this Journey as well.  and if i don't give them that voice, where will it come from?  I am not, however, the Creator; i'm just a speaker on a stereo system. but i'll happily be that at least.

I was hanging with my daughter yesterday.  picked her up, brought her over, she cleaned my kitchen while i cleaned my bathroom.  we had lunch, i sprayed my house with the peppermint oil solution for mice, i took her home, let her raid my cabinets and gave her some money.  it was good for me to hang with her, i don't know if it was good for her.  that's not my business, though i hope it was. after i dropped her off, i went to Crandall park and waited for my counselor to call.

part of the so-called 'new normal', is the having of appointments over the phone.  i don't particularly like it; i miss my counselor.  she is a good heart in a comforting face.  she's been a part of the last 2 decades of my life.  talking on the phone to someone you've seen practically 52 times a year for the last 20 years is like either being sentenced to jail and maintaining communication...or having someone you love and care about sentenced to jail, etc.  but you take what you can get.

my counselor raised an interesting proposition in response to my query of my current disconnect.  i wonder very much about it.  it encompasses a lot of my life.  i am on the outskirts of a great number of details in my existence.  i can make myself speak to certain family members whom i have no real issues with; just don't speak to them anymore.  i can make myself keep appointments, but completely disregard the follow-through.  i don't know what the issue is; but i may have a better imaging on it when this is all done.  in fact, i'm moving mentally on it now.  but order is the name of this entry, and order we shall adhere to.

the disconnect in  question yesterday had to do with my physical therapy...or lack, thereof.  i was supposed to do some exercises for the past week, and i didn't do them.  no reason not to.  not complicated, not hard.  toe touches and backward bends, i think side stretches.  on the bed back stretch to help alleviate the sciatica pain i'd been having, and on the bed half-pushups.  on the step extensions to also stretch my back, from the 1st and the 3rd steps.  that's about the extent of a week's worth of a beginning.  and i did them the 1st day with the therapist (over the phone, using ZOOM), and i said i'd do them for a week...and i didn't.  and when the time came to set an appointment time for this week, i ignored the call.  and i had no idea why i didn't follow through.  this is in my best interest, after all.  and isn't that what i say a friend is to me?  ''someone who has my best interest at heart when they think about me'', that's my famous line when it comes to friendship.  so, the consideration becomes, if i don't have my own best interest at heart...i am not a friend to myself, am i?  and what the fuck kind of life can that possibly be?

i have learned to function, and that's something.  it is better than being totally dysfunctional.  i can keep my ass and home clean.  i can keep my bills paid-ish.  i can keep food in my fridge, whether i cook it or not.  i have a bed with clean sheets, i have a phone that's (mostly) only had one number.  i am employed when 20 million other motherfuckers have been laid off.  i make regular car payments.  i check on my mom every day, check on my parents several times a week (different things), and i try to do things for their well being (ahem).  i have learned to function.  but what do i DO for myself?

i've taken no real trips, gone nowhere significant.  i have not committed to weight loss since i worked at KA Menendian, and that's been about 30 years now.  i stopped daily walking.  i don't really tend to my diabetes as well as i should.  i don't draw, barely write, though when i do i'm pretty good at it.  i've not been on my upstairs computers in over a year.  i use the excuse of mice, but if i had been constant with it, mice would not have invaded my printer.  and so on, and so on.

little things, lumped together long enough, become a big pile, an overflowing closet that the door cannot be closed upon any longer.  and to see it, that is what i see.  un-care for myself, un-tending to many of the important details of my own life.  and my counselor raised the question, based on my past writings in this very Journey, based on our years of communication, "Can the grown you forgive the child you for not being perfect?"  or something like that.  because, what i discovered in that conversation over the phone yesterday was this:  when i fail significantly, I quit.  Period.

in one of my early years, first or 2nd grade maybe, my mom had come to my school (as parents used to do) and she was sitting in my class and i was up to the blackboard, think it was math, and i got a problem wrong, and i was so embarrassed about getting that equation wrong that i started crying, which is what i'd do often as a child.  i got beat when i got home; likely for the crying, which tended to run long for me, but i associated it with the mistake in the math.  i know i did, because this is the first time i've ever thought about it from the perspective of the crying being the motivator for the beating.  all i know is, i remembered it one way, and i reacted to that beating by disconnecting to the situation, and reframing it in a way that i would not have to deal with it, or anything that felt like it.  i can think back, now, to a number of incidents that i have done that with when i was a child.  the question becomes, when did that become the default position emotionally for me?

my sponsor would have told me, back in my younger years, to 'act as if' i deserved to take care of myself, and do the things i needed to have done to take care of me, to 'have my own best interest at heart; the things i'd want a friend to do for me', until they became part of my nature.  he'd be right, of course, and i wouldn't do them to completion, but significantly, i never really disconnected from him.  only in the very end.  when i wasn't in contact with him, i was trying my damndest to apply some of the things he'd taught me to my life, so i didn't have to be a disappointment to him.  like i'm doing with my PT now. 

i am fucked up sometimes.

well, that's enough on that for now, no point getting depressed in a pandemic.  MORE depressed, i guess i should say. i'm going to work on this shit.  a promise to myself.  i hope i value myself enough to keep it.  i do always value Jehovah, and I thank Him for the opportunity to reflect in life's mirror this morning.