calm

      I never imagined in a million years that I would understand what  it felt like to " be still". Never could I have understood how to merely grasp the concept of  even STANDING still. My busied mind and body constantly had me bouncing around from insanity to astronomical insanity and back again. I'd tap my foot a hundred miles per hour because my nerves were so shot. I legitimately could not stop my heart from racing, my eyes from staring or my limbs from shaking. When I was a child I had a horrible case of Restless Leg Syndrome that carried on heavily into my addiction. I remember being  up for hourssss, days on end kicking my legs. Hanging the left  one off of the bed, and then the right one, and then both of them. Over and over. I was quite possibly crawling out of my own skin one single nerve ending at a time. My own body didn't even want to be a part  of me...what does that say?!
    My mind moved faster than my legs most days. I'd be ten steps ahead of myself, before my limbs could catch up I'd in turn be ten steps past that. I wandered. My poor soul was left out to dry on a regular basis. It would try desperately to catch up to the empty vessel  that had  abandoned it, and sad defeated time after now even more sad  completely defeated time I imagine it had just given up. I began to truly feel that hollowness. I imagine it happened somewhere between 18  and 24...I was lost before, believe you me...but not until I hit  my full maturity did  I begin to realize just how strayed I  had become. I  talk a lot about surviving. I Know now much of the time I did not spend living, but the more I think about it...I'm pretty  positive I just existed. I took up space. Always in a rush to go  no where and to pull everyone along for the ride. I don't even think I breathed the first 23 and a half years of that shallow existence. Didn't have the TIME I  guess.
     Today I sat still. I sat through an entire movie...alone mind you. I laughed, and I was the only one around  to hear it, and that was ok. I did not need to phone a friend or fast forward through the boring parts. I was just PRESENT. That is my new theme for this journey I continue on. I will  not survive, I will not merely exist...I will be very much present and I will  be very much alive.

Truth

        Maybe I don't want to know the truth.  The lies are safer, they are easily digested past the knot that becomes my intestines every time you speak to me. Don't think  for one second that I don't know,or that I don't think about it. Don't think that the thought hasn't crossed  my mind a damn near hundred times as I replay the same scenario over and over and over again. In sickness and even in health I have difficulty judging reality from fantasy. My heart and mind still play those little girl fairy tale games, where I dream of prince charming and candy coated rainbows. I need to be blind sometimes.
         I will think until my head hurts. I will find a way to blame myself for crimes that I did not commit. The things I had done in the name of love. I screw things up, lots of  things...I bob and weave, I weeble and wobble,  I generally always fall down,  but I indefinitely ALWAYS get back up. I can forgive me, my diseased mind. I can justify every move I  make. It is you I can not disregard. I have to know why...Why the half truths...because they weren't all lies. The look on your face screams innocence but your hands are in cold blood. Where did your mind wander off to when you were staring in my eyes. Did you have to convince your conscience to look away because you could not stand to feel the pain that was living behind my freshly mascaraed eye lashes.
        I can not see through you. I never wanted to, I still  don't want to. That takes the purity away. This blindness ruins us, this I know, but it is also the only thing that keeps me coming back. If I choose to acknowledge every disobedient moment then I assure you I could not allow myself to continue to return back to you time and time again. For now I will trust that my instincts will let  me know when the pain has gotten to great to bear, and that God will tell me when its time to come back home.

Restless

    68 days sober today and I am more restless, irritable and discontent than ever. The first month I was on a high...the pink cloud if you will. I couldn't tear my eyes out of my big book. I could not tell you the last time I was up until 3am reading anything let alone the alcoholics anonymous bible for goodness sake. I did not sleep Id have to say  for the first 40 days of my sobriety. I couldn't begin to wrap my mind around it...for so long I had "passed out". A complete sedation. I did not dream, I did not toss and turn. I was paralyzed with substance. Remove my crutch and my mind was off to the races. I was up rearranging my closet, or writing or turning the tv on and off and on and off. I think I was crazier in those early days of sobriety than I ever was using. Uneasy is an understatement.

    I was completely lost when I celebrated my 30 days. I actually had forgotten what day it was until about 1030 at night on Novemeber 15 where I then proceeded to throw myself a pitty party. All my friends are out having a good time and here I am wallowing in my own shit. Boo freakin who. I AM AN ALCOHOLIC. I KNOW THIS. I can not drink safely. I can not throw caution to the wind the way that they can. This Dis- Ease is mine alone to own. Am I jealous that my loved ones do not suffer the way I do...Some days of course I am. I do not wish this pain on any solitary human being, my worst enemy even, but do I like to day dream that I could trade places.. sure I do. Most days I'm happy that I can't go back to who I was. I was a gypsy monster. I was nil and void..sooo lost in so many many ways. I miss her some days,  because she was familiar that sad girl. She was justified, so she thought, and she was sick beyond her wildest imagination. On my good days I would not trade my worst days now for my best days then. I find disgust in who I was...

     This is painful. It is an unexplainable feeling of joy and weakness. It is freeing to have your life placed in gods trusting hands. The hard part is leaving it there. My will has gotten me no where. It has hurt the ones around me, it has ruined everything it has touched, and still my sick mind travels back to that. I have to keep remembering that I need to stop forgetting that I am one bad decision away from losing myself, my mind, and most importantly my whole life. 

     

Touchstone

I heard once in a meeting that pain is the touchstone of spiritual growth. This emphasizes that pain is a necessary element of life, but it is optional to suffer from it. That's right, OPTIONAL. To suffer means that you make the conscious effort to live in the past, to avoid the future and to neglect the now.  Why? What in the past is so important that it needs to be so heavily dwelled upon. Have you not endured that pain once already? Have you not lingered in the presence of danger long enough. You go to any lengths you can to evade the future because It is unknown. We as alcoholics especially are not fond of the unknown. We must have all of our half drunken stumbling ducks in order..in OUR selfish sequence, following OUR unrealistic will for them or the lack of control will strangle us. The now, forget it. We never experience this now you speak of. We are either miserabling sitting in the hole that we have dug over the course of our reckless shit storm of a life or we are feverishly stacking premeditated resentments for incidences that have not yet, or may never occur. Right now never happens for us. We live backwards almost. You act then you think. Your emotional shell cracks, the tears are rushing down your beat red intoxicated horror stained face, and then somewhere between cracking and crying you actually realize what its all for. Your dead before your dying. You have given up well before you've started to fight. That is this disease. What is this you ask yourself. Why do I constantly force myself to relive the pain over and over and over again? Your scared shitless that's the problem. Your friggin terrified to live..but that's ok, because so was I. Its FEAR. That as humans is our biggest motivator and in turn our most profound handicap. I remember a time I could not take a single step in any direction...forwards or back without being incapacitated by trepidation. What if I made the wrong move, or chose the beaten path..What if by chance, and the chance was great, I was alone on that "road less traveled by". Who the hell cares!!! ANY move is the right move as long as your not standing still in the trench of terror. And Thank god if you happen to be alone on that road..No one to get in your way, no one to sway your opinion. Just walk...Breathe and walk. Today when I move it is by faith and not by sight because my heart knows what my sick mind still ignores, that I will never be alone. That grace follows me in every subtle footstep. In my prayers I ask that it not only guides my sails but my thinking as well. I do not suffer today, for today I do not fear.

humbled

Today I have to sit back and count my blessings.  There are so many days, minutes even, that just fly by without even a glance. We are so caught up in "the now" that we miss so many of life's little miracles and don't even realize. There are thousands and thousands of hours wasted pursuing countless selfish acts of "heroism". People who are stressed out over petty minuscule things, continuously robbing Peter to pay Paul, giving only in hopes that they will receive. There are natural disasters and personal daily tragedies. There are deaths, births, relapses, homelessness, greed, lust, envy...Incomparable bouts of pain, fear...solitude. Yes these are real life scenarios, and yes they are of importance, and yes they sometimes can be a matter of life and death...but where is GOD? The biggest miracle of all is the human ability to have faith. Belief that even if not viewed from the beaches of Turks and Caicos, the sun still rises just as bright and beautiful. The leaves are still filled with the morning dew even when there is no one around to feel the damp branches of the freshly planted trees. I think somewhere we have lost our ability to trust. We are all so hurried to get things done that we miss the joy of  doing them. We plan so far in advance that we actually MISS "the now" that we constantly strive to be apart of. We are lost and we don't even know it. I humbled myself by thinking  I was very much present, for I had played god  most of my life. I thought I had all things, saw all things. Sure maybe through blind eyes and empty hands did I defy the odds. I could make lemon juice out of lemons...although I'd hardly call it lemonade. I didn't trust anyone and I barely trusted myself. God was not a question for me...He hated me. THAT I was sure of, at the time atleast. Until one solitary day...I had no where else to go but down, on my knees I went in the middle of a beautiful church cathedral, and I cried. I wept oceans of tears, enough to drown the angels and the consistent chaotic noise I'll call it that filled  my head, and I prayed. I prayed that the madness would end and that my heart would find peace in " the now". I had been one of those busied people for far too long..racing and racing, going no where fast." eating poison, and waiting for someone else to die" is how I lived. The best advice I was ever given and that I can give to you is to live every single moment. Live it like it is the last moment, the only moment. Live for right this very second, if it feels right than capture that experience. Your gut instinct is usually right, and if it is not god will make sure some way some how that it all makes sense in the end. Every passing day is documented whether we rush through it, ease into it, smile or cry...and when we are old  and gray, those scribbled down memories become " the greatest story ever told"...the story of our lives.