5 years clean

And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me

i am writing this the night before 09/28/09. i grilled some veggies for dinner, grilled extra for a coupla days lunches with some tenderloin too. i am grilling pears right now and gonna have one or two with caramel ice cream. my laundry is in the dryer and i'm watching "cadillac records" while i post. i spent a night in salida with a friend, savoring the changing colors of the aspen and other trees. that friend is my mother, and we are re-writing our relationship- at least the finale.

this is a dramatic departure from where i found myself five years ago and before. i had been flapping in the wind like a kite caught in a tree for so long that i don't think i could remember what it was like not to hear the wind. i had stepped in a bucket of "fuck me" paint and i just starting believing that was what i looked like. and it was reflected in every other relationship i had, too.

thanks to a series of what then felt like unfortunate experience, i found myself with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. i had no one to blame for it, either. this last part really sucked. i found myself back in denver, after leaving that town in an angry chess move, to have the fun that i was denied the ten years prior, waiting to die from aids. so i jumped to san francisco and directly into a kerouac story. or maybe it was really more like dennis cooper. anyway, the meth days began before my heart could heal from any prior pain. i checked out of my life emotionally, and began to fill my time and my mind with little white shards of ephedrine-like amnesia and my time with chasing the midsections of men. each passing month drew me deeper into nothing and before i knew it, that's where i called home.

5 years ago, after several miserable attempts and making a change, i touched the dark bottom beneath me. i had seen my future, had seen my past, and had somehow realized that there was only one way to find my chi. i needed help. i couldn't do it by myself, as i had thought i had to do all my life.

my introduction to 12 step was painful. all these people talking in language that ignited nothing but anger in me. emotional boot camp is what i called it, and i really didn't want to be bothered. but i had nowhere else to go. divine intervention is what it was. after a year, i was able to trust someone enough in those rooms to tell them about me.

skip forward to tonight with my opening paragraph. with the help of a program, a sponsor, a therapist, some lithium, some diligence and some courage, and most importantly a higher power, i have a life today. i have future to work toward, and i have something to bring with me on my journey. i have met so many similar people, some have stayed, some have moved on, and i continue to grow in new directions. i have found work to do that holds meaning for my heart. i can look at myself in the mirror without shuddering, i can stand to cry or feel fear. i have a long way to go, but there isn't the sense of rush that used to describe my life.

so that's it. no fireworks. no big parties. just a quiet exercise in gratitude for relief from the hell i came from. recovery works. if you work it.

today's sound choice is from the verve remix cd. it's nina simone with "feeling good".

bliss

Willa Cather
Miracles seem to rest, not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from far off, but upon our perceptions being made finer so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear that which is about us always.

from my perspective, there is a process to this recovery walk. i feel so very different today than i did, say 2 years ago. i feel as if i am gregor samsa but in sepia or black & white, shifting from cockroach to human and from sepia to digital color. the movements in this are so extreme- from a snail's pace all the way to tornado-like.

i go to a meeting on sunday mornings that i have been attending for over 3 1/2 years. during one of the first meetings, i shared that i was bi-polar and a meth addict who had hiv. i certainly felt i would be judged. but this guy came up to me after group and said to me "with all those issues, you are going to have so much help to offer others". this totally blew me away. i had never even considered viewing any of my issues as a source of strength.

i am thankful to so many. too many to name. there are a few along my journey who have given me truth or kindness when i seemed to need them. i can only hope i can do the same for others. certainly, though, almost every blogger listed on my warriors list is responsible for giving me their experience, strength, and their hope in this particular aspect of my life. i started this blog a year and a half ago, and these wonderful personalities, all just as varied as individual notes in a lullabye, have given also given me comfort and direction as life's clouds have rolled by.

bliss and kisses....this is what recovery means to me today, on the 4 year anniversary of a shift in my perception.

my friend richard kearns sent me this poem. thank you richard. i hope you figured out what an orgasm is...:)

the sun jumped up

the sun jumped up
ran through the city
ashine betwixt scrapers
beamquick
clouds on fire
flamefluffed
glowed
three sixty
vaporizing
lowderlong
tied bandannalike
and sweated
by a musclebig
bald gay piledriver
yellow helmet-hat
not quite covering the true
arch’d blue blue blue
ache’d even bluer
surmountable by
dreamcrafted upsteps
as the city spreads
stalkingly past me
neither of us
rests
who dies first
come sunout?
will we know
night’s candles?
i shall. i will. i did.
they’re you
in darknesse
weep
while you
have tears
then laugh
then jump up and
run through the city
ashine
awake
faster than light

we love the killers

changes have mostly become natural now. i am persistently changing and consistently letting go. it's sometimes trying and often challenging. it is also peaceful now and then.

i am jumping the gun a bit here, but sunday will four years of sobriety for me. i am completely blown away by the transformation. you know, i always share in meetings that i have felt like a piece of shit my whole life. somehow broken. somehow not right. but since i have gotten clean and enlarged my spiritual life, things have changed. i still feel like a piece of shit now and again, but i don't have to medicate myself to get out of it, and i don't land on those thoughts any longer. i have learned how to change them when they come my way.

this is one of the promises coming true for me. i never would have believed that i wouldn't always think very little of myself. but i am learning not to think that way. it feels strange, but very good.

i have started a dui counseling position and am working 2 nights a week. one therapy group is particularly challenging for me. they have been together a long time and have gone through several counselors. one client is particularly resistant. they have the habit of talking while anyone else is talking, bringing consistent sarcasm to any idea of change, blaming the judicial system for unfair punishment, and making complete light of any curriculum to be used. with only 8 or so classes left out of 34, this client came to group last night completely unprepared to present a required project, did not bring their book, threw gum to each of the participants while others were speaking, and gave a plan for the future comprised of stockpiling food and water, and moving into a shelter for the inevitable nuclear war between iran and iraq.

i lost my cool. i didn't actually lose my temper, but i let the client get to me. it's so ridiculous for me to lose face. i know better. but i also know the client is fighting liver shut down. i know that underneath all that redirection is frustation, fear, and probably anger. i know all that and yet i react like an asshole.

The Serenity Prayer
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr