Faith?

Tonight at my women's meeting we talked about faith. Now one of the things I love about AA is that I'm not expected to have any particular faith. No one expects me to be a Christian or practice/believe in any specific way. What is expected of me is that I find a power greater than myself. I just love that nowhere in the literature does it describe what my higher power should look like. It just says I need to get one.

When I was a child I was raised in the Church of Christ. This particular denomination believes that services should not include musical instruments of any kind, that dancing is of the devil, and that they are the only ones going to heaven. It was a very boring, monotone, staid service every Sunday and Wednesday night. I went quite a bit when I was a child because I rode with my Uncle Fred and Aunt Kathleen. My mom usually had to work on Sunday mornings.

I rocked along doing just fine with CoC until around my junior year of high school when I decided I wanted a more engaging religion so I joined an evangelical church. I can't now remember the name but I do remember that they believed in speaking in tongues, musical instruments, and dancing (as long as it was during a service and divinely inspired.) I desperately wanted to believe and to fit in. I had been feeling increasingly isolated over the years. I had gone through a phase where I told great big lies to get sympathy. I reached out to particular teachers desperately wanting, needing them to do something to help me but none of them did. I'm not sure now what they could have helped me with. I was being rushed headlong into experiences I didn't know how to handle and having feelings I didn't understand. I look back now in dismay that I was so messed up and yet still managed to graduate high school. Although I think the graduating part was just barely.

I thought belonging to this church would help. The kids that belonged were kids I liked, that I admired, that I wanted to like me so I figured this was the best way to get into their group. What I didn't learn until much later in life is that if you're running after people, chasing them down, begging them to love you, accept you, help you belong, they tend to run away from you as fast as possible. Once again in my life my desperate need was repugnant to the ones I needed. It's such a fucked up Catch 22. The more you need people, the faster they run away. The less you need them, the faster they show up by your side.

The church wasn't a bad place. I don't remember any of the clergy or really any of the services. I remember going skiing with the youth group to Crested Butte, CO. I thought, finally! I'll be one of them. I'll go on this ski holiday and we'll all become great friends! Well the trip was fun but because I felt Other, I remained Other. No one was anything but kind to me. I just wasn't in a place where I could accept myself much less them.

Once I graduated high school, I moved to Austin and it was there that I met Tammy. I got a job selling encyclopedias door to door (yes I am that old!) and there she was that first day in the parking lot. I'll save all that for another time. Suffice it to say I finally figured out one of the reasons I felt so different. Tammy and I had a whirlwind, intense, INTENSE, three month relationship until I decided there was no way I could be gay. Nope, no way, can't do it, this isn't who I am! So I did the only thing I knew to do: I ran away back to Austin and found myself an evangelical church.

Again, I can't remember the name of this church. I just remember that it was in one of those big, cold, emotionless buildings these churches are so fond of. There was a youth pastor there who was interested in saving lost souls and he said he could help me not be gay anymore. There was another person, a guy who's name I don't remember, who also didn't want to be gay so the pastor started working with us. He had us detail our past experiences with same sex friends as well as opposite sex ones. I told him all about my life, my feelings, my emotional entanglement with my girl friends that was so much more intense than theirs' for me. I told him about the guy I had sex with and I told him all about Tammy. I told him a lot of secrets some embarrassing and shameful to me. I wanted to get "better" and I thought I could trust a holy man.

After a couple of months of working with this man, he asked the other guy and myself to sit in the front row during the Sunday service. He said he wanted to do a special blessing for us. We naively did as we were asked and sat in the front. In the middle of the service in front of about 300 people, many of which I had come to know during my time in the church, he called us up to stand in the front. We stood there while he told the congregation every single thing we had been discussing with him. He shared our intimate, personal, shameful secrets with everyone. Even to my life at this point, at 51 years of age, I've not felt so exposed, so violated, so humiliated in front of a bunch of people. I left the church that day and never returned. I vowed that if this was what God was all about then he could go fuck himself. I wanted no part of such a horrible thing.

For years, I carried around that chip like a badge of honor. I was bitter and hateful about anything smacking of Christianity. I'll admit that I'm still not comfortable with bible thumpers. I don't trust them or their motives and that's not likely to change anytime soon. What it did do for me though was open up my mind to other spiritual possibilities. While I was still thinking that Christianity was the only true path, my mind wouldn't allow any other belief systems to be valid. After this experience, I was free to choose my path. For a long time, I was agnostic. I believed there was probably something but I didn't know what it was. Then I began to explore Paganism. For a while this became my spiritual path. Once I relapsed, though, I lost all ideas about spirituality. I was back to not believing in anything. I guess you could say my higher power was whatever got me high and then even that failed me. What had once felt good now just kept me from being sick.

Getting back into recovery, the first three steps require that we admit we're alcoholics, drug addicts, whatever, and that our lives are unmanageable. We come to believe that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. We then turn our will and our lives over to the care of that higher power. Having arrived at AA this time, I was fully ready to admit that I was an alcoholic and a drug addict. My sponsor had me list five ways that illustrated the unmanageability of my life. I was able to list them in about five minutes. It was pretty apparent. The coming to believe part wasn't particularly hard either. I've had plenty of evidence over my lifetime that there's a greater intelligence at work. I've seen things that shouldn't have happened, genuine miracles, and I've felt the presence of something. The hard part for me this time was believing that this higher power could restore me to sanity. Believing there's a higher power is one thing but believing that it is personal to me is something else entirely. The turning my will and life over part seemed daunting as well. I wasn't really sure how to do that. My sponsor told me that it didn't matter that I couldn't define it. She said that if we could define the higher power we wouldn't really need it, which I thing is very true. She suggested that I just pray every morning that whatever is out there would help me do the next right thing, would help me stay clean and sober, would help me make it through the day, just this day. Then she said at night I should thank whatever that power is for my day, for staying clean and sober, for helping me do the next right thing. She said just to put it out there and to realize that I'm not the center of the universe.

And that's what I've been doing for the last 24 days and it seems to be working. For the last 22 days I've not wanted to drink and I've not wanted to take any drugs. It's like that all consuming compulsion was just lifted away and I felt free and easy for the first time in a long time. So, as to the question of faith: I have no idea. I just know that if I ever start thinking I'm the center of the universe again, I'm in trouble. I need to remember that my best effort, my best thinking, got me nothing but fucked up and broken. Left to my own devices I would soon kill myself, maybe not intentionally but dead just the same. If I operate under my own steam, I will run this car into a ditch and off a cliff. So I remain humble in my belief that there's something greater out there and if I give up control of everything around me I'll be fine. I just have to trust right? Isn't that what faith really is after all?

That dreaded fifth step

It's interesting to me that so many people dread doing the fifth step. If you're not familiar allow me to enlighten you. The fourth step says: "We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves" and the fifth step is: "Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." Basically, we make a list of resentments and other shit we've done that we carry around with us then we tell someone all those deep, dark secrets that kept us sick. The point is to unburden yourself of all the stuff you've hauled around that you then used or drank over. Now, obviously, I'm not going to get into specifics here about my shit but I can speak to all this in a general way.

I've been really anxious about doing this step for a while now. I wrote down all my stuff during the fourth step. I looked at my behaviour past and present and wrote down all those things about which I'm embarrassed, ashamed, guilty, resentful, whatever. Anything that I used over for whatever reason. I tried to be as thorough as possible. I mean, I really want to get clean and sober this time. I'm tired of living the way I was and I don't want to do it anymore. My sponsor was amazing, truly! There's a reason she and I were paired up together. She understood a lot of where I'm coming from. It's kind of weird talking about deeply personal stuff with someone you don't know that well but then again I know that she's been in the same hell I've been in so what else really do I need to know? Like the big book says, we're like shipmates that have survived a shipwreck. We feel that overwhelming happiness to just still be alive and we know that the person in the life boat with us experienced the same terror we just did.

My sponsor and I went through steps 5, 6, and 7 so now I'm up to 8 which is the one where you make a list of all people you've harmed and becoming willing to makes amends to them all. So, back to the notebook for more writing.

Having my bad behaviours modeled for me

I work with a married couple cleaning houses. They're really amazing and fun to work with most of the time but here lately the man has been getting on my nerves.

Supposedly he can hear just fine, according to his wife who said he's had his hearing tested, but I swear you can be looking right at him and he won't hear what you're saying. His wife will be speaking to him from the backseat of the car and he doesn't hear a peep. I'm constantly having to tell him what she just said because I get stressed out when she gets angry at him for not hearing her.

He's so impatient to get where he's going that he drives too fast and too recklessly. He even got a speeding the other day. He barrels through towns with 35mph limits going 50mph and I don't even think he notices. He rages over the fact that the speed limit is stupid and should be changed. Surely he should be allowed to drive whatever speed he's comfortable with because he's a safe driver. He also thinks he's the only one who can successfully do something on his phone while driving.

He seems oblivious to anything that's not right in front of his face and he's unable to multi-task. He can't work and talk at the same time. When we go into a house to clean, he'll spend 30 minutes talking to the homeowner while the wife and I get started. At the end, he'll be rushing around all flustered because he's behind. Then he gets irritated at us for not helping him finish his work even though we're still working on ours.

The other day he got upset that the back of the car wasn't organized to his satisfaction so he threw everything out onto our customer's lawn before putting it back complaining the whole time about how we didn't put it all back in there correctly.

So, I'm talking on the phone to my wife and I'm bitching about his behaviour. "He's so hard to be around sometimes! I get so anxious and upset when he behaves like that," I tell her. She just goes, "Hmm," and it dawns on me that these are the same behaviours she has said bother her about me. Time and time again she's asked me not to throw things when I'm upset. She's asked me not to drive like a crazy person when I get impatient. She's asked me to do what I said I'd do instead of fiddle farting around on inconsequential things.

Shit! I'm getting to experience first hand how maddening, upsetting, irritating, crazy-making these behaviours really are and I don't like it! It's giving me new insight into myself, though, to watch what triggers the various behaviours. Except for the "that law is stupid and I shouldn't have to follow it" thing. There's no trigger for that one, at least not for me. I used to genuinely think I should be given special dispensation to not obey certain laws or rules. How many times have I gotten in trouble for not following a rule I thought was stupid? I've lost jobs, gotten tickets, lost friends, etc, etc. That one I definitely need to work on.

Two dogs

This morning, after I drove into Meadowlakes headed to work, I came across two little dogs that were running loose in the street. One was a small curly haired dog and the other a chihuahua. I stopped to see if I could help them as did a few other people. Neither dog was wearing any kind of tag and no one around seemed to know who they belonged to so I called R to ask if Meadowlakes had some kind of authority I could report the dogs to. She said there wasn't but I should bring the dogs to her place and she'd keep them safe until their owners could be found. Okay, excellent! I can do that. :)

I opened up the car door and the curly haired dog jumped right in like he'd been born to ride there. The chihuahua was a lot more hesitant. He would come up just out of reach of my hand. When I tried to reach for him, he'd dance away. He would get tantalizingly close to me but wouldn't let me touch him, wouldn't come close enough even, and kept turning and running down the road. Eventually, he ran off down the street in the opposite direction.

Later in the day it struck me that these two dogs represented myself in my recovery journey. The first time I got into recovery, it was because I was afraid of losing my job, my home, my stuff. I knew I was an addict. I knew I belonged in recovery but at that point in my life I wasn't desperate. Well, I was some kind of desperate I suppose. I knew that something had to change or I'd end up in jail and that was the one place I NEVER wanted to go again. But I was like the chihuahua. I got close to recovery. I danced around it. I got tantalizingly close to it but I wasn't ready for it to touch me and I sure as hell wasn't getting in the car with it! Inevitably, I relapsed.

This time, I'm desperate. I'm "Oh shit, the edge of the cliff is right there and this boulder won't stop pushing me over" desperate. This time I've already lost my job. I've come very close to losing my marriage, my home, my security, my life. This time I WANT this. This time I'm the curly haired dog. Someone opened up the car door and I leaped inside. "I'm ready! Let's get this show on the road!"

Finally.

Growth opportunities

I've had a full day of growth opportunities. It actually started the other day when I was busy telling S what she needed to do. I was telling her all about my ideas for what would make her better. We even got a little snippy with each other about it. I mentioned to a recovery friend that S wasn't really wanting to listen to me when I told her what she should do to fix her problems. My friend listened to me bitch and then asked if I was S. Well, no, obviously I'm not. Well then, she says, why in the world would you think you know what she should do? Have you figured out your shit yet? Have you got this living thing so perfected that you're the expert that can now advise others? Well, no, I say. I just want her to be happy. My friend says well then, leave her be to work on her own issues. Don't you think one of S's problems is that you fucked everything up and she's had to clean up after you for so long? Don't you think something that will help is if you concentrate on you?

Damn! This recovery shit is making me think. It's making me look at myself, at my behavior, at my decision-making skills (or lack thereof). After the conversation with my friend, I text S and tell her I'm sorry for trying to work a program for her, that I realize I can't do that, and I'll try to keep myself on my side of the street. Today, I'm busy telling S that I think she should go to Al Anon. My main reason for encouraging this is because I thought Al Anon was for mostly normal people who have an alcoholic/addict loved one and want to know how to deal with them. I want her to learn how to deal with me. The thing is, though, she needs to figure out for herself what will work for her. She's a very intelligent adult who's perfectly capable of finding her own path. I have my hands full with myself. I'm the one who couldn't figure out how to live day to day without drugs or drinking so perhaps I should just stay in my lane. So, yeah, I'm working on that.

I belong to an American Expats in NZ group on Facebook and today someone posted about how they are worried about being double taxed for their US social security and pension. The poster was being very negative all while people were posting links and info trying to help her out. She finally said she was fed up and was moving back to the US because this all sucked or something like that. Well, it touched a nerve in me so I posted "If you really think you’ll get a better deal in the US then head on out. Seems like you’ve already made that decision no matter what these helpful people are telling you." A few hours later someone posts on my comment: "She's just had some major news that she wasn't expecting. She's worried about her financial stability and is processing while researching. Let's give her a minute." I instantly realize that I've responded to the OP from my own shitty attitude that really had nothing to do with her. Fuck. Now that I realize this I can't let it just sit out there. Fuck. I have to make it right so I post: "You are totally right. I'm in the US right now and I'm up to here with everyone telling me how much better the US is so I'm projecting my own shit and for that I apologize, OP. I hope you get the info you need here to make a sound decision for yourself."

So now I feel pretty good about myself. I've seen where I went wrong and I've made amends. And then someone notices how awesome I am: "That was some good self-reflection there. 🙂 You were maybe a little harsh on yourself, but it’s refreshing to see someone take feedback and reconsider." I'm feeling chuffed because I've done some good shit today. And then I realize that if I hadn't been an ass in the first place there would have been no need for this entire conversation so I guess I'm not as enlightened as I wanted to be today. I have, however, made progress. A few weeks ago I would have been unable to see my part in this and stewed in my righteous indignation. So yay for less stewing! 

Yet another thing that happened today was my sister-in-law posted something on Facebook that involved Jesus and I instantly blocked it out. She posted a meme about a dad who wants to get his kid off his back for a bit so he takes a picture of a world map out of a magazine and rips it into small pieces. He then gives it to the kid and tells him to go put the puzzle back together. The father relaxes on the couch thinking he's now got at least an hour of free time when the kid comes right back in with the map all taped back together. The father is flabbergasted! "How did you do that so fast?" The kid says, "There was a picture of Jesus on the back. I put Him back in and the world just fell into place." Now at my current state of spiritual development, I'm not a fan of Jesus. I'm not a fan of his followers. I'm not a fan of organized religion. So, I write this little story off as more church propaganda and go about my day. 

During work I either listen to music or AA speaker tapes. Today I was listening to a speaker who was quite good. He had a lot of good stuff to say, a lot of which I took the time out to make notes about. In the middle of his talk he pulls out this same story only instead of a picture of Jesus on the back, it's just a picture of a person. The kid says "I put the person back together and the whole world fell into place." Now THAT resonated with me. It was only the word Jesus that put me off in the first place. I realized that I've been possibly missing things that I might find enlightening, interesting, helpful because it seems too christian. Don't get me wrong, I have good reason to dislike the church. I've personally been persecuted by some of the most God fearing, bible thumping, hardcore evangelicals out there. I think they're toxic, hateful, damaging people who use their god to beat the rest of us down. I think if they truly had their way anyone with the slightest amount of difference would be executed or locked in cages. My wife and I would have no rights and would, indeed, be criminals. We may even have already been honor murdered by our very own loving families. So, no, I don't have really any respect for them. However, I'm coming to believe that my recovery depends on my ability to have a concept of a higher power. I mean, surely there's something out there more powerful than myself. I can't make the sun rise or fall. I can't make it rain or not. I can't make the seemingly impossible possible. And I have seen these things happen. So there must be something out there. In step two it says that we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. In step three it says we turned our will and our life over to the care of that higher power. I was a hopeless drug addict and alcoholic. Nothing I did made any difference no matter how much I didn't want to use. It wasn't until I came to believe that there was something in the universe that could help me that I was able to stop. I still don't know what that something is but I know it's there. And I've experienced that when I say something like "Please just help me get through this day without using drugs or drinking" I make it through the day. There are a lot of things that will help me along the way and I need to keep my eyes and my heart open to recognize them when they pass my way.  

Being able to reflect on these things and feel grateful for the opportunities feels so good to me right now. In the past, I was so blinded by my own crap that I wasn't grateful for anything. I was a miserable wreck who just wanted to get through each day without being sick. Today, I don't have to live that way anymore. I'm discovering things about myself. I'm seeing how my behavior affects others. I'm having the chance to tell the people I love "I'm sorry. I'll do better." Those things are utterly priceless. 

Desperation and belonging

Last night, an idea came to me. I don't think it came from my own mind as it was just too perfectly formed to come from my imperfect thought process. The discussion was about how sometimes people come to us and at other times they seem to run from us. I remember when I first came out back in 1989. I had met a woman named Tammy and fallen HARD! The mental, emotional, and physical sensations were greater than anything I had ever experienced in my entire life up to that point. In just three months our intensity managed to burn me out and I ran away. I didn't know what to do with all that feeling. It was too much, too soon, too hard. Because the problem was that I was having this deep almost spiritual awakening and I didn't think I could tell anyone. As I said, it was 1989 and being a lesbian was just not something one did at the time. At least not in my experience. Up to then the only gay people I had ever heard about were the "freaks" decent people talked about in hushed whispers or Billy Crystal's character on Soap. I wanted to stand at the top of the mountain and scream my love for this woman but I was stopped by fear, self-loathing, self-doubt, SELF. It was the gossamer prison of my own making. True, society would try to punish me for being deviant but not nearly as much as I punished myself.

I made a geographic change and tried to be the good heterosexual I was supposed to be. I dated a few guys, one of them named Adolph. I carried a knife in my purse because I was afraid of the potential for violence from these men. I kept them at arm's length because I wasn't able to accept them into myself in any way. When I finally made the decision to accept myself, my life changed but it didn't become better. I began to feel comfortable in my own skin but I still didn't feel comfortable in the world. I still felt other.

I had numerous meaningless encounters with women I met in the bar, drunken grasping for something more intimate, more fulfilling. None of them made me whole. None of them made me feel better. None of them provided more than fleeting cold comfort. I was desperate for someone to love me. I was desperate for connection, for belonging, for something I was unable to identify. The only time I felt better was when I drank so I drank with a vengeance. I was working full time for the state at the time making good money but I didn't have two nickels to rub together because I had no idea how to manage my life. I spent money on cigarettes, booze, gas, rent, electricity, and food in that order. When I went to the bar, which was the only place to meet other gay people, and drank that first of many beers I felt better. I suddenly felt free to be myself, to act out, to talk to people, to flirt, to dance, to seduce. It was like armor I put on so that I could walk in the world without being wounded by others but also to contain my insides because they always felt as if they would tumble onto the floor if not held tightly in check.

What I didn't learn until years later was that intense sense of desperation was the reason people ran from me. I chased after them screaming "love me, fulfill me, make me whole" and they hurt themselves getting away from me. I sought out damaged people and tried to fill them, to fix them, but of course I couldn't. It took me a long time to realize that no material person, place, or thing outside myself can make me whole. Nothing of the world can fill that void inside me, can cover that hole, can make me whole.

Eventually I had to make another geographic move because things were changing around me and my philosphy was, "Leave them before they leave you." I moved to Witchita Falls for three months which was an unmitigated disaster and then back to Austin.That's when I met Star and graduated from chain mail of drinking to the stainless steel armor of drugs.

Which is a story for another time. It's 12:22pm on Sunday afternoon and already approaching 100F so I'm going swimming!

Insights and observations

I hadn't really planned on going to a meeting tonight. Saturdays are usually for getting things done and hanging with the parents. However, a woman from the program texted me to see if I wanted to meet up then go to the DAA meeting. Well, how could I say no? S is in much the same situation as me. She's come back to MF and moved in with her mother to get her shit together. She's got almost two months clean and sober so she's several weeks ahead of me but she's not started writing about anything yet. I'm finding that the writing has become almost my favorite part. When I sit down at night in front of the computer and just put my fingers on the keys, stuff comes out the way it needs to. It's pretty amazing.

Tonight at the meeting someone said something about how they hated the taste of the drugs and alcohol which triggered a memory for me: the way my body would try to reject the pills as I was taking them. Sometimes it was all I could do not to throw up the pills before I'd even managed to get them down my throat. It was almost as if my body knew it was poison and was trying to expel it before it could enter my system. I also have this distinct memory of how nasty the liquid codeine cough medicine tasted. That chemically sweet flavor that's almost grape but not quite. Just thinking of it makes me nauseated.

Another memory that came to mind was from the book What Dreams May Come. In it, a woman has committed suicide after the death of her husband in a car accident. The husband has been happily living in his own version of heaven since he died. He finds out that his wife has killed herself and so goes in search of her. He meets many people along his journey but one in particular sticks out. He meets a woman bound in the fetal position by these big thick chains. At least to her they appear to be chains. To the man, her bonds are nothing more than spider webs. Thin, wispy spider webs that could easily be discarded if only the woman could see but she's so caught up in her own mind and her own ideas that she can't see anything but thick chains. That's how I see myself the last few years. I've been bound up in these thick chains that are actually spider webs and to be free all I had to do was believe that I could be free. I just had to stand up and I was free. It was that leap of faith, though, that was so hard. Once I finally realized it seemed easy but I think it's going to be a conscious decision every day to believe my bonds are nothing. Sometimes they seem so real.