people often ask about my life in recovery. the most common questions include:
do you go to a meeting everyday?
nope. i try to help one person and call my sponsor (who is just a friend), but other than that, my program looks different every day...
don't you feel like your life is over?
nope. my life is just beginning. i can go anywhere, do anything, and meet anyone - i have no limits. before my life was contained with in the four walls of a bar or a bedroom.
do you tell people you are sober? if they want to know. a lot of people can't handle it.
do you think this is permanent? i take it day by day.
seems like a lot of trouble- why do this?
because death is a scary alternative...and yes, i was really that bad. a good quote sums this up:
They say there are no 'musts' in AA, that it's a 'suggested program'. That's right. The same way that when you jump out of a plane, it's suggested you take a parachute. ~unknown
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
18: twisting the knife
When in Florida I sifted through my mounds upon mounds of journals, paper, drawings, photos... etc. among other treasures, i found this book I once recorded my favorite quotes in - even the margins are covered with scribble. But I turned to it tonight after a distressing phone conversation and found this from my freshman year of college...
letter from Rainer Maria Rilke
To love is good, too: love being difficult.
For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.
For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.
With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love.
But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is--solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.
Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate--?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.
i want to ripen, to grow: now i realize that love is not merging, giving over, becoming one. love is loving an individual and being an individual and choosing to be with that individual day after day.
maybe?
Monday, March 17, 2008
Sitting in the ft. Lauderdale airport again –
A elderly lady with foot-high white hair and bold red lipstick sits across from me, nonchalantly tapping her foot and glaring at the young people who sit around her. Her varicose veins peek over her starchy white socks, and her jaw hangs a little slack on the left side. This is the other side of Florida: in with the freakies and out with the oldies!
Waiting for my plane back to LA…
This trip? Amazing in so many different ways.
I finally finished an important chapter in my life. Garnering enough strength to make HUGE life decisions is difficult for anyone, especially a broken thinker like me☺
Honestly, I could say this “decision” took me my entire life – 23 long years - to complete. My friends tell me to use my experience to create strength and hope, and that is what I am trying to do…. But the difference between this breakup and my other breakups is that I am not alone. I have my family and my friends to stand with me. My voicemail box is full, I have three unread text messages. 18 emails to check, and a Sampson in a bag sleeping beside me. My Dad in Florida and my Mom in Colorado, my sisters flying back and forth across the country. Lynnie and Hallie picking me up from the airport, Omar is preparing to tell me his “last two things”, my sponsor just called to wish me love… and the list goes on.
In other words, I feel this thriving support system beneath me – like a trapeze artist with her net – I feel empowered and bold, strong and independent.
((and that self aware voice inside asks::: who is this person? What is this strength? Really?? REALLY??))
I know. I can hardly believe it myself.
Pictures when I get back!!
A elderly lady with foot-high white hair and bold red lipstick sits across from me, nonchalantly tapping her foot and glaring at the young people who sit around her. Her varicose veins peek over her starchy white socks, and her jaw hangs a little slack on the left side. This is the other side of Florida: in with the freakies and out with the oldies!
Waiting for my plane back to LA…
This trip? Amazing in so many different ways.
I finally finished an important chapter in my life. Garnering enough strength to make HUGE life decisions is difficult for anyone, especially a broken thinker like me☺
Honestly, I could say this “decision” took me my entire life – 23 long years - to complete. My friends tell me to use my experience to create strength and hope, and that is what I am trying to do…. But the difference between this breakup and my other breakups is that I am not alone. I have my family and my friends to stand with me. My voicemail box is full, I have three unread text messages. 18 emails to check, and a Sampson in a bag sleeping beside me. My Dad in Florida and my Mom in Colorado, my sisters flying back and forth across the country. Lynnie and Hallie picking me up from the airport, Omar is preparing to tell me his “last two things”, my sponsor just called to wish me love… and the list goes on.
In other words, I feel this thriving support system beneath me – like a trapeze artist with her net – I feel empowered and bold, strong and independent.
((and that self aware voice inside asks::: who is this person? What is this strength? Really?? REALLY??))
I know. I can hardly believe it myself.
Pictures when I get back!!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
13: goodbye well-paying job, benefits and vacation time::: hello paupers and poverty:)
13: goodbye well-paying job, benefits and vacation time::: hello paupers and poverty:)
Jodi and I created this masterpiece – a little risky to post on the internet, but I had to do it! Yes, I know what you’re thinking – that blue eyed girl, she lives on the wild side! Crazy ‘yatch! Ohhh, snap.
[Photo]
On March 1st I officially “resigned” from my 9 to 5, cookie cutter job… and shortly after was manipulated (strong armed) into working for the rest of March.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose… only two more weeks left?! Thank GOD!
Jodi and I created this masterpiece – a little risky to post on the internet, but I had to do it! Yes, I know what you’re thinking – that blue eyed girl, she lives on the wild side! Crazy ‘yatch! Ohhh, snap.
[Photo]
On March 1st I officially “resigned” from my 9 to 5, cookie cutter job… and shortly after was manipulated (strong armed) into working for the rest of March.
All’s well that ends well, I suppose… only two more weeks left?! Thank GOD!
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
12: "the states", as we canadians call it
What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked
down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking
at the full moon.
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon
fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!
What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at
night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes!
--and you, García Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?
I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking
among the meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.
I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops?
What price bananas? Are you my Angel?
I wandered in and out of the brilliant stacks of cans following you,
and followed in my imagination by the store detective.
We strode down the open corridors together in our solitary fancy
tasting artichokes, possessing every frozen delicacy, and never passing the
cashier.
Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in a hour.
Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and
feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade
to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automo-
biles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America
did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a
smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of
Lethe?
--Berkeley, 1955
Allen Ginsberg
CURRENTLY my america is driving down the highway, flicking off fellow road ragers, smelling hot sun rising from my leather seats and smoking a rapidly smoldering cigarette while chewing watermelon bubble gum.
coming home to a news channel droning on about places i haven't been and events i can not understand.
and you?
Monday, March 10, 2008
welcome home
i'm here.
I forgot how many freakies live in my home state (me, included? too early to tell). Currently I am sitting outside in the full blast steam room that is Florida, watching a man with stringy blond hair vibrate in a wheelchair, tweaking out and crying "Oh you fuckers, ohhh fuckers, fuckity fuckers..."
Omar Sal is picking me up in his new boy-version of my prius: a hybrid camry. Hopefully it isn't lime green with a red flame etched on the side... who knows what this crazy man is capable of?
lots of memories rolling over me at the moment, good and bad.
bad: arriving in Miami, straight from Chile, drunk off a gallon of knockoff rum; leaving one of my two GIGANTIC bags at the claim, hitching a ride with a haitian man who came up to my chest (barely), stumbling into my house and pouncing on Jackie; Dad finding my third-full bottle and whispering, "Do you think robin has a drinking problem?"
good: talking to my dad on the phone - his happy and reliable greeting, WELCOME TO FLORIDA, my laughter and his excitement. killing time by checking email, writing, and eating a ben and jerry's cookies and cream cone - spending $10.00 and laughing with the befuddled man behind the counter... right now. right now, this moment, this fresh - sweet - lovely moment in my second year of sobriety.
i'm one of the lucky ones.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)