Dear Bill,

I know it’s been a while since we spoke. I’ve even dialed the first 6 digits of your number a few times, only to hang up before I could complete the message. It appears I’ve finally mustered up enough courage to stop by your place, thank you for being home. Thank you for inviting me in once again.

Your friend,

Jess

Relapse

Yes, the odds were stacked against me, it’s the nature of things I suppose. After climbing down from my 70 day pink cloud I, or rather my ego, decided that I was no longer an alcoholic. It’s typical, from what I am told. Regardless, I am back in the rooms and back on the aa train…beep beep.

Steps? What Steps?

My little brother and sister are in town this week from NYC. I am extremely happy that I get to invite them across the country to check out the NY of the Left coast (although I don’t think there is much of a comparison) they seem to be having a great time. I took their coming her as an excuse, a reason to take a break from AA and so I haven’t prayed, I haven’t read the big book, I haven’t been working on my fourth step and I haven’t felt o.k. In fact, yesterday I was as close to taking a drink as I have been since I started 38 days ago. I most likely would have just gone home, gone through the motions and not drank, but then, like she knew she was supposed to, my sponsor called. I’ve been rather waining on her suggestions of prayer and it’s made me not want to call her everyday. It’s made me want to avoid the rooms and go back to praying into a whiskey bottle. It’s made me want to stare inside of myself and find blind self reliance again. Not good Jess, not good.

We talked for a while, I really am not even sure what we talked about, but I realized toward the end of the conversation that all I was doing was feeling sorry for myself because I can’t do what I am used to doing when I get overwhelmed. I can’t drink it away. I don’t have my blanket.

This morning when I woke up, the Bay Area decided to be absolutely beautiful and sun drenched. Breaking up my routine a bit I sad in the garden and drank my coffee with the Big Book. And this is what I read:

On awakening let us think about the twenty four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest, or self-seeking motives.

Thy will be done.

Commitment

A friend of mine asked me “so Jess, now that you have 30 days, when are you going to start making coffee?” What she meant was, when am I going to take a commitment. And what that means is, when is my participation going to grow further than just showing up. My immediate reactions, as with most things that require selfless effort, was “not yet.” But because AA is really a program of fellowship I felt as though I was a bad person for not wanting to commit to something as small as making coffee just yet. There is a very big part of me that still feels like I will do this AA thing for a little while and then that will be it, then I will be cured and I won’t have to go a listen to all the emotional and mental masturbation any more. I won’t have to remain aware of my shortcomings, I won’t have to pray and I won’t have to show up. But of course, this is not what is going to happen at all, and if it does, then the odds of me drinking go through the roof. So, why not make some coffee for a little bit. See where it takes me.

The reality of the situation is that I don’t want to commit to any one particular group. I don’t want to be the big book slinger, the banker or the soap box sitter. I just want to be. Sitting in a seat and listening. I have spent so many damn years forcing myself into the center of attention, into the spotlights among spotlights and I never really wanted to be there, I just thought it would make me feel important. It always left me feeling empty when the curtains closed, or in my case, they called last call. I just want to listen, take it all in, understand as thoroughly and soundly as humanly possible.

I suppose the real truth here is that I don’t want AA to steal my identity. While I am interested in engulfing myself in its teachings and reshaping my life into one of selfless actions, love and prosperity, I don’t want to become the AA kool aid drinking fag hag. It’s not like me anyway. I liked my life, the good parts of it, and rather than trade that life in for this new life, I prefer to build on what I had and make it all that much better. Yeah, sure, it’s important to have support in the program, I get this, but I have support from all angles and that is just another reason as to why I am lucky, why I am blessed.

So here is my crisis of character: Am I just being lazy and selfish as always? I mean, coffee?? not that hard eh? Should I just do it for the sake of doing it? Should I just call people for the sake of calling people? I have a tendency to stay within my comfort zone until it gets too unbearable or forces me into loneliness. So here we have coffee as a metaphor … committing to one small task once a week wouldn’t be a problem, what scares me is asking to commit to that one small task once a week and either be rejected or not be able to hold up the commitment.

29 years and 29 days

Today is my birthday! I am 29 years old. Today is also my 29th day of sobriety.

I finally watched the Zac Efron movie, 17 Again, and as rediculous as this might sound, it changed my life. And since it’s my birthday I am going to tell you all why.

In the movie Matthew Perry (also his birthday today) turns in to Zac Efronand finds himself back in high school again. It’s his golden opportunity to make new decisions, to go back with the knowledge that he has now, in his 40’s. Well, how many times have we all asked ourselves, if only I could go back to (insert past time period here) knowing what I know now?

I have found a way to do this and I suppose it’s kind of ridiculous that it has taken me 29 years to figure it out, 29 days to figure it out really. AA is my knowledge of the future, my intuition into knowing what I don’t already know now. Being new to the program I have been spending a lot of time listening and one thing that I hear over and over is that when you relapse it’s never as fun as it used to be. Of course the thought of just having a couple beers (doubtful) or maybe trying my hand at a glass of wine (laughable) wouldn’t be so bad. What would happen, how would I feel and would it be so bad? The answer is a definite “hell yeah it will be worse than you think” because I have the power to see that far into the future through the use of the stories of my fellows and bring that back to my present.

 This is the beauty of the fellowship as I see it now, and for that I am grateful.

El Mentiroso

Fantasies and resentments, I have a lot of them. I have resentments that stem back as far as high school toward my softball coach who didn’t give me play time in my junior year. I always thought that it was a major turning point in my life, because I wasn’t given exposure to the big Universities that provided scholarship money. While I loved the college I went to and met the most influential people in the world there, I often wonder how different things would have been had I remained dedicated to the sport on the collegiate level. I would probably be a less traveled. It is a fantasy I have dreamt about almost daily.

And now, right now there is someone in particular that I would just love to rant about, but because it requires a look at the alcoholic mind, I will relegate my ranting to just me. I have lived inside of a fantasy world for many years. Often at the bar I would tell people that I made more money than I did, that I was skilled in things that I am not and that I knew of and spoke very knowledgeable about things that I did not understand. It was my act of complete falsehood that kept the real me, the one who I thought was not good enough to grace the presence of anyone who was listening, very securely hidden. It’s uncanny how anyone can throw out a topic, anything from Arkansas (which I have actually been to and did rather enjoy) to Zen Buddhism (which I remember skimming over a paragraph of in a text book in high school) and I can speak from a level of apocryphal authority. I suppose many of us can, as it is the incarnation of the ego at its finest. Not only do I get to live in my fantasy of worldly knowledge but I also get to be the center of everyone’s so impressed attention.

This person that I mentioned before, the one who is at the top of my resentment list at the moment, is a big exaggerator. She tells stories to make her life seem more grandiose and profound than it really is, or at least than she really thinks it is. What I think she is doing, and what I have done and continue to do regardless of my awareness of it, is to overcompensate for what we think is a boring, less than desirable, mediocre life. But in reality, amazing things do happen to us everyday. We just fail to recognize them. And when the extraordinary does happen, it seems meaningless compared to the fantasy life that we have created inside our heads, and then less noteworthy, so we add details.

While all of this might seem harmless in its practice, it is yet another cause for loneliness. People around me have learned that I do this and are never really sure when I am telling the truth or my fantastic version of the truth.  It alienates me from the normal people who do not do this. It alienates me from living the life that I actually have and seeing the importance of its reality. I am bored most of the time because unless I actually did ride in a sea plane, or actually did become successful in real estate or actually did make a six-figure salary, to me I am just another one, lost in the crowd with no real story to tell.

Interestingly enough I am beginning to realize that I would much rather have people believe my seemingly boring stories then constantly speculate on my capricious lies.  And if I had gone to a University on scholarship, perhaps my life would have really been as boring as I might think it is now. My fantasy about becoming a great softball player and the coach who got in my way, is really just an excuse for not wanting to go down that path, or being too afraid to try.

(The title means “The Liar” in Spanish and I decided to use it as the post header because I am writing this in a coffee shop and that is the song that the live jazz musician was singing just as I was concluding this post) H to the P!,

Grateful for Mondays

I could never have imagined being grateful for a Monday. Typically this day is a living nightmare filled with morning excuses on how to get out of work. Why would I be late, what would cause me to stay home which could possibly be plausible? Will I wreak like a beer can or whiskey bottle tucked away, literally hiding in my cube?

Monday has a new place in the week. It’s become a symbol of a succesfull, sober weekend. I’m looking forward to going to work, so I can imagine how I will feel when I’m actually doing a job that I enjoy.

So today I’m grateful for Monday. I’m grateful for the begining of summer in the bay area. I’m grateful, not because my softball team voted me MVP (although I am very happy about that) but because I continue to have the opportunity to play the game that I love.

Go get em!

Let Step Three work Me

I’ve hit a road block. My free will is too important to me and it is my understanding that God gave me free will. Thou wilt me to have it and I plan on using it. But there are times when my free will is also powerless over my actions, such with drinking. I have no free will over that. So perhaps there are other things that I do not have the free will to prevent or to force. This is where I need learn how to rescind and practice the fine art of allowing the world to spin without me as its axis.

With that said, my gratitude list requires a little explination:

1. I am grateful for AA, especially today. A few people in my life have contacted me or affected me in a few ways recently, three people in particular, two of which I hold resentments towards and will eventually owe amends, and one being my father. The drama that surfaced because of these three people would have caused me to drink 17 days ago. I would have played into and perpetuated the drama, crying into a whiskey bottle, claiming the whole world is against me. It;s not under my control nor are any of these things under my manipulation. Just knowing that I had a meeting to go to last night, and that I would be calling my sponsor with my gratitude list this morning gave me a new sense of freedom in dealing with life’s simple occurrences. Nothing has really changed except my coping mechanism.

2. Step three is kinda kicking my ass so I did some research and came across this: MikeL’s Recovery Blog and more specifically this: 3rd Step without Kneeling, without Prayer. Mike L’s blog is frank and comes from a humanistic place that looks, from what I can see, to be an amazing resource going forward. He says that more disclosure is a path to sobriety so today I am grateful for the interwebs!!

3. And then there are the little things … and I just remembered that I have to move my car thus avoiding another parking ticket.

It’s all in the eye

I’ve always enjoyed taking pictures. I avoid actually calling it photography because when all you’re doing is pointing and clicking, well, it’s not really an art form is it? Regardless of what you would call it, it gives me something to do besides drink.

A lot of people will tell you that it’s all in how one perceives the image, how they can imagine the real life in digital form, and then there are those who really make life pop through the lens. I stumbled upon Bruce Gilden through the New York Portraits blog and immediately felt the NYC attitude from his close ups. There is just something about flabby arm fat in Coney Island that makes you crave a hot dog, ya know! And when did they shut down Broadway in Times Square to traffic? Man, stuff changes.

Here’s a few from Lake Merrit, Oakland, CA:

It Came to Me in a Dream

How is one supposed to not only fathom what a higher power is, let alone write it on paper? Philosophers have been contemplating this very fact for years and I’m supposed to figure it all out now just to stay sober. Well, if that is what it takes then let God handle it. Let Him come to me and show me so that I don’t have to sit here banging my head against the wall trying to understand the un-understandable. Although, I must admit, the idea of a doorknob being my higher power is a good one, I am convinced that my personal higher power, whatever it may be, has a very dry and timely sense of humor.

I had a drunk dream last night. I was told these would happen but the best part is that I actually blacked out in the dream, blacked out, in dream form … put that in your contemplation pipe and smoke it! So, in the dream I wake up from my black out and have the most disgusting feelings of dispair, faliure and fear of lonlieness and disappointment. I was rubbing the domino that I keep in my pocket raw (as I usually do when I think about drinking) with this sense of loss that I was now, after falling off the wagon, going to have to return it.

Thomas Jefferson was meowing from the bathroom rather loudly at about 4am when he woke me up. When I noticed I was in my apartment I was washed over with a wave of relief. The deliverance from this nightmare was abounding.  I was thankful and when I realized that it was my higher power that I was thankful to, I cried. This dream allowed me to feel all the wretched emotions that I would if I allowed my ego to let me take that first drink. All the negotiating with myself and the ego-betting I’ve been doing for the past few days were excuses that I was trying to make so I could justify having a few beers. I needed to feel the consequences of that and it flooded me inside of this dream.

I realized that an epiphany does happen if we are willing. And today I am willing.