I know, I know. Someone is going to say, “tell us what you really think.” So I will. Since only the tiniest group of intimates know of this place and none of the relatives of people I live with . . .
I should totally be asleep since I have to be up in 6 hours, but both of them come home at 11:30 and make so much noise that there is no possibility of falling asleep. Joe is not really a problem though. Jake is. I hate him so much right now that I can’t stand to hear him BREATHE!
So the deal is that I’m moving in a week. Not that I enjoy moving. Actually I hate it. It is my least favorite activity in the world. I hate it even more that I’m moving out of a place that I planted tomatoes. AGAIN! I swear I’m not planting tomatoes next year. I’m not.
Jake manwhore skuzzbucket is the kind of Mr. Young Slicky that thinks that re-engaging with an ex on a regular basis is fine. That it can’t be hurting them because they choose to participate. He also thinks that in the absence of a ring, he is free to fuck anyone, any time he chooses and that there cannot possibly be any reasonable, natural consequences.
So the stage is set.
I’m home on a Sunday afternoon, taking a nap, trying to make up for the sleep I don’t get during the week because of the hours they keep around here, when I hear all this yelling and screaming.
Jake: “Get the fuck out of my house!”
Girl: “blahblahblahblahblahblah”
Jake: “Get the fuck out of my house!”
Girl: “blahblahblahblahblahblah”
(CRASHING SOUNDS LIKE BODIES BEING THROWN AGAINST A WALL)
(REPEAT)
Finally after 20 minutes of this I decided to step in and escort the ex-girlfriend, who has let herself INTO the house and discovered Jake fucking one of the 3 other girls he’s fucking, out of the house.
Calmly. With deference to her feelings. Identifying with what she’s just been through. And telling her, because I know SHE’S not making him use a condom, truthful answers to all of her questions. Which means telling her that lately he is sometimes fucking 3 chicks a day.
And he somehow BLAMES ME for what happened. He refuses to acknowledge any sort of wrong doing at all. He believes he’s harmed no one.
And I don’t WANT to write any inventory on him because he is so obviously a disgusting, fucking PIG and I’m right. I’m not the one causing harm here. I’m part of the group that has been harmed. He had no right to bring that kind of drama into our house.
So essentially I’m moving next week because I have to be right. I haven’t the power to change that particular defect on my own and I can only hope that moving to a more peaceful environment will provide me with more fertile ground for spiritual growth – growth that has been sorely lacking since I moved in to this house.
My decision to move in here was not based entirely on self – but self surely was part of it – which means that I PLACED myself in this position; this position to be harmed. So it’s my own damn fault. I really OUGHT to consider taking up hermitage.
I am still forbidden to drive.
It has been nearly a month since my surgeries and I am still completely dependant on others for nearly everything.
I find inside me a resistance to asking for what I need, or to at least minimize what I think I need so as to minimize the need to ask for it; amazing what one can do without. Today though I needed to get to the grocery store. I had $25 left of the money my dad slipped into my pocket and I needed food, the kind that doesn’t require much in the way of preparation.
Even calling on friends from AA has gotten old. People know how sick I’ve been so no one can be surprised to hear from me to ask for a ride, etc., but I harbor this idea that my phone will ring and someone will ask if I need anything. That doesn’t happen. I have to bear in mind that I’ve been down for basically a month now. I’m only helpful for a week before I begin to forget about the needs of others. I can hardly blame anyone for allowing me to slip out of their consciousness.
I called my aunt today though. She has health problems of her own so I haven’t called her at all, but I know she usually does her own grocery shopping today so I took a chance and called.
It turned out to be a well placed call as, though she had actually done her own shopping already, she had free time and was just getting ready to leave the house anyway, just to get out.
As we were walking back to the car we talked about how much this experience has been like starting over for me; how I’ve had to learn all over again to ask for help. My aunt observed that she has had the same thing on her mind recently and how she has wondered if she really had to, who would she be able to depend on. I hope that I can be one of those people, should the need arise, and I hope that this experience of being so dependent upon others will show me how hard it is to ask for help.
Perhaps then I can exersize the true art of asking for help by being the one who calls to offer it.
At 40 days off cigarettes my back and ribs hurt me so much that I couldn’t move and for some reason I decided that I needed to see a chiropractor. So I went to see one, had an exam, took a ton of x-rays, got an adjustment and was told to ice my ribs and come back the following Monday.
Well, that night I couldn’t get out of a chair I sat down in. I tried to lie on the floor thinking it might help and instead it made things worse. I called my mom and asked if she had anything really good for pain and I made it through the weekend with Norco and Valium. Monday my sponsor took me to a real MD – and a few x-rays later he shot me up with antibiotics, wrote a scrip for others, along with another scrip for Norco, and sent me across the street to a radiology lab where I had a CT scan on my 40 day smoke free lungs.
It was too late in the day to get the darn thing read so I had to return the following morning for the results. When I did I was given clear instructions that they were waiting for me in Admitting at St. Lukes Regional Medical Center.
At the very least I had pneumonia – and they presumed PCP. Oddly I’m still HIV-. I assumed they would wheel me into a room and throw a gown on me and an IV and I’d be done in a few days. Instead, the next thing I remember I was in recovery from surgery and had tubes sticking out of my side along with some sort of pump that was keeping my lung inflated. I don’t remember being in any pain as I was attached to a bottle of morphine.
The fluid wasn’t coming out fast enough I suppose, because after 2 days of that I signed something and woke up several hours later in ICU with a 14″ incision across my back and bruising across most of my ribs, front and back, and the information that parts of me had to be removed. I want to sue that fucking chiropractor who looked at chest x-rays of me from 3 days before and didn’t send me to a real doctor.
I am out of the hospital now for several days but I am in so much pain that I can hardly describe it to you. I’ve also gotten the first hospital bill – not the surgoen or anything else mind you – and it looks like the hospital stay alone was over $23.000 – and I feel like I want to die.
This doesn’t seem right.
I son’t be able to even drive – like to go to work – for at least 2 more weeks according to the orders. I live paycheck to paycheck (mostly) and I haven’t had one in 3 weeks now and have had to rely on family and friends for groceries and telephone service . . . .
I’m trying to remind myself that “this too shall pass”. At the moment though, honestly, I wish I would have died. The longer ago the better.
Funny how the process of recovery works; how we go through phases and stages and, as long as we are committed to the process, more is revealed. I’ve learned something recently that has surprised me in a way that I didn’t think was possible.
People who know me in real life know very little of me unless they put some effort into it. I can’t tell you how often people are surprised to learn that I’m gay, for example. It isn’t the most obvious thing about me. What I do show people is usually kindness and patience. I show them my lovely manners. I iron my jeans and wear cardigan sweaters. I show the world every quality that one would expect from a Utah raised Mormon Eagle Scout. You WANT to bring me home to mama. And I like it like that.
I stopped smoking about 40 days ago, though, and I haven’t been very nice. Actually, I’ve been in the grips of a low grade rage pretty much all the time since I quit. Finally a friend shared with me something her grandmother had told her about her experience with quitting smoking. “I smoke my anger,” grandma said.
The truth in that statement resonated with me immediately. At work when I am frustrated or someone creates a mess for me to clean up, I go smoke. When I get hung up in traffic I smoke. When my roommates do something stupid I smoke.
Things happen and I remove myself from what is happening by lighting up. So no one, including me, ever realized just how pissed off I am all the time. My anger goes up in smoke and a cheerful me rises from the ashes, none of us the wiser.
So now that I’m not smoking I’m suddenly aware that I have all kinds of unresolved anger and if I’m going to remain smoke-free I need to find effective ways to deal with it. If I don’t I will smoke again. I’ll have to or I’ll hurt someone or give myself a heart attack.
Taking breaks at work and not feeling guilty about it is one thing I can do. Exercize is another. They both seem like good places to start to decompress, but I have a lot of growing to do in order go become happy, joyous, and smoke-free.
It’s cute that Jake and Chelsea are busy playing house. Young love is so . . . so . . . makes me want to vomit. (Fuck, I’m jaded!) Nevermind the semi-weekly fighting that never nets them anything but make-up sex. I mean, that aside, this young couple really has bonded over a level of mutual desperation and fear of working on themselves in a way that, I don’t know, fills me with judgement and a quiet rage. I can usually dismiss all that pretty easily because I know it is a well-known and predictable part of growing up; chapter 4, if I remember, in the textbook for my Comm 105 class years ago.
The lovely couple, when they aren’t screaming at each other or having make-up sex, which by their own admission they do cyclically and intentionally, are planting a garden. So lovely, don’t you think? They planted a bunch of things that one wouldn’t normally start inside, like green beans, radishes, and peas, in plastic tumblers which they set in the dining room window. The cups had no drainage and too much water was added to them. After a week of watching this experiment I gave them a couple of seed starting trays, complete with starting soil, that I had bought for my own use earlier in the week. All that had to be done was to (following the directions on the box) moisten the soil well, plant the seeds, and place the cover on top of them.
Well they sprinkled a little water on some portions of the trays, planted the seeds, and left them uncovered in the window where they sat, untended and incomplete, for the next three days.
On day three Jake came home, alone for once.
“You didn’t read the directions, did you?” I asked him by way of greeting when he walked in the door.
“Yeah I did,” he lied. I fucking hate being lied to, and if I had not wanted the trays to be put to proper use I wouldn’t have bought them. I could just have taken $10 an lit it on fire.
As I became more frustrated with the deceitful and periodically happy couple I also began to have a reaction to the Commit Lozenges which I have been using to help me stop smoking. The inside of my mouth was becoming more and more inflamed and irritated. I got up yesterday morning with the inside of my mouth bleeding, infuriated by the seed trays sitting neglected in the window, and I kind of, completely, snapped.
I watered them properly. I put the damn covers on them. I mumbled things under my breath. Then I wen to the store and got patches and Oragel.
I think I’m doing better now, but I can’t feel it when I swallow.
Well, that was fast, wasn’t it? A three day weekend of drinking and a plea for help?
She asked me to drive her to Gooding this morning where she’s being admitted for treatment at the Walker Center; the same treatment center that I went to. Her husband doesn’t drive so I went over last night to take him to the Fred Meyers to pick up some things for her, and I’m up a couple of hours early so that the three of us can take this little road trip.
I’m actually really excited to go and see some of the staff there at the Walker Center. And much of the drive is really pretty. Shoshone Falls is not too far out of the way and currently has more water going over it than at any time in the last 20 years, so maybe we’ll take a little detour.
It’s also nice that the answer to “how can I be helpful” came so quickly and so clearly.
One of the main reasons I work where I do, one of the reasons that I have a job that is much better paying than what I would have been able to get on my own, is that I know this couple from the program, and on balance it has been a great thing to be employed by them. The only drawback until recently has been that, because I work out of their home, I get exposed to everything that is going on with them. I’d really rather go to an office; somewhere where the boundry between work and life is more clear.
There is another drawback that I had never considered before this weekend. One of them is drunk. Wes called this morning to tell me not to come in. “If you’ve got work that you can do from home, do that,” he told me. “Jill has been drinking since Saturday.”
I don’t know if any of you have ever quit smoking before using any form of nicotine replacement therapy but one of the side effects is that you DREAM like CRAZY!!! So Wes called before I had actually gotten up this morning, and I promptly went back to sleep but I shouldn’t have. The next hour was exhausting. I dreamed that not only was Jill drunk but that Wes was, too. I played out the entire scenario of what it would be to suddenly not have a job and to have it be caused by something so far out of my control. In my dream I reacted very badly. I was very angry. I was retaliatory. I was mean. I thought something would snap them out of the daze they had allowed themselves to slip in to.
Of course in my dream, as it would be in real life, nothing I could do was of any use at all. I woke up an hour later exhausted and upset, and with a new appreciation of the power of the disease and its ability to make my life unmanagable than I had before.
I am not really sure of what the real fallout of the weekends events will be and I am apprehensive and a bit heart sick. I wish that things were different, but they’re not. I have to trust that God is going to take care of me and I have to keep doing my part.
I believe there is such a thing as permanent sobriety. I am working for permanent sobriety, and I believe that God can make that possible. I hope that God will also guide me through this experience and show me how to be helpful (as opposed to how I acted in my dream).
I live in a city that has been described as America’s “most remote urban area“. The key words there are “remote” and “urban.” Urban would seem to be an accurate desctiption, based on our population and density, but the remote quality of this place seems to insulate us from being exposed to anything that the rest of the world might consider normal. For example, I live about a mile from the center of downtown Boise in a long established neighborhood considered by many to be the heart of the city. The urban part insures that parking is a problem, and recently having had my scooter stolen, crime is, too. The remote part has placed me next door to someone who believes that, in spite or ordinances banning it, keeping a rooster is totally acceptable.
This is a wonderful thing at 6 AM. I suppose. If you’re a chicken. Coming off a 25 year cigarette addiction it is a matter of some annoyance and discomfort. I’m probably stepping down a little quickly. I’m down to 1 lozenge every 4 hours. Every time I step down a lozenge I can pretty much count of 3 or 4 days of total disomfort and on losing my temper at least once. This morning is no different. That rooster never bothered me before.
I pretty glad to have 30 days off smoking even if I don’t have any time off nicotine yet. I think that really is progress.
You know what I hate? I hate it when people tell me what kind of mood I’m in. It makes me crazy.
Of course you can never say anything to someone who has told you how you feel and have them actually hear you. They are too busy projecting their own neuroses to be present at all.
Jake did that to me last night. As I was on my way to bed he showed up at my bedroom door, notebook in hand, expecting me to do some stepwork with him. Never mind the fact that 2 nights before, when we were supposed to do this work, he (and his girlfriend) went to bed without acknowledging that he was blowing me off. “I was just leaving you alone because you were in a weird mood,” he said, by way of justifying his choice.
I was in a weird mood? How does he know that? Did he ask me what kind of mood I was in? No? Did he ask if I was still available to keep our appointment that night? No? The basis of his assessment was the fact that when I got home from school I didn’t say hello to him on the front porch where he was smoking a cigarette. Instead I said hello to him in the house a few minutes later – after I started making myself something to eat; it was after all 9:45 and I hadn’t had dinner.
I don’t know why people reading my mind or thinking they can makes me so insane, but it does. It reminds me so much of what it was like in the bad old days of selling drugs, when everyone wanted something from me and nobody gave a damn about what I wanted, or how I felt, or what I needed. It reminds me of being an object and not a person.
I don’t expect to be treated like that anymore, but I haven’t grown enough to maintain that boundary without becoming disturbed myself. Now I get to own the fact that when Jake told me about how I had been in a bad mood I got a bad mood and a crappy attitude and I took it out on him.
I have not filed my income tax return.
I’m getting a refund, and a stimulus check, and yet, here it is, April 15th at 5:15PM and I haven’t even started.
Last year I filed my electronic return with one minute to spare. In the past I have dropped a return off at the post office with only 5 minutes to spare. I do the same thing with smog inspections, drivers license renewals, etc., and I don’t know why. I suppose I’m lazy and I resent authority. This strategy, while rarely causing me any actual harm, is hardly supportive of a life in recovery, yet I pursue it without question or examination and that troubles me.
I have a sense that I fear acting like a grownup; that in spite of the fact that I have, over the course of my 27 months in recovery, succeeded at handling increasing responsibility in a number of areas of my life, that there are areas to which I prefer to remain blind.
Weird.
