So much anxiety today. Like my insides were simultaneously bursting and collapsing at the same time.
But things heard in meetings today hit home. "Pray for something to happen, and then act like it did." I never thought of that, but heard it and I did it. Prayed that I would know when I get to leave this shithole hotel and the next thing I've got DB on the phone and he is going to help me find more suitable digs, somewhere I can be with Little B, and even Big E, as much as I can, somewhere not, as he says, "In the line of fire." That brought me some relief. Enough that I just might sleep some tonight.
Earlier in the day someone shared and then said, "And if no one has told you they love you today, I'm telling you. I love you." Damn near started sobbing. I really needed that. Who knew that first "I love you of the day" could be so vital? I knew. I just quit paying attention. If I'd been decent. If I'd been sober.
Today was about honesty. I'm not the sort that objects to the steps or the book or the program. Only a few of the people in the rooms drive me nuts. And for years, I never objected to the program. Never quarrelled with it. Never tried to argue with it. I didn't need too. I wasn't doing the work. If you don't listen to Ray Charles, you don't need to convince yourself not to listen to Ray Charles.
Of course for years I told myself I had a program. Told myself I would be rigorously honest. All except about one thing -- that was still going to drink The look of those words as they are written makes me wonder what would have happened if I would have written them sooner. But no matter, because they are there now and I can say they are the rigorous truth.
I went to meetings but I continued to drank. I lied to everyone about that.
Before yesterday I never really had a sponser. Went through the motions of getting one, I some people I would call -- usually pretend to call -- but never did any work and the sponser never lasted. Just like of course, my sobriety.
I announced birthdays I never had. Even if I managed to put a few days together -- I really did get about 90 days once -- I lied about the birthday because I'd lied about the date of my last drink to start with. Which is why I say "about" 90. It was probably more like 83.
Told friends, the marriage counselor, anyone who asked all about the sobriety I didn't have.
Lied to my headshrinker. Three meetings a week, I told him. Yep, yep, got a sponser. Oh yeah, doing just fucking fine. I was never, never honest with that dude.
Over the past two days, I finally said these things, out loud, without any jive, to people. And that brings me some relief.
I also prayed for some instructions, especially with my wife and my family, and this meeting tomorrow with the marriage counselor which has caused me so much anxiety and obsession over the past three days. I didn't have to act like that prayer was granted because it actually was, after the evening meeting by a man named John H. "Don't smother her," he said. "My advice, take these 90 meetings in 90 days and tell her you'll see her after that. If it ain't ready after 90 days, then try 90 more. This separation is like a trial divorce. You'll feel different after that and so will she. She's going to be watchin' you. She's going to be watchin' you real close. And if she misses you and you miss her after 90 days of real sobriety, then there you go." This is not what I wanted to hear, that I'd worn my wife out. Not in the least bit. But I didn't have the will to argue with him, and he was way fucking bigger than me. I just wanted direction, and there it was, and made a lot of sense.
Later I found this in the Big Book:
If there be divorce or separation, there should be no undue haste for the couple to get together. The man should be sure of his recovery. Teh wife should fully understand his new way of life. If their old relationship is to be resumed it must be on a better basis, since the former did not work. This means a new attitude and spirit all around. Sometimes it is to the best interest of all concerned that a couple remain apart. Obviously, no rule can be laid down. Let the alcoholic continue his program day by day. When the time for living together has come, it will be apparent to both parties.
This too brings me some relief. I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is December 2, 2012.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Day 3 - Morning
I am an alcoholic. Sobriety date still December 2, 2012.
This morning I am guilt, remorse, rot. This morning I am hopeless.
Our meeting with the marriage counselor is Wednesday, when we figure out, "what to tell the kids." I've been holding on to that; it's really the only time in the near future that I'm guaranteed to see her, and definately to be close to her. I hoped she might touch me, but I don't think so anymore. On the phone, in the texts and emails, she's so remote, not hostile, or cold even, but flat and far, far away. This is what I have done.
I want to tell her that I love her. I wonder if she will be upset if I tell her or if I don't tell her, of if I can upset her anymore or if she's even thought about it. The last time I told her I loved her nothing came back. That might be worse than not telling her at all. Perhaps I will find out today.
All night I obsessed over what I want to tell her on Wednesday, what I think the plan should be, how I can be around at Christmas, how I can keep her close enough to see that I'm finally doing the work. I asked for the obsession to be removed. Nothing was removed. So I obsessed for the rest of the night. I am still obsessing. Wednesday is tomorrow and it will come and it will go and it will be gone. I've got to get up and go to work and call my sponser and go to meetings and maybe eat something and find a way to act like I don't feel hopeless and this is what I'm going to do, if only because this place is a dump and I'm not spending anymore time here than necessary.
I never thought I'd say this, but I should have stayed at the La Quinta.
Right now I will read "How it works." Tonight I will call Little B. That is what I'm hoping on.
This morning I am guilt, remorse, rot. This morning I am hopeless.
Our meeting with the marriage counselor is Wednesday, when we figure out, "what to tell the kids." I've been holding on to that; it's really the only time in the near future that I'm guaranteed to see her, and definately to be close to her. I hoped she might touch me, but I don't think so anymore. On the phone, in the texts and emails, she's so remote, not hostile, or cold even, but flat and far, far away. This is what I have done.
I want to tell her that I love her. I wonder if she will be upset if I tell her or if I don't tell her, of if I can upset her anymore or if she's even thought about it. The last time I told her I loved her nothing came back. That might be worse than not telling her at all. Perhaps I will find out today.
All night I obsessed over what I want to tell her on Wednesday, what I think the plan should be, how I can be around at Christmas, how I can keep her close enough to see that I'm finally doing the work. I asked for the obsession to be removed. Nothing was removed. So I obsessed for the rest of the night. I am still obsessing. Wednesday is tomorrow and it will come and it will go and it will be gone. I've got to get up and go to work and call my sponser and go to meetings and maybe eat something and find a way to act like I don't feel hopeless and this is what I'm going to do, if only because this place is a dump and I'm not spending anymore time here than necessary.
I never thought I'd say this, but I should have stayed at the La Quinta.
Right now I will read "How it works." Tonight I will call Little B. That is what I'm hoping on.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Day 2 - Evening
Intake. Endless episodes of "Full House" on the waiting room TV. The sign says no weapons, sharp objects, lighters allowed.
A man walks in. Tall. White. Skynard shirt. Escapee from Redneck Island? Desert Storm style combat boots, tall combat boots fully laced. Matching socks, pulled high above the boot tops up to the knees. He has a young blond girl slung over his shoulder. A proverbial sack of flour. She struggles some, a small voice repeating "put me down, put me down, put me down," but it looks like they could be playing. He puts her down, points and says "Sit." She sits, starts sobbing, muttering things under her breath between sobs and raspy gasps of breath. They are not playing.
A large black woman -- they are all large black women here -- moves them out of the waiting room, through a door, out of sight. Another black woman gives the order to lock the doors. "I don't think she'll run." But evidently they lock the doors anyway. Now I am trapped with these people. Trying not to look, not to listen. Trying to act like Full House is compelling TV. But I'm fixed on them. Held in morbid curiosity. Live "Rehab."
A ruckus from behind the door. The hysterical voice of a crazy woman. Screaming, "What did you do? What the fuck did you do? What did she do?" I think whoever she is, she's running. But now more voices, the black women again, talking about blood. Blood everywhere. A razor on the counter. "Got a biological situation up in here." So the girl smuggled in a razor, went to the bathroom, and slit her wrist. I can hear one of the women asking her if she did that to get readmitted for a long stay. "You didn't have to do that, honey," someone says. "I was gonna get you readmitted."
It takes an hour for them to clean up the mess. All the while I"m sitting there, nothing to do but watch Full House. Three full episodes before I go back. It's a good thing I'm already committed to going through with this, because otherwise I would have been gone.
Later, afterward, in my hotel, reading the materials, reading the "Relapse Prevention Plan," remembering how much I hate the term "slip" because a slip is when you hit some ice and bust your ass not when you make a choice to drink and I think about the question of when I relapsed. And I'm thinking about the term "rigorously honest." I heard it so many times today and the rigorously honest truth is this: I didn't, couldn't relapse because I never got sober. Seven years I've been calling myself an alcoholic but I never got sober. I can hear my wife telling me that I put on a good show and then it would be like groundhog day. Because I just never got sober. So that's the truth: no relapse.
Day two. Two meetings. Met and accepted my sponser, G. One fucked up intake experience for outpatient rehab. Sobriety date still December 2, 2012.
A man walks in. Tall. White. Skynard shirt. Escapee from Redneck Island? Desert Storm style combat boots, tall combat boots fully laced. Matching socks, pulled high above the boot tops up to the knees. He has a young blond girl slung over his shoulder. A proverbial sack of flour. She struggles some, a small voice repeating "put me down, put me down, put me down," but it looks like they could be playing. He puts her down, points and says "Sit." She sits, starts sobbing, muttering things under her breath between sobs and raspy gasps of breath. They are not playing.
A large black woman -- they are all large black women here -- moves them out of the waiting room, through a door, out of sight. Another black woman gives the order to lock the doors. "I don't think she'll run." But evidently they lock the doors anyway. Now I am trapped with these people. Trying not to look, not to listen. Trying to act like Full House is compelling TV. But I'm fixed on them. Held in morbid curiosity. Live "Rehab."
A ruckus from behind the door. The hysterical voice of a crazy woman. Screaming, "What did you do? What the fuck did you do? What did she do?" I think whoever she is, she's running. But now more voices, the black women again, talking about blood. Blood everywhere. A razor on the counter. "Got a biological situation up in here." So the girl smuggled in a razor, went to the bathroom, and slit her wrist. I can hear one of the women asking her if she did that to get readmitted for a long stay. "You didn't have to do that, honey," someone says. "I was gonna get you readmitted."
It takes an hour for them to clean up the mess. All the while I"m sitting there, nothing to do but watch Full House. Three full episodes before I go back. It's a good thing I'm already committed to going through with this, because otherwise I would have been gone.
Later, afterward, in my hotel, reading the materials, reading the "Relapse Prevention Plan," remembering how much I hate the term "slip" because a slip is when you hit some ice and bust your ass not when you make a choice to drink and I think about the question of when I relapsed. And I'm thinking about the term "rigorously honest." I heard it so many times today and the rigorously honest truth is this: I didn't, couldn't relapse because I never got sober. Seven years I've been calling myself an alcoholic but I never got sober. I can hear my wife telling me that I put on a good show and then it would be like groundhog day. Because I just never got sober. So that's the truth: no relapse.
Day two. Two meetings. Met and accepted my sponser, G. One fucked up intake experience for outpatient rehab. Sobriety date still December 2, 2012.
Day 2 - Morning
Morning. A long and sleepness night. I feel like I haven't slept, really slept, for days. And that, of course, is because I haven't.
Last night C told me that none of my own thoughts are good thoughts. None of my plans are good plans. I heard it time and time again. I know its true. Desperately want to call or text my wife, tell her good morning and that I love her. But those are my plans. I'm squeezing my coin and letting go.
Read this in the Big Book last night: The fact is thatmost alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, ahve lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
That's sure enough about me, although if I'm going to be honest then I start now by admitting that last Friday, and all the other days before that, I choose to take that first drink. I choose it because I thought I was smart enough for it to not matter, that just by sheer geographic distance I could hide what I was doing and keep the suffering and humiliation at bay. I choose it based on bizarre calculations about how long I would need to sober up and get the shit off my breath. I choose it because I believed it would still all the swirling mess inside of me that only simple hard work - work I've never been able to bring myself to do - can reach. And of course once you choose that first one, all the others don't matter.
So this is Day 2. My sobriety date is still December 2, 2012. Meeting at noon.
Last night C told me that none of my own thoughts are good thoughts. None of my plans are good plans. I heard it time and time again. I know its true. Desperately want to call or text my wife, tell her good morning and that I love her. But those are my plans. I'm squeezing my coin and letting go.
Read this in the Big Book last night: The fact is thatmost alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, ahve lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.
That's sure enough about me, although if I'm going to be honest then I start now by admitting that last Friday, and all the other days before that, I choose to take that first drink. I choose it because I thought I was smart enough for it to not matter, that just by sheer geographic distance I could hide what I was doing and keep the suffering and humiliation at bay. I choose it based on bizarre calculations about how long I would need to sober up and get the shit off my breath. I choose it because I believed it would still all the swirling mess inside of me that only simple hard work - work I've never been able to bring myself to do - can reach. And of course once you choose that first one, all the others don't matter.
So this is Day 2. My sobriety date is still December 2, 2012. Meeting at noon.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Day 1
My sobriety date is December 2, 2012. This is day one.
I called the treatment hospital. The intake nurse was nice enough. What's going on is I'm an alcoholic, and my wife is done, kicked me out of the house, and I've never felt so hopeless, so low. I need to get treatment. And she asks me, "Do you want to do inpatient or outpatient?" And how the fuck am I supposed to know? I just want someone to tell me what to do. I'm fixin' to die. Someone just tell me what to do.
At the meeting earlier it was the same stuff, stuff I've heard over and over here and there for years - that alcohol is cruel and cunning. That it will kill me. Jesus. It killed my daddy. I know what it will it do.
This is how cunning: so cunning that even now, at the bottom, on a Sunday, staying in a hotel room in the town I live in, just a few miles from home, with the words of my wife in head - "you're a piece of shit" - my fucked up alcoholic brain is telling me that not far away there's a bar and a drink. No one would know.
Call some people in the program. Text some people in the program. I got a desire coin at the meeting and it's sweaty in my palm. Tonight I sleep at the La Quinta, and I'm not leaving this room until morning.
My body aches for a hug, a kind touch from my wife. I want to call her, tell her goodnight. Text her. But no one has told me to do that. I may have just bathed and put my son to bed, in his bed, at our house, for the last time. I'm done thinking for myself.
I've been doing this, fighting this battle, for seven years. Except that I haven't really been fighting. I never did any real work. I never got honest. I'd fake it for awhile, and then put myself back in charge and do what I wanted to do. Which is drink. Sneak around and drink. And lie about it. Lie about being in recovery. So many lies, every day, all the time. Lies that I didn't even realize I was telling. Lies just rolling out of my brain, so that there I am, earlier today, sitting in the airport, trying to get home, knowing I've got to face her, knowing its over, I'm exposed, I'm done, and its past time to tell the truth, and everything that comes to mind is a fucking lie. Because I'm so far gone, so powerless and hopeless and wasted that I can't even find the truth in my own thoughts.
Tomorrow I will go work. I will close my door and try to keep my head down. Meeting at lunch, meeting after work, intake after that.
Tomorrow. I can't see how it can be any better than today. I can't see how it can any worse. So tomorrow is a pretty fucked up place. But maybe someone will tell me what to do.
Goodnight to my wife, my son, my family. I love you. Please let me come home.
I called the treatment hospital. The intake nurse was nice enough. What's going on is I'm an alcoholic, and my wife is done, kicked me out of the house, and I've never felt so hopeless, so low. I need to get treatment. And she asks me, "Do you want to do inpatient or outpatient?" And how the fuck am I supposed to know? I just want someone to tell me what to do. I'm fixin' to die. Someone just tell me what to do.
At the meeting earlier it was the same stuff, stuff I've heard over and over here and there for years - that alcohol is cruel and cunning. That it will kill me. Jesus. It killed my daddy. I know what it will it do.
This is how cunning: so cunning that even now, at the bottom, on a Sunday, staying in a hotel room in the town I live in, just a few miles from home, with the words of my wife in head - "you're a piece of shit" - my fucked up alcoholic brain is telling me that not far away there's a bar and a drink. No one would know.
Call some people in the program. Text some people in the program. I got a desire coin at the meeting and it's sweaty in my palm. Tonight I sleep at the La Quinta, and I'm not leaving this room until morning.
My body aches for a hug, a kind touch from my wife. I want to call her, tell her goodnight. Text her. But no one has told me to do that. I may have just bathed and put my son to bed, in his bed, at our house, for the last time. I'm done thinking for myself.
I've been doing this, fighting this battle, for seven years. Except that I haven't really been fighting. I never did any real work. I never got honest. I'd fake it for awhile, and then put myself back in charge and do what I wanted to do. Which is drink. Sneak around and drink. And lie about it. Lie about being in recovery. So many lies, every day, all the time. Lies that I didn't even realize I was telling. Lies just rolling out of my brain, so that there I am, earlier today, sitting in the airport, trying to get home, knowing I've got to face her, knowing its over, I'm exposed, I'm done, and its past time to tell the truth, and everything that comes to mind is a fucking lie. Because I'm so far gone, so powerless and hopeless and wasted that I can't even find the truth in my own thoughts.
Tomorrow I will go work. I will close my door and try to keep my head down. Meeting at lunch, meeting after work, intake after that.
Tomorrow. I can't see how it can be any better than today. I can't see how it can any worse. So tomorrow is a pretty fucked up place. But maybe someone will tell me what to do.
Goodnight to my wife, my son, my family. I love you. Please let me come home.
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