After spending all day at Starbucks writing my post yesterday, I drove down to pick up my son from his dad's house. He fell asleep on the way back up to where I was headed for church choir rehearsal. I had over an hour before rehearsal would start, so I went over to my now-boyfriend's house for a quick kiss. I had spent the night there the night before so I'd all ready seen him in the morning, but, I wanted to see him again.
[The interaction between us that morning had both depressed me (as things tend to do lately) but also provided me with a revelation (as things tend to do often).]
That morning I received a call from a bill collector that got me out of my boyfriend's bed. Jason (not his real name, as usual) and I had just woken up, and I had all ready begun to express some dissatisfaction with certain aspects of my life. He shushed me and said, "We've only been awake for what, 20 minutes, and this all ready? Come on."
He doesn't want to hear about such things. I'm not sure if it has to do with him being 25 and living with his parents and being totally spoiled, with people taking care of him hand and foot and therefore him having no concept of what it means to nurture someone else, but, that's what I'm going with.
He complained when I got off the phone with the bill collector - I had answered and calmly set up a payment, which he didn't understand. "You should have asked them, 'What the hell are you doing, calling someone at 8 in the frickin' morning?' Geez!" I started to explain that I had previously scheduled that call, but he wasn't interested in hearing me speak. He interrupts me routinely, implying that he feels that his words have more value than mine. It's a trend I've noticed over the past few days since we became "boyfriend and girlfriend". I'm much quicker to pick up on these sorts of things now that I'm in recovery and am being "restored to sanity" one day at a time (some days are saner than others, for sure).
I meditated in the shower so that I could get my mind off what I perceived as his immaturity and how invalidated I felt. Or, rather, what I mean to say is I meditated to accept his perceived immaturity and to observe my feelings and figure out what to do with them other than what I would have done in the past (scream, kick, yell, punch walls, drink, use drugs, etc).
[Also worth mentioning is the fact that he takes medications for bipolar, anxiety and sleep disorders...so...his demeanor is probably a combination of the aforementioned living-with-his-parents-at-that-age and these latter conditions. But...nature, nurture, tomayto, tomahto...all that is really beside the point.]
If I don't kick and scream when I don't get my way, how do I make myself feel better when I feel "wronged" by someone?
I kill my ego. Doesn't sound like it'd feel good, but actually, it does.
And here's how I do it: First, I meditate, bringing myself wholly "present", taking my mind off the other person and focusing it on me (my body), my feelings (not my thoughts), and what's in front of me (literally: shampoo...soap...hot water...shower curtain...etc), and then, after becoming aware of my self and what is real (tangible corporeality) as opposed to what is not real (thought perceptions)...all that's left is really all there "is".
And then...I enter another realm. Y'all ready? That's right -- I pray.
Okay, this is where the atheist goes, "Aww, man, another crackpot." Or, "That is all so effing kooky, and way too complicated." But my mind is a complicated thing, and it gets me into trouble, time and time again. So what I do here is actually simple. And I need to simplify things so that I don't have to feel insane all the time (because, as of right now, I don't have meds to regulate whatever happens up there...but hell, maybe I don't need 'em, any way. Let's see...).
One prayer I use is called "The Serenity Prayer". It goes like this: "God, grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference." One thing I've learned by now, although I have to remind myself every day, is that I can't change anyone else. And that is for damn sure. The only person I can change is me...but I can change me. (Though, still, not without some outside help.)
Then the next one: "God, I offer myself to Thee, to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy Will, always." I was an atheist for the first 28 years of my life, and I have to say, I much prefer spirituality these days. When I let go of everything and just trust it to be part of some Master Plan that I have nothing to do with, I get to experience a sort of simple, effortless peace and freedom...even joy.
Here's another prayer that I recite from memory, after the other two: "My Creator, I am now willing that You should have all of me, good and bad. I pray that You now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to You and to my fellows. Grant me strength, as I go from here, to do Your bidding." I take a look at what "defects of character" are driving me and making me "useless" (sitting in resentment and self-pity makes me "useless"; helping others makes me "useful"). These "defects" usually include selfishness, self-centeredness, dishonesty (most often I'm dishonest with myself), and fear. Doing God's Will, as opposed to mine, for me, means asking God to remove these "defects" and replace them with positive, useful attributes, like love, patience, tolerance, kindness, honesty and selflessness. Because, believe it or not, that makes me feel better than resenting someone for how they're treating me.
For the record, alcoholics like me actually can't afford resentments. Resentment is what leads many a recovering alcoholic to relapse. "Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink," the saying goes. During my interaction with Jason yesterday morning, I actually thought about how nice it would be to just "check out". I thought about smoking weed and how nice it would be to be high. I thought about drinking and how nice it would be to be drunk. After my nearly two years clean and sober, that is a very dangerous place for my mind to go; absolutely, under no circumstances, can I pick up a drug or a drink, or my life will be over.
And, so, here's the final prayer, the Mack Daddy of them all: "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace! That where there is hatred, I may bring love. That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. That where there is discord, I may bring harmony. That where there is error, I may bring truth. That where there is doubt, I may bring faith. That where there is despair, I may bring hope. That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort, than to be comforted. To understand, than to be understood. To love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life."
Amen!
(I do need help remembering this one, though. HWDEDDS CUL SFD...lemme try that.)
After I meditate and pray, I do, at least temporarily, forget about whatever it is that someone did that bothered me. It's a lot of work, but it's a small price to pay to get out of a living hell.
I came up with another way to help me deal with Jason for when I'm around him, because I can't easily do all that meditating and praying when I'm actually around him - that'll take some practice. So before I left the bathroom and went back to his vicinity, I said to myself, "Okay, Adora: any time you're with Jason, shut your mouth other than to laugh at his jokes, to console him, to kiss him, to sing to him, or to suck his dick."
Fuck, I know. It sounds horrible, doesn't it? And my perception could be entirely wrong. But I'm gonna re-mind myself of the phrase my cousin coined when I left my husband to "be with" a co-worker, 2 1/2 years ago: "Enjoy your boy toy." Right now, maybe that's Jason's place in my world. And I really do feel, based on how he "treats" me, that the above five verbs about sum up the place I have in his. I'm not going to try to "get anything" from him other than what he's willing or able to offer (and my prayers do help me with that.) He's not a stepdad to my son (my son's dad is in his life, and okay, so I'll be doing it on my own when he's in my custody...fine). He's not a financial provider (I'm going to school and trying to finish so I can work full-time with a degree...so...I don't get a man to "take care of me"...fine). He's not a spiritual guru (he's an ego-driven, science-loving atheist...fine, I love science, too; ego, not as much, but whatever). He's a musician, and we have fun making music together. He makes jokes, and we have fun laughing together. He's sexy, and we have fun being physically intimate. And he's leaving for the Berklee School of Music in Boston for two years in July, although he'll be coming home for vacations...so the fun'll be over in six months save for intermittently thereafter...if we're even still involved with each other at that point.
Boy Toy. Fun. Fine.
So, I went over to his house again before choir rehearsal for a kiss, since my son was asleep, and because I do like affection. I came up with another mantra on the way, where I reminded myself: "Save your crazy." In other words, I'll "save my crazy" for, or only talk about my feelings when I'm talking to sponsors, friends, my therapist, people in recovery meetings, or save them for when I write. But presenting them to Jason may not give me a favorable result; I've all ready found him to be a black hole. "Don't go to an auto mechanic for heart surgery," a saying goes.
So Jason is, to me: "laughter, affection, and music". When I went back over there, instead of talking to him about my feelings, because experience has taught me that I can get nothing out of that other than frustration, I decided this time to just listen to him, laugh at his jokes while sprinkling in some of my own to make him laugh, show him affection, and nurture him. And it all worked out just fine. I didn't lose one ounce of serenity because of my acceptance and decision to just "give".
[And no, he won't read this. I'm hoping he ends up proving me wrong eventually, really. But we'll see.]
Then, I left, and I drove to the foster care facility where I picked up my 16 year-old sponsee Kassandra. She's recovering from alcohol and drug addiction, and I'm working her through the 12 steps. I also hired her to babysit my four year-old son for me during my choir rehearsal last night. I enjoy spending time with and being of service to her, whenever I can, and she enjoys getting out of the foster care facility any chance she gets (it's not a "home" with a family...it houses a large number of "former delinquents" without a home...and the place more resembles an apartment complex with a big office building in the middle than it does a house). Kassandra's doing a lot better now that she's not living in a motel room with her heroin-adddicted dad and now that she's not ending up in juvie over and over (she's been twice). Now, she's going to an adult school for her GED, she's involved in club volleyball, she volunteers at a mental health facility, and she gives me one more reason to stay sober and knock my own bullshit off. I want to be a positive example for someone.
Choir rehearsal was good. I enjoyed watching my director intently as I led the Soprano section. He's so good at letting us know when to be loud, when to be soft, when to cut off, when to come in, with his hands, arms, and face. I think I want to go on for a Master's Degree in Choral Conducting after I get my Bachelor's Degree in Music. I'll be done with my BA in a few semesters; I'm going half-time. Actually, when I woke up here at 4:53 am and decided I needed to write some more (I love it when my addictive nature latches onto writing as opposed to other things), this idea was the first thing that came to my mind.
I dropped Kassandra back off at "home" and drove my boy and I home, where we commenced to build a castle out of giant legos and had the bad guys tear it down and then the good guys beat up the bad guys for tearing it down. Then he asked to watch Max Steel on Netflix, so I set that up for him while he ate dinner, and I took some time to read don Miguel Ruiz' The Mastery of Love. I hadn't read anything for weeks (I was too busy obsessing about Jason and trying to get him to be my boyfriend), so it was nice to get out of my head some more. I picked it up while thinking about the last prayer that I'd quoted above, otherwise known as the St. Francis Prayer (or the 11th Step Prayer), thinking, "Hmm, maybe this book will teach me how to love." It was a Christmas gift from a girlfriend of mine in recovery, but I hadn't opened it up yet. And I only got through about ten pages before my son needed me again, but I read some things that I really appreciated. I have to open myself up to solutions from outside of myself as much as I possibly can. It's just the only way for me to go on.
Before I got to writing here this morning, I had also begun to read again one of my ol' writing professors' blogs. Whenever I go on a reading spree, I try to make sure his work gets in there somewhere. I'll be forever indebted to him for his inspiration; I always learn something from him, even though it's been, say, nearly ten years since I've taken the two classes I took from him (a literature class focusing on autobiography and a beginning creative writing class). Right now he's having to undergo chemotherapy; he's about done with it, and it's working, so I'm glad about that. But gosh, it's amazing to read his work, not just because as a professor of creative writing, he writes extremely well, but also because when I read his work, I always gain some new perspective on my own life situation.
One of the things he wrote about in his last post is the value he has found in community, as people gather to help one another in a common purpose. We don't have to do this thing alone. And that reminds me why I'm of service to those less fortunate - because nothing that I'm going through is really that bad. Other people have it plenty worse.
I need the death of the self (or ego) that St. Francis (attributedly) talks about. For example, I also help a crippled woman named Melia who's in her fifties and can't go anywhere without someone's help. I give her rides and bring her things and spend time with her, just because it gets me out of myself. She calls me every day, in a lot of pain both physically and emotionally. I can't do anything to alleviate her physical suffering, but it makes me feel good to make her laugh or to help her through her own resentments and self-pity (which are probably more founded than mine, though no more or less detrimental to one's well being).
Today I'm giving Melia a ride to the doctor at 2:30. Before that I'll be taking care of my son and reaching out to some people on the phone, to see how they're doing.
I'm gonna try to just be okay today, whatever it takes.
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