pacifying

sympathy and heart

for the human condition.

rain for the next ten days.

 

meditation

not a hypnotic

state of mind.  not on guard

against restlessness.

no fear of passion or aggression.

no sense of paranoia

and limitation.

it is giving a luscious green

meadow to a restless cow.

the cow eats and eats and eats,

relaxes and falls asleep.

this requires awareness.

“awareness is seeing the discovery

of mindfulness.  we do not have  to

dispose of or keep the contents

of the mind.”  we offer it space.

Sobriety: More information…. Day 8

I miss my friends.  I said that last night at an AA meeting. Actually, I said, “I miss my drinking buddies.”

As one man passed me on his way to the bathroom, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “We are your drinking buddies.”

He’s wrong.  The people in AA are not my friends.  I have a long history with my friends.  We have traveled together, gone on cross-state bicycle trips.  My friends come to my house for dinner and I go to their homes in return.  My friends attended the wedding of my daughter. One special friend, threw a bridal shower for her.  They came to my daughters baby shower, to Amelia’s birthdays, to my and my husband’s sixtieth birthday bashes.  I have friends across the country, some drink, some do not.

Desperation drove me to AA for the first time in 1990.  I considered suicide.  I practiced yoga.  I meditated.  I went to therapy.  I attended church and prayer group, but nothing relieved my suffering.  I drank daily to get smashed.  My then husband kept cases of wine and beer in our basement.  I see myself now, bending over to avoid hitting my head as I walked down the steps into the bowels of Hell returning with a bottle, any bottle.  Sometimes I would drink champagne.  On other days, I chose wine.  Red or white it did not matter.  I wanted to get drunk.  I hated my life.

After I quit drinking, depression set in with a vengeance. I went to treatment, not for alcoholism.  I went for bulimia.  Food was my lifetime drug of choice.  Later in life, I drank to avoid eating, anything to stay thin.  My mother trained me well.  As a child, if I did not have a daily bowel movement, which was rare for me, she gave me enemas.  Looking back, I see her like a mad scientist filling the enema bag, me lying on my side on the bathroom floor.  Christ, what a psycho drama.

Anyway, I got sober.  I quite taking laxatives.  I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed Prozac.  I did yoga.  I meditated.  I learned to take care of my two children.  I worked.  I got my first full-time as the administrative assistant at a day care, but I was still miserable.  The man I loved, truly loved married  another woman.  We were together briefly in 1984.  He and I both left our spouses and  tried to make a life together.   We lived together for three months.  My love’s wife destroyed his relationship with his daughter.  On the recommendation of his attorney, he moved in with his parents.  I returned to my husband, got pregnant with my second child and made a life for myself.  I did not drink for 10 years most of which I spent in misery.  If you see pictures of me from that time, I never smiled.  I went through the paces.  I learned how to be a responsible grown up, but I was never really happy.

In 1997, I made the break.  After four unsuccessful attempts, I left my marriage.

The death of my lover’s father the previous year opened his eyes and heart to the fragility of life and to his unhappiness.  Unbeknownst to me he began planning our reunion.  He  sold his business of 20 years.  A few months later, we had a brief but fateful dinner together in Nashville.  I returned home to Memphis and told my husband I was leaving to live with Jimmy.  My children disowned me.  I cannot blame them.  I had left so many times before.   Jimmy, his name is Jimmy,  left his wife to live in a condo his cousin kept in Memphis.  My husband and I divorced somewhat amicably.  In July of 1997, I rented a duplex.  Jimmy moved in.  We began our life together in our first home.  Thirteen years later, we are still together, happily married.  My ex-husband remarried as well.  We are now all one big happy family.  Funny how things work out.

Why am i telling this story?  Drinking today is not the escape it was for me in the late 1980’s.  I am abstaining today because I want to really see myself.  If I drink again, it will be because I make choice to do so, not because of some nameless inner demon.  This is so f_ _king complicated.  But then life is a mess, a grand and wonderful mess and I love it.

Pema Chodron says,  “The humor of practice and the beauty of practice is that going from one extreme to another is not considered to be an obstacle.   Basically, once we have some sort of joyful curiosity about the whole thing, it’s simply all information, gathering the information we need to find our own balance.”

She goes on to say, “Learning to be not too tight and not too loose is an individual journey through which you discover how to find your own balance: how to relax when you find yourself being too rigid; how to become more elegant and precise when you find yourself being too casual.”

Trungpa Rinpoche, the Buddhist teacher says, Buddhism doesn’t tell you what is false and what is true, but it encourages you to find our for yourself.”

I have tried labeling myself an alcoholic in hopes that the name would bring some relief.  It has not.

My first yoga teacher, Felicity Green told me, “Avoid labels.  They imprison you.”  I am gathering information.