Happy New Year!
I've been sick since last Friday (the same cold I thought I got rid of 2 weeks ago). I got so run down at the beginning of the Christmas/New Year's break that it caught up to me for the 2nd half.
I spent 3 days around Christmas in Delaware with my sister and her family. We had a great time. This is the non-toxic family that life (or God) held in reserve for me until I was an adult.
I also spent a fair amount of time driving vast distances in order to have lousy meals at Chinese Buffets with old friends who were worth the trouble.
I got lots of DVD's, the board game "Clue", and a seating guide to all the legit theaters in New York City called "Stubs" (as much a "must-have" for New Yorkers as the Thomas Guide is for Angelenos). It helps take a lot of the hassle out of buying theater tickets on-line, by seeing in advance exactly where you'll be sitting. My grown-up theater queen nieces were all very impressed with it and got one for themselves.
By last Friday, though, I was feeling my age. I was also feeling the growing scratchiness in my throat, throughout the afternoon.
So I've been coughing my fool head off ever since. The cough is "non-productive" in medical parlance. I'll be thrilled when I finally hack up the fur ball that's been living in my throat for nearly a week now. (Is there anything sadder or more pathetic than a sick old queen, home alone on New Year's Eve? -- well don't cry for me Argentina! I watched 9 episodes of Season 3 of "Lost" New Year's Eve and Day. And washed that down with intermittent doses of the Twilight Zone Marathon on the Sci-Fi Channel (Wasn't Billy Mumy delicious as the evil kid who controlled the whole town?)
Today is my first day back at work. I have to work tomorrow, too, but I'm off Friday in order to see my cardiologist who should have the results of the nuclear stress test I had the week before Christmas (he'd better fucking say I'm in the pink or I'll have to hurt him because I'm in no mood for bad news).
Perhaps the single most important thing I did this past week was to hang up my 2008 Calendar in the bedroom. It's full of quotes by the brilliant philosopher Joseph Campbell. January's is this, "Life is Perfect. It's chaos and it's always been chaos and it always will be chaos and there is nothing you can do to change that. It's your job to straighten out your own life. That is the meaning of life."
Amen, brother.
I hope everyone had a happy, joyous, sane, healthy ChrisHannuKwaanYear, and that you spent a lot of time with people you love.
Now go straighten up the mess you call "life."
-JZB
p.s. I spotted the following little item on Wonkette the other day. Be sure to drop by over there and read the whole thing. Wonkette may be snarky and too "inside-the-beltway" for a lot of folks, but I love it.
=============================================
Ok, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with these Christian conservative types? Does anyone else, anywhere, spend this much time thinking about other people having sex that isn’t doing so in order to masturbate, plan their next porno, or write for Fleshbot? Let alone, does anyone spend this much time equating the guy-on-guy anal action with fucking dead people, little kids or animals? Like, how does that even occur to you? Candidates are being assassinated in Pakistan and people are dying in Kenya over rigged elections and thousands of Americans and Iraqis are dead in Iraq because of a war we started for (apparently) no good reason and their feeble little minds are totally filled with thoughts of how God doesn’t want people to to engage in ass fucking because you can’t have babies? Jeebus Motherfucking Christ, I’m ready to start drinking now. Bring on the New Motherfucking Year.
1:35 PM ON MON DEC 31 2007
BY MEGAN CARPENTIER
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Friday, December 21, 2007
Inside Job
My sponsee was sprung from rehab on Wednesday. He spent that night with a friend of his in Philly. She was good enough to find out times for 12-Step meetings in her neighborhood. Naturally, he didn't go to one that night.
But, he did allege that he went to one yesterday.
He showed up, with the friend, at my doorstep last night, at a pre-arranged and agreed upon time in order to collect his house keys. I could tell that he's on shaky emotional ground right now. The reality and enormity of his loss has finally started to sink in.
It's a funny thing about "bottoms." Everybody in recovery has one. Some were gentle bounces and some were full-fledged thuds (mine was one of the later). The point is that soft or hard, a bounce or a thud, everyone in recovery was absolutely, positively, 100 percent
MISERABLE
when they came stumbling into their first 12-Step meeting with a giant neon sign attached to their foreheads that flashed "NEW" and "PLEASE HELP ME" and with a "deer caught in the headlights look" upon their frightened faces.
When they show up it's my job, and the job of others like me, to do what we can, within boundaries, to offer all the love and support we can until the newcomer finally learns how to smile again after which we set them on the road to more permanent contentment and serenity through the 12-Steps.
That transition happens, usually, around day 50. After 49 days of showing up looking like they'd stayed up all night sucking lemons, one morning they'll come in in and the misery will be gone from their faces. They'll look refreshed because they actually slept all night. They'll smile because they're actually glad to be in the room where they know they are safe, a room full of people who genuinely care about them (and aren't after something).
After nearly 10 years of recovery, I live for moments like that now. I look around the room at my Friday morning beginner's meeting and I see a half dozen people just like that.
A few months ago they were hopeless, miserable, soulless wretches. Now they're ready to become productive members of society again.
When I'm asked why I do what I do to help newcomers my response is the same response I got from MY sponsor, when I had 45 days of sobriety and asked him the same question.
"Because one day you'll do the same for somebody else."
The feelings of fulfillment and joy I get from helping fledgling recoverers fills me with indescribable happiness.
I hope and pray that my sponsee, fragile and delicate at the moment, will someday find what I have found.
That happiness is an INSIDE job.
But, he did allege that he went to one yesterday.
He showed up, with the friend, at my doorstep last night, at a pre-arranged and agreed upon time in order to collect his house keys. I could tell that he's on shaky emotional ground right now. The reality and enormity of his loss has finally started to sink in.
It's a funny thing about "bottoms." Everybody in recovery has one. Some were gentle bounces and some were full-fledged thuds (mine was one of the later). The point is that soft or hard, a bounce or a thud, everyone in recovery was absolutely, positively, 100 percent
MISERABLE
when they came stumbling into their first 12-Step meeting with a giant neon sign attached to their foreheads that flashed "NEW" and "PLEASE HELP ME" and with a "deer caught in the headlights look" upon their frightened faces.
When they show up it's my job, and the job of others like me, to do what we can, within boundaries, to offer all the love and support we can until the newcomer finally learns how to smile again after which we set them on the road to more permanent contentment and serenity through the 12-Steps.
That transition happens, usually, around day 50. After 49 days of showing up looking like they'd stayed up all night sucking lemons, one morning they'll come in in and the misery will be gone from their faces. They'll look refreshed because they actually slept all night. They'll smile because they're actually glad to be in the room where they know they are safe, a room full of people who genuinely care about them (and aren't after something).
After nearly 10 years of recovery, I live for moments like that now. I look around the room at my Friday morning beginner's meeting and I see a half dozen people just like that.
A few months ago they were hopeless, miserable, soulless wretches. Now they're ready to become productive members of society again.
When I'm asked why I do what I do to help newcomers my response is the same response I got from MY sponsor, when I had 45 days of sobriety and asked him the same question.
"Because one day you'll do the same for somebody else."
The feelings of fulfillment and joy I get from helping fledgling recoverers fills me with indescribable happiness.
I hope and pray that my sponsee, fragile and delicate at the moment, will someday find what I have found.
That happiness is an INSIDE job.
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