Music: "Oleo", by Sonny Rollins. Smooth, clean Jazz. The kind that can keep you going, when nothing else can. Thanks Sonny:)
Garden: Warming up. I spent about an hour just laying on the hill beside the house, with the cats circling around me, just feeling the warm grass under my back and watching the clouds drift by above me. The trees are starting to leaf out. Green is starting to return all around. Peaceful.
Step 1:
"We admitted that we were powerless over ____(alcohol) - that our lives had become unmanageable"
Grief seems to come in waves, in stages. I feel it like a weight, a force. It seems to have a gravity. it adds heaviness to everything. It creates a fuzzy perception, and almost thin film that seems to block certain kinds of light, sound and such. It muffles the world, muffles emotion. Dampens everything with it soggy weight. It's insistence on being endured, felt. Why must it though? What does it give back, in return. It just seems to take. it seems so selfish, so limited. It feels like a tight place where all you can see, feel and taste is that which you can't have.
I got a call from my mother, that a truck driver had called her, using my son's cell phone. My son had hitched a ride and left his phone in the driver's cab. Now the driver was trying to find him, via his phone's address book. When he reached my mother, she called me, since the driver did not want to give his name and number to her. The times are strange, we reach out to help, by picking up a stranger, never ask his name, or tell him ours. Then when we try to help him get his lost item back, another nice gesture, we protect ourselves by being anonymous. "Strange times indeed", as Lennon would say.
This event brought up a number of feelings for me. First, worry about that fact that he was hitching around. Worry at who was giving him rides and how dangerous that might be. And sadness that his life seems to consist of transience, moving about, disconnection. I wonder what he is doing with himself all day, these days. I know where he is staying, generally, at a friends. How often he actually stays there, and what that is like for him, I don't know. I do know the family is very permissive, and let's there son have friends over there drinking and drugging. I know in the past he has even dealt drugs out of there home, with their compliance. Other than that, I don't know anything anymore about what he is doing, or where, or with whom he is staying. Argghh.............Will this pain ever end??
Back again. Just returned from an Al-Anon meeting and heard a very inspirational story of a woman member. It was different than mine, but harrowing. "But for the grace of God"- came to mind. It's one of the AA slogans. I'm just starting to learn about them and read about a few today. Her story brought that home. I wouldn't say her situation was worse, just different, yet I related to her trying to keep her head up, trying to live life in a positive way, despite all the fear and negative relationships. From looking at her I would have NEVER guessed that that was her experience. It really did hit that home too. How little you can know from just looking at someone. A huge lesson in humility about not making assumptions about anyone. Always a good message to hear.
OK. A short session, since I'm tired and heading to bed. I am going to read some from a new book I picked-up at the meeting. "The Courage To Change". It's a daily reader, one message for each day, mostly of stories by Al-Anon members of their experience. Today's message was about unity in diversity, that the strength of the groups is in their representation of the universality of the experience of alcohol, addiction, co-dependence and how we can heal from the effects of all of that. Our group is very diverse. There are teens all the way to 80 year olds. Every walk of life. I love that phrase-walk of life. That life is a journey but we each walk our own path, one step at a time. The strength that comes from so much collective wisdom is awesome.
After the meeting I went and had some iced tea with a friend, a fellow Al-Anon member, who also has a mentally ill young adult child. It was very good to have her fellowship about Al-Anon, mental illness, as well as parenting a young adult with mental illness. Such a gift from higher power to bring this woman back into my life at just the right time. You children went to high school together, and are now both diagnosed with BP. She is also my teacher in the NAMI Family-To-Family group. I feel right now she is the only one who really understands what I am going through. Amazing to have her friendship. Thank you good friend! OK, time to really head to bed!!
Thanks for listening.
Keep coming back:)
What to look forward to: NAMI class.
Challenge: Getting the truck back from the shop at work tomorrow and getting back on track with the business. Wish me luck!
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