27 years

I woke chilled and wanting to pee.  When I finally got out of bed to relieve myself I found the covers were  on the floor. I’d held onto the duvet.  It’s Vancouver June.  Hot in the day and cool in the wee morning.

I came back to bed and couldn’t sleep.  My mind was restless.  The Bangles song, Walk like an Egyptian was playing on my mental jukebox.  Background music.,  I have to take my car in to have the sun roof fixed.  I can’’t leave the dog in the car in the heat without the sun roof.  The Mini sales and repair is downtown in Kitsilano.  I have a virtual phone clinic and don’t know where I’ll have wifi reception and phone except at the clinic,  Should I take my dog Madigan with me,  What are the logistics.

I want to wear a long jean skirt. I’ve been thinking about wearing the jean skirt for days and weeks,  It used to be kaftans or sarongs.  Today I’m thinking I could wear the jean skirt. I am not falling back to sleep,  I have been planning another tattoo.  A celtic cross. I’d like to travel to Berlin and see where the wall fell and the place of the air life miracle.  

I have turned over several times and each time Madigan walks over my head to be on the other side scrunching his little body up against my back.  I rub his head.   He growls at me.  I don’t fall asleep.  The ipad clock says it’s 530 am.  The sun is out. I might as well get up.

27 years.  It’s that anniversary. While I ‘m sitting in the living room trying to meditate or meditating I’m aware its 27 years. I run my mind back over the lists of sponsors and the fondness of memories.  Gratitude.  Gratitude. Gratitude.  Bernie.  Then Hank.  Then Scotty..  Then it blurs with George.  The Georges of my world are the Saint George of Christian fame.  My mentors mix with my sponnsors.  Art. Ray. Don. Graham.  Willie.  Phillip.  Then there are the priests and ministers and professors.  Carl. John. James Peter. Emily.

27 years ago I stopped drinking. It may have been a few weeks before but I took this day as the anniversary that I could remember. 25. Christmas and June.  June 25, 1997.  My friend said since I’d stopped drinking I should try out this meeting,  I had returned to church.  She was dangerously insane  on cocaine and wouldn’t get help.  I begged her to get help. Instead of going to treatment she had a little detour and vacation and plotted and lied.  I know she was borderline.  Hysterics are attractive.  Like male psychopaths. Narcissistic. They complement. Bonnie and Clyde.  I lost myself in her.  She in me.  I thought we were to have children.  The woman before had aborted the child.  I had been raped.  I felt ruined and shame.  I passed a sperm test like other exams.   I had thought of it in terms of violence but later knew the person as weak and afraid taking advantage, and lying. The snake.  But a sociopath. Kindly , a gentleman.  Well dressed. Intelligent.  People might describe some lawyers and politicians like that.  Smooth. 

I never thought of myself as smooth.  Rough.  I ‘d been called a jewel in the rough. Maybe the hairy Neanderthal genes inside me remember the smoother less hairy Homo sapiens coming to burn their homes, kill their children and rape their wives.  Yesterday.  40,000 years ago.  Yesterday.  

27 years ago life was so crazy with her that I decided I couldn’t afford to drink or smoke dope.  I’d smoke pot occasionaly when it was available , on vacations.  I needed to quit smoking cigarettes. I’d reached a pack a day over 10 years and promised myself I’d quit when I did but I kept relapsing that year whenever I drank wine out.   I was in a foxhole and needed all my wits about me.  I had never wanted my life to be this way.  I was a god seeker and a doctor. I wished to be a healer. I prayed , make me a channel of your peace.  We met in sex and pot and wine.  She’d promised children and I wanted a family.  I married because I had sex and I had sex for the sake of children.  I was also a slut.  I never said no.  I was simple that way but there were no children just abortions and birth control pills and I’d wanted birth control pills before that.  When children were offered I was in my head.  Our bodies entwined in love and I was elsewhere. Now I was here.  A wounded amphibian on a beach.

My colleagues didn’t know that evil among them.  I learned of it as a patient.  I was threatened and humiliated and assaulted.  I was ashamed and prayed. I’d turned my head from God and all was my fault. I found solace in the psalms.  I’d not been able to protect her from herself or her demons or the mother or the insaniety and rudeness and I’d failed as protector.  She kept attacking police and gang members and laughing thinking she was above the law and younger may have been. She was elite.  She thought me silly for not knowing how the world works, how people are bought, how it’s who you know and old alliances of family and money.  I was an outsider.  She found me amusing until she didn’t.  « I’ll drink and smoke what I want to. ». « You can’t stop me, ». And I couldn’t but the proxy violence a woman can cause is volcanic. Zeus tremors before Hera. I’d only known Venus.  Tsunamis of rage can be meted out to failed lovers.  Victim cards and foolhardiness.

I was silly.  Naive.  She was a flower and I was no prince.  So many regrets.  She wouldn’t stop.  

I told the doctor all I want is for her to stop drugs .  I’d stopped drugs,  I liked Keith Richard’s, I’ve been stoned so long being straight is a new high.  

I can get you back to drinking next month. Everything can be as before but you can’t speak of these things.  You just have to do as I say.  You can never see a lawyer.  Drinking a bottle of wine a day is okay.  Smoking a joint is okay. Stay away from those people who say different he said.  I didn’t.  

27 years ago.  It was a muddle.  A mess. I left her because I couldn’t face another of her weeks in bed and refusal to do anything.  I was so tired of enabling, taking the phone calls, making excuses.  

It’s all a cesspool, an outhouse hole. I couldn’t stand her screaming at me night when I needed to work in the morning.  I had this work ethic. Middle class.  I served. I was there each day.  She came and went. The butterfly. I was larval.    I laughed because poor amber heard shit in the bed and she’d done that a decade before.  She’d puke on my stuff too.  I’d made the sheep skin sleeping bag sewing each hide together over many evenings and now I had to clean it.  What stories she could tell.    I suspect she didn’t like it.  She didn’t like something and she broke something but she didn’t tell me.  She didn’t communicate. I was supposed to be telepathic and because I was n’t I was punished.    Passive aggressive active agressive . I thought but then I was increasingly paranoid.  She’s trying to kill you they’d say.  Concerned friends.  

Complements.  When I point a finger four are pointing back.  I was the flip side.  War of the Roses and I didn’t even know there was a war.  Leonard Cohen.  Dylan.  The poets and philosophers of the day. I gave her my heart and she wanted my soul.  What ever I say of her is worse with me. I forgive her and maybe one fay I’ll forgive myself.  

I walked away. Ran. Left my part cannibalized body parts  in the cage,  I went from frying pan to fire. Borderline to psychopaths.  I couldn’t even take care of my dog.  The two of us in the cold  and rain on the ferry fleeing one nightmare to another.  

I stopped everything.  The thieves drugs addicts and criminals just looked at me as food .  Once they’d stripped me of what I had they lost interest. God sent a peculiar angel and gave me a trailer on a hill and the solitude I’d prayed for.  I rented it with the disability cheque I’d paid into for decades.   I went to church where I could cry and saw doctors who didn’t drink and drug who said I didn’t need to drink and drug.  I left her with the doctors who said ‘women don’t have addictions.  It’s always the men they choose that are the problem. ». They claimed they were feminists and gave all power to the men. I triangulated on booze. Okay, if you want me to quit asparagus I’ll quit asparagus.  I’ll show you.

Survival kicked in.  I was cared for by Christians.  Christian doctors. Christian friends.  Christian lawyer.  I escaped the aetheists and didn’t know who to trust but my Christian childhood had been good and I parted from that path when I went to California. Now I was back.  Jesus Christ.  St. Francis.  Father John.  

Bill and Bob.  Oxford Movement, 

Higher power,

I’d been a follower until he brought me pot and wine and fucked me saying we create reality. We are the priests of science,  Alistair Crowley was his mentor and I was his student. I was lost.  She wanted to stay with her mother and I was alone. Outside the garden of eden.  There were so many singles.  Mulling about. Lemmings.  Plenty of fish.

I’d washed up on stranger shores.  Then one day gave up on the world and turned back to God and God alone. I’d meditated for years with Paramahansa Yogananda. I’d studied theology at University. I’d read Billy Graham and Martin Luther. Later I’d read Bishop Spong.  My utmost for his highest would be my daily reading then. I read the Bible several times those years and studied with James and others.  John and I laughed so heartily over pizza and spoke of Freud and Jesus.  Dinner discussion missionary, talk of  work and and service and society.  Candlelight .

I was a year sober when I realized how sane my life was. Living in the morgue with her. Watching as she worshiped the mausoleums of her soul.  I was asked to replay the fiction of her parents after the deaths and she was the arbiter and publisher.  I was a pawn.  I was in so many dramas of so many people and then all I wanted was to do hunt and sail and heal.  Sober I could see how insane I was.  I had to turn off the media and stop listening to news.  Among sober people I saw the sadness in the bar.  I was sick and now I was healing. 

I realized I was insane.  Not as insane as the hospital but insane. I was restored to saniety as promised.   

I had actually thought there was a limit to God’s love. I had imagined I was outside his grace.  I was grandiose and judgemental and was among those whose fear kept them from faith. I sailed through hurricanes alone.  He stilled the water. My mind found peace.  I was fascinated by those out of control who needed to control.  I was blessed by the presen of God.

I was sober.

I stayed sober

one day at a time,

It was yesterday.  A different year. A different time, A different place.  Adam and Eve playing so many games of peek a boo.  Peek a boo with Jesus. Love and lust and hide and seek.  I thought I was lost.  God never was.

Peace.  I’d lost my peace of mind ,  I’d be Joseph with the coat of many colours tossed in the ditch by his brothers. I was waiting for Godot. I was the Metamorphisis. I was doing one day at a time. One foot after another looking at the foot prints in the sand. 

I went to meetings, I didn’t isolate. She isolates,  She controls the comments. She avoids difference. Needs constant adulation.  She is a reflection.  She is the woman. The mitochondrial Eve.

I stagger at times. The back pains from the weight of world get to me.  Sisyphus. My eyes have been plucked out by eagles.  I am losing my hearing. Bits of me are falling off.  I stagger but then Irealize where I am and I smile.

I used to be a mental wankers. That’s what the Aussies call us.  

Don’t look for God in the wall, he said.  I loved Mere Christianity.

They have children and don’t want to talk about abortion and euthanasia.  They want to make pie and hide in Metorrahs. .  I know there are no more Cappidocea’s today.  This is the world of the Devil and the lies are everywhere. Even Jesus whispered before he ascended.

My father who art in heaven.   Haven,  My parents and family have gone before me. Many friends have died. They have mansions and I still worry what side of the street I ‘m on. Will there be street lamps in heaven. 

But it’s funny. Sober.  All my wits about me. A fool on the hill,

I am thankful. So much to learn. I’m alive today thanks,  Gratitude and spiritual tools,  Wisdom writing.  Emily preached on Job at St Barnabus but she left out the part where God and the Devil play dice,  Zoroastrianism and prehistory. I’m fascinated with ancestor worship and fertility goddesses.  The Venus figurines.  Mom was such a kind person,

She was kind,  Kind and kinship. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Ethiopia and the south San tribes.  Flying into dry and wet reserves.  Being shot at ,chased by polar bears and surviving plane crashes.

I accessorize others. I serve their egos. I’m a flower in a lapel. I’ m a part object. I’m alive. I love the air and the feelings and this world as a gift of God.  I am so thankful. 

I am alive.  Thank you God.  That’s all we can hope for and be thankful for each day.  Life. I am alive.  17 years sober.  A sober me.  I drank from 17 to 1997.  45 years old. I was a binge drinker, months and months of time working, studying, and then a week in mexico blatto.  There’s 23 years of drinking.  I’ve now 17 years sober. I figure I’ll not drink today and maybe see what its like to see 23 years. I ‘d thought I’d only do a year but life got so good that I’ve never gone back . Thank you God. Thank you Jesus.