A Suit of Armor...

So, I've known for a long time that I'm more than a little weird. I have shared that already, yes? Okay, good. I thought so...

Apparently my therapist and my wife's therapist are in cahoots, because they've both determined without collaborating that I live inside a very robust suit of armor. Heck, I guess even my older Sis' therapist figured that out a long time ago, although in reference to my father - the tree from which I didn't fall too far. I've never questioned him on how he came to be the way he is, and am not at all certain that particular analysis might be true. I always felt him to be warm and caring toward me. Can a suit of armor be semi-permeable? Hmmm...

Anyway, this is all something of a revelation for me that I'm having to deal with, and its not easy. Only a short while ago, if you had asked me whether I was open and warm and caring, I'd have said yes without hesitation. I really do have a deep sense of empathy, feel the pain of others, am not ashamed to shed a tear. Just shed one this morning, in fact, over a story a Facebook friend wrote for a national magazine.

I fret over the fate of mankind - constantly. I hurt for victims of war and pestilence and natural disaster. If I come across an accident, I am the first out of my car trying to render aid. If a co-worker suffers a loss, the destruction of a relationship, some personal pain or suffering - I'm the first to lend comfort. Hell, I've been known to cry when shipping a puppy off to a good home. So, I'm a warm caring softie, yes? Well, maybe not so much...

I first came to realize some disturbing facets of my character back around the time of my initial semi-breakdown in the spring of '08. I had run myself a bit too ragged in the early grass-roots stages of the Obama campaign - keeping too long hours juggling campaign obligations and work, drinking too much, eating too little and too poorly, carrying more of a burden than was perhaps prudent. Most critically, I had let my energy reserves run so low that I found myself huddled in almost a ball in my bedroom, crying inconsolably, feeling lost and confused and afraid, and I'm pretty sure I was most afraid of me. Energy reserves, I know now, are very important - just to get through life and maintain some sort of mental and spiritual balance, and even more so if you have the added task of generating and maintaining an impregnable suit of psychic armor. Of course, when you don't know you have this armor thing going on, its kind of hard to focus on maintaining it...

So, what was my epiphany? Which I didn't recognize as an epiphany at the time? That I love mankind as a whole, but have little patience for individual human beings. I apparently make exceptions for strangers in pain, but these exceptions are temporary and only for strangers. And, if you're someone I really should care about - someone who loves me and truly cares for me, in whose life I play a central role and who should be able to rely on me for support? Look somewhere else. I'm too busy emoting about the world to care about you. Besides, you've been around me enough you should have picked up my strength. You should be resilient and strong and self-reliant, not some simpering weakling looking to me for support. I've got more important concerns to address. Hmmm... Can you say, "Asshole?"

Mahatma Gandhi famously said, "Be the change you want to see." I've always described myself as a "forest person" rather than a "tree person," and I think that remains largely true. However, I'm slowly coming to realize that I'm not God. Quite a letdown, let me tell you. In the end, I'm just another tree in the forest, and a pretty fucked up one at that. I may stand taller than the trees around me, and I may have developed the ability to generate some really lush foliage, but at the end of the day, I'm just another tree, and one with some really severe structural issues that need to be addressed. I'm working on them...

And, while my first responsibility is to be as strong and healthy a tree as I can be, I need to be considerate of the trees around me, the saplings below me, the soil in which we all grow. And I need to remind myself constantly that the health of the forest, to the slight degree I can affect it, depends on me being the best steward I can be of the gifts I've been given, and to do everything that I can to ensure the health and growth of those trees nearest me. My sphere of influence is very finite, but strongest right where I stand and nearby. And how brilliant was it for me to think I could ensure the health of the forest while my own spot was rotten and withering?

So, my lesson of the week is to remember that I'm not God, which I have to tell you is a real letdown. Oh, I mentioned that already? Yes, but still...

And so I have to take off this armor, this ego, this cloying fear-filled sense of self that won't let others near me and won't let me share of myself. And I need to set it aside. I've known this, conceptually and intellectually, for some time, and have been working on it sporadically and rationally. And half-heartedly. But it takes quite a bit more than this. Actually, a lot more than this. It takes the full focus of the body, mind, and spirit. It is an intense emotional and spiritual exercise, but one I know I can do. If I can just figure out how to get these buckles undone on this damn heavy sweltering constraining suit of armor. Hey, not as easy as it sounds, smart ass. We trees don't have opposable thumbs, you know?

...and smell the roses

Having just this morning finished reading Stephen King's Under the Dome, I am reminded once again how much I have to be grateful for, and how rarely I truly am. To live a life that affords me the leisure hours to enjoy more than 1,000 pages of fiction, in a country and a world that allows King and armies of other artists to engage in creative activities that have nothing to do with providing food, shelter or clothing, but which bring endless enjoyment to so many? I mean, how lucky are we, and how lucky am I? Very, very, very...and never sufficiently appreciative.

Reading King's book I am reminded of how much we have, and how much can go wrong in life. Sure, it's science fiction, but he draws from many plausible aspects of reality. Like, how would our lives be if we really had a truly self-serving despotic government, insufficient air or water or food for survival, insufficient energy to run our businesses or cook our food or warm our homes, non-existent police protection, or worse - law enforcement bent not on protecting freedom and rights, but on subverting these. I and we are fortunate to live a modern and actually quite challenge-free existence, compared to what King depicts, but also compared to the reality that too much of humanity still faces on a daily basis. So...

So, how does life bless me? Let me count the ways:

1. I am alive as a human being. In a universe that is endless in every measure, I have the good fortune of being composed of just the right elements in just the right configuration under just the right environmental circumstance to be a human being. I am allowed to be self-aware, to be able to seek and understand the deeper meanings of my life, of God and the infinite, of history, of science and all the material and energy and non-material aspects of existence, and to manipulate much of this to my own end. All of humanity that has ever existed or will ever exist comprises less than a single grain of sand in the endless ocean of the cosmos, and yet I get to be part of this human experience, if only for a nanosecond in the infinite life of the universe. How cool is that? How much greater a blessing could one ask for?
2. I have a family and friends who love me, despite my myriad flaws and weaknesses and frailties and shortcomings; who recognize and respect me for who I am, forgive my transgressions, share my hopes and dreams, bolster me when I’m down and humble me when I’m a bit too up, and who allow me the to play the same role in their lives.
3. I have material wealth and comfort and freedom beyond the imaginings of even royalty less than a millennium past, have never suffered a single moment of true hunger or thirst, nor felt the relentless and inescapable exposure to the many ravages that nature can bring against us puny mortals.
4. I have my health, which now includes my sobriety. And as the old Yiddish Bubbes would say, “When you have your health, you have everything.”

Certainly, I have much more than these few things of which to be grateful, but I think these will suffice for now. I think it is entirely possible that one could obsess over enumerating all of the many things for which we could or should be grateful, to the point that we run out of time to actually enjoy the experience of being grateful. I should know, as I’ve done only the tiniest bit of the former and virtually none of the latter…

So, as I proceed through this day, and hopefully every day that follows, I am going to try and recognize and be thankful for the blessing of being an imperfect human – part of an imperfect species among a universe of imperfect species, part of an imperfect family among a planet of imperfect families, living in an imperfect state in an imperfect country on an imperfect planet floating through an imperfect solar system in a universe comprised entirely of imperfect solar systems and planets and species and countries and states and families and individuals. And all of these are part of an incredibly perfect universe. I will be grateful, because I’m pretty damn sure that, at the end of the day, life just doesn’t get any better than this!

Carpe diem!

Life Sux, and then...

So, I’m a month and a few days shy of completing my first year of sobriety. A few days ago we suffered the first death of someone I knew in my AA group, although I know there will be many more to come. Actually, we’ve had several die recently – most of them, thankfully, of old age or natural causes. At least as natural as the ravaged body of an alcoholic will allow. Not this one, though. Only forty years old, good looking and healthy in appearance, and with a young daughter he loved dearly. Too soon. Too young. Too sad…

I’m no stranger to death – have been intimate with it for most of my life - perhaps more so than many of similar age and background. Since my teen years I’ve buried many – strangers and relatives and old friends and new, from natural causes and murders and accidents and suicides and sickness. I really don’t fear death – haven’t for some time. But, as one of the women at tonight’s meeting said, a sober death can be beautiful. A drunk death cannot…

I didn’t know this young man well. Our group is large and it takes a good while to get established and come to know everyone, but being one of the younger group, he was more open. He generally had a smile on his face, was well liked by all, loved by many. I knew him by name, and we talked a bit on occasion. Although I’m a relative “newcomer,” I came into the program with a sponsor from day one, and never went to a single newcomers’ meeting until about a month ago. It happened to be on the day after this fellow had come back in from “out there.” He was angry at himself, and sad, and confused, and embarrassed. And obviously in deepest spiritual and mental agony…

Almost everyone in the program slips in the early going, and I know he had a few times. He wasn’t forgiving himself this night, though. Not even close, despite all our condolences, best wishes and support. He and I did the man-hug thing, and I told him I was pulling for him and knew he could make it. He tried to smile when we broke, but the eyes that looked back at me were those of a broken spirit. I didn’t know then and don’t know now that I had anything to offer him – he’d been around a lot longer than I. I wish now, though, that I’d tried…

The program allows for forgiveness – in fact demands it. Nobody sits in judgment of anyone else, because we all know that the prodigal returning to our room can so easily be a foreshadowing of ourselves, or the faded image of those who are now decades sober, but who had their own missteps before finally finding the true path. We are directed to “turn it over to God.” I’m not a big God guy, but know we have to get outside of ourselves if we are to survive. This disease is all about being inside ourselves, hating ourselves, hiding from ourselves, killing ourselves. It’s a very dangerous place to stay for any length of time. A drunk alone with himself is locked in the death grip of his own worst enemy, and it is a battle too many don’t survive. Most of the victims go to their grave never having admitted they were alcoholics or addicts. He knew exactly what he was, but couldn’t get away from his boogeyman…

Years ago, when considering a career choice, I’d thought about going into counseling. My mother advised me that I didn’t have the patience for it – wouldn’t tolerate the patient or client who refused to recognize the wisdom of my prescribed treatment and adhere to it. While she was wrong concerning so many things about me through the years, on this one I’m afraid she was right, at least then. My ego was totally unwhupped at that point, and remains pretty stubborn even today...

I’ve found myself wondering lately how much I’ve really changed, being only an infant to sobriety and introspection and spirituality and such. I know I’ve grown over the years – well remember being violently angry at my first friend who committed suicide before I was even out of my teens. Over time I’ve come to realize these are troubled souls. All of them. Some actually do perform the act out of malice, trying to hurt some in the worst possible way for actual or supposed transgressions. Most, however, are just desperately sad and lonely and hopeless, and dealing with things the best way they know how…

I’ve not yet learned the details of my fellow alcoholic’s death, and may not. They don’t really matter, to me at least. I am told he died drunk. For an alcoholic who knows he’s an alcoholic, that’s suicide, whether fast or slow. Some fights are just tougher than we are...

Rest in peace, young friend.