“First Fix”

Oh man. It’s barely nine o’ clock, and I’m up and blogging. Not sure if I’ve ever mentioned it here in these pages, but I am NOT a morning person. I’ve got a pot of very strong coffee brewing downstairs.

I’m back home after my trip down to Pacific Grove. I woke up this morning to a clean apartment. Before I left last Friday, I took the time to clean the whole place from top to bottom. I vacuumed, dusted, the whole nine yards. I even made the bed ;-) I know there’s a lot of guys out there who don’t care too much about how clean their home is. There are plenty of people, men and women, who thrive on chaos in their homes, in their activities, in their relationships with others. And I suppose it can be said that that was once true for me. Nowadays, it’s the exact opposite. Cleaning my place, and certainly waking up in a clean home, does wonders for calming my chaotic mind. It’s just another facet of needing peace and quiet, preferring peace and serenity to drama and trauma.

This weekend was rough. The brain is still a little busy today. I’m doing a lot of praying, asking for help, and trying to remember that it will pass. I’ve got a full day ahead of me, and that will help. An artist I’m working with is coming over and so I’m gearing up for some good studio work. The cat has a vet appointment this afternoon. She’s overdue for her yearly checkup and needs her shots. At some point I’ll get over to the bank and to the landlord and get the rent paid.

Over the weekend, I wrote about being uncomfortable being in the church environment. With the disease still kicking, and realizing that it was doing so even before my trip, I have to admit that it wasn’t being down there that was the problem. While it’s true that being around wealthy people can piss me off, and that the naïveté that many good church-going folk possess truly grates on me, there’s something else going on that is the real cause of why my disease is acting up. I’m pretty sure what it is, too, but I’m hesitant to write about it here. Oh well, here goes anyway. Heh. Yeah, enough stalling.

I have an old-timer friend in the program who found her way into the rooms because of a crank addiction. She’s got a lot of time now, and would have even more if she hadn’t had a relapse on alcohol years ago. She shares frequently about how the disease is about so much more than drugs or booze, saying she can fix with anything because the stuff isn’t the problem. She’ll talk about how her first fix was food, something she still struggles with to this day.

It’s been said in the rooms many times, and I’ve joined the chorus, too: I don’t have a drug problem, I have a me problem.

My first fix was relationships. It was lying in bed next to a girl when I was fifteen that the committee of voices in my head first went silent. We hadn’t had sex. In fact we’d only been making out. But I remember that moment well. It was a lot like when I found pot. I felt a sense of peace and a feeling of purpose, like that was how I was meant to exist. I know a lot better now what true peace is, that it comes from within and not because of something external. I can look back now and see that what I was experiencing was escape. And I can understand, too, how that was why my emotions went so haywire when it came to relationships.

Yes, I was a teenager and hormones go crazy when you’re at that age. Yes, emotions run rampant during any love affair. But for me, there was the added element of a budding sufferer from the disease: I had learned that I could quiet my brain by being in a relationship. I could fix myself by being the ‘perfect’ boyfriend. If I was the perfect boyfriend to a girl, then I was okay as a person. My life had value, I was a worthwhile person--not the sack of shit I thought I was--if I made a girl happy. My happiness, my feeling good about myself, was dependent on someone else.

Fixing with relationships, or with sex or food, really isn’t all that different than fixing with drugs or booze. It’s still the same old story of using something outside of ourselves to escape. We don’t feel good inside, and so we do whatever we can to escape that feeling.

The reason my disease has been kicking lately is because I’ve started looking into dating again. I dusted off one of my online dating profiles and started looking around to see if there was someone I matched up with. I’ve been meeting women, and the disease is having a field day with it.

I spent a number of months deliberately not dating, doing a bit of hibernation you could say. And I gotta tell ya, right now I’m half-tempted to go back into that mode. Just say ‘fuck it all’ and not date. Give up. Enough. But I know that’s not the way. Refusing to walk through the tunnel doesn’t get you through to the other side.

I get so sick of this damn chatter. Every little thing becomes an excuse for the brain to go crazy with what-if’s. I have some tools to fight it; I can remind myself of What Is, and I can apply the knowledge and Recovery I’ve gained, but damn Uncle Steve always has that tv up so fucking loud when he watches this channel. What’s worse is I know lil’ Joshua is hiding behind Uncle Steve’s recliner, thinking of childhood pain and all the love he needed that he didn’t get.

So I have to try and ignore the blaring committee of my diseased brain. I need to stay on guard against the inner child who is chomping at the bit for the chance to grab the steering wheel of my life and drive it into a tree. And even though I know all these things, even though I’m aware that my brain just DOES THIS when it comes to my attempting to meet people or be in a relationship, I’ve learned that it really is all more than I can handle on my own. It’s Unmanageable. So I have to call in the big guns.

The last set of twelve steps I worked, I worked them specifically on my relationships with women. And just as I can’t stay sober on my own without God’s help, I can’t do relationships on my own without God’s help either.

As I wrote those words, my brain kicked back at me. It told me that I should be able to, that I’m not a real man because I can’t do it on my own. And you know what I think about that? At those thoughts, I smile and know that I’ve dealt the disease a powerful blow. ‘Should’. ‘Less-than’. That’s the language of the disease of addiction. Those are the things my disease tells me to try and drag me down, make me feel low. My disease doesn’t want me to succeed. It doesn’t want me to be happy. It does one-armed pushups and waits, salivating for the chance to tear me down and make me feel like shit. Not to get all mythological here, but it is the devil in my mind telling me that I am not a child of God.

I am a child of the Infinite All. I do deserve to be happy. I do deserve all the best. When the disease says different, it is lying.

So I’ve been doing a lot of praying and meditating lately. I’ve asked God’s blessing. I’ve asked God’s help. I’ve admitted, once again, that this is an area of my life that I really can’t handle on my own. And that’s okay. That’s one of the things God is there for, to help us, to do the things for us that we can’t do for ourselves.

I believe that there is a healthy peace, calm, and comfort that can come from relationships. But in order to get that, I have to go into it with healthy intentions. If I’m trying to escape myself or give my life meaning through being with someone else, then it won’t work; I’ll choose a partner who isn’t good for me. I’ll end up hurting her and myself. I can’t save and I can’t rescue.

I can’t not date forever, and I don’t have to. If I try to do it on my own, the results will be a disaster. I’ll end up hurting someone else and myself, too. If I ask God to walk with me, if I let myself be guided by his will for me and not my own for myself, then life becomes manageable. Relationships become possible.

The disease is still there, forcing out a last gasp, telling me how self-indulgent I am by writing so much about this issue. Yeah, I hear you in there. Yes, Uncle Steve, I know you’re watching the Relationship channel. Thanks for turning it down. Keep it down, will ya? And as for my inner child, the part of myself that I write about here as Lil’ Joshua? Self, I’ll be honest with you: you’re never going to get what you didn’t get. But it’s okay. How about I hoist you up onto my shoulders? Let’s go play ‘airplane’ in the park.

(Wheeeeee!)