Life & Death, with Flowers in-Between

"If you aren't able to be used, you're useless":  That's one of the best pieces of advice I ever received while I was serving my apprenticeship for funeral service licensure. Because it's true, after it's done being funny.  It's human nature to use, and be used.  We come up with nice words for it, such as "trust" and "love", but it's really just a gauge of how far you'll press the needle into your discomfort zone to accommodate the wishes of someone else.  The relationship becomes a series of favors, attempting to keep that needle from swinging to hard or too long into our own individual comfort zone, while still making space for it, the next time our lover comes to need us. So, what is my point? The point is, I can take a whole lot of suffering.  And, I want a whole lot in return. I said to a friend the other day, "I feel very solulent lately" and that is barely a word, but somehow a complete description o...

It's been a whirlwind of a month.  The beginning was humble, laughable even, my pathetic attempt at striking up a conversation with a friend that made up his formative years in the same towns I grew up in, because I found him attractive  and dangerous  and wanted to bang him .  Yep.  Written for posterity. I wanted to fill some time fucking until I hit one year, and could be trusted to love  again, by some magical interference from my Higher Power.  I was resigned to the grind of dating apps and organic flirtation and the unending explanations about why I choose not to drink... but man , he looked like fun. I was so uncharacteristically enthralled by him, I agreed to meet after work, after a work meeting, nonetheless, at a place unfamiliar to me and with street parking  only... my trifecta for anxiety.  We ended up talking the coffee shop closed before going back to his place, spending another couple of hours engaged in the most existentia...

Some days I want to write and write and write, and then there are others... the days where I feel as though I physically would choke and die if I attempted to open my journal and put ink on page. I remember that choke .  I used to feel it tighten my throat whenever I cracked open a box of cheap wine and realized I had drank more than intended the night before and could not make it through an entire day with the remaining contents of the sloshing, poisonous bag.  I used to feel it whenever I attempted stepping out of the house, and unless it was for another box of wine, I often let it defeat me. "The Gift of Fear" I thought, priding myself on being so good and so gentle with the mental illnesses that trapped me in that apartment for five slippery sloshing years. Mental illness does not deserve my kind regard. Recently, I've been feeling pretty down on myself, because at 235 days, I am not a saint.  The miraculous transformation I expected to continue in...

85 consecutive days and 153 since I made the decision to get better. And in a lot of ways, I feel like I'm 19 again, ahead of the decision to pick up a drink in earnest. I cry a lot, lately.  I feel deeply touched over things that I took for granted before, and sometimes the tears are tinged with sadness... but after I cry, I often feel healed .  When I cry over lost prospects, lost potential, lost years, I bleed some of the sadness off of those memories and can look at them clearly. I've had a lot of thoughts lately, that maybe I can be the kind of person who doesn't consider a bottle of special occasion wine to be the end of the world.  I recognize that this is dangerous thinking in early sobriety.   I can set that thought aside without acting on it, because I know I am an alcoholic and I cannot trust my mind quite yet, but the black-and-white thinking has eased off some, and I think that's some of my trouble with taking AA seriously. I'm even looking at my ...

I think at 55 days sober, it's alright to take a couple of days to reflect on who I truly am, alone and independent.  I feel  as though I should be doing more, making more progress, working on quitting smoking, eating better, losing weight more quickly, getting out more, making more meetings, but... I only feel anxious about my own progress when I start relating it to what others are doing with the same sober time, or more.  I'm always chasing ideals, daydreaming of a better future. Some days, it's enough to get dressed, take a shower, get some minor chores done, and feel comfortable with the presence of oneself.  Not dwelling on social media or taking in the testimonies of others, just separating from the world and reflecting on what makes my own personal ideal of success. Today, my personal level of success is feeling happy.  Gently touching base with a couple of close friends to remind them that 1) I am alive and 2) I am still devastatingly funny, even...