All Matters Family

Yesterday I rang up Shorty, my go-to guy in all matters family - I haven't given him the chance to tell me to go to The Fellowship For Those Who Know Alcoholics for a while.  I figured his time was nigh.  He needs to feel like he actually knows something from time to time.  This is my opportunity for passive-aggressive service work.

I need my friends to help me look at difficult situations from all possible angles.  I don't need people to agree with whatever it is I'm doing - I'm not in a bar drinking anymore.  I want to see stuff with a new perspective because my inclination is to think that whatever stupid thing I'm doing is, in fact, not stupid at all but a very smart, very appropriate thing.

I want to balance my responsibility.  I'm the guy who has a powerful spiritual program - I need to go the extra yard, to be the bigger, better, badder human - and I'm also the guy who should know enough to keep a low profile when I'm not needed, or wanted, a tough task for someone who knows everything about everything.

My family percolates along.  I try to stay in touch.  I try not to stay in touch too much.  I try not to get angry or judge.  I try not to tell god what it is he should be doing or not doing.

Seaweed: Aribiter

Arbiter:  A person who settles a dispute or who has ultimate authority in a matter.

As an arbiter of everyone else's fate I confess to wondering if things wouldn't be better for my father if he went and met my mother up in heaven.  That's a euphemism for wondering if he would be better off slipping into the next world in his sleep.  Another euphemism, of course, for death.  I feel awful even thinking that but not as awful as I feel imagining what it must be like being in my dad's place: broken body, loss of spirit, now deprived from the one thing that might have given him some solace - brother alcohol.

Like I know what's best for anyone.  Like I know who should be alive and who shouldn't.

To be clear: I'm not wishing that my father would die.  I'm wishing for him to have some peace of mind and I don't see that as an eventuality in the current state of affairs.  It's painful for me to imagine what a day must be like for him now.  I can't imagine that it's pleasant.

Judge, Jury, and Executioner

I returned from my trip to a father in decline.  He has fallen every couple of nights the last week, each time necessitating a trip to the emergency room.  The last fall was a big one - he may have broken a bone in his back, another bone - so at the very least he's going to end up in a rehab unit for a few days.  Probably he'll need to move from his independent living apartment into as assisted living facility.  It just doesn't seem practical for him to be there alone anymore.  I have no frame of reference for how shitty this must make him feel.

The whole thing is complicated for me by the almost complete coin of silence that lies over The Old City as far as my family is concerned.  My father has spent maybe a total of 67 minutes on the phone with me - and has never contacted me first - in the 4 years that I've been gone so no word from him now is hardly a surprise.  My sister has contacted me unbidden . . . I'm trying to be fair here, difficult because I'm prone to lying and justifying and exaggerating when it makes me look good . . . maybe 5 times in that period?  Certainly not double figures, and she's very casual about responding when I reach out to her.  Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't.  Also not very surprising.

I'm in this weird space where I feel like I should be making an effort to get updates and offer suggestions but no one is contacting me or asking me any questions or responding when I get in touch with them.  So . . . I'm not checking in and I'm feeling guilty about it.  Naturally.  Of course.  Most people - when treated a certain way for years and years and decades - get the drift.  They don't keep doing the same thing over and over.

To top the whole shit sundae off I'm battling the temptation to be judge, jury, and executioner about the whole sorry, preventable mess.  My dad hasn't moved from his easy chair in 20 years; doesn't eat and I don't mean properly, I mean at all; and he drinks.  So the fact that he's unsteady enough on his feet to fall repeatedly pisses me off and I have to fight the urge to make snarky, passive-aggressive comments.  This doesn't help anyone and it makes me feel terrible.  Maybe this is why these people don't talk to me.

Mostly I'm OK with it.  I believe that I act consistently and kindly to the best of my limited, human ability.  I believe that the way I act is just fine while having empathy and trying to show patience for those who think I act like an ass.  To Thine Own Self Be True is a treasured phrase of mine.

In one of my favorite Simpson's episodes Homer, trying to get free cable service, climbs a pole outside his house to see if he can hook his TV into the cable feed.

There's a red wire and a black wire.

"Hmm, only two choices," he says, hooking onto the red wire and receiving a blast of electricity.

"Must be the black, then," he reasons, receiving a similar jolt when he hooks onto the black wire.

He pauses, looks at the two connections, and says: "Maybe it's the red wire."  This time the shock is so powerful that he's knocked clean off the pole.

That's me.  That's what I do.  It'll be different this time.

Maybe I should call my dad.  It's the right thing to do.

Doing A Thing

I've done a bit of a drift here the last week with my writing.  That's what a month of travel with all the newness and routine-destruction will do to you.  Honestly, it has been pretty nice - we're tired, we saw most of what we came to see, no big agenda left, so we've just cruised.  The result of all of this not trying to bend the world to my specifications is that we spent a lot of very pleasant days and we uncovered a lot of hidden gems.  Big recommended sites and experiences do that to me frequently - they disappoint, collapsed under the weight of my unreasonable expectations.  So I go to less well-known places, manageable both time- and distance-wise, and have a ball.  I do one thing, slowly, deliberately, completely, and I make space when I'm done with that one thing before starting the next thing.  It's harder than it sounds, in my brain, anyway.  I'm usually taking a step into the next thing before I'm done with the thing I'm doing, thereby ruining the thing I'm doing which is what I'm doing, after all, not the next thing.

Wait! I Need Somebody!

Wait:  To delay movement or action until some event or time; to remain in readiness. 

I am intermittently grateful for what I have in The Fellowship vis-a-vis the ability to talk to other men who are often as whacked as I am.  Not always grateful, of course, but it strikes me from time to time.  As I consider more carefully my Director friend - the talented control freak - who has no release mechanism for outrage and frustration that can remotely compare to what I have in recovery I'm struck by what a blessing it is to be able to walk the fine line between action and inaction.  So many situations in my life resolve themselves when I stop trying to resolve the holy shit out of them by myself.  It's not in my nature to wait - it's in my nature to force the square peg through the round hole even if I have to break out the trusty sledgehammer to make it fit.

The only tool I need is a sledgehammer.  It cures all ills.

Arrogant Asses All Around Me

I'm in the habit of exchanging messages with a lot of people.  Frankly, I'm a lot better at it than most people are - the curse of the introvert who is in a Program that stresses not thinking about myself all of the time.  I suck at this but I work at it, too.  Every now and then I run into a friend or two - often people that I love dearly and with a great intensity - that gets my competitive juices running in the "I know more than you do" department.  This is a shitty department.  They should close this department and transfer everyone to Customer Relations or something, a department where they might be able to do some actual good.

From time to time I delete people from my phone's saved-people list.  If a name is on the list I'm tempted to interact with the individual associated with said name - I forget how irritated I was when I actually deleted the name from the list.  I think: "It will be different this time."  This has almost nothing to do with the person, regrettably, and a lot to do with me.  It's not even a bad quality, per se, staying in touch with people who aren't as good as staying in touch as I am. Hey, maybe they don't want to stay in touch with me; but I prefer to think that they're on to other things.  It's less malicious that way.

I had a furiously passive-aggressive interchange with a dear old friend recently.  This is not unheard of with this guy.  He's another example of the kind of people I meet in The Fellowship all of the time - talented, smart, tireless, someone who has a long history of setting goals and then achieving them.  While this is another good thing it can also be a bad thing.  SuperK accuses me of never saying "I'm sorry."  I think that it's more a case of me having made my mind up that I can solve some problem or arrange some situation to my liking, and I'm loath to divert from this path.  It can be a terrible path.  I'd be better off on another path but I have it in my head that this is the path.

He is having some problems that are entirely of his own making, in my opinion.  He has a situation that isn't to his liking and he's trying to arrange everyone and everything so that it IS to his own liking.  Good luck with that.  I'm 6,000 miles away and I can see that he's not going to get his way.  He disagrees and somewhat dismissively, being an arrogant ass like me.  I really had to bite my tongue. 

It hurth when I bite down.

Blame, Blame, Blame

Blame:  To assert or consider that someone is the cause of something negative; to place blame, to attribute responsibility (for something negative or for doing something negative)

One of the things that I try to remember on a daily basis - and forget on a daily basis - is that I'm the only person responsible for how I feel, this despite my ceaseless efforts to blame someone else when I feel bad or when I don't feel as good as I want to feel, and I really want to feel good.  Poor SuperK, of course, is a convenient target, being close at hand much of the time and a person who has an out-sized influence in my life.  I say this with no shame whatsoever because I'm sure I'm a reciprocal target, and deservedly so.  Now, all of us are going to be affected by circumstances and the behavior of others from time, and we're going to be riled about these things.  That's inevitable.  But it's up to me and me alone to take responsibility for how I feel.

Liisantaku Street

The topic at my Finnish meeting on Liisantaku Street was emotional sobriety.  Although I shouldn't have spoken I did - I never let lack of knowledge about a subject put a damper on my desire to speak at length about said subject.  I am, after all, a tremendous liar.

One dude there talked about reading the opinion of a mental health professional that the normal human condition, on average, is a state of mild anxiety.  This makes sense to me as it confirms my inability to accept the fact that I am, after all, a mildly anxious man.  The soothing thing is that my mild anxiety is comforted by the knowledge that other alcoholics are also mildly anxious, and that's if they're really working a Program.

It's funny to walk into a meeting 5,800 miles away from my home and recognize almost everyone.

Just being somewhere else is the changing thing.  It makes the routine of being nowhere else palatable.

Beer Braised Beef

I'm kind of tired of the whole eating thing on the ferry - the crowded buffet, people jostling about or just standing and gawping at the food, everything managed and arranged around mealtimes.  There are some people who are focused on what they're doing.  I mean they move from Point A to Point B with a singleness of purpose that's outstanding.  I weigh 180 lbs and I get out of the way when some of these dowagers are on the move.  They are not to be denied.  I'd end up on my ass in a head to head collision.

A little lessening of the tolerance after 7 days on the boat, eh wot?  There's a kid on the the small observation that I think of as My Small Observation Deck for no reason other than that I control the world, and he's playing a video game with loud warfare sound effects.  This is irritating me.  His whole family is there and they're from a country that annoys me for reasons that are incomprehensible even to me, a man fully aware that I live in a country that annoys almost everyone else from time to time.  And there are two people sitting right next to me eating cherries - apparently the 3 open buffets where you can eat for a couple of hours isn't supplying enough food for them - and spitting the pits into plastic cups where they land with an audible click.

Today SuperK noticed that the main course for tonight's fixed menu dinner was something called Beer Braised Beef.  Mindful that I had quite the experience in France a couple of years ago when I bought Rum Raisin Ice Cream that turned out to be 45% rum as in real fucking rum, I spoke with the attendant about this.

"Don't worry," this lovely lady said.  "All of the alcohol is cooked out.  It just tastes like beer."

"Yes, well," I said as diplomatically as possible.  "I don't want it to taste like beer.  I don't want any beer in it at all."

She disappeared for a minute, spoke to the head chef, and cheerfully told us that we would still get the beef but that it would have a different sauce on it.  I thanked her profusely.

That evening the waiter who was delivering the meals to our section blew through and put two blue triangles of paper on our table.

"Alcohol free beef, yes?" he said quite loudly.

When the meals came out he sat them down proudly and said: "Beef.  Completely alcohol free," again, quite loudly.

I bet they ladled my beef out of the same pot as everyone else's.  Tasted pretty good.