A Suspicious Mind

Suspicion:  The imagining of something without evidence (Ed Note: That's a great definition, the without evidence part).

So here's the latest installment of the reality TV show "Suspicious Seaweed V Serene Seaweed." That's a joke - Suspicious Seaweed always wins.  He dominates.  It's like watching a major league pitcher throwing inside, high and tight, to a T Ball player.  Serene Seaweed is bailing out. He's on his back, in the dirt.

I've not been able to shake the feeling that my sister was trying to go around and behind and beneath me on the whole checking account appropriation thing.  I'm telling the truth when I say - and I have to mention that I'm telling the truth because it's not a favorite thing of mine to do - that I really am not upset about the money and her behavior.  But I'm . . . you know . . . suspicious.  I can't remember one instance of my father talking about money with me - ever - in the entirety of my existence on this earth, so I'm having a lot of trouble imagining the circumstances where he would, unbidden, offer to give my sister a hell of a lot of money.  I can't see it happening without some prodding or manuevering on my sister's part.  I may be wrong but I can't shake the feeling.

So here's the main thrust of the latest installment.  The lawyer who is responsible for dealing with the legal system - making sure that the will is executed according to the wishes of my father - has to provide the probate court with a detailed accounting of my father's assets.  He sent a list to us for review.  There were a few highlighted areas where he requested additional statements or back-up documentation, and then there was one big, long, detailed section - marked in proctor red - asking why I had provided one amount for dad's checking account and then the last statement showed that amount less 85%.  Apparently that's a no-go for the court.  Where did that money go, the court is wondering?

So my sister, temporarily free from any brotherly disapprobation, is on the hot seat again.  I read her response to the lawyer with some sadness.  I remembered how I felt when I had told a whopper, got caught, miraculously danced out from under the lie, with that vaguely comforting feeling of having got away with it but not really.  Then it resurfaces.  Lies are like that.  They're like retching.  Sound and fury with no results. 

This is why I always try to tell the truth even if it reveals something uncomfortable about myself, some poor behavior or embarrassing lack of knowledge, some deficiency.  I'd just rather deal with the short, intense discomfort that have to face that slow burn of a suspicious mind.

The Monster Gargantua

Gargantuan: Huge; immense; gigantic.

I fumed through my 7AM meeting today, one day after my 29 year anniversary.  This is why I go to meetings - my self-entitled serenity doesn't even last one day and right in the middle of a meeting to boot.  The leader was a guy I really like and he suggested that as the eighth month of the year coincides with the eight step that might be a good topic.  He took great pains to remind everyone that the eighth step is not the ninth step and could we please talk about the eighth step and leave the ninth step for a meeting where the topic is the ninth step and not the eighth step? It did not annoy me that everyone talked about the ninth step anyway.  This is to be expected - retelling of dramatic and successful amends is a lot more fun that describing the slow, arcane, opaque process of acquiring the willingness to do something that no one wants to do in the first place.

What we got was the Gargantuan Share Meeting.  I have probably mentioned before that the average size of the average meeting in Vacation City if pretty big - 40 or 45 people isn't at all unusual and plenty of meetings are bigger than that.  This encourages the long-winded and assertive and pedantic among us to share and share at great length.  I don't care if you're fricking Bill W for god's sake - I don't want to hear anyone talk for that long.  I can barely sit still for 10 minutes let alone listen to someone preach for longer than that.  Compounding my outrage is the fact that we announce at the start of each meeting: "Please limit your share to 3 minutes."  I'm astounded to see that some of the people who were so upset at the antics of a couple of disruptive members a few months back are the biggest offenders, lending credence to the theory that most of us can spot a tiny defect in another at the distance of a thousand yards while ignoring the cracks in our own personal Liberty Bells.

I groused to a few friends after the meeting about the lack of a timer to shut these miscreants up, being careful to preserve my own sense of self-righteous purity by not naming names.  I got a steady dose of shut-the-fuck-up from these guys.  They didn't use that particular phrase and they were very reflective in their comments but the basic message was this: "What can you learn from this?"  Tolerance?  Patience??  Understanding!??

Who are these freaks and why do they bedevil me so?

29

Today I have been - to the best of my knowledge - sober for 29 years.

I can hear an old friend say: "Now, Seaweed, that's 29 continuous years, right?"

Oh.  I thought you just added up all the clean and sober time you have and whatever sum you get is your clean and sober time.  If you drink or drug for one day then we call that a BooBoo.  BooBoos don't affect sobriety time.

Actually, I'm not exactly positive what my sober date is.  I know it's pretty close to August 16th but it was getting a little foggy there at the end.  It may be a day or two one way or the other.  I had to come up with a day so the 16th it is.  To further complicate matters I quit drinking sometime earlier in the year; Easter Sunday, as I recall.  I didn't grasp the idea that The Marijuana Maintenance Plan wasn't a valid choice for The Fellowship.

A while back I congratulated a friend on his 33 years of sobriety.  He got a serious, somewhat perplexed look on his face, and said: "You know - I thought I'd be further along than I am."  I laughed pretty hard.  I know what he's talking about.

Old Kenner would have sent me a coin and a card with the inscription: "30 is the hardest."  Mostly a joke but also a reminder that this is not an End Sum game.  We're in this for the duration.  We get better and better, with some ups and downs, but we don't arrive anywhere.  There is no Long Timers Club.  There are no keys to the executive washroom.

I'm proud of my 29 years and I take a ton of credit for it.  I'm a proponent of the Gotta Do The Work school of thought, preferring that to the What A Miracle Sobriety Is movement.  Sit at home on the couch and see how many miracles come true in your life.  I plug away at this shit, doing the best I can each and every day.  I frequently fall short but I'm swinging the bat.  I never strike out looking.  I get my hacks in.

I have taken alcohol into my mouth two times in the last 29 years.  Once I got a big swig of a glass of vodka that my dad was trying to pass off as ice water.  I managed to spit that out into the sink.  The second time was in Brazil where I had a swallow or two of an alcohol-free juice concoction that just tasted off.  I interrogated our waiter until he said: "Totally alcohol free."  Holding up his finger and thumb, a sliver of light peeking through, he added: "Just a little champagne."  Little Westside Jonny was there to see that mishap.

I'm grateful for all of the people who have meant so much to me in my recovery.  I do believe that sobriety is an inside job - the responsibility is on me to do the trudging and do the work.  And I believe in the power of the first word of the First Step.  I'm in trouble when I go it alone.

Fairly Fair

Fair:  Just; equitable

All of this sleight of hand and passive-aggressive posturing and manuevering over the money - most of it no doubt hidden under layers of self-justification - brought to mind a story my friend EMC told me long ago.  He was in the process of getting a divorce and he was trying to behave well, two almost diametrically opposed actions.  This stupid Program encourages us to behave well - to the best of our ability - as often as we can.  This idiotic Fellowship suggests that we try to "understand rather than be understood."  It's harder than it seems, folks.

EMC worked outside the home and his wife worked inside the home, doing a fine job of raising their kids judging by the men they turned out to be.  So as part of the divorce proceedings he had a responsibility to provide alimony and child support, and he was happy to do this.  In fact, after reviewing the suggested court guidelines as to how the money should be divided, he decided to go above and beyond what he believed he would be obligated to pay.  The amount was insufficient in the eyes of his wife who was no doubt driven by a lot of financial fear.  I can understand this - it must have been frightening to contemplate a future where the individual who has been earning the money is moving out.

EMC pointed out that according to the court guidelines he was being generous - overly generous - but she stood firm, no doubt temporarily blinded by the thought of more money.  That's the thing with money - it's never enough.  More money always seems like a good idea.  The judge, of course, sided with EMC and his wife went home poorer, not richer.

I've never forgotten this anecdote.  I hope it actually happened, too, and more or less along the lines of what I've shared.  It keeps me forever pushing my boundaries as to what I think is fair.  I want to be the one doing more for everyone, giving more than I think I have to give.  What kind of lesson am I showing if I'm just another selfish cheap-ass trying to game the system so that I come out on top.  And I don't mean to suggest that we should allow ourselves to be treated unfairly - rather that we take a dispassionate view as to what fair really is.

Continued To Take Personal Inventory

Bemuse: To confuse or bewilder.

I must say that I'm a little bemused that my sister - despite her expressions of gratitude for my generous response to the Great Money Diversion Caper - has not offered to . . . you know . . . give me any of the money.  It's one thing to state that it would be ridiculous for money to ruin a relationship, another altogether when you're the one with the money.

Thus, my relentless pursuit of greater knowledge of my inner motives - my true motives - must continue.  I have in my mind the belief that I behave a certain way.  I also have a belief that I would have behaved in the past in a consistent way in the course of events of which I now have a full accounting.  I'm pretty good at bullshitting myself when it serves my own selfish interests.  I wonder if I would have been so kind and understanding if my sister had called me a couple of years ago and reported that her kids were gifted this money.  Maybe and maybe not.  It sure is easy to be magnanimous in hindsight.

My wife often accuses me of hidden motives.  Sometimes she's obviously right and sometimes I'm surprised that I'm being blamed for something that I think I'm innocent of.  I'm guessing there are plenty of cases where I'm fooling myself into behaving in a less than savory way.

I have been musing on the psychological test where students were paid in cash for self-reporting the number of correct answers they got on a test.  I'm sure that I would have been rigorously honest; less sure after I heard that fully 75% of the participants lied.  The facts are this: I probably would have lied and I would have justified by lying must a little bit.  I wouldn't have claimed that I got all of the answers right but the odds are that I would have collected a little more money than I was rightfully due.

"Continued to take personal inventory . . . "

A Suspicious Mind

Suspicious:  Distrustful or tending to suspect.

When I'm upset about something someone did to me I often write down my thoughts in an email.  I'm careful to make sure that there is no one in the Send To line because when I'm working some shit out in my head I want to make damn sure that it doesn't get unleashed into cyberspace.  Then I holler for SuperK to come in and take a look at what I've written.  There's nothing like getting a second opinion right before I do something stupid.  Most of the time I'll admit that there might be a couple of sentences or a paragraph or two that are suspect.  She usually says: "You mean this paragraph."  It isn't a question.  More of a statement of fact. 

We'll talk about it and then I'll let the writing marinate.  After a while I come back and begin the process of surgery.  There's some stuff that definitely needs to go so go it does.  I tweak and massage, then walk away again.  Depending on what I'm addressing and how pissed I am this process can take a while.  Sometimes an entire day is required.

The first things to go are overtly aggressive; then the more subtle passive-aggressive parts are removed; finally, I make very sure to excise anything that might make someone else feel bad, trying to fall back on the "better to understand than to be understood" maxim.  It can be hard. I prefer letting my ire fly to being kind and compassionate.

After I caught my sister in what very well may have been a little financial hanky-panky I put together an email to send to her.  By the time I was done about half the original content had been banished.  It was a little frustrating that I wasn't adequately able to express my arrogant outrage but I felt comfortable at the tone of the note. 

Her response was almost immediate.  She was clearly relieved.  I so remember that feeling of having been caught in a lie or, even worse, suspecting that someone else believed I had been less than truthful - that was almost worse, being accused of something I didn't do.  Today I point out that I don't lie primarily because I hate getting caught lying - it's not that I have anything against lying other than that.  In fact, it's kind of a hobby with me.  Some people practice magic or put together puzzles or paint - I lie.

The point is that I don't want these feelings to linger.  What my sister did or did not do is in the past and there's nothing that can be done about it.  I don't want to harbor feelings of suspicion.  I want to think the best of everyone and go from there.  If I think I'm getting screwed then I spend all of my time irritated that I've been screwed.  I want to believe that my sister acted honorably and that the fact that I was out of the loop was an oversight and not a willful act of deception.

She didn't offer to give any of the money back.  I had to point that out.

True Dat

True:  Conforming to the actual state of reality or fact; factually correct.  (Ed. Note: That definition makes me laugh out loud.  The "actual state of reality," indeed.)

I have been pondering the phrase, here in our election season: "It's not the act - it's the cover-up."

A number of years ago my sister and I decided to split the cost of a new TV for my parents - a huge investment of $200 - as a house-warming gift.  I ordered the thing, slapped down my credit card, and had it shipped to their apartment.  My sister never paid me her half of the gift, adding insult to injury by joking about it a few times.  I was mildly irritated but eventually just wrote off the hundred.  It was easier to take the loss than nurture the resentment.

Although the fact I remember the incident in such vivid detail indicates that I'm maybe kinda holding on to something.

When my father died I immediately began imagining all of the ways that my sister was going to try to maneuver more of his small inheritance into her pocket and out of mine.  She did have access to a few of his accounts - rightfully so, to help him pay bills as he failed - and access to his person - to wheedle and cajole and manipulate, if she wanted to.  As the executor I have the responsibility of seeing that the will is executed according to dad's wishes; namely, a 50 - 50 split.  I have been really pleased at how well she and I have cooperated during the laborious process, especially because all things money are fraught with perilous potential.  Once again - I imagine the worst and marvel at how much mental energy I've wasted hallucinating up scenarios that don't come to pass.

I got a check today to be deposited into an estate checking account that the court requires be set up to settle any outstanding debts that the estate owes.  A good thing.  The check was about 15% of the amount listed on the latest statement that I had.  A bad thing.  I pinged my sister, wondering if the bank had not closed all of the accounts, leaving the rest of the money still in their greedy, grasping, octopus-like Large Financial Institution hands.

Her reply: "Yes, there's a possible small glitch that I need to talk to you about."

The small glitch was that dad had decided to will the other 85% to my two nieces to help fund a college fund about 15 months ago.  My mind takes a journey down "I'm Getting Screwed Lane" and takes it all the way to the end.  My assumption, of course, is that I got cut out of something that was rightfully mine.  This would be a very, very bad thing, not because of the amount of money but because They're Out To Screw Me!!  The money, of course, was my father's and he was free to do whatever he wanted to with it.  He could have said: "Seaweed - you're out of the fucking loop.  How do you like them apples?"

Some good common sense learned in The Program - "restraint of tongue and pen" - advice that has been honed to a sharp point by failure after failure, due mostly to the total idiocy of the concept, came to the rescue.  I talked this over with my spouse; I jotted down some notes in an email draft which I quickly sidetracked into a Saved Drafts folder; a message on the voice mail of my sponsor; and things sorted themselves out.  I have ceded the funds without a fight.  The funds aren't worth the fight.  I had actually planned on giving most of the amount to my niece's college fund as an expression of love and gratitude for all of the help my sister had given my folks over the last five years as I sat on a chair, in the sun, contemplating my navel, here in Vacation City. 

So the point is that it's not the money - it's the whiff of subterfuge.  If dad and sis had just told me this was going down I would have been all "that's cool" about it.  Again - dad's money, not my money.  Now I'm left to imagine that her intent was to hope that I didn't notice that the account was much reduced, leaving me much more suspicious of her motives in all future events. Remember the $200 TV, or have you forgotten it already?  I didn't care a whit about the act - I cared about the dissembling, the hiding.

I always say that I try to tell the truth not because I like to tell the truth - much preferring lying and exaggerating and embellishing - but because I so hate to get caught telling a lie.