Those Poor People

It sure is easy to blame our families for all of our problems.  They’re an attractive target: accessible, convenient, in possession of well-established quirks and defects of long standing fame.  They know how to push our buttons and we know how to push theirs.  

And in a lot of cases – most cases, probably – these people have done some damage.  After all, they’re fallible people just like us.  Some families are train wrecks, too, with active addiction and alcoholism and all kinds of other problems.  Some of us grew up in horrific circumstances and have suffered mightily as a result.

I was at a meeting once where someone was complaining mightily about their parents, and everyone was piling on, as we so love to do, and an old-timer said: "You know, when I start getting resentful about my parents I realize that I wasn't such a great son myself."  This was a great reminder that there is only one person we can work on.

I often wonder how difficult and perplexing it must have been trying to raise a nut job like me.  I got depressed and euphoric and my moods were all over the place.  I demanded so much and was so ungrateful.  I think my folks were just bailing water, trying to keep the row boat from sinking.  I don't think there was much nuance in my upbringing.  I think they were flailing about, trying to minimize the damage I was doing.


It was damage control.

Garden Variety Drunk

Same:  Alike in kind, quality, amount, or degree; not different.


"I'm different."


What a great battle cry.  The battle cry of the wounded alcoholic.  We proclaim this all of the time.  It's one of our most powerful excuses not to dry out and clean up.  We try to make ourselves special and unique.


I cringe when I think of some of the conversations I had when I was getting sober.  There I was, a common garden variety alcoholic, trying to convince old timers that I had problems so unusual that there couldn't possibly be a solution to them in this ridiculously simplistic program.  They were very patient with me, these men, as I talked about the reasons for my drinking: money, jobs, sex, relationships, all standard stuff.


"My parents were terrible!" I yelled, except they weren't, and if they were, it surely didn't make me a special case in the world of the alcoholic.  My parents were fine.  I was terrible.


The deal was that I had to endure The Slog for a while.  The Trudge, leading to the Road of Happy Destiny, which is a comforting but oddly ridiculous slogan.  I don't like to trudge -- I like to skip, prance, and mince.  I don't prefer heavy going.  I want things to be quick and easy.  I want to take a taxi to the Road of Happy Destiny.


Taxi!  Taxi!

Battle Cry

Different:  Not the same; distinct; separate.


In Idaho.  Treeless hills rising from a treeless plain.


As a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, I'm one tough son of a bitch.  And I'm serious when I say this.  Life threw a lot of stuff at me -- most of my own doing, unfortunately -- but it taught me  how to take a punch.  You may knock me down but you're not going to knock me out.


This is one of the great strengths of The Program.  As a group, someone has overcome every possible problem and challenge that I'm going to encounter .  My old battle cry: "But you don't understand!" is no longer applicable.  Someone does understand.  This was a total paradigm shift for a guy who spent my whole life trying to convince everyone that I was different, that what I was going through was an insurmountable problem.  


Then I met you people.  There is nothing quite like being helped by someone who has survived similar struggles to your own.  Identical struggles, in many cases.  I will listen to someone with experience.  OK, I don't listen to anyone, but I do watch someone with experience to see what they do, then maybe I'll follow their lead after I have exhausted all other options and am in a great deal of pain.


Ho Hum.

Sponsor: "Are You Still Talking?"

I've always considered myself to be in the general range of a 5 year old emotionally.  You know, lies a lot, throws tantrums, hates pain.  I have a sneaking suspicion that I'm offending most 5 year olds when I say that.  Anyway, the point being that I rarely listen to what people say but I do keep a sharp eye out on how they behave, like most children.


SuperK and I did some hiking last week.  Not overnight, back-country hiking but not a gentle stroll on a paved path, either.  In my mind, of course, I'm scaling Mt. Everest by myself, and I try to give my fellow hikers, most of whom could beat me up while bound and gagged and heavily sedated, the impression I know what I'm doing.


As we finished up our hike we began to overtake a family on the final few paved yards.  The dad was carrying his daughter on his shoulders and the mom was bending over to pick some flowers.  Horrors!  Leave no mark on the trail is the code of the Mt. Everest Scaling Club.  I pondered a corrective statement, then decided to walk on by, silently.


As I passed I could see that the little girl -- cute in the way of all 2 years olds -- was carrying a handful of dandelions.  I'm no botanist but I believe this plant falls in the category of noxious weed.


I really wish I had said something.

Accepted!!

We were on hold with insurance company number one when I tried a little prayer experiment, which in my experience is sort of like trying a little gasoline and open fire experiment.  I asked for what I wanted -- to be accepted by this particular carrier.  It would have relieved me of some mental anguish.  I was careful to pay lip service to the Powers that Run the Universe by adding the qualifier "if it be your will, or wills, as the case may be."


I was only half-serious about this prayer befitting my status as someone renowned for half-assing everything, according to my dad, who is pretty much right on this one.  I'm not the kind of guy who thinks god finds me parking spaces or sends rain clouds packing if I want to take a walk, so I don't often pray for specific outcomes, which tend to blow up in my face if I get them.


I had a discussion with my mother once about praying specifically, which she happily does.
"It can't hurt to ask," she pointed out.


It can't hurt to ask.  What a great concept, I thought.  What if god really does listen to specific prayers and grant specific wishes?  Maybe not every specific wish, but some of them, anyway.  I imagine I would be quite pissed off if I found specific prayers were answered and I never bothered to take advantage of this loophole.  Although I'm unsure what would happen if I was praying for coverage and the person handling my account, close to a bonus for denying her one hundredth client, was praying for the exact opposite.


I told SuperK.
"Uh-oh," she said.


Rejected!


We then called insurance company number two.  This time I ratcheted things down somewhat and asked god to help me deal with this situation which was distressing me so much.


I mentioned this to SuperK, who grimaced.
"Uh-oh," she said.


Accepted!!


Unfortunately, this proves nothing except that I need to get comfortable with a spiritual program and stick with it.

Rejected!

Reject:  To refuse to take, agree to, accede to, use, believe, etc.


I think I've mentioned my disappointment the first several hundred times I heard the famous Promises of recovery lore.  For someone still aspiring to be a rock star or the next Ernest Hemingway, or at least a guy who could afford to move out of his parent's house, all of the talk about an absence of fear and calm insight and enjoying honest, healthy relationships was deflating.  I was hoping for Ferraris and super-models and sleeping on piles of money.


"What am I trying to be, a mystic living in the desert, eating locusts?" I groused.  While I admit to never eating locusts they don't sound that appetizing.  They're insects, for god's sake.


Yet here I am, still sober, and of all the things I'm grateful for, the relative lack of anxiety and fear and angst is at the top of the list.


To wit:  when KK and I moved to the New City we were dismayed to find out that our health insurance didn't transfer smoothly.  While we were still covered -- no small feat these days -- our premiums tripled because we were "out of network," which is insurance company code for "we want to triple your premiums."  I'm sure their legal permission to do this is buried somewhere in the 878 page contract we signed.


We applied for insurance with another company.  I was approved but SuperK was not, due to a minor, normal condition that has never caused her any problems and almost certainly never will.  But this is a right of the insurance company, a private entity that is trying to make money, not reduce the angst of a couple of middle aged hipsters.  We requested some additional documentation from her physician and reapplied, and were rejected again.  As one might imagine, this was quite upsetting, on multiple fronts.  We didn't like to have to pay so much more money to keep our current coverage, and we didn't like someone suggesting that SuperK might be afflicted with something serious.


So we applied with another company.  After an interminable wait, a thin, thin letter comes in the mail.


"Oh, for god's sake," SuperK says after reading the letter.


She got accepted and I got rejected, for a minor, normal condition that has never caused me any problems and likely never will.  Apparently one company's disaster is another company's ho-hum.


SuperK looked at me with some trepidation until I burst into laughter.


What had happened over the last few months -- not quickly, but slowly, because health insurance is an important issue -- was that both of us had just kind of forgotten about the whole thing.  If not forgotten, at least placed it in the What the Hell Can You Do About It, Anyway? category.  We had insurance, fortunately, that we could afford to pay for, fortunately.  We were applying for different coverage.  Those were the facts, as distasteful as they were to us.


So I guess she's making one insurance company happy and I'm making another one happy.  We're happy, that's for sure.

Personal Flawlessness

"To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got."


One of the big advantages of a consistent self-analysis is that it allows me to see that this world and its inhabitants are frequently wrong.  This is bad enough, this failure of other people to be perfect, but it's downright toxic taken in conjunction with my own personal flawlessness.  It makes me so angry when people make mistakes that affect me, and it make me angrier still when they don't cut me some slack when I mess up.


Anger, then resentments.  Then I drink, then I die.