Respecting Others.

When I see someone sneer at a member who is crashing about in pain amd sorrow, unable to follow the social niceties, seeking only comfort, I feel a sad and tired anger. We are all the same, we breathe, we eat, we long for love.

When you turn to another person and feel superior because you are not suffering enough to make a fuss, you are negating their personhood.  This life is short, and we can spend it enamelled into our self-chosen categories of "Us" against "Them" but we are fooling ourselves if we think we are living life in any better way than the one beside us.

This season speaks to loving one another, as does our program. It isn't always easy or comfortable to reach out to say, "I see you, I hear you, I am here with you, I understand your pain" but that's what Bill W started trying to do.

Please, don't look for differences in the faces around the table, look for your common ground.

Grief Lives Inside A Cardboard Box.

Two nights ago, I was going through a box, with an eye to unpacking it, and found first the beads my friend had draped around my neck when he greeted me at their door, last Mardi Gras, then the material I purchased on our trip together, and finally, at the bottom, the earrrings I had worn for the 2 days of cleaning up the blood from his partner's attempt at suicide just after my friend died.

The thought of going on without him, was impossible for the one who'd loved him on sight, and for 21 years thereafter. I didn't deal with the death of my friend, or the pain of cleaning up all that blood because I couldn't, at the time, I was trying to be strong for the one alive and trying to find a way to go on without him.

When we lost our mate, whether to divorce or to death, the loss is the same. We're faced with trying to construct a new life without them, without all the little shared jokes and shared history, without this person who knew us when we were younger. What I'm discovering, is that I never did have what I thought I did, it was founded upon a web of intricate, convoluted lies.

 I recall driving home to sit on my couch, and ask aloud. "Who are you? I do not know you in the way that I went for so long believeing that I did."

I can struggle with this reality, or I can do what Syd has written about this week, and simply trudge through, with a faith that I will understand at some point, or maybe never, but in the meantime, I can give kindness to those around me, and for today, that has to be enough.

Word Verification

After complaint, I turned off word verification some time ago on this blog, and it was fine at first, but now I'm getting spam comments from websites dealing with matters "below the belt" to use a grandparents term, so it's been turned back on.

Thankyou for your patience, and your honest comments, I appreciate them.

Your Body Is Trying To Get Your Attention.

When I was last at my doctor, we were discussing sleep, and getting, or not getting, enough. What is enough? Enough for me, is an amount that allows me to awaken naturally, rather than being blasted out of sleep with the alarm. When the alarm wakens me, I feel instant resistance, I don't want to get up. Even if I've set it the night before so that I may meet my obligations, and even as I'm getting out of bed, I'm thinking to myself that I hate getting up early.

It's all to do with feeling forced. When I awaken naturally, I feel as though I've had enough sleep. When the alarm pushes its way into my brain and brings me forcibly to the surface, to wakefulness, my entire system revolts. I try to get up at the same time every day to keep some structure in my life, but that requires retiring to bed the night before, sufficiently early that I will sleep long enough to do so.

When my normal system is interrupted, it's always because I'm struggling with something which interferes with my serenity to such a point that I cannot go to sleep.

My body is always the first sentinel warning me of lapses in my serenity. I get vague headaches, and my eating habits slide, and all because of my mental state. When I ignore these changes in my usual habits, I ignore myself.

My body is the temple of my spirit, and as such, it deserves respect.

Maintaining The Ground We've Gained.

Yesterday the phone rang, and I answered it, unthinkingly, and for a moment, didn't recognise the voice of the man calling, until he asked, "How are you?" - it was my husband. I was in shock as he chatted on, until finally I managed to ask, "Why did you call?'

He said pleasantly that he was calling to invite me to Christmas dinner. I could feel myself start to tremble,  that's how it started between us all those years ago, with his invitation to Christmas dinner. I've had to work to detach from my emotional response - some part of me wanting to go back to that time that the more rational self knows is lost to me forever - when I trusted him implicitly, and was so in love with him.

When I believed him. It's a miserable thing, to find out that you cannot trust the one person who should be the one into whose trust you can relax, against the pressures of the world. I made some excuise about needing time to think, and got off the phone, calling at once my counsellor and then my
sponsor, getting badlty needed reinforcements and support.

My husband has been so skilled at making life my fault that I can fall into that minset unthinkingly. I was deeply grateful for those two women, who took their time to help me maintain  the ground I've gained, and not fall back. It would be so easy to just give up and fall back - until reality set in.

I pray to find compassion for the alcoholic's confusions, and my own, not to be deciding that they must fall upon my shoulders.