|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 15, 2015 20:43:00 GMT -5
Hey Walker Girl I'm Going well thanks. At the farm with my son and brother as I said. Brought Homer up this time too. He is losing his mind over the deer. They were just now outside my bedroom window eating apples that fell off the trees. Homer was on the bed and starting to fall asleep and then he started growling. Somehow he knows when they are out there.. Anyway how are you feeling these last couple days?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2015 20:56:45 GMT -5
Hey Brett, Thats cute about Homer, after the deer. Are the deer just walking around everywhere? I'm going well. I had a pretty good weekend. I've decided just to cut down my smokes for now and not get too panicked over it all. Just stay focussed on my sobriety. It must be late over there as its nearly lunch time here. Great to see you back posting.
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 15, 2015 21:08:02 GMT -5
Kim At night the deer are wandering all over the place. I have a big spotlight on the garage next to the house. So most nights you can look outside and see them roaming around. It's interesting to watch their behavior at this time of year. It's breeding time so the bucks are chasing the does all over.
I think that's a good plan about the smoking. Whatever keeps you calm at this stage is best in my opinion. The sobriety thing is so important. Once that is settled, you can make all kinds of better decisions about other things you want to change. For me, it all started with stopping drinking.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 15, 2015 21:30:30 GMT -5
Wow! I wish I had something like that to look at at night. So different from where I live.
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 16, 2015 15:59:57 GMT -5
Hey Kim It's funny how other places seem like more interesting places to live then where we are currently. You would like to see deer running around freely, I on the other hand would love to see a wallaby or kangaroo hopping about. Don't they cause all kinds of car accidents in Aussie land? That's how the deer are in Michigan.
In the past, I always longed to live somewhere else. So I did it. I moved across the country alone at a young age. The world seemed more interesting anywhere else than where I was at the moment. That was a trend that continued for many years. In my case (I'm not saying anything about your case here just mine) I was running from my past troubles and pain that I never dealt with properly.
Eventually what I learned was that no matter where I ran off to, the first person waiting for me when I arrived was myself.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2015 16:30:51 GMT -5
Hey Brett, It sounded interesting to me compared to living in a big city. I didn't imagine that the deers were causing car accidents, wow so they're actually a bit of a pest. We don't actually see that many kangaroos here in Brisbane. I can't speak for Tassie but I only saw a herd of them once at my friends acreage and in the country where my grandmother lived. Of course there are heaps of dead ones on highways and stuff. I don't see much of anything except birds, dogs, cats, possums, lizards and insects. Ok and toads. The list is a bit bigger than what I thought lol. Maybe I do feel a bit like running off or that I need a holiday. I've tried that before too, only once and hopped on a plane to another state. I drank even more at the place I was at and got thrown out. Today is going to be a bit of a challenge as it is payday. So no drinking, I'm planning on getting to the shops early again so its all done before the bottle shop opens.
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 16, 2015 16:50:02 GMT -5
Here's what I remember about the night I almost drowned. I was at the family cabin in Northern Michigan. It was summertime and myself, my brother and our two boys were up north for a weekend of fishing. To be honest, I was up for a weekend of drinking and maybe a little fishing thrown in.
By then, I was deeply entrenched in hiding the amount of booze I was consuming. If there were people around me, my tactic was to stash a bottle of whiskey someplace and have a six pack or twelve pack of beer in the fridge. Nurse the beers and sneak off every so often for a slug from the bottle. Rinse, repeat. Most nights I would eventually forget where I put the bottle and I would end up tearing the place apart trying to find it. All in secret of course.
This particular night we had just finished eating a nice meal of hamburgers hot dogs etc. typical American weekend getaway fare. I'm sure it was delicious, not that I knew the difference at the time. We had just finished up and my brother thought we should go night fishing. Perfectly reasonable and safe for sober people (which he was about 5 years sober by then). Me, I was pretty hammered. I didn't really want to go but somehow put my own wants aside for once and told him yeah, I'm up for some fun on the river, sure. He had no idea how drunk I was. As far as he knew, I had drank about 4 beers over a span of 4-5 hours. In reality, it was 4-5 beers and most of a fifth of Jack Daniels.
We walked down to the river behind the cabin. Navigated our way through the cedar trees and picked our way along until we arrived at a great spot for catching Brown Trout at night. I do remember it being a beautiful moonlit night. Lots of stars, quiet and peaceful. Inside I was a raging inferno of shame and self loathing. An idyllic setting that many would love to experience. For me, I was just drunk. Trying to see straight and cast a fishing pole into the river to appease my brother.
When I came to, he was standing over me, about to administer CPR or something. He was scared shlitless of course. He thought I was dead. I'll never forget the look on his face. Pure terror. I'd never seen someone look so frightened in real life. I asked him what was wrong. He just looked down at me. That's when I realized I was soaking wet and my head hurt. He helped me up and we walked back to the cabin. Once inside in the light, we saw that I was bleeding from my forehead. My son was scared. Asked what happened. I said I didn't know. This is what my brother said happened.
I was standing next to him. We were talking about something and suddenly my face went slack. I dropped the fishing pole and fell over like a tree into the river. I went under water. At first he thought I must have been screwing around. He couldn't make sense of what happened at all. When I didn't surface, he panicked and jumped in after me. Grabbed me by the back of my shirt and yanked me up. He must have had one of those superhuman moments when something bad happens and a person can lift a car or something. He hauled me out of the river and rolled me on to my back so he could see my face. That's when I coughed up water and stared up at him. I must have smashed my head on the rocky bottom of the river.
My alcoholism caused Alot of anguish for those around me. Unfortunately this is but one story of many. He never knew what happened to me that night. I made up some BS story about locking my legs while standing and that must have made me pass out. He never knew the truth until after I got sober. Which was probably the following Monday you might think right? Nope, it would be four more long drunken years before I would finally give up and try to live rather than just exist.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 16, 2015 17:02:16 GMT -5
Wow Brett, thats a pretty scary story. You could have drowned. Amazing how you had the beers for normal drinking and the whiskey stashed away to hide your drinking. Thank God for your brother. I remember when I was young hiding a port bottle in my room and then having port bottle in the kitchen cupboard and I would fill up the port in the kitchen with a bit of water to hide how much I had drunk. So I was drinking 3 times more than what my mother thought I was. I also cracked my head open and got 7 stitches and then did the same thing again a week later and had the stitches glued back on. Crazy hey? Thanks for sharing that story with me.
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 16, 2015 17:08:02 GMT -5
Hey Kim Yep I guess I am lucky. I always thought I probably wouldn't have been down there by myself that night but you're right. Thankfully I wasn't alone and my brother saved my skin. I've just been thinking about all the crazy stuff that happened during my drinking days. I suppose it doesn't hurt to remember the reality of just how much it screwed up my life. I'm so glad it's over. Life is hard enough without being addicted to something that causes so much misery. Sorry about your poor head!
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 17, 2015 19:04:57 GMT -5
A few words about shame and how it affected my life. This is from last Spring.
"Spring has sprung in SE Michigan. I see my Irises are poking themselves out of the ground, pushing aside their last year’s foliage they seem to reach for the weak March sun. The flowers are coming out of hibernation after a long cold winter. They symbolize hope, just like my doves Mario and Maria. Onward and upward is the steady march of nature. I try to acknowledge that every day as I do the same myself. The neighbors across the street are a lovely family. At least I think they still are. I haven’t spoken to them since last summer. Around these parts, people largely hibernate like flowers during the winter, withdrawing into our homes waiting for warmer temperatures. Sure, people come and go. But the purpose of venturing out is more closely tied to needs than wants. Grocery shopping, school, work, etc. Whatever we need to do to get through the winter. So I haven’t talked to my neighbors much for a long while. My neighbors were out in their driveway last week when it was a bit warmer. They were playing basketball. Mom, dad, two young daughters and their teenage son who looked decidedly bored, but out there nonetheless. I watched them for a while and thought about how they are together, while I am alone. I smiled for them while inside I felt sorry for myself. Suddenly I felt something terribly familiar and dangerous. Something that has been part of my life, coming from various sources, since I can remember.
Shame is a killer. I have had much time to think about how mine has shaped my life. Shame for things that I had no control over led me to further shame. A deeper more painful form of shame that I did have control over. At least I thought so until it showed me how little control I really had. I grew up with a lot of shame and anxiety. Being part of the only Jewish family in a rural area comes with some tough reality. Not everyone knew this about my family. Many of the ones that did treated us like something of a novelty. Not that we were a religious family at all. Jewish by birth. That’s it. My mom even made a pork roast for dinner one year when she decided to host a Passover dinner. THAT didn’t go over so well with the more religiously aligned half of the family. In school, I was called “#### “and “####”(whatever that was). Whenever the topic of religion came up (and it came up more than you would think for some reason…) I would seize up inside and feel ashamed but I didn’t know why. “Christ Killer” was never a nice name to be called even though I was certain that neither myself nor anyone else in my family had anything to do with that scene. Point is, I felt ashamed of who I was even though I never had a mean thing to say to anyone when I was very young. As I grew older, that shame would lead me to make “amends” whenever the topic of religion came up. “I’m really only half Jewish” I would say. Which was true from a biological standpoint. My father is a born and bred German protestant. But my mom is the child of two Jews. And in the Jewish culture, if your mom is Jewish, then you are Jewish. So, when I thought I had an “out”, I really didn’t. Shame followed me throughout my young life, forcing me to apologize for my heritage. An awful way to feel how the world viewed me resulted in a terrible way to see myself.
I spoke about my abandonment a while back. This also brought me terrible feelings of shame. At the time, I felt this shame every day. When I saw other boys with their fathers, I felt angry and I felt hurt and I felt shame. Shame because I thought those people would look at me and think I must have had something to do with my father leaving it. I felt ashamed that I wasn’t good enough for my dad to stick around. I felt rage over this shame. I sought new friends that didn’t have fathers around either. They felt the same way I did and we could share that rage and shame.
I have learned a lot about myself since coming to this forum. I have learned that there are reasons why I drank the way I did for so long. These are not excuses. There are no excuses. But they are things that happened to me that when I trace back over the timeline of my life, I began to see patterns emerge. Shame has caused me trouble in the past. These things that brought me shame never should have. Of course being Jewish (or any other heritage) is not a choice nor is it ever something to be ashamed of. Our kids must always know this. My shame related to my heritage and my family situation led me down a dangerous path. There was a time when I think I figured this out but by then, I was addicted to my drug of choice and sought relief from that drug relentlessly.
So when I felt the familiar shameful feelings while watching my neighbors, it took me a second to realize and remind myself where that was coming from. I feel ashamed about my failed marriage. About my alcoholism and all the things that have gone wrong in my life. My neighbors and I have been segregated for several months and during that time, a lot has happened. And I know that the inevitable contact will happen one of these days now that winter has released its hold and people are out and about again. The questions will come and I will have to tell them. I don’t need to explain the reasons but talking about divorce is always difficult. And I’m not looking forward to it at all."
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 17, 2015 21:09:43 GMT -5
A word about Mario and Maria...
"Mario and Maria have been coming to my house every spring for the last 16 years. The only thing that changes is when. Depending upon the severity of the winter, they show up in late February or as late as mid-March some years. It never fails. They arrive and it brings joy to my heart every time. My kids picked the names. I have no idea why they settled on Mario and Maria, but it stuck. They were always proud of that fact. Still are although I’m not sure if my 18 year old son would admit that now or not. I will have to ask him. Every year when they appear, it is a sign of spring springing. I always wait for the day when they arrive. I begin looking for them in the middle of February if the weather is warm. I watch for them and wonder when they will show up and start their annual project.
Sometimes they arrive a bit early. I look out at them and watch and think about perseverance. The wind may be howling and the snow may be falling, but they sit through it. Steely eyes staring, feathers ruffling in the breeze. Committed to the path they have chosen. What else are they going to do? Get up and leave? Nope. They ride out these late snowstorms somehow knowing that it is temporary. That fair weather is just around the corner. For the first few years that Mario and Maria graced us with their arrival, we told the kids they were the same two Mourning Doves coming home to nest. Who knows really? In the beginning they may have been. As time wore on, we let the myth grow. Mario and Maria became something of a legend in our circle of friends and family. They have been a staple in our lives for many years. Something to look forward to. Something that never changes regardless of the weather or what’s going on in the world. What’s going on in our own lives. What’s happening to my own life.
The nest is tattered and torn but it doesn’t stop them. They arrive and spruce it up a little each year. I leave it be when they vacate each year. I have never removed it. It continues to catch my eye as the spring turns to summer and again as fall gives way to winter. Throughout the year, that nest is a reminder of the constant things in life, of which there seems to be very few of the older I get.
Last year Mario and Maria stayed until the end of May nesting under the eave of the front porch directly in front of the front door, same as always. They had three broods of chicks last year. That was quite unusual for Mario and Maria. This year I began to worry that as time seemed to be wearing on, the era of Mario and Maria was over. I looked every morning first thing. I began to wonder if maybe they moved on to a new location. Maybe they sensed the changes that are so apparent around my house these days. Less activity. No dogs barking. Less coming and going. Who knows? Of course none of these things should matter to a pair of birds but my mind dreams up some strange thoughts sometimes. Not all of them logical.
Mario and Maria returned today. I got up to make coffee at 8 am and walked by the front door on the way to the kitchen. I looked up like I always do. There she was. Sitting stoically on her nest. Mario was off to the side looking at me. I like to think he was double checking to make sure that I was no threat. That I was as welcoming to them as I have always been. He bobbed his head and I nodded mine. I smiled and thought about the things that have changed in my life. And one thing that apparently hasn’t.
|
|
|
Post by bethanne711 on Nov 18, 2015 14:18:53 GMT -5
That is a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing. This was the Spring just passed ? When John and I lived at the place before this about 2 years ago, we had one white dove who stuck around for a couple of weeks and it brought me great joy. Unfortunately I never saw him again.
|
|
|
Post by gwampa69 on Nov 29, 2015 17:13:22 GMT -5
Thanks to Jeyu and Yvan for your posts to Kim and Beth. Both were brilliant and both said what needs to be said in a nutshell. I wish I could speak with such brevity but alas I cannot. It takes me a while to get to where I want to go. They both brought up the topics of surrender, personal responsibility and choices. To my mind, these are the three key areas that can lead to both the decision to seek sobriety, and the ability to hold onto it and prosper. It’s almost too simple. Like Jeyu said, simple but tough. And worth it. The notion of surrender was always confusing to me when I was drinking. In fact, most things were confusing to me when I was drinking. Of course. I was dousing my poor tired brain with a chemical (chemicals?) that killed brain cells, destroyed motivation, stripped me of reality, obliterated logic and reason and kept me feeling good while it did those things to me. Until it didn’t feel good anymore. Then it occurred to me (hallelujah) that the very thing that I was using to numb my pain was the very thing that was making everything worse. Exponentially worse. Did this occur to me due to some tragic singular event that changed the course of my life forever? Nope. I simply grew weary of the destruction I wrought on my life and the lives of the people that by then were more or less emotionally chained to my sorry ass. And then I surrendered. Not to the fight. But to the thing that I could not control, manage, consume or be friends with. Alcohol had won in that it taught me who was really in charge. Then I said to myself, I surrender. But in surrendering, I was victorious.
When I was at my worst, I lied to those that loved me, drove drunk every day, and shirked my duties as a husband and father. As a decent human being and friend. I no longer took personal responsibility for my actions. Life is really easy when you go that route. Trouble is, eventually it leads to a pretty bleak existence fraught with pain, rife with financial distress, littered with guilt and shame. Eventually, a person has nothing left but the bottle, if they can scrape up the money to buy one. You may tell yourself you have never sunk that low. You may still have a job, a home, aspirations and goals. Who knows, all of those things may be true. But for an alcoholic, those things are temporary. Believe that if you believe nothing else that I say. “It’s better to have had than to never have had at all” isn’t real. Losing everything just sucks. In my experience, saving what you have before it’s too late is a better way to go. Why do we choose to keep using? Is it because the pain it brings is still better than the pain it masks? Maybe. For me, that was the case until that whole surrender realization thing happened. And that is when I was faced with making a simple yet difficult choice. Keep drinking and die. Or stop drinking and find a different way to live. I’m so glad I was able to choose the latter. So many people don’t or can’t. It’s hard to watch happen to someone when you know intimately and with profound understanding what it is they are going through. And it’s frustrating to watch because I know there is a better life out there for everyone that surrenders. Surrender to the struggle of the only way of life you may have known. Surrender to the notion that this time will be different. Surrender to the old way of viewing the world and the things that have happened in your life. Things in the past that you have no ability to change. I want this for people that are struggling. I want this for you.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Nov 29, 2015 22:46:48 GMT -5
Hey Brett, Another great post. You brought up the topic of Surrender. I'm glad you spoke about that as it is a little confusing to me and you clarified the meaning of Surrender for me. I agree with what you said that its realizing that the alcohol is now in charge. That is how I feel atm. Just a shell of a person with a roof over their head. I am using alcohol to douse the pain but in reality it is just destroying me and will end up killing me. I need to find a different way to live, seems scary but I know I can do it. I've been there before and felt like a new person. Like I said, I'll just take it a day at a time and not give in to cravings.
|
|
|
Post by bethanne711 on Nov 30, 2015 10:10:52 GMT -5
Awesome post, Brett. You have a real talent for writing and expression. So glad you are here. You really give me pause for thought. Thank you.
|
|