A BELATED VALENTINE POST

I’d been divorced about a year when I ran into an old girlfriend. We went to a movie and later she asks me:

“So what’s the story with you? You’re divorced, and you spend all your money on child support, and you’ve got all this baggage, and you’ve forgotten how to be single?”

That’s a hell of a question you know?

So I said “Well, I don’t think I have any baggage”

Man, what was I talking about. Just all the dope I was doing was baggage enough. Lets say you meet a nice girl. When are you going to tell her about your little habit? That it takes a hundred bucks a week just to get you going. That she is going to be wondering where all the money is disappearing to. And all this weird unexplained insanity that is your life, where is all that coming from?

Sometimes I go to the grocery store. I see a happy couple, and they are pushing the cart together down the aisle. They are discussing whether to have the Rock Cornish Hens, or salmon for dinner. They are comparing the seven blade roast to the the pork loin, and trying to decide what is the best value. They are amazed at the price of yellow squash—“Can it really be 2.99 a pound?”—but they are laughing, smiling, happy and exchanging romantic looks as they skip on over to the family planning aisle.
It all looks so normal, so sane.

I look on, and watch them from a distance, and I’m horrified.

Could I ever get that normal? Would I want to? It’s some scary shit, man. I might could do that for a week, or a couple times a year. Could I keep that up forever?
I have my doubts.

I mean, I come home in the afternoon, I walk in the door and the first thing I do is take off my pants. I don’t plan to stop either. It’s the best part of my day, and I just don’t know if there is anyone out there that would put up with that. Even if there is, she’s probably going to want something in exchange. God only knows what. It will probably be sane, whatever it is.

And I been thinking lately about what it has looked like to be restored to sanity.

It has looked like, as the program says, not doing that first drug.

It has looked like pleasing the court seven years ago, and staying clean that first year.

It has looked like first getting my driver’s license back, and then being able to buy a truck with the money that used to go up the nose, and a REAL inspection sticker and insurance and registration.

Sanity looks like when I got my first ticket in that truck, going and paying it before it went into warrant. My whole life I’m not sure if I ever done that before.

Sanity has looked like not stealing any gas. Its looked like still being involved with NA, and becoming the treasurer for the group, and picking up a couple of sponsee’s.
Sanity looks like clean socks, empty sinks, regular meals, sleeping nights.

Sanity has looked like improved family relationships, and a couple of kids that have a dad again.

A few years back I got  upset over a girl for a while. I started going to more meetings, and that really didn’t help much , so I decided to seek professional help and went to a psychiatrist. I didn’t want to do like I did after my divorce, and spend a few years trying to figure out how to get over it.

He asked me ‘What is it you want Bulletholes?”

I said  “Doc, I just want what everyone else wants”

He said “And what is that?”

I said “You know doc, a love that lasts forever.”

I remember that one of us laughed, and one of us didn’t, and just now I cant tell you which one of us did what.

I kinda think it was him that laughed. I already told you what the odds of me keeping up a relationship forever would be.

I think back to a post I did a year after getting clean. I said all this spiritual stuff in the program was starting to scare the shit out of me. All this being restored to sanity, and coming to believe that a higher power could restore me to sanity,  and the Third Step; making decisions to include yourself and God in your own life while getting out of your own damn way. I’d have liked to disprove God, to disprove prayer when I came to the program, and the reason it was all starting to scare me was because if it was working so well in my life, practicing open mindedness, and willingness to believe in a power greater than myself, and developing a God of my own understanding, then it could only mean one thing.

That I had been wrong about everything.

That’s scary, being wrong about everything.

So, when I see these nice soft couples at the grocery store, maybe I got that all wrong too. 

The scariest part of all is that maybe someday it wont be so scary anymore.
Maybe someday I will be OK.
Maybe someday I will be OK.
Maybe someday I will be OK.

***Now that I've written this one down instead of just sharing it in an NA meeting, its not as funny as its supposed to sound. Sometimes I guess it just be's that way!