I’m grateful for chances to reset. I’m grateful for seeing the storms roll in, and grateful when they pass. I’m grateful for finding bits of peace where I need them. I’m grateful things are still lit. I’m grateful to be sober today.
Sometimes things just stare and stare at you, sometimes they even shout, and still sometimes, I ignore what’s right in front of me. How has this never been the Song of the Week:
I’ve always listened to the Beatles a lot, and also really had (have) a thing for Earth, Wind & Fire, so here’s the perfect mash-up. I used to play “Serpentine Fire” all the time. All secretly, of course. I was way too shy, too afraid of rejection, too afraid of ridicule, to share really anything about myself. What kind of music I really liked? What I thought about? What I liked to read and why?
I don’t think any of that came from actual events. I think it came from a mind-set, a narrative arc that was in part imposed, and in part created. I know that when I dig down and down, there’s always fear at the bottom. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort to explore where that came from, not so I can figure out who or what is responsible, but so I can figure out how to make it stop.
I like to think that I’m pioneering some kind of a niche here. Unfortunately, I think the niche I’ve selected is pretty obscure:
Coming up with weird metaphors for sobriety and recovery that connect back to ridiculous 1970’s tv shows
Yes, I know how that looks and, yes, we plunge ahead. I think fear in my life works something like this:
The part where a random, seemingly harmless event (except from the varmint’s perspective) triggers an event of fantastical proportions. That poor mountaineer’s stray bullet triggers a gusher! That’s how I looked at life: Every stray bullet could trigger a gusher. Not a gusher of good stuff: swimming pools, movie stars…No, a gusher of catastrophe, locusts and skin eruptions, cats and dogs living in sin, demons, crocodiles and clowns spilling from the sewers.1 The ruin of everything, the end of everything, it was all just a stray bullet away.
Meaning, if I didn’t want the elevator to actually hit the basement floor, I had a lot of shit to control. The fact that only I could see the looming catastrophe didn’t suggest that I should re-think how likely it actually was, it meant that only I could avert that disaster. That disaster that no one else saw coming and usually didn’t arrive. So, after all that effort, I’m not even going to get thanked for averting the disaster that was probably never going to happen.
So, now, I’m fearful and angry. Also, part of me sees again how different I am. Other people don’t react the same way, don’t feel or see things the way I do. I attribute this to my own defects, usually the fact that I’m an alcoholic, which then activates the shame machine. That’s how I walked around for a long, long time. It simply wasn’t tolerable and I discovered that drinking dimmed the lights on that shitty diorama.2 Once you get on that escalator, there aren’t that many exits.
Back to the thing at the bottom, the “Texas Tea” bubbling underground and in the recesses of my alcoholic brain: Fear. The Big Book says that it’s resentments that kill alcoholics, but this one thinks that it’s fear that spawns those resentments. And, for this alcoholic, the fear that I think was at the bottom was that I was going to fail, that I was going to get teased and ridiculed, that I was defective. I think we all have those fears and cope and adapt to them in lots of different ways. I think the point of the Steps, and particularly Steps Four through Seven, is about recognizing patterns, tracing strands back and finding the thing or things at the bottom that twist things the wrong way.
I know, “Good Luck,” on that. It’s progress, not perfection. Here’s the challenge I faced: I needed to create a life that wasn’t run on the fear of that stray bullet and the gusher. My previous efforts involved trying to make sure no bullet was ever fired or could hit. That is the way of madness. Alcoholic madness. Things changed when I simply began to reframe the narrative the way it was supposed to be told: those gushers weren’t disasters!! What was I thinking? That stray bullet-black gold gusher thing got Jethro that super cool tiger-stripe beret to wear when lounging next to the “cement pond.”
That oversimplifies things, too. I’m really better off with fewer gushers, that’s something important I know about myself now. That also is not entirely in my control. In the olden days, when that feeling of fear started bubbling up, my brain kicked in and started figuring out how to stop the incipient gusher. I couldn’t live my life that way. Gratitude is what helped me reframe the narrative, that no matter what, every experience would leave me something to be grateful for. That the lessons I was learning, being taught, were necessary, for a purpose I’ve not entirely been let in on. Oh, and faith that there is some plan somewhere and I’ll find out what I need to when I need to. Faith that things will probably be okay.
I don’t know if you’ll notice: The vehicles in both videos today are pretty similar. One’s a “Zonk” on “Let’s Make a Deal,” one’s a chariot of glory on the way to Hollywood.
Isn’t it all about how you see it?
Happy Friday.
Sorry, there’s some unattributed Ghostbusters stuff in there.
I actually loved making dioramas.
12 year old me loved Jethro, my brothers and I used to imitate him playing around.
Maurice White. You are after my heart. ❤️🕺