Friends of Bill W.

[nanners]

I've been thinking...when I am ready to start dating, I will make it a point to try to date someone who is in recovery and doing at least fairly well. I think knowing and following the 12 step program is such a healthy thing to do, and would always help a relationship. At least next time I start dating someone, I will be able to see the red flags much, much sooner having at least a year's recovery time or more. I am excited about the person I have become, and am becoming thru the power of the program and my own hard work. It's certainly not easy, but it is worthwhile, and life saving work.

Happy Monday my friends!

[LeftWriteFemme]

April 15


Chickens and Eggs


Who is more sober the early riser or the long-timer? How do we get here and what does it mean. It all starts with a day, which is good because this is more than we had hoped for, sometimes more than we could do. Then it moved into an ever escalating game of can you beat this, each day an improvement over what had been accomplished the day before. For years the standard bearer is the pain or relief of the very first in this string, orbs of 24, yet here stands the question, “Is the essence the last pearl you touch or the total of the strand, which makes it real?” I don’t know for sure. Sobriety is like light; is light made up of waves or is it made up of particles and the answer is invariably yes, for it is. And what you need and how you look at it seems to make the determination, scientific method or no, the watched is affected by the watcher and vice versa. The end is a day round and imperfect as any and what is strung between the beginning and the end is what you’ve made of it.




Never underestimate bitterness

*

ESCAPING THROUGH THE CEILING

Up and away is my motto
Upwardly mobile is my goal

If I can flee without leaving a track
I'm clean

No heart wrenching walk down the isle or lane
No dust on my shoes, no possibility of stumbling

Grace at all cost
Empowerment through elevation

If I must leave my human plane to attain this, so be it
Give up my natural rights, such is life

But yet, if I lose my bonds to earth
What did the leaving gain me?

I arise, to appear better
As a result, I appear not at all

<<<doesn't wanna date another recovery nutter

Thanks for your suggestions Kc; I did those things - reaching out to other addicts, journal writing, a long chat with the ever patient Ms.Sponse., and made a start on step 4 writings...one question completed is better than no questions completed.

Wouldn't ya know it, all that action helped

It became apparent through doing step three writings that action, and the discipline to act, is the key to it all. A simple notion that took so long for this complicated being to 'get it'.

SuddenlyWestFemme ..memory lapses about step 10

I'm so grateful that folks are coming here and sharing. I sometimes feel so alone in my area as there are precisely 4 other gay folks...none of whom ID as queer and none of whom seem to have any concept at all of butch/femme dynamics...not that they need to but it just contributes to the notion that there's no-one like me in my area. A little identification with folks who really are like me makes a whole load of difference.

Thanks y'all

[SuddenlyWestFemme]

Originally Posted by Daktari

SuddenlyWestFemme ..memory lapses about step 10

I have those same lapses on 11 as well. I will be going along with daily meditation and then suddenly one day I wake up and realize it's been over a month since I meditated and no recollection of how that happened. Hence, I still need meetings after 20 years.

Originally Posted by SuddenlyWestFemme

I have those same lapses on 11 as well. I will be going along with daily meditation and then suddenly one day I wake up and realize it's been over a month since I meditated and no recollection of how that happened. Hence, I still need meetings after 20 years.

It's always good to hear that folks with much time in the programme have the same struggles as those of us in our first couple of years.

I like finding out that folks with 20 and 30yrs clean/sober still do step work. What comes after Step 12?...Step one of course

Complacency is a killer isn't it? If we don't keep actively working on our programme then we're buggered!

Feeling all powered up from tonight's meeting. I don't think it was any con-incidence that on this gloriously sunny evening it was a small meeting No matter though, it was a wonderful small meeting.

It was fabbalus to acknowledge our lovely treasurer G's 6yr and new dood M's 30 day clean times during our clean-time countdown tonight.

It was awesome to see just how stoked young M was with himself at not only reaching 30 days but managing to get through a few really dark days of the soul in this last week without using.
I love it when ya see newcomers 'get it'

[LeftWriteFemme]

April 16




Not Fur but Fin

You can’t delay the river, I’ve tried, all it does is distort. I block the flow and swamp ensues, mighty oaks waist deep in water. The current is strong and I fear being swept away, not realizing I was born to swim. Dreading the swim back for spawn I try to stay too close to my origins, never make it to open water, never to live the life I was intended for. I’ve heard it said, “Don’t push the river it flows by itself,” but I can’t stall it either.









Line up the little endearments offered you


*

FEEDING THE MONSTER

Who will feed the monster, once they’ve made her?
Her hunger burns in her like a beacon
Should I let her starve?
Should I put her on rations of old crust and tepid water?

Rebuke her as if she were her own idea
Possibly bind her hands and cover her eyes
Stand her in line with the good girls and fit her in
Turn her visage from her desire and tell her to forget?

Hold her hand and tell her that’s enough?
When I stand in the face of her yawning hunger
What do I say---It's for your own good?
Well that's what THEY said too.

[LeftWriteFemme]

April 17




Like an Elf Working in an Empty Tree

The chairs in the loft are empty, but I still hear the choir sing. The bottle though it’s empty, still sometimes calls my name. Though front pocket is empty and there is rolled up empty sleeve, still the nicotine haunts my dreams. On this empty road I travel, I still long for company. The stillness is not all that’s empty, but I run to fill that spot. Chaos is like a tapeworm it eats me from inside, but in the meantime I still believe it’s filling me.







Curve around what is sharp on your tongue

*

HOW THINGS SEEM

Not everyone who pushes me down is my enemy
Not everyone who pulls me up is my friend
I have been seduced by the closeness of people
Who used me as their shield

When I have been held in a place of honor
The point man of life
I forgot that made me the replacement target
For the one who stood behind me

I have been offended as I was thrown to the ground
The hands that shoved me I saw as my rejecters
I was spared the tragedy and peril of the thing which flew by my ear
Thanks only to the grace of a thrust in the right direction

Accurate appraisal is my weakness
Seeing thing for what they are is hard
Things are rarely how they seem