Friends of Bill W.

[TenderKnight]

Hello, all

Just wanted to post a quick update.. Have been MIA lately due to taking care of myself. That included a 10 day stay on a locked mental ward, 10 days at a crisis house, and a couple of weeks at a sober living. I am now on my way to a residential treatment, and will be in with the other males, so am pretty happy about it.

I have about 70 days clean and sober and am taking my meds as I am supposed to. Life is good and getting better, day by day.

Thank you all for your past and continued support, will get on here to post when I can. Hope that everyone is well and I will be checking back here later tonight, but will be offline for 2 months or more after tonight, due to being in treatment.

Love and Light,
Tony

[LeftWriteFemme]

Good luck with your treatment, TenderKnight!

Wishing you well,

Sherrie

[LeftWriteFemme]

September 29


Kicks


New balance is more than a brand of sneakers. New balance is a joyful revelation made possible through constant vigilance. I am tap dancing into a vision, no more soft shoed wishfulness. I can lift my feet knowing I can keep my up right posture; my musculature robust from climbing the steps and accepting direction. This bright tempo delights me; I feel stretched, supple, able bodied. Life off the balance beam offers me the world in which to embrace my equilibrium.






Pick up your toys, pick up your chin and move on


*
CATCH

How can my sensibility catch my intellect
Or find a map with enough information
To get my heart to the current location of my mind?

What are the common markers recognized by soul and brain?
I know the pulse of my wrist
Is counter pointing the firing of my synapses.

My life signs run their course
And I struggle to find the intersections
I long for more than signposts and curbing.

I would like parallels, paradigms and conclusions
There must be a place of common home and hearth.
I am looking for the depot of my life
I hope I hit it before I hit the coast.

[LeftWriteFemme]

September 30



Moniker


The Hurt carry on the tradition, would never think to give it up, don’t even know there is that option, strap on their weapons without a second thought. How can there be a second thought when there never was a first. Hurt is a reflex and it moves its way through the world like dominoes tumbling; everything’s knocked down before you ever saw it standing. So, what’s the use anyway? So, I fall down and in that action push you forward and we are all together in the mud, but it is so hard to recognize anyone in the mud, including myself and especially you. If I hurt you that makes it hard for me to see anything about you except my wish for your departure, which I subconsciously hope will take away the guilt I can’t afford to feel. If I make it out of the mud I can’t afford anything, but if I don’t pay up I’ll be in new mud soon, so I must break tradition and the first step toward that is seeing it and the second is calling it by its name.





Open up your secret vault and unload

*

BATTLESHIP

If the first is a guess, what is the second?
Paranoia or worse.?
Action is a blessing, reaction a debilitation
And to twist from reaction to self-doubt
Sinks the battle and the battleship.

When I can’t make sense, the gift is stepping back,
Better to put my hand down than to lose the farm.
When I find myself in a minefield I can walk gingerly
Or wait for aid to come from above, air rescue or other.

The option of rethinking every step sets me dancing
The tune which begins this hurky jerky polka of death which
Stems from the metronome of criticism playing in my ear.

When I am overwhelmed with critique
I give up acceptance of chance or joy of spontaneity
Throwing myself into a pit of apprehension.
I am safer being wrong occasionally
Then unsure forever

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 1




No Substitute for Fire

I wanted alcohol to do better for me than burning did. I was constantly disappointed, yet I kept trying. I was not to find pleasure in that bottle though I had no problem finding addiction there. This is how I came to believe that there is not an upside to everything. Booze took me to surprising destinations, but never the ones I desired. I sought release, the release I got from a wildfire spreading across my skin and this might have been mine had I poured the liquor on rather than in. But in me it did no good, it never let me exhale the way that the “right” kind of pain did. What I got from alcohol drove me though; fear rode me roughshod and I found my way home, it was a bumpy road, but once there we doused the flames and I live the upside I had come to doubt, because fire is no substitute for life.






Randomize the alphabet, then write

*



MY MOON

I anticipate the crowning of your face
As you birth the sky.
Your rhythmic visitation sates me.
The gravity of my need keeps you close.
The tide of my heart pulls you from shore to shore.

We live in sweet ecstasy of tethered love
Our souls slingshoting across the open palm of heaven
Your empathy for me transforms these shards of ice
To a tender heart satelliteing

I orbit you
Empowered by your kindness
You are my moon.

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 2




Saltbox House


Refusing to make reasonable demands is quite as dysfunctional as making unreasonable demands. The opposite of an extreme is often twice as crazy and harder to explain. I open my mouth and dry toast is the reply. Nothing should be said when nothing can be done and to do nothing is harder than one might think. I fold my hands but my lap rejects them; I quiet my mind but my soul objects. I must let my heart sing and trust you enough to ask for help.






Check your speed and direction

*

REJECTION

Rejection as a game of endurance,
A boundary enhancing process
A test of survival
Rejection sought or unsought is a challenge.

Sometimes rejection is a flare
Lighting the need for change of tactics or direction.
Though it is hard to view rejection as a beacon
Rather than condemnation.

Rejection is also the counterbalance for acceptance.
Risk is nothing if rejection is not part of the equation
I cannot value yes if you could not say NO.

Rejection is the safety valve
For putting myself in situations where I don’t belong.
I get sent back to the world of possibilities
When the kindness of rejection ejects me from wrong choice.

[LeftWriteFemme]

October 3



Sackcloth


Tragedy is a tale unfinished. Life is far longer than calamity can endure. I will not give up, not even when hope is lost, for life carries forward; more is filled with optimism. Threads break, but the fabric is woven still, flowing off the living loom waiting to be used. I will cut my swath and fashion a garment to wear and if sometimes it is filled with ashes I will sit and grieve all the while knowing that this is never the stories end.






See through your own shades


*
AMENDS

Amends is about truth and change.
The relationships of my past
Were places of little truth
And even less change.

I tried to be nice----not honest
I tried to keep things going
Even when they needed to die.

Making amends has ended
Most of my relationships from the past.
A quick 10th step keeps me
From starting too any new ones.

Good healthy relationships
Require time and attention
So this necessitates a short list.

Sometimes I wish for more quantity
But I realize in sobriety
I cannot accept less quality.

[Lady Pamela]

" 19 " Years ago today...I recieve my new birthday...From choosing to leave what I thought was what made me live...Meth !!!. I was a size 2 pants..weighed in at a whooping 87lbs and my skin tone was grey and molding...I was dieing. 19 years ago today, I chose to live one day at a time...Live my life with truth and dignity....And from doing that..I found great joy and love from all..But most important...I FOUND ME.

[Tommi]

Happppppy Happpppy Birthday Lady Pamela

Who knew 6490 days ago you could turn your life around. Way to go. Congratulations.

[LeftWriteFemme]

.

Happy Anniversary!!!!

Originally Posted by Lady Pamela

" 19 " Years ago today...I recieve my new birthday...From choosing to leave what I thought was what made me live...Meth !!!. I was a size 2 pants..weighed in at a whooping 87lbs and my skin tone was grey and molding...I was dieing. 19 years ago today, I chose to live one day at a time...Live my life with truth and dignity....And from doing that..I found great joy and love from all..But most important...I FOUND ME.