May 22, 2004

• Anniversaries

  I let
  my second Xangaversary slip by unremarked on MayDay, because I’d
  planned something to mark it and then had not followed through. 
  That plan is still pending, to go back and compile a list of links to
  the blogs of my healing journey that started with my first post here
  two years ago.  Anybody got a round tuit?  I could use a couple of them, actually.

  Tomorrow
  will be my dog Koji’s fourth birthday.  He hasn’t changed much,
  outwardly, since I took this pic on his last birthday.  In
  behavior he has mellowed some, and learned important things such as how
  to walk back around that tree in the yard when he winds his chain
  around it.  He’s my buddy.

  One year ago yesterday, a Wednesday, I wrote:

  I’m not taking it personally.

  The Old Fart called
  last night and left a message on my answering machine.  It was his
  usual style, the good news/bad news ploy to soften the blow.  The good
  news was some irrelevant-to-me thing he dredged up for the purpose,
  then:

  “The bad news:  I’m drinking… gonna look into AA in Wasilla.  I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  That he’s not living here now really helped to soften the
  blow for me.  I’m not terribly upset about this, as I had been so many
  times before.  Maybe my uncharacteristic neutrality has something to do
  with the fact that my own addictions are under control currently.

  Whatever may be contributing to my sanguine mood, I
  appreciate it.  I’m not even worrying over whether he will actually
  call today.  If he does, he will talk to the answering machine again.

  He didn’t call that day, or the next.  I was
  okay with that.  I have never enjoyed talking to him when he was
  drunk, and I was fed up with thirteen years of addictive relapses and
  broken promises.  When he had rented his little cabin there at the
  flea market strip we were not yet calling Felony Flats, Doug and I had
  felt relief at having him out of our house.

  Then on Friday, that Voice Within that I’ve always referred to
  either as “Spirit” or “my Guides” (and have recently begun calling HP
  or my Higher Power in NA and AA meetings) told me Greyfox was in
  trouble.  My response was, “Yeah, so what?”  Then I went on
  about what I was doing, taking pics of my buddy Koji and blogging about
  him.

  God kept nagging me, and piqued my curiosity.  I tried to tune
  in on Greyfox’s psychic energy and got nothing.  That’s unusual in
  itself.  We have a tight connection, my soulmate and I, and I
  usually know without trying how things are going with him.  As
  usual when I want to know something and the knowledge isn’t coming on a
  direct channel, I picked up an oracle.

  The nearest one to hand that day as I sat here at the computer was a
  bag of runes.  I asked the Norns (pulled three runes) if Greyfox
  was alive.  The way the runes came up was, yes-no-maybe, one
  upright, one reversed, and one that is the same both ways.  The
  Norns are like that, so I stood up to reach my Crystal Oracle and
  resolve the ambiguity.  The gist of my reading was that his life
  was hanging in the balance.  Nobody else would save him and it was
  up to me.  Personally, I was ready to let him go.  I carried
  a lot of hurt and resentment over his narcissistic abuse, not just of
  me but of Doug, the cats, the dog, and everyone.  Narcissitic
  personality disorder does not make nice people.

  The thought (not “mine”, I am convinced, but a flash of divine
  inspiration) that impelled me to throw on some clothes and jump in the
  car was, “You’d do this for a stranger, wouldn’t you… for just anyone
  in need?”  “Yes, I would–so then why not for my soulmate, the man
  I love?” was my answering thought.

  That led to this, that, and the other thing,
  and to Greyfox’s diagnosing his own NPD and starting to work at
  transcending it.  He dropped that “one day at a time” crap that
  had left open the door to his many alcoholic relapses, and made a
  lifetime commitment to living clean and serene.  Having quit
  alcohol, tobacco and marijuana all on the same day (May 23, 2003) with
  the help of the amino acid supplements that I’d been using to transcend
  my sugar addiction, he became happier and a lot easier to live
  with. 

  I won’t be going into town tomorrow and I don’t know if he plans
  to go to a meeting to commemorate his AA/NA “birthday”–if the weather
  is good he’ll probably work.  He’ll pick up his aluminum one year
  coin next time he attends an AA meeting, and we will both get our
  little plastic NA key tags next time we go to a meeting.  My AA
  sobriety date is December, 1992, and my AA coin is bronze with a big XI
  on it.  I wasn’t in the program that long, but I was
  “grandfathered” in, as a 12-Step “legacy”.  My father and my
  mother’s brother Roy were AAs.  I learned a lot from them, and a
  generic magazine article on 12-step groups that I read while in prison
  was instrumental in my kicking alcohol and hard drugs in the ‘seventies.

  My own life is lots better now, especially since I’m not living with
  the paranoia of growing weed to satisfy his need.  That had been
  an economic choice I always had problems with.  We really couldn’t
  afford to buy the stuff.   I love growing things, but I happen to
  be allergic to hemp and couldn’t work around the plants without getting
  a rash on my hands and arms… and then there’s the fact that it’s
  illegal, too.  But I don’t need to concern myself with that any more.

  • 3:37 pm
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