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This BLOG is duplicated from my website and can be pretty random. Philosophical. |
| I have found that the writing I initially did for therapy and catharsis has been of some interest to others so I started a blog on my personal website. I will be copying those here to get feedback as well as entertain. |
| Sober living has saved my life to be sure, but it definitely is not for everyone. I have lived in some type of communal living for most of my life, so it was probably easier for me to adjust than most. My first experience with communal living was when I was 11 and went into an orphanage because my mother abandoned me. I was young enough and already a chameleon, so I seemed to take to it pretty easily. I would go back to my mother for a year and a half and then was placed at a “Children’s Home” in Denver after she called the cops to tell them she still could not handle me. They still did not have anything they could arrest or incarcerate me for, so they placed me in a institutional type children’s home. There we were subjected to all types of abuse. From beatings from the staff to the staff ignoring actions by other inmates. I say inmates because we were treated as such. I would go on to be placed back with my mother or grandparents many times but always wind up being placed in another institution, group home, foster home, or other communal type environment. I never had the experience of living a normal home life and had no siblings, so I was always a loner in a crowd. I learned to not trust and be ready to fight anybody. Eventually I wound up in a psychiatric hospital for about 18 months and then broke out of there and hurt my mother. I was then placed in youth corrections for 2 years for that. The youth corrections facility was the final straw and capstone to a life of powerlessness and violence. But, unlike the other places I had been at Lookout Mountain School for Boys was a whole new experience. In reality it was a prison and several inmates were killed or severely beaten while I was there. After I survived all of that, anytime I have lived alone has been disastrous. After a few years of living alone I got married and at least had my spouse and later on children. I also became a firefighter and later paramedic and those jobs also came with communal living at work because we worked 24 hour shifts. I think I was able to adapt to that easier than most as well due to my previous experiences living with others. Fast forward to getting sober, divorcing, and eventually moving into an Oxford House sober living home. I have really thrived there and again my past comes in handy to allow me to adjust quickly to the trials and tribulations that can come living with others. When you add in the fact that we are all addicts and alcoholics it can become very complicated. The biggest problem I have encountered with living in sober living is that we are all relatively unstable and can be very manipulative. With that comes cliques and schemes from many different angles. From trying to get the house to purchase self-serving unnecessary items to evicting someone you are beefing with, to contagious negative addict type behavior. To do well in sober living takes a tremendous balance of common sense, patience, and selflessness. If you are particular and always want things a certain way you will most certainly fail. You will either get evicted or corrupt the house. When houses fall away from the original model and become corrupted then the eventual end is almost always the same. It very quickly becomes a trap house instead of a sober house. All of this may sound very negative but my experience with sober living has been very good overall. I am one of those people that can initially have a negative reaction or opinion of something and then change my mind after some reflection so many people that have been around me may think I dislike Oxford House. As I said earlier I do owe sober living my life and do not see leaving without a compelling reason. |
| You know, I have been in and out of therapy my whole life. I can remember my mother dragging me to counseling as young as 12 years old. The counselors I saw in the 70s were all women, dressed very provocatively, and were very progressive. Psychotherapy was still in its infancy for the common folk like us and it showed. I remember they were always “going to try something” and when there was no change try something else. I remember they did stuff like recording me speaking on these tapes and disks and then listening to it back. I am not sure what we were supposed to get out of it, but I never had any improvement. I guess the crux of the problem was no one ever told me why I was in therapy or what we were trying to accomplish. My mother would take us down to this building behind one of the big hospitals in Denver and I am pretty sure she saw someone as well when we were there. She most definitely needed to. Years later after having an education in counseling and counseling theories, I can see some of the stuff they were trying but they were way off the mark. It was all new and I think they figured if they did the stuff they were taught it would all work out. The thing is, they had no idea what was really wrong with me and never asked the right questions. They came from this place where counseling knowledge and theories of the day based everything on the patient being flawed in some way or having fallacious thinking and could be fixed. What I know today is that I was damaged and needed repair not reprogramming. They tried though. My mother was desperate to find something to fix one or both of us. She had to know the stuff she was doing with me at home, physical and sexual abuse, was the root cause. I think she was hoping these counselors could fix her or repair me. In the end, I just had a lot of weird talks and experiences with all these nice yet presumptuous ladies. I saw a handful of therapists over the years in attempts to fix myself but in the end, none of them truly did any good. Probably because I was never honest with them and did not understand the problem myself. Fast forward to me getting sober and beginning to understand the problem and actually wanting to get better. I had to want to get better enough to finally be unconditionally honest with my therapist. The only therapist to really help me was Alan. I think a good part of it was his empathy and giving of himself as well because he would be exhausted by the end of most of our sessions. When Alan died suddenly from Covid I was again adrift and left halfway through our work. A local mental health clearing house helped a bit, but they just want to throw meds at everything and make monetizing diagnoses. The therapist there also abandoned me with only two weeks’ notice. Abandonment and betrayal are my worst triggers to boot. I finally found another therapist who could handle my complicated situation and she did help me a lot but, in the end, she was worse than all the rest because she abandoned our therapeutic relationship without notice. I do not think I have another trust in me at this point, so I have been going it alone for now. I am writing an autobiography and that seems to be the best therapy for me right now. I am not wanting to discourage anyone from seeking therapy because I do firmly believe in it. I am saying to make sure you get a trustworthy counselor and get a commitment to not abandon your case without at least a separation plan. |
| I was looking back at my 2019 posting about 2018 and I see a pattern. Each year I am relieved the last year was over like it was the years fault or something. This year is different. I would not want to go through a year like 2023 again for sure but it is all up to me. 2023 started out rough. I was on a leave of absence from my job and literally had to do nothing and still getting paid. Unfortunately, I was also very socially isolated because that same leave of absence separated me from almost everyone I knew at the time. I was surrounded by some very good ladies at OH Dawson though and they loved on me until I could love myself again. In January I resigned from the coolest job I have ever had but it was also the job that almost consumed me. Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it they say. For several months I struggled to find work. No one would hire me with my criminal background still. Well almost no one. I had applied at numerous rehabs and shelters. At each one I would have a terrific interview and would leave with the feeling I had the job. Then I would get the call or have to call them until someone would talk to me and be told HR said no. I had applied for food delivery and been turned down by all but Doordash and they were going back and forth with questions about my history, so it looked grim. Finally, right before St. Patrick’s Day weekend I got the text welcoming me to Doordash! I made my car payment and back rent in one weekend. Right after that another employer called me, the San Antonio Aids Foundation, SAAF, about working in their transitional living home. I kept dashing and started part time at SAAF. Everything was turning around finally, and I realized that most of it had to do with my attitude. So, for most of the year I was still resisting going back to a regular full time job but once I did I am as happy as I have ever been. All my bills are paid, I have a regular schedule to follow, and my life is peaceful. When I had everyone’s dream of getting paid to do nothing I was miserable. Then, when I did the one thing I did not want to do I was happy. Go figure. So, what I learned from 2023 is that I am happiest when I am doing the right things whether I think I should be or not. Like I said, it is all up to me. If I am unhappy it is my own fault and I have to look no further than my decisions to see where the problem lies. |
| My oldest memories are of my Grandparent's home in Aurora Colorado. I remember getting hurt outside on a blanket, I must have rolled onto the grass or got stung. I had to be a baby. I remember falling down my grandparents’ blue stairs leading into their basement, I had to be less than four years old. To me, this shows that traumatic memories are the most imprinted and endearing. I have also come to believe that the pain and dysfunction that trauma creates never really goes away. The law of conservation states that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one form to another. Therefore, I believe that my life energy, the thing that turns this computer made of meat into a personality, is the same. Energy and water will take the path of least resistance. I believe that the path of least resistance for me in many of the most extreme events of my life was to flow into a new tributary, or personality if you will. Like flood waters overtopping a levy or bank, many of the events in my life overtopped the ability of the personality running my mind to cope and my life energy created a new personality to handle it. Now this brings up a very interesting and, as far as I know, unanswered question. Since this process is very similar to loading new programs into a computer, where did the programming come from? It is my opinion that my life force comes from outside of me and is in some way divine, so therefore I already had access to the programming. Why and how this power is available to me only at certain times is a question for another day, but it suffices to say I believe in the direst moments of my life my life force tapped into a source I cannot otherwise see or sense and transformed into a brand-new personality. |
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