Swifty phiphty niner

Today I did a thirty minute sit.   I felt some pain meander in and I thought I will treat this with meditation.   My readings say sit with the pain, embrace the pain.   Don’t avoid, avoid aversion.   I think my whole life has been aversion to pain, so much so, that I don’t know exactly when I’m in it and when I’m not.   Ok there are lots of instances when I know but those are symptoms of a much deeper pain.   That’s what I’ve been working on these past few years.   First with pill popping and we all know how well that works.   It just makes the pain BIGGER!   Hah!   But I lied to myself that it felt good on that train to derail the pain.   Of course with the AA head I would always feel guilty because everyone knows I’m an addict and everyone knows I’m supposed to stay clean.   I would take on that guilt and increase it by multitudes of degrees until I got to loser stage.   Every fucking time.   And the original pain?   Untouched by anything positive.   Just dumped on the ammo pile

10   days before I go on vacation.   10 days before I get to spend some time with my cousins from the East Coast.   The right side of the country.   I will get up at 3:45AM on the morning of the 23 rd and be ready to catch the Super Shuttle to the airport.   My first flight is the weakest link in the whole trip.   It is a leg to Las Vegas and when I went this time last year my flight was cancelled because of terrific wind surrounding Vegas.   I swore I wouldn’t do that again but here I am, next year doing the same thing.   My memory, God bless it.   It needs a lot more than God’s blessings.   It needs a complete overhaul. Hah!   But other than that I will be in DC at 530 PM EST and will be sitting down for chow with my cousins that night.   Halina Dabrowski is who I’ll be staying with.   David King, her by law now, husband and their 3 boys, Noah, Joe and Matthew.   At least I think that’s where I’m staying.   They’re supposed to be tearing down their house and building a new one.

I had an interesting hour with my therapist.   I was spun out by my head exhausting all possibilities between a and b without knowing any facts.   I was guessing but I based it on old history.   Of course it has to do with a woman I went out on a date with.   It was a great date, we had dinner, frozen yogurt, we held hands and we even kissed ever so lightly on the lips as our night ended.   There was no problem with the date, it was after the date that my trouble began.   I wanted to see her again.   Of course I did.   But it was the when that was driving my anxiety.   I felt I had to have more control over the when.   She has kids so there are automatic certain days that are out and then there are vacations coming up for the both of us so that leaves a very thin window of opportunity.   In fact there is a Wednesday coming up that would be ideal but it’s a work night for her so it would be a short night if it were to be a night at all.   But hold up Chris, what’s the real deal?   Wha

I haven’t written in a few days.   The day I didn’t write was July 2, 2015.   I didn’t write that day because I didn’t know what to say.   You see that Thursday was the 2 year anniversary of my friend, Jane, putting a gun into her mouth and pulling the trigger.   I shared in the noon meeting about it and got trembly and teary as I felt once again that there was a plug of guilt on my part.   That I could have done some things differently and maybe history would have been changed.   I knew she was addicted to pain killers but I didn’t know the extant of the booze she was drinking until one day at the Primary Purpose AA meeting.   They were giving out chips for birthdays and I picked up a chip for 9 months.   Then I heard a voice coming from back of the room, “Christopher Shirley.   Christopher Shirley is a mother fucker.   Christopher.   Christopher Shirley, you are a mother fucker.” “Thanks Jane it’s nice to see you too!” I sat down gripping the chip in my hand knowing it was tenuo

I can feel myself getting fatter by the minute lately.  Ugh.  My worst nightmare is waking up middle aged with a pot belly that I can read off of when I’m standing up.  I was doing so good for so long and then these past few months it’s been pounding on, pound by pound.  When I first went on my meds back in ’05 I was prescribed Depakote and I gained about 45 lbs. in 6 months.  I was up to 215 lbs.!  Yuck.  I told my pdoc that I would rather be crazy than fat so take your meds and shove them up your ass.  Oh yes I did.  Well maybe not in those exact words, so he took them and just changed the names and gave me more.  But that didn’t make the weight go away.  No it didn’t.  I quit eating breakfast, upped my dosage of Adderall and drank a lot of coffee for a few months.  That helped but it really wasn’t healthy.  Do you think?  Anyway I read that missing breakfast was the worst way to lose weight so I started slowly getting back into the breakfast mode.  Mostly cereal and toast.  But it’