Day 5 My Seat

We may consider the material world as the clay which the
artist works with, to make of it something beautiful or ugly.
We need not fear material things, which are neither good nor
bad in the moral sense. There seems to be no active force for
evil--outside of human beings themselves. Humans alone can
have either evil intentions--resentments, malevolence, hate and
revenge--or good intentions--love and good will. They can make
something ugly or something beautiful out of the clay of their lives.
Prayer For The Day
I pray that I may make something beautiful out of my life.
I pray that I may be a good artisan of the materials which
I have been given to use.

Typically I go to a bipolar support group  every Wednesday night that's called Balanced.  It is a Meetup group that was created almost 6 years ago as a peer to peer group for those blessed with bipolar, depression, anxiety etc.   It's good for me to hookup with my people.  I've been attending for 5 + years now.  I am pretty much a regular.  Out of the 25 - 35 that go every week I'm one of the small handful that has been going for so long.  I would safely say I'm an old timer at this group.  The group is about 3 months older than my first appearance so we've grown up together.

The correlation in AA is that we are called old-timers or elder statesmen.  If you're in that class and use it to whine about how it used to be or how it should be you're simply called a bleeding deacon.  This story I careen between the two fairly easily!

Prior to the creation of the Balanced group I went to the only game in town for the likes of me.  Sutter Nutter every 1st and 3rd Wednesday.  It was a moderated group. It was also the only meeting I could attend one evening when I was "in-house".  Wearing the white wrist band you know.  If it was a yellow wrist band they wouldn't have let me out of the unit that night!

Balanced is a peer to peer group and loosely facilitated so the basic premise is we just share a slice of our lives at that moment.  The key being we don't have to explain ourselves.  We've all been in each others shoes.  We just share and try to get through any pain, questions, dire straights in a safe and fairly comfortable environment.

Since I've been there since the beginning there has been growing pains as to the direction of the meetings, the flow, the exchange and the inevitable cross talk.  We've grown from the janitors room in the back with 7 or 8 people to a minimum of 3 full rooms in the main hall of the church.  2 rooms for us and one for family and friends.  The environment between the 2 main rooms is completely different from each other.  Our room has abandoned the Q & A approach.  My upbringing in the 30 years of AA meetings that I've attended just made me cringe if any cross talking went on.  So why am I bringing up this randomness today?  Because this is my blog chronicling my last days before 60 and all the debris of thought that is coming in with this exercise.  I want to dump it finally here so that it won't be on the same bus with  me when I'm 60.

The theme in AA is that we talk about alcoholism.  I understand the concept well.  If we bring up jihad and self-immolation the new people just won't feel like they're in the right place.  No relating.  Rightfully so.  Another critical theme in AA is that drinking is "but a symptom", it is not the problem.  The problem centers in the mind.  My mind went dark in 2005 and it may have been murky but it was clear that alcohol wasn't the problem then.  That "problem" not only was centered in my mind, it made a cinder block of my mind.  You see I had quit alcohol entirely for 9 years at that point.  I was going to meetings, I had a sponsor, I was working the steps.  Simultaneously, streaming in another manifestation of some world in my head my mental disintegration was in process and had been for quite some time.  This was my 2nd tour of AA and I thought I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.  Actually it was an exact blueprint of my first tour of AA (which lasted 8 years).  I had a job, I was sober, I was in love, I wanted to be married and did get married.  I had a son from the first tour and I picked up a wonderful step daughter on this tour.

The similarities?  Marriage slowly dissolving, enormous trouble brewing at work, erratic and jumbled relationships with my friends.  Emotional disturbances internally knocking seismographs off the charts.  But wait.  I'm sober. This just can't be happening.  And happening again.  The more my marriage crumbled, the more my emotions, my needs consumed me.  My presence in the lives of others was just a frame for a black hole.  Life was so unfair.  Why is this shit happening to me?  Why doesn't she love me anymore?  Fuck, did she ever love me at all?  The disease centering in my mind is shifting to saturation mode.  Suicidal ideation (darling psychiatric phrasing) mode is now replacing "No Matter What." I start swallowing handfuls of pills and end up in crazy houses.  I have not had a drink though!  In retrospect, grace was a stream on alert and salvation that never left me alone.

My sponsor fired me because I was just too crazy.  Not exactly the babbling brook sobriety he may have been hoping for.  He did say that I completed the 12 steps, whew.  I was doing everything right the AA way.  The opportunity for clarity though was demolished when he bolted and now the confusion reigned without filter.  Coincidentally all of Rock's (my sponsor) friends felt it was too awkward to invite me to any social gathering if both of us would be present.  Coincidentally, they were all my friends too.  The horror of feeling awkward was now my marker for sanity so clearly I was way off the rails.  Miles off the rails.  My only other friend (best friend too) was dealing with family mortality stuff and I was too much for his attempt to holster what serenity he could.  He let go of me too.

My disease was strangling me, pulling me out of the world of the living one by one and still, no alcohol on board, just plain crazy.  Still going to meetings between hospital visits.  By this time I was missing significant time from work, the marriage over and out and I forgot. I forgot that it all started with the desire to just stop drinking. I didn't bargain for this.  I'll come back to the meeting format in a minute.  My life had become intensely interesting, really moments away from death.  All I knew to do in that world of black and white was to go to meetings.  Just go to meetings.  One foot in front of the other until I sat in a chair.

So I went.  And I sat and I tried.  I listened for the similarities and not the differences.  I listened hard.  I spoke and eyes rolled.  The disease that had taken residence internally, outwardly was eating me alive and then I knew I had no place to go.
AA is not a hotbed for open mindedness when it comes to mental illness.  When it comes to open discussion in meetings about mental illness.  My dilemma was that I didn't drink but I did not know how to live a life in sanity.  I had nothing to offer in the way of expressing hope to any newcomer.  As a "newcomer" myself I found or heard nothing compelling for me to keep coming back.  My insecurity was peaking and virtually no one would stay to talk to me after meetings.  As if I could or would stay that long.  I fell further and further from the light.

Then I discovered the support group at Sutter Nutter.  Every other Wednesday.  A group specifically for "consumers." (Psych term coined for mental health patients who consume medication).  It was also for families and friends and was moderated.  Not the fix I had hoped for but a big step up from where I was desperately dying.

I would go with feverish anxiety feeling that I had a place I would fit in.  Where I didn't have to explain anything.  However, the crowd was too much of a mix for me.  A question would be asked and the moderator determined the life and amount of cross talk time for each one.  Questions asked by friends and families would get a lot of mileage.  When I finally got to ask a personal question about how I was feeling or thought I was feeling or wondering how I was supposed to be feeling, the response was tepid and the time was unmercifully brief.  What?  No!  This isn't AA!

The grace that relentlessly worked undercover revealed to me a friend in that meeting.  David C.  A man my age that called me his friend.  I didn't think I would hear that word in such a kind way again.  He felt the chaos in me, weathered the questions and kept his hand on my shoulder and whispered he loved me like a brother and supported me.  That I was fine.  I felt fine.

1.   I am grateful that friends can come out of a cypher and stay despite the chaos.
2.   I am grateful for my desire to write in here 4 days in a row.
3.   I am grateful I am having dinner tomorrow night with Winnow.