For Mary should you come to read
This post is for July the 16th
There was something different about me, my parents knew, and so did everyone else. That was news to me. The day I realized that something was different was the first day of 7th grade, it was a new school, a new schedule and a new routine. Gym was something we did every day, the compulsory hour of physical activity. I knew the first day I walked into that locker room, that I was “different.” That was 1979.
They say in AA, “that if you have a problem with someone, it is usually a reflection of what you don’t like about yourself!” My father had hated me since the day I was born, and now from this point, he would have a new reason to hate me, in retrospect, I think this was the truth he didn’t or couldn’t look at in himself.They also say that when we start drinking we remain the age when it began, well then, I was a teenager for most of my life, which proves how difficult most of my life was. You see, my father was not an active part of my childhood or adolescent development, and today as an adult, he is absent from my life, this includes my mother.
I had a good life as a child, I got what I wanted from my father, and it was a trade off. He beat me more than my brother and my mother, in trade he paid for my silence in a really big way. Was that a mistake? It probably was.
My drinking took a toll, and in my 20’s “big things” started to happen to me. I fell in love, and moved to
WHOA! 18 months huh? My boss became my father, my caretaker, and my friend. My education about growing up began in earnest. Todd had lost his lover to Aids a couple of years before we met. He began to intensively teach me everything I would need to know how to do, to take care of me and COPE with what I may face in the future. There was a lot of work to do in those years.
I got sober that same year in August of 1994, and I stayed sober for 4 years. In retrospect, that first sobriety was a time of learning how to live and survive, rather than work a program. I stayed sober, mind you for that 4 years, I went to meetings but I was so sick during those 4 years, you could not imagine.
I learned all those lessons that Todd could teach me in 4 years we lived in the same area, and worked together. I believe, that if Todd had not been in my life then, I would have surely died, sooner. (This is where you all roll your eyes and say I think God had something to do with that, don’t you think?) Yes HE did.
I made a lot of mistakes growing up. I think we all have. I planned a great slip/geographic just after my 4th anniversary. That slip lasted until December of 2001. I had returned from
God has a funny sense of humour, I was living in a studio apartment, and my landlord got me a job in an antiques store run by a “member.” I was barely surviving on what I was making. It was ok, but I was still drinking and using. Go figure!!! I hired an employee a couple of months prior to reaching my bottom. And he used to say to me every day he came into work that “he didn’t drink!” Well, good for you I would say. In the grand scheme of things,
The morning of
“Well, it had started.”
The city of
Those 2 weeks of my life was a complete blur. We all got sober during those initial two weeks. The mourning period ended respectively two weeks later. We were all catatonic, nobody knew what to do. Eventually the bars started these promotions all over town. Come and donate some cash to the relief effort and drink free all night. That’s what the entire community of
The beach rose out of their stupor and I think the people on
I went to a
Four months later I came to
And so it did for me. I came for one week; I ended up staying for two.
I returned to
I hit a lot of meetings, during that first year of sobriety. I came to
over my list and I could hear HIM, in retrospect say to me, “Uh huh, well let’s see here, No, No, Not right now, I don’t think so, maybe later, and I think you should rephrase that question!”
My second attempt at sobriety would be the greatest 4 years of my life. Firstly, all those lessons that Todd gave me years earlier started to make their way out of my head. I found a place to live; I started building a home, while I waited for my citizenship to come, it eventually did on
I was seeing a therapist, whom I still see to this day every week. Margo is one of my best friends today. It was the spring of 2003, and I had worked really hard on my program, I had climbed a really BIG mountain in Margo’s opinion. And one day she asked me, “Jeremy, you’ve climbed this huge mountain, now you are standing here looking at it, what are you going to do for you?”
I sat on that question for two weeks. I was sitting at home, here (right here) where I am now, typing this out, and I was looking at the wall – at my Citizenship Certificate, and I said to myself “A University diploma would look good up there!” So it went. I applied to
I was making adult decisions with my life, for the first time in my life. The move out of the
In the spring of 2004, Peter got sick and had a nervous breakdown and we had to extricate him from his former place of employment. He was diagnosed with Bi-Polar 2 (Rapid Cycling) disorder. He spent the better part of 6 months on the sofa catatonic from the different medications, it took that long to find the right “combination” of drugs to take him out of the stupor and set him up for his re-entry into the world. I think that’s about the time I came across Chuck and the Real Live Preacher (Gordon). I started blogging when Peter got sick, as a way of relieving my sorrow and do something with myself at night. Chuck and Gordon have been incredible role models, fathers and friends to me over the last year. I respect them and admire the men they are in the world. We should all be so lucky to count men like these as friends.
I prayed for direction and I decided that I would “stay the course” and not walk away from someone I loved, just because there was a problem. Lesser men would have just walked away citing, inability to cope or put someone else’s needs before their own.
Peter has become the greatest man I have ever known, because when push came to shove in the last year, he stepped up and took charge when I was sick.
I grew up really fast. I had to manage the house cash, take care of Peter’s medical needs, and mine as well, eh? I had to shop for food, cook and take care of the house and Peter. And during that time I was a full time student at Concordia.
Here is a story for you, you can click and read it.
http://thetaoofjeremy.blogspot.com/2005/01/elderly-man.html
This blog entry was written the night I intuitively understood where my place in this universe was. After hearing this story on the radio that night, I sobbed like a baby. I remembered WHO Peter was, and I vowed never to leave him for better or worse.
We were married in a small ceremony at the Loyola Chapel on the
I became the man I wanted to be, I achieved things that I never knew were possible. I grew up A LOT in the last 4 years alone.
I have begun my 3rd year of Religious studies atThat question of “when does a boy become a man” no longer haunts me, because I know who I am today. It took me a long time to “get it!”
It was in the “realization” of who I was, and I learned to be comfortable in my own skin and to learn to Love Myself and to have faith in my own abilities. Today that is vitally important. I ran from who I was for many years because I was afraid I would end up like my father, and I am glad to say, I am No Where Close!
Children suffer for the sins of their father’s; it took me a long time to work through these issues. I pray a lot, and I hope, and I believe in the redeemable qualities in my parents, and one day, I pray that redemption may come, then again, it might not, and I am ok with that today.
Where is God in my life, He resides in my heart and in my soul. I’m still on the path, and still searching for a place to call home. The church is not what I wish it could be, nor what I want for me today. So I belong to a group of blogging Christians who follow a man called the Real Live Preacher.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for my sobriety.
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