Bus Babble

Day 262

What happens when you’re a struggling addict in recovery, and stuck in hideous traffic on a packed, smelly, noisy bus? Anxiety is making your teeth float. Get creative. I wrote the following on my phone in my rehab days. As you will be able to tell straight away, I’m no poet. Keats or Yeats, I ain’t, but they ain’t me either. Writing these two pieces of bus babble, helped to stop my head exploding into slime on various bus rides home. The picture beneath is one of my drawings from many moons ago, in my twenties.

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Bus babble #1

THROUGH DARKLY EYES

Praying this glass is the killer,

The TNT in the heart,

The body gets sicker and slimmer,

The explosion is waiting to start.

Dulling takes more and more poison,

Much more than a human can take,

The blood paints its walls with ‘NO CHOICE,’ on,

No matter the soul is at stake.

I shamble as the puppet strings snap, creak, and fray,

Clawed fingers no longer life-sleek,

The master looks down, unable to say,

“Don’t pray to me I am too weak.”

The hope of that second heart beating,

Beneath the smile of my son,

His eyes slay my death that is cheating,

His wings take us up to the Sun.

The End.

Actually. Strike that.

The Beginning!!!!

* * *

Bus babble #2

Essentially, life is like concrete. Hard, unyielding, and tough to crack. Some chip away, others take a pick axe and tear through it. Many just walk over it without a second thought because it’s there, it serves a purpose and necessary. But one thing’s for sure, you can’t sprinkle it with pretty glitter and hope the winds never blows its false beauty away. Dig, chip and smash. We do whatever we can. Because it’s underneath, beneath the cracks and the filth and the darkness were the diamonds and the stars truly sparkle. And behind filthy curtains that hang down like the rotten, tattered, bloody wings of long fallen angels – new born wings unfurl behind. Ready to guide and fly with us – if we dare to look and hold out our hand – and trust. Then we will rise and rise and rise. Because that’s what we chose, because now, we can. I’ll meet you at where we all want to be, not were ‘others’ want us to be. We began with the hope of choice. Our one and only prize. . . life!

Stay safe everyone xx

Clenched

Day 261

I wrote this on my Facebook page over the Christmas period. Our first Christmases sober can be utterly terrifying. They are laced with relapse landmines, and the pressure to drink and join in over the festive period can be crushing.

To non-addicts, the following might sound like a series of jokey, slightly crass paragraphs. But dark humour is how we skew our re-programmed brains to safety in tough times. We must get through another day sane, sober, and alive! Whatever it takes to physically and psychologically survive any public drinking/fighting/arguing/vomiting season such as Christmas, and come out the other side sober – keep doing that! No matter how seemingly ridiculous. Here it is, for what it’s worth.

* * *

How do you stay sober through the Christmas period during recovery?

The same as any other time of the year. Dig in, grit your teeth, and talk to/ignore the appropriate people. Try not to murder anyone, that’s very important – I’ve heard prison showers aren’t the best, or considered festive.

Grit your teeth so hard they may shatter in your mouth when somebody says something crappy to you. It will stop you saying something you regret when the red mist arrives. Teeth-clenching could be mistaken for a smile, or wind. And that’s fine. We know better. People may think we’re happy and enjoying the fun, or maybe holding in a dangerous fart. But we’re stopping ourselves from nailing faces to a door, thus avoiding jail time. Everyone’s a winner!

Dig in so deep that you bury yourself in calm, rather than burying the person currently giving you grief. Digging in deep inside ourselves is our impenetrable fortress. Our safe place that nothing gets in.

Talk to everyone you need to talk to that makes you feel good about yourself. Everyone who has got you this far! They didn’t mind helping you before and you won’t be bugging them now. And who knows, they may be needing you!

Don’t limit it to humans. Pets or farm animals are good allies. I recommend goats. They don’t talk much but they are fantastic listeners and they will never judge you or talk shit behind your back. Especially if you have food for them. Lots and lots of food!

Ignore negative people. If you can’t, make excuses and walk away. What’s a good excuse? Tell them you’re visiting a goat in your secret fortress to save your bottom virginity. Granted they may breathalyse you for fear that you’re drunk but at least you’ll proudly blow a big fat zero! That’ll confuse the crap out of them. Hey, new Christmas party game! Breathalyser Bingo! You’ll win every time! Because you’re still sober!!!!!!!

Dig in, grit your teeth, and avoid prison showers. Rinse and repeat. But most of all . . . have a good and safe Christmas. If none of the above works for you, I’m sure you’ll find your own way to do things. This is only how I do it right now. Whatever works for you – do that!

Stay safe and take care of yourselves xx

Newborn

Day 260

Early in sobriety it seems much of our time is spent trying to explain to non-addicts (family, friends, loved ones, work-mates, partners) what addiction is, because they don’t get it. I totally understand, it must be so frustrating for them.

But we are so busy saving our own lives daily and getting on with our recovery, we don’t have spare brain-space to explain to everyone who doesn’t get it. We are teaching by example simply by living as well as we can. Also, we don’t get it. We just had to live it.

We are as newborns in recovery, seeing the world for the first time. We stumble out our first terrifying baby steps.

Staying sober and holding it all together is a twenty-four-hour job. It’s stunningly hard. It’s impossible to try and explain the never ending can of worms that is addiction to everyone we meet. Most people ask the usual questions, ‘why didn’t you just stop? Why can’t you just drink normally?’

Professionals have been struggling for decades to define, pin-point, track down, research, treat, and explain addiction. How the hell are we supposed to do it?

I mean, how do you explain wishing the next drink would kill you? Your hygiene is so bad but you don’t care. Running out of hiding space for bottles and cans until the floors are rolling in glass and tin. Wearing the same clothes for days, weeks or months. All control of bodily functions is lost; it’s ok just because that’s the way it is. Sobbing your heart out for no apparent reason. You’re in pain and seeing your own blood so often you could identify it in a line-up. But it’s inconvenient to go to the doctor because waiting rooms cut into your drinking time. The phones are unplugged or switched off. The doors are locked and the curtains are never open.

Anything to do with the people you love are cancelled because they can’t get hold of you – nobody can. You’ll stop drinking tomorrow, but you don’t: it’s Christmas, new year, my birthday, your birthday, week off work, holiday – eventually you run out of excuses and it’s simply just another day. Tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes. Ever! Hell is the norm.

Eventually you don’t/can’t even try to stop because your body is so chemically dependent that it won’t let you anymore. But your daily prayer is that the next drink kills you. But it doesn’t. But you still pray for it and you still pick up that bottle or the can, praying at the altar of alcohol, because all other gods have failed. Nothing else matters.

That’s just a mere fraction of what was my daily life. My addiction/your addiction/our addiction! Everyone’s addiction! Alcohol, drugs, whatever the substance.

How can you explain all that to someone who doesn’t get it? Life’s too short to even try.

So, why/how did we survive and stay alive?

Luck. Pure luck.

I’ve seen many people pushed back into active addiction by constantly trying to explain and justify past actions. If people don’t get it that’s their problem – not yours! You just stay busy living with addiction and ripping its throat out! keep doing that! Every day.

Baby steps. The biggest steps you’ll ever take!

Stay safe and amazing!

Station to station

Day 246

Just because we’re in recovery, doesn’t mean that we’re not allowed to get angry at the injustices around us, especially when it negatively impacts the important services that we use daily to help us get on with our lives. Some things make the top of my head volcanic, particularly the misuse and waste of public money. I wrote the words below a few months back. My anger hasn’t diminished. I’ve tweaked it a little as my claws and teeth have sharpened over time.

* * *

When I first returned home for good last year, our town centre had a perfectly good bus station. You waited for a bus, you got on the bus, you went home or wherever. Job done! Then one day, the powers that be, ripped it all down for no apparent reason whatsoever. Today I used the brand-new station. Again, it’s perfectly good – you wait for a bus, you get on the bus, you go home or wherever. Job done! Exactly the same. The only difference being – it cost over fifteen million pounds to build!

In 2019 we still have homeless human beings freezing to death in shop doorways. This morning, I saw two shivering souls asleep in the entrance of a bank. The irony in that scene is a humanitarian blasphemy.

Alcohol and drug abuse continue to kill, tearing families apart in ever growing numbers as addiction rips through society like a plague. Our recovery services have no money to employ enough staff and no resources to cope with the growing demand. The workload increases daily as workers try to bend and warp time to accommodate every client. There aren’t enough hours in the day!

Domestic violence and rape victims struggle to be heard, treated, and stay safe because of massive cuts. Single mothers struggle to pay childcare just to earn a living every day. Mental health services and the NHS get kicked in the teeth, daily.

Everything seems to rely on the public kindness of charity donations. Seemingly nothing at all runs without the goodwill, time and effort of unpaid volunteers.

Everyone around us suffers and goes through daily hell as a way of life because that’s just the way it is. Everything is run on a shoestring so frayed; it barely exists anymore. People are literally dying on their feet because money can’t be found – anywhere!

Really? Anywhere?

But hey! Nice, brand-new, shiny bus station that nobody wanted or asked for, that does exactly the same as the old one did, which everyone was happy with in the first place!

Hope those millions were worth it eh!

Getting There

Day 245

Sometimes I just let pictures talk. I’ll write tomorrow.

‘We Hide our Scars’

Day 241

One of the many, many benefits of recovery is rediscovering old passions. One of mine is creative writing. Here’s a little something I wrote when I was bored on a bus journey.

The picture below is one of a growing series of recovery memes I write for myself as backgrounds for my phone. I call them Word Noodles.

‘We all hide our scars, pain and shocking darkness with the thinnest of fragile skin. But sometimes they bleed through as life catches us out. As the architects and artists of our own souls we build and paint with the only tools we have at hand. Our palettes may vary and the way in which we re-build and re-paint ourselves. But we are all one as we repair a worn and tattered spirit with striking new colours and washes of a new and stunning life. We are all so very the same and all so very strong in our fight. The world can be frightening. But the world is only a canvas and together, we will paint it with pride and love and joy and awe!’

Word Noodle #1 — Tomorrow doesn’t matter

An Odd Duck . . .

Day 237

This sobriety lark. It’s a bit of an odd duck. The world feels strange. It’s confusing, frustrating, frightening, and nonsensical. My newly rewired brain now has a memory that is both a blessing and a curse. Emotions and feelings can no longer be fogged-out by the constant waking blackout at the bottom of every single bottle. You get a whole lot of life (past, present and future) to deal with all at once.

In recovery you discover to your amazement that after all these years of thinking you were an unlovable monster, you’re quite a nice person. But now you’re all sensitive and emotional. You now navigate a world full of shitty, insensitive people (be they sober or not). Newly discovered feelings get smacked about as you weed out the good people to see if they are the lifers that you can rely on. These new souls tend to be also in recovery. They too are also tentatively going through their own version of your new life.

Recovery is a terrifying but exciting ballet performed on the most public of stages, rather akin to dancing Swan Lake in Afghanistan. We all know the routine but one wrong pirouette and a landmine turns you to roadkill. A distant sniper can turn your new brain into a wall decoration, and turning your tights red. It’s a bizarre life-dance we all do – but recovering souls must do it.

We are all winging it. From the moment we open our eyes until we crash into bed. ‘How the fuck did I manage that?’ we ask ourselves; staring at the ceiling with another day sober under our belts. All tentatively micro-managed but we did it.

Television – that box of triggers in the corner. Reality shows, soaps, documentaries, advertisements, and food programmes – everyone seems to be getting royally slaughtered on booze and having a fine old time. We watch grudgingly as we sip our tea/coffee/juice through gritted teeth. Mentally, we spray bullets through every celeb and reality star as we smile and wave boys. Smile and wave. ‘Nobody dies today,’ we gently whisper to ourselves. See! We’re nice.

People often try and shock us with their version of shock. But we’ve seen it, pinched it, spent it. We used ambulances like Uber. The doctors and nurses in A&E knew us by name. Those insane drunken YouTube clips and CCTV footage? Yep, that was us! You’ve already seen the mortifying Facebook posts and drunken texts. All us. We lost control of every bodily function and didn’t care a jot. We’ve seen enough of our own blood we could identify it in a line up. We would never treat an animal like we treated ourselves. Nobody would.

The daily luggage we carry comprises of: sorrow, shame, and the unbelievable weight of guilt for all the above and much, much more. But we are now taught to let go of damaging thoughts and put the past into the past. But do we? Can we?

Can I?

Give me a short time alone with a crate of wine and I’ll put everything behind me and forget the lot! That, I can guarantee. But that is not an option anymore. I’ve treated people I love like dirt. So, I live with and micro-manage the shame, sorrow, and guilt. But I can’t forget or put it all behind me. Not yet. I may be a new version of me but I’m a frightened version. I’m only human. I still carry my luggage but it gets a little lighter with time.

So yeah, sobriety. It’s an odd duck. And in the scheme of things, I’ve only just been born. I’ve got lots of growing up to do yet. Is it worth all the effort?

Yes.

To be continued . . . and continued . . . and . . .

Take care, all xx

Borg?

Day 236

It was April 2017 when I started my recovery. One of the few things I had left from the ruins of my own destruction was choice. The choice to carry on with my addiction to its inevitable and painful end, or the choice fight with absolutely everything I had left and see how far I get. Whatever happens, happens. I had literally already lost everything. I had nothing to lose. So, I got in the ring with everyone else, put on my gloves and fought. I fought bloody hard! But I needed help.

I was given mental tools and had my brain pulled apart by amazing experts. Peers and brand-new friends helped me to re-wire the damaged, frazzled sponge which was slopping around in my head. It still sputters, sparks and slops now and again but the damage is reduced. The harm has been minimised and monitored to carry on the constant sober war.

Sadly, as we all learn very quickly, the fight is life-long. We can’t take eyes off our opponent (addiction) for any amount of time or we are screwed. I found this out to my cost with two relapses.

But things do ease and calm with time and effort. Nowadays I’m lightly but constantly sparring with one hand whilst getting on with life with the other. I have focus and I have a plan. But most of all – I want to live. So, although I can never get out of the ring, I can fill it with hopes, dreams, friendship, love, and the little miracles that happen along the way.

It’s my new normal.

Understandably, it’s very frustrating for non-addicts to stand by and watch helplessly as they try to comprehend what we do and how we do it. But it’s just another day in the office for the rest of us. It’s something we simply must do.

If you ever see me about and I’m looking calm, cool, happy, and contented – don’t be fooled! It’s bullshit. Inside I’m ducking, dodging, weaving, and kicking the living crap out of my lifelong and mortal enemy. You’ll know what I mean if you’re fighting your own addiction.

In recovery, we are like The Borg from Star Trek. We are the collective, interconnected, the same – we are one! Whatever the country, language, gender, class, or status. But unlike the characters from Star Trek, we always try to be nice to our fellow humans.

In short, life is finally getting shall we say . . . interesting, to say the least! I’m getting there.

If you are reading this and you are struggling in your own recovery – keep going! Just keep going! Don’t ever give up! Who knows where it may lead? But wherever it goes, surely it must better than the hell you have come from. What have you got to lose?

Stay safe everyone xx

Off Facebook

Day 233.

I’ve decided to come off Facebook for six months to get on with my writing. I’m finding it hideously distracting. Below is the last post I wrote there. I’ve left it unedited and as it was. Apologies to the grammar Nazis:

My son bought me a phone case for my birthday two years ago. My phone has been in it ever since. A bit like me, the case is worn and tattered around the edges. I took the phone out of the case last night and realised it’s the first time I’ve seen my it in the buff since I bought it. Again, like me, it’s surprisingly thin and a little grubby and quiet. So, I cleaned it up and it looks as new as the day i bought it. Because my case has kept it safe.

When my son bought this present for me, things were bad, really bad. He chose a case with these words on it to remind me every day that the past is the past and it’s time to look forward. He was trying to help his dad. He never judged me then and still doesn’t.

I look at these words every day and see my son in my head. I’m safe. The words and my son’s image are ‘my’ case – I feel his baby breath on my skin, his hugs, hear his giggles and he holds my hand. Wonderful memories. They stop me getting scuffed, scratched, and damaged, or worse. I’m simply, safe. I’m in ‘my’ case. It’s a nice place to be, considering present circumstances. A time that I need every tool in the box to stay strong and keep moving forward.

This is my last day on Facebook for a while. So, I can follow my hopes and dreams without the screaming distraction of the internet.

I will always have the words on my phone case. It’s time to write some new ones. Lots of them. Tomorrow my presence won’t be here. It’ll be busy creating my future. All is good.

Thank you, Oz

Dad xxx