The Breath of Life

It's been a hard weekend, but a good one. My emotions are just all over the place these days!

On Friday night, I made out with TT. On Saturday, I was blown off by Narc. It wasn't easy. I haven't heard a peep out of him since I sent that email. I don't know what that means. I don't know what he's thinking. But, my sponsor told me that my primary job when it comes to Narc is to stop trying to figure out what he's thinking. I'm trying to take her suggestions. It's so hard though. All I can think of is that this is all my fault-- if I didn't tell him that I was upset he threw away my Valentine... if I didn't tell him it bothered me that PopStar's picture was still up on his desktop... Oh well...

I couldn't fall asleep at all on Friday night. As such, I overslept and missed the women's meeting that I like to go to on Saturday mornings. I decided to head to a 10:30 beginners meeting instead-- one where I knew I would find Brick. I haven't hung out with Brick since Sunday, February 18th. It was really nice to see him again because I miss him, but at the same time, it was all tempered with semi-repressed anger. I feel completely blown off by him... blown off and used. When he needs me, he's omnipresent. When he doesn't feel like making the effort to make plans or stay in touch, he disappears. It doesn't matter what I need. Of course not...

"Are we ever going to hang out again?" I asked Brick.

"Of course," he said. "Why don't you meet me at noon tomorrow for a meeting and then we can hang out after that-- a Brick and Hyde day!"

"Okay, but you better not cancel on me!"

After the meeting, Brick asked if I wanted to get lunch with him and a friend of his, but I couldn't-- I had plans to meet B. I headed to a diner in midtown. The weather was perfect. On my walk home from the diner, my phone rang. It was an "unknown caller" and so I picked up.

"Hello? This is OddBall," came a voice on the other end.

"OddBall? OddBall?" I racked my brain. (OddBall's real name is, in fact, a quite common name. I don't know if you remember him, but he's in AA and he called to ask me out back in January. I never called him back.)

"You know... OddBall from AA."

"Oh! How are you???"

The conversation proceeded very awkwardly from there, peaking at a discussion of the beautiful spring weather. It felt like pulling teeth. I was horrified when he asked me out again for a "walk in Central Park" and I heard myself accept. What was I doing???? First I made out with TT on Friday night, not really wanting to, and then I accepted a date I didn't want?!?! (I really am "just a girl who can't say no.")

To make matters worse, when I got home, I had a text from TT:

Thanks for coming out last night. Good times. If you want to grab a bite or something between stressing on your presentation, don't hesitate to call! (What am I saying? I mean 'text.') ;-)

Ugh. I didn't answer him. (And I still haven't. Does that make me a terrible person?)

Anyway, that was Saturday. That afternoon, I got that email from Narc and later cut my wrist. Then I went to the movies with Bezoukhoff and that night sent the reply email to Narc. I feel so powerless, so disposable, so utterly abandoned... like garbage.

Late that night I remembered that I had made morning plans with Hammer and that I couldn't meet Brick for the 12:00 pm meeting. I sent him a message asking if we could meet afterwards instead.

Once again, I couldn't sleep that night. All I could think about was Narc... how much I love him and the absolutely sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

At 8:21 am, on barely three hours of sleep, I was awakened by the soft beeping of an incoming text message. I snatched the phone. Was it Narc? It was Brick.

No worries... I may hang with my sponsor after, he wrote.

So... he was cancelling on me again?!?! This made it the fourth time in a row. I called him up. We spoke for a few minutes and I told him how I felt. I told him that I felt unimportant; I told him that when he's needy he's around and then he disappears on me; I told him that it hurt. He said that he is busy and that he's trying to balance AA and work. I told him that if he doesn't have room for me in his life, that's fine, but I can't keep my heart open and stay vulnerable as a friend.

When we hung up the phone, I burst into tears. It was the first time I've had a serious cry in a long, long time. God knows, I needed it! I cried until I was choking. I cried until I couldn't see and couldn't breathe. I am so sick of investing so much love in people who can so easily discard me. I'm sick of caring so much about people who can turn around and act like I don't exist. I felt so powerless... so utterly out of control and alone. I wanted to die.

I am exactly that person they talk about in Chapter 5 of the Big Book. I am still running on self-will and it hurts like hell.

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.

What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. He begins to think life doesn't treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?

In any case, I cried until I could cry no more. I called B and tried to get him to tell me that he loves me (without directly asking him to say it). It only sort of works. Every single time I hang up the phone with B, I say "love you." Every single time, he answers "okay. Bye." I know he loves me. But I wish that sometimes he'd read his lines right. Then I called my sponsor. By that time, I was able to stop the tears. There was nothing else to do.

There wasn't time for moping through the afternoon on Sunday, as I had done on Saturday. I had plans to meet Hammer at our "German diner." We brunched together and caught up on a lot of things and then went for tea at a beautiful little Japanese tea house where we drank Jasmine tea and ate chocolate mochi. At around 6:00 I headed to my meeting and to meet my sponsor. She told me that I had to call OddBall and cancel the date.

"It's good practice for you," she said.

And so, I did. I made the excuse that I really shouldn't date with under a year of sobriety.

By the time I got home and to bed on Sunday night, I was exhausted. And I was still sad.

On Monday I got up bright and early to teach. Afterwards, I had a special plan. Does anyone remember when I decided to learn to paint Russian icons last May? (I wrote about it here. It was only a few days after I first got sober.) I never went back to work on my icon, until now. On Monday I headed back to the studio. My icon was still there-- just barely beginning, red clay edging the frame and forming a base for the halo. I sat down to work on it, and there I stayed for the next four hours, in quiet contemplation surrounded by burning incense, Russian chant and three or four other iconographers. My task this time was to prepare the clay on the halo for gilding. First I had to sand it very carefully with two types of sandpaper. Next, I had to varnish the clay, rubbing it with a piece of glass. This revealed any imperfections in my sanding and several times I had to begin the process over. When this was finally done, it was time for the gold leaf.

Tatiana, the instructor, explained to me that the clay symbolizes man, as God made Adam from clay and that the gold symbolizes the divine.

"When we pray," she said, "and we pray correctly, there is a union of mind and heart. We are able to connect our divine self to our human self. It is like the gold sticking to the clay. Since we are in the image of God, God is in us."

She told me that to get the gold to stick to the clay, we had to moisten it. Since every task in writing icons is symbolic, the way to moisten the clay was to brush our lips against the icon and breathe on it.

"Just as God breathed life into man," she pointed out.

I had already attached the gold leaf to wax paper and cut it into strips. After each breath, I had to quickly press the gold onto the clay and wait a few seconds for it to stick. Then, with a dry paintbrush, I brushed away the excess. My first few attempts at this were rather miserable and I only got the gold to stick in a few spots. To make matters worse, the gold was so delicate that small mistakes would put a wrinkle in the strip. I felt guilty wasting such a precious material, but after a while, I got the hang of it. For over an hour, breath by breath, I breathed life into my icon and laid down two layers of gold. I united mind and heart. I connected the divine with the human. I breathed life into something.

This whole process was a powerful one for me. I can't quite explain why, but it gave me a tinge of guilt for hurting myself. For disrespecting God's creation. I'm not really a "believer" in God. But, for that afternoon, I was.

At about 4:30 pm, I left the studio. Here's the result of my work so far:




















That night I headed out to an 11th step meditation meeting. The speaker reminded me a lot of myself. She also lost her father as a little girl and she also made a decision not to believe in anything greater than herself. When she came into the program she didn't have any belief in God or any concept of God, but she proceeded anyway. For some reason, hearing her talk, matched with my iconography experience, things started to make some strange kind of sense to me. I imagined all of the step-work I'm doing now as the sanding and the varnishing of the clay-- necessary prerequisites to being able to lay down the gilding. And even when the clay is prepared, it's not easy to apply the gold. Every small piece has to be lovingly and carefully applied with a new breath. I can't quite explain the spiritual shift in understanding that happened for me, but that is where I was at.

In any case, that night I went home to watch 24. Dan was back in town after his trip for Florida, awaiting more interviews for his teaching programs, and so he came over to watch with me. I quickly caught him up to date on the plot. Afterwards, we talked for a while, but I couldn't stay up too late, as I had hardly gotten any sleep over the weekend and it was catching up to me.

Tuesday was Brick's birthday. Because I believe in what B has lovingly termed the "dictatorship of the birthday," I had to put my feelings aside and wish him a happy one. I called him just before midnight to be the first one to greet him. He didn't pick up the phone, but I left a message telling him that I love him and that I'm proud of him. The next afternoon, he sent me a text back: Thanks... i love u.

Tuesday was also a birthday for my home group-- the 13th anniversary of its founding. The meeting was supposed to be huge, so after teaching and lunch with B, I got there at around 5:00 pm (for a 7:00 pm meeting!) to drop off the milk and save some seats for me and Meema. Would you believe it? There were already tons of people there! I saw OddBall milling around.

"I completely understand," he said, in reference to my cancellation of Monday's date. "But how much time do you have now?"

"Almost ten months."

"Oh! So, you're almost to your year," he smiled.

"Yes," I smiled back.

Shit, shit, shit, was all I was thinking, though.

In any case, everyone was abuzz with one opinion or another about the night's speaker. Apparently, he is quite a character. He flew in all the way from LA to talk to us. Before the meeting began, I went out for a quick bite with Cherubino and a new "sober sister," Cortland. When we returned to the church, I saw Meema in our seats and she was sitting with Talis. I've only seen Talis once since I fired her as my sponsor and even though I've called her twice, she has never returned my calls. Nevertheless, I'm still sickeningly sweet to her, as she is to me.

"Thank so much for saving us seats, Hyde!" she smiled. "I think there's room for my boyfriend here too!"

There was no room for her boyfriend, nor was there room for her. I had only saved two seats-- one for me and one for Meema. In order for Talis and her boyfriend to fit, we had to push down some other seat markers on the pew and I felt guilty doing so. It was really annoying, but I bit my tongue and didn't' say anything.

The speaker was great. It was incredibly moving and he was charismatic and phenomenal. Afterwards they did a "countdown" for the anniversary. First they asked members of the steering committee to stand up, then members who had chaired a meeting, then members who were sponsorship chairs or activity chairs, etc, then coffee people, greeters, etc. Pretty soon, the whole meeting was standing-- over 400 people. Then, they asked those under a year to sit back down, then those with two years, three years, and so on. It was amazing to see those still standing with ten, twenty, thirty, forty and one man with nearly fifty years of sobriety! If I make it fifty years sober, I'll be 77! I was so overwhelmed with emotion at the scope of what is being accomplished by those of us in the rooms. I used to be so much more cynical, but I'm now surrounded by people who are actually (in the approximated words of Gandhi) "being the change we want to see in the world."

Last night, I was exhausted by the time I got home. I talked to Liu on the phone for a while, and then to both of my sisters and my mom! I also started reading The Triads by Gregory Palamas, a 14th century Orthodox scholar, a proponent of hesychastic theology, or mystical prayer. It was recommended to me by Tatiana at the iconography school.

But in spite of everything, there is still one nagging and gnawing thought returning to my mind with every thought cycle... Narc, Narc, Narc. It hurts and I hate it. Last night at around 11:00, I sent a text to my sponsor:

I'm dying. I want to text him so badly. Going to take a shower to keep myself away from the phone. I feel like I'm white knuckling it with Narc. It's maddening!!

Pray. Take it one day, was her reply.

So, that's what I'm trying to do. But it hurts so fucking bad. It hurts so much more than it shows... more than I will ever let on.

But, I'm trying... I'm still trying...

love,
h