Acceptance and Tolerance

 Acceptance and Tolerance

I know some of you have been following my story for some time, others not so much and others really don’t care. Whatever you have gleaned from my pieces on my recovery, the one thing that cannot be mistaken is the novelty of my first five years. It is within that novelty, and that constant reaching and trying that has left me here. Smothered with perceived acceptance and tolerance, little understanding and utter silence.

I walked into my first meeting with a cane and three herniated disks in my back, a broken bone in my pelvis and sciatica that would drop the biggest tough guy. Not only did I have my alcoholism to get a handle on, but I had to jump through the hoops of a pain management clinic I am still with today, and a number of other issues. Now I can’t say my troubles are more or greater in difficulty than others, I am just saying that there is a novelty of it, one that has been missed and misplaced for a long time. I have brought this up because of something my Grand Sponsor said at a meeting and directed it at me. The lazy bit, not going to enough meetings, not getting a job, or being involved more. I was furious for a second until I realized that just like my mother; there would be no pleasing or making proud this person. They don’t even know how to begin to get who and what I am and what is different about now. Very much in the vein of people are all alike, so their actions and reactions must be derived from the same motivations. Sorry, that never fit me and that has been the problem. Putting regular folk’s motivations and thoughts behind my actions will leave you curiously frustrated in no time. I don’t follow that mold and never have I you want to know what or why I am doing it; you should ask me because you may be surprised at my reply.

I am not ungrateful; this man helped me much understanding alcoholism and myself even better. I would not have found my other genetic disposition without his help in some way. This Gifted business is a very real deal, and when I found groups of like minded and tested individuals I was complete. For the first time in my life I had the last set of questions maybe not answered but a direction given to answer them. The timeline of events and actions to the lay observer in my recovery has been too complicated to care about and too unbelievable for most to accept.

In the first five years of my recovery from drugs and alcohol; I have run the gambit. Change everything is a motto of sorts in the rooms, change is fine when you are willing. Yet when you are forced to change everything because of one thing or another, and you are in fact cruising along; people in the rooms don’t care. Grand Sponsors as well. Innuendo and suspicion, back talk and everything else runs the best of folks away, smothered by the acceptance and tolerance that people who told them they were friends and family. They will speak the truth or lies about you, but not to you, how is that for this honesty business that is being coddled away. I have had three back surgeries, swine flu, acute diverticulitus, Intestinal cancer, bladder infection, kidney infection, pneumonia three times, and now a rare sinus issue in which my Eustachian tube stays open on my right side. That is after they removed the polyp, and after my genetically prone to clotting blood had been managed into a less painful consistency. All they while not being able to work, dropping over a quarter of my weight and half my muscle mass. Exacerbating my back once again; Never mind the two times I had bad reactions to medications and almost died on the table one time, my blood becoming too toxic for me to pump. Toss on the fact that I am sensitive to medications and it is a blessing to be here at all. I would call that novel; I would call that just not a normal way to go through the first five years of finding yourself. I am working on resentments still, because I have to keep on practicing the practicing and doing what I can to keep going. I am not a writer, I am not an artist, I am not anything to anyone, and that’s ok. I am something to me; I am busy on another level mostly unseen by the outside world. I am an introvert and an empathic and it pains me more when people just don’t get it. Yet, it is here I find myself mostly alone in this recovery business because I am absolutely smothered by the tolerance and acceptance that has been shown to me over this time. So please speak to me and ask things about me from those who know. Assuming that you know my story is kind of hard when the first thing you said is that you haven’t been listening.

I will eventually get through the gambit, I am almost there now. I never have fit the molds of expectations around me. I just got all my wisdom teeth pulled a week before my 51^st birthday; I am in Physical Therapy and I still suffer from intestinal issues and diet. I am trying to gain weight and find it difficult at best. But I will put away my thoughts and dreams, I will bury them once more to be found in the dimply lit areas of life; and I will move on. It is all about acceptance an tolerance and change, I just have to accept that my dreams and expectations are just that dreams and expectations and I can’t live my life if I don’t simply move on and forget about this part of me once more. Cheers.