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 51st 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.
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