Shutting the door on my past

It's so easy.  It's so hard. It's so impossible.

They say that we should never shut the door on our past.  But damn, god damn I want slam the door in its face so hard.  Just like all the ex-boyfriends I have.  Kick it's sorry ass out on the lawn. I have so much practice with sticking my middle finger through the window and telling the thing outside to fuck off and die.  To slither away and find the ratchet hole it escaped from.  

I do that from time to time in my recovery.  I treat my recovery like my junkie ex-boyfriend. Maybe I'll get a drunk text message at night from it, maybe I'll get a whining I'm sorry, maybe I'll answer the door when it decides to bang it down. Maybe I'll believe it when it says it'll pay me money back.  In the end I want nothing to do with any of my junkie ex boyfriends, and some of them aren't even on this earth anymore. But they still show up knocking.

And this is how my recovery started. It's pretty brilliant,  I decided I wasn't an alcoholic but I went to an AA meeting.  I wasn't an alcoholic I just had this wee little problem with drugs and a pretty serious history with substances.  I just smoked a bunch of meth when I was fifteen years old, smashed a bunch of ecstasy pills drank almost everyday for maybe eight years.  I hid my life from everyone and I showed everyone what they wanted to see.  I tried so hard to show that I was ok, that I think I began believing it.  Until I couldn't even fool myself anymore.

So, I said AA's is kinda something I'd be willing to try because I'm only completely done with living this bull shit life style. And I went to my first meeting.  If asked me what I heard that meeting I couldn't tell you because I was drowned out my own voice in my head telling me I wasn't an alcoholic.  I wasn't a REAL drug addict, I just had adolescent angst. I wasn't as they say "under the bridge with the brown paper bag" but if you invited me to a cool party down there, fuck yeah I'll go! But I managed my life just enough to get by to tell myself that I really didn't have a problem to talk about.

Until I stopped drinking.

Turn that shit to 11.

So cool, here I am sweating my balls off not wanting to be an alcoholic or a drug addict.  Usually how people come into recovery, I'm not special.  I seem to think I am though, time and time again.  Anytime I go to a detox center to speak, I always try to convince the people present that "DUDE, MY DETOX WAS THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME!" It was exactly that, it's not pretty its not cool to not able to walk or stand.  It's not cool feeling a pit in your stomach all hours of the day. It's not fun shaking while you're cold and sweating down your ass hole.  It's not the best thing to feel.  It's not fun turning away food but resourcing to candy for a fix.  It's not fun to sit in a shower and get just the tiniest bit of physical relief from body aches and feel like you're catching the flu for ninety days, its just not awesome. 

It's the best thing that ever happened to me because I knew I was an alcoholic.  I sat there in those beginning meetings with my soul suffocating in on my chest, actually being able to identify with recovered drug addicts telling myself I still did not have a problem.  My higher power turned that shit to 11.  Because without all this doubt about my addiction, I had the power amp of fucking low grade agonizing detox for ninety god damn days. 

And I STILL like to shut the door on my past. Why? Because the amp that goes to 11 is loud and obnoxious and its incovnient to whatever quiet bull shit I'm telling myself that I'm really ok.  And if you haven't seen Spinal Tap, just do yourself the favor.  I recommend it with a group of people, its way more enjoyable.  

The point that I'm trying to make is that treacherous pain that my detox put me through helped me realize that I truly had a problem beyond something that I could even comprehend. Beyond something of definitions that I had in my vocabulary.  Beyond my existence, because I did not know how to exists beyond it.

Come in for tea.

I deny my disease because it become inconvenient to me and then I become inconvenient to myself. It becomes a hardening in my life, a boulder if you will that stands right in front of me.  I still do this because I don't want to be this person, because I'm so scared that if I don't slam the door, tell it to go fuck itself, change the locks that it's going to come back it's going to be seen.  People are going to see what it was that I was, and that I truly am not worthy of the life. Like I'm going to be caught.  Excuse me, I'm looking for Katherine and I'm trying to take her back to where she belongs and its not with you fine people its by herself with a forty and a blunt.  

I live a life beyond my wildest dreams today that it becomes difficult for me to look on the past.  And I become afraid of it.  I become afraid that people are going to find me out. That what that chick was capable of doing then, she's fully capable of doing it now.  I feel that way with employers, with people I date, with people I'm friends with, with professionals or just people in the creative community.  I get uncomfortable around teachers and kids sometimes because I don't feel worthy to be in some sort of presence.  

I shut the door of my past from the fear that I have to live.  We can't dictate this disease.  I tried doing it for way too long, it doesn't work.  I end up waking up in my bed covered in puke and leaving the oven on all night.  

I can't shut the door on my past because first of all, it's exhausting and impossible.  And second, I can't shut the door because it always comes knocking.  Instead I shall invite her for tea.  I shall forgive her.  I shall listen to her speak, because that's all she wants.  She's not my ex-boyfriend that stole money from me. She's the girl that got her money stolen from.  She just wanted to make a pizza while she was drunk, but because she was so sick and intoxicated she passed out instead.  She's also tired. She also just wants to be heard. I can't shut the door on my past because no lock can keep it out. But I can invite her for tea and hear what she has to say.  Shit, maybe she'll offer me some advice on my life today. 

Instead of denying that it happened in fear of not being able to have life that I want to LIVE today, which is me managing the program and god. I just want to change the channel on the metaphorical television show that I believe is the show I'm trying to live, or better yet MUTE that shit.  I don't want to pay for that package of life, I want the whole package at the lower price.  But sometimes to get that rad ass nat geo channel you have to pay to for the phone line.  And that phone line could save your life if your dog is stuck to the ceiling one night and your cell phone is dead, (don't wanna get too serious).  But really, you gotta sit through the commercials to see what happens.