acceptance – Trezvennost II

Perception of Reality: A Crisis

More and more lately I catch myself wondering if life would be easier for me due to my perceptions of things happening if I wasn’t so profoundly entertained by social media, especially including movies, advertisements, songs, and books. I think I’ve been deceived about how life does and should work.

Illusion is something I’ve been fighting regarding alcohol intoxication through the last 14 years of sobriety, and yet illusion has kept me in a choke, nevertheless. I just didn’t pay proper attention to it.

Illusion of how people behave and talk. How they joke. How they take life’s curve balls. How they react, freak out and how they fuck. How they walk away from things and what are the consequences of their unpopular decisions. How is all that perceived and judged by society. All of those questions are valid, and I ponder them more often lately.

I think people’s freak-outs and catching curve balls, and the society’s reaction to those are most central for me in this ongoing wondering session. If I preferred to keep silence instead of responding, or walk out and slam the door, the situation will not magically resolve itself. The people whose face I’ve slammed the door in still will be there when I come back and I’d have some good explaining to do instead of receiving a pat on the shoulder and an “OK!” to my nonchalant remark “I’ve got a lot on my mind” like a protagonist would do in a cop show. And yet for a long time I thought the cop show approach was completely appropriate. I also thought the situation may resolve itself. So many times in the past I wondered why it hadn’t. I mean, I walked away from setting fire to the whole settlement, so why do I have to resolve anything now?

Nobody just understands you if you flash a grin as an explanation for a screaming match. No witness will just turn around and leave. Even friends and loved ones who understand you, they still need to be talked to about what caused the disturbing/inappropriate/insensitive behaviour. To talk to – I don’t think I was taught to do that. I was expected to do that, but I didn’t know how. I haven’t learned it.

I wish relationships and communication were taught at school as religiously as math and history. They should’ve replaced organic chemistry or geometry with “how to talk and not talk to others” workshops. I think it would make up for much more caring and supportive societies.

I guess my perception of reality crisis, it will bloom from here on now that I may have faced the truth of it. It’s good to be aware. As for the lessons, they will keep coming up. All I think I need is to patiently continue acquiring adequate ways of handling them and improving my behavior conduct. For most of my life, being taught was not a fun process. Let’s see how it goes from here on.

the image was copied from https://jackiejain.wordpress.com/2016/04/11/i-is-for-identity-and-illusion-day-9/ thank you.

Get Used To

Early February 2005 was three months before I quit poisoning my body and mind. That month I wrote the piece presented below. It’s quite amazing I still had some good brain matter working well.

Yesterday I was swearing heavily at my PC. Some invincible virus has infected the computer and it makes all web pages I open in Internet close or “hang-on” whenever it wants or for whatever period of time it wants. It wants… That is the thing. If you think about it, computer doesn’t want. It doesn’t have a will, a mind, a soul. It is just a working machine with electronics sown though it from left to right and from top to bottom. If the virus has infected the system, machine stops working properly. No curse, no damnation, no active misbehaviour of the machine. Just electronics. It reminds me of people who try to start a car and it doesn’t go. “Come on, work it!” And the engine is silent. “Work it, for God’s sake!” Engine starts. Just a whole bunch of metal, honestly, though you sometime start thinking your prayers have been heard.

Just a whole bunch of metal. Just electronics. We know it. However, I freak out when the “Word” program makes me type a sentence for two minutes. One sentence – two minutes. Words are typed but haven’t been displayed yet and are showing up slowly, one by one. I freak out and swear, but it works as effectively as milking a cat. Couple a months ago I was trying to write an email to my folks back home and had to call out Yahoo web page three times in a row, for it was disappearing as soon as I have type my password and pressed a button to go. Three times. Computer god was laughing at me. Aha… Computer god, right. Listen to Black Sabbath. But seriously, now I am not surprised. I got used to. I call out the program twice, more times until I got the result I needed and it finally works, even after computer being restarted twice. The letter is typed and sent. Bravo.

Earlier that day, in the morning I was waiting for LRT to take me downtown. A group of down-syndrome kids, escorted by either guides or teachers, goes down the ladders and join me in my wait. Maybe not just down-syndrome. Who knows. I can’t distinguish. Poor little kids who looks at the world the way it makes us laugh when we are kids ourselves and have little tolerance for things. Though now when I look at them, I feel nothing but pity.

So there are those female guides, two of them who watch the kids, sit them on the benches and keep them from climbing railings. I watch them, walking there and back impatient for the train to come. A guy who was sitting at the bench next to that group got up and walked for at least fifteen meters away. When I‘ve been passing him by, he said in a low voice: “Can’t sit there next to them… How do they manage to deal with ‘em?” I understood the last part of his phrase was related to the guides. I looked at them. They definitely didn’t have a fun time: watch every kid of ten or fifteen. A kid that can’t just be told “don’t do it.” A kid that needs to be nursed; not a toddler, but a seven year old, almost helpless because of his mental deformity. I said in a low voice: “I believe you can get used to almost anything.” The guy nodded and answered: “But it is a constant headache!” I just nodded. Then the train came. This guy went to the last carriage, I’ve got myself in the middle, and where did the kids go I don’t know and didn’t really care at all, I was into my stuff, I had lots of things to be done that day. Though now I remembered. And I thought.

I thought, you can really get used to almost anything. You can get used to the fact that every day you stare at the faces of the number of kids who experience down-syndrome. Kids that have to be nursed, watched, be fed and clothed and treated not like a mistake of a human kind, but as a living being that deserved care. That is not their fault they’ve been born that way.

You can get used to the fact that for long months you lay in the trenches full of stagnant water and mud, holding defence of the territory and the bombs fall and explode every thirty minutes, and you are deafened and exhausted, hungry and thirsty, none knows what for. Lost in the battle field and every day you watch your yesterday friends been carried out of the hospital tent and been packed in black plastic bags. And no one knows when will the end of this hell will come.

You can get used to the fact your loved ones are not with you anymore and there is no way you can have them back soon, ‘cause you are separated from them with lands and oceans. You can work hard and dream of meeting them some beautiful sunny day, and that day never comes, and you just get used to it and live on.

And you can get used to the fact that your computer “hangs-on” every time you start it, but you have no time to call a technician to fix it or to do it yourself. The computer “hangs” and “hangs-on”, like a war criminal on the gallows pole, for weeks, and you get used to it and keep on going with it, with downloading easy programs for hours, and it eats your time, eats your patience, your sense of confidence. Though you get used to it.

And you also can get used to the fact that some moron defecates in the lobby of your floor in the apartment house, in the middle of the room, every God given day. No bloody way to get the person and kick his dirty ass, and you catch yourself on the idea that you getting used to it. To this shit. You can press hard on your Residence Manager or Resident Assistant, for they would hire a security officer with a face of gorilla and a grip of a bulldog, and put tracing cameras on the walls to check the situation out. But you just hang on, just like a war criminal on the gallows pole in the middle of the desert where God’s eye is tired to watch and just… say it: You get used to it.

You can get used to anything. It is just that some things are never to be changed, and there are some that could be changed if some effort is applied. Make an effort. Make a difference. And let the Force be with you.

the image was copied from https://kadampalife.org/2016/03/14/accepting-unhappiness-without-panicking/ thanks.

Teachable

The whiskey I quite liked in high school was called Teacher’s. I only tried it twice, but somehow developed love for it, and the memory of that affection somehow remained for two decades. In them days when the cult of Teacher’s whiskey stood strong, I didn’t like teachers, or instructors, or professors. I couldn’t stand school and classes. I was pretty much forced to go to college right after school so that I would avoid serving in the army.

When I’ve quit drinking, I’ve realized studying was becoming easier. I’ve developed more interest in subjects I was studying, and I started having more conversations with my instructors, and hey, I started liking the teachers a bit more.

The more I went through the recovery and life alongside it, the more I was becoming teachable. And that doesn’t mean I was taking shit from those who cared to give it. I’ve learned to listen and keep listening even if I felt like I really had to say something, to support or to oppose the speaker’s point of view. I’ve learned to retain and analyze what I heard or read, and to recall situations that may have had something to do with what I’ve just learned. I’d see the patterns between the past and the present, and if it called for it, I’ve allowed myself and often forced myself to learn from the mistakes I’ve made.

I would never have stayed sober even for a year, hell, for a month, if I didn’t listen to a group of strangers in the strange room one summer evening. They taught me something that I’ve never considered would work. I had nothing better to propose, so I pondered the lesson they taught me and took it to heart to act on it. What followed was the path of hard work of changing my lifestyle and attitude to the world around me, but with that I’ve acquired freedom and true joy from living that I didn’t have much of prior to that.

After I graduated with the three-year college degree that thanks to my alcoholic adventures took ten years to receive, I went to school two more times and the last time I somehow managed to graduate with honors. I am still amazed by that one. But I kept learning outside of school as well. I learned from the things the strangers kept speaking in the recovery meetings.

One day I learned about creating a healthy routine that started with making your bed every morning. Having that done would mark one accomplishment on the map of the day even when I really didn’t want to go and get things happening. I proceeded with creating more of a healthy routine and that keeps me in check and my mind clear.

Another day I was walking my dog in the neighborhood by a wall with a graffiti on it that said “Life Starts When You Say Yes.” I will be honest, I resented that one. It was in bright colors and it read too optimistic even for my liking, like a person who smiles all the time to the pointed you’re considering punching them in the teeth. Yet the more I passed by that graffiti, the more I pondered the message. I realized that it rang very true in almost everything in my life. I’d see a challenge, either stumble on it or see it passing by, and when I accepted it, interesting and positive things started happening. So today I’m writing about it. I must have allowed myself to accept being teachable one more time.

The message is kind of smells of making a new year’s resolution and I’m not making one, haha. But I think what I’m doing is I’m giving myself a very feeble promise to keep trying new things when I face them. New stuff, different things, man, I can’t stand that. Something in me just revolts in situations like that. But… It’s like you’re in a training for work with a bunch of people most of whom you don’t know and then they ask you to join in groups and discuss stuff at hand, and write stuff down on posters. Each time that moment comes, I hate it. And yet when we do get in groups and share experience and possibilities, it almost always comes to interesting ideas and good conversations. I should remember that.

Sometimes I feel like I have grown into an old and conservative fellow. But I remind myself that I can be teachable when I want to, and sometimes I really have to be teachable when I don’t want to. The last time I did that, the universe has saved and changed my life for the better (see the written ramble above). So I gonna keep trying to say “yes” more often than in the past.

the rights for the artwork in the provided image belong to the unknown street artist. thank you.