reality – 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.

Saved by the Wall

Thanks to Brian for the wall inspiration.

In the grey mist nothing was to be seen, or so it appeared. I ran fast, making jumps here and there. I yelled loudly, they were curses and shouts of joy. Growls were loud to the point that as they left my mouth, my throat hurt. Yet still I did it, because I wanted to express all of my anguish and joy of liberation which I thought I was experiencing. And when I was just about to make it out of the woods, I ran into something. I should’ve known, of course, what it was – I ran into it so many times before. Still somehow, I managed to forget each time. So much good time, so much forgotten in the midst of it. I hated the pain that pierced my head, I hated forgetting, but oh how I hated remembering! It would always appear just when I started to have a real good time. I looked at the wall that mounted above me, and I recalled more and more of the past instances. Resentments, pain, need for the cure, instantaneous relief, blinding intoxication, freedom at the tip of my tongue and all over my brain, and then – hitting the wall and all the self-loathing that came along with it…

No, that is not the wall to symbolize the isolation as in the great Pink Floyd album/movie, although in me past of self-destruction that certainly would come over for a visit and stay for a long time if I’d allow it… and I did.

Each time my mind wanted to party, even if it was a celebration of the day just for me, myself, and I, my body would perform all the necessary rituals, no matter how tired it may have been minutes prior. I’d run to the store to get booze so fast I’d beat an Olympic champion. And then the chug-chug-chug must-do and I was back in business of fun. Colors came back, and the reality would retreat. And since I could never stop if I started, I’d let party keep going. More beating Olympic champions would follow, and oh dear, how bad my stomach was ravaged, while my mind danced not realizing it was kept being raped!

And then would come that time when my spirit would be running in the grey mist of not seeing too clearly anymore and then BAM! I’d hit the wall. I’d be lying there wonder what the hell happened. Most of the time that would happen in the morning after. What a crash! Getting on with the day in “the morning after” was like a world war! And I could never learn from that lesson of which I had thousands.

Lessons! Oh, how well I tried to ignore those! I kept trying to bash my head through the wall. Just kept doing the same thing. Then I decided it would be smart to try and walk around the wall. My mind was looking for the loopholes in the Creation that would allow me out-smart my body. Mostly those attempts were based on the advises from other drinkers. Listening to those, I was rejoiced. The illusion that the grass is greener somewhere out there where we aren’t at yet didn’t want to die. I believed I could still find the way to be happy on my own terms, doing what I wanted, being reckless if they just let me, or dream all day long if life allowed it.

And yet I kept hitting the wall, only these times instead of being blinded by pain and growling helplessly, I’d be wondering aloud “Hey, I ate this time!” or “I was drinking water too!” or “Well, I wasn’t mixing anything!” And no, those attempts to calm down hangovers didn’t work for me. My body simply didn’t want to have anything to do with alcoholic intoxication beyond certain point. Problem was, I couldn’t stop drinking at any point except for brain shut down, or I’d be out of money, or the liquor store was closed.

The wall was a testimony to my being unteachable and lost in denial. Yet at the same time, all these times I failed to see that the wall was also the extremely useful limitation created for the sake of my self-preservation, my body trying to teach me a vital lesson. It was to signify my boundary I believed I wanted to and could cross, but my body and mind won’t allow me to. It worked just as the blackout was not a curse, but just my body shutting down on me so I wouldn’t kill myself with all the truly lethal massive dosage of ethyl spirits.

It is easier to see now that I was spending crazy amounts of money and time to pretty much kill myself each time over the last several years of my drinking “career”, while I was thinking I was having a good time, diving headlong into the illusion of running away from reality for a little while. The wall of my body and mind reactions saved me, and yet I felt I was weak and needed to strengthen it by building a seasoned drinker’s attitude and gut. Silly, but sad.

And that just how my mind and body reacted in the real time. The way my mind was screwed by my own hands during those years is sometimes hard to look back at, so crazy those thoughts and ideations were. I still say in the AA meetings that this recovery fellowship literally was the best thing that ever happened to me. No lie about that. I’ve learned about my limits. I’ve learned how not to run away from life, and I’m still better at it these days then in the past. I became better with living in my skin and accepting responsibilities. And I no longer go too crazy to kill myself and deny it.

Thank you for fourteen years of sobriety!

the image was copied from https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen/comments/b3xhua/found_it_the_wall/ thanks.

Awakening

vestido1 Soiled mattress.

Bed creaks every time he makes the slightest turn.

Light bulbs are broken, so at night darkness is absolute.

Window panes are broken to open no more,

Glass is gone, wind blows in uninvited at all times.

Ceiling leaks, cold blobs hit him on the head,

Waking him up in shivers.

Wallpaper shouldn’t be called that anymore,

“Nightmare of a stained paper in ribbons” is more appropriate.

How can he live like that?

What kind of a person could ignore

The glaring signs of such disgust and stagnation.

What a disaster of existence that is!

I looked at that and shivered,

But not in repulsion.

More of recognition.

I forgot that I used to live like that

Not physically, perhaps, but in my mind.

Stagnation of thinking and reasoning was my unconscious motto.

I used to poison myself with things that I believed made me well,

That helped me escape reality and emotional pain,

And so I lived in a dump of a mind,

Disaster of a belief,

Brain room with leaking ceiling and stained walls shred into ribbons,

Sleeping in a soiled bed that creaked loudly and annoyingly

Each time I turned.

Every once in a while, I would wake up from that sleep

That felt eternal, oblivious to reality,

And I looked at what I found myself at,

Terrified, refusing to believe

What have I got myself into on a seemingly permanent basis,

And scared of the truth of it, I’d shut my eyes

And try to sleep some more,

Resisting reality, closing my eyes on the self borne insanity.

It’s a miracle that one day I woke up and stayed that way.

I could no longer breathe in the stench

Of my own mental decomposition,

Could no longer fail to see

The almost complete destruction of sense and equilibrium.

I stopped making peace with enslavement.

Stopped letting the fairytale sooth me for another day.

It’s a miracle that I still stay awake.

My room is clean now.

The bed is fixed, and I do laundry regularly.

I fixed the windows and changed the wallpaper.

I will not let the lie win.

I don’t allow myself fall into forgetting what I am

And how I can so easily fall into a trap

Of embracing the escape from balance.

image was copied from https://blog.flaviomarinho.com.br/jovem-posta-foto-de-vestido-provocante-mas-bagunca-de-quarto-rouba-a-cena/ and mangled by me. thank you.