Riding a sleigh of homeless
They all smell like cat piss
Pretend I don't hate Christmas
If it gets me laid
(pant pant pant)
Greasing up my body
To penetrate this chimney
Oh what fun it is to ride
A single mum tonight.
~ End Of Ricky's Butcher's Christmas Lyrics
9:40 pm
I only have twenty minutes to write, before I am meeting with this lady named Celia, who works here at Blah Blah Hop-sital. She was the porter that showed up to escort me to my first hop-sital AA meeting, almost four weeks ago.
She will be THIRTY YEARS sober next month. Sounds like a disgusting way to live, I know, but she seems really happy. Incredible.
I was sitting out in the hall last night, talking on my phone with M, reviewing the stuff I had been forced to look at about myself earlier in the evening. At the end of it all, M told me that he just couldn't keep going on this way - that he had been holding me up and supporting me for too long, without reciprocation, without progress from me, and he was exhausted and scarred. He told me that he would still be my friend and staunch supporter while I sought treatment, but that was all he could offer me right now. He couldn't keep jumping into the water and bashing his head against the bottom of the pool anymore. He needed to test the waters a bit more this time.
Amazingly, it was okay. It hurt, and I cried, a LOT, but it was okay. I didn't get defensive or angry or, most importantly, revert to the role of victim and try to hurt him for retribution. I tried to put myself in his shoes, and found that I felt the same as he did - I would need a break from me and the disappointment every time I gave up, too.
He did accidentally let it slip that he is madly in love with me, though. Oh no wait, part of him is. He couldn't keep going like this, but he said part of him is still madly in love with me. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
So there I was, bawling my eyes out in the hallway after we'd hung up, and whom should I look up to see but Celia, the porter who took me to my first AA meeting. She was sitting on the other side of the alligators (elevators), on one of the super uncomfortable, crappy red chairs.
Coincidence? I wondered, and before I could change my mind, I stood up and walked over to her.
"Excuse me, Celia?" I said hesitantly. Her choppy short brown hair set off the diamonds in her hoop earrings quite nicely. Well done, I thought admiringly, momentarily distracted. Why can't I look that well put together?
She looked up. "Hi," she smiled up at me. I knew she remembered me - I had cornered her in the corridor behind a gurney last week to show her my 30 Day chip.
"May I speak with you?" I asked.
"Sure," she said, and gestured to the empty seats beside her.
I sat down, opened my mouth, and blurted it all out - the gross perpetual-victim thing I had just realized about myself; the fact that I was fighting with a desire to keep dancing because I am fucking bonkers broke; that I am struggling to turn my will over to some "God".
"I beg 'Him' every night, please let me do Your will, not my own," I told her earnestly. "But I feel this knot in my stomach and I know that something's not right."
"That would be because you haven't surrendered yet," she said.
"What?" I cried. "Yes, I have! I'm a goddamn hop-sital, am I not? I'm clean and sober, and I'm not barfing. How is that not surrendering?"
"You tell me," she said with a smile. "What's the knot in your stomach, Kage? What is it that you won't surrender?"
I opened my mouth to say something snotty, like 'there is no God', but instead blurted out, "Dancing."
Ah. Fuck!
"And why do you need to surrender the dancing?" she asked.
"Because...because..." I didn't want to say it out loud.
"Because...," she prompted.
"Because it is highly unlikely that I will be able to sustain any kind of sobriety for very long if I continue to dance," I admitted with a sigh.
"Ah," she said. "And whose will do you suppose that is?"
"Mine," I mumbled sulkily.
"Mmmmmm," she agreed.
"Yeah, okay, well," I sat up suddenly, determined to prove her wrong. "What about the rest of it? The rest of life in general? How the hell am I supposed to know what's right and what's wrong, what's this suppose-ed God's will and what's mine? Is there a Divine List available for download somewhere?"
"No," she smiled, "it's much simpler than that."
"Hit me," I said.
"Anything you have to justify doing, is not God's will. It's yours."
Oooooooooh, I sat back, and rolled that one around on my tongue for a bit. Bazing.
It tasted right. Exactly right. More right than any other advice has ever tasted, because I knew it was true.
Anything I had to justify doing, I prolly shouldn't be doing.
NO SHIT.
"Do God's work Kage," she said earnestly, and I wrinkled my nose with distaste.
Oh no, she's a goddamn hippy, I thought with despair. I am not touching any fucking lepers. I don't care who God knows.
"Help out with coffee at meetings, help get the word out to others who are suffering, chair a meeting," she suggested, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Phew! That wasn't so bad. "It's all God's work, it all helps other people, instead of just helping ourselves."
"Ok, I can do that kinda shit," I said excitedly. "I actually just asked the other anorexics this afternoon if I could come back a couple times a week for a visit, and bring my three dogs. It helps the girls who don't get to see their own pets, and it helps keep me accountable to my peers, for whether I'm arseing around or not in my eating disorder recovery."
"That's fantastic," Celia smiled.
Oooooh, gotta go! tbc...
11:30 pm
Sitting up in bed, after chatting with Celia for half an hour, then on the phone with M for another 20 minutes.
The chat with Celia went well. She had given me an assignment last night before we parted ways - I was to write a response to the following:
- Why I won't surrender
- What will it take for me to surrender
I was waiting with my iMac open and ready when she stepped off the alligator (elevator).
Tee hee! I'm such a keener.
For once.
"Hey, Kage," she smiled, and I knew she was relieved to see that I had actually shown up.
"Hey, Celia," I smiled back.
She settled into a chair beside me, and we went through what I had written the night before. Then we just sat and chatted for a while. She asked me lots of questions about dancing, what were the pros, what were the cons, how did it make me feel, etc. Then she asked me about writing, what I wanted to do with it, etc.
"Can I tell you something?" she asked me, after we had covered both topics quite thoroughly.
"Yeah, huh," I replied.
"Do you know that your face lights up when you talk about writing?"
"Ha ha! Gay," I laughed. "Oh, wait, are you for cereal?"
She looked at me quizzically.
"For serious," I explained hastily.
"Oh," she rolled her eyes. "Right. But when you talk about dancing, your face shuts down completely."
"Huh," I said. "How bout that."
"Just thought I'd let you know," she said with a knowing grin, like she could see that I was already getting defensive.
We moved on to what I was going to do when I was ejected from hop-sital on Thursday evening.
"I'm gonna go back to meetings, both NA and AA, and I'm gonna keep going to my Eating Meetings, plus I'm going to go back to counseling," I started, listing things off on my fingers as I went. "I wanna keep writing every day, and try to make time to clean up some of my older stuff - "
"About that," Celia interjected, and I looked up. "Clearly, Kage, writing is your passion."
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Yes, I thought. But that doesn't mean I'm any good at it.
"What can you do to pursue it as a career, instead of dancing?" she asked.
"Erm...I dunno," I mumbled, looking up at the ceiling.
"Really," she smirked.
"Well...I've been trying a few things lately, really slowly though," I admitted. "I've sent a few things out."
I haven't.
"What are you scared of?" she asked me.
"Rejection," I said immediately.
"And what about rejection?" she said. "What can rejection do to you?"
I thought for a moment. "I'm scared that it will rob me of my passion."
She sat up straighter in her chair, and leaned towards me. "No one can take your passion from you, Kage. No one."
Ew. She was getting all serious. Snort.
I changed the subject.
We ended the conversation with plans to meet tomorrow night, if she gets called into work, or Thursday night when I come back to hop-sital for the AA meeting, as a civilian.
Before we parted ways, I asked her if she would be my temporary sponsor.
"Yes," she said. "But I gotta tell you, Kage, I'm all about the solution, not the problem, and I'm all business. With me, you gotta do one step a week."
"A step a week?" I squeaked. "Are you mad, woman?"
"I know it might be a bit tough while you are in treatment, but that's what we're gonna aim for," she said firmly.
Holy shit, thought I. But I wanted her onboard. I wanted Celia on my support team.
"Okay, then," I agreed. "A step a week."
We stood up and she hugged me. "Just know that you are a beloved child of God," she said as she squeezed me.
I rolled my eyes. Goddamn hippy, I thought.
But I hugged her back.
When I got back to the hop-sital dorm room, I saw that I had missed a call from M, so I grabbed my mobile and went to sit out in the hall.
We had a really good conversation. He was a little worried, and asked me for a second time if I was mad at him for the things that he had said to me yesterday, when he had shown up at the hop-sital to confront me about my blog-bitching.
"No," I replied honestly. "I'm really not, M. I need to hear that stuff if I am going to get better, but I am still too cowardly to instigate it myself. But if I wanna fix my shitty behaviors, I guess I have to be made aware of them first."
"Yeah, I guess that's true," he agreed.
"And I'm so, so sorry that I hurt you, and I'm not saying that it was good thing, per se, but I needed it to happen. So, no, I am not mad at you. At all."
"Okay. That's good," he said.
We talked about our days, and it was nice and relaxed and easy, despite the havoc I had wreaked over the weekend. And though I have to remind myself not to get carried away, that right now he is just my friend and one of my strongest supporters, it felt so good to connect with him again, even on the simplest of levels.
And now, es ist 12:30, und ich bin sleepy, so piss off and leave me alone.
Guten nacht!
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