Monday, August 31, 2009

Feeling Normal

Sometimes I find wings to fly, sometimes I don't. I am alcoholic in what we call recovery. It means I don't drink. It also means more than that. What it doesn't mean is sainthood. There are simple disciplines that are essential to staying free of drink. Honesty is one of them. Here is an honest poem.

Feeling Normal

It's sunny today.
I'm more used to dismal days
and the cloud cover
that hides the sunshine.
I have this urge to kick up
so much dust that gloom
returns and obscures
the clarity in the air,
ignite volcanoes,
create the winter
of my discontent anew
just to feel normal.

February 9, 2009 1:40 PM

9 comments:

  1. Am grinning wryly here....yeah, how to define normal, hmmmmm.
    I'm working on normal meaning happy....

    love you

    x

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  2. I like the idea of normal meaning happy. I think I am going to adopt that definition..

    Life .....
    Linda

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  3. Clarity takes energy and work and recovery is never ending. Good for you for being honest with yourself and with others. Like your poem, I may feel an urge to kick up the dust but how I handle the urge shows me where I am in my recovery. Stay well.

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  4. I felt so not normal in high school. I yearned for a normal family, normal interests (which I didn't have a clue about), and I had a next door family that looked normal to me in every respect. I ached to live with them. This was so deep in me that eventually I did live with them. I have never wavered in my opinion to this day that they were normal ordinary people while we were not. What has changed for me over the years is being okay in my own skin. That was decidedly not the case when I was in high school. I was desperate.

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  5. I'd like to give this to my dear relative who is an alcoholic - recently off the wagon and trying to get back on. The dust in the air is her normalcy.

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  6. I think you sum up very neatly (and honestly, yes) why alcoholism is so tough to break out of. Honesty is good, be proud to have set these thoughts down so simply and elegantly.

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  7. Some of us just ain't normal, never were, never will be. If you are in some 10% or less of the population or other, you will often be the only guy in the room. If we all wear masks then even if you are like someone else you may never know it. If we all wear masks then even when you have some small things in common with others, just some small things, even then you may not get a chance to notice. The isolation of falsehood even when it is not intended has the power to kill.

    That is a deep structure in the illness of alcoholism, but not only there.

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  8. Hum. Have I known this! Got accused of it just today. Don't think it's my truth any more but it sure was once.

    I do wonder if there is such a thing as normal. And isn't it funny that we should ever quest for that, but I understand.

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  9. I don't think, Erin, that it is all that odd for teenagers to freak out about feeling weird and strange, and if one's parents seem to be strange too, why then how much more awful can it get? Easy. What if the kids at school decide you are weird and strange? What if they think your Dad ought to disappear (being in my case the Dean of Boys and disciplinarian in the high school I attended)?

    I was absolutely desperate for another life.

    Eventually I grew out of it. Sort of.

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The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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