Offered by Tess Kincaid as a writing prompt for Mag 189
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My Brother's A Drunk
The ticking helps me,
why I sit here in the damp
on my roundabout
trudge through my own mind.
The clockwork does not keep time
that well, not my job
to care for the gears
though they grind me as they turn
and turn.
Circular
feelings match the sounds.
You have gone on a new tear
not to be found, not
where you always go,
not this time. I fear what's next.
As they all said, pissed
and powerless, bro,
and I shiver a bit here
in the fog of love.
October 6, 2013 9:44 AM
This is a story. I don't have a brother. However, as a thirty year member of twelve step recovery, I have many brothers. And sisters too. I am often in this position, or one like it.
But you're still hanging in there. That takes, and has taken, not a little courage and commitment.
ReplyDeleteIt sure does, and perseverance...and passion for life and for something more. Keep on with your recovery, and God speed. Love your post.
ReplyDeleteChange title to "my father" and a pre-teen wondering where he was on more than one occasion and that would be me. A good man with a bad illness. "All in the fog of love," Yes, indeed. Thanks for sharing. Best to you on your continuing recovery :-)
ReplyDeleteahhhhhhhhhh good man as it were.. I have family that should watch what they drink........and speak
ReplyDeletetrudge through my own mind. - the mind is a rounabout of emotions, full of truth and lies and this is very powerfully expressed.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the disclaimer, Christopher ... and congrats on many fine years of sobriety.
ReplyDeleteI've been in this position, too, with a child who thankfully has many years of recovery.
ReplyDeleteWell done.
=)
Excellent...you have my admiration, dear friend...
ReplyDelete30 years is no small accomplishment congrats! I had an alcoholic father so I never drank
ReplyDeleteThank you all for your comments.
ReplyDeleteI will make two observations in relation to the background of this area of experience.
The first is the almost certainly obvious business that while the failures of humans to thrive are individually apparently limitless in variation, the forms of failure are quite limited, all relating to some kind of physical or emotional or perhaps spiritual twist and all of these twists lead to the same sorts of suffering. Thus while alcoholism, for example is just one form of illness, there is much in common with the other forms, especially when one focusses on the suffering itself.
The other is that there are solutions, more than one, for nearly all of these few basic forms of suffering, such that no one way can claim sole possession of The Way Out. However, each way claiming success may actually offer that success, relying on the commitments and the natural healing propensities of each of us who suffer. Some ways may seem to offer more success than others but not that much more on the whole. After thirty years plus in this game (31 next Feb) I am convinced that mystery is always involved and thus something like an invitation is also involved. I "invite" my own healing but I am not much in charge of whether or not it appears. However, as I have already written, I can have some confidence that healing will occur, much as doctors rely on it. They do not always know how it happens, but they have confidence in so many cases that it will. The human body and soul both tend to heal as much as possible all things being equal.
It is also quite true that if one resists healing it may not occur, or at least is less likely. Many illnesses seem to resist their own healing. Alcoholism is one of them.
It was sometime in the fall of 1987 that I met who I call the Detroit Ranger in a run-down bar down the street from the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tennessee. The reason why I called him that was on account of him actually being from Detroit, who served two tours in Vietnam as an Army Ranger.
ReplyDeleteWhile I was down there at the time trying to find a sympathetic barfly to spend the night with, he was in Nashville on vacation. He said that he was in his third year of this vacation that he had went on after seeing one too many obituaries of one of his cases in the Detroit Free Press. He told me that he had broken the cardinal rule concerning never getting personally involved in the lives of his assigned substance abuse cases. Neither one of us understood how it was possible to actually help someone at a rigid arm's length, however.
Anyway, he asked if I could help him go back to his own wife and kids, and I took him as far as Effingham, Illinois. I sure hope he made it all of the way.
That is quite a story. You are quite right about the essence of healing that it is intensely personal and that if one wants to actually help one is going to get really wet. You can't help from the beach. Most healers do not help in this way but instead facilitate from a safer distance the natural tendency of healing found within. In the trade, that's where pharmacy comes in, doing the intimate work while the healer hangs back. The best priests and ministers engage intimately, and so do some therapists. Burn out is just one of the risks.
DeleteOh, the gears that grind...
ReplyDelete