Why I Will Remember 2011

I will never forget 2011.

I stopped alcohol, and started working on myself.

Rediscovered that underneath all those years of blushing drunkeness, I am still a worthwhile, lovable human being who responds to encouragement and honesty.

Re-gifted myself time and the ability to calmly accept patience and humility as great personal learning forces.

Learned just to sit quietly and watch the chickens and my adorable daughters and simply let life happen by.

Accepted the power of forgiveness and accepted how powerful just surrendering to forgive others can be such a weight off my shoulders.

Revealed my innermost thoughts to a silent, intelligent audience online who share and support me even when I write things that might not be exactly on topic.  The blogging friends are always there, just out of sight, quietly reading. 

It is such a source of peace and satisfaction and strength to just know that as my thoughts drip from my fingertips - someone is reading and has been there too.

So thanks for being a huge part of my recovery in 2011 - it is such a powerful tool to have your support and encouragement.  I simply could not have done it without you.

Thank you, for your comments, your time and your just being there, I swear I could feel it and it was such a warm sensation to have you share in my recovery and let's look forward to a sober, calm, and honest 2012.

Cruel Mother

Today I was at the Police Station - my mother has told people I dobbed my sister in dealing drugs. My sister got raided and there is the tax audit of her indoor plant hire business. Things hit the fan. My mother would not open the screen door for my wife and my daughters and I. My daughter was sobbing as my sister spat obscenities and said she would bur my house down. And that I would get bashed.

A truly awful day - the worst day of my life for many years.

My sister has always been in the drug scene - always since 16, and always her boyfriends and the whole scene has always had drugs not far out of reach. So when they started renovating their home, putting on a deck and a swimming pool and buying caravans and 4WDs and motorbikes all the while saying their indoor plant hire business was failing - you get the picture.

So they were raided in early December and the tax office demanded their files for an audit of their tax history.

And where do I fit in?

Well, I have been blamed as the one who called the cops.

Completely fucking Bullshit. Not true. I simply did not do it.

So when my sister hisses she will have someone burn down my house, that men are coming to punch me out, that I better watch my back, I am seriously worried. That's when I left and went with my family to the Police Station.

Now, somehow, I have to prove that I didn't do it.

But what really kills me, what really hurts inside my heart, is the fact that my mother, Margaret, called me this morning to tell me what had happened, and that I was of course the sole suspect for calling the drug squad.

My own mother, calling me out for putting the police on my sister. And standing there, behind her screen door, blinking as though it is a verified truth.  It is not.  I did not do it.

At once I felt the sheer surge of red pulsing anger well up inside me, and as she bumbled through her reasoning, my heart trilled like fingertips on a drum, I breathed and came to see her for what she has become. A weak willed plaything to be manipulated by my sister at will. To be pitied. I wanted to hit out and cry all at the same time.

Minutes later I was dictating the incident through thick glass at the Police Station.

Christmas Rush

It's over.
The Christmas Rush has welled up, loomed over us, and crashed over.
My wife and I have put out around 1000 hampers together.
We are both flat, exhausted and nearing hysteria.
It is a combination of sheer tiredness and at the same time pure pride that we have managed to do it again.
Oh, and there's no time for drinking or "celebrating" with drink.
This one's sober and just nice and quiet.

The English Teacher

My English Teacher took me out when I was 15 and got me drunk. On Teacher's Brand Scotch, believe it or not, and I sat around a table with him, the corner store owner, and his wife, sipping searing hot nips of scotch like - like something out of a movie. Looking back it was borderline abuse, but being there I was more than intoxicated with my English Teacher's mentoring my writing and being a kind of confidante.

It all started when he marked my English papers - and left curled, scrawled notes in green pen with question marks - like "and you think he didn't actually mean it to be read that way?" The comments and notes grew longer and denser and were scribbled in some kind of private frenzy along the white of the margin. Lines and lines of commentary and analysis of what I'd written, as though I was some kind of boy genius.

And I have to admit that I lapped it up. Like any fifteen year old, suddenly swamped with the attention of the head of the English department. He would catch my eye during class so I would answer his question. Like I was saying the obvious. But his rapturous, table-thumping approval intimidated the other boys.

Let's not forget it was an all boys boarding school, where we wore blazers to breakfast and went home once during term. Totally immersed in the gothic architecture, dripping with eroded statues and bronze-green plaques and sepia frames of rugby teams in oversize clothes.

"I know you smoke," He said one time after class. "I'll be down by the rowing sheds after supper."

Intrigued, I duly materialized out of the dark after nine. He was leaning against the shed, smoking already. He handed me one and I awkwardly lit it, making sure the spark light was shielded from the eyes of the dormitory. He said something about what I had written and how he was compiling everything. Keeping it for later.

Weeks later I was in his car, then out into the night and following him in behind the counter of the corner store, to sit at the table with the Teacher's Scotch. I drank it eagerly, (I already knew I was alcoholic, that alcohol was my thing) but with the confidence of knowing I would not get too drunk.

Things were definitely not what I had expected.

Grains of Sand

Being sober has all the slow burn of the getting of wisdom. Most days there is nothing dramatic or mind blowing - just the steady, cold reality of yourself and the world. Without the get out of jail free card of knowing you can have a drink later on and it will all be fine.


So the revelations come thick and fast early on, when you are learning all about yourself as though you are something new and unexplored. But then after six months, you reach regular roadblocks where your internal dialogue comes up tired and flat and almost ready to submit.

The once seemingly indefatigable enthusiasm of your new found personal insight seems a little over the top. You feel like a bit of a born again virgin and it becomes like you are just another recently sober know it all. But you are really just a grain of sand.

"Anyone who thinks they're important is usually just a pompous moron who can't deal with his or her own pathetic insignificance and the fact that what they do is meaningless and inconsequential."
William Thomas

And suddenly it is like you are back at the beginning again. You are humbled and alone and vulnerable and terribly exposed and just seeking all over again. So you have to work harder and delve deeper and try to penetrate beyond, and it is all your own mission.

"It was like beginning life anew without the vigor and enthusiasm of youth, like learning to become left-handed in old age."
- Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart.

Like learning to become left handed in old age. That awkward moment of expecting respect and seniority but knowing your glaring weakness is exposed like a plump pale belly. Looking at your left handed fingers like they are foreign, willing your brain to grow connecting neurons so things just happen naturally. It takes time, and another 'left hand' - patience.

Foiled, you have to walk away, and look at the problem from another angle. Eying it up and down and across ways as you pace around it, like a fox at the hen house, nudging, touching, feeling. It is right there in front of you yet you can't get it, not yet anyway.

Morris Townsend: For God's Sake! What do you think I am? I'm not good enough for you! Not nearly good enough! What do you want me to do?
Catherine Sloper: I want you to love me.
Henry James, Washington Square

Maybe that is the answer. Maybe you are good enough and maybe you do have to just do the obvious. Stop being distant and critical and rejecting and embrace the fear and Love yourself back.

Dead Chickens

Pools of feathers. When a chicken dies in free range, often there is just a pool of feathers on the ground. Fluffy, delicate feathers with the white downy edges vibrating in the breeze. It is silent, too. No homely cluck or eager waddle through the undergrowth of fat-rumped birds coming up to meet you. It is pretty devastating to lose your friends to just a quiet nothingness.

On Thursday, one chicken was missing. Then on Saturday we lost another, so we were down to four birds, scratching nervously and looking around with their eight collective eyes for danger. Then on Monday the last four girls disappeared leaving nothing but swirling pools of downy feathers behind. I ran through the bush, ducking through the trees, and nothing but teasing trails of feathers. And of course silence.

As an active alcoholic, this would be an ideal trigger for me to withdraw and nurture an elaborate getting-even scheme against all the imagined perpetrators. As a sober, calm alcoholic, I narrowed it down to two suspects, and by dinnertime we were sitting at the kitchen table of one of them, talking muzzles, new fences and apologies.

Now those amongst you who don't have chickens can be forgiven for underestimating the gravity of the situation. Chickens aren't just birds - they are diligent weed controllers, gregarious garden mates, and generous suppliers of brilliant yellow yolked eggs. It is hard to imagine how much a part of my lifestyle chickens have become, and how much a part of my relaxation and release being in the garden with the birds is. So, they are not just birds and although you can replace them, you don't quickly forget the girls and their habits.

It was agreed the dog had been less judiciously supervised than was usual, and that it had indeed been wandering through the bush. As had another dog, a border collie, black and white, identical to marlan, called star. So there were in fact two culprits. I spoke with Star's owner and she offered to 'reimburse' me immediately. Great. Money is fine, but more important was for this to not happen again.

By lunchtime I was helping catch another 10 pullets at a chicken farm half an hour from here. Ungainly, ochre-orange teenagers with crumpled feathers and gawky gangly legs - shy and skittish and not familiar with human handling - yet. These were the new team. I was in love again and before long, the yard was warm with the gurgle of contented chickens.

Thinking not Drinking

The Christmas rush is here and everything is busy and orders are flowing and the place is buzzing with activity.

I have been buying truckloads of wine and unloading it into the coolrooms, knowing I will not be drinking any of it. It is a big difference to know that all of the stock will be sold instead of whatever is left that I haven't drunk. Shows how a little restraint is good for business. Which is a funny, strong feeling.

Here comes the first sober Christmas, and I'm feeling fit and functional for the first time in forever. Confident but not complacent.

Fathers


One ninja was called Mak Deme but I can't remember the other one's name. The ninjas were tumbling through the moist ferny forests of medieval Japan and after five handwritten pages or so had the ultimate final fight - and the story ended with the two ninjas lying dead. Until one of them flicked open an eyelid.

So goes my early writing effort inspired by some movie or book I had been reading at the time. I was about 11 and used to write stories all the time. (One story for my class was about a quokka that became and abbott and went onto to change religion for the other quokkas - inspired of course by Watership Down. A quokka is a rodent like animal from off West Australia FYI).

Anyway, I wrote the Ninja story and pencilled a title page and stapled it all together. Then I left it out for my dad to read - and he read it burping beer from cans (I never drank beer from cans - EVER) while he lay on the lounge. He finished reading it and put it aside and said nothing.

I sat forward, elbows on my knees, waiting for his response. Nothing. So I played it cool and ignored it and went on with whatever I was doing, walking away. The next day, I sort of casually asked what he thought of the story.

"Oh, the one about the Japanese?" He said, nodding his head slowly and exhaling, "I couldn't say their names - what were they called again?"

"Mak Deme and (whatever the other one was)" I said quickly.

"Yeah, well, I dunno about having names like that, they're not real Japanese are they? And you can't really write about stuff that you don't know." He started, and said other stuff but I got the general gist of it.

...---~~```^```~~---...

So I didn't present much of anything to my father over the years. It was brutally honest feedback that, looking back in all fairness, was probably not far off the mark, but for a novice, feeling out my first attempts at things, it was all about rejection. Pretty soon I stopped showing him anything and our conversations became less wordy, more nods and eyebrow raises, until today where we haven't spoken for years.

A huge part of being sober for me has been healing my ability to forgive and to accept that people will not ever change simply because I want them to. People are just people and have their own shit going on and my wanting something from them is way down their list. 

So it is about my healing my ability to forgive. Not forgiving was a great sport when I was drunk and sitting looking out at the view, but being sober and finding the ability to live with myself has meant I have to be able to forgive. So I can forgive my dad for being vigilant and critical and having a keen eye for faults - that's what he does. It is about seeing him for who he is, and me for who I can be.