Some memes

I need me to be me,
not a him, not a we,
not the fellow I think
that you’re hoping to see.
Not more than I am.
Not less than I’ll be.
No costume, no cape.
Just authentically me.
This morning I stumbled,
as mornings will do,
on a passage that poked me
and said, “This means YOU.”
It started by saying,
“The fellowship needs
you to be who you are
in your words and your deeds.”
And I thought, “That is true,
but the emphasis, please,
needs moving today
from the fellowship to ME.”
For time after time
and for year after year,
I’ve guessed what you needed
and put myself rear.
I’ve studied the room.
I’ve inspected the faces.
I’ve measured reactions
and shifted my places.
I’ve figured out quickly
what Fellow A likes,
what Fellow B preaches,
what Fellow C strikes
as sufficiently spiritual,
proper and wise,
then tailored my sharing
to fit their damn size.
And that isn’t service.
It isn’t quite true.
It’s putting on costumes
to perform there for you.
For once upon years,
when the lie ran the show,
I needed you thinking
I had farther to go...
No, wait.
That’s not right.
That’s the opposite track.
I needed you thinking
I had NOTHING I lacked.
That I knew more recovery,
had mastered the game,
had wisdom and clean time
attached to my name.
For deep underneath
all that puffing and pride
was a fellow who never
felt equal inside.
I did not feel greater.
I felt LESS than the rest.
So I built myself taller
and called myself best.
I inflated the package.
I polished the shell.
I learned all the slogans
and learned them quite well.
I could quote from the books.
I could chapter-and-verse.
I could solemnly slogan
till everyone's worse.
I could bumper-sticker
a meeting to death:
“One day at a time!”
“Keep it simple!”
“Next breath!”
And some of those sayings
are useful and true.
But parroting slogans
is not what I do.
Or rather...
I CAN.
I’m absurdly well-skilled.
I can sound like a guru
whenever I’ve willed.
But Recovery Guru
is not who I am.
I don’t own the program.
I don’t have The Plan.
I’m not High Priest Don
with a magical chair,
dispensing clean wisdom
and spiritual air.
I’m simply a fellow
who’s managed somehow
to live clean through yesterday,
then get clean through now.
I’ve gathered experience.
A bucket or three.
Some painful.
Some funny.
Some uniquely me.
I know something of living
when Life throws a brick,
when plans turn to garbage,
when people act thick,
when grief comes to visit,
when anger comes through,
when everything changes
and nothing feels true.
And I have my own language,
my grammar, my way,
my peculiar method
of what I might say.
That is what I can offer.
That’s what I can give.
Not instructions for living.
Just how I have lived.
Because every damn time
I step into a role
that isn’t quite mine
from my mouth to my soul,
I’m feeding the lie
that once lived in my head:
“You are much too defective
to simply be read.
You’re too broken for showing.
Too flawed to be seen.
So polish your armor.
Stay clever and clean.
Be better than others.
Be wiser somehow.
Don’t let them discover
the fellow you are now.”
Well, screw that old story.
It’s had quite a run.
I carried that bastard
for years just for fun.
Except it wasn’t fun.
It was heavy as hell.
And today I can finally
see through it quite well.
So here is an example,
a curious case,
involving dark Guinness
and zero-point taste.
At book club last evening
somebody appeared
with Guinness Zero,
non-alcoholic beer.
And Guinness, I’ll tell you,
still lives in my head
as something I once
rather happily fed
into me in a life
that no longer exists,
though memories stubbornly
stay on the lists.
So I took me a photo.
I sent it along
to three recovery people
I’ve known rather long:
my sponsor, one peer,
and a fellow I guide.
And I asked, “Clean-time reset?”
with tongue parked inside
my cheek.
It was humor.
A joke.
Nothing deep.
Nothing dire.
No lurking obsession.
No alcoholic fire.
Two of the three
understood what I meant.
They laughed at the picture
and where it was sent.
But the third didn’t laugh.
My sponsee was upset.
Because his experience
had taught him a threat.
He’d watched other sponsors
go dabbling about
with non-alcohol beers
and watched it go south.
For them, Zero beer
had not stayed at zero.
It turned from experiment
into antihero.
It opened a doorway.
It loosened a thread.
And eventually somewhere
the real booze got fed.
So my joke touched a nerve
I had not meant to touch.
And this morning we talked
about why it was much
more serious to him
than the joke was to me.
And listening to that
was exactly the key.
I apologized.
Not because Guinness Zero
had magically made me
a clean-time-less hero.
Not because drinking it
meant doom was ahead.
Not because bells of relapse
were ringing bright red.
I apologized because
the joke that I threw
had landed much harder
than ever I knew.
And I told him directly:
“It wasn’t a test.
I wasn’t approaching
some dangerous crest.
I wasn’t experimenting
to see what I’d feel.
I wasn’t secretly craving
the alcoholic real.
I drank it.
I liked it.
And then it was done.
No obsession arrived.
No compulsion begun.”
I didn’t wake early
and bolt from my bed,
with Guinness! GUINNESS! GUINNESS!
all pounding my head.
I didn’t run frantic
straight down to the store
and purchase a four-pack
then purchase four more.
I didn’t sit plotting
my next zero beer.
I didn’t feel desperate.
I didn’t feel fear.
Perhaps I’ll drink one
some future-time day.
Perhaps I will not.
Either outcome’s okay.
For me it was simply
one thing that I tried,
an experience enjoyed,
then I put it aside.
Not destiny calling.
Not prophecy brewed.
Not some slippery slope
in a black bottle screwed.
Just something I drank.
And I liked what I drank.
Then went on with my evening.
No drama.
No tank.
And THIS is exactly
the fellow I am.
I joke about serious things
when I can.
My sharing gets sideways.
Irreverent too.
Sometimes profanity
comes bounding right through.
I probably use it
more often than needed.
Some purity standards
are cheerfully unheeded.
Some people believe
that recovery should sound
very solemn and sacred
whenever we’re around.
That every discussion
should properly honor
the Literature Shelf
and the Recovery Donner...
No.
That doesn’t rhyme.
And that’s kind of the point.
Sometimes my expressions
get bent at the joint.
I’m not always reverent.
I’m frequently dry.
I question assumptions.
I ask people why.
I joke at myself.
I joke at my fear.
And sometimes the serious
gets easier to hear
when nobody’s pretending
we’re carved out of stone
and nobody’s acting
like humor’s unknown.
But beneath all the jokes,
and the cynical spin,
there’s something quite serious
living within.
I have FAITH in recovery.
Yes, capitalized.
Not because every slogan
should be idolized.
Not because every speaker
has mystical sight.
Not because every meeting
gets everything right.
I have faith because living
this spiritual way
has somehow kept adding
clean day after day.
It gave me a manner
of living my life
through pleasure and boredom,
through anger and strife.
And I take that quite seriously.
Dead serious, true.
Recovery saved me.
That’s simply my view.
But taking recovery
seriously today
doesn’t mean I must solemnly
act out a play.
I took MYSELF seriously
far too damn long,
as if being important
would prove I belonged.
I don’t need that fellow.
He’s fading away.
I’m much more interested
in being me today.
As another clean date
starts drawing up near,
I don’t need a robe
or a staff or a seer.
I don’t need incense.
I don’t need a throne.
I don’t need people believing
I’ve spiritually grown
into some High Priest
of Recovery Truth,
reciting great wisdom
from age unto youth.
I have opinions.
A whole blooming sack.
Some people agree.
Some people push back.
And when I decide
that my thoughts must stay still
because someone might dislike them,
I’m serving them ill.
Because somebody somewhere
may need what I say,
not because it is Gospel,
but because it’s MY way.
My strange little message.
My crooked clean road.
The particular manner
in which I’ve bestowed
one day on another,
then one after that,
without needing to wear
a recovery hat.
Just for today
is not merely a phrase.
It’s how I have built
all these thousands of days.
One day of becoming.
One day being free.
One day growing closer
to someone called me.
A person I once
could not possibly see.
A person I doubted
I ever could be.
And maybe the service
I’m meant now to give
is simply to show you
exactly how I live.
Not polished.
Not perfect.
Not holy.
Not bland.
With coffee and cussing
and cigar in my hand.
With jokes at odd moments.
Opinions galore.
With faith that runs deeper
than slogans can score.
No grand performance.
No recovery degree.
No more.
No less.
I need me
to be
**ME.**

∞ DT ∞