The hip pocket sized book

He's how it started. I'd never said a word. Not one word.
But.
"When you're in, you're in.

And so it goes now. A lot of things have changed in the past six years.
I have seen the inside of crazy as well as the calm and serenity of a daily reprieve from my own form of madness. This is the best way I think I can do the writing about it that need be done.
After the first three years of things being O.K. I had arrive a point of needed change which came in the form of all together stopping a medication I had been taking for the first part of the previous six years I just mentioned. Which led to a gun in the mouth and horrible fear and remorse, which at it's core, and only through looking back now can I see was total self centered loathing, fear and mental illness which when combined made me a mad man again.

I recovered which is all that need be said. Other then, anyone that reads this and takes meds may know what I am talking about if they too are Bi-polar or some such other popular style of head case. I joke perhaps too lightly but refuse to confuse two distinct issue's. One I am a drunk. Two I am a drunk with Bi-polar. I have a way in which I treat my alcoholism and one in which I treat my Bi-polar and never the twain shall meet.

So for those of you who will recognize this for what it is, so be it, for those of you if any that read it and come away with anything of your own interpretation that is all as well too.There will be no names that can matter to anyone so do not guess that you will know this person or that. Or that you will find some secret about a person that you may think you have met or may have known in the past. In fact the people I will mention will have names and they will be real enough people in fact but I will not break with my one rule concerning people which it that all shall remain anonymous.

I will try to have several other rules for myself as well. Another one being that I will state now and restate through out the time that I write this, that these “thoughts” or “opinion’s are only my own and not that of a group of which I consider myself a member. Having gained the right to say so through countless years of demonstrating to the world at large and myself that in fact I am. And the only requirement that this groups has is a willingness to change some things and show up for ourselves one day at a time.

I am a member with all that comes with it. Loss sorrow and freedom. Joy remorse guilt. Judgment atonement and constant never ending selfishness self-centeredness and a attitude of I don’t think that to be the case at all and you are in fact the problem but if you just did what I wanted things would be fine forever and without change. There has been great shame at times in reaching the room were there has been a chair waiting for me all along. There was also some good grace and forgiveness that came along with sitting in it for the first time and none have these things have changed today or since I first got here. Which is odd and in a way what this journey is all about.

Some truths that I believe are that nothing ever stays the same, there is no “it will always be like this. Or “This is never going to get better” It is just a matter of physical impossibility that either of those past two statements could be true. In fact things as I understand them, meaning the physical world are in constant change, nothing remains the same forever, maybe for long periods of time it may, but not forever. So these feelings are not facts and that is therefore a truth.

But I do have feelings there is no doubt about that large monstrous gnawing and often very frightening feelings. Often too I have no idea how to deal with them or what to do with them even if I do think I have some clue as to how to act as far as they are concerned. So I do nothing? Yes as often as I can I simply do nothing at all at least until I can talk to another member of my group another fellow or fellah as the case may be. But I am a man of impulsive behavior and not always are my impulse’s even near good one’s frequently there are a bad idea gone wrong waiting for an offense to happen. I will of course act on many of them. Which too is what all this will be about. But I hope to make this as much about what goes wrong with me on a daily basis as what I have that helps me to correct, relearn how to act and then through continuous correct actions change the way I behave in all. There is no end to this. There is no arrival at Nirvana. No cure for what I have, simply put there is a way to change over the course of my life time that remains into the person I may have always been all along but just tried to kill so many times has retreated into the shadows of what I am now and needs light and honesty to be rediscovered anew.