Once again, the phone call isn't about me

My sister bears her own burdens in life.

And, whenever she calls, I'll usually hear plenty about them. I will even if I'm the one who calls.

I have journaled about this before, but decided to write something brief here, knowing that it's public.

I'm not talking about the details, just the fact that ... although she will get back to my issues at some point, especially if I'm the one who called, the "feeling" is that ... it will be at least 75 percent about her, if not more.

And, I can listen to the emotions, but I can't fix the issue.

And, it's issue, singular. She has two options for change, or else more fully accepting things as they are ... or else keeping herself in this current, years-long limbo.

As I have new rounds of anxiety attacks, I have fewer emotional resources of mine to offer back, anyway. That's just my reality on my end. And she knows that, somewhere, or at least partially knows that.

Basically, aside from the above, neither of us is highly emotionally available for the other right now. And, this is an area where, from others, I work on continuing to lower my expectations. And, my sister doesn't always turn a phone call to her end. And, she's helped me before when my PTSD-related anxiety has ramped higher than now.

An ebbing and flowing resentment

It's not a huge one. And, per the headline, it's not constant.

But, it is with another sobriety person.

And, while it's my response, it's that person's action, when on-again, that sets the table for me to respond as I do.

I debated earlier whether to write about it or not.

One basic idea of journaling is that, if you write something out, you get it out of mind.

On the other hand, another basic idea is that by writing something down, you make it more concrete.

But, having debated it in my mind, I'd already made it fairly concrete.

Basically, the issue is like a small pebble in a hiking boot. Just a pebble. No bigger.

It irritates you for a couple hundred yards but then, either on its own or by you wiggling your foot, it's out of the way.

For a quarter mile or so.

Then it returns. Then goes away ago.

It's not big enough to rub a blister or anything like that. You don't feel like stopping, untying, then hoisting off a boot and sweaty sock or socks.

But it's going to recur if you don't.

But, if you're patient enough, it's going to go away again.

Why can't I? ...

Why can't I make myself psychotic to escape from life?

Why can't I have, or make myself have, an amnesiac fugue state to escape?

I feel like I am "cursed by rationality."

And, yes, I have wished for both of these things before.

The amnesiac fugue state sounds better. "Wake up" in a new place, with a new persona, and upward.

Twenty years ago today

Twenty years ago today, I quit drinking. And, at some point not too far later, actual sobriety set in, and stayed.

I got, if not drunk, half-drunk, for the first time when I was 10 years old. On liquor, not beer. And drunk straight, or as close to straight as a 10-year-old me could stand.

There’s a story behind that, which is part of the story with why I sought out alcohol more and more for nearly 25 years after that.

I’m a “survivor.”

A child abuse survivor.

A child sexual abuse survivor.

An incest survivor.

My primary sexual abuser led me to where that liquor was at. And encouraged me to get drunk.

In addition to being a survivor of child sexual abuse at home (and yes, there, not some grandparent or step-grandparent who lived elsewhere), I am also a survivor of a fair amount of emotional and verbal abuse, along with some other psychological abuse, and a modest amount of physical abuse.

I’m old enough to have been watching John Wayne movies before he died. I knew that “real men” like John Wayne drank straight whiskey, so I drank it as straight as I could on an empty stomach to show the neighborhood kids — acquaintances all of them more than friends, and sometimes bullies and even abusers themselves on an occasion or two — that I was a man.

And threw up 30 seconds after I met two of them.

Gradually, those memories faded more and more. Along with more and more alcohol, helped by me going to an “18-state” on beer for college. Repression may not be the right word, but something like that is real, and Elizabeth Loftus is wrong more than right on this. I know.

I drank more after graduating college and doing traveling church construction for a couple of years. That said, I had alcohol poisoning in college, along with bouts of depression, and didn’t learn.

I eventually tried to follow in my dad’s footsteps. But, before I was through graduate divinity school, knew I couldn’t be a pastor, even as part of the reason for trying it, other than to please my physically, emotionally and psychologically abusive dad was to be a Protestant Christian minister’s version of “married to the church” and escaping other things.

I got my degree, but not ordination. After a year of not getting full-time work, yet not grasping in my mind how manipulative my dad had been in the past, I accepted his offer to move back in.

He lined me up with the possibility of contract adjunct college teaching, which idea I liked, and even more when I got it. And with the job of working part time at a convenience store as well, which I dreaded and made me feel more a failure.

My third suicide attempt was the day before that interview. Yes, third. One at around the time of my first drunk, in childhood, when tormented by the second of my two sexual abusers at home one afternoon. Another in college, after rebuffs from a woman who in hindsight may have been like my third, covert sexual abuser. And then this.

A year later, I was the victim of an armed robbery at gunpoint at the convenience store. And my drinking took off from there. Drinking on the job there, I got fired.

Fortunately, my dad was going to move, and I had nothing keeping me in Flint, Michigan. So, I went with him to Texas. Got my first newspaper job. Then got one in another town. Not great pay, but enough to live on my own.

And the drinking got worse. The last year or so, the only thing I rationally thought about was whether my stomach could handle a straight shot when I got up, or if I needed to start the day on beer.

For non-drinking reasons that weren’t all my fault, I was fired there. At the risk of boss-employee issues, I had asked my office manager out, for coffee, the week before. That removed that problem.

I had it “easy” on drinking. Both a Walgreen’s and a grocery within three-block walking distance and another grocery less than a mile away. After we’d been dating a few weeks, my former office manager saw me walking back to my apartment with a case of beer one afternoon. When she was over that evening, she told me how it made her feel.

Something in my listened. That was a couple of days before July 28, but … after I finished off the booze I had at home … I didn’t buy any more.

And soon, memories started coming back. And more. I talked some with her. Later, I talked more, as yet more memories came back, with the only other person I could talk to at the time.

I soon got a new newspaper job, in a new city. While driving there from Hobbs, New Mexico, I got gas in Amarillo, Texas. A voice inside me said “open the phone book when you go inside.” One AA group was the “Hobbs Plaza” group. I was a secularist of some sort then, and even more, now. But. That caught my eye. I went to a meeting in 15 minutes and an emotional dam started to break.

Then? The move, the stress, the sobriety? The memories came on more — with more emotional content. I would have to stop driving because I was crying.

Eventually, in the next town over, I found out that the pastor at the Methodist church had experience with counseling children. She’d never counseled an adult survivor before, but she helped, with EMDR, and some other techniques.

Eventually, after losing that job for various reasons, I got to Dallas. I found some secular sobriety meetings there, and got involved with Lifering online.

I also, crucially, found a organization called The Family Place which had a lot of women at risk services and then, with a grant, started its first group therapy for male survivors.

The Methodist pastor had diagnosed me with PTSD. I had first figured that was mainly a diagnosis to give an insurance company something as an entry for billing purposes. But, I found out it was real. Very real. And still is today. I even learned that something like this is considered "complex PTSD."

Along with those emotional returns came about two early sobriety years of semi-regular flashbacks and silent scream nightmares. Occasional “body memories” and actions. That’s pretty much faded away, but I had a silent scream nightmare earlier this year. Had a flashback from another trauma last year, over the car accident that badly displaced my left hand two years ago. I may have some genetic susceptibility to this, for traumas beside the sexual and other abuse, as well as that abuse priming me for other PTSD reactions.

I’ve had a hard life. I don’t mean this as a “poor me, pour me” moment per the old AA chestnut. And my life isn’t as hard as someone born into poverty. Nor have I suffered the worst sexual abuse. Trust me, from The Family Place, I know that in person. But, it’s been hard enough.

After a couple of years at The Family Place, I started facing parts of my past. Even before that, I had mildly confronted my dad over the physical and other abuse. He denied it, then minimized it while outsourcing blame.

I then confronted my primary sexual abuser. After initial non-comment, he admitted it, but said the fact he was in the ministry now was a sign he was beyond it. In turn, that only adds to the idea that in some cases, religious abuse can be a real issue.

I’ve never confronted my second abuser, but … while having less interest in confronting him before, I have less interest in accepting his apologizes for not defending me from the older abuser of the two of them as an apology, or even an unconscious admission, of his own actions. The other family member, who said I have false memory syndrome once long ago, I’ve ignored since then on family dynamics issues.

Had I confronted my mom with what I earlier called covert abuse, she would have been clueless, even with a detailed explanation, but then might have had a fatal heart attack years earlier than reality. I don’t want to go into more details; I still feel bits of shame about the weirdness, along with everything else in my family. And, again, with all of this being full blood — no "steps" or "halfs."

With the two people I have confronted, just as described in some books of survivor narratives, I’ve learned that there’s not much healing there.

Do I still have bitterness today, inside the mild-mannered self that many know in person and some Lifering friends have probably sensed just through online contact? Yes.

Bitterness over a stolen adulthood as well as a stolen childhood, not so much from alcohol, but all the family abuse and dysfunction that led to the psychological battering that led me to start getting drunk in the first place. Bitterness over knowing that, in things like a family life for myself today, or not one, a career path that isn’t my original idea or my ideal — not my ideal creatively and “spiritually” even more than not my idea or ideal financially — gets harder to change as I get older, especially in a country like ours.

All I can do ultimately is stay sober and “trudge,” as Yenta the Matchmaker says near the end of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

And, with that said, a couple of closing thoughts, for people with me now, or working to be with me now, on this journey.

One is how huge luck is in our lives. A middle class minister’s family shows blood is not thicker than water. A girlfriend’s comment at the right time “sticks.”

Related to that? Per the old medieval Church’s rhetorical question, “Cur alii, non alii,” I don’t know why sobriety, and sobriety support, “sticks” for some and not for others. I’ve tried to become more careful in insights I offer, or claim to offer, over the years, because of that.

Speaking of, I offer a few “call-outs” to those who have passed.

I mentioned Robert “Itchy” Bradley recently in another post here.

Kat Wyke, aka Kishimojun, was little known even to “oldtimer” Liferingers outside the online meeting and chat room. She stayed sober through the pain and intestinal surgeries of Crohn’s disease for more than a decade herself, until a recurrence of feminine cancer was too much.

I think of Thailand Chani (never learned her real name) and Kenya Johnson, who stayed sober through years of bipolar disorder and other mental health challenges.

Sadly, I think also of those who “succeeded” on one action where I “failed,” because they were frustrated by not staying sober. Or, those who may have thought marijuana was OK, even if marijuana smoke may not have agreed with other health issues.

Cur alii, non alii? As Brahms, Ein Deutsches Requiem, plays here in the background.

All I can do is stay sober, while being honest and true to myself. That's part of what non-steps sobriety offers, including on dealing with issues behind sobriety, and recognizing that they, not "sobriety itself" in a sense, may need to be the primary focus at times.

==

On a related issue, I also don't know why on "cur alii, non alii" on child sexual abuse and recovery. That's both as to why some children are affected worse by it and why, some recover better than others.

I'm going to offer a few bits of speculation, though.

First is that, if it's just a one time, or even more than once, a very occasional abuse, that may lessen its effect.

Second is that, per the ACES evaluation, stability or instability of a child's family life in general is a factor.

Third is if a child is able to, or not able to, find some sort of surrogate parents.

RIP Itchy Bradley

Robert "Itchy" Bradley, or "the immortal" as I called him after my first Lifering Congress meeting with him, has passed away.

I don't know which of us mentioned the phrase first. But, it became a catchword and remained so long after the second Lifering Congress at which I saw him.

I wasn't as close to Itchy as some of the founding or semi-founding members of Lifering. He's pictured at right in that photo at left with Lifering's original executive director, Martin Nicholas. I believe that's at the Lifering Constitutional Congress in Florida in 2001.

I do know that, even before he was there and before Lifering formed, he was taking an initiative in looking online for new alternatives in so-called "secular sobriety" from Secular Organizations for Sobriety, which at that time was the only game in town. Sadly, after a promising start and plenty of potential, SOS had befallen institutional problems, especially "founder's disease." Eventually, he, some SOS Floridians, who sometimes aren't fully recognized in Lifering's founding, which I've noted before, and Marty, representing Californians and having already founded Lifering Press, started Lifering Secular Recovery.

Itchy went on to serve a number of years on Lifering's board of directors.

Indeed, on Lifering's one email list, Marty reminds me and all that Itchy was on the founding board of directors and signed the articles of incorporation. I apologize to people who knew him longer or better that I didn't post that in any early emails to Lifering groups myself.

Itchy put the "secular" in there in the best way. He was a secularist, and I believe passed on that way, unless there's something I don't know about.

But, he wasn't some "Gnu Atheist" type of person, either.

Indeed, he turned me on to a "day at a time" book called "365 Tao." Knowing who he was, I bought a copy and still have it. And, in the spirit of "pass it on," I'm recommending it right here and now.

Daoism is a good way to look at "the immortal one," come to think of it. Itchy was a good practitioner of the Daoist art of "wu wei," or non-doing. In other words, he was good at trying to find what should be the flow of life for him, and afterword, doing as little as possible to disturb that flow. He also didn't suffer arrogance or fools readily.

I quote from another Liferinger, who posted this as a public setting on Facebook:

"Itchy was a sort of hillbilly Jesus who kept a set of mummified turkey feet (look closely) in the guitar case for when he played 'Turkey In The Straw.'"

If you don't believe that, said person has the picture where he says "Look closely."

Behind that body, as frail as he looked, and was, late in life, was both a steeliness of mind and generosity of heart, at least to the degree I knew him and to the degree I saw him with others.

I don't claim to have known Itchy as well as others either inside or outside of Lifering.

I do claim this memory and this understanding as mine.

I conclude this with a musical suggestion or two for listening.

The first is a musical tribute that another person offered to Itchy on Facebook:

The second, kind of stimulated by that, is Alan Parsons' haunting, exotic "Return to Tunguska."



I don't know if Itchy was into Parsons, or Alan Parsons Project as a group. But, while I don't do a lot of modern techno music, this one just grabs me ... and kind of makes me think of him.

Cur alii, non alii?

The old question, "why some, not others?" first raised in medieval Latin Christianity about why are some saved and others not, whether looking on the human side at acts of repentance and belief, or later in Calvinism, at the divine choices in predestination, has long been a question in sobriety, for myself and many others.

Why do some "get it," and others don't? Even when things like child or adult traumas are controlled for, so that people of similar circumstances are being compared, it's clear that ... some get it, others don't.

In my secular sobriety, I was recently reminded of that, strongly.

A lady in an area where there is not face-to-face support had drifted away from activity in online support years ago. In fact, had had ebbs and flows of participation within her long-ago involvement.

Recently, she jumped back in. And, in her meatspace world, started looking at some personal and medical issues, and also signed up for some brief inpatient help plus intensive outpatient.

Less than three weeks later, at an old running buddy's ... she drank, and not just one beer/wine/mixed drink.

Can't tell you some of the other details to honor privacy, but I can talk about the general style I've seen in such cases.

After the relapse (too big to call it a "slip") the person then beats themself up. And invites others to do the same. The subconscious — maybe in some cases fully conscious — idea seems to be "I'll make myself look undeserving of sobriety."

Not only is the person letting an "out" form, subconsciously — or again, maybe fully consciously — they're actively helping create this out.

I don't condemn such people in public for several reasons, and I don't want to sound sanctimonious myself in saying that.

First, if I suspect this is what a person is doing? I'm playing their game in that case. And, in a public forum, rather than one-on-one, I'm playing their game in a way that others can hear and see me play, and thus might be tempted themselves.

Second, if this is not an active attempt to create an out, my jumping in might tempt that person.

Third, definitely, if it's not an active attempt on their part, my jumping in is not productive.

Fourth — to riff on Calvinism and double predestination? What if I am "back out" in the future? It leaves me in a place where I am thus less deserving of compassion myself.

At the same time, I could be — not so much tempted, but conscientiously challenged — to, without saying "Bullshit," say, "Hey, I think this is at least in your subconscious, something deliberate."

I haven't and I won't.

In my opinion, doing so at the time is almost certain to create nothing but a reactive, defensive response. Doing so later is likely to be unproductive if the incident is forgotten, or ... producing a reactive, defensive response if it's not.

To go further than AA, sobriety is about more than so-called "cash-register honesty," but in a specific way.

It's about self-honesty, and about the subconscious as well as conscious parts of ourselves.

Without practicing Buddhist mindfulness, let alone mindful meditation, we do need to work on sober self-awareness.

Fuck you, Jim Moser

Offering me a publishing job on arguably unethical terms as far as budget even if you don't know that Dennis and Teresa have been overcharging people on ads, which I bet you do, assuming they were doing that in Hearne even before taking over Marlin, and somebody, sometime, contacted you?

I'll put more here later, but before everything dissipated, wanted to get the original emotion out, at least.

More specifically, eff you for getting me to raise my hopes of escape from Sulphur Springs, for screwing up vacation eligibility that already sux here and other things.

The real world versus aching desires

Well, it's back to Sulphur Springs after the Marlin newspaper job turned out to be a shit sandwich carefully wrapped to appeal to my emotional heartstrings.

I have no idea if Jim Moser asked other people besides me before offering me this job. I do believe, based on stuff that i couldn't have known about before I got to Marlin, that the offer was borderline unethical at a minimum. And, the "borderline" part is being polite.

So, despite my yearnings to move, despite me liking people in Marlin, despite me liking being near Waco, and despite me trying to use the I Ching and an old baseball cap to convince myself any lingering misgivings pre-move weren't real, it's back to Sulphur Springs. Fortunately, my old job was available and there's no company rules against rehires, even in those particular cases.

That's the real world. I'm back to a place I wanted to get out of rather than keeping myself in a dry heaves situation over a job whose future worried me. More in weeks and months ahead.

The good side is that I'm not eating much money, and that I now have a new cushion from Geico.

That then said, when I do hit 62 or beyond, even if I don't need to have financial worries, will I still actually have them?

Looks like it's moving time

And, back to an old position, at an old paper, but under new ownership.

Back to the town where I found this hat on the road.

The working out of the kinks on this has led me to some free association type thinking about previous cities I've lived in or at least visited regularly.

One-word/phrase word associations with various cities:

Flint — GM. Specifically, the town GM built and GM let die.

Bonham — Transitioning. Did it ever finish that? What’s the town like today? Why couldn’t things have been different when I was there? Before CNHI bought?

Honey Grove — silently dying. Like we all are. Sad.

Hobbs — Why? Why didn’t I see Mary Bearden’s manipulations better? Hah! Remembered her name. Why do other people advance and I don’t?

Jacksboro — Sorry. Sorry I screwed up with Roy. Sorry I didn’t look at good side. Sorry I didn’t do more with sports. Sorry it wasn’t 5 years later in terms of Internet. Sorry for all sorts of stuff. Town sorry too. Struggling. Oil not helping it. Only further east in county, with workers in Wise County.

Mineral Wells — Hypergritty. What will turn it around?

Lancaster — Bypassed. Bypassed by most white and much of the better black migration out of city of Dallas. Kicked? Failed city-state, with Chamber implosion?

Navasota — Depressing. Literally, for me, and thank doorknobs I got past that. Ugh. Sweaty. Missing its chances?

Cedar Hill — Boomtown-bust. The desert mall. Hypocrisy alert on Franke et al.

Odessa — Trying. Oil. Climate change looming as it gets hoist by its oil petard. Denialism.

This is from Dripping Springs, near
Marble Falls, where it eventually
was the perfect time to move.

Marble Falls — Gaslighting. That’s the way I felt with Schock. Really? That’s the way I felt with Roy’s wife. As Chuck said: “Marble Falls is not Fredericksburg, it never has been Fredericksburg and it never will be Fredricksburg.”

Marlin — Gritty. And, I guess, about to become home again.

Center — Clusterfuck. Brandi bought the Light and Champion out of nostalgia. Didn’t do due diligence with the presence and strength of the other folks and didn’t have a real plan. Clusterfucks on publishers, there and Mount Pleasant alike.

Sulphur Springs — Pretentious. In several different ways. More details later. Kind of like a bigger Marble Falls but with less reason.

==

I"m going to write more about these cities.

I lived in Flint two summers home from college in the mid-80s, half a year, again with dad while working in the late 80s, a couple of summers home during seminary time, then 18 months moved in after that.

"GM"? If you've seen Roger and Me, you get it. I saw a fair chunk. AC-Delco started there. Half its manufacturing now gone. Fisher Body of old GM cars, closed. GM Truck and Bus plant, closed. Other GM plants closed or cut back. That was before Rick Snyder's lead-laden pile-on. It's a shell of what it was 30 years ago, and pretty much a shell of 20 years ago, though changes were starting already then.

Bonham? My first newspaper job. I think my dad was right — I moved down with him, nothing keeping me in Michigan, to the nearby town of Honey Grove. To some degree, the town was living off old largess of Sam Rayburn, though Mr. Sam really wasn't that big a pork-barreler. It's gotten new life since I left, primarily being an exurb commuter town for the northeastern sprawl of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Neighboring Honey Grove, aka "the sweetest town in Texas"? Dying town, as I could tell in person recently. The 2010 Census declined almost one-third from 2000. Members of dad's church dying; saw one's grave at an old country cemetery.

These sentiments are still true, even though in my return, I found out the previous publisher, and still publisher of the next paper down the road, had been committing seemingly unethical and possibly illegal predatory sales actions on advertising customers, along with other issues. So, I'm back to pretentious Sulphur Springs, and still wanting the fuck out of a dying newspaper industry

Expressing a bit more, at least in Gestalt self-talk

Per my previous post, my review of Bessel van der Kolk's "The Body Knows the Score," and related items, I've started doing a bit of self therapy based off group therapy family role playing he mentions in the book.

It's doing something, that I know.

I told images of my mom and dad, from childhood, that I was not just angry in some way, but that I was disgusted, ultimately, with how both of them were not only, or just, self-centered, but either unaware of their being self-centered, or something like that, during my growing up, as far as failure to psychologically nurture me.

Indeed, I then thought for things that aren't specifically emotional abuse, but maybe a constellation of religious abuse, intellectual abuse and similar, that we ought to call this "psychological abuse."

I also told a Gestalt image of my sister, of today, not childhood, that I was kind of angry with her response to me a few weeks ago when I had a PTSD anxiety incident at work that had ripples inside me for a few days.

I'm paraphrasing somewhat, but it came off as being something like "Put your big boy pants on," or "you made your bed." She knows I took this job because I had to, rather than risk staying unemployed after being downsized and over the age of 50.

That said, as I have written here before, I see less and less available at that well. That's just honest.