04 Jun 07 Monday
Trip Photos
Current mood:flippant
Category: Travel and Places
I’m back from the UK. Actually, I’ve been back since May 28, but I’m only getting around to posting a blog entry now.
I’m hoping the link below works. These are the pictures for which I had prints made. They’re of Italy (Manoppello) and London:
http://photos.walmart.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=12314380/a=3211315/t_=3211315
I figured I’d share these photos like this in case it takes me forever to put them up with captions on my web site. So take a look if you like.
Mary
12 Jun 07 Tuesday
Changing My Name
Current mood: indifferent
Category: Life
Yesterday I went to the DMV to change my name on my license and my registration and title to Mary R. Drews. Today I changed my personal bank account. Next comes my business account. Then car insurance, passport, mail, health insurance … what a pain. So much so that I have vowed to never change my name again. I’m done with it.
The weird thing is that I have a hard time signing my name “Drews.” It’s been quite some time since I signed that name. My hand keeps wanting to write “Shefferman.” I suppose it’s just a matter of time before it sinks in. For now, my signature requires concentration. It’s a strange effect.
So I’m now Mary Drews again. It’s an empty victory (if you could call it a victory).
Currently listening:
Shrunken Heads
By Ian Hunter
Release date: 15 May, 2007
24 Jun 07 Sunday
Another Great Photo!
Current mood: ecstatic
Category: Music
Susan and I hung around outside the Highline Ballroom last night until …
–Mary
18 Jul 07 Wednesday
Anniversary
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes
Today is the 14th anniversary of my sobriety. No shit. I haven’t had a drink in 14 years. I don’t miss drinking. I don’t wish I were drinking. It’s not an issue. Not important.
I wish I had something profound to say about being sober. But I don’t. I’ve had a charmed sobriety. I never “slipped.” Never hung on the edge, a sweaty slab of needy meat. Never cried myself to sleep in a fit of agony and craving.
The first few months were like a new drug trip. I remember having feelings. The numbness ebbed. The novelty of haze-less perception kept me curious and driven. I went to AA meetings every day, except Mondays, which was the day I saw my psychologist.
I didn’t like AA. I kept wondering why God (since it seemed that’s what it was all about) would create the only path to freedom from alcohol fraught with the sheer terror of standing in front of strangers telling them my deepest secrets. Not just strangers, but strangers who had been taught to be judgmental and suspicious of anything that wasn’t specifically condoned by “The Program.” I know it wasn’t the intention of Bill W. or Dr. Bob, but I sensed a hostility that seemed misplaced and dangerous. I felt that if I used my brain at all that I would be condemned. If I tried to avail myself of psychological help outside The Program, I was allegedly doomed to a life drowning in alcoholism.
But I went for over a year, trying to “get it.” The only thing I got was a sore ass from sitting on metal folding chairs and a feeling of being trapped in a place I didn’t belong. Recovery was penance. There was a sense of shame I was supposed to embrace, but I couldn’t see the shame in being ill. To me it seemed that AA was perpetuating the idea that alcoholism is merely a choice stupid people make, and those stupid people should hide themselves in church basements while they think about just how stupid they are. A slight twist on the leper colony.
That’s not entirely fair or true. I gained some important insights. I gained tips and tricks that have kept me from slipping back into drinking. I don’t like to admit it, but AA did help me. But it wasn’t enough for me, as I’m sure it’s not enough for many people. Still, there’s wisdom and there are some damned good ideas mingled with the blind faith and utter idiocy of AA.
For years after I stopped going to meetings, I thought I was stuck with trying to climb out of my pits of depression on my own strength. (I say “pits” because I fell into more than one episode of depression.) I believed that no doctor would prescribe antidepressant medication to me because I was a recovering alcoholic. So I never asked for it, even when I was crying so hard I couldn’t breathe. Even when the room was spinning around me, and all I could think about was dying. Even when I was writing out my good-bye letter. And later, when I could barely stop myself from slashing my skin with a box-cutter — and sometimes failed — when I resolved that living under a banquet table with a stuffed toy was the key to safety, I still believed that I had no hope of help out of the mud of despair.
There’s the failing. AA tried to tell me that it could cure me, if I trusted that it could cure me. But it refused to acknowledge that maybe the alcoholism wasn’t the primary issue. Maybe the depression was the primary issue and the alcoholism was a symptom. Maybe treating only the alcoholism left me without relief from the true illness.
So I’ve been on antidepressants since 2001. I was even taking anti-anxiety medication regularly for over a year — something AA would tell me is exactly the same as having a shot of Jack Daniels. Oddly, I didn’t become addicted to Ativan as AA predicted. It didn’t send me down to the liquor store or the local dive-bar. It didn’t transform me into a crazed creature straight out of Reefer Madness. It just made me feel human. It made the gut-rending pain and terror of anxiety stop. In retrospect, that’s all I ever wanted when I poured a few glugs of my father’s scotch into a glass of iced tea. I remember the clarity of realizing that I felt “normal” when I had a one-drink buzz. The problem was that alcohol was never the right medication: it only exacerbated the problem and created its own hell around my soul.
Fourteen years. I suppose it’s some accomplishment. In AA they say that it takes the same number of years in recovery that it did in active alcoholism to reach the neutral point. They say that you can’t walk five miles into the woods and expect to walk out in two. If this is true — and I have no reason to doubt it — then I might still have a few years before I’m truly on the other side of this illness. I’m not sure of the exact moment that I became an alcoholic; I’m not sure that can be determined for anyone. So maybe this is my turning point. Maybe next year.
In the meantime, I focus on living. Although I don’t forget my past, I don’t dwell on it. Most important: I’m free from all the things that prevented me from being me. For that, yeah, I’m grateful.
–Mary
27 Jul 07 Friday
Some New Pictures!
Current mood: sleepy
Category: Art and Photography
I took some pictures of a chipmunk (“Chippy”) in the yard today. He lives under some rocks that are piled against a catalpa tree in the front yard. If you watch quietly, he comes out onto the rocks.
While I was saving the pictures of Chippy to post them here, I was interrupted by visiting horses (with some people on top of them, of course). So I took a picture of the horses.
Then, while saving the pictures of the horses, I realized I should post some pictures of the cat (Milo), seeing at I went to the trouble of taking the pictures.
The pictures of Milo were in the same folder as the pictures of the yard here at Bayberry Lane. So I looked through those and chose a few to post …
which reminded me that I had taken pictures of the construction of my brother Mike’s new house on the bay.
So if you look in the “The Log Cabin” photo album you’ll see all those pictures.
–Mary
29 Jul 07 Sunday
New Music
Current mood: grumpy
Category: Music
The other day I went to a garage sale and I bought three CDs and a cassette tape. I paid a dollar for the lot of them.
So I’m listening now to Where The Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson. It’s a compilation by various artists, including John Wesley Harding and the Good Liars, Julian Cope, R.E.M., T Bone Burnett, and The Jesus & Mary Chain, among others. I don’t think I ever heard any Roky Erickson. But I’m really enjoying this.
The CDs I got are Dave Edmunds Plugged In, The Replacements Shit, Shower & Shave, and Frank Zappa Strictly Commercial. The Dave Edmunds CD is the digipack with the die-cut “E” — which is apparently collectible.
So there’s my Sunday. Not terribly exciting, but it’s mine.
Oh … and a Very Happy Birthday to my very old friend Lisa. OK. So she’s not very old, but I’ve known her longer than either of us is willing to admit.
–Miss Mary
Currently listening:
Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye – Tribute to Roky Erickson
By Various Artists
Release date: 19 October, 1990