PoM 161
When I was 15 years old my father was ranting and raving against his favorite group to vent his hate and prejudice towards.
I stood up for the left, and defended this group.
He told me that he paid the bills…and squashed me like a bug out of a Kafka novel.
I felt shamed and irreparably victimized.
Today my wife and I disagreed about finances.
I felt the unexpressed rage from that conversation 52 years ago.
But I remembered something…to pause.
I went for a walk, meditated, and I finally had an insight into something I’ve never understood all my life.
I could finally see why couples fight.
Each of us has dents from our childhood. When these specific dents meet each other…There is conflict.
I stood back and got a little perspective.
Looking at it, as a third-party, I could see both sides.
I went back and we talked. Each of us could see and hear each other and there was peace again.
Whew!…
PoM 162
“I’d prove to the world I was important. The old fierce determination to win came back”.
Big Book, Bill’s story
I worked with a young man for two years who was addicted to porn, when I only understand codependency recovery.
He was handsome, well spoken, hardworking at a demanding mining job in a very difficult part of America.
At the end of two years he had dramatically reduced his masturbation, but was still plagued.
One day he said “I want to be you”.
I felt slightly shocked and little embarrassed, shuffled a bit while I regained my composure and said ”Well, I think you want some of the recovery that other people have shown me how to have.”
He said “No, I want to be you”.
I knew that even in the many years I wanted to be as good a guitarist as Hendrix, that I still wanted to be myself.
But, I tried to see where I had that character defect in myself.
I found that because my father was alcoholic, I had missed a basic love that I needed to be healthy, which left me very needy for love and acceptance.
That would wreck my romantic relationships because that is more responsibility and power than a partner should have.
But, more than that, it drove me to succeed, wildly.
I had seen my codependency with it’s people pleasing, being a door mat and being controlling, but now I could see my outsized need for success as having at least a touch of narcissism.
Codependency is one extreme and narcissism is on the other extreme of a continuum.
I need empathy on the one hand and willingness to take care of myself on the other.
I need to be in the middle…
PoM 163
“I am not an artist.”
Bullets over Broadway
Today my wife, Gummy, my muted trombone player Scott, and I were out at the San Francisco Bay on a day as idyllic as a Monet painting, playing music.
A 21 year old man, with no shirt and a half sarong came sauntering up to us.
I could tell he was a musician by the way he was looking at me and Scott.
Turns out he could play the Peruvian drum, Cajun.
I invited him to sit in with us and we played all afternoon. Alona and Gummy were enthralled.
Afterwards, I could feel a certain excitement in my gut…And I was off and running.
I immediately started making plans for rehearsal to add this guy to our group. I was going to buy a recording microphone, a digital/analog converter, mic stand and cables.
But…I kept remembering that line from Bullets over Broadway, “I am not an artist”.
Music…is for meeting my need for creativity.
PoM 164
When I grieve I am much more loving now.
Gone are the days when I would verbally abuse myself with shame, derision and castigation.
I made a commitment to love myself 33 years ago.
At first I didn’t know what loving someone meant, nor did I know who I was, but I learned, one feeling at a time.
Now when I fail, I tell myself the truth, the new truth. And that is that I love me no matter if I win or lose.
It makes grieving so much easier, when I have a friend.
PoM 165
I have recovered from 22 addictions.
(God, that sounds like a hypochondriacal Woody Allen line.)
Stopping alcohol and pills was really painful physically.
Food slammed me day, after day, after day.
Stopping masturbating took 23 months of hard work, using all the tools, as passionately as I was capable of.
But, love addiction, was, by far, the most painful.
The reason is that, for males, it’s about an incomplete, dysfunctional separation from my mother.
There is a longing, not only pre-verbal, but pre-birth that is involved.
Gandhi says that the temperament and the makeup of the parents, when they are conceiving, is imbued into the child’s neurological makeup.
I feel relatively certain that anyone reading this did not have utterly perfect parents.
That being the case, love addiction recovery is very slow and takes a very long time.
But, it’s worth it.