PoM 367
There are some hurts you can never undo…
When I was 17 I left a girl that I would love all my life. I left because I was a love addict, and we were eating each other alive, emotionally.
I had no boundaries. I had no limits.
Walking on my father’s footsteps, I did not know how to negotiate a relationship, to work on myself, to replenish myself and come back to the relationship…I just left.
Addicts are like that…very black-and-white.
It gets worse. I remember saying to myself, out loud, “That was just too painful. I want to have sex…but, just without any feelings".
You can imagine how that turned out…
So I had sex with all the pretty girls that I could find…some of them were her friends.
Not having any boundaries, we would periodically get together and have sex, which sent a very confusing message to her, because I was still having sex with lots of girls.
A year and a half later, I tried to get back with her, but she was gone with another guy.
A decade later we met again, both married to other people and with our own children
(The storyline is right out of Woody Allen’s “Cafe society”).
I was sober, but it was AA quality sobriety, and no more.
Love addiction hit me like an out of control freight train…and I gave up five years of sobriety that day.
When God’s got a message He sends a man. But, when he’s got a big message…He sends a woman. And that was the turning point of my life…I finally put sobriety before everything else.
We would meet again, 25 years later, but she had “moved on”.
I made amends to her, but there are some hurts you can’t undo.
The story has a happy ending.
There was always a piece missing in our relationship. The God piece.
When I finally met Alona I had met someone who had that piece. And I am finally, after 50 years, not hiding, in the recesses of my heart, the desire to be with my first love.
There is a movie that closed with the dedication, “To my first love… May it finally Rest In Peace.”
Some hurts…you just have to forgive yourself for.
PoM 368
Chastity is helping me achieve a goal.
My second favorite guitar player was André Segovia. He practiced four sessions a day, for one hour and 15 minutes.
I’m doing three: Early morning, late morning and afternoon. I can’t tell you how tickled I am.
Chastity is King…
PoM 369
On day 24 of Chastity I felt a moderately strong urge to be sexual as my wife and I were retiring.
I prayed the “Sister, may no harm come to you from me” towards my wife, remembered all the people who are practicing a finite period of chastity at PrayerCall, read the Chastity Offices and I…“Did a Gummy”.
When Gummy is in trouble with his Mom I tell him “Run, Gummy run!”…and he hides under the bed…me, too.
PoM 370
There is an old recovery joke:
Have you heard about Narcissists Anonymous?
Yeah…they won’t tell you where the meetings are.
PoM 371
In that tome of commercial wisdom, Psychology Today, that we love to hate, there is a definition:
Narcissism does not necessarily represent a surplus of self-esteem or of insecurity; more accurately, it encompasses.
1. a hunger for appreciation or admiration
2. a desire to be the center of attention
3. an expectation of special treatment reflecting perceived higher status.
God, I hate to admit it…but that be me, Lord.
It is easy to see it through the music: I have spent a lifetime trying to get people to see that I am better than Clapton (that’s embarrassing).
I always lead bands, never join them…and we always do my compositions or arrangements.
I expect people to treat me better than others because my many years of self-education clearly demonstrates that people should shut up and listen to me.
PoM 372
My second marriage was falling apart and I assembled the Traditional Prayers for MJ twenty years ago .
We memorized them and would recite them, in seven minutes flat, throughout the day on the phone. We called it the “Mobile Monastery”.
But, after a while something changed and I didn’t want to hear my voice prattle on all the time…and breath prayer got very interesting.
It’s still my favorite form of prayer (after actually being in the presence of God).
The trick with breath prayer is to surrender every pesky little thought that intrudes into my alcoholically worried pea-brain.
Surrender thought
Breathe
Surrender thought
Breathe
Surrender thought
Breathe
…You get the idea