Tag Archives: Celebrate recovery

Enough.

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Near the end of tonight’s session at Celebrate Recovery, we did an exercise where we were supposed to write down the things that we were struggling with, our baggage, or in denial about. It wasn’t particularly difficult for me to fill up the index card. I had scribbled down an “A” before the leader even finished giving us instructions. I’m perfectly willing to share my list because I am not ashamed of my struggles. They are a weakness that will allow me to grow in strength.

My list was as follows:
Alcohol has a hold on me.
I take my relationships for granted.
I am unappreciative.
I am lazy.
I am cruel.
I take advantage of people.
My suicidal tendencies are so deeply ingrained that I worry I can never change.

The segments of these that are mind sets are already a work in progress. And I am grateful to say that I currently have a week of sobriety under my belt(I know, not that impressive, but hey, you have to start somewhere.)

Early in the session we got a reminder that one cannot find self worth based on what others think.
That’s important for me to remember. I also like to remind myself that although these are truths about me now, they do not always have to be. There are also a multitude of other truths about me, ones that can qualify as affirmations.

Truths like:
I am creative.
I am intelligent.
I am good with animals.
I am quality driven.
I am skilled with my hands.
I am analytical.
I have a good eye.
I am witty.

Now, my abysmal self esteem is preventing me from coming up with too many more, but for once I’m actually pretty convinced there are some.

Also, despite that fact that I am currently going through some grief and heartache, I still find that I am improving. Smiles seem to come a little easier, a little more naturally. Some of my suicidal tendencies are starting to feel a tad absurd, for the first time. The buzzing tension that my body holds is there to teach me that as long as my heart beats, there is hope.

And that’s enough for now.

Sanity

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The question that got me tonight was “What is your definition of sanity?” It’s a question almost too simple and too complex at the same time. I didn’t want to answer it at all because I was sure my response would be way out of bounds from normal, so, naturally, I volunteered to go first.

I don’t think there’s any such thing. I think that everyone’s got some things that are seriously dysfunctional in their life. I think you can’t look at anyone and declare they are sane or not. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a sane person. I’ve seen some that are radically not, but that tends to come with the fact that I’ve spent a combined 5 weeks in psychiatric facilities over the last two years. I’ve seen some crazy people, but I’ve yet to see any sane ones.

One of the ladies made the observation “If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then sanity must be the opposite; learning from mistakes and correcting behaviors.” I like that a lot, it’s better than the definition the book provided. “Wholeness of mind, making decisions based on truth.”

I still stick with the idea that there’s no such thing as sanity. There’s just insane that’s thinly veiled.

Long day.

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I woke up early, under the advisement to see the day as an opportunity to create. The night before, Denise had been teasing me lightly about my last blog post via text. Very shortly, I was in her car, driving to a storage place as a GRMakers field trip. At one point during our conversation, I turn on my hippie voice and declare “I’m just one of those artist types, man.”
Quick and devilishly observant as ever, Denise replied “So you need constant reassurances and validation?”
She had me. “I don’t know abou- Yes.”
As we laughed and I made faces to exaggerate my hurt, I was actually feeling a little stung. She was quick to reassure me. “It’s totally okay, I am too.”

We reached our destination, a large brick building with an entryway of swooping curved metal. We were there to meet a guy who buys up the fixtures and furniture of businesses that close down and resells it. His warehouse is massive. The downstairs is rented out, and we passed factory workers, who would look up from either their phones or their work and watch us curiously. There were rows upon rows upon rows of racks filled with racks or barrels or little metal tidbits. The place seemed endless. Then we got upstairs, where we could really dive into the miscellany that we were there to look at.

~

As I walked up to rest of the group(inspecting desks), Buttercup broke from the herd to say hi and pulls me aside. “You know, as you were walking up here- today is the first time I can like SEE that you’ve lost weight. You’re like a different person.” Sometimes I think he says these things just to perplex me. It’d be within his personality to drop weird statements to throw me off. He’s one of my truest friends, but about 12% of the time he’s an asshole. There’s the 88% of the friendship where he builds me up and we joke together and muse about people, but the 12% can rip you right down(hence the nickname Buttercup). I didn’t get his motives, he had a funny look on his face and we’ve got enough history of us pushing each other that I’m generally second, third, and fourth guessing anything he says.

I don’t usually see the lost weight(about 45 pounds), I just see how far I have to go to. And I’m certainly not a different person. In fact, that’s the wall I keep bumping into with my mental health. I know that no matter how I progress or what changes I make, I’m still me. And I’d still be living my life. But the real key of this whole experience was that it’s winter. This is the first time he’s seen me without a hoodie or jacket on in months. Of course I finally look like I’ve lost weight.

~

As a fledgling makerspace, this place was ideal to outfit the place. We eagerly plotted about desks, chairs, materials racks, transformers, carts, saws, dust collectors, fans, cables, shelves, and a welding table. The two things that interested me most were the barrels of chain(for my chain horse idea) and these great big metal spoke wheels that were pulled from an overhead conveyance system. When I saw them, I saw Giraffecycle.

Giraffecycle is a very old idea of mine, I’ve wanted to build her since I was a small child. It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. A pedal powered vehicle in the shape of a giraffe. Preferably life size, and with an articulating neck.

Building her would be a dream come true.

Eh, probably never gonna happen. But there’s power in dreaming, and I was basking in that joy for the rest of the day.

~

 
After that I went to work. The slightest task can become a festival of tangents there. All I had to do was assemble two more parts to fill an order. I made the argument for setting up a machine to make new parts for an order, but my father insisted that I sand some polished display hinges to send them out, he’d rather get the order out ASAP. I didn’t want to throw away the work that someone had already put into polishing them, but I did as he asked. It involved chucking up the little lathe with a thin rod wrapped in sandpaper and center drilling one end. Then put the rod between the chuck and the live center support, and after more fiddling around, flipped on the lathe and started to sand the tricky inner curve of the part.

The sandpaper immediately shredded. We had center drilled the wrong end, so the sandpaper was wrapped wrong. More fiddling around, cleaning the rod and replacing the papers. But I got it done, went to the other buffing jack to sand the rest of the part, and reassembled the hinge. Then we realized there are no more flanges, and my father decides that if I have to make 2, I should make eight instead, that way the whole order will match instead of some having a zinc finish and some plain.

So I start welding flanges. At one point, I notice some moisture on my glove. I was baffled. I looked at the ceiling for a leak, I wonder if maybe I had wiped my nose or something without remembering. Then I look at the torch. The water cooled TIG welding torch. There was a leak.

I only had two more parts left, 125 amps of electricity and a leaking torch, bad idea, but surely it could hold out for two more parts? The next arc strike makes my hand tingle. BETTER NOT.

I watched for a moment as my dad repaired the leak. “I guess I’ll go vacuum or something.”
“Don’t you want to know how to do this next time it happens?”
“Yeah, but I also feel bad for not being productive right now.”
I stayed standing right there, productivity be damned. Learning is important too.

Repair complete, I finish the parts and my father and I had another discussion, where it was determined that we should indeed set up the CNC machine and run more new parts. Turns out that the 2 pieces I had worked so hard on had a different hole pattern than the rest. It took until after I sanded away the nice polished finish that I was so keen to preserve earlier. Sigh.

~

My evening was spent at Celebrate Recovery and ended with squeezing arms wrapped around my ribcage. Trudy came to visit me and brought with her a hand lettered card for me with a quote from Sir Francis Bacon. It represents our shared struggles and was really very sweet. It’s going on my wall.

“If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.”

Right now I am certain of only one thing; that it’s time for bed.

Unfinished

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photo

 

 

Today at work was directed by super effective frantic energy. From the time I go there to the time I left, huge strides were made on the Downs body, a 33-34 Chevy fiberglass shell that we were developing hinging and safety features for. I was elated when we finally got the door swinging after having worked on those blasted mounting plates and the jam. I wish I could say my father was as excited as I was, but he just immediately focused on the next thing without taking a moment to appreciate that victory, a supremely important one for me.

 

 

It was amazing how effective we were being. We got more done today than in the past week combined. The power of deadlines, I suppose.

 

 

My mom walked up at one point just after the first swing, and I forced her into sharing my elation. I got a fist in the air and a halfhearted “Whoo” but that was better than nothing.

 

 

When the guys came to pick it up, they were excited about what we had made. They talked about how cool it looked, and how more and more people were looking for the kind of features that we were designing. It was very satisfying, because for me it had just been routine, but they saw magic.

 

After work, I went to my CR step study. One of the members gave me a birthday present she had been working on since finding out that my birthday had been before last week. It was sweet and heartfelt and I felt totally undeserving. All of the girls wrote notes on the back of an art frame that says “You are loved.” They barely know me, why should they love me? And yet they choose to. It’s baffling to me.

 

 

The Downs body is going to a car show, as is, with all the rough stuff exposed. And I’ll keep walking through CR, and letting people see a bit of my rough stuff.

 

Reconsidering CR, Part 2

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I went back to the Monday night group tonight and it affirmed that I should continue going to Celebrate Recovery.

We heard a testimony from a woman who told a story of hiking between two mountains in Israel. She was taking this path through the desert because she was told there was an oasis in the end. She likened it to CR; even though there may not be any signs of life, and everything still looks like desert, if you stick with it there’s a miracle in the end.

I also had a conversation with Dan, because it turns out that he heard about my blog post. The internet got real small for me that day.

It was really nice to talk to him.

I’m writing the following down so I’ll remember it.
He can tell I’m not a quitter by how many barriers that I have up. In a year, we’re supposed to talk again and see if I’ve figured out why those two concepts are related.
It sounded like an elaborate ploy to me. I mean, if you tell me to attend for a year so I can harass him about that question, then he’s just counting on my stubbornness. He insisted it wasn’t a ploy, though.

I guess I’ll find out this year.

Reconsidering CR

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I’m starting to think that Celebrate Recovery might not be the right fit for me. I mean, I’ve suspected that the whole time, but it seems to be becoming more clear. It’s filled with humorless people that have no concept of mental illness or theology and yet claims to be good for both. It feels like an environment for zealots to grow.

The initiation of each meeting must seem cult like to newbies, as we recite our principles and steps and bible verses. The whole thing is getting repetitive, redundant, and obnoxious. Several of the people just seems stupid. I feel bad about writing all of this stuff, because I know it has the potential to do good things for people, and the leaders are all very kind. But it doesn’t feel like the program it should be. At the same time, it’s both too structured and not structured enough.

There’s great gaps in approach and theology that is the natural occurrence of bringing together people with different backgrounds, so I can’t fault it, but some coherence would be nice. The person that I have the most respect for is Dan, but I can’t ever seem to have a conversation with him.

I briefly mentioned wanting to leave to Trudy as we were leaving. She apparently felt the same way, saying that she’s been having some of those thoughts as well. As we hugged goodbye, she mumbled “If you quit Celebrate Recovery, can we still be friends?” I said “Of course.” She’s the highlight of my evening there.

While I’m on the topic of CR, I might as well mention one mildly related thing that keeps sticking to the back of my brain. I had mentioned the program in one of my journals that I had read at writers group, and afterward while I was hanging out with some people, one of the guys turned to me and asked me how I was coping with Grandma passing. I said what I usually do when people ask me that.

“I’m not. Not well.”

“Coping, not doping, right?”

Do I just look like a drug addict? I was thoroughly confused at that moment and it must have shown on my face.

“You mentioned Celebrate Recovery. That’s not usually a program that people just research about, you’ve gotta be on the inside.”

I don’t think we had any more conversation than that, or at least I don’t recall it.

But it’s interesting to hear that perspective about the program. It seems to me that most people going through CR are struggling with codependency or divorce or pornography addiction. I went for depression, I figured it was a free resource and my neighbor spoke highly of her own experiences there. Maybe the location that I go to is an oddball one. He said “coping not doping” like it was a very regular phrase that gets kicked around a lot. It seemed odd to me.

I think it might be time for me to stop going on Mondays. I’ll continue to give the step study a chance.