Where I am today

By Red Grammer © 1994 Smilin' Atcha Music, Inc.

I used to think I knew
Everything I needed to
I know how crazy it sounds
Thank God He led me 'round

To where I took a mighty step
And left all I was sure of
Walked off a ledge sight unseen
With no idea of where it was leading

And now I'm Free Falling.....
Oh I'm filled with the sound
Of where it is that I am bound

And I'm trying
I've never looked behind
Since I've learned to fly

I took my step faithfully
I took it like I knew
Exactly where I was going
But it is surely new for me

And here I am in panic
Here I am awash at sea
Asking God to help me through
The very thing I needed to do

It's a Free Falling......I know
I have my lessons too
And I have my bridges to burn
And I have my roads I must leave behind..........I'll try

I used to think I knew
Everything I needed to...

I heard this song for the first time this past summer while I was at Bosch Baha'i School. I knew I was on the brink of a tremendous change in my life, but I had no concept of how all encompassing the changes would be. This is why I don't believe in looking into the future, even though I'm a clairsentient/clairvoyant. There is absolutely NO WAY anyone can accurately see or predict the future. It's all in God's hands, where it should be.

Everything in my life has been turned upside down, or should I say, right side up. It was upside down before, but I didn't know that. All my little schemes and designs for my life--gone. I literally live from day to day on nothing but my trust in God to get me through 24 hours. Actually, I just live from one meal to the next, and pray constantly in between. There's nothing else. All my wishes for the future have been given over to God. If what I want for my life is in concordance with what God wants for me, then that's what I'll do. And if God wants me to do something completely different, I'm willing to at least accept that, even if it's a begrudging acceptance. I might not like it, at least not at first. But I will do it, eventually. Hopefully God has a sense of humor and understands that Angela has to at least put up some semblance of resistance, just because. Becoming completely compliant without asking questions seems so unnatural to me.

I don't like recovery, to tell you the truth. I'm doing things that I definitely do not like right now like calling someone at an inhuman time in the morning and telling her what I'm going to eat for the day (and I eat it, which is a miracle of itself). Even more galling, I have to tell her every aspect of my plans for each day. Why? Because I need to have a strategy for how I'm going to keep my recovery even though crap, aka life, happens. I don't like telling her about my daily life. I don't like having to call three different people every day and try desperately to figure out what I'm going to say to them while the line is ringing. It goes against everything I have learned from my family about keeping my life private. But what did that get me? Morbid obesity. Depression. Denial. Health problems. Loneliness. Isolation. Do I want those things anymore? No. So I'm doing things I've never done before even though they are unpleasant because I want to live. That's what it comes down to. I've almost died twice from morbid obesity, and another two times I was nearly killed by my ex-husband. That's rolling the dice way too many times, and anyone who deals in back-alley gambling will tell you that it won't be long before you crap out.

So I do what my sponsor and other people in the program tell me to do each day. I'm no longer resisting the program. It's not worth it. This is it. I'm free falling.

I also found out that I'm a love addict. This is worse than finding out that I'm a food addict, as far as I'm concerned. But it is what's underneath all the obsessive behavior with food. I never wanted to admit that I have the same desperate need to connect with the opposite sex, just like so many other people. Food kept that desperation at bay. I don't like that this problem has emerged as part of my recovery process, either. Love addiction seems so...so wussy. It's not a part of my much more comfortable rough-and-tough persona that I've spent so many years cultivating. Talk about ruining a person's street cred!

For now, however, I'm just going to sit on that information. When I get more neutrality from flour, sugar and excess portions, I'll look into working the steps related to that issue. To tell you the truth, if I hadn't been so obsessive over a man who held up a very large mirror so that I could see myself more clearly (thus getting in touch with that painful anguish that kept me awake for weeks), I never would have admitted to having an addiction to love. I think I'd prefer living in a convent (strictly forbidden for Baha'is, by the way) than admit to being a love addict. Yech. Mushy, corny stuff. But I have it. Yes, I do.

In other words, I'm committed to this recovery process, along with sharing what's going on with me here on this blog. I don't know why. I no longer ask. If my life isn't supposed to be a secret anymore, and I'm supposed to be a writer, then that's what I have to do. I have to write about my secrets. I'm not doing this to-save-one-other-person, or anything nobly altruistic like that. I'm doing this because I need to save my own life, and sharing my thoughts and feelings is part of that process. I can't save anyone if I'm dead. Trust me, I have no desire to rise up from my grave with pearls of wisdom flowing from my cold lips. Y'all wouldn't listen anyway.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts as a result of the #MarchOnWashington

Image
Georgia's 5th District Representative John Lewis looking up while speaking in the Great Hall of the Libary of Congress on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington 2013  By Djembayz (Own work)  Note: I wrote this as a reaction to an article on Ebony magazine 's website that discusses the exclusion of youth in the 50th anniversary of the March On Washington . I was five, and rather irritated by parents' constant "shhhh" to me and my sister when we said we wanted to watch something else. Of course, I didn't see the significance of the event at the time. I was more interested in Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, and, as I noted in my response to the article, my first day of school. As of now, I'm waiting to see if my comment will be approved for publication, a necessary process that doesn't bother me in the least. The site has probably been hit by the deluge of the typical Internet troll brigade who love to espouse the doctrine of ...
Read more

My former English professor and mentor

Image
The guy is still kicking butt and taking names! (I accidentally published this before I finished the draft, and the only way I knew it was that I saw a link to this article on Phillipe's blog Baha'i Thought ! Good looking out, my brotha!) The following passage is from an article that appeared on sacbee.com : Marc Bertonasco, a CSUS emeritus professor and co- author of "Prose Style," a popular college writing text, also sees "The Elements of Style" as too restrictive. "Oh, it had influence on me, no question. It was the pioneer in what is unofficially called the new style – clear, straightforward writing aiming at efficiency. It's a reaction to bureaucratese," he said. "But I'm a classical rhetorician, and my position is this: No style is better than any other." I had to chuckle at the last quote. If that's true, Professor Bertonasco has mellowed considerably over the years. I remember sitting in the classroom and wat...
Read more

About Love (Love Actually)

Due to circumstances beyond my intellectual capacity to understand, I've been considering the subject of "love" a lot more than I want to lately. I suppose there a lot of reasons, the best of which involves seeing and hearing so many people talk about it in public. Just yesterday, while I was transferring from a light rail train to a bus, I overheard a young lady gushing to two friends, "I'm SO in love with James! Don't call me later 'cause I'm gonna be with MY honey!" I tried very hard to contain the gag reflex. Please give me props for at least considering that it would have been an unseemly act, and quite rude. So anyway, I've been noticing the actions of young people "in love" (lust) and wondering, was I like that once upon a time? I can't remember ever declaring undying love for a guy in the presence of strangers, but I'm sure I've done things that were equally ludicrous, like threatening to beat up a girl fo...
Read more