The Fuckhaze.

One of the things I have always loved about my husband, or one of the things that I loved about him before heroin made him lose interest in everything except heroin, was the way that our physical relationship was so constant. His hands and mouth always found me, and my hands and mouth always found him. Making love wasn't just an act that happened in our bed...it was something constant, a perpetual fuckhaze of intimacy, touch, and desire, that loomed over us, kept us close. People noticed it, too...talked about the ways that we'd look at each other, the ways we'd interact.

As he emerges from his last relapse and begins accumulating some clean time, our physical connection is coming back to life. I love it...I love remembering what it is that I loved first about him. I love feeling that foundation in mutual attraction regaining its solidity, and I love the feeling of looking forward to coming home to him.

I'm also fucking terrified of it. That fuckhaze-feeling gets all in my mind and makes me susceptible to his lying. It's like my brain gets bathed in semen and sweat and smells, and I can't think clearly. I think that he's wonderful, and I let my guard down, and I let him close to me, giving him opportunities to invade my stillness. I don't want my serenity disturbed...but I do want to enjoy my husband while he's here. I'm not so sure that the other guy that lives in his body, that guy who I'd love to drown forcibly in the toilet, might not come back soon.

Photo Credit: Marcio Melo

Headstand.

I've wanted badly to be able to do a headstand. When it's time in yoga class for our inversion, the instructors often tell us to choose our inversion from many, but they walk us through the shoulder stand.

And don't get me wrong. Sarvagasana is a great pose. I like feeling all the blood pooling in my head, feeling my body calming down and cooling off after the long, sweaty class. I like flopping my legs over the top of my head into plow and feeling the tops of my feet pressing against the floor. Shoulder stand is fabulous in its own way.

But I want to stand on my head. One of my teachers said one time that sirasana is the king of all yoga poses. I have looked around the room, jealously, at the students ignoring the teachers walking through sarvagasana and slowly unfolding themselves into a beautiful, tall, strong, head stand.

As a little girl, I could stand on my head. I took gymnastics classes, and we learned to do the tripod headstand there. I loved it, and I loved folding into and out of it, kind of climbing up my own arms until I found my world upside down, felt my spine stretching long in places where it's normally short and compacting in places it's normally long. I wanted to feel that freedom, that upside-down, disconcerting freedom again as an adult.

I started trying to climb into the pose a few weeks ago, and I could never get my legs up off my arms. I'd try to reach even one toe a little higher up, and it felt as if my legs weighed a thousand pounds each. They wouldn't budge.

But I kept trying, and guess what? Tonight, my feet lifted, and I felt my stomach tighten, and my legs came off my arms! I didn't get my legs all the way straight, but I felt it coming. I took three full breaths with my legs slowly rising and rising before I trembled and fell to the floor.

I am so excited! Soon, I think, I'll be able to do it beautifully!

It occurred to me that asking my husband to leave but not being able to follow through is something like my first, tentative, awkward movements towards sirasana. I felt something opening up within me, and some part of me that was weak is stronger now. I'm getting closer to something, something elegant, strong, and wonderful.

Everybody's Doing It.

Well, if MPJ, Question, Mantra, and Recovery Discovery are all doing it, then I'm going to have to do it, too. I can't let my imaginary friends play a game without me.

It started with Question suggesting that she wanted to find a word to dive into for the New Year, and then Mantra said that we should really also have words for the old year. My imaginary friends really like words, you see.

So I've chosen mine. For this year, my magical word is the top secret recovery open-sesame password-word: SERENITY.

I'm going to seek out opportunities to find serenity, and when I find a moment, a person, a place, or anything that gets me closer to some kind of inner stillness, peace, clarity--I'm going to embrace it. I'm going to chase it down. I'm going to trap it with a big old net. Serenity! Now! Yeah!

I liked this quote from Khalil Gibran, "And you would accept the seasons of your heart just as you have always accepted that seasons pass over your fields and you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief." That's what I want...bad things are going to happen to me and to the people who I love. I am going to experience pain, but it's ok. It's like winter. It passes.

And my word for last year: Endurance.

I made it through. It was hard. I made it, and I grew. I found some nice quotes about endurance, too:

"Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory."

-William Barclay

"God places the heaviest burden on those who can carry its weight."

-Reggie White

The Serenity Prayer, By Mother Goose.

For every ailment under the sun

There is a remedy, or there is none;

If there be one, try to find it;

If there be none, never mind it.

Serenity granted.

"Serenity is not freedom from the storm, but peace within the storm."

Maybe I've finally been to enough meetings and chanted the Serenity prayer the right number of times to please the godlike person, place, or thing that's looking out for me. I don't know what's changed...but I'm so content lately...the person I am, the people I know, the place where I live all just feel so right, for the first time in a long time.

For the first time, maybe, ever.

At last night's meeting, we were talking about memories, how they wash up, and wash up, again and again, and how much they can hurt. It made me think of how each time, each year, when the weather changes, I get all swamped in melancholy. I think of where I've been, where I'm going, what it means. I think of all the years before and what I was doing when I felt that first fall chill, smelled that soft decay just beginning, and I feel sad.

The cool and the smell is different this year, though. It's invigorating. It means that it's time for a new chapter, a chapter where the heroine has found a wealth of strength and hope and peace, which is all I've wanted for so long, and the hero isn't looking so bad himself.

After our respective meetings, we had such a sweet night last night. Sharing this growth with someone who is so special, in a place that's so beautiful, in our bed in our room in our home on our land by our street in our town in the world under the stars...it's warm and secure, or I'm warm and secure in the midst of our settling madness.