Quick ----Sand!!!

July 23

QUICK------SAND!!!

“Don’t ask me how deep the quicksand is,” said my sponsor, “it’s your job to get out of it, not to quantify it.”

“I’m not sure how to get out.  Will you come and get me?” I ask her.

“No, Darling.  If I get in we will both be down for the count.  The only chance we have for me to help you is if I stay out of the morass with my feet planted firmly on solid ground.”

“What if you can’t get me out?” I cry.

“I will go get more help.”

“What if all of AA can’t get me out?”

“Angel, my hope is, that if there was no way out, you wouldn’t even know you were stuck.”

Limit your limits.

*

Before Ophelia

Young women drown themselves before Shakespeare

immortalized, memorialized Ophelia.

But having a poster child changes us.

Cautionary tale or rallying cry,

Ophelia is a hand to hold on dark cold days

when the light is hard to find

and everything seems bent toward destruction.

Not that I think she solved anything

with her despondent act

just that she stands in the familiar frame

I find myself in from time to time.

When I imagine I’ve invented the wheel

it makes it harder to step down and walk.

Ophelia’s fate makes it easier to get off depression’s bus

and find my way back home.

You are reading selections from Sober on the Way to Sane and More Lines From My Life by Sherrie Theriault

http://www.amazon.com/Sober-On-The-Way-Sane/dp/1440417342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576888&sr=8-1&keywords=sober+on+the+way+to+sane

http://www.amazon.com/More-Lines-From-My-Life/dp/1448677203/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388576956&sr=8-1&keywords=More+Lines+From+My+Life

Soul Chiggers

June 3

Soul Chiggers

If you can seed apprehension deeply in a generation, you can reap disillusionment for a hundred years.  Bent foresight twists hindsight.  Admiring ignorance, signs death’s warrant.  Evil splintered to a thousand slivers burrows under the skin without killing their host.  Death delayed spreads destruction along with melancholy; a septic contagion if ever there was one.  And how do we fight this systemic blight?  It is embedded in the water, the air, the mind, and try what I might; I can’t seem to live without any of these. Chiggers of the soul feed and breed no matter how I scratch and chew.  I am raw, but still infested.  How do I kill what is in me without killing the me?

Step up to indecision

*

THE WORM

Because there is never enough punishment

For those who inflict pain, I punish myself

Only I can tell if the depth of the pain is a match

Only I can judge when enough is enough.

This is the turn of the drunken worm--

Who lives in my brain

The belief that what began in pain

Must end there too.

Even now in recovery I persist in hurting myself

In a thousand tiny ways, setting trap after trap,

To catch the perpetrators, making my heart a mine field

A place unfit for me to live

I must sober the worm

And let myself off the hook.

Nameless Strange

September 19

Nameless Strange

I am nameless strange and you don’t know me, not anymore. Dismissed as an unread book; sent away with covers torn off. The bad weather that you love keeps you indoors eating hot curry and thinking foolish thoughts. What narcissism separates you and me? After blinking eyes you find our sameness, bend near me and whisper my name.

Have faith in fruit

*

A LITTLE EXTRA HOPE

What will you do with a little extra hope?

Asked my quizzical sponsor.

What good is a little hope?

My retort.

A little hope got you sober,

What can you do with a little more?

Could you take out your dreams

And fly them on a breeze?

Could you throw yourself

Into a wave of intention

And see if you could ride it out?

Breathe easier, smile broader?

Take my hand tighter

And walk the road awhile longer

Before you run for refuge?

Let me ask a better question.

What couldn’t you do with a little more hope?

-----------FAIL-----------