First Post.

Me, at my dishwashing job.


Heck, I decided to open a new blogger blog. I had one once before, but you know what? Most of it was lies. I had that blog just in case some hot dyke somewhere read it and found my blog interesting enough to want to marry me.
I thought that living in Alaska made me interesting enough for someone to contact me and want to move up to be with me.. .that is how foggy my brain was.
So let's get started, just ramble on a bit, step on the train... hoist myself up as it were. In that other blog, I would mention only interesting things that happened to me in Alaska. It wasn't lies, actually, just embellished. Call it "Fifty Thousand Little Pieces."
No more of that.
I'm forty five and (as Bill W. put it) in emotional kindergarten. I have blown into and out of so many towns and cities and lives and jobs that I can't keep it straight. I could not tell you how many jobs I've had, nor how many lovers I've had.
How many places I've lived, couch surfed at or just plain slept in the corner. I don't know why I started another blogger blog... I have a Live Journal. I think the LJ is just to keep my buddies from Technodyke informed of how I'm doing.
Technodyke's gone... now everyone hangs out at either dyke daily or dyke noir or who knows where else. It's not the same of course.
And I have some amends to make even within that online community. I'm on my fourth step now... and I keep remembering people I have resentments at. Just when I think I'm done I will wake up in the middle of the night to pee and think of someone and go "Crap. I forgot about that."
And have to write their name on the ever growing list. My sponsor gave me an extension on my fourth step and now I think I may need another week.
when I moved to Alabama in February from Lost Wages, I was not really sure what I was going to do. I knew I was messed up. I did not think that I could stop drinking this time.
A half a case of beer a day, or a fifth of gin, or four bottles of wine... whatever I could get. Towards the end I went back to drinking the mouthwash.... because you can go to a market that is open all night and get that when you can't purchase alcohol... at any rate, mouthwash did a number on my skin.
I'd like to put here how I got sober this time:
After weeks of drinking that heavily, and smoking of course, not eating, barely moving around...I found myself one day with a lusty appetite. What a welcome feeling , hunger... I reached up into a kitchen cabinet for chips. Chips I had bought but never ate because... alcohol was all I put in my mouth.
As I was reaching for the chips, I passed out. Waking up, the first thing I noticed were the chips spilled all over the floor. This caused me to look to see how many chips had scattered... then I saw the blood.
A pool of it, under my head. I was still lying down and at that point sat up to get the phone. I called my sister. Mind you, I had to open my cell phone, and get the number of my sister's cell... without getting blood on my Samsung.
I did this just fine. I called her and told her she needed to come home, and she did. When she arrived she found me passed out in my pool of blood. Screaming and hysterical, she called 911.
They sent HEMSI over. The paramedics did their thing and carried me down the back steps.. I do not recall any of that.
I woke up in the hospital, barely remember my brother sitting there at my bed-side in his 'Mr. Goodwrench' uniform.
Memories of that night are ... waiting for my MRI, and pulling off the neck brace and tossing it in the trash. Giving my brother reason to wonder if they were going to have to restrain me... I wanted to get up and walk around.
At some point they released me and my brother drove me back to the apartment where my sister was locked in her bedroom, angry at me, scared for me.
My poor brother begged me not to drink, he talked about the other brother we'd already lost (to AIDS) and he didn't want to lose me. I think he hugged me but I don't recall. I do know I got into the apartment by myself. I was now sporting four staples in the back of my head... and I had blood ALL over my 'R.I.P. Technodyke' t-shirt .
*sigh*
It washed out, I'm happy to say.
Well, don't you know... I went on drinking. The next morning as soon as my sister was off to work, I managed to get a baseball cap on my head and walked across the street to get beer. Lots of beer. I hid them all over the apartment and kept drinking them until my sister got home, and then after she went to bed.
My memory was shot and for some reason I thought the doctor had said I could not wash my hair, so I was getting somewhat greasy headed... and you can imagine I did not look my best ...
but I kept procuring beer. About five days after I hit my head on the baseboard in the kitchen, I was sitting on the couch surfing the web on my laptop; my sister was watching tv and surfing the web on her PC across the room.
A thought occured to me. At that moment I was posting on Dyke Daily, typing the usual fluff and nonsense, when it happened: "I wonder if A.A. ever went online?"
Just like that. I typed 'Alcoholics Anonymous' into the search field of Google. There are many many links but one caught my eye... "AA Online". I went there and found an AA chat room.
(www.aaonline.net).
I was just in time for an AA meeting... and I stayed for that. I stayed in that chat room for two days, having not had a beer since that first thought popped into my head ..."I wonder if AA ever went online..."
chatting with people in the AA chatroom and going to online meetings, I regained my sense of humor, and began to want to go to AA in real time.
My sister drove me to an AA meeting on a Thursday night, only two miles down the road. I was pretty shaky and emotional, feeling mighty sorry for myself for losing all I had up in Alaska and arriving on AA's doorstep as beat up and knocked around as I ever was.
I was the first person in the meeting room, but others began to trickle in within minutes. A group of three women came in the door and one of them came right up to me to welcome me... and asked me if it was my first meeting. I explained that I'd been in and out of AA and that I had gone back out, and yes this was my first face to face meeting since I'd gone back out.
The woman who'd first approached me agreed to be my sponsor... and she gave me a ride home, took me to meetings , hooked me up with other women who would give me rides... until my sister gave me back the keys to the car she'd been letting me borrow before I hit my head.
Within a couple of weeks I got a job. Washing dishes in a greasy spoon owned by someone in the program. I've been there a couple months or so now. At this writing I have a little over sixty days sober.
Within those sixty days I have gone from someone with a serious skin condition (looked really bad. All over my body. Big red splotches... arms, torso, back, legs, creeping up my neck and onto my face...) to someone who can wear shorts and tank tops... I have gone from seriously unemployable to having had two interviews last week and having to choose between two lucrative positions.
It has not been easy, washing dishes at my age, my feet hurt, my back hurts, it's hotter than hades in that place sometimes, and there is no dish machine.
I still have doubts about wearing shorts in public... my legs still look a bit bad. But the rest of my body, thankfully has healed and looks normal.
My brain is beginning to clear and with it came the desire for companionship. I occasionally hang out with my sponsor, and a few other AA friends, and last week I found a new friend with whom I can get together and drink coffee and discuss life and I tell you it's the most exciting thing in the world, to have a friend. It's been so long since I had one.
There is nothing in this world that could compel me to drink at this moment. And this moment is all I have. My sister's dog is laying on the floor next to the couch I'm reposing on, the night is winding down and I must put the sheets on the couch so I can call it my bed.
This is a one bedroom apartment and small at that. My sister is not so fond of the adventure of tight living; it grates on her nerves and she sometimes lashes out at me.
I don't blame her. It's tough. But somehow I have come through this with extreme gratitude for the simplest of things... I can tie my shoes, I can walk the dogs for an hour or more. I can meet people for coffee, find my way home from downtown , work every single day that I'm supposed to work, and I'm even beginning to crave art.
Two months ago, I could not see ever taking my clothes off in front of a lover again, my skin was so bad... I could not see procuring a job that required wearing shorts. I was terrified of what my life had become. The mirror was my worst, most tenacious enemy.
There is hope, and faith, and love, and fun; if only I don't drink today. Just for this day... I am a miracle of AA and my higher power.
And I hope to record that journey from here on out in this blog. I profoundly wish I had been blogging about it since I left Las Vegas, or better yet, Alaska... but I was in NO shape to blog.
Not truthfully... I don't think I could have written a truthful word.
Finally, I'm going to find out who I am, while being a worker among workers, one of many.
I wish myself a good night with sweet dreams and tomorrow I will greet myself with a smile.