Christmasiest

It’s Christmas eve…eve. That’s the latest possible time of day on the day before Christmas. I can’t make it any clearer than that. It’s actually only 8pm, but that’s about how late I make it up these days.

Today I spent the day with my girlfriend and her daughters where we opened up presents and cooked meals and even prepared a family meal for her mother and her brother who spent the second half of the day with us. This was the Christmasiest thing I think I’ve ever done outside of the routine blood-relative holiday celebrations. We did something similar at my mom’s house last week, but we hosted this festivity: a first for us together.

 

Last night, the youngest daughter—whilst restlessly shifting around in her high-chair—fell to the floor with a thump. Quick to action, momma gasped and ran over to her baby lying on the ground before I had even realized the gravity of the situation. As I looked at her, from four feet up in the air, I could see a knot tying on her forehead. In my paradigm, I could see it pulsing with every heartbeat, and changing color quicker than a chameleon. In truth, it was pretty bad, and it did swell up quickly, but she cried it out in two minutes, and we iced it down for about an hour which helped the swelling go down to a manageable bump.

My first thought told me that we were going to be celebrating from a hospital. I was scared, and for the first time I realized that I was afraid not for fear of me losing something or not getting something, but afraid for the wellbeing of a child. This is a healthy fear. You people don’t really have to deal with sorting out fears like that, but I do. As an addict, I was only ever worried about myself. I only cared for my needs and wants, and I acted accordingly. Through years of retraining myself and fixing my past and present mistakes alike, I have found that if I put others first in my thoughts and actions, the world around me is a better place.

 

Tomorrow we separate for the day as our families hold their respective Christmas gatherings at the same time. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, and we will be back together in no time at all. In just a few short minutes I will get to help play Santa Clause for the first time in my life. Last night we wrapped all of the gifts from “him” and tonight, before we go to bed, I will eat both of the cookies the girls left out for him, and dump out the milk because, quite frankly, milk is kind of gross, and place their new gifts under the tree. There will be much excitement in the morning, and I will be part of a new happiness that is unfamiliar still, yet quickly growing on me in my new role.

 

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all was quiet

Santa Vince is ‘bout to diet

On the cookies and milk left out for Saint Nick

My girlfriend won’t let me type an inappropriate sentence involving her and ending with the word dick.

 

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate, and happy days to all who don’t: I hope all of you love your life the way it is, and if you don’t…. Well, change it.

 

I'm Not Daddy

My name is Vince, and I’m 39 years old, and I’ve never had children. I’ve had much experience with being in the life of a child, and I think I do well with kids in general, but I am not a parent in the literal sense: nobody calls me Dad.

I want children—or maybe just one child—of my own someday, but I have no plans to impregnate any human females in the near future. I also have no plans to impregnate any other females of any species which is hopefully a relief to my friends and family. But if you want to make God laugh, make plans.

I recently put myself in a relationship with a willing partner who has two beautiful children from a failed marriage. She has custody of both of them full time, and I have taken on some of the responsibility of a positive male role-model. I suppose that’s a nice way to put it. Another way to put it is that I have forsaken my previous life as a bachelor to take on a roll much needed in the lives of three amazing ladies. But that last definition is self-centered in that it focuses on what I have sacrificed. I no longer have the right to concentrate on my desires over what is needed by the greater good. My only objective here is to continue to do the next right thing and give instead of take. What comes back—what is given to me that I do not ask for—is a love I am unaccustomed to; a look from a child that says she appreciates me; a laugh at my silly joke; or a hug from a tiny person when I wake up in the morning. I can’t express what those actions do to me inside, but it activates a part in my brain that I don’t think has ever been used. I know I’m not Daddy, but I’m filling in where one is needed, and it’s coming naturally as far as I can tell.

Privacy is gone, organization is out the window, and my skills as a cook are humbled by the selective palate of a toddler and her older sister. I’ve found myself in a world where some people only pee and shit in diapers which they cannot clean themselves. They cannot eat a meal without getting food in their hair, and juice on the floor. They cannot stand it when a grown-up is not present in a room, and they will open bathroom doors and shower curtains to be in sight of an adult. It’s creepy. Two-year-olds are creepy. There, I said it.

The older one is much easier to communicate with mostly because she knows English at a first-grade-level, and we have a lot of fun with math, cooking, and projects from the internet. She is creepy in her own ways, and she doesn’t like to flush the toilet when she’s done, but I can accept all of her shortcomings because she is learning daily. We laugh a lot and I told her how to spell the word fart.

 

I am not Daddy. I am not replacing Daddy, because I need to be better than he was in their lives when he was there. He left with an impact that will surely be felt in their lives for some time to come, and he is in a place where he can work on becoming a better father and I hope and pray that someday he can be part of their lives again as their father. If and when that happens, I will still be in their mother’s life as a positive male role-model, and someday when we have all been through whatever it is we are going through now, we will establish our relationship boundaries and live our lives in as happy a fashion as possible. For now, we are growing each day, and learning how to love again.

 

Growing

I’m still here. It’s not even that I’ve run out of material on which to write, it’s that I’ve been using my time less selfishly. When I first started writing, it served as a platform to air out my laundry in a way that wasn’t perceived (by me) as so personal; it was just a story on the internet. Then I decided to go public with the blog, venture out on my own, and the format changed to a life of recovery after prison. Now that there's somebody else in my life, I've felt restricted as to what I can and should write. But that will change with time.

My life is different again. I’m still in recovery. In fact, my sober life takes up quite a bit of my time as I now have four sponsees and a sponsor all of whom I try to meet with weekly, along with a home group and another meeting I attend on a weekly basis. I have a service commitment in my home group as always. I am the 7^th tradition coordinator. The 7^th tradition states that every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. This is usually the time in the meeting that the baskets are passed around as we collect money to pay for rent and lights and coffee, etc. It also means that we are completely self-contained in our group. We do all of the work including setup, cleaning, and business duties. There’s actually quite a lot that goes on behind the closed doors of AA, none of the specifics of which I can share with you however. Did that sentence make sense? I hope not. Let’s move on.

I’ve made big changes at work. I was promoted obliquely which means that there is no raise associated with the new responsibilities. I coined that term just now, and I like it. I now work the 6am-2pm shift Tuesday through Friday, and Sunday. I am a morning person and this really works with my schedule and what I do with my life outside of work and recovery. I am now a breakfast cook again. This is my third stint behind the omelet pan, but my first in roughly a decade.  I am also now the “soup man” which is great in its special way because I get to use some creativity in that I get throw leftovers in a pot and boil the flavors together. Can you tell if I’m being sarcastic? Neither can I. My alarm time of 5am does come early most days, but I get out of bed and trudge on anyhow because I don’t shirk responsibility anymore. I’m only a week into these new hours, so maybe it will catch up to me, but for now I am happy.

Most important of all is my life with the girls. Each day I am blessed to have these three hearts to wake up to, to come back to, and to enjoy life with. I spend nearly all of my time here, and there’s talk of spending all of my time here, not because it’s convenient, but because it feels right. There’s not just talk, there’s action. In order for me to make a move this far away from my county of commitment, I had to have the idea approved by the Department of Corrections, which it was. Making a move 50 minutes west is a big decision, and I have considered it carefully. I’m not looking for approval or guidance, just acceptance. So there you have it.

I will continue to write once I have come up with a more current theme as it relates to my life in recovery, life in a relationship with a married woman, and the daily struggles with children that look up to me for love and tolerance. Until then, I will continue to be grateful for everything I have in my life. I believe I have been growing in a spiritual sense. I have the best comprehension of a God that I have ever had. That doesn't mean that I believe in God, it means that I believe I am not God, and I am capable of loving and being loved, and that I spend my time putting good into the stream of life because of the feeling I get in return. Maybe in that way I am selfish.

 

Thanks

It’s that time of year again where we celebrate the theft of our land from Natives by some guys from Spain. Right? Or did the Brits steal it? I have no clue, I lost all of my historical knowledge years ago in the fray. Well, Google tells me that the "First Thanksgiving" was celebrated by the Pilgrims after their first harvest in the New World in October 1621. Fair enough. I suppose this explains why it is customary to share gratitude over a meal every year. When you have something to be grateful for, like a harvest, you celebrate it.

This year I have a lot to celebrate. My life is quite different than a year ago, and very opposite three years ago when I ate sliced turkey loaf and canned fruit off of a tray in prison. Here is what I am most thankful for this year:

1.    Nina. It’s been two months since my grandma suffered her stroke, and although there are some permanent side effects, she is able to do nearly everything she could do before it happened. She still has her personality, her humor, and her strength. I ponder why it took such a catastrophic event to get me closer to her life, but the point is that I have the capacity to be there, and I have shown up when I was needed.

 

2.    Continued sobriety.  Another holiday approaches and nobody will have to ask my mom where I am. I have sustained my commitments to my home-group, my sponsor, and my sponsees for a long time now. Working with others has been the foundation of my recovery which supports all of my other actions, and without action on my part, and like-minded people I can rely on for support, this daily reprieve from alcohol and drugs would not be possible.

 

3.    The Girls. Without my sobriety, I would never have landed in this relationship I am in now, and I can’t imagine my life any other way. This is a different life: there’s not a moment of quiet or privacy, and I don’t get to watch Netflix as often as I did when I was single, but such is life. I am happy every day I wake up next to her (even when she pushes snooze five times), and I am grateful that I have an opportunity to be a positive male role model for two adorable children, which is something I lived without (in my home) for the first 39 years of my life. Every day I am happy.

 

4.    Mom. I don’t see you as much as I did a year ago, but we are both in different places (figuratively and literally) in our lives. What I am grateful for is the relationship that we have formed since the day I got locked up in December of 2013. I remember getting a letter from you while I was sitting in that cold dark jail cell and feeling like I had somebody that cared for me for the first time in a while. That letter, although a little stern, got me through a lot, and even though I continued on the wrong path for a while after that, you were there through my entire stay in prison, and you have supported me every step of the way since my release. I love you.

 

5.    My job. I have benefits, I get paid more than I ever have, and I actually look forward to going to work. I’ve never been able to say that combination of words before.

 

And that’s the list. Of course I have a lot more to be thankful and grateful for, but this isn’t always the right place to say everything I want to, so I will leave it at that.

 

Every day, every week, I get farther and farther away from that criminal I used to be. This has not been the easy path: there was and is much work to be done, but the results are in and I’m loving my life as it is, so I need to continue doing what I have been because it’s working. Happy Thanksgiving everybody! Don’t forget to tell your loved ones not just that you love them, but why you love them.

 

 

She 6

It’s been two months since I wrote the last post in a series dedicated to my love life. Well, I decided it was time to add to the story, as so much has happened since my last publication on the subject. You may notice that the title of this post is She 6. Well, you get a gold star for detecting that there is no She 5. Actually, there is. I wrote it for her, and it will never be published.

Once when I was young, my mother was assaulted while I was in the next room by an angry, possibly drunken doctor. I remember feeling helpless: I was too young and too weak to do anything about the situation, to protect my mother. I felt that same way that night. I knew that you two were arguing, but I didn’t know how bad it was until you called me frantically, telling me to hold on. Then the phone hung up and I waited. You texted me that you were locked in a bathroom with the girls and that he was screaming at you through the door. He was punching things, and you thought he might be drunk. I tried calling you but you didn’t pick up. I felt helpless- I texted you to call the police.

The rest of that story is for her to write if she wants to, but it was pivotal because it opened up a whole new world for us. 

You found a lot of courage that night and you grew as a woman and a mother. It was the first step of many that set you free.

Two months ago we started growing even closer because it was possible without the toxic thing around. We planned a date with your girls because I needed to meet them if we were going to be able to see each other more often. We went mini-golfing which was interesting for me because I hadn’t been around a 2-year-old for a very long time and they don’t much like paying attention of following rules. The 6-year-old and I got along just fine and I let her beat me at all 18 holes.

Since that first meeting, I have spent more and more of my time in their lives, and in the past five weeks, I have really immersed myself in a life with children, spending most of my days with them (and She.) My life now consists of everything sticky, screaming, poop, pink, cartoons, half-eaten diapers (Willie comes with me too, and sometimes we forget to put up the gate), No!, Mine!, onesies, pee, trolls, egg-animal things,etc. I don’t know, I love it. Everything is always chaos when they are awake. Everything, off of every shelf, every time. 

It’s a whole new level of responsibility for me, too. I’m not what anybody would refer to as a “clean person,” and kids leave a mess everywhere they go. She has been used to cleaning up after kids for six years, and me just over a month. I have some catching up to do. I like to think I contribute a lot to the relationship, but I think I could add more. I already do a fair amount of cooking, and I generally do my own dishes, but I don’t do them to her standards and I can see that she is maybe a little bit neuro when it comes to cleaning. It’s okay; these are the things you find out about another person when you get close. Shit, I used to smoke crack, so I don’t judge other’s behaviors and habits.

Nearly all of the time we are in harmony: We laugh, we kiss, and we love. No relationship will ever be perfect. As long as we address issues as they arise and don’t let anything build up, we should be fine. This is a big change for both of us, and it may take a little time to work out all of the kinks and details, and while we are doing that, we can fall in love every day we wake up next to each other.

It’s the middle of the night. I can’t sleep. I look on you and see the woman I love and care for. I see a woman, a mother, and my friend. I smile. I wrap my arm around you to keep you safe. I can protect you now. The world is right, goodnight.

Love and Tolerance

It’s been nearly three weeks since I last wrote a post. Have you missed me? I’m sure you have, so I will employ roughly 700 words to describe my life since I’ve been away from the computer.

Hectic. That is an adjective. I use it solely with the following definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: Characterized by intense action, excitement, and confused, rapid motion.

Many of you who have been reading the He/She series of posts over the last two months are probably wondering about what’s happening now. Well, don’t worry, everything is going well. In fact, I haven’t been this happy since… maybe ever. It is very probable that I am engaged in the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in, and I have immersed myself in her life which includes two beautiful girls whom I have begun to spend quite a lot of time with. Things are different, that’s for sure, but I really love spending my thoughts and time on other people: this is my new philosophy on life.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working through step 10 of A.A. which suggests I continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. My job is tough, I need to watch out for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, and when they crop up—and they will—I need to address them and move on immediately, for my new way of life is love and tolerance of others. I need not worry about mistakes other people make, they can deal with those, the little bit I focus on myself these days is all about cleaning up my side of the road and seeing what good I can put into the stream of life. I forgive, I love, and I pray. These things set me free day to day. It’s a work in progress, and sometimes I dwell on things for too long and I find myself in my head, not able to pay attention so I have to work on this daily. I will never be perfect, and I cannot expect perfection from anybody else.

Kids have a lot of energy. A six-year-old and a two-year-old seem to have a never-ending supply of concentrated Mountain Dew coursing through their veins and it’s a lot to keep up with. I do my best to help out when I’m over at their house which has been about five days per week for a little while. I read a lot of books, cook a lot of food, and go on a few fun trips when we can. It makes me happy to see them happy. This is my life now, more to come.

 

My grandma has been home for a couple weeks now save for a three-day trip to the hospital for some nausea which turned out to be some bleeding on the brain which is normal after a stroke. She still has her three therapies, twice per week, and she is quite mobile now. Here’s the best part: she has regained nearly all of her ability to communicate. She still has some difficulty reading and writing but that will come back with time. We can have complete conversations and she is alert and humorous. She has to wear a heart monitor for 30 days to determine if she has an irregular heartbeat which may have triggered the clot to move from her heart to her brain, only time will tell. For now, everything seems to be ok, and we are finally able to breathe again. It was a tense moment in time, but we made it through as a family. Yesterday I brought my girlfriend over to meet her for the first time. We sat around with some family from out of town and had great conversation for a couple hours, and today she and I will be bringing the girls over to my mother’s house for my birthday celebration where she will meet some more of us.

Winter is coming, but fall is still here. Enjoy this beautiful weather while you can, and take time to notice how beautiful our surroundings are. Take time to forgive somebody, you will never make it out of this world alive so let go of that resentment before it destroys you inside. Take time to tell people you love them—let them feel how much you care. And take time to help somebody that needs you. People are struggling everywhere, and you may know somebody right now that is afraid to ask for help. You could be the change in somebody’s life. You might have the answer in your heart, in your mind, or in your wallet. If you are the one struggling right now, reach out. People will help if you ask them, and not everybody will know your stress unless you open up. Communication is the essence—you can control that.

 I challenge everybody to put something good into the stream of life today, and leave it there. You don’t need to brag or boast, just help. Try to be a good person, even when nobody is looking.

 

It's Just Aphasia She's Going Through (Part 2)

So much has transpired in my life since my last post. Not all of it has been good, to say the least, but I will focus on the subject of my last post and what has changed since I wrote it.

A little over a week ago, my grandmother suffered a stroke. Not a stroke of luck, and not a stroke of genius, but a stroke. This means that the oxygen supply to a certain part of her brain was cut off for too long, and essentially that part no longer works. Unfortunately, the part this effected left her with a condition known as aphasia, which hinders her ability to communicate.

Last week there seemed to be little hope, as the doctor bluntly told us there is no cure, only therapy. She moved to the Courage-Kenney acute therapy center at United Hospital on Friday... I think Friday. I don’t know. Anyhow, that’s where she is now, and she has been undergoing a battery of physical, occupational, and speech therapies. I have been in attendance for a good number of them, and I am happy to report that things—although still a little sketchy—are moving forward at a good pace for a stroke victim.

 

Everything we can do we take for granted. That we can not only see, but interpret what we see into information that we can understand and communicate is something we don’t have to think about doing. When we look at a pen, we know how to hold it and what to do with it. When we look on a loved one, we know who they are. We know our own name and we can certainly write it. When we see food we not only know that we need to eat it to live, we know how to eat it. When we listen, we understand. These were all lost to my grandmother a week ago.

 

Today I was present for her speech therapy where she was able to look at objects, say what they were, and write the names down on paper—not always properly, but she knew when she was making a mistake and figured out how to correct them. Yesterday during physical therapy, she walked over 200 feet with her walker and collected different colored cones that had been placed along the walls, giving her an opportunity to mover her head around while walking: helping to improve her overall balance.  She also went up and down a flight of stairs, and was able to maneuver over some hurdles.

Her basic communication (conversation) skills have vastly improved. She knows names, can engage in productive conversation, and can understand a lot of what is going on around her. She still has some vision troubles especially when her brain has to work hard at recognizing and writing words. She gets what she calls “double vision” and her periphery to the right is blurred, but even she will admit that she can’t properly describe what is happening.

Tomorrow the therapeutic recreation nurse will be bringing in some art supplies to see how her motor skills will function for something she is quite accustomed to. She has been a watercolor painter for as long as I can remember, and I think it would be great if she could get that back, or at least relearn her form.

 

We have great hope, yet we remain cautious to applaud just yet. She has made prodigious strides through hard work, and she has a long way to go. The process of recovering whatever will be recovered after a stroke usually takes about two years, so there is some time, and the largest area of repair happens early on with getting a lot of the speech and motor skills back.

It’s been a tough week seeing her like this. I don’t know if I could do as well as she is doing under these circumstances. Next week she will get to go home—actually to their new home, where she will have assistance around the clock available, and home visits from nurses, doctors, and family. We are all in this for her, and I will be there as much as I can.