Weebling To Thirty

Do you remember those toys called Weebles, which first appeared in the 1970s, and had the tag-line “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down”?  (I just googled them, and it turns out you can still get them.)  They were great fun, and I especially loved the tree house, in which they lived.  I really wanted to live in that tree house.

Anyway, this is not a post about Weebles, per se.  This is about the fact that today is my AA birthday, and I have somehow managed to cobble together thirty years of consistent sobriety (that’s 30 years, in case anyone out there has problems with discerning the letters in words - though my internal grammarian baulks at the informal and technically grammatically incorrect use of numbers within a piece of text).

But enough of that pedantry.  So where do Weebles come into this miracle of recovery, you may be asking?  Simply in the fact that I’ve decided that the Weebles’ means of locomotion is one I share when it comes to describing the way I’ve done my recovery (and can be extended to encompass the way I “do” life in general) - namely, I’ve wobbled a lot but I haven’t fallen down.  Sometimes I go from side to side whilst remaining stationary; frequently, it seems I’ve gone backwards; oftentimes I’ve gone round in circles; but ultimately I have managed to make slow, tentative, frequently tortuous, forward progress.  

This is how come I happen to be sitting here now, the bemused (but grateful) recipient of the gift of thirty years of sobriety, which I have to tell you I was never really sure I wanted in the first place, didn’t ever really make a conscious decision to go after, but rather (in the classic autistic way, I can now see with hindsight) simply copied my way into; and for the first ten years wished I could give back, and return to the ignorance of not knowing that alcohol was not the solution to anything in life but simply one more problem to add to the pile.

Briefly, my journey of sobriety began with my second, and last, visit in 1988 to the psychiatric ward of my local hospital, after I’d been arrested for criminal damage, and had then tried to kill myself with an overdose.  

After this I was given the choice of either going home (where I was extremely miserable), or going to the local rehab unit for alcoholics/addicts, which conveniently happened to be next door to the hospital.  

Even though my initial visit to psychiatric had been for a two week detox from alcohol, which I’d voluntarily kept extending until I’d outstayed my welcome at the seven week mark (I felt strangely safe and at home there, after the initial terror on being admitted), I don’t recall any of the staff ever using the word ‘alcoholic’ to describe my drinking.  I believe I was initially considered to be possibly suffering from manic-depression (bipolar disorder), because I suffered extreme mood swings (due to both the effects of coming off alcohol, and what I now know is a combination of autistic meltdown, and ADHD).  

What is most remarkable is that, despite the fact that medication seemed to be freely and routinely prescribed to patients willy-nilly, I escaped the psychiatric system without ever being given anything other than the standard sleeping tablet, which I only took during my stay there.  It was years later, when discussing it with my best friend, that I realised just how blessed I had been, given that I had so many things for which I could easily have been medicated, especially given that, due to complete ignorance on the part of the staff, I was being misdiagnosed (autism not being widely recognised, especially in females, back in1988).  

And, distressingly and painfully uncomfortable as my life has frequently been since then (living without anything chemical to replace the alcohol and mute the chronic anxiety, and general sensitivity to everything around me), I am extremely grateful for being kept safe from what could have been a disastrous transference of my addiction to alcohol to an addiction to prescribed medication, as has happened to so many other people I know of.

To continue (before I weeble myself into a standstill), I chose to go to the rehab unit as the lesser of two evils.  And, as with my stay in the hospital, once I got over the shock of moving into an unfamiliar environment, I settled in and duly repeated the same pattern of becoming dependent - duly becoming the longest-serving resident, clocking in at a year and a half.  Yet again, I had to be almost forced to leave.

After I left and moved into my own home, at the age of twenty-three, things proceeded downhill from there.  Despite having been taught all things domestic by my dad starting at the age of seven (and then being expected to take care of him), I was hopeless at looking after myself.  And, whilst I’d come away from rehab with the knowledge that I couldn’t ever drink safely (‘one drink is too many, and a thousand is never enough’), there wasn’t a great deal else that was keeping me sober.  Essentially nothing had changed.  

Add to that an escalation in my undiagnosed anxiety, and a full resurgence of my also undiagnosed and raging eating disorder (compulsive overeater/under-eater/bulimic - in remission for a number of years now).  Plus I’d discovered that I could get mildly stoned on certain over-the-counter medications, which I used whenever I had to leave my flat.  A joyous existence, what ho!

It’s not surprising that, after nearly ten years of this, I descended into a state of hopelessness and depression, in which I wished daily that I could die, and finally progressed to the planning stage.

And at that point God stepped in and, in a remarkable act of Providence, reunited me with someone I’d met at the end of my time in rehab, for whom I’d briefly worked as a voluntary alcohol services counsellor (yes, me, counselling people - it doesn’t bear thinking about, I know), and who was now firmly steeped in the AA Twelve Step programme.  Through her, God saved my life.  

She became my AA sponsor; introduced me to the real recovery programme (it’s in the Big Book, not the meetings); helped me find a God of my own understanding (a Friend who loved me, rather than the critical and punishing father figure in which I’d come to believe); was the first person to recognise that I suffered from chronic anxiety, and the first person who identified me as being autistic; and she has been with me on this journey for the last twenty-one years.  Having just one person who truly knows me, and accepts me for who I am, has made all the difference - and for that I am extremely grateful.

What’s also remarkable is that, despite the struggles, I have never had the desire to drink alcohol again since sometime in the first year of my stay in rehab - the obsession to drink was removed (as it says in the Big Book) without me even realising it.  I have also never wished I were dead, and thought about killing myself, since reuniting in 1997 with the aforementioned person who is now my best friend and who, ironically, has also turned out to be a fellow autistic; and thoughts of wanting to die plagued me daily from the age of about seven, after my mum left us.

So, here endeth this brief overview of my time in recovery.  I can’t say it’s been easy (I’ve never been known to do anything easily), and there have been frequent set-backs, but I have to say it is ultimately worth it; and I will, no doubt, continue to wobble my way in Weebly fashion through the rest of my life.  

Therefore, I guess all that’s left to say is:-

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME, HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR LISA WEEBLE, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!!

Evolving In Circles

Wol (or Owl, for the uninitiated) safeguarding my copy of the Big Book

“a) … we could not manage our own lives.”    Page 60 - Alcoholics Anonymous basic text

Here again?  So soon??!  Yep.  I’m either full-on, or full-off, like a faulty thermostat with no temperature control: you can either have it hot or cold, but there’s no in-between.  And at the moment my mind is popping with thoughts that I want to write down.  It’s great, in a semi-exhausting kind of way.    

It’s also a bit like with buses (just to labour the similes a little longer - stick with it, I will eventually get to the point): you don’t see one that’s going in the right direction for ages, and then three turn up all at once.  Well, unless you live here in Misterton, of course, where we get one scheduled bus every two hours, so if I miss it I’m buggered.  And by the time the next one is due to arrive, I don’t want to go anymore.  Like my writing.  (Are you still with me?  Keep up: I promise there is a point.)

So, I’m a bit of a Dodo, really.  Sometimes I don’t know what I’m talking about at all.  In the post I wrote the other day (Blog Boggled) I mentioned how I had somehow expected my blogging to evolve spontaneously, when I don’t do spontaneous.  And, as a result of this misguided idea, nothing has actually evolved at all.  In fact, my blogging was almost on the verge of extinction (oh, I just realised how apt my reference to being a Dodo is!  It’s raining similes and metaphors here today.  I wish it were raining real rain ‘cos it’s bloody hot and sticky.  I hate summer).  

Now, whilst this is true (about the blogging, not the weather - though it is true about the weather as well), it dawned on me that I was making a categorical statement to the effect that I never evolve in any area, at all.  That all change I go through is more like facing a bloody (and I mean that in the literal sense of the word, not as the expletive) revolution, with me firmly on the side of the Resistance.  It doesn’t matter what the Resistance is resisting, I just naturally gravitate toward it.  At least, this is what I would have you, and myself, believe.

Turns out this is not quite true.

I was thinking about another blog post I’m considering writing, one where I kind of list things about myself that you probably don’t know, to give you a sense of who I am.  Sharing myself.  Something I thought I was doing with my blog posts, but which my friend told me I wasn’t: I was simply sharing my opinions on certain random, unrelated topics.  This, to me, is sharing.  But I got her point.

So, I was making a ‘brief’ (for me it’s brief) list of things to put in the post, and one of them was the fact that I am a vegan.  (I’d like to point out that this refers only to my diet, though I avoid using anything made from animal products as much as possible, but I still wear things like leather shoes.)  But then I was thinking about when I stopped eating all animal products, and how that happened.  And d’you know what?  It evolved over time.

And here’s the other thing about it, which also harks back to something I said in that prior post - it was never planned.  I had no goal to become a vegetarian or a vegan.  I come from a traditional Yorkshire family, who ate a traditional Yorkshire diet of meat, potatoes, and two veg.  

Vegetarianism was an alien concept to me.  I think I associated it with the dippy hippy brigade.  I couldn’t imagine how anyone could live like that.  What did they eat, other than vegetables?  (I’ve since found out that not all vegetarians even like or eat vegetables, or are healthy: they just eat the vegetarian equivalent of a junk food diet.  Weird.)  As to me, it all happened organically, as a result of the need for me to change my diet in order to recover from my eating disorder(s).  So my eating had to become healthier in order to avoid triggering my overeating.  

The page of the AA Big Book from which the quote is taken

When I initially started to address the issue of my diet, the first (and most important) thing I did was identify and remove all the foods that were a problem to me, which set off my uncontrollable eating.  This meant giving up all junk food, convenience food, and any other of my own personal binge foods (which included some things considered healthy by the general population of ‘health professionals’).  

And then I wrote down a weekly food plan, which had every meal for every day set out to reduce the stress induced around trying to decide what to eat.  I still ate meat, and dairy, but I experimented (something else I categorically state that I can’t or don’t do.  Who is this person I keep talking about?!), so I ended up using lots of stuff that are frequently used in a healthy vegetarian diet - like beans and grains.  And I found that I liked them.

It took a while, but gradually I changed over to a mainly vegetarian diet, with just white meat occasionally thrown in.  I swapped out the dairy for soya milk and yoghurt, and I had to give up cheese ‘cos it turned out to be a problem food.  But I still wasn’t thinking about becoming a vegetarian (though I had started to think about animal welfare, which had led me to buy only organic animal products) - it was just naturally happening on its own (evolution!)   

I well remember the day when I finally gave up meat completely.  I was in Tesco’s (a large supermarket chain in the UK, for those of you not familiar with it), and I was looking for my usual organic turkey fillets: and they didn’t have any.  And right then I just thought, “Okay God, I guess You don’t want me to eat meat anymore.”  And that was it.  There was no fuss, no angst, just a calm feeling of acceptance that this was the right thing to do.  

And it was.  It's been over ten years now, and I’ve rarely missed meat, or any of the other animal products I gave up (except perhaps an occasional wistful thought at the beginning).  I had naturally evolved into vegetarianism, without the struggle that I’ve heard some other people have when they make the decision that it’s something they feel they ought to do, and then attempt to give up everything at once.  I knew a woman who became a vegetarian for health reasons, so it was a decision forced on her, and she missed meat all the time. 

And as to turning to veganism, the same process occurred.  I didn’t have the goal to progress to that, it simply happened.  There wasn’t that much left for me to give up, and the last thing to go was eggs, which I finally gave up early last year, when I realised that I didn’t know where to fit them into my diet, and I wasn’t that bothered about them.  So out they went.  

I have had the occasional doubt about whether I should include them, but that’s because of all of the health stuff I’ve read over the years which say they’re good for you.  But then they also say that bananas are good for you (they’ve never seen me eat ten or twelve of them within the space of a few hours, or less), or honey (REALLY BAD for me, a true sugar addict, for whom even the supposed healthy substitutes for artificial and processed sugar trigger my craving, and are often worse than the other stuff). 

So I guess this is all confirmation that:

• my life goes better when I let go and stop trying to manage it (plans being my number one method to which I resort in order to try to achieve this, and which I am singularly inept at constructing and following);
• the slow process of evolution is often the most effective in achieving solid, lasting change: rather than the disruptive, disorienting upheaval of a revolution;
• sometimes there has to be a mini revolution to change my perspective to shift me onto the right path, in order to allow evolution to continue to take its natural course;
• just because I struggle to evolve and change spontaneously in one area doesn’t mean that’s the case in the whole of my life.  I can evolve, it's just that it's a very VERY slow process for me - like the speed at which earth's tectonic plates shift.  And if you try to rush me then I naturally revert to a state of resistance, either overt or covert.  So don't bother, 'cos I won't shift until I'm ready.

All of which basically means there’s a use for both evolution and revolution (in the right way, at the right time), which is a bugger ‘cos I want to say it’s either/or, as my personality dictates.  It’s an autistic thing.  Well, it’s my autistic thing, anyway.

So there we go.  That’s where I am - enjoying writing down and sharing my musings, rather than just having them rattling around in my head.  I hope you’re all in a good space.  I wish you peace on your journey, the guidance to point you the right way, and the courage and willingness to change direction if you find yourself going down the wrong path.

Śanti (also spelled Shanti: I'm just showing off, and excited that I found out how to put an accent on it) - Peace 

Birthday Greetings

So, in the new spirit of trying to stay connected, and keep a sense of continuity going, I thought I would share that it’s my AA birthday today.  I’ve now been sober for twenty-eight years.  Strange.  

I have to say that it hasn’t really sunk in, but then I have spent the morning out doing my once-fortnightly grocery shopping in my local market town, Retford, and everything has been rather frantic.  I’ve just spent nearly forty-five minutes playing at taking photos to add one to this post (again, another new thing I’m trying to do to shake things up).  

I guess it’s rather apt to be changing things on this day, a celebration both of all the changes that have gone before in order for me to get to this point (the major one being stopping drinking all those years ago, without which none of this could be happening now), and of the days to come.  But I haven’t really had time to reflect and celebrate, to be perfectly honest, but then I never really do, ‘cos I don’t actually know how to do it, so they generally pass by without much notice.

And I have to say that with time, clichéd as it might sound, the quantity of years stops meaning anything, and what becomes more important is the quality of sobriety and the life I lead.  So I guess that’s something to reflect on - not just thinking about where I came from, but whether I am where I want to be; and, if not, what needs to change, and what I can, and want, to change.

I was going to share a potted (ha ha) history of my drinking and recovery, but I don’t really have the time now.  Maybe some other day.

But for now, to all of you who are trudging this path of recovery, I wish you happiness, joy, and freedom: and faith in your own conception of a Higher Power, who will do for you what you cannot do for yourself.

Namaste - “I bow to the Divine within you”

If You're Happy And You Know It, Flap Your Hands

“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness, and the desire to be very grown up.”    C S Lewis

Are you a flapper, a rocker, a spinner, or maybe even a twitcher?  In other words, do you stim?  For the uninitiated it means self-stimulation (think hand-flapping, body rocking, spinning around in circles, etc - not masturbation!)  

I stim, though, up until recently, I didn’t really understand why.  I kind of thought it was just one of those peculiarities attributable to people with autism: yet another example of the difference between us and the non-autistic population.

Strangely enough, given its conspicuity, it’s one thing about myself of which I’ve never felt self-conscious.  Of course, this could be due to the fact that I’ve been largely unaware that I’m doing it (difficult to feel self-conscious when you’re not even conscious); or that it’s considered an odd thing to do.  Why would I?  It’s part of who I am, what I do, so to me it’s perfectly normal.  Plus, having perfected the art of avoiding looking at people (because I cannot read their facial expressions, nor simultaneously listen to, and look at, them), I have no idea whether they are looking at me, or exchanging questioning glances.  

So it wasn’t until after I’d got my Asperger’s diagnosis, years later, that I discovered that people do, indeed, notice what to them is considered to be my odd behaviour.  My best friend told me how some of the members at our local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings would stare and point at me in concern, directing their silent questioning at her to find out what was the matter with me, whilst I remained blithely unaware.  

After all, it was perfectly logical to me to bend my body into a pretzel-shape to make myself as small as possible in order to hide (I also happen to have a problem with sitting ‘properly’, and stationary, on a seat); avoid all eye contact by staring at the floor; and then soothe myself by rocking.  I was astounded to learn that it produced the opposite effect - that I made myself conspicuous, which to some people would even appear as if I was attention-seeking.  Dread the thought.

My particular preferences are for rocking, hand-wringing, stroking (myself, particularly upper arms; and, if available, dogs, cats, soft toy animals, and anything else with a soothing texture), and patting/drumming/tapping (especially my upper chest, which produces a pleasant sensation, and a satisfying noise).  I do these for their soothing and calming abilities, which makes perfect sense - think of how people rock, pat, and stroke babies.  And yet some of those same people think we’re odd.  Have they forgotten how soothing, and effective, such things were?  Perhaps it’s  because they expect us to have grown out of the need for such things: but then they don’t have a highly sensitive nervous system like ours. 

I’m also a bit of a flapper, sometimes, though I don’t do it as frequently.  This I do when I get excited about something - it’s like there’s a surge of energy that needs releasing, so madly flapping my hands helps.  It makes me look like a sea mammal flapping its flippers, so we now refer to it as me doing my seal impersonation.  

Oddly enough, until I found out I’m autistic, and then read about flapping, I don’t recall ever doing it before: unlike the others, which I know I’ve done throughout my life.  It’s like I unconsciously started copying what I’d read.  I did it with stammering, too: never stammered in my life until after my diagnosis (I’ve always been more prone to becoming mute than babbling, when anxious), then suddenly I couldn’t stop tripping over my words!  

Having discovered that what I do has a name, I have become increasingly more aware of when, and why, I am doing it, which has given me the ability to choose whether I continue to do it or not in that moment (for instance, my best friend will sometimes tell me I’m rocking whilst we’re on Skype, which can make her feel a bit dizzy, and be rather distracting for her).  What I have not consciously tried to do, though, is attempt to control it.   And yet it has lessened, seemingly of its own accord.  

I put this down to a number of factors.  One is that, remarkably for me, I have accepted it as being part of my autism, and so haven’t tried to force myself to stop doing it (an approach which has never worked yet).  Another is that the level of general anxiety I experience on a daily basis has reduced phenomenally over the last few years, which means an automatic lessening in the need to sooth and comfort myself via stimming.  You can tell when I’m really anxious because I turn into a restless, rocking rambler again.  

I believe that my improvement is due in part to the practice of the AA programme, which has led to an increasing faith and dependence upon a God of my understanding (spiritual, not religious), one of the results of which is a reduction in my anxiety about the world around me.  Then there’s the practice of yoga, which has taught me how to calm myself, and control my anxiety, through the breath. 

So, this may well sound like it’s a post about how to reduce stimming, which would totally conflict with the title, not to mention a large proportion of the content.  On the contrary, it is, in effect, a celebration of what is, essentially, an intuitive, benign tool for self-care; and the fact that I have recently discovered a socially acceptable way of stimming.  I kid you not.  

Yoga.  Seriously.  

I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to realise it (I have, after all, only been doing it for twelve years), but it makes perfect sense.  When we stim we are unconsciously stimulating the autonomic nervous system (responsible for, amongst other things, heart rate, breathing, and the fight or flight response).  The practice of yoga does exactly the same thing.  However, it wasn’t until I started supplementing my regular practice with Kundalini yoga a year or so ago that I made the connection.

Kundalini yoga employs a lot of quite vigorous exercises, which are called kriyas - a number of which actually look as if they were designed by autistics!  Truly.  So, not only am I absolutely, positively induced to try to bend myself into a pretzel shape with my usual yoga routine (something I was naturally drawn to doing before I ever came across the formal practice of yoga), but I now also get to spin in a circle, rock backwards, forwards, AND sideways, and flap to my heart’s content (with variations).

So I say flap like a loon if you feel the need; and if anyone questions what you’re doing, just tell them you’re practising yoga!

"Aren't I Blessed?"

“You seem so sad, Eeyore.”
“Sad?  Why should I be sad?  It’s my birthday.  The happiest day of the year.”      From ‘Winnie-the-Pooh’, by AA Milne

It’s my birthday today.  I’ve been on this planet, in this corporeal form, exploring this life, for forty-seven years.  Do you know what’s so remarkable, so miraculous about this fact?  When I was almost twenty-one I tried to kill myself.  My life was so bleak, so devoid of any hope, so overwhelmingly joyless, and I so completely unhappy and despairing, that I finally got up the courage to try to end it all.  

I nearly succeeded.  I ended up in the hospital, in A&E, being pumped out, and then spent a few days hooked up to a drip.  The worst of it was that I felt even more hopeless when I came to and realised that I was still alive.  I’d always counted on suicide as a last-ditch option for when life became too unbearable, yet here I was, and it hadn’t worked.  Despair doesn’t begin to do justice to my state of mind at that time.  

Yet here I am, and I can barely describe to you the amazing change that has taken place in my life.  My stay in the hospital catapulted me back onto the psychiatric unit (where I had spent seven weeks, earlier in the year, being detoxed and ‘counselled’ about my drinking), and then into a rehab unit for alcoholics, where I first came into contact with AA and the Twelve Step programme of recovery.

I can’t say that I found the programme, took to it like a duck to water, and my life altered radically at that time.  The truth is I tried reading the Big Book (the basic text book of AA which contains the programme and the instructions on how to do it), and it made very little impact on me at all, other than to confuse me, and cause me to question whether I was, in fact, alcoholic at all, because I couldn’t find an exact match to my drinking ‘career’ or my life and personality.  

I was, of course, reading it literally, and I couldn’t see beyond the words, to the essence of the message.  But at that time I had no clue that I was autistic, and so I took on board the idea that was spouted forth by the ‘average’ non-autistic alcoholics, that I was merely in denial about my drinking, and that I simply didn’t want to admit that I was that bad, that I was alcoholic.

Well, I have to say, for someone in denial I did my damnedest to try to fit the picture of the classic alcoholic, and I stuck it out in the rehab, without a drink, for eighteen months: I was the longest serving resident there.  And on the 21st July this year I will be celebrating my 26th year of continuous sobriety.  People in denial don’t tend to last that long!!  I think, perhaps, the unfortunately misguided people of AA who have a tendency to generalise about alcoholics need to rethink their approach, and consider the fact that there are, among them, many of us who are not wired exactly the same, and who require alternative approaches to cater to our differences.

Interestingly enough, we are covered in the Big Book, which was published in 1939, and is so farsighted it has to have been what we sometimes call ‘a God Job’ - it was divinely/spiritually inspired.  On page 58 of the chapter ‘How It Works’ it says, “There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest.”  Even though the language is not what I would use to describe my autism, it is the terminology in current general use.  But then that’s the miracle of the Big Book - despite its age, it remains timeless and relevant in its principles, hence the fact that it has never been altered, other than to add new stories to the personal histories at the back.

So, to return to the narrative of my life, I didn’t leave rehab with a completely altered perspective on life, brimming with joy, hope, and confidence.  I felt much as I’d always felt, a great sense of anxiety and trepidation.  But the one thing I did have was the knowledge that I was alcoholic, and that that meant I couldn’t ever safely drink alcohol.  So I was now sober, afraid of the consequences of drinking if I relapsed (I’d had that fear bashed into my brain), and with no coping skills for life - alcohol had been it.  Oh, and food - which was not as effective as booze, but which now took centre stage.  And not forgetting over-the-counter medication, with which I'd get stoned - not the pleasantest of experiences, but effective in its own way, nonetheless.  

And I was never the kind of person who came into contact with illegal drugs, nor would have had the courage to go and find a dealer - my anxiety around people was so great it precluded any such interactions, unless drunk.  So, since my creative use of medication didn't begin until after I got sober, I was kind of limited: which was, undoubtably, a good thing, as it turns out.  Who knows what type of mess I could have gotten myself into, being such a naive and gullible innocent, and not just with the drugs themselves.  You kind of get the picture?  One addiction/compulsion replaces another.

I lasted six years in this miserable cycle, until I once again reached a place of complete despair and hopelessness, and was ready and planning how to kill myself.  And then a miracle happened - I found an angel!  I reached out to someone I’d known six years previously, who was now in AA, but who actually followed the programme in the Big Book (there are lots of people who don’t, who believe that the programme is in the Fellowship: they are, I believe, sadly misguided).  I admitted that I was not well, and she offered to help me.  She then became my sponsor (my mentor).  She’s also the person who suggested that I might be autistic.  

And, seventeen years later, she remains so, and more - she is my best friend, my spiritual guide in human form, an inspiration in so many ways.  And, even more amazingly, it turns out that she, too, has Asperger’s!  This is the woman I once described here on my blog as being about as autistic as a plastic bag - that’s how perceptive I am!  She was diagnosed at the end of last year, at the age of 66, but it hasn’t made a bit of difference to how she lives her life (other than to answer some questions about certain behaviours, etc that she has) because she’d created a life that suited her, using the AA programme.  She truly is remarkable, and a groundbreaker. 

And so, back to the present.  I have spent my birthday in joyous contemplation of everything that I have in my life - I decided to list 47 things that I appreciate, one for every year of my life, which I duly did on the bus journey into town..  And I have been full of wonder and enthusiasm at the amazing spiritual insights that I’ve been having today, and in the last week or so - I feel like a well that has sprung a leak, the thoughts are just spouting forth all over the place.

I spent the morning shopping in my local market town of Retford, and at the dentist having my teeth de-scaled: not a usual method of celebration, I grant you, but it reminded me of the days when I was drinking, and how I would have to get drunk in order to go to the dentist, so crippling was my anxiety.  Then once I got sober, and had nothing to anaesthetise myself with, nor any way of dealing with the fear of being in such close proximity to another person, I simply stopped going to have my teeth done for the next twenty-odd years.  Fortunately, nothing happened to them in that time, and they stayed remarkably intact and healthy.  And now I can go in there and just get annoyed at the fact that he doesn’t understand my allergy to sugar!

And then I decided that I wanted to share all of this, my birthday, with anyone out there who might be reading this, in the hope that it might give someone hope, or insight, a feeling of connection, or just a bit of a laugh.  There is much to laugh at in this world, and, as I am learning, it only takes an instant to switch a light on, and go from darkness to light - you just have to make sure you’re plugged in and connected to the right Source.  And to think I could have been here twenty years ago if I hadn’t kept sticking my plug in the wrong socket!

And on that profound note, I bid you adieu, and a happy birthday to, and from, me.  ‘Cos, in the words of Eeyore (and Pooh):

“Oh!  Well, many happy returns of the day, Eeyore.”
“And many happy returns to you, Pooh Bear.”
“But it isn’t my birthday.”
“No, it’s mine.”
“But you said ‘Many happy returns’-“
“Well, why not?  You don’t always want to be miserable on my birthday, do you?”

“Oh, I see,” said Pooh.