I've been nursing my Camp Scabs hangover. No, not drug, alcohol or even chocolate induced...this is the kind of hangover where coming back to real life smacks you on the head and you have to run carpools, fold last weeks laundry and pull weeds. Why can't everyday be like Camps Scabs and Christmas?
If you haven't seen the gorgeousness that is summer in Wyoming, you should! I miss it! And I'm terribly heartsick for brave ladies who camped with me. But, most of all, I miss the wild west park ranger (with a mustache and a billy club) who tried to interrupt the chi of our starlight meditation. I miss him so much, I left him a present--or at least the birthday girl left him a present (sorry, sorry, camp joke...bahaha!).
I can't wait to show you pictures and tell you more about camp but that will have to wait till Monday. For now, I feel like telling more of my story. It's been almost five years since those nightmares woke me to the world I now walk. It's time to put more pen to paper and tell the rest.
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April 2012Mr. Scabs takes a sledge hammer to my kitchen cabinets and counter tops and then to the wall. Everything is a disaster. Destruction is always so much easier than creation. Always.
Sitting on my stool I watch and then complain he isn't doing it right. Especially when it comes to knocking out the load bearing wall. I'm nervous. Whether I'm awake or asleep my mind plays a reel of wood splintering crashes, ceilings caving in, plaster cracking and my house falling into a pile of earthquake worthy rubble. Mr Scabs destructive force in my life and in my house is trauma inducing! I talk about it with my shrink. It unsettles me while I try to ground my yoga practice. It follows me to 12-step. I second-guess everything. Nothing feels solid. At any moment my marriage and my house could be a pile of broken bricks and splintered two-by-fours.
If you've never walked into a 12-step group it's like landing on another planet. Not a familiar planet in our galaxy like Jupiter or Venus, but some outrageous planet found on the other side of a black hole where up is down and down is up. Even the air is different. No matter how many times I go, it still feels like another planet. The 12-step culture is so strange and so foreign.
What's said here, stays here.
Then the group cheers HERE! HERE!
I didn't understood the cheering bit and so I didn't add my voice. Life makes more sense to me when it's buffet style: choosing what interests me and leaving what doesn't. The chants didn't interest me but the challenge did.
Step One: Admit powerlessness
Powerlessness seems like the opposite of what I should do in the wake of Mr. Scabs destruction of my kitchen. What the hell does powerlessness even mean? It sounds seriously dangerous. A horrible idea. When can I get started?
This is the moment. Among the faces and tears of women I didn't know but already trusted, among the chants and weirdness of this other planet I decided to search. I didn't know what I was searching for but I did feel the wanderlust of a fresh way to live.
And so, every week, I got in my car turned spaceship and landed on planet 12-step and breathed the strange air and drank the weird cool aid. Here! Here!
