Category Archives: Free Fallin’

The Aftermath of Stingray City – Death Comes For Me Part 2

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So, friends, it has been 11 months since I almost drowned in the Cayman Islands due to an asthma attack. My life has changed in many ways since that day last June. Some of the effects of that experience have been obvious and profound, while others have been subtle yet now, indispensable.

I now have an immense appreciation for the fact that time is moving faster now. At 20 my whole future lay ahead and it seemed like there would be time for everything. Now the future doesn’t seem as distant, and the end seems far more familiar than the beginning. There isn’t time to put off opportunities anymore. All of a sudden, they carry so much more weight now, and cannot be brushed aside as easily as they were in the past.

People. For any human being including so-called “normal” folks, interacting with people and deriving satisfaction, even pleasure from this activity is a chance taken at best and underwhelming at worst. For those in recovery, it can be downright invigorating at best and perilous at worst. For us, there is always the nagging doubt of “Did I handle that correctly? Was I too (insert favorite adjective here)? Was I (again, insert favorite adjective here) enough?” For me, this is still the case but with a bit of a twist.

I am even more particular about the company I keep now. I am incredibly discerning about who I invite into my home. These behaviors are not born of any snootiness or aloofness.  I will not spend a moment with those I have no desire to be around doing what I don’t want to do. Doing so is wasting one’s self, as well as being dishonest with ourselves about who we are. Of course, there will be certain social situations where it is indeed necessary to participate in exactly these practices. Barring this, however, I will not indulge in these behaviors.

“Life is too short to casually discard a single moment.”

In my mind now, in its deepest recesses, I brutally bottom-line everything and everyone. I do my best to get along with people but I do not need to be liked by everyone. I do hope to earn respect, but seeking friendship with those who don’t have my best interests at heart is not on the menu.

Trying to be better than I was yesterday has taken on a renewed sense of urgency and appreciation for gains made. There are days when I come up short. I apologize when I think I need to, and I stand up for myself when I don’t.

I am more conscious of my worth now and I will not be shortchanged. Most will see this as being about money. There are things that are just as valuable as money. Do those I work for appreciate my efforts? Do they respect my perspectives? Am I just part of their agenda, to be brushed aside when I am no longer needed, or am I a respected, integral member of a team?

In mid-September last year I left a job I loved. I enjoyed the relationship I had with the person I worked with most closely. We still today have immense respect for each others’ abilities. I am ever thankful for the opportunities that those who own and operate the entity I worked at for six years afforded me. My work has been viewed by thousands of people including the professionals that I interacted with daily. In a lot of ways, it was my dream job. Even dream jobs require us to move on at some point though.

I am currently working a new position at a small, local firm. I learn new things and I am acquiring mad skills every day. The powers that be appreciate my dedication, motivation, and desire to learn. They also appreciate my efforts on their behalf and the pride I show in what I do. They trust my judgment. I am enjoying the position considerably.

Since beginning the new position, my increased happiness and self-satisfaction have become apparent those closest to me, and they have told me that I am happier and less stressed out.

A lot of truths have become apparent to me over the past 11 months…

Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Words to live by, and these days, I do just that.

“Sobriety comes first.”

Yes, it does. Always. That always begins with “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (drugs, sex, gambling, eating, smoking; whatever our addictions might be!) – that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Don’t waste a single minute of each day I get – tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Remember that The 12 Steps can be reduced to 3:

Clean House

Trust God (or whatever YOUR higher power is)

Help Others

Begin anew each day and live my best life.

Death Comes For Me at Stingray City – Grand Cayman Island

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Your humble narrator with King Julien

For most people, when death comes for them, it is not a surprise. Most of us are reasonably old and we have an inkling that our time is possibly drawing near. Perhaps we have cancer or some other malady that has cast its shadow upon us.

Then there’s the sudden, unexpected death that sneaks up on us and carries us off like a thief in the night; unapologetic and quite satisfied.

Personally, I’ve used several of my nine lives already. A tire blowout at highway speed. Two different near misses on 9-11. How many times in the military? I don’t know. How many times had I almost drank myself to death?

Recently, I returned home from a cruise that took me to ports of call in Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and Jamaica. One of the Shore Excursions I booked was a visit to Stingray City, a sandbar about 40 minutes offshore by tender. So, on the way out to Stingray City, I was chatting with some of the folks around me, trying to wrap my head around being in the water with Stingrays. The only reason I’d found myself in this situation was that this leg of the excursion was one activity while a “Swim with Dolphins” was the other.

After a 35-minute jaunt from the Dolphin Cove facility over open water, we arrived at the Stingray City site and the stingray wrangler briefed us. There were two exit points off the tender: the front ladder into about 3 ½ feet of water, and we could jump off into about 6 ½ of water from the side of the tender. As I have a pool in my backyard that I jump into regularly, I didn’t think anything of jumping into the water off the tender. Perhaps I should have.

I jumped off the boat and even before my head broke the surface, I knew something was dreadfully wrong. I could not get any air into my lungs! I could not take a breath, nor could I breathe out. I would imagine the look on my face was one of total fear.

The common “My life flashed before my eyes” never happened. Simultaneously I was thinking “Well, I’m gonna die in the ocean on a sandbar in 6 ½ feet of water. Shit!” and “Fuck this! I’m not done yet! I am NOT fucking dying here!” Finally, I was thinking, “I’ve got to get on board that boat and get my inhaler – NOW!!!”

Thank God, I was able to catch the attention of a guy standing a couple of feet from me who asked if I was OK. I somehow managed to say I couldn’t breathe. “Bill” guided me around towards the shallow part of the sandbar where I could now stand on my own in about 3 – 4 feet of water. I was still trying to breathe in, which I could not do at all. This also meant I still could not breathe out. Deep inside I was scared shitless because I knew I had to start breathing soon or I was gonna die, literally.

I did my best to remain calm and I started striding as best I could to the ladder on the front of the boat which was only about 6 feet away. I started climbing up on the right side of the ladder which seemed like it went on forever, and I was unapologetic as I somewhat obstructed those climbing down on the left. Still can’t breathe and the only thing I was thinking about is getting my hands on my inhaler, in my back bag on my seat. I finally reach my bag and secure my inhaler. I take 2 puffs and wait. Over the course of the next 3 – 5 minutes I begin to breathe; not very well mind you, but I am getting air into and out of my lungs.

After a while, everyone came back aboard and the tender began the 35-minute trek into the Dolphin Discovery facility. Now a storm was moving in so the temperature had dropped, it was raining lightly, and the wind was picking up. We finally arrived, secured life jackets, and were broken into groups. As we waited the storm moved in with sideways rain, and it was actually quite cold (to me anyway). The wind had blown the tops off 2 of the pop-up canopy tent shelters (which had no side panels, to begin with), and delayed the beginning of our time in the water with the dolphins.

I was still extremely tired from having tried so hard for those few minutes earlier to breathe. For those that do not have asthma, it is hard to conjure in your mind’s eye the extent to which an asthma attack of that magnitude will completely exhaust a person’s strength, including reserves.

After enduring my “Dolphin Swim” adventure in the cold and rain and in water that was the color of diarrhea, we began our journey by bus 30 minutes back to the shore to catch our tender to return to the ship. Now I had dried off the best I could but still, I was in a wet bathing suit and shirt, freezing on the inside and shivering. Once we reached the tender we had a 15-minute ride to the ship. Upon reaching the ship, I summoned every remaining shred of energy I possessed to traverse the last distance, finally entering my cabin broken, exhausted, and thoroughly vanquished.

Your humble narrator kisses Mr. Dolphin

I could not stop shaking and I was freezing cold on the inside: I had that hollow feeling one has when they are sick where if someone had blown on me I would have fallen over. I took a hot shower as my wife had our cabin attendant (God Bless you Aireen!) secure hot water so she could prepare coffee for me in our cold brew coffee maker.

After drying off and drinking some mercifully hot coffee, I again used my inhaler and then slept for five glorious hours…

…To be continued

 

 

I Don’t Know

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What will 2018 bring? I don’t know.

Will it be better than 2017? I don’t know.

Will I be a better person in 2018? I don’t know. (Hopefully!)

Will I stay clean & sober in 2018? I don’t know. (I’m gonna take that “One day at a time.”)

Will I have an opportunity to make amends in 2018? I don’t know.

Will some of my friends “fall off the wagon”? I don’t know.

Apparently, I don’t know much, do I?

What DO I know?

I agree with the wise Davos Seaworth that “Nothing fucks you harder than time!”

I have entered that age group where I have begun to lose friends and relatives with greater frequency, some of whom are not terribly older than myself.

As each day passes, it becomes more and more difficult to suffer the ignorance and rudeness of people I must deal with.

Dementia, Alzheimers, and strokes scare the shit out of me. I figure that I will survive a heart attack, or I won’t. A stroke can minimally affect me, or more likely, disable me in one or many different ways, none of which are predictable. Dementia and Alzheimers are both slow deaths where my awareness, cognitive abilities, and knowledge of self and the world around me will disappear, one day at a time, until one day, I may as well be a lump of coal.

There is so much that I have not accomplished. Some of this is just the universe at work, and some are my own poor choices, misplaced efforts, stubbornness, or just stupidity.

There is the awareness that some amends will never be realized and affected.

There is a growing certainty that time is moving faster for me and there’s so much less of it for me to work with now.

Decisions made have a far more immediate and consequential impact on my life now than in the past.

I really must buckle down and begin to focus more on the things I want to accomplish even as I attempt to pay bills, maintain a home, and relationships.

These are the things I do know.

There is one more thing that I know, without question: Without being clean and sober, nothing is possible except decline and death.

The Winds of Change

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So, for those of you who have been following along, my previous post was about possibly losing things that are near and dear to me.

Well, Hurricane IRMA passed right over us, the eye itself in fact. We survived. While many in this state suffered to varying degrees, we came through remarkably well. Our home was not damaged. We did not lose power. We had running water. Were we scared? You bet.

As I mentioned, throughout the state, friends, and neighbors have been suffering through difficulties (some still are) including loss of power, no ice, no running water, backed-up plumbing, flooding, damaged or destroyed homes, damaged or destroyed vehicles, and other challenges.

In many ways, at least for me, this experience had many similarities to when I first got sober. Once Hurricane IRM was over, we realized how fortunate we were compared to so many others we know. There was that same sense of wonder and amazement I experienced when I came through be sober for a while. There was that innate knowledge that things could have turned out so much worse.

The hyped up-state and sense of worry and constant sustained sense of anxiety were all quite familiar, and so too was the mental and physical exhaustion that came with them.

When everything was over, there was a sense of relief, with the release all at once of the pent-up excitement, worry, doubt, and fear; a fear that was present always, no matter how much it was suppressed and pushed to the background.

Everything is not completely back-to-normal here yet. Some things are still not as abundant as they were before the storm such as gas, water, propane, and other supplies. Some are are yet without running water, properly functioning plumbing or electricity. It’s funny how much we take these basics for granted every day until we have to do without them.

Just as in recovery, there are repairs to be made, things to be put back in order, as they should be. Those basics we so take for granted become so mush more appreciated again.

This experience has once again, in a clear and practical way, shown me that recovery is just like life itself: we have to work at it, so it doesn’t fall apart and stop working.

One Day At a Time – Again

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So … 80 wildfires are burning in 9 states. Hurricane Irma is heading to us. Two MORE named storms behind that!

When I am looking at something that is heading my way that is 450 miles wide, with a sustained wind speed of 185 mph, it scares the hell out of me.

Will Irma hit my area directly? Hopefully not. Even if not, it will still have a substantial effect on me.

The thought of losing my home shook me for a couple of days.

40 years of my art and photography, that my wife was kind enough to frame after I had stopped dragging it around the world with me after I retired from the military. It’s  irreplaceable, as is the artwork of my mother and father that hangs in our home as well.

Most of all, there is the house. This house is our dream home. It is perfect for us. Never in our wildest imaginations did we think we would ever have something this well suited for us, this comfortable, in our lifetimes. One of my wife’s greatest joys is working in the yard, fussing with this or that, and fussing with the inside of the house as well.  It is our refuge from the world. We love it.

And it could all be gone in an instant. Forever. All of it.

Here are the realities:

I can only do what I can do to prepare, and then, it is no longer up to me.

As long as I have my wife, I have everything I need.

Starting all over at 57 would positively suck, but I would still be better off than most.

It is a living lesson, reminding me once again, that life truly is “One day at a time.”