Sunday, October 30, 2011

Learning How to FLUSH!!


4 out of 5 people suffer with diarrhea, the 5th person enjoys it! That is just like me and my alcoholism. It shows me that I am happy to be swimming in my own shit. And why wouldn’t I be? That is where I have been living my whole life. Even when I had sober time, I never learned how to flush my own shit. I was sitting there in the bowl and comfortable sitting in my shit. Then one day I learned about this crazy concept of "flushing." This is where you take the shit that you have either been given, or also created yourself, and you let it go down the toilet, and you end up in relatively clean water. What a concept! What makes this possible? I asked. It was this wonderfully shiny thing on the side of the toilet tank that most people refer to as the handle (toilet handle). This handle was way above me, and it took a leap of faith to get to it. I was not sure how to get the faith that I needed, so I sat there still longer marinating in my own shit. There is an interesting thing about shit though; it gets worse, never better. Finally the time came when I was so sick of the shit, that i believed that the handle would take it away. So I took action and stepped forward and pulled the handle on the toilet. To my astonishment, water began pouring from all areas of the bowl, and I could feel a suction beginning to tug on my feet. A great whirlpool began to form all around me, as slowly the bowl was beginning to fill. The bowl was getting filled and the shit wasn't going anywhere! Had I made a terrible mistake? I became overwhelmed and was about to give up all hope. Then, the suction around my feet spread up to my legs, and my arms, and i realized that there was an opening below me and the shit was beginning to flow down. Hooray!!! Just as change is important so is survival. I thought- If I am flushed down the toilet with the shit I will surely either be put in a sanitarium, prison, or die. So I must swim with all my might to fight against the current! So I began to swim with all the energy i possessed. I had many micro moments during this flushing. I realized that my hands and legs moved more freely, that my body wasn't as weighed upon. I also realized that all this time, i had been sitting in my safe shit, when all along i was really sitting upon a large whirl pool of emotion that i never had ever wanted to face. My thoughts that told me i never had a problem now were screaming at me, telling me that I had a huge problem. I was still struggling to not get sucked down into the dark place with all the shit and I thought - for a brief moment - my fighting was futile, and that I was soon going to get sucked down. When suddenly the suction stopped, and I noticed that all the shit was gone. The bowl was still being filled, but with clear water. I stood up, and my arms and legs were tired, but the bad smell, and all the awfulness of my shit was gone. Now only a memory. I had made it! Phew!! I could not believe what had happened. I was so tired, so i sat down in the clear water and finished washing the shit off of myself. As I cleaned up I thought about how long I had allowed myself to sit in that mess. Had it been minutes, hours, days, months, or even years? Well, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, right? I kneel down in the water and thank my higher power for giving me the strength to go through all that had happened. I was truly grateful to not be bogged down in my shit. The bowl is filled to the line with water, and all is silent. I began to speak out loud, and it echoed. I felt the echo inside of my soul. Where all that shit had been, there was a very real and empty part of my soul. I had not noticed this for a long time. For so long I had been filling up the emptiness with so much shit, that i had almost forgotten about it, ALMOST! Now what to do? I began looking around my environment for ways to fill the hole in my chest, and realized that soon, there would be another shadow, and there would be shit once again. I was after all in a toilet, and this is where the assholes came to deposit their shit. I wondered about that now, now that i was clean and could see clearly in all ways around me. I wondered what else I had to do. After all I had flushed, and had survived the rush of current, and now i felt pretty dam good, except for this hole. I remembered hearing once, two people in the bathroom talking about only one thing. That thing was change. They said that their sponsor said they only had to change one thing, and that was everything. I had flushed my shit, but i was still sitting in the toilet. I had changed some things, but not everything. I thought about it for a while, and came to the conclusion that I did need to find a new place to call home. That the flies could no longer be my friends and that i was going to need to learn to flush a whole lot sooner than i had done today. All of these are part of the steps that I needed to take to get out of the shit, and stay out of the shit.

Now I said in the beginning that 4 out of 5 people suffer from diarrhea, and the 5th one enjoys it. Well, it was enjoyable as long as i didn't notice the smell, or the way it made me feel, or the way i looked to others, or the way my family and friends felt about me being there. And definitely not the way that i felt about myself. I thought i was different from other people, that i deserved to be stuck in the shit, and that nothing would ever change that. However, the steps, a sponsor, and a higher power, and perhaps second most important, being rigorously honest - by fully participating in my recovery from the shit - I know that I will still have to visit the bathroom, but I will never have to climb back into the toilet and sit in the shit again. (So long as I stay active in my recovery.) I feel that no matter what comes out it can be flushed. I can see that I am happier and more joyous and free. ... And I am realizing that God is doing for me what I could not do for myself.

-by Bri Malan
October 24, 2011