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Bill Birdsong died….

This makes me sad. I really liked him. He was my first like, sponsor since I got sober this last time. All my other sponsors didn’t really ‘catch’ and this one did. It was nice, because I got to talk to him about sobriety and we really were peers, and it was great.. I mean, he had used for a lot more of his life than I did, and it was nice to get his input that it wasn’t all it cracked up to be. And also that he didn’t come out until later in his life, and finally embraced his true self. And he did it in spite of hurting a lot of people he was close to. I will take his example of being true to himself and try my damnedest to make it my own.

I remember that when I lost it, like, really really lost it – when I realized that I was a drug addict by walking into my BA class, tweaking my FUCKING BRAINS OUT on DRUG AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION DAY, while I was in fucking OUTPATIENT REHAB, and had just gotten KICKED OUT OF MY PLACE OF RESIDENCE. I had a really really honest share at MCC, and just lost it. I was bawling, and he was there, fortunately. He took it upon himself to get me out of the meeting. We left, and 2 people came out with us, trying to talk to me, and console me. They kept telling me how smart I was, and I was snarling in their faces saying ‘Don’t you SEE?! it doesn’t matter how smart I am! The stimulus response thing supercedes all conscious thought! My intelligence is a detriment in this context!”

He ushered me away and we talked as he drove me to his house. I listened to ‘surrender’ by way out west, whose lyrics have been very meaningful to me all throughout my sobriety this time. It was a lovely day out, and I remember lying on the grass, while he cooked something for me to eat. I ate, and then he dropped me off at my place when I was living with Dennis. He did his best to take care of me.

I also remember talking with him on the phone when I was going crazy from my amphetamine psychosis and had somehow managed to trick myself into believing that I was something I’m not. He listened, even while I got drunker and drunker and further and further from coherence. He offered me council…. He didn’t judge me when I needed most to be just understood and not put into a box.

I also remember going berserk in the midst of drunken episodes, calling him up and yelling at myself with him on the phone. He came to my house, in the middle of the night (I slammed the rest of my booze while he was on his way), and he listened to my drunken ramblings while I chain-smoked and cried. He made sure I was safe.

I also remember meeting with him when I was sober, and going into his garden. He would routinely pull a leaf off of a plant that was growing out of the earth and tell me to eat it. And I would. And there would be something very special, and very symbolic, and something so incredibly significant to me – that I was eating a LIVING THING… And this made sense to me, for some reason. And we would walk around his garden, smelling things, and pulling plants out of the ground (that we were going to eat later), and he would have me go into his garden and choose the plants we were going to add to the food we were going to cook. I remember he had a spice drawer, and he would just open it, and we would smell a bunch of different spices. I found out about Cardamom in his kitchen.

I remember us making chicken korma. I remember being in a bit of a manic state and cooking breakfast for him, towards the end there – when he was still coherent, but he was starting to straddle the line between life and death.

I still have his sleeping bag. I meant to give it back to him. I guess it’s mine now…

I still owe him a back massage.

I miss him.