Determined To Succeed

Day thirty.

Do any of you gamble? It doesn’t matter really if you do or not. I guess what I am asking is if you guys are familiar with the ways people gamble in places like Atlantic City or Las Vegas. They use chips at all the table games instead of actual money in part so you feel like you are playing with “fake” cash. You may remember you are dealing with your own hard-earned cash but at least the various chips are pretty and shiny and fun to look at.

My favorite table game is Craps, a game where the shooter stands in position and rolls two dice down a long oval table while she/he and others place chips on the table betting on what number will come up when the roll is completed. I love Craps because, when a great shooter is up, you can win a great deal of money. The energy is high and everyone is excited and feeling good – as long as I remember to take it easy and place conservative and somewhat conservative bets on the table. It’s when I go and think “I’ll be O.K.” that I over bet and lose. That’s, invariably, when even the best shooters “seven out,” rolling a seven which means that round is over and EVERYONE loses EVERYTHING on the table.

There are other games of chance of course that also employ chips – various versions of poker, Roulette, Blackjack and more all use chips and you sure as hell want to have a lot of chips in the game. The more you have the longer you can stay, have fun and play. Also, the more you have the more you’re not going broke from losing your fun, pretty “play” money because it’s never fun (or very smart) to gamble using just one or a few chips.

They even mention playing chips in the movies. There’s a quote from “Clear and Present Danger,” the Harrison Ford flick based on the Tom Clancy novel. In the movie (I don’t know if this scene is in the book as I’ve never read Clancy) Ford as hero Jack Ryan is confronting the President with information he has about an operation that was illegal. Ford’s character knows that this is huge and could, in effect, bring down many people in government including the President, who turns to Ford/Ryan and says “you won’t do that. You have a chip in the big game now and when you need something I’m going to be the one to cash it in for you.” Ford then tells the President off, walks out of the room and testifies in front of Congress anyway, and you can imagine him mentally holding onto that “one chip” in his head, and you know he ain’t going to bet with just one chip.

I guess you all are wondering why I am talking about chips today. Well, I’ll tell you. Today is my thirtieth day of sobriety. I had always seen in the movies that people in Al-Anon get a chip to mark their month-iversary of sobriety. One single chip. In doing a bit of looking before writing I see that many different A.A. groups and many different companies distribute and make, respectively, different chips – chips marking everything from 24-hours of sobriety to years of sobriety. But no matter how many hours, days, weeks, months or years you are sober the idea is you carry this chip/these chips with you to remind you to stay sober.

In the movies the person who receives or has the chip will always be faced with the dillema of whether or not to take a drink, thereby negating the sobriety already achieved. They will be tempted to act out on their bottom line behaviors when faced with X, Y or Z. Most recently I saw it in an episode of last season’s “Flash Forward,” a show in which two of its main characters are recovering alcoholics – both of whom take a drink and give in to their demons.

But if I have learned anything from the movies and table games in Vegas it’s that you never, ever gamble when the stakes are that high and you have only one chip to your name. In many cases it may be all the currency you have in the world and you have to hold onto it with both hands because it’s all you’ve got to get you home.

And being just thirty days sober means I have but one, precious chip.

Is it fun to gamble from time to time? Sure it is but I ain’t ever gonna gamble with this most precious chip. It’s what I’ve got. It’s all I’ve got. And as I stand on day thirty of this sobriety I am feeling better now, more honest and free, than I ever have and I’ll be damned if I am going to gamble that away the way I’ve gambled before. Yesterday, I met a friend of mine for coffee and she has lost a lot of weight and I bet she wouldn’t bet that chip for the world since that weight loss and happiness was hard-fought-for and a long time in coming.

I may not get an actual chip today but I don’t need one. I won’t need one and I will never need one because I do not need a wooden coin to remind myself how lucky I truly am in this world. I’m going to take today and just breathe and think about what my life was like thirty-one days and more ago. Those thoughts of that old me will be all the reminder I ever need, and all the strength I need, to not gamble with my one, precious chip no matter what happens for the rest of my life.

Day three.

I don’t quite know how to describe what fear feels like but I will do my best. I am standing in front of a mirror and can finally see the person I have become and, for the first time in my life, not knowing who I am but knowing I have to find myself again on a path I’ve never traveled before.

There are many other ways to describe fear but that’s the one that is most prominent right now. I said to you all the other day it really feels silly to talk about weight loss, too, in all of this but they can and do go hand in hand. Like when I am really fighting the urge to grab an ice-cream, or a Coke. I have always been an emotional eater and since I am truly admitting to myself how messed up I can be AND not running away from it I also have to admit that. I have been fighting the urges to eat and drink those bad things.

I can tell you all there is an old Bill and a Bill who wants to be a new Bill. I have lived so long with the old Bill that it’s immensely foreign to be looking at a stripped down and bare Bill, one that is trying to be a new Bill for the first time in his life and not wanting to fuck it up. That is fear. And it’s also a fear to do something I have never done before – tell the complete and honest truth. That contains fear. It is an unknown land and I am walking in it for the very first time.

When you’re afraid your heart beats harder and faster, your breaths get shallow, your adrenaline pumps and you become hyper-aware of sensory things – things you hear, your mouth going dry, etc. That is how I am living these days, but I do so very much want to be that new Bill. That also means suppressing the urge to run away and to hide and, yes, to hide with food. I just have to keep reminding myself that the empty pit in my stomach these days comes from fear and having to finally face life and reality not from actual hunger.

I mentioned yesterday how stupid I felt even bringing movie lines into my blogs these past couple of days but there is a movie quote that is very appropriate. It’s from the 1982 Ridley Scott movie “Blade Runner.” In that film Harrison Ford cowers in a corner on a rooftop after having been pulled from its ledge by Rutger Hauer’s character, an android who simply wants to not die (androids live only four years in their world). Ford doesn’t understand why a person, who just tried to kill him, would save him from falling to certain death and is given a lesson in living in fear.

“Quite a thing to live in fear. Isn’t it?” Hauer says to Ford before dying. Ford then gives voice-over about how he thinks, in the last moments of his life, Hauer realized the gifts of life and how that made him value life in the end.

Fear can make you do that, too.

I have told lies upon lies upon more lies in my life and have always lived in fear. Fear of being found out. Fear of people laughing at me, ridiculing me, realizing I was not who I said I was and, most of all, fear of not being liked by everyone. Believe me when I say there are so many people out there in this world, me included, who claimed and claim they don’t care what people think, but they delude others and themselves with that lie. But I admit it now. I did care what people thought, from as far back as when I was a kid, and that is when my path of lying started, leading me to this very point in time. This crossroad. This empty path in front of me that is scary because it contains the one thing I have never done in my life – tell the truth.

Don’t ever be afraid to admit you want to be liked. We all do. There is no shame in that. Fuck, that’s a human thing to feel. We all want to be the perfect one, the one who people look at and have them say “that person has it all together.” But if you don’t admit that to anyone or only tell it half-way like I used to then you will one day suffer the same catastrophic failures I’ve suffered.

Whether or not your situations deal with food or not I can now tell you from recent experiences that lying gets you nowhere and leaves you bankrupt and empty. It makes you live in fear, constant and inescapable fear. I am trying very hard to be that new Bill, but that comes with a new fear, too, and I am scared. I don’t ever want to be old Bill again (and yes, that does include the 400 pounds that also came with that baggage). I want to be new Bill, but it will take time and work and moving in a direction called truth. And I will get there. That road may be scary and dark and uncharted but it is my new path and truth, honest-to-goodness truth, is the light that will lead the way.