RobbyRobot

:rotfxko

Thanks, Ready.

RobbyRobot

Hey,

Now into the single digits countdown. A week today. I'm feelin' distracted, you know?

So my surgeon has approved of combining the both stages of my surgery. Way cool. It does mean more initial pain, since my hip joint hasn't moved in like 43 years, but like they say... no pain, no gain... lol. I requested to keep some of the hardware, like just a screwbolt, something simple, but no, denied, because of health sanitation codes in the hospital. They'll give me an x-ray, and so that will have to do. In any case, all the hardware will be removed is my understanding.

I'm having trouble sleeping. My mind is working overtime. My emotions are strong and alive, and open. My spirit is empowered. I'm stoked.

Can you believe this week we are in the midst of buying a new house? We close on October 1st. We also put up and list our present house September 1st. Our selling of this home is not conditional on the purchase of our new home. Sweet. All the action and effort required to close the deals is really helpful in keeping me focused and present. We're staying in Ottawa, we're (Melissa and I) moving to a waterfront property on the river. 6.5 acres. 400ft of the prettiest waterfront. No dock, yet, lol. Ranch style home, everything on one level suits me fine. Awesome.

I have a meeting with an engineer this morning to talk about the physical building. Inspections really are the thing to do when buying. Can never know to much about what is being purchased. No one likes surprises.

Did I say I was distracted?

I gotta tell you. Honestly. I feel the fear. I'm not overwhelmed, okay?, and I'm not under the gun, but yeah, I feel the fear. Like a perfect storm is on the horizon. I guess I feel like a kid who does the right thing for all the wrong reasons. Dosen't make sense to me right now, but I'm working through it nonetheless. Its like my feelings are too deep for me to swim in and just be myself. I'm having to check myself again and again looking for one justification after another to then summarily throw each discovery onto the mountain of failure growing behind my awareness...

anyways.

Gotta go. See ya later.

thanks.

ReadyAndAble

Lotta changes, Rob. Big ones. I know you're all about staying in the present, but I like the image of you chillin' by the water's edge in a couple months. Hopefully the pain will be subsiding. You'll be able to watch light play off the surface, see the ripples come and go, always changing.

RobbyRobot

Yeah. You know it. Thanks, ReadyAndAble.

PaperDolls

I really don't have any idea how I never saw this thread!

Robby -- You are a bad ass. No doubt. You've been a support and strength to me over the years here at SR .... in more ways than I can even mention.

I'll be thinking of you (and Melissa). Sending you both good vibes and happy thoughts.

RobbyRobot

Thanks, PaperDolls.

DayTrader

Great stuff there, my friend.

For a number of years, I had it in my head that "feeling fear" was contradictory to the promises.....soooooo.....if I'm feeling fear, I must be doing something wrong - I'm not working the program correctly, I'd think.

Long story short, I've been meaning to read Eckhart Tolle but never made the commitment. Heck, I never even bought the damn book! (lulz). I did find 4 or 5 of his books in audio format though.....and "The Power of Now" has been on constantly for the past month or so (lots of "chapters" I had to listen to a dozen or so times to really get what he was saying). Sooooo.... he does a reeeeally interesting job of explaining how feeling fear, being "in the fear" as he calls it, is so essential to a stable life. Certainly before recovery, I'd avoid fear....... but IN recovery, I was doing the same thing (albeit because I thought it was the "right" thing to do).

Sitting in the moment.......feeling all of it......and relying upon my belief that I AM safe and protected - even when I don't necessarily "feel" safe and protected...... there's some real power in doing that.

I look forward to your future posts Robby!

.....and if anyone wants that audio book.... shoot me a pm and I can send it to you.

Mike

RobbyRobot

Oh yeah. That's the good stuff right there, Mike. Totally awesome.

I mean, no sooner did I get word from the surgeon that both surgeries -- the amputation and the removal of the hardware fusing my hip -- no sooner did I get word and I just felt myself jump into the abyss. So now I know why I've been feeling tame the last month or so when the surgeries would be staged in sequence two months apart.

I'm happy to lose this paralysed excuse for a leg, no problemo. The hip, though, that is where i've stored up all the energy of my past frustrations, failures, challenges, resentments.

So now I feel the fear of failure, is what it looks like to me, in this present time. My head knows the argument is moot, I've made the best correct descision, and yet my feelings feed my head trash no end. garbage. mistrust. unloved. pushed aside. abused. angry. regret. frozen. foolish. dumbass. loser.

I'm so stoked I'm finally getting off this f'cked up tour, you know? I'm so done. Thanks everybody. Thanks, Mike.

Oh yeah, wanted to say I have Tolle's book.

DayTrader

I've spent a lot of time in that space - knowing one thing in my heart and even knowing it in my head......but "feeling" completely different.

Perhaps our feelings aren't always true - not always honest. I mean, we feel them sure enough....but maybe sometimes they're coming from somewhere else - maybe from a "lower power?"

The battle for our soul..... Amer. Indians liken it to two wolves fighting over your soul...your consciousness. It's a battle to the death and one is going to win. We have the ability to sway the battle one way or the other though - Which wolf am I feeding?

Actions that are contrary to how I'm feeling - like doing things I'm afraid to do, calling for help from a God I sometimes don't feel, helping someone else when I really want to worry about myself.... Heck of a meal for that good-wolf.

spryte

I hope things go well and I find it inspiring that you can work through these things - feeling things and taking things as they come but not letting it overwhelm you - there's some serious peace and strength there man!!

willquit

Wow, I have tears in my eyes. God loves you.

RobbyRobot

Thanks, Spryte. You know what? Its awesome to be hearing from you giving strength to me. I'm so happy you are sober, and sharing, and being well. You're good people, Spryte. And yeah, I'm not overwhelmed, I'm just sharing what is what. Thanks for knowing that.

Thanks, willquit. I appreciate your feelings of empathy and kindness for my journey. Its always amazing how people who don't know of each other still know enough to be important and essential and sharing. This thread helps me be me. Thanks for the God love affirmation.

BackToSquareOne

The mind is an amazing thing isn't it Robby. It almost seems to debate itself, finds all the loopholes and often carries on like a little kid on a sugar high. I don't ever try to block out the mental chatter, when it arises I just see it for what it is and let it pass.

I think awareness rises above all that, kind of like awareness is the adult in the room and the mental chatter is like a bunch of 10 year olds trying to outdo one another. That's why the essence of mindfulness is to learn to become the observer of the thoughts, not a player in the mental drama that the chatter wants to create. Remember that the mental chatter can ask you to come out and play but the observer can always say no.

I think it would be abnormal if the mental chatter didn't try to create some drama, after all that's its job, it's what minds do. Just stay strong in your position as observer of the thoughts and you'll do fine. Again best wishes for smooth sailing with the whole procedure but I think you have this thing way outclassed, it will soon be another page in the history books.

RobbyRobot

Yeah, perhaps.

Feelings, for me, are experienced on a time continuum. Past. Present. Future. My feelings have no awareness of counting time, keeping time, making time. Whenever they happened, there they are, and there they stay. It's a comfort to know where I'm at with my feelings, that I own the experiences first-hand, in the raw, all natural. Alcohol and drugs really distorted my perceptions of course, made it impossible to gain my footings, get my bearings, know my way. The dumbing down of my potentials is what originally got me loving being drunk. No more responsibility to be me. No more dissapointment with failure. No more anticipation of success. No more reason to be reasonable. Freedom to be lost in space.

Growing up as a kid, I enjoyed being me. My life on a stage is how I played out my days. Life was what I made it to be, what I wanted it to be, what I could believe it to be. I was very poor growing up. My medical bills piled up for my family. No insurance in those days. I was in hospital from age 11 months fighting for my life against polio. I was just past 2 years old when I got out. Can you imagine? I was bonded to the hospital life absolutely. My parents were visitors in my life, the way I saw it. Once I finally got home I was never really home again. Paradox. Even today "home" is an idea experienced, not a place felt. Surreal. I manage though. I've learned home is where the heart is.

I've been under the surgeons knife more times then I want to remember, which means too many times. Hospital stays in every season. Summers were always the worst. My schooling had no rhyme or reason. I missed grade 5 and grade 8. Had a teacher come to visit me in hospital and at home those years. School for me was always a playground. Academic standing for me was nothing more then a scorecard kept by those who lacked the awareness of living in the moment. I was a bright street-smart savvy kid who had more fun at failing classes then i ever could have had at passing my grades. I had their respect though. They could always see my potentials. And I loved school. I would return their respect with compliance and a measured restraint. I was not a trouble-maker. I was though a loner apart from their authority. They had collective, stodgy, institutional powers. I had singular, grass-roots, adaptive and innovative powers. We didn't always agree, and although I was never what they wanted me to be, they appreciated my situations, and just kept passing me through my grades. By the time I went to college, on a scholarship, I was nobody's fool. Of course, being drunk, I quickly wrecked both my stints at college. My playground at college was the tavern. A different kind of fun that wasn't really ever fun unless I was drunk. And even then, that fun too didn't last, as we all come to know for ourselves.

I haven't been drunk now since I was 24. I'm 55 now. Awesome! I'm still empowered knowing I'm not drunk anymore! Even after all these years, I still wakeup, and smile, knowing I'm still just as done with being drunk as I ever was. And you know what? I do love being sober, I do, but I still more hate being drunk more then I love being sober. I still remember being drunk, and so here I am, always now sober.

Being sober for decades now, when going thru struggles and challenges like I am today, I don't have concerns about keeping sober, and thats a surety, a comfort. There is another side to that sureness though, and its then all about being responsible for my experiences. There is no place for me to hide from myself anymore, and so, my feelings are very powerful and committed, very much in-my-face. I'm not an easy guy to ignore, even to myself. I have presence.

My feelings around my hipfusion, when I was 12, are as in the moment with me as what I had for breakfast this morning. 43 years ago is just a number count, and says nothing about how I feel today. Awareness is always in the now, and only always in the now. I can be aware of past and future, but I can only now experience those respective times in the present now.

So, having my surgery this coming friday, which has the sole objective of undoing my hipfusion of 43 years ago, and of additionally amputating my entire right leg because my days of walking are forever pastme, so lose the leg, well, this sets up conflicting feelings, and its difficult to master the moment. Not impossible. Difficult.

So yeah, I'm still stoked. I'm still anticipating every success even as my past feelings scream failure. I'm still trusting the outcome even as my thoughts betray my efforts. I'm still winning even though i'm feeling a deep sense of loss.

Thanks, everbody. You all mean more to me than I can say. Booyah.

RobbyRobot

Thanks for all that, BTSO. No problemo, my friend.

BASEjumper

I'm excited for you Robbie, I'm looking forward to hearing how it goes

RobbyRobot

Absolutely!

freshstart57

Robby and BackToSquareOne, I am a student of mindfulness in the presence of masters. I so enjoyed that last exchange. Youse guys are cool.

It is stylish, I agree.

RobbyRobot

Hey, takes one to know one, so right back atcha, freshstart!

RobbyRobot

I'm feeling way better today. I had a real talk f2f with a great friend here in Ottawa, and he and I exchanged on Friday some pretty rough experiences which helped me push through onto the other side. Kinda like I found myself standing tall in the midst of my feelings. The abyss looks more like just another window into my medical past now, and I'm grateful.

My fears are understandble, and natural. They are also now more in the open, and so, the light of reason prevails. These fears can only come up because of the surgery being so close now. I could always bury these fears earlier... It is simply amazing what can be accomplished from honestly working out our deepest feelings with respected and trusted others in friendship, fellowship, and/or in a professional therapist-client relationship too.

This SR thread helped me with my talk with my friend. This thread helped me with trust of others, which is important particularly with these feelings, because these exact feelings were created from my experiences of betrayal and broken trusts. Drinking alcoholically at 12 pretty well made it impossible to reach me back when, and it took another 12 years before I was able to quit drinking. After 43 years, these paticular feelings will at last be exhausted post-surgery, and another chapter in my life will be completed. What's there not to love?