I’ve been going to noon meetings again. Need them greatly and I certainly have the time. I’ve missed my weekday noon meeting and it’s good to go back. We have some real whack jobs that go there and the five minutes before the meeting settles down to business can be a circus. Some folks are tired of the circus so they started their own noon meeting three days a week at another location. Thought I’d go check it out. Sadly some of the circus freaks followed so I’ll not make it a regular thing BUT…

I ran into two women yesterday at the meeting and things are going to change a bit in my life because of it. It feels momentous, mainly because I know how momentous my meeting with one of these women was over a dozen years ago.

My second sponsor, Mo, is the one who had me write a 4th step inventory on my relationships with men. I’d been acting out with men in unhealthy ways in sobriety and it was time to take a good hard look at it. It changed my life and was the beginning of 9 years of single celibacy for me. Life changing, life affirming, falling in love with ME. For those who don’t know the 4th step in 12 step programs is:

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

I haven’t seen Mo in years and years. I sent Christmas cards for years but after about 7 I stopped. I never heard from her. When they asked for birthdays in the meeting yesterday I heard her announce 33 years and I turned and there she was. Looking fabulous.

The second woman I ran into, Jan, was called on and after she said her name she yelled out “Hi Cynthia!!” Just returned from giving her apartment up in LA to finalize her move here, she is someone I started walking about Greenlake with. She follows (and teaches) a Buddhist path and we had much to talk about, our paths are very similar.

I connected with Mo after the meeting and will be calling her this week. We have a lot to catch up on.

Jan invited me to her new place for tea. I accepted but warned her, “I’m a mess.” She said, that’s great, come on. After a tour and a hello fest with her dog, she made me tea and asked me to spill. She knew I wouldn’t be at a noon meeting if I was working. And I spilled it all. Tears and Tea. She said a few things that I found very interesting. She said in her experience, when someone’s life keeps getting burned to the ground, there is a reason for it. The universe believes they are capable of great depths of feeling and the ability to search very, very deeply within themselves and that they are forced to do it because of that strength. That her Buddhist teacher is a mess all the time because he’s always going deeper. That me wanting to put on the brakes is of no consequence, this is the life I’m in this time around. That someone has a lot of faith in me. And that it is time to dig deeper yet again. Oh she said that we have to die, almost literally die, in order to get to the other side. Well I have to ask, how close to dead do I have to get because some days I pretty fucking close.

So I have one week to write an inventory. It is different than the ones I’ve done in the past. Instead of columns, it will be free form writing, asking that I be guided and that I ask some very basic questions. What am I so afraid of? What is holding me back? What are my core beliefs, the ones that are killing me? Just a few simple things like that. What I do know is that I have fallen out of love with myself. I don’t know who I am any more.  I want my life back. I want my spark back. I want to feel lovable again in my own eyes and I don’t, far from it.

What is interesting to me about all of this is that these two women are now book marks for my life and that I ran into them in the same place on the same day and was given the same assignment by both of them. Both are here in my life to help me love myself again.

The new inventory is more about my life in general and not just men but you can bet there will be at least one man on it. Among other things like jobs and parents and friends. One week. I got started last night but have much further to go.

She said that I am still in a relationship with D whether we think so or not. The fact that we are in some kind of contact on a daily basis proves it. There is much still happening there.

Last night D called me. Very briefly, he made sure it was brief, and that is okay with me. I’m not up to much and neither is he. He’s going to a family wedding over Labor Day and I am feeding and loving his cat while he’s gone. Not only that, I’m taking him to and from the airport. It’s the best way to handle the key issue (only one front door key to the building) but it’s also a way to see how things are going. Am I comfortable in his presence? Can we be just friends? Keeping my oar in so to speak. We are both benefiting greatly from the current solitude, I getting some good work done, and I’m assuming he is too. His neighbor, who adores me, is moving and D and M put together a few boxes of stuff M doesn’t want for me to paw through. Oh yeah, this relationship is far from over. I just don’t know what it actually is.

Anyway. I have this feeling that this work with Jan is going to change my life as much as my work with Mo did in ’97. I sure hope so. Something has got to give. I want to love myself again but I seem to be stuck.

Oh. One other thing.  The more time I spend away from my coven the more I think it is right. I might stay but if I had to decide today, Iwouldn’t. I will miss some of those people terribly, some of them have been so very kind.  But the path doesn’t feel right.  I had to initiate in order to know that, it’s a catch 22. Yes, parts of it do feel right but not enough to stay. I am following a very curvy Cyn Path and I don’t have a clue where it is leading but I have to trust this, that I will be lead. Things are going to get much simpler before all this is over, that I sense. More paring down is coming, please let it just be things like the fact that I have too many tarot decks… I know I’m a hermit but don’t take all the people out of my life.

But god damn it, send me a job. Please let this process open the way. I need to eat and pay the bills for crying out loud.