Category Archives: using

Room Six

Room Six

I’ve heard the suggestions like change your playground, stay away from those old haunts. Stay out of your own head. To hearing that popping sound as I take my head out of my – well, you know where.
Sitting down with a friend one day having coffee. Talking about how we felt and joking about the times we put those, “For rent signs,” in our minds.
Thinking that this great machine I like to call my brain will fix the problem sometimes.  And we laughed – knowing that we share the same way of thinking.
We started telling each other how it is when we go to that place in our heads what I like to call room six.
Room six – just the name sounds amusing when I say it out loud.
But it’s not. Just one room. My room, your own room.
We all have a place that we go to when things are going on in our life.
Room six is a large room with one window and peeling ceiling with wallpaper walls.
Well, at least what’s left of the wallpaper, that is.
Looks like the preceding leaseholder had some fun tearing some of the wallpaper off in three of the corners.
But why just three? Now there’s a query.
Least they had their hands free.
Or maybe not.
It could’ve been done with their teeth I reason to myself. I’ve even heard that one could use their own toes to pick away at themselves to the point of bleeding. But let’s not go there at the moment.
Needless to say I don’t have my hands free along with the taste of wallpaper. That doesn’t appeal to me either.
I haven’t been in room six long enough to think about it and there’s that word right in itself – think.
That’s why I’m in room six now, anyway, is it not?
My large room has but one chair, tanned in color and by the window.
Listen to me, my over sized room, ha!
The chair is old and worn with age. Looks like somebody sat in it relatively often looking out the window. Which is not much to look at other than the wall of the building next to this one.
My room has no bed in it either. They must not consider that I will require any sleep.
The floor is white – well, most of it anyway.
Nice and white like after snow first falls.
Worn down in places like in front of the door or where the wallpaper in three of the corners is peeled away. But not in that one corner, I thought. That one blemish stands out the most.
The ceiling has but one light bulb, hanging down low from it. Old by the looks of it. Yellow with age. It has no string or switch on the wall to turn it on or off – it’s on now – but most of the light is coming from the window.
I decide then to walk over to the window and look out – that’s when it happens.
Let me try to put my thoughts in words that even I can understand.
I could smell things – not bad smells. But remembering smells.
Like candy apples at the state fair or cotton candy. The smell of rain on a spring night’s air, and I had to sit down.
Is this why the chair is here by the window? I thought to myself.
I was overwhelmed with intoxicating odors to the point where you could taste them. Sitting down I started to breathe easier – one breath at a time, slowly I told myself as I closed my eyes, slowly breathing through my nose.
Then they came at me again – these inhibitions forcing their way in.
The smell of an open field of wildflowers, the pages of a new book when you first open it. The smell of grass when cut. These odors reached out to me.
My mind was in a thousand different places all at once.
I don’t know how long I sat there, five minutes, ten – it could have been five hours just sitting there breathing slowly in and out.
At some time I opened my eyes to look out the window to see shadows dancing across the side of the building next to me. How long was I staring? Who knows – but the more I stared at those shadows they began to take shape.
It sounds mad I know sitting there having these overwhelming odors and now – now seeing shapes in the shadows, like children running or throwing a ball back and forth. Someone old sitting on a park bench feeding some birds, a couple holding hands while they walked away, and I cried.
One tear from my eye – down the side of my cheek.
I let it go and breathed in deeply.
The taste of my tear when it touched my mouth brought even more smells.
How long?
How long have I been sitting? I thought to myself.
My legs hurt and my feet were starting to tingle. I wanted to get up then. Start walking around – let the blood flow through my legs.
But it’s so nice – where did that come from, was that me?
This spot – it’s familiar.
Looking around my room, the three corners where the wallpapers were torn. The one wall where the door was at.
I looked at the far corner now. Dark and uninviting. But familiar just the same.
The window was too far away to cast any light on that side of the room and my one light bulb hanging down didn’t seem to shed enough light either.
I closed my eyes again, then stood up.
Feeling lightheaded. The images of the shadows still playing across my mind. Slowly – so slowly I open my eyes again, to see my door was open.
Open!
How long? How long has it been open?
There I was standing next to the chair feeling the rush of blood going back into my legs. How long?
I took a step towards the door – this is a dream – it’s not really open. I take another step and stop, my hands are free.
Free! For how long?
I touch my face running my hand through my hair. My tear dried long before.
Before?
I stopped looking back out my window to see the shadows playing across the building and they’re gone. I breathe in quickly – the smells they’re gone too!
How long? How long have I been standing there?
I face the door again. Open, it’s open.
I walk to the door slowly taking each breath, each sight in and I stop again to look down. The paint is worn not on the outside of the door – but inside where I’m standing.
Have I been here before?
Think – and there’s that word again.
The door is open. My hands are free. Just one step and I’ll be through that door.
I look back around now, I have been here before. I close my eyes again, I want to leave or do I want to stay?
With one step I walk through the door.
Eyes open most likely to come back again once more. My friend and I finishing up our coffee only to laugh at this place of mine I’ve come to call Room Six…

My Father’s H…

My Father’s Hands

This thought came to me when I was sitting down next to my father in the hospital.
Dad was in again due to his breathing or lack of.
He had asked me to trim his fingernails for him.
As I was trimming them I saw for the first time just how old his hands looked.
All the wrinkles of time, to all the age spots showing.
I couldn’t get over just how old my dad had become while lying in this hospital bed.
Looking at my own hands and seeing how they’re shaping up now.
The small traces of lines forming from time – the age spots slowly being seen.
As I held my father’s hands it came to me all the things his hands had held throughout these years.
From holding my grandmother’s hand to his horse Major’s reins to the simple thing as a cup of water to his lips.
There is history in all our hands.
From tying our first shoe laces to that first button down shirt.
I started to see the past of my father within those hands.
He would tell me about the farm he grew up on.
Those hands moved dirt and tools to farm with.
Off to war so people like me can live with freedom freely.
From holding his mother’s hands to his first date.
To his wife as they started their life together.
Holding on to my brothers; then to me in the end.
His hands have felt the touch of so many things in life – that looking at them now made me realize how my life or better yet – just what my hands have touched so far in life.
My father told me once that you could tell a lot about someone with just their handshake.
To look someone in the eyes when shaking their hand meant something at one point.
That deals were done upon their word and a handshake.
How much we placed upon that.
When I started my journey in recovery who knew all the things that my hands would touch.
All those handshakes at meetings.
From being welcomed in.
To the one welcoming people in.
To see people bound with just that simple handshake.
You can see the friendships starting up that will last one day at a time.
How easily we can forget to hold on to those hands when we think it’s going too bad.
Looking down at my own hands again and seeing my father’s hands looking back.
Maybe not as much has touched them like my father’s – but God willing they’ll get there.
Trying not to forget that it all started with me holding on to that drink, thinking that my life should be so much better if only “they” would leave me alone.
Never realizing that my life was unmanageable because of that drink.
How much money passed between these hands to pay for the things that ended up destroying my life in the end.
Finishing up trimming my dad’s’ fingernails and really seeing for the first time just where my life was going today.
To knowing just what my hands touch on a daily basis.
The handshakes that greet us to the handshakes that bind us in life.
Being responsible in what my hands hold onto throughout today. Working on my fathers’ nails was just another God shot in how I interact with all my affairs today.
Being mindful of where I’ve been, to now.
As I let go of My Fathers’ Hands…