Let me just start with a thanks. I'm so grateful for these weekly meetings. Whenever I've felt in pity party mood, AA has been just what I needed. While I have close and caring friends, we're not on the same wavelength, we haven't gone through the same things. I can always come here and feel right at home.
Peter and Barbra. Charley. Mocha Daze, its remodel and recent vandalism. My uncertain medical status.
I can only take so much.
I'd like to talk about sex for a minute, if that's okay with everybody. I've been celibate for the past two years and I want to make love with somebody. You know, it's not even the act itself that I want. It's the touching, the holding, the knowledge that I'm cared for in that way by another person. I don't just need to get off--I can do that myself.
Funny, for the first year after Charley's death, I had no desire, at all. I just wanted to crawl into a bottle and die. I almost lost Mocha Daze and all that Charley and I had worked for. But, with the help of some of you people in the room, I dried myself out.
After I worked the program, the desire came back with a vengeance but I didn't do anything about it. Sex and death were too intrinsically linked for me. Since I hadn't been tested and had certainly been exposed, there was no way that I could have sex with somebody else, safe or not, without knowing first.
One day passed after another and I kept putting off getting the test. Part out of fear, part out of just the sheer volume of time and work I was putting into Mocha Daze. More of the first, of course. Mocha Daze was just an excuse for me to erase my sadness with the sadness of my friends.
Now another year has passed and I still haven't been tested. I'm not feeling as good as I usually do. I could pray that it's just exhaustion, the stress of my business but does God acknowledge the prayers of foolish men?
I'm working up the nerve to take the test and get over this denial that's choking the life out of me. I need to make my life happen, but I need to know some things about my self first. I need to deal with my denial.
About my status. About my need for a companionship that is more than a good conversation and a cup of coffee.
I'm going to take a few steps forward this next couple of weeks in an attempt to make that life start happening.
With all that's been going on in my life, it's often hard to keep focused on the good.
Keep me in your thoughts.
