I imagine today that I am going to die.
I ask for some time to be alone and write down for my friends a sort of testament for which the points that follow could serve as chapter titles:
These things I have loved in Life:
Things I tasted:
Any and all chocolate. Water. As much water as I can drink. Pure MDMA. Sweat dripping into my eyes and mouth for any number of reasons. Vegetables I’ve grown myself.
Looked at:
Fog rolling over the Flint Hills first thing in the morning.
The Great Lakes.
Sunset on the cliffs in Pacifica, California.
Smelled:
The smell of bleach is one of my favorite things.
Fresh cut grass.
Prada Amber.
Heard:
Peter Murphy singing live.
Thom Yorke singing live.
AA’s preamble read in French.
So many people forgiving me.
Touched:
Thousands of different hands grasped in prayer.
The body of someone I was deeply in love with.
These experiences I have cherished:
Every moment with my friend Ann.
Learning how to stay sober.
Realizing that God or something like God loves me, and is concerned with my welfare.
Trips to San Francisco to see Nina and Nikki.
Crying until my vision clears, then laughing until I cry again.
These ideas have brought me Liberation:
I am not alone.
I don’t have to do this by myself.
Punishment never heals. Only Love will heal.
Day by day.
One day at a time.
Sometimes, one second at a time.
Now is the most important moment of my life.
These ideas & beliefs I have outgrown:
Nobody loves me, understands or “gets” me.
I am the legacy of my parent’s addictions.
I’d be better off alone.
Everything in my life has gone wrong because my mother gave me away.
“Blood” family is the only “real” family there is.
I was going to die an alcoholic addict.
We all have “roles” to play in life and that was mine.
These convictions I have lived by:
We can all be different today than we were yesterday.
Wishing and believing are not the same thing.
Nor are saying and doing.
These insights I have gained in the school of Life:
Insights into God:
God is a velocity, a momentum of love and understanding.
God isn’t quiet, and soft handed, necessarily.
I hear God screaming sometimes.
The Universe has no desire to see any of us unhappy, murderous, pitiful or full of remorse.
God is a thought, a feeling, a state of mind.
God is not religion, nor spirituality.
God is something I found inside of myself
that I call the Connectedness.
The World:
Greed kills.
Money sucks.
People lie.
I wish we could all be more like children–
if you watch them playing, they might fall down, cry for a moment, and get right back to the task at hand.
No regret, no sorrow, no blame.
Human Nature:
Are we really what we’re “taught” to be?
Self-will is a gift from the Universe.
How am I going to use it?
Anger, fear, judgement, resentment, melancholy, rage, sadness, loneliness, inferiority, superiority.
All gifts that let me know that something isn’t really right with me in this moment.
Love:
I asked a friend once what she thought love was,
and she answered that it’s a knowing beyond definition.
I never forgot that.
However, today: I feel like love is whatever I choose to create.
It is acceptance, and empathy and understanding and equality.
It says ” I am right here, and I am not going anywhere.”
Religion:
It’s so divisive.
Prayer:
A whisper, a scream, an intent.
The Risks I took, These Dangers I have courted:
Drugs and sex.
Alcoholic blackouts.
Pushing people away because I’d be “better off alone.”
Living on the streets at times during my addictions.
Multiple abusive relationships and my inability to walk away from them.
These Sufferings have seasoned me:
Methamphetamine and other addictions.
Being put up for adoption at an older age.
Mentally and spiritually bankrupt parents.
So many friends lost to overdose, and suicide.
The Lessons life has taught me:
Nobody else is going to do it for me,
although I can ask for help.
When I compare my insides to every else’s outsides, I will stay miserable.
I can trust my “gut.”
I am not in a position to judge anybody.
Everyone has different ways of doing things.
There are over seven billion Paths that seven billion people are walking.
I can’t compare mine to any of those.
These influences have shaped my Life:
( people, occupations, books, events )
Ann Mitchell. Don Galesh. Oscar Pearson.
ReGina Cruse and Jen Nickels Rowe.
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The Language of Letting Go, by Melody Beattie.
I very distinctly remember the first time I “meditated” and heard the Universe talk back to me.
It rattled me and shook me to my core, and it changed me.
Working in peer support. I will never be the same as a result. I am beyond grateful.
These things I regret about my Life:
I regret taking so long to forgive my mother.
Being angry and unforgiving gives other people so much fucking control over my life.
I regret wasting so much time and energy.
These are my Life’s Achievements:
I broke the cycle of addiction and sorrow in my family, and I am free.
These people are enshrined within my Heart:
All of you. I have so much love in my heart that sometimes I feel like it will burst. I used to think it meant my heart was breaking, But I’ve figured out it’s really a heart expanding.
These are my unfulfilled desires:
I used to want to be able to know the ending to my story.
I used to think I did know the end to my story.
Sometimes I still want to control every outcome.
I want to talk less and do more.
William Matthew Reilly
Taken from a writing exercise by Paulo Coelho
MISTER WILLIAM REILLY 