Quoc’s Web Journal

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Hey all!!! Hope this blog finds you well… Sorry I haven’t stayed in touch… Life has been in session… If you want to know the juicy details, e-mail me at quoclam@gmail.com and ask me… I will be more than happy to share. I can’t share all the details in a public forum for now. With that being said, allow me to preface on some notes on the following pictorial review giving you “one” of the many highlights in my life that happened this past week and weekend. If you’d like to see a larger image, click on the thumbnail and it should open a new window with a larger picture for your viewing pleasure… You’ll also see a new friend of mine that is consistently in the pictures… Mom always taught me that a picture tells a more vivid story when there is someone in it. Since I was the one behind the camera most of the time, Curtis is the “person” (a very special one too!!!) that will be a star feature in this pictorial review…

This retreat was from Friday, April 4 – Sunday, April 6… It is a Men’s Spiritual Retreat. It’s located high up in the beautiful mountains of Santa Barbara at St. Calvary Monastery. This was my second year attending this specific retreat. Go to “April 2007″ blogs if you would like to read the highlights of last year’s retreat and what it did for me in healing a relationship between Mom and me and bringing a sense of being a member of a group of people who are united on a mission striving to be of service for the greater good.

This year was about tuning up and “tweaking” various areas in my life that need some work. One area is to practice being “emotionally self supporting” and not need your validation to be ok with me at the end of each day. My desire for validation from others especially in the area of “dating” was one of the scapegoats to fire my successful act of sabotage to my continuos sobriety. Along that same lines, the other major area in my life that I get to learn more about and work on in the next year and beyond is the lack of acceptance for being HIV positive and trust that I won’t romantically condemned to being single for the rest of my life.

My buddy Curtis and I decide to be roomates for the weekend to support each other throughout this intense weekend. Here in the picture above, he seems really pensive not knowing what will come of this weekend… Or is he just busy sending a text message?!

Curtis demonstrates what everyone is doing for me with prayers, thoughts, e-mails, phone calls, text messages and for some who are local to me actually taking time out to spend with me in support of my recommitment to being a “wonderful sober man.” For those of you who don’t follow my blog, I relapsed a couple weeks back and desperately making attempts to quell the conflicted battle between my mind and the physical allergy I woke up as a result of relapsing… That physical allergy as a result of using drugs is that “irrestible physical craving of the body” to want more of that poisonous substance whatever that may be. I wouldn’t be able to do it with amazing friends in my life like Curtis… Thank you for giving your “Quoc-La” bear a hug!

We look like twins wearing striped shirts. Believe you me that was not done on purpose… And now that I take a second look at the picture, I don’t think we look like twins at all! So you respond by saying, “Quoc, you needed a second look to see that you aren’t twins?” Heehee… Notice the hair on Curtis’ head and how it magically disappears for the rest of the journey… He wanted to go along with spirit of the occasion and get a monk’s haircut…

Here we are spending our Saturday afternoon hiking a nearby trail with a bunch of the other guys…. Notice how the nature of the hike changes as the pictures progress, well at least how I interpret what a hike is! Curtis poses for me while on the trail. What a beautiful view. Oh yeah, the trees are pretty too!

So about 1/6 of the way into the hiking trail, we find a fork in the trail… One trail is laid out clearly and has been traveled by others in the group before. The other one is a little harder to discern, but a member of the group shares that following this trail will take us along the stream and allow us to see more of the waterfalls as we travel up the mountain… I pick up a sturdy stick to help me along the hiking trail; little did I know that stick would come in very very handy as the trail progressed. Oh yeah, most of us voted to take the less pronounced route along the stream. The minority had to concede and come along…

So, as you can see, the trail (or lack of a trail) is indeed very beautiful… The terrain becomes more treacherous with each small distance we travel along the stream… I am starting to realize that this is feeling more like a rock climb rather than a brisk hike. Several times throughout the hike, I had concerns that we were lost and we really didn’t know our way… Well, at least we’re in it together!

Here is a good shot of the hiking group and the hiking trail as we make our way up the stream… We encounter fallen trees we need to cross, boulders and steep precarious rocks to climb and steep ledges we have to maneuver around to get through… The wonderful thing about this experience was how everyone stayed together and whenever one needed a helping hand to get up to the next rock to move forward in the path, one would always find one there with an outstretched hand ready to help. What a beautiful analogy to recovery: one person’s hand being held and supported while the other hand is outstretched to help the one down below….

Yes, I am as happy as I look in the picture here… Being out in the open and away from all the insanity from down the mountain really is refreshing… All we get to do in this given moment is just absorb all the beauty of mother nature all around us. Unfortunately you aren’t able to see it, but I am level with a small waterfall… The waterfall would be directly to my left and falling below me…. Breath taking!

How can I not share this perfectly captured image of man and nature in perfect unison and harmony with each other… Thanks Curtis for posing! Gosh I wish I had a twin to take pictures of myself!

So, indeed there were moments when we were very very concerned about being lost on this path along the stream that we thought was a trail. Here is a picture of the great relief we had when we saw a sign pointing directly to a trail!!! I was sooo happy to see other people hike by us along the “official” trail as we did NOT run into anyone along the couple hour hike that we did as a group up the mountain along the stream!

Ah, let’s take a group shot of the happy hikers trudging the road of life… We’re close to the pinnacle of where we hiked… We took the official trail back down the mountain… It was a lot easier, but definitely not as scenic! Now that we’re safely out of the woods, I am sooo glad we took the path we did.

Ah… Curtis really enjoyed the weekend as did I and hopefully everyone else who participated on this retreat, but how nice that we got a little break from “life down the mountain” and at the very same time, we get to go back to the very gifts (job friends, family, home, pet…) that we’ve worked sooo hard for to nurture, grow and continue to maintain this wonderful thing called life… Let’s have lunch before we go back down the mountain!

Considering the fact I have crystal meth brain (aka SFB = Sh*t for Brains), I really wanted to take a picture of the door that lead to the room that gave us somewhere to retire to each night after a long full day to connect with our fellow human and of course to God.

I met Mark last year. I really remembered him from last year because he just has that kind of presence that captivates one’s attention… Well at least my attention… Upon meeting him this year, I really wanted to let him know that he is like the silver lining in the sky; just able to brighten up even the darkest of moods… So, I asked him to pose for a picture with me so that when I am down and in the dumps, this picture would brighten me up and make me smile on the inside…

Ah yes, the annual tradition of the group shot before we part ways back down the mountain side… What a wonderful weekend… I couldn’t have felt more honored and privileged to get to spend my weekend with such a great group of guys I consider family. Until next year!!!

I took a moment to take a picture with Brother Roy who does most if not all the calligraphy in and around the monastery. His artwork is indeed beautiful as is his gentle and kind spirit… You can just see it in his eyes…

Suffice it to say, there is a lot more that has occurred in my life in the past week… It’s been wild and rampant, but with each passing day, I learn new lessons, make new friends and build closer bonds with the ones I already have. What I really want is a renewed and stronger bond with my Higher Power. It is that lack of willingness to trust in my Higher Power to take care of everything for me and provide me with what I want and need if and when it’s deemed appropriate… As an alcoholic, I am impatient, impulsive and will take back my will and control if I don’t have it five minutes ago… So, I’ve become much more patient since coming into the program, but I need to nip these areas of focus in my life need work to help keep me sober…

Thank you again for your love and support in sooo many ways… In meetings of recovery, we take a moment of silence to pray for the alcoholic/addict in and out of these rooms who still suffer… One of the things we pray for is that they make it into the rooms of recovery where we can love them until they can love themselves and teach them tools for living and alternative ways to fill that gaping void we have within us: no God… Prayers work… I believe in them… If not prayers, keep me in your thoughts…

Unfortunately, when that moment of hesitancy as to whether my Higher Power was going to take care of me in the area of romance, the mind took over… And when the mind took over (where the disease of alcoholism centers) and I actually commit the act of shoving a mind altering substance into my body, then the body does follow and I suffer from that physical allergy of an alcoholic… Instead of breaking out in hives, I break out in the “irresistable urge to continue to want to feed that need to use” despite the consequences!!! That is the insanity in it all…. It doesn’t need to be figured out… There is no figuring it out…. It just is…

Sorry, I digressed… Please stay in touch…

Much love,

Quoc

- One clean and sober breath at a time…. I can’t quite fathom one full day at a time quite yet.