Rae's Confessions

Seeking Surrender

2011-03-30T02:46:00.003-04:00

On page 120 of the Big Book of AA, it is written, "If a repetition is to be prevented, place the problem, along with everything else, in God's hands."

I have fought for control in every way, shape and form I have known, for as long as I can recall. I live a "scared shitless" life when I'm not in control. Yet time and time again I have been shown the grace and comfort that can be found in simply letting go and letting my Higher Power take the reigns of my life.

This fear of what will come with a lack of control does not leave me for long. It is a part of my "thinking problem," and as an addict, I find myself in states of irritability, dis-ease, panic and obsessiveness before I even know what has hit me.

The answer to peace and harmony is always in surrender and acceptance. But that surrender and acceptance is so much easier to think about and write about than it is to actually do.

My prayer today is that I can remember, one moment at a time, that there's no need for my control, no hope or peace in it. There is only peace and harmony in gentle surrender to the God of my understanding. I don't have to know what it looks like or have God all figured out ... I simply have to let go. Just place whatever I need to hold on to in God's hands and let go.

I can accept that it's natural for this need for control to come up when I am stressed. I don't have to resent it. I can simply recognize it as part of a disease that I have been living with all my life and will continue to live with into the future. I will never be rid of the "stinkin' thinkin'" completely. It will try to use old coping mechanisms to help me get through tough times. But I pray that I continue to seek a more gentle path.

Conflicting thoughts

2011-03-18T23:30:00.003-05:00

As I begin to find my foundation, I have truly embraced the journey of life and become thankful for every part of my path. Occasionally, though, something stops me in my tracks and makes me ask if there is something fundamentally wrong with my thinking. That's when it helps to write through my thoughts and sort them out so I can look at them.

So, clearly, I had one of those "stopped in my tracks" moments recently when I was signed on to Facebook and saw that one of my friends had posted a link to a list of sex offenders in her county. The local sheriff's office had posted the names, addresses and pictures of registered sex offenders in the county. There were a few comments that made it clear that people felt safer knowing who the sex offenders were who lived around them.

Those who know I was molested as a child probably could reasonably think I think it's a great idea to expose all those "perverts." I suspect a few people might be aghast that I actually cringe at the notion of shaming people in this way. But it's not my job to think for anyone else. I'm just trying to think for myself.

As I looked through the names and faces, I saw men and women, old and young. Some of them even looked like the "typical" sex offender, if there is such a thing. But a few of them looked like exactly what they were before they got a big red label pasted across their foreheads that said "SEX OFFENDER." They looked like local grocery store clerks, fast food and factory workers, business professionals and teachers.

My sexual behavior, which was at one point outrageous by any definition, was a part of who I was. For a long time, I let the shame of that behavior and the shame of my past define all of who I was. I think differently now. I know that it is only by God's grace that I am not on a list of sexual offenders in my county -- not because I ever got anywhere close to a child (even the thought of that repulses me) but because in my county if a person gets caught engaging in public sexual activity then you go on the sex offender registry. I never got caught, but I certainly engaged. That's not something I'm proud of, it's just a fact. In a world where sex is the drug of choice, parked cars often become the "party room."

So, as I think of this fact -- I never got caught. My stepfather never got caught. There are people recovering from sexual addiction around the globe who have never been caught committing a crime. Then there are those 37 people on that Facebook page who did get caught. For every one of them, with terms after their names like carnal abuse, sexual assault, rape, solicitation, there are dozens more who are using sex in dangerous, inappropriate ways that never got caught, whose names will never be smeared, whose families will never feel the burning shame of their "outing." But these people, like me, like my stepfather, like the fathers and mothers and uncles and neighbors and teachers of so many of my friends and loved ones, have horribly hurt other people. Had we made it to those registries, we would have been looked at with total disgust too, because no one would understand or care that we were more than sex offenders.

I've been thinking of my stepfather recently. He was more than my abuser, more than the sum of all his horrible attributes. He was creative and talented in his vocation and avocations. Given the chance at an education, he could have been a very successful designer and engineer. Before my sex addiction took over my life, I was a glowing professional, filled with confidence and ability. It's taken me a long time to reclaim the parts of myself that are still useful. Embracing them is still difficult.

Don't get me wrong, I am not advocating that we should let people free because there are far more sex offenders than will ever be caught. In fact, I don't think I'm advocating anything. I am just typing out loud, trying to sort through these feelings of sadness and confusion about the people whose names and faces I saw on that Facebook page, and show up in one too many I Phone apps for sex offender registries.

At times when I've considered future career options, I've thought of pursuing a career that would allow me to help women who have survived incest. It took me only a very short time to realize that it is not the victim we should focus on helping. Once the abuse, the incest, the violation -- whether covert or overt occurs -- it is too late. The damage that will take years and years to overcome has been done. It is the fear of what will happen as a result, just how fucked up one will become as a result of what has happened that is the worst damage of all. But what if more was done to help those "would be" sexual offenders to begin to live lives they could be proud of, lives of self-awareness that prevented them from making that first move to ruin the lives of others? I don't know what help -- other than therapy -- there might be, but I know there must be something more helpful than this horrible shame.

There is purpose

2011-02-07T02:24:00.004-05:00

My thanks to fellow bloggers and followers who continue to check in now and then. I write here rather infrequently now, despite my best intentions. In this digital age, there is so much technology to distract all of us and me specifically, that writing short tidbits of thought in social media has become the daily norm, as opposed to sorting out my thoughts through lengthy blog posts. And while I think I need to make it a habit to journal and share my thoughts with others in the recovery community, I have found that sharing thoughts via Facebook with people who I know or have known is helping to bring together the pieces of my life into a whole person.

I have shared here many times about the pain and confusion of living parallel lives. It goes beyond simply having a public life and a private life. For as far back as I can remember, I have lived a compartmentalized life. As a child, I had my family life, I had the secret life of abuse and a parallel life of my own escapism, I had my school life and I had my church life. There's always been a part of me that excels and seeks to lead and a part of me that I long to live undetected.

After many years, I am coming closer to living a more integrated life. I have friends who I allow to see my flaws, and I have made a conscious effort to become more humble and less manipulative. Rather than trying to shape others opinions of me by "leading" them and wowing them with my "perfection," I am learning to be myself, accept myself as perfectly imperfect and flawed, and let others be themselves. Perhaps they are in a place to form opinions of me, or perhaps they really don't give a shit about what I think or do -- despite my once grandiose ideas that I was the center of everyone's universe. Either way, I have no stake in what others think of me. Instead, I have a vested interest in how I feel within myself.

It may sound as if I am being a little too harsh on my past self. Trust me, I love myself more today than I have in a long, long time -- maybe ever. And it's not because I'm so much better than I was before. It is because I accept this journey that I am on as my pathway, my journey. I am simply at peace with what is.

In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things. Pablo Casals

This is not to say I don't struggle with non-acceptance and self-hatred and feeling overwhelmed at times. I most certainly do. These are emotions that sometimes show up every day. But those are not the places that I dwell. I seek, today, above all things, peace in my soul -- peace with all that is around me. And I find it not in complacency, but in acceptance and and immense gratitude that, thus far, the God of my understanding has found a purpose for me.

I may be a fat, depressed, sex and love addict, without a real job, with more questions than answers sometimes -- but despite those things, God has found things for me to do in this world. The AA Big Book talks about "We had a new employer." And I am grateful beyond words that among the work that was meant for me was the task of making peace with myself. It seems to be making all the difference in being at peace with the world around me.

Again, I don't mean to imply in any way that my life is perfect. It is not, and I am learning plenty of things the hard way. I am simply saying, I know more peace than I have known in a long time, and for that I am immensely grateful.

Just a sip

2010-11-12T07:39:00.003-05:00

I became aware at last night's meeting that I was trying to control everyone and everything around me. I was telling someone else to lead the meeting, then taking over by telling that person everything they needed to do. One member suggested to me that we cut the reading short to accommodate more shares. I said no, then changed MY mind and told the leader to cut the reading short. Some of the men in the meeting were acting silly and I was feeling so chaotic ... I just was ill at ease with myself.
One of the things I am working on in my recovery is humility. A part of that is stepping back from being "the leader." With the help of working the Steps and the revelations of my Higher Power, I discovered I always put myself in positions of authority or leadership so that I can be in control of the outcome of most any situation. In doing this, I also separate myself from other people. I can cause others to feel intimidated. I can appear busy and inaccessible thus leaving me alone. And, oh how my addicted self loves the misery, loneliness and self-pity it finds in isolation. For it is in that isolation where I long for just a small foray into my diseased behavior. I rarely feel any desire to really get fully involved in my disease, but there are times on a regular basis that I feel so uncomfortable in my skin that I just want some release from the discomfort and pain of feelings and emotions -- simple ones even -- that I don't seem able to deal with.
Unfortunately, in sex and love addiction, like all other addictions, there is no such thing as "just a sip." If I go on to one of my old websites "just to see" what people are looking for or engaging in, I am participating in middle circle behaviors that will no doubt -- NO DOUBT -- lead to acting out. It's like an alcoholic sniffing the bottle of whiskey. I cannot begin conversations with past lovers or potential new lovers pretending to just want someone to talk to -- the equivalent of taking a sip of whiskey from a completely full bottle -- without finding myself fully involved, making plans, and eventually feeling deep regret and being forced to start all over again searching for some semblance of peace and serenity in an otherwise chaotic world.
Because of the cyclical nature of addiction, I have to be hypervigilant about maintaining my spiritual condition, identifying those moments when I'm feeling that life is spinning out of control and compelled to stop it by grasping anything and everything that can cause me to feel in control. It's important that I'm fully aware of those impulses, so that I can remind myself to give the reigns to my Higher Power. In order to do that, I need to get quiet and humble and prayerful and let the storm pass. It won't last forever. If I give in to that voice that says ... "Take just a sip, it will relieve the pressure. It's not going to hurt anything," I lose all access to my Higher Power, all access to manageability, and I find myself taking a sip that might never end.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and thank you for the wisdom to know the difference. May thy will, not mine be done.

Goals, Smoals

2010-11-08T14:43:00.002-05:00

Forgive me a moment while I express some emotions that aren't really that positive, but should be expressed nonetheless.
I've heard all the theories that we are what we think, the things we focus on are the things we manifest, negative thoughts yield negative results, blah, blah, blah. The variations of the same message are endless. They even include the story of the Cherokee elder, which I love.

One evening, an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.   He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, greed, and arrogance. The other is Good - It is peace, love, hope, humility, compassion, and faith. ”  The grandson thought about this for a while and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?”   To which the old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

I was listening to an audio presentation by Brian Tracy called "Goals" this morning. His basic premise, which is not a new one, is that without goals we are directionless. You know, the old adage, "If you don't know where you are going, you're going nowhere."
So as Tracy goes on and on about the process of getting clarity about what you want from life and doing one small thing every day to work toward those goals in all areas of your life, all I can think is, "What's the point?" I can set goals until the sun rises in the west, and tell myself I am going to work toward them every day, but in the end I know I will just give up. It will require more effort than I want to give or I will be more inclined to sleep than to exercise or go to class. I will get to work at my dream job and the computer will be sitting there, drawing my attention away from the things I want to achieve and before I know it, I'll be right back to square one -- feeling like absolute shit.
Clearly, I'm having an issue with self-confidence at the moment. It's been quite a battle for a long time. The disparity between the confident, ambitious, dependable, capable person and the person who simply feels like the only thing left to do is to give up is growing wider and wider, as my ass does the same. It is so frustrating. That higher self KNOWS that setting goals and achieving them and getting recognition for them builds self esteem, but the lower self asks herself again, "What's the point?" I suppose I believe that no matter what I work for, no matter what I achieve, it will never last, it will always be stolen from me and in the end, like all things, it will never, ever be enough.
Inside me somewhere right now is a voice crying out, "Challenge those negative thoughts! Ask them what right they have to be in your life? They aren't true and they sure aren't helpful." And when I "hear" that faint voice, still fighting for life, right now at this moment, all I can feel is tired. I just want to close my eyes and forget about these struggles, to slip into the nothingness that doesn't include goals or ambitions, the place where there is no fight left. I am sad to say that at this moment, that is the place that feels safe.
Truth is, I know that in that place I go much deeper into darkness, into the place where the attempts to feel alive become desperate and more risky. Risk is the only thing that brings a spark of life in those moments. Then comes incredible regret, that insatiable desire to just be "normal," the resurfacing of the struggle, even stronger and more insistent than before. The addictive cycle, the clinicians call it.
As I sit here, I struggle with a dozen things: whether to go to a meeting or stay home with my husband who I am sure will be too tired to deal with me once he gets home, but not too tired to be irritated that I chose something else over him. I struggle with my lack of desire to fix a healthy meal and my guilt in ordering some overpriced takeout that is not healthy. I struggle with the need to go to the gym, fix dinner, get ready for the meeting, take care of my pets, return program calls, and again, the desire to just lay down and say fuck it all.
I know I won't feel these things in an hour or two, but I do know they will be back. I suppose my true desire is that I live at peace with myself and my decisions and that I be happy with life no matter how much effort it takes. I'm not there today and the best I can do is acknowledge that and get up and do the next right thing and realize that nothing is going to go wrong today that is going to kill me and if something does kill me, the struggle will be over and I can quit bitching.
Grateful to be alive one more day. Grateful to be honest with myself and others. Grateful that my life is filled with all kinds of feelings, and I can experience them as they come without overreacting.

Searching for me

2010-11-05T02:10:00.004-05:00

As I read Bernadine's letter to her trauma recovery therapy (TRT) group at Et tu husband? I thought how good it was to witness someone come out on the other side of the struggles of a recovery cycle.

Bernadette wrote in her departing letter to her TRT group,"I had known about (my husband's) addiction for a year and a few months when I started the group.
By then, the person I had been -- was gone."

Later in her letter she wrote, "I realized, just this last weekend, that I’m back to me now."

Oh how I long to be "back to me."

I had occasion recently to correspond with several people from a life before the one in which I've found myself for the past seven years. They know someone I once was -- a confident, testy, fun, hard-working, competent and talented leader and fellow employee. They know the person I long to be again, and would be so surprised to know this depressed, fearful, struggling individual that sometimes loses sight of hope.

By the time I came here to write my confessions in May 2004, the person they knew was long gone. I had no idea where she had gone or how she got lost, but OMG was she gone.

It occurs to me almost fleetingly here that perhaps the fact that I am pursuing a lost dream rather than a brighter future messes with my ability, at times, to be satisfied with the present and encouraged by the journey.I idolize that upwardly mobile young professional that I once was, and see myself today as a mere shadow of what I once was. I literally fucked myself into a feeling of worthlessness and self-pity that I grow so tired of, so restless with, and at times so attached to, I don't now how to move on.

I was talking yesterday afternoon with a recovery friend about this issue, about the fact that I felt a whole lot better before my recovery began than I have felt during its process. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful that I am in recovery, that I am trusting the process, that I am experiencing a "balancing out" of life. Without the tools of recovery to guide me as I have worked with (and at times against) my Higher Power and support system to put my life back together again, I have no doubt I would not be alive. No doubt. I feel grateful that I am alive even with the recovery process and support to lift me up.

Through a whole series of metaphors, my friend helped me connect to the fact that I am not recovering from a series of bad choices and behaviors -- I am recovering from a system of values and beliefs that have been my means of coping with deep-seated underlying realities that were too painful to bear at some earlier time in my life.

My friend asked me "If you were to vow to never let anything pass your lips again that would prevent you from achieving and maintaining your healthy weight, would that be hard or easy to achieve?" Silly me took a while to think about that question. As usual, I was trying to find the "right" answer. But, of course, it would be as hard as hell. I love food. I love sweets. I love sharing food with friends and sharing the pleasures of new restaurants and new tastes. Throw in all the factors associated with my attachment to myself as a fat person, and you've got a complete revamping of my entire life. There is no way that is going to be easy. No way. And my skewed relationship with food and fatness barely even scratches the surface of the massive jumble of misguided, disproportional, and damaged thoughts, feelings and forces that I have absorbed and incorporated into my life over the years. There is so much more.

So, for today, I give myself, my recovery process and my God the time that is required, the patience that is needed to go through these fundamental changes.

AllTreatment.com Interview

2010-10-25T18:36:00.003-04:00

In my last post I posted the answers to some interview questions that had been posed to me. The interview was conducted by Brandon Yu, managing editor of AllTreatment.com.

Brandon has posted the interview on the AllTreatment site today. Check it out here.

Answering questions

2010-10-22T12:12:00.005-04:00

I was recently asked a series of questions by a recovery resource portal site. I thought my answers summarized my story quite well and decided I'd share them here. The interviewer's questions are in bold. Once the interview is published, I'll post a link.

Tell us a bit about yourself. Ironically, a lot of online conversations with potential acting out partners started with this very same question. I am a 43 year old woman living in the Midwest, married, college educated, out of work communications professional. I grew up in a higher-low class family and was sexually abused by my stepfather for 10 years of my life, beginning at age 3.
I am willing to answer specific questions, but that's "a bit" about me.

Do you feel like you have an addictive personality? I don't feel like I have an addictive personality, I know I do. Mosby's Medical Dictionary defines an addictive personality as: a personality marked by traits of compulsive and habitual use of a substance or practice in an attempt to cope with psychic pain engendered by conflict and anxiety.

When did your addiction start? Which one? I am a compulsive overeater, codependent, sex addict. I believe that I began eating for comfort (though I didn't recognize it then) when I was a small child. I have always had a fascination with food, as long as I can remember. My codependency began sometime in childhood as well, though I did not identify it until my 20s. I just thought I was trying to take care of others. I did not recognize it as an obsession that helped me feel safe. As for my sexual addiction, which I assume you are most interested in, I remember masturbating to numb myself as early as 10. As soon as I was introduced to the Internet at age 26, I began to use it to connect with others sexually -- usually for cybersex, phone sex and eventually face to face meetings. The behavior was limited to online contact after I met and married my husband -- until about six years into our marriage. That is when casual chatting with friends and family led me to begin to use online chat programs to connect with married men first to flirt, then to connect offline for physical encounters. What started as one affair quickly went out of control until I could no longer stop searching out men for offline and online sexual encounters.
The basic text of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous says, "At some time in our lives our behavior began to take on the compulsive hallmarks of addiction. The once rare liaisons became monthly, then weekly. They happened when inconvenient, or when they interfered with work or family obligations. The occasional pleasurable daydream grew into a constant obsession that destroyed our ability to concentrate on more ordinary and more important things. One by one such things as satisfaction in our work, friends and social activities dropped away as we found more and more of our time and our thoughts absorbed by (addictive obsessions)." This is what happened to me.

Was there a quick escalation or did you "dabble?" See the answer above.

What was living with your addiction like? It was like being on a runaway train moving so fast that the thrill and the fear were indistinguishable. I loved the high that came with the pursuit of a man and I had all sorts of tricks for getting him hooked, but once he was hooked and we reached the point of meeting, my high was already waning and I needed more. I once used a hotel three times in a single night and still felt empty, wishing there was someone else to call to help me get high again. At the same time, I wanted to stop more than anything in the world. I knew I was living a life that was incongruous with the person I really was. Before long the addiction became who I was and my real self, though still there, seemed impossible to reach. I promised myself time and time again that I would stop, that I wouldn't go online, that I wouldn't see a particular person again, that I would stop making plans to act out. Inevitably, I'd find myself driving to meet someone on the side of the road, in their office, at a hotel, in a park or anywhere we could be sexual.

How was your personal life affected? I was living one lie after another. I was constantly rushing to through my "real" life to either get back to acting out or to make up for time lost acting out. I would speed down the highway, I would rush through dinner. I was constantly trying to keep all the lies straight. I could hardly sleep. Eventually I reached a level of depression that caused me to want to end my life. I never actually attempted suicide, but I had ideations and longed for death to find me. I could not live with the disease of sex and love addiction and I felt completely empty without it.

How was your professional life affected? I had been a very competent professional, excelling above my peers and taking great pride in my work. Eventually work just became an interference and it wasn't long before I didn't have the concentration to complete any task without becoming irritated and careless. Though I never could understand how, I always seemed to keep one foot in front of the other. I missed a lot of deadlines and frequently missed appointments or canceled them. After some time, the work I had once done became impossible. My low concentration and depression made in-depth projects impossible to complete -- first on time and then at all.

What was rock bottom like? What happened? I would like to think that rock bottom for me was when in the midst of a relapse into my love addiction I became pregnant with another man's child. The man was a raging alcoholic and at one point I had to put black curtains on all my windows out of fear of what he would do to me and that he would out me to my husband. I ended up spending thousands of dollars on him out of codependency and fear. I would love to think that was my rock bottom ... but the scary thing is ... I'm not sure if I have hit rock bottom. I came into recovery within a few months of my first acting out episode. I knew something was terribly wrong and I needed to change. I continued to act out even in recovery, but I continued to attend SLAA meetings and try to apply the principles of the program to my life. Unfortunately, trying to work the Steps while you are still "high" doesn't work so well -- so I had periods of sobriety, sometimes long ones, but they always resulted in an eventual slip or relapse. I have had a tremendous time maintaining sobriety in this program -- and some would say that it is because I have a tremendous difficulty surrendering control.

When did realize you needed to be rid of your problem? As soon as things started to get out of control about six years into my marriage. I never ever thought I'd have one affair, much less be unable to stop having affairs.

What recovery process did you find? I entered therapy and even though I saw a lot of therapists who knew NOTHING about sex addiction, I did learn a lot about myself. Luckily my first therapist suggested I might be a sex addict and though I poo-pooed her idea, I made a decision to go to my first Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting. As soon as I heard the stories of the others there, I knew I was in the right place. And, though, as I said, it has been diffcult to maintain sobriety -- I believe the program is the only thing that has kept me sane. I continue to be active in the program and was thankful to eventually find a certified sex addiction therapist who was able to help me in ways no other professional had been able to up to that point.

Have you ever tried to quit before, how, how long did you last, what was it like, did you start again? I believe I've answered this question -- if not please let me know. I've tried a million times to quit and failed. I just have to keep getting back up and trying again. Most recently I have been using a mantra that is working. I remind myself that I cannot try to not act out. I'm either acting out or I'm not. I say that to myself again and again. It helps keep me sober, as does calling upon the God of my understanding to help me accept the things I cannot change and give the courage to change the things I can.

How are you coping with recovery today? They say that recovery is like peeling away the layers of an onion and that is how it has been for me. While at one point, the focus of my recovery was simply to stop acting out -- today I realize that the disease of sex and love addiction is far more deep rooted than just anonymous liasons. I have had to look at the fact that relationships of all kinds are difficult for me. I avoid intimacy at all costs, but constantly want to get as close as possible to people in my life -- only to push them away. I have had to look at my very identity and worth -- since I inherently believed that I was less than everyone else around me and the only thing that gave me value to men was my sexuality.

What advice do you have for people currently suffering from addiction? Begin to seek out resources for help. If you are in an area where are are meetings, go to meetings, find a sponsor, find a therapist, and most of all KEEP COMING BACK. If you are not in a location where there are meetings -- there are dozens of online resources, phone meetings, online meetings and more.

You don't have to be perfect, just keep coming to meetings and working on healing. You did not get to where you are overnight and you won't heal overnight. Don't give up and don't expect perfection. This is not like giving up alcohol or cocaine. Sex is a natural process, which in those of us who are addicts, has become a drug.

For female sex addicts -- sex addiction programs (there are several including SLAA, Sexaholics Anonymous, Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous and likely some I'm not aware of) are dominated by males. I spent most of my time in recovery sitting in a room of men. It has made it difficult if not impossible at times to find a sponsor and female support. My advice to women who live in an area where there are no women in the meetings -- keep going, sharing, and taking your seat at the table. You deserve to recover just like the men who are sitting there and you deserve to do it without being objectified. Learning to take this stand is a part of learning to take care of yourself. I also encourage women to use online and phone meetings to connect with other women in the program.

And last but not least, I will say that there is a solution, it is a spiritual solution. It is not easy, but it works, not all at once, but one day at a time. Just keep coming back and you will see I am telling you the truth.

A program of action

2010-02-23T06:46:00.001-05:00

"Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for
the alcoholic! For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his
spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could
not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not
work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely
die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us it is just like that."

~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Bill's Story, pg. 14

There are a couple of sayings in SLAA that support the message that Bill W. was conveying in this passage. One is "My best thinking got me here." Another is "My sick brain can't fix my sick brain." I have to DO certain things, new things, things that don't feel comfortable all the time in order to change my perception, and as a result change my thinking and ultimately my behavior.

I used to think I just had to stop acting out. But isn't that a Step 1 issue? I'm powerless over my addiction and if I COULD just stop acting out, then what's the point of all the rest of this? Why do I need faith if I can just stop my behavior? My addictive mind is a spiritually and emotionally barren land. My acting out behaviors erode my spirit and cause me to feel hopeless, depressed and worthless. Sure, I may be able to make myself feel good for a little while, but deep down, I can't live with myself. Living in a world that is so out of control, so consumed with thoughts of another person, another sex act, another rendezvous -- it simply causes me to feel and act insane. And how can I possibly hope to fix that insanity?

After trying to "think" my way through Steps 2 and 3, I finally started "doing" what the program asked me to do -- go to meetings, make phone calls, do service as a way of life and sobriety, read the literature, write, do an inventory, identify my primary defects of character and ask that they be removed, make amends, practice prayer and meditation, be rigorously honest with myself, refrain from acting out one day at a time. By doing those things, I came to believe in a power greater than myself, because I saw a power greater than me at work in my life. And the more I did these things, the more willing I was to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood God.

I believe because of the order of the Steps, many of us (I did it too) spend a lot of time trying to argue with ourselves and others about the whole "God thing" ... when if we just "make a decision" to WORK the program, that's enough to get us started.

The more I help another addict, the more I reach out for help, the more I look at my own feelings, behaviors and actions and let go of what others think, say or do, the more I go to meetings and hear other addicts share their stories and share my own, the more I study the literature and search out my questions in it and with others who have studied it -- the more richly I am blessed, the more hopeful I become, the more sure I am that there is something bigger than me at work here. I am not comfortable with my old way of life anymore. It is far less intriguing to think of hurting someone else with my sickness. I am willing to say I am sorry, and let go of blaming the whole damn world for my problems.

If I get away from my program, if I let up on PRACTICING these principles in all areas of my life, if I think I can take a day's vacation or a week's vacation from DOING what the program tells me to do, I lose ground. I am not cured. I have accepted I never will be. I simply get a daily reprieve from the deep emotional and spiritual pain that living in my disease gave me.

The 11th Tradition

2010-02-03T19:32:00.005-05:00

I was recently honored by a request from a student journalist to submit written answers to questions about my sexual addiction and recovery. Upon sharing this news with a long-time member of the "Alpha" 12-step fellowship -- AA -- I was quickly reminded of the 11th Tradition, which says: "Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, film, and other public media. We need guard with special care the anonymity of all fellow S.L.A.A. members."

With the help of this friend, I was also able to recognize that I might not be respecting the 11th Tradition as it relates to my own personal blog either. So, I went out in search of AA's stance on how the 11th Tradition relates to today's technologically connected world.

Here's what I found: http://www.aa.org/lang/en/en_pdfs/mg-18_internet.pdf
GENERAL SOCIAL NETWORKING WEB SITES
MySpace, Facebook and other social networking Web sites are public in
nature. Though users create accounts and utilize usernames and passwords,
once on the site, it is a public medium where A.A. members and
non-A.A.s mingle.
As long as individuals do not identify themselves as A.A. members, there
is no conflict of interest. However, someone using their full name and/
or a likeness, such as a full-face photograph, would be contrary to the
spirit of the Eleventh Tradition, which states in the Long Form that, “…
our [last] names and pictures as A.A. members ought not be broadcast,
filmed or publicly printed.”
Experience suggests that it is in keeping with the Eleventh Tradition not
to disclose A.A. membership on social networking sites as well as on any
other Web site, blog, electronic bulletin board, etc., that is not composed
solely of A.A. members, is not password protected or is accessible to the public.

That said, I will take the advice of some other bloggers who have addressed this issue and continue to talk about my recovery, about meetings, about the 12 Steps, but I will not make mention of any particular fellowship to which I belong on this blog, as I attempt to honor the 11th Tradition.

Learning humility

2010-02-02T09:15:00.004-05:00

"Another great dividend we may expect from confiding our defects to another human being is humility...a word often misunderstood. To those who have made progress in AA, it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. Therefore, our first practical move toward humility must consist of recognizing our deficiencies. No defect can be corrected unless we clearly see what it is. But we shall have to do more than see. The objective look at ourselves we achieved in Step Four was, after all, only a look. All of us saw, for example, that we lacked honesty and tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of self-pity or delusions of personal grandeur. But while this was a humiliating experience, it didn't necessarily mean that we had yet acquired much actual humility. Though now recognized, our defects were still there. Something had to be done about them. And we soon found that we could not wish or will them away by ourselves." (Twelve and Twelve, Step Five, pg. 58)

Humility was the subject of both of my daily readings today. I like the concept that humility is a "clear recognition of who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be."

I have been so busy in life trying to be what I thought would make other people like and accept me, that I have had very little idea of who I truly am. Any concept of who I am was met with the idea that I surely wasn't enough -- I wasn't good enough, not polished enough, not comfortable enough, not attractive enough -- just simply not enough.

Today I recognize that I am an imperfect part of the universe and that what I am is not all I can be, but it is enough today to love myself and share love with others.

My character defects, as is suggested in the 12&12 reading above, don't just go away because I want them to. Despite doing my step work, I sometimes am dishonest and have the propensity to "hide" because I am concerned about what others think of me. That's not humility. Humility is accepting who I am and being willing to share that authentic self with others as a means of practicing healthy, honest behavior. Still, I am afraid of being weak and vulnerable, and the truth is that by my own willpower, I cannot give up that fear. I have to do the action of the 12 steps to help me work through those fears and then let go of the outcome. I may still cling to isolation and dishonesty 10 years from now. If that is the case, there is still more work to do and the defect is still serving me in some way.

I am grateful today to be learning about humility and its true definition.

Feeling the grit

2010-01-31T15:21:00.004-05:00

I've been abstinent from sugar, drive through food, Diet Coke and graze eating for three months and 14 days. I'm feeling more feelings than I ever have. It is allowing me a deeper level of honesty with myself. Other than Solitaire, there is nothing really to soothe the emotions I don't know how to handle.

I've been cranky, resentful and overall just not in the best of moods. I'm like the recovering alcoholic whose wife says, "Would you just take a drink for God's sake? You were a lot easier to live with as a drunk." How easily we forget.

I've been fortunate that I haven't really felt much of a compulsion for sugar -- despite the fact that before I became abstinent, I was eating as many as two king sized candy bars a day, plus other kinds of desserts every chance I got. I thought it would be impossible to give it up. But one day at a time, I have simply been able to refrain from eating those things. The one binge food that has called me is Diet Coke. It's not that I drank 10 cans a day or something. But when I used to get a taste for it, I couldn't deny it -- and when I drank it, I couldn't stop drinking it, and wanted more and more to eat especially salty foods, which sparked the craving for sweets.

Recently though after taking my husband to work I saw a boy eating some candy that I really liked to binge on. For two days I couldn't stop thinking about the taste of that food, the sound those crunchy shells made in my mouth, the sound of them pouring like buttons out of the bag. I have eaten full sized bags of this candy -- intended to last an entire family a whole week -- in one setting and mourned the fact that I was at the end. On that day last week, the old call of "opportunity" to eat myself into oblivion was there unlike it had been in three months. But I was grateful that there was a new call for an opportunity to do something else -- be with myself and my God and reach out to others for help.

I went to an open meeting this morning and the speaker said she was addicted to excess. That is me. If I like something, I want it in excess. I can't get enough of it. There's never enough of anything -- whether it's food or sexual highs or romantic euphoria or attention or wins at the game of Solitaire. I'm always left feeling depressed and even emptier than when I started. The only thing that fills the need is a relationship with a power greater than myself, and if I'm honest, I never feel like I do that good enough, so I just have to keep trying, one day at a time, to deepen the relationship, and learn to rely on my Higher Power rather than my own willpower. And when I say up and Higher Power says down, I have to accept that with humility ... IF I am to feel whole.

I asked my Higher Power this morning to help me focus so I could work on my Fourth Step in my recovery from compulsive overeating. I haven't done a bit of work on it yet. I also asked if there was someone I could help, to reveal them to me and give me the willingness to help. Two opportunities presented themselves over the next hour. I did what I could and I thank my Higher Power for answering that prayer.

Sometimes living life one day at a time feels like waking up to a losing battle one more day. Other days I can look back and know that I've made more progress than I can imagine. Today I have no desire to use this computer to find some horny man who wants to meet at a coffee shop and then go to my car for a little action. I am having a little bit of obsession over a friend and know that the thoughts are obsessive in nature. Still, I'm able to reach toward recovery and know there is something more meaningful there. For that I am grateful. I don't like the way I feel today ... but I don't have to try to numb it. I know my feelings won't kill me, especially if I share them with someone else. That's enough for today.

The God of my understanding

2010-01-23T08:58:00.002-05:00

My addiction will use any emotion I have to take over my life and send me into a world so out of control I can't breathe. If I feel sadness or confusion, my dear addict friend, is always there to offer a solution. The problem is the solutions that the addict offers are sick solutions that perhaps ONCE worked for me, but are now my worst enemy as I try to heal from a lifetime of pain.

My Higher Power is a quiet, still voice -- it is not panicked or judgmental or mean. Anytime I hear a voice like that causes me to feel ashamed or guilty -- I know it is NOT my true Higher Power. Instead, it is my addiction, trying to stir up even more negative emotions, to turn up the heat so to speak, in order to move me closer to chaos and acting out in one of the many manifestations of my disease. (food, sex, love, codependence)

My Higher Power is in the energy that flows between all living things. I can go outside (and often do to pray) and simply feel the gentle softness of the wind on my soft skin and know that is my Higher Power, whom I call God, because it's easier, not because it is the Christian God I grew up with. (How's that for a run-on sentence?) Now sometimes I go outside and the wind is cold and biting and not so gentle, I accept that it is a powerful force of energy that causes this and can still find amazement in the fact that there is this air moving around strongly, changing temperature drastically, without human hand and I can feel God in that. In the meow of a kitten, the tweet of a bird, just by taking note of the sheer genius of a tree -- how it takes roots and has a strong upward foundation that then goes out in thousands of directions, and when it is injured, heals itself and is constantly growing. In all these things I find manifestations of a power greater than myself. In that tree, I find hope that although my life may be currently out on a limb, it is attached to a really strong foundation. In the softness of the meow and the tweet of the bird, I recognize that not all messages are transferred between living beings in the same way they are transferred in my own narrow mind -- that the world is much bigger than I am, and that I am a small part, but that every move I make shifts the energy of the universe just a little and makes me an important part. When I smile and say hello to someone on the street, I pass positive energy from myself to another person who may have just needed that little boost. When I pet my dog, I am transferring my energy to her and helping her to feel loved. When I pray for you, I am shifting my energy into your world in hopes it will make a difference in your day.

So, why do bad things happen? Why are people devastated in Haiti right now? Why did someone commit suicide last night? It is my belief that the universe of energy is a balancing act and that we need perspective in order to grow. Without sadness, how would we know happiness? Without cold, how would we know the comfort of warmth? Without chaos, how would we truly understand calm? Nothing is good or bad, thinking makes it so, William Shakespeare said. I tend to agree. Though admittedly, I do enjoy some things more than others.

I also believe in the line from pg 417 of the AA Big Book that says, "There are no mistakes in God's world." Over my time of healing, I have come to learn that my addiction and my sexual abuse history and even my obesity have at times had an impact on the lives of others. They have all made me a more useful part of the universe and God's bigger plan of acheiving balance and promoting love as the pathway to peace. Let's say there was someone who really was struggling with lack of acceptance of others -- perhaps people who didn't look that great on the outside -- and they met me and found me to be a loving, gentle soul. Wasn't it useful that I was not a beauty queen? Or let's take the beautiful woman from Argentina I met at a retreat once who shared with me that she too had been sexually abused and that as a result she developed bulimia and it almost ruined her life. Didn't she have a message for me?

The God of my understanding is everywhere, and for that I am grateful.

Acknowledging the voices in my head

2010-01-04T04:19:00.002-05:00

I have written before of the unsual appearance of a "voice" in my head that simply said "I love you, Rae." I never knew who the voice belonged to and it never came at a time when it made sense. For example, it wasn't that it appeared when I was feeling low or sad or even good. It just appeared out of the blue at indescript times.

Well, I have to say that I liked that voice better than the ones I've been "hearing" lately ... ones like the one that whispered into the night as I awoke just a few minutes ago, "In the black and white world where I'm either dead or alive, I choose death."

This is not the first time such a voice has appeared ... it's been more frequent lately. One recognizable one is "Please just let me die," and also "I don't want to live."

Before you go calling the cops or suicide watch line -- I don't connect to these voices any more than I did the voice that said "I love you." They just appear in my psyche and I have no idea where they come from.

Yes, it is true that I suffer from depression and those words certainly are comfortable in its darkness. Though I feel none of the emptiness that one might expect when these words dance through my head. Again, there is no emotional attachment to the thoughts, they just appear as "messages to self."

It's bizarre stuff that I will discuss with my therapist, not that my therapist had any answer when I said I got those "I love you" whispers.

As 2009 closes

2009-12-31T13:15:00.002-05:00

When I came into recovery, I was completely empty, filled only with tears, hopelessness and stories that turn my stomach. I was so happy to have found other people who could help me understand what was happening to me. I still hated myself, but I knew I wasn't alone. That was in 2004.

Since then, one day at a time, recovery and relapse have taken me in many directions -- most of it is outlined in this blog. I've given lots of advice, most of which I didn't follow myself. I've had answers to other people's problems when I couldn't take care of my own. I've been emotionally, physically and spiritually sober and I've been completely high on the triggers of my addiction. I've done service in recovery and I've been unwilling to do a damn thing, including show up.

In recovery, I've thought I had to do things perfectly, or give up entirely. I've thought I was one of the "unfortunate" ones they talk about in "How It Works" who cannot recover because they lack the capacity to be honest. I thought I had to act on every desire to act out, and when I finally got it that I was powerless over the disease but not my own actions -- I thought that if I were truly recovering the desire to act out wouldn't come at all. All that was wrong.

What is true is that I am a sex and love addict of the real variety. I cannot break my bottom lines or it sets in motion a release of chemicals into my body that trigger an obsession of the mind that neither allows me to think or act in a sober or sane manner. I am not able to adhere to my bottom lines alone. I need the tools of the program, which includes the help of others. I need my sponsors and I need the literature we are given to learn how to work the program -- for me specifically I need the AA Big Book and the 12 and 12. I need to address the disease of addiction in all its manifestations in my life -- I can't be sober in one program and drunk in another and expect for sanity to be restored. And I have to live life on life's terms -- not as I would have it, but as my Higher Power would have it. Acceptance truly is the answer to all my problems today.

The SLAA Promises say they will be manifested in us -- "sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly." I've taken the slow route, but as 2009 closes -- five years and two months after I found recovery, I feel better about myself, my life and my future than I ever have. I have hope and proof that my Higher Power can and has used me to help others and has sent others to help me. I believe in love as a "thoughtful, committed decision." I no longer accept sex as a substitute for love and in my relationships I know that love is unconditional and involves nurturing, care and support that is not sexually based or manipulative. I do not feel deprived of anything. I "know a new freedom" and that is the freedom from endless, never ending desire for something "more." Most of all, I have humility, and I can tell you unequivocally that my life today, my hope today, is mine because I follow 12 simple divinely inspired rules which instruct me to turn my will and life over to a power greater than myself, to examine myself and ask for relief from my defects, to seek to the right the things I have wronged, to seek my Higher Power and to share my program with another suffering addict. I don't have to cry about yesterday, or worry about tomorrow. Those things are in the hands of my Higher Power. I just have to follow these 12 Steps today.

As 2009 closes, I give thanks to my Higher Power for my entire life, my sickness and my health, my despair and my elation, my friends and my enemies, and most of all the grace that allows me to be sober today, to be a part of a recovery community that loves me and to laugh instead of cry.

With loving and humble gratitude, I wish you all a very happy New Year.

For the first time

2009-12-02T03:04:00.002-05:00

Last week, while traveling for the holidays, I returned to the place where the disease of sex and love addiction first began to rule my life. By the time I found my first SLAA meeting in October 2004, acting out was an obsession that had me so spellbound I wanted to die. Going back to that geographical location where every exit along an 80-mile stretch of highway held some memory of acting out, has always been acutely painful and extremely shameful.

However, I am grateful to say that I was able to return to that beautiful valley last week, and and for the first time feel none of those old painful attachments. I was able to call up an old friend who I knew from the meetings and ask him to go to a meeting with me, rather than spend weeks planning a tryst with an old lover and ruin my whole trip with a relapse. I was able to drive right past a particular no-tell hotel that was my 'home office' for acting out, and for the first time, never even notice it or recount the shameful memories. I was able to spend the night alone in a hotel not far away without obsessing over who or how I could act out.

These things may seem minor, but when I tell you they are monumental, I am not exaggerating. For the very first time, since I moved (aka ran kicking and screaming) from that area, I returned and felt peace and serenity and gratitude that it was where my healing began. I felt the miracle of recovery and I felt that the Promises really can and do come true. I felt the presence of my Higher Power with me and around me. I was safe, not just from others, but from my own self-hatred.

Before I went into the valley where I had lived, I visited for the first time since I had left the office building about 45 miles away where much of my online intrigue happened. As I walked through the doors of that building, I immediately began to feel all the feelings that I had numbed with my acting out -- the sadness, the dark depression and despair. It was not that I experienced the feelings again, but rather that I felt their heaviness. I walked into the restroom where I had "hid out" and cried and felt such utter despair, and could feel, as if for the first time, that I had lived a very, very painful experience in this building. When I left my job there in 2005, I was so numb I didn't feel a thing. But as I walked out last week, after having shared with a friend who still works there who is experiencing serious depression, just how difficult my days were there, I left it all behind. For the first time, I felt that all that sadness was a part of my past, and I could leave it where it was. I did not have to bring it with me. What an amazing blessing.

To add to the blessing, I remained abstinent in my OA program throughout my trip and the holiday gatherings. As I left that building where I had worked, I touched the vending machine that had served as a stand-in friend in times of need back when I worked there and simply said, "Thank you, God, that I don't need this today."

It is not enough for me to say that recovery through the 12 Steps has saved my life. It has made living possible for me.

Putting Humpty Dumpty Back Together Again

2009-11-12T23:19:00.002-05:00

I have been reading a book at the suggestion of my therapist on the link between sexual abuse and eating disorders. This is the first in a series of posts related to that reading.

As I have been abstinent from compulsive overeating for three weeks and five days, I have began to feel many, many feelings that have been masked behind the consumption of sugary foods for literally all of my life. I am realizing that I have not even been feeling the trauma of my sexual acting out, much less all the feelings associated with 10 years of childhood incest. During the short time that I have let go of sugar I have experienced flashbacks, body memories and sexualized dreams all related back to the childhood abuse.

While on one hand, the feelings are incredibly hard to take, I am almost celebrating their complete presence in my life. It is only by going through fear and pain, not avoiding or denying it, that I can truly recover. And I can only get through this and all phases by gentle living, one day at a time, in the hands of a power greater than me. That power has protected me through all the phases of my life, blessed me with coping mechanisms that saved me as a child and have almost ruined me as an adult and helped me grow to this point today where I CAN celebrate these feelings and endure them so that I can become whole. Fall these things I am immensely grateful.

In his book, "Sexual Abuse and Eating Disorders," Mark Schwartz, PhD, writes on pg. 94, "Trauma-generated disassociation means the person is unintegrated. He or she may feel like an imposter. The person everyone knows is not consistent with the impulsive urges, behaviors or self-knowledge. Such people may forget years of their lives and function moment to moment without the benefit of previous models or experience. They experience constriction [slowing or stopping of the natural course or development] and isolation from others and an "empty hole" in their stomachs that is unfillable. ... Often they will continue as adults to disassociate or space out automatically and without control as a way of defending against shame or old memories."

I recognized very early in my recovery how much I compartmentalized my life and how no one really knew all of me. It wasn't until a little further in recovery that I realized that in fact there were parts of me that even I didn't know. Sometimes today when I talk to my sister or niece, who grew up with me, and they recall certain things about the "way I was" I simply don't remember being that way at all. It feels very disconcerting, and I sometime wonder -- especially with my sister if SHE's the one who doesn't remember properly or is making up stuff.

In this quote, Schwartz talks about the abuse survivor feeling like an imposter. "The person everyone knows is not consistent with the impulsive urges, behaviors or self-knowledge." I very often wonder who in the world people are talking about when they say things to me like, "Rae, you are always so calm and you just seem to be able to handle stress so well." What??? Are you talking to me? Even the woman who shows up here and writes about recovery and my connection to it, very, very often feels like a fraud, because I know lurking beneath is this darkness that I can neither describe nor escape. There is also the hollow feelings that long to be filled with acceptance.

So, how does this relate to my sex and love addiction? For me it relates because of the issues of disassociation and compartmentalization. Many times when I have acted out, it's been as if my real self were on the ceiling watching everything unfold. I was keenly aware that what was happening was not congruent with what my "real self" wanted. Yet, I was equally engaged in the act of "drunken" sexual activity. This is a symptom of what is called Atypical Dissociative Disorder or Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (DDNOS) -- which falls somewhere in the spectrum between PTSD and Dissociative Identity Disorder, otherwise known as multiple personalities.

In childhood, dissociation allowed me to depersonalize what was happening to me while I was being molested. As Schwartz describes, I could believe the abuse "did not happen to me, it happened to my body." As I have carried the coping mechanism of dissociation into adulthood, where it was no longer needed, it has allowed me to believe concurrently that I was in recovery, despite the fact I was acting out. It has allowed me to feel deep compassion and love for my husband, and sleep with a stranger an hour later without feeling any of the associated guilt.

So, where does 12-Step recovery come in? Everywhere. I am powerless over my past and the scars that it has left. I need a power greater than me to guide me through to the next right thing and grant me the courage to do it.

In Schwartz's writing he quotes a woman as saying, "While all this (abuse) happened, I was stone. I was dead. I was gone, yes gone far beyond imagination. I only hoped to come out and come out alive." This, by the way, is exactly the feelings that have been recreated in my acting out patterns. She goes on ... "But my question is, Am I alive? Am I living? I feel like I am not. But the truth is I live on other people. I live depending on other people to see me to the end. Where then does that leave me?"

And that's where recovery really comes to a head for me. If I do as Step 2 suggests, I believe that a power greater than me can restore me to sanity. And for me that means that I can be restored to wholeness, to an integrated, complete human being who no longer has to depend on my own unsteady willpower and hopeless attachments to other people to feel alive. When I turn my will and my life, my thoughts and my actions over to a power greater than myself, I use each of the 12 Steps to put the Humpty Dumpty of a life I've lived thus far, back together again. I meet myself and I become one in body, mind and spirit.

I am so grateful for the gift of recovery and that there has been enough of my core self left to keep me coming back and seeking the wholeness of life that I earnestly desire.

If you have read this far, thank you for listening. Not just today, but all these days as I have stumbled to find my way.

For anyone interested and willing to wade through the academic nature of most of the writing in Schwartz's book, the book can be found on books.google.com.

Dreams and visions

2009-11-11T13:31:00.004-05:00

WARNING - Possible triggers for sex addicts and incest survivors in this post.

Over the three and a half weeks since I have given up sugar as part of my abstinence from compulsive overeating, I have become aware of many things that I have been numbing for years. I am beginning to feel feelings that I never really knew first hand. Among those feelings are disappointment, loneliness, hollowness, and fear.

I have also been experiencing some very troubling flashbacks to the trauma of my childhood sexual abuse. The first came in the form of a "daydream" in which I felt I was being forced to do something I didn't want to do. The second, which was by far the most scary, came Friday, while on the brink of orgasm I began to scream "Don't make me do this, Please, don't make me do this." I could not quiet the screams for some time and sobbed uncontrollably in shame and fear. I was absolutely confused as to what had happened and just felt completely hollowed out once it was over.

The most recent incident happened this morning as I slept. Like all people, I'm sure I dream, but I almost never remember a dream. The fact that I did remember this dream is a sign of its significance according to my therapist. She asked me to write down as much as I remember of the dream.

In the dream, my mom and stepfather are younger and it began with my stepfather being angry because he could not concentrate on the book he was reading and my mother trying to get him to come to bed because he had to work the next morning. He yelled at her and she and I went off to bed. He continued reading the book and eventually left to mail it somewhere once he was finished reading the last chapter. While he was reading and after he left, my mother and I lay in bed together and we began fondling one another. She initiated the touch, but both of us were involved. She was also using brown and yellow markers to draw circles on my stomach, circles that I eventually realized were supposed to be images of my nipples. She was painstaking in this process and it seemed we both were having fun. Then she handed me the phone and told me to dial #PROMISES. I remember being confused about the phone number, but on the other end was a man who began talking to me in a sexy voice and engaging in phone sex with me. I was thinking that my mother wanted to hear, but I became so aroused and wrapped up in my own arousal that I didn't pay much attention to her. Then my stepfather came home and came to crawl into bed with us and he started to climb on top of me. I remember being torn, because I was so aroused that I wanted the touch, but also I knew that he should not be doing what he was doing to me. I can't remember if it was me or my mom who said to him, "Your wife is on the other side." I woke up with him crawling off of me and toward my mother, and with me feeling disappointed and relieved at the same time.

Just writing these words makes me want to vomit. I'm holding all sorts of pain in the center of my back. Still, I do not want this exorcism of all this stuff to stop. I want it out of me. I fear I may lose my mind as it emerges, but I know I will lose my mind if it stays buried.

Living in the light

2009-11-07T12:14:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I faced a very scary and confusing flashback to my childhood abuse. For the first time I felt what it felt like to be crying out, begging my stepfather to stop
using my body for his pleasure. I never muttered a word as a child, I just did my best to endure what was happening. But yesterday, as I neared the brink of orgasm, I was able to cry out in fear, and sob through the confusion. Yes, it was scary. Yes, I felt hollow and confused afterward. But I didn't have to f*ck some stranger and I didn't have to eat a bag of Oreos to make the pain go away. In fact, I was grateful to be able to feel the feelings. For so much of my life I have numbed anything that didn't feel comfortable. I thought life was supposed to be different than it is. Today I am grateful to accept it AS it is, and allow my Higher Power to help me heal my wounds and recover from my obsessions and compulsions. I'm living in the light because I choose to accept life on life's terms.

Avoidance through suffering

2009-10-27T19:54:00.001-05:00

I have really given a lot of thought to this idea that I get something out of suffering. For one, if I am a victim and have suffered, there's less chance that I'll be held accountable for my actions. (Character defect number 1 is dishonesty, number 2 - avoiding responsibility for myself and my actions.) Also, if I am suffering, people feel sorry for me and give me attention, which in my twisted mind means they love me.

There is no serenity in living in that manipulative, maladjusted mindset. I have been blessed, beyond my wildest dreams. Yet, I am without a doubt stuck in my own suffering mindset.

I was listening to an OA speaker tape this morning and a woman was sharing about how she believed in a Higher Power who could and would do great things for other people, and maybe even a few good things for her. However, when it came to the big stuff, the removal of her compulsions, she simply didn't believe she was worth her Higher's Power's time and love. She had lost her virginity as a young teenager and felt it was unforgivable. Her shame and guilt blocked her from her Higher Power. It really resonated with me. I see my Higher Power doing amazing things in my life, but there is still that weak, scolded child, who grew up to do countless unspeakable acts of adultery and didn't even feel guilty while doing them, who thinks she's really not worthy of the grace of recovery. Opening myself to true acceptance of God's grace means letting go of that victimhood, that suffering. I admit that I honestly am not sure where to start. It's yet another layer of the onion.

Remember R?

2009-10-25T17:32:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I went to an all day retreat sponsored by Sexual Compulsives Anonymous (SCA) and for the duration of what was a very excellent keynote address, a man whose back (not his front) looked exactly like R sat in front of me. The image from my angle was an exact duplication of the man I spent a year in a torrid affair with, whose memory reminds me of just how painful and scary this disease can be. The man who sat in front of me yesterday even wore a shirt that was identical to my favorite shirt that R. had. Occasionally he would raise his arms up and they didn't look like R.'s. I could not stop looking at the man. I tried to assess what I was feeling. Even now I am not sure, though I know it was neither longing nor rage. I honestly had very few thoughts. I just sat there and looked. At times, I thought of what it felt like to touch R., but not in a sexual way. I contemplated asking the man if he would sit in front of me for a while after the retreat so I could have a cathartic conversation with R. I could not, however, think of anything I would want to say. I wondered if this was my Higher Power's way of saying, "The storm has passed." I resist that notion, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps it is because of one of the core addictions the speaker said all addicts possess.

The four core addictions behind the perception problems of all addicts, according to our speaker Lilliane D. are:

1. Security (the feeling that nothing is enough, we are not enough, we can't get enough of anything)
2. Power and control
3. Sensation (the need to always be "high" on something, to be stimulated in some way)
4. Suffering (the state of being victimized, abandoned, hurt, used or otherwise in pain)

It is number four I was thinking of when I said perhaps it is one of these that prevents me from believing that the storm has passed. Perhaps I was trying to get high on the euphoria of looking at that man who had the physical characteristics of my former lover. I didn't get high. I didn't get low. I just sat there looking. I can see I'm still trying to sort out my feelings about it all. For now, I accept it just is.

What I Want

2009-10-23T17:37:00.004-04:00

Some people have a Bucket List. I decided today to make a list of things I want.

I want to:

Comfortably tie my shoes while standing up
Not be the exception
Laugh like there is nothing to fear
Cry because I know what I am feeling
Be paid for my true talents and passions
Accept people as they are, and me as I am
Feel confident and at ease in social situations
Hike in the mountains
Kayak
Visit South America
Enjoy shopping in clothing stores
Remarry my husband on our 20 year anniversary
Fall in love with reading all over again
Be drug free
Write a book
Be a vessel of love, hope and peace.

About this time

2009-10-22T17:57:00.002-04:00

About this time every month I go crazy. I get obssessive, I get irritable, sometimes I get seriously inclined to act out. It's called PMS. The fact that I've rejoined OA and am not medicating with food at the moment is making PMS all the more gingerly wonderful. I hung up on my husband today. I'm isolating. I don't want to go to my meeting, I want to tell people to fuck off. Other than that ... I'm doing pretty good.

Seriously, I'm grateful to have an OA sponsor, to be abstinent from compulsive overeating, and to see God's hand at work in my life.

How about some recovery talk you say? OK ... I'm doing what I don't want to do. I'm not trying to be perfect. I'm showing up. I am working on striking a balance in life today -- and not doing so well, but not beating myself up over it.

I'm also grateful to be sleeping better. In fact, I think I'll sleep right now.

Another one of us joins the blogosphere

2009-10-16T18:15:00.002-04:00

I write this blog for the reason I express right on my banner -- it's my own brand of therapy. Rae's Confessions is the place I have come to tell the truths I've been too scared to share elsewhere, or the things that I simply cannot sort out. For a woman who has a difficult time finding safe places, it's amazing that out here in the middle of nowhere, amongst strangers, I find my peace.

I'm always grateful when something I write touches someone else, and was especially thankful to have recently gotten a note from fellow sex addict John F. saying he had been inspired to start blogging after spending time reading what I have shared here.

I'm even more grateful, having seen in just his first few posts the experience, strength and hope John has to share with those of us in recovery from sexual addiction.

So, without further adieu, I invite my readers to take a peak at John's blog "My Outer Circle." I promise you will not be disappointed. I should note that I was having difficulty with opening the blog using Internet Explorer -- but it worked well with Firefox, and showed up fine in my Google Reader.

Godspeed, John! Welcome to our world.

One pound and some notes

2009-10-12T18:53:00.005-04:00

I have began to slowly try to care for my body with more exercise and one day at a time am trying to make better choices around food. I'm no where near perfect with either effort, but I'm doing my best to simply notice my feelings and accept my efforts.

Today was weigh in day at the gym. If I go by the "official" weigh in, I lost two-tenths of one pound. If I go by the locker room weigh in, I lost 1.4 lbs. So, essentially, we'll even it out and say that in one week, I lost one pound.

Sure, I should celebrate ... I lost 1 pound! Whoopee!

Yet my feelings and self-loathing messages are hard at work with really demeaning reminders of how many weeks it's going to take me to lose just back to where I was six months ago, and lashing me for every "bad" food choice I made last week, and for the wimpiness of my exercise routine -- even though, for the first time in months I went to the gym four days last week.

The laws of nature go like this -- you get out what you put in. I needed some warm up and build up time for my exercise, and food is still a great soother and satisfier for me. If these things change gradually, they will change for good. Of course, that screaming little child in me wants all this excess fat and flesh gone today and if it is not gone, she's decided we'll hate ourselves.

I'm doing my best not to soothe the uncomfortable feelings with food. I did take a nap, which is another sometimes unhealthy soother, but tonight I'll go to a meeting and be aware of my feelings and offer some love to the screaming, disappointed little girl.

--

I'm reading Melody Beattie's new book, called "The New Codependency" and finding some rare gems there. It can stir some feelings that are hard to deal with, but it also has some great exercises for moving through those feelings and on to healing.

--

I received an e-mail last week from a fellow sex addict who had discovered my blog and took the time to read through it from beginning to end. I was touched that someone would spend the time to read my words and I took some time myself to go back and read some of my earlier writings. It was a welcome reminder that while I still struggle, I have come a long, long way. My God, I was crazy before I got into recovery and even a few times since. I am grateful.

--

Step 1 says I am powerless and that my life is unmanageable. Thankfully there is a spiritual solution. Today, I sought it. I stood looking out my back door and asked God to please give me the willingness to feel my feelings and to surrender my life to his will.

--

I am resisting the urge to want to run away from my therapist, who wants me to do things differently than I am willing to do them. I am going to show up to this week's appointment and leave it in God's hands.

--

I continue to feel like the life I am living and the one I am sharing with my husband is quite a mess. It seems so different than what I expected life to be. Again, I'm just going to keep trying and asking for the sincerity I need to travel on this path.

Accepting me, accepting life

2009-10-04T05:47:00.003-04:00

Just for today, I've given up hating myself. I am giving up, in this moment, what others think of me, or what I worry they might think of me, and I am accepting myself as a perfectly flawed human being, experiencing life as it is presented.

This decision didn't come to me from reading a book or going to a meeting or attending a workshop. It came from within me.

Within me is a capable, intelligent, loving person, who has been masked in a world of self-hatred, sadness and pain. That person, upon not accepting her imperfections as well as her perfections, her lack of control along with her exceptional skills and talents, delved deep into a sea of self-help books, programs, workshops, searching desparately for that perfect self again, hating herself more for not doing things perfectly in the "new" life.

But I feel myself, my whole self, at last emerging, accepting, and after feeling absolutely hopeless that life could ever be worth living, more than hopeful that I still have what it takes to live and breathe and love and embrace the ebb and flow of life.

I am not bursting from the earth, emerging with grand proclamations, shouting from the rooftops or putting on a fireworks show. I am quietly accepting life as it is, accepting me as I am, listening to the voice inside me, and to the voices that lift me up.

I was given a life, and just for today, I choose to live it, the best I can. Problems, fears and doubts will arise, I am sure. So, will inspiration, love, and support. I welcome them all as a part of my life.

"Honesty is the only way out"

2009-09-30T12:41:00.002-04:00

These are the words my therapist said to me this morning, and they sit on my heart like a steel beam.

Tears rose in the absence of words to describe the gravity of what I felt as she said them. Inside I thought, "He is all I have and I'm all he's got. We are everything to each other. What a mess."

The "he" I was referring to was my husband, whose work is his "exit" from our intimacy and commitment to one another. My exit is sex and love with men who are married. In this way, we co-exist, quite painfully, but somewhat comfortably. Harville Hendrix, developer of IMAGO therapy, says until we both close up our exits, our relationship will always be damaged and never intimate.

My therapist says until I fully disclose to my husband the truths of my acting out, I will continue to use sex and love as a way of survival -- a way to avoid feelings that I now compartmentalize, feelings like guilt.

I had told her again, with tearful regret, that the reason I don't want to tell him that I have been beyond unfaithful in our marriage, is simply I don't want to ruin his life. I don't want to crush him with the truth. The truth seems so dangerous, so painful to me. It seems easier to carry it on my own, rather than think of shattering the spirit of yet another innocent victim of a horrible disease.

Still, she says, "Honesty is the only way out."

I am not hurting enough yet to be honest, she said. I can act out and say that it felt good and let the addiction wash away the painful truths of my deception.

She asks me how guilty I would feel if my husband had walked into the room the last time I acted out. I couldn't even bring the image into my mind. When I think about the reality of actually experiencing all the guilt that I have not felt while engaging in sexual and love relationships with other men, I honestly think I could not endure it. She says that enduring the guilt will set me free.

"So, what," I ask her, "I self-inflict the pain of the guilt by disclosure in order to heal myself, while I ruin his life?"

"Yes," was her response, adding that the truth comes out one way or another, whether we reveal it or not.

I argued with her ... people are and have been having affairs for centuries and taking the truth to their graves.

Yes, but to what cost? Living in painful marriages without the freedom of true intimacy, she responded.

I told her I heard what she was saying and even believed it to be true, but I know that I am not willing to be honest with my husband about how many horrible deeds of transgression I have done in our marriage without his knowledge. I simply am not willing to hurt him that way.

Pray for the willingness, she said.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to pray for the willingness to pray for the willingness.

It is not for selfish reasons that I don't want to disclose, I told her. But she challenged me. You don't want to feel the guilt.

When I think of that guilt and what it would be like to feel it, she's right. I don't want to feel it, and I feel certain it would destroy me.

As I drove to her office, I had a moment of consciousness, a brief second when I connected to that part of me that still feels alive. As I was turning the corner from one street to the next, I realized that at some point in my life, I learned to drive. It wasn't inherent knowledge. Someone taught me. And I practiced, and I learned to feel comfortable driving, even in major cities.

She encouraged me to remember I can take the wheel with this addiction also.

"Honesty is the only way out."

The way is dark

2009-09-22T06:21:00.002-04:00

In this world I walk alone
With no place to call my home
But there's one who holds my hand
The rugged road through barren lands
The way is dark, the road is steep
But He's become my eyes to see
The strength to climb, my griefs to bear
The Savior lives inside me there

In Your love I find release
A haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
A living prayer, my God to Thee

In these trials of life I find
Another voice inside my mind
He comforts me and bids me live
Inside the love the Father gives

In Your love I find release
A haven from my unbelief
Take my life and let me be
A living prayer, my God to Thee

Take my life and let me be
A living prayer, my God to Thee

Random Thoughts

2009-09-21T22:40:00.002-04:00

* At a recent meeting, someone broke down Step 1 into two parts: First, I am powerless over my addiction and second, my life is unmanageable. My life is unmanageable whether I am acting out or not. The rest of the 12 Steps are an invitation to regain some manageability in life.

* Step 2 says, "Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Lately, I find I am faltering in the belief that anything can restore me to sanity. I feel as if I am my own worst enemy and have doubt that anything can save me.

* The dreary weather has started and so has my depression.

* The longer I live the more I recognize that life is just one big cycle of attempts to manage our emotions. I just wonder what makes emotions so destructive and hard to handle? I read a book recently about a group of women who healed from various trauma by knitting. By sitting quietly together and telling their stories, and by sitting alone and mentally counting "Knit 1, Pearl 3, Knit 1, Pearl 3" they learned to sit with their emotions and to survive them. In 12 Step Rooms, by using standard formats, prayers, slogans and by sitting around and telling our stories, we learn to survive the emotions that feel as if they will kill us. Some people go to church, some people exercise, some people paint, some people meditate or sit next to the water ... but it's all a way of keeping the emotions in proper perspective. We let go of the all or nothing thinking.

* I haven't let go of all or nothing thinking. I don't want to feel anything, yet I long to feel everything.

* I am willing to believe there is a bigger purpose and that my life is a part of it.

Pain as the Pathway to Peace

2009-09-08T04:29:00.003-04:00

As I continue on my journey to healing and recovery, I recognize more clearly than ever that it is the core underlying issues of self-esteem, insecurity and much more that is actually being addressed as I learn to care for myself, refrain from using old, ineffective coping mechanisms and keep my side of the street clean while giving others room to grow. This does not mean that I never want to act out. In fact, the desire to seek comfort (what food, sex and love are for me) can be far greater when I'm doing work on resolving the trauma of my childhood, which I have been doing lately.

This weekend I was preparing for a few trauma healing exercises and my body began to ache with physical pain, stiffness and discomfort just reading about the various stages of healing we go through when recovering from childhood sexual abuse. The pain, which has been carried in my body since childhood, deserves a chance to be felt and experienced, and released. No one wants to hurt unmercifully. Still I know that if I can endure the pain while it is here -- being experienced in its fullness -- rather than eating it away or losing it in the numbness of sexual/romantic intrigue and pursuit, I will be releasing it and making room in my body for comfort and growth. I pray for the strength to feel the pain and to face the future with a new perspective.

I thought this reading was perfect for me today. I share it in hopes that it helps someone else.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009
From the book The Language of Letting Go

Stopping Our Pain

Some of my feelings have been stored so long they have freezer burn.
—Beyond Codependency

There are many sources of pain in our life. Those of us recovering from adult children and codependency issues frequently have a cesspool of unresolved pain from the past. We have feelings, sometimes from early childhood to the present, that either hurt too much to feel or that we had no support and permission to deal with.

There are other inevitable sources of pain in our life too. There is the sadness and grief that comes when we experience change, even good change, as we let go of one part of our life, and begin our journey into the new.

There is pain in recovery, as we begin allowing ourselves to feel while dropping our protective shield of denial.

There is the pain that leads and guides us into better choices for our future.

We have many choices about how to stop this pain. We may have experimented with different options. Compulsive and addictive behaviors stop pain - temporarily. We may have used alcohol, other drugs, relationships, or sex to stop our pain.

We may talk compulsively or compulsively focus on other people and their needs as a way to avoid or stop our pain.

We may use religion to avoid our feelings.

We may resort to denial of how we are feeling to stop our pain.

We may stay so busy that we don't have time to feel. We may use money, exercise, or food to stop our pain.

We have many choices. To survive, we may have used some of these options, only to find that these were Band Aids - temporary pain relievers that did not solve the problem. They did not really stop our pain; they postponed it.

In recovery, there is a better choice about how we may stop pain. We can face it and feel it. When we are ready, with our Higher Power's help, we can summon the courage to feel the pain, let it go, and let the pain move forward - into a new decision, a better life.

We can stop the behaviors we are doing that cause pain, if that's appropriate. We can make a decision to remove ourselves from situations that cause repeated, similar pain. We can learn the lesson our pain is trying to teach us.

If we are being pelted by pain, there is a lesson. Trust that idea. Something is being worked out in us. The answer will not come from addictive or other compulsive behaviors; we will receive the answer when we feel our feelings.

It takes courage to be willing to stand still and feel what we must feel. Sometimes, we have what seems like endless layers of pain inside us. Pain hurts. Grief hurts. Sadness hurts. It does not feel good. But neither does denying what is already there; neither does living a lifetime with old and new pockets of pain packed, stored, and stacked within.

It will only hurt for a while, no longer than necessary, to heal us. We can trust that if we must feel pain, it is part of healing, and it is good. We can become willing to surrender to and accept the inevitable painful feelings that are a good part of recovery.

Go with the flow, even when the flow takes us through uncomfortable feelings. Release, freedom, healing, and good feelings are on the other side.

Today, I am open and willing to feel what I need to feel. I am willing to stop my compulsive behaviors. I am willing to let go of my denial. I am willing to feel what I need to feel to be healed, healthy, and whole.

Upon seeing what others see

2009-09-04T02:09:00.003-04:00

Today a friend of mine sent some photos taken of me and her together this summer. I was appalled at how fat I have become. I do not have full length mirrors in my house and even when I'm looking in them at the gym or at a restaurant -- I'm standing up, have my shirt carefully pulled down to hide the width and breadth of my stomach and simply am not able or willing to focus on the "whole" picture. These images captured with the lens of a camera on warm summer days, however, don't hide a thing. I can see the swollen face, the stomach bulging out on all sides, the rolls of fat that form my short legs. I am thoroughly disgusted and ashamed and repulsed. I am cringing at the thought of the person other people see me to be, their comments whispered in their minds or aloud.

I began carrying this weight to protect myself. It increased as I held in the emotions and feelings. I used my girth for the strength to carry the responsibility of my mother, my sister, and for my badness. I have eaten and avoided taking care of myself as a form of self-hatred and self-abuse. Compulsive eating and living life as an obese woman is a slow form of suicide. All of these things are things that therapists, former fatties and books have told me. I haven't connected a single bit of it to my soul. I believe it ... but I don't feel it. Why? Because if the feelings come -- I stuff them inside with cookies, cakes, candy, hamburgers, ice cream, anything my body craves. I consume mounds of rich, sweet, fatty foods -- almost always in solitude, and almost never walked, ran or swam off. It has all just gathered on the bones and around the organs and muscles of my body, enveloping me, hiding me, protecting me, strengthening me. Those last three things are a lie that my inner child believes.

I remember in her book, "Make the Connection," Oprah Winfrey talks about hitting rock bottom when she was accepting an Emmy nomination and was embarrassed to go on stage. She recently talked about another bottom, where she began again to feel embarrassed to live in her own skin, despite her magnanimous success. I watched the preliminaries of the show "Dance Your Ass Off" earlier this week. Men and women shared how they wanted for the person who lived behind the fat to be revealed. The Battle of the Bulge it's called -- this war humans fight to reclaim the person who lives behind the blubber.

TT commented on a previous post, "I just can't help but wonder, Rae, whether you first need to find your rage toward those who damaged you, and go through it, THEN find forgiveness, then move on. It seems to me you have skipped a critical step, never having experienced that rage."

I can't help but wonder if all that rage is wrapped around my midsection, under my chin, and across my ass. I feel as though waging war against the fat is waging war against myself ... and maybe I'm right. I feel weak to wage a war.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the Courage and Strength to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference. I surely cannot do this on my own. God, help me. I've failed so many times, I am afraid to even say I'll try again. I feel the resistance even as I fall at your feet in total surrender -- searching for a way to hold on to my way of living, hoping by some miracle that I will not have to go through the pain of taking off all this armour I've put on.

Help me to be humble, help me to be strong, help me to let this matter when darkness breaks into dawn.

Reconciling the feelings within

2009-09-02T20:35:00.004-04:00

I just read JBR's blog entry about the deep emotional pain she is experiencing. Like me, she lived through the pain of childhood sexual abuse. I really identified with her statement, "I just feel no one understands the ferocity of my emotional pain." Adding to this truth for me, I am not even sure I understand the ferocity of my pain. I'm not always sure if I am experiencing my feelings or if they are swallowed up in a chocolate brownie or in codependent conversations with others. If someone were to ask me to sort out my feelings into tiny piles, I'm not sure I could even find them all, much less identify them.

Right now, at this very minute and for what has felt like several months, I have felt very disconnected from myself. In psychological terms this is known as disassociation. The problem is -- I'm not sure how to reassociate.

Recently I was talking with someone else who is in recovery from sexual addiction and he was sharing about the decisions he and his current girlfriend are making about their physical intimacy based on the Christian values to which they both subscribe. Again, I feel so disassociated from any sense of moral values.

I know that I have feelings. A personal incident over the weekend left me feeling extreme nauseau-inducing anxiety. I stood in the middle of an office and cried like a child. I have felt fear, shame, guilt, anger, regret, love and gratitude in the past few days. So, I know there are feelings that exist within me and I even experience them at times. But most of the time I feel a sense of numbness and wonder where the feelings that are making me feel uncomfortable are hiding. Is God protecting me from them?

Lately I have these long, lingering feelings and cravings to be held and comforted. I can lay in bed at night and simply ache for someone's body to spoon up against mine, to feel the skin of another person against mine. I'm not talking sex here -- I'm talking physical comfort. Are those cravings suppressing the real feelings that I'm having? I don't know. They feel as real as anything else and I have no idea if they are healthy or not.

They physical feelings seem to be seeking to calm the emotions that I don't even know how to express. I loved Practical Addict's post from this weekend about emotional sobriety. It seems to capture a bit of what I am trying to say here ... that I may be outwardly avoiding the actions of acting out, but inside I feel like a jumbled mess. I also found myself in the final paragraph of Enigma's post today as she described the need to find herself in the midst of all this recovering. It sometimes feels as if I've lost all sense of myself, my hopes, my dreams, my values somewhere between living in my addiction and trying to recover from it. I stopped seeing my therapist for seven weeks because I wanted some time to think for myself. In that seven weeks all I accomplished was another dance back into the malady and melody of my addiction.

I read this post at Being Made New and could really connect to his feelings of being a part of rather than a part from the people around him. Yet, those feelings seldom come across my path. I always feel as if I'm sitting somewhere just outside the circle.

I'm praying for reconciliation tonight. I know it won't come tonight. But I have faith that it will come. One day at a time.

Who knows?

2009-08-27T05:26:00.003-04:00

After that last trumpeteering post about the spiritual experience in the 12 Steps and turning my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand God ... I need to say that this is still hard.

It's difficult to let go of the stash after a relapse into sexual addiction. Yes, in some ways relapse into love addiction is even worse. Neither is a cup of tea.

Like a heroin addict who longs for that first push of the needle, women like me crave that first kiss, we remember the contours of our lover's bodies, and we yearn for the physical touch that is meant to be shared between two people who have committed themselves to one another and share far more than the cost of a hotel room and a few laughs about their physical escapades.

I know that the current loneliness that comes from my husband's extraordinary work committments is contributing to the difficulty of getting through the withdrawal. I am working to occupy my time with and energy with other things, healthy people, and examining my own life through a renewed 4th Step inventory. It helps most of the time. But some of the time ... not so much.

As I'm writing here I'm thinking of the many wonderful and wounded women whose blogs I read. Their husbands or ex-husbands are sex addicts. I often think of them and wonder if they know what a large role they have played in my recovery. How many times has it been their words that come to mind when I think of acting out? I wonder too how painful it must be for them to read my words and not want to slap the living shit out of me. After all, it could have been their man I was craving tonight.

But as the Big Book says ... "probably no human power could or would have relieved" my desire to get that sexual high. If it could ... I would have been "saved" by now from these relentless urges and compulsions.

I've given some thought as I dissect my cravings and hand them over to God to the question of why it is I seek and desire other women's husbands.

I guess the easy answer is because I'm an addict and I seek people who are emotionally unavailable, but for today that's a cop-out. I want to own this truth, and I want to have a bigger answer than that. I want to know how I got from the lie of trying to find something to "supplement" a marriage that "left me feeling empty in some ways" to desiring the attention of men who not only had wives, but also lovers. How did I become obsessed with being the one they told all their secrets to?

A part of the equation I know is that my sick self needs some external force to reaffirm that I have value. For me, being the kind of woman that anyone -- male or female -- can share their deepest secrets with, has meant that I am valued. But my addictive mind has turned even this basic gift of friendship into a tool of my disease.

What am I recreating? I'm regaining that child's sense of power that comes from being the person who keeps information that could tear apart families. Not only could I use it against someone, I can use it to protect myself too. Secrets keep us safe, keep families together, and keep people out of trouble -- that's what I learned as a child. As an adult, I've learned that they are poison. Yet, my addict self wants them, desires them and does not know how to live without them.

One day at a time, I'm learning to live in the light of truth. It's not easy. But it's worth it.

A spiritual solution

2009-08-25T12:38:00.003-04:00

As I continue to try to recover from this last relapse, I have been working on reviewing Steps 1-7 for my sponsor. As I consider the power of the Twelve Steps as a means of recovery from my sex and love addiction, as well as my compulsive overeating and codependency, and overall addictive personality something is becoming more and more clear to me.

What I have learned in therapy can help me understand my behaviors and thinking patterns better. Drugs can help with chemical imbalances that have occurred from the rush of my own natural hormones in the extremeness of my acting out. But the only place I find hope of truly overcoming the damage that has been done to me and for having a life that is worth living is in working the Steps that were first established by Alcoholics Anonymous.

It is true that those of us who were victimized sexually as children have been biologically and psychologically damaged by our abuse. But the SLAA program (which is based on the tenants of AA) gives me hope that there is a solution if I work for it. The solution is one that can not be experienced in my body or in my mind -- it is a spiritual experience. My spirit transcends my body and mind. Doctors and therapists can treat my body and my mind, but it takes a power greater than myself, and greater than any human power to give me hope that I will be free of the obsessions of my mind and the allergy of my own natural pleasure hormones.

I was listening to some of the AA Big Book lessons of Joe and Charlie yesterday (you can find the free downloads at www.silkworth.net) and they were talking about how alcoholics are very proud of their Steps, but that it is important to remember where they came from. The First Step "We admitted we were powerless over (our addiction), that our lives had become unmanageable," came from Dr. William Silkworth, a neurologist, whose opinions on alcoholism can be found in The Doctor's Opinion of the AA Big Book. The Second and Third Steps came from Dr. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and brilliant thinker, who said that a "spiritual experience" was the only effective cure he had seen for the disease of alcoholism. The remainder of the Steps are based on some basic tenants set forth by an organization called the Oxford Group.

My point in repeating this is to emphasize that two medical doctors, both of whom worked with issues of brain function and performance, were a part of establishing the root program that has helped millions and millions of people find a better way of life.

Please understand -- I believe there is absolutely NO replacement for talk therapy for a person who has been abused as a child. But I also believe that the only hope of truly living a life that feels worth living to me is to become a whole person connected in body, mind and spirit. For me, that requires a spiritual experience that I believe I can find in working the Steps.

All this may sound empty coming from a woman who just had her umpteenth relapse after being in program for six years. However, please note that despite my relapses, I always have had the willingness to keep coming back, because I have seen the progress that I have made, and I have seen the progress of my disease. And I find that it is when I stop actively working on the Steps and practicing their principles in all areas of my life, those are the times the disease wins a foot race and gets the better of me. But in the journey of recovery, the progress I feel within myself is always moving forward and stays ahead of the disease and I don't give up, I keep coming back, because I want to experience the Promises and the Blessings. They are the things I cannot get in a therapist's chair or a psychiatrist's office. I can only get them in the rooms and fellowship of people recovering through the 12 Steps.

Honesty's role in the Steps

2009-08-24T15:26:00.002-04:00

During my prayer and meditation this morning I realized that when I finally reached the point that I was willing to get honest about my recent slip, I had become willing to work the Steps again. Being honest that I had broken my bottom lines, rather than continuing hide the truth meant that I was admitting my powerlessness (Step 1), that I recognize my only hope to avoid full blown relapse into very dangerous behavior was to turn back to the program and its work (Step 2), and that I had made a decision to surrender my will and life over to a power greater than me and greater than my addiction (Step 3).

It felt fantastic for me to associate honesty with these three steps and I immediately felt prepared to do an inventory of my resentments and fears, and to better define the defects of my character that continue to lead me down that road.

I feel more humbled and more willing that I have felt yet, but my faith in myself is shaken. In saying this truth, I am invited to put my faith in God, and remember that I am not at the center of my recovery -- my Higher Power is. It is only those of us who have a spiritual awakening who do recover. And even then ... one day at a time.

Spinach & Eggplant Parmesan

2009-08-22T20:16:00.002-04:00

It hasn't been that long ago that one of the women I sponsor said to me, "Rae, I'm going to remember how bad I feel right now so that I won't go back and make these mistakes again." I cautioned her that past pain, no matter how acute, no matter how scary, had never stopped me from acting out.

I guess this latest trip down acting out lane is proof positive that I wasn't lying to her. And today as I jitter around, frustrated, irritable and discontent -- unable to settle down to save my life (unless it is to sleep because I'm so damn tired) -- I am asking myself, "Did you think you were just going to feel like roses and sunshine when the withdrawal set in?"

I don't want to act out. There is no pull toward that. I've been focusing on recovery as best I can -- reaching out to others, listening to speaker tapes and I'm planning to go to an open AA meeting tonight. But there's not a single cell in my body that feels willing to vacuum the floor, clean the bathroom or wash the dishes. I tried going to see a movie, but drove off once I got to the theater, knowing there was no way I could sit in one spot for two hours, no matter how interesting the show was. I wanted to go to a coffee shop and read for a while. I have a new book I'm really excited to read. But my racing mind would have none of that, nor would it allow me to sit still long enough to truly (or maybe I should say 'perfectly' work on my steps).

The symptoms of withdrawal -- the racing thoughts and the acute feelings of depression -- remind me of the symptoms of bipolar disorder. It is nauseating and unsettling.

One of the speaker tapes I was listening to today encouraged addicts to write down a comprehensive list of the pros and cons of actively living in addiction. I've heard before and this speaker reiterated -- when we continue to act out, we are getting SOMETHING out of it. Off the top of my head, I know that I'm relieving a sense of loneliness, getting some positive affirmation (both of which are quickly deflated), reinforcing the lie that I cannot live without this behavior and the lie that I am fundamentally a bad person, so that I can continue to avoid responsibility for myself. I even get some sympathy from others. The cons are, of course, that I become detached from everything and everyone around me and feel more isolated and alone than when I started. I don't feel connected to my Higher Power, or to my husband or to my friends and loved ones. Instead, my connections are to the people I am acting out with. Then when I withdraw from them ... I'm left with nothing but emptiness.

One step at a time, one moment at a time ... I just have to remember this phase will pass, that it is a natural physical and emotional reaction to what my body and mind have been through. Withdrawal and abstinence are required to be able to move forward with my recovery from here.

By the way, in case you are wondering, this post got its title as a result of my effort today to stay in the moment. As I sat down to write, I was eating my dinner -- some delicious spinach/eggplant parmesan from Whole Foods -- on a paper plate, with a side of Gatorade. Cheers!

Thinking Aloud at 4 a.m.

2009-08-21T05:02:00.003-04:00

I rarely sleep through the night and I often awake with thoughts I think it is important to write down. Occassionally they will be things I want to say to others - perhaps in an e-mail, and sometimes they are things I need to say to no one in particular.

What I need to say this morning may need to be said to someone specific in the future, but for now, I'll just put my thoughts down to words here.

Last night I shared with my sponsor and with my face to face group about my slip. I cried in the meeting and I felt like an idiot, but was thankful for the support I got. My sponsor was also supportive and offered some good suggestions. But it is a statement by my certified sex addiction therapist way back in July 2008 that keeps coming to my mind.

When I told her that my husband knew of my sexual addiction, but not the specifics of my acting out, she said, "Until there is full disclosure, you have a sense that you can get away with something. There is no accountability." As I look at other people try to control the information their spouses get about their acting out and how closely they protect that information, I see myself in them. I also see how their sharing has opened the doors for more intimate and loving partnerships with their spouses. These people have found they don't have to face their demons alone. Not only do they have the support of their group, and sponsors, they also have the support of their spouses.

I certainly have the support of my husband. He supports my recovery, and he knows that I am a sex and love addict, but he has no idea the extent and content of my triggers and behavior. And I wonder how I could tell him -- "Hey honey, while you were away, working 12-15 hours a day, I felt lonely, vulnerable and afraid and had sex with a few other guys to numb the feelings. And, while I'm at it, I might as well tell you that I've been numbing every uncomfortable feeling I've had the same way for about six years."

Have I even tried to change, he might ask. To which I could respond that Yes, I had. In fact, I had made some great progress. At least I hadn't used the same hotel key more than once in at least five years. Oh yes, and did I mention that what was once a rabid sex addiction seems to be more of a search for the allusion of love these days? And isn't it true sweetheart, that our own relationship has changed, I might ask.

The AA Big Book says we must be willing to go to any lengths to get sober. We must take off the masks. So the question becomes how willing am I to destroy someone else's life in order to save my own? How long can I stay sober when the voice in the back of my head says ... "What he doesn't know isn't hurting him." When will the "next time" be the time that all this luck -- no STDs, no pregnancy, no fatal attacks or obsessive stalkers -- runs out?

Sobering thoughts at 4 a.m.

Appreciating another's honesty

2009-08-19T21:10:00.003-04:00

Eli Hornby over at Eli's Addict told a very powerful truth to his wife early Monday morning. Then he told it to his readers. His honesty is helping to keep him sober. I want to commend him for doing the next right thing.

I've not been nearly as honest with my husband, my sponsor or my readers. I've slipped a few times over the past few months, given in to those lower urges, lived to regret it, walked away, went back again, walked away. Through it all, I haven't told anyone, until a month or so ago when I said I had to walk away from a friendship that had become addictive. The truth is that relationship had become sexual.

The cycle of dishonesty and secrets is ugly. It's painful. It truly is painful to act out now. I know there's a better way, a clearer path, but I have to stay on it long enough to find my way. I know that honesty is the friend of my recovery, and the enemy of the addict.

Thank you, Eli, for helping me find the courage to tell the truth. Thank you, God, for planting that courage inside.

I heard recently:

Step 1 tells me there's a power that wants to destroy me.
Step 2 tells me there's a power that wants to save me.
Step 3 tells me I get to choose which power wins.

I've been allowing self-will to seek the power that wants to destroy me. God, I've made the biggest mess of my life, please grant me the willingness to turn it over to you. Just for today, I'll settle for the courage to hit "Publish."

Not so funny

2009-08-19T19:54:00.003-04:00

*warning - potential triggers for sex addicts*

The other day I picked up Chelsea Handler's autobiography, "My Horizontal Life, A Collection of One Night Stands." As I skimmed through a few of the colorful stories, I thought of how much money she was making writing about the men she had bedded over the years. This queen of late night talk -- who has written about her love for vodka as well as sex -- is not wallowing in self pity or despair. She's just laughing and causing others to laugh with her.

As I flipped through her book, I thought of the funny facts I could share with others about my own set of one-time encounters, and even what others might write about their escapades with me. Sex addicts do gain a lot of insight about the underbrush of people's lives. We share fantasies, and discover kinks. Sometimes we tell one another secrets that we've never told to others. A lot of times we lie -- for stupid reasons and legitimate ones. There is no bar to our age, race, size, socioeconomic, religious, political or marital status.

In my active addiction I've learned that certain professions attract a higher percentage of sex addicts, and that certain body types yield smaller penises. I've learned that true addicts rarely think of their spouses while engaged in addictive behaviors, but as soon as the passionate shudders end, there is a sense of loss, and a desire to move on.

Today as I was driving I saw a quote from Edward Abbey and it made me think of R. He was obsessed with Abbey and his writing, and was a political pacifist of his own sort. I've slept with others who were activists, others who were trusted public servants with buildings named after them. I've had sex with men who've been to prison and men who have put them there, with dominants and submissives, with immigrants and natives, impotents and long lasters. They each have their own story -- some they've shared with me, others I've found out on my own.

So, is there a book in my escapades?

Not a funny one I'm afraid.

Mine are stories that weren't meant to be told. They are dirty secrets that silently bond two people together. Chelsea can drink and fuck all night, and laugh about it in the morning. I won't try to judge whether she laughs to keep from crying. I won't even judge whether I should laugh more and cry less. All I will say is that my liasons have been mid-day steal aways with other women's husbands, who were stealing a few moments or hours with someone else's wife. I have used them like Chelsea uses vodka. And they have used me like cocaine. In addition to their stories ... they have been fathers, brothers, sons, and even human, but that rarely mattered. In fact, many times our names didn't even matter.

An act held so sacred within the covenants of a marriage, is nothing more than a drink of whiskey to a sex addict.

There's nothing funny about that. Nothing at all.

What I fear most

2009-08-17T12:39:00.002-04:00

My message from God today from Facebook:

God wants you to know that what you are most afraid of is where your greatest rewards are.

If all you had to do was wish for something and you would have it, life would be pretty boring, wouldn't it? God placed barriers between us and what we want, so we can enjoy interesting and satisfying lives. God hid our biggest rewards behind the highest barriers - our deepest fears. God wants us to face our fears, and hold ground in their presence, and let them go, and that's how we get out biggest rewards. What are you most afraid of? Say it, just start by saying it.

OK, I'll say it.

The three things I fear most:

1. That I am on the wrong path and that I have no idea how to get straight again.
2. That I will spend the rest of my life knowing that I am wasting my God-given resources and talents, but feeling powerless to engage them.
3. That I will become so self-absorbed that there will be no concious left.

How about you? What do you fear most?

Stuck in a Moment

2009-08-13T08:32:00.001-04:00

I had never really "heard" this song before. One of my friends posted it on her Facebook page last night and it spoke to me in many ways.

Hate-filled and thankful

2009-08-11T13:36:00.003-04:00

This morning I read a story from Chicken Soup for the Recovering Soul, and as it ended, something inside me cried out "God, I need your help. At my core, I hate myself. I hate who and how I am, the way I look, the way I feel. I hate what I've become and that I can't seem to move past it on to something more. I hate that I wake up every morning and life seems to have no purpose at all. I hate that following three simple daily rules - take a shower, exercise, and make a list - seem to be too much for me. I simply hate my life."

I knew I needed to come here to write. But as I stepped out of the room where I had been reading and into the hallway, there was my dog, sleeping peacefully, not yet fed. I said, "Thank you God, for this one daily reason to live."

I looked at my house ... it needs to be dusted, decluttered, vacuumed, there's dishes that need to be washed. I remembered that my husband will be home this weekend, and I said, "Thank you God for the incentive to clean, something to look forward to."

I came to the computer and began to hate myself again as I checked five e-mail accounts -- three of them legitimate, two used for the purpose of medicating my pain. But when I opened up my "official" e-mail, I was thankful for the reminder that tomorrow I'll have my weekly meeting with a group of wonderful women who make me laugh and smile and feel loved and nurtured and appreciated. And I was thankful that as their "organizer," I had a task to complete before tomorrow's meeting. Thank you, God, for giving me a reason to take one more step toward one more day.

And now, here I am finally writing, and willing to say, God I do need your help. I know I cannot live with this self-loathing. I know that even in itself it is a defect of character. But, God, I also want to thank you for your help, for carrying me through these rough times, for helping me to see today that you are with me, that there are reasons to live. I can only trust that there is a reason for where I am today, for the emotional pain that I feel, for the call of my sexual addiction, for the absolute shame I feel about my body and the way I've used it. Please help me have faith that in your time, I will find the strength and courage to move past this point. I want to serve you and to serve others. If that is your will, please give me the faith and the courage to go on, not in self-hatred, but in self-love, so that I might share your love with others.

A risky path

2009-08-09T14:51:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I ran into an old acting out partner. I'd love to tell you that it was by accident, but I walked right up to him and said hello in a restaurant. He was alone and I was alone, and he asked if I'd like to join him. Like an alcoholic who slips when one day someone asks, "Would you like a glass of wine with your meal, sir?" without hesitation, I said yes.

This man is one of the few acting out partners that I told about my addiction when I walked away. I told him back then because we were together three times and each time he shared with me how much he struggled with himself, with his God, how much self-hatred was created inside him. He shared with me about his trips to massage parlors, strip clubs and such and it was clear that he was an addict. I didn't try to save him -- I just told him of my disease and of the concept of the 12 steps.

So as we sat across from each other yesterday and I looked into the most gorgeous set of eyes ever given to a man, my addict was buzzing. That buzz only got stronger when he told me that like my husband, his wife was out of town. The battle was on within me. But we both acknowledged that we were experiencing those feelings, and we talked about them and what we weren't willing to give up, what we weren't willing to experience for the hit. We talked about what clarity had been with us, the struggles that exist from day to day, he shared his religious approach to his disease, and I shared the 12 steps -- which interestingly mirrored one another.

Both of us battled interally the entire conversation -- "do it" vs. "don't do it." Only by the grace of my Higher Power, and frankly his too, were we able to walk away. Things could have gone the other way in a split second ... if one of us had made the move toward "yes," there is no doubt the other would have followed.

I would never "recommend" doing what I did yesterday -- walking up to an old acting out partner alone in a restaurant -- to a newcomer in recovery. It simply could be suicide for recovery efforts. However, somehow I can accept today that there was a reason I went up to him, a reason why my Higher Power helped me to say, "It's best for both of us to just go on our way," rather than "Let me show you the way to my house." I can humbly give my Higher Power the credit for that strength and ask that the lesson of the day be revealed to me.

I was vulnerable yesterday. I have been vulnerable for a few weeks to acting out. I even toyed with it last night. That usually means my spiritual condition is suffering. It doesn't mean I have to act out. It means I have the opportunity to improve my faith and my partnership with my Higher Power. However, it may also mean that I took a bite into the diseased apple and tomorrow I'll be on a downward spiral. My life didn't begin or end yesterday. Lessons aren't always revealed right away. Six months or a year from now, I may be writing here and saying -- my spiral downward, back into relapse, all started with that innocent little hello in a restaurant. I can only deal with what's right in front of me and do the next right thing.

My sponsor is reminding me that while I often label myself an addict, my addiction is only a part of me. I am much more. And while I cannot expect "normal" responses to situations like yesterday. I can be thankful that five years in the program, many, many mistakes and lessons hard won, make it easier to choose the path of recovery, rather than the path of my disease. But my disease does not go away. It just sits, waiting and hungry.

I may face another trigger today. Today I will call on my Higher Power, not to save my ass, but to help me remember that I am more than an addict. I am a human being with values and a desire to live a better life. I have no chance at a better life if I don't make better choices.

Just beneath the surface

2009-07-17T21:41:00.002-04:00

Do you ever have those days when you know you're feeling angry just because of the thoughts that come to mind?

Today, actually for a couple of days, I've thought the words "I hate your f*cking guts!" Now, I don't typically hate people, but just those words seem to be filled with rage about something and someone.

Then tonight I was going through Facebook, looking at old classmates and ran across someone who used to be my neighbor. I immediately thought "I bet you'd love knowing I f*cked your father." I saw another classmates' photo and thought he'd be devastated to know that one of his other classmates, who I met during my acting out spree when I moved back to my home state in 2005, had ratted him out about being a swinger.

Maybe it's me I'm angry with. Maybe I'm mad that everywhere I look, I'm reminded of my addiction. I'm cleaning house for guests who are coming next week and I have to make sure all my recovery literature is hidden away. Maybe I'm mad at my husband because he's looking at changing jobs again. Maybe I'm mad at him because his work is causing a lot of tension. I'm not sure.

I certainly am not walking around actually feeling overtly angry. There's no one at home today other than the dog and I seem to be treating her OK. But somewhere beneath the surface, I clearly am angry about something. Guess I better work some of that anger off by doing the next right thing ... feeding and walking the dog and finishing with the housework.

Nurturing, care and support

2009-07-16T22:52:00.002-04:00

The sixth characteristic of Sex and Love Addiction says, "We use sex or emotional dependence as substitutes for nurturing, care, and support."

I've been to three 12-step meetings today looking for nurturing, care and support. I'm not sure if it's emotional dependence or not ... but I was really feeling the need for some comfort.

Thoughts of the friend who I had to bid adieu this week kept creeping in, and I kept praying, "God help me find in you, what I was seeking in him."

I don't know ... even after going to all those meetings and feeling good about hearing others share about improving their concious contact with God, and relating to the shares in tonight's SLAA meeting, I still don't feel replenished. I'm grateful to be sitting with the feeling. I'm thankful that I know the feelings are exaggerated and exacerbated because I'm going through withdrawal and that they will pass.

I know that everything happens in God's time, in God's way. It doesn't stop the little spoiled addict brat inside me from fidgeting and whining and refusing to give me any peace.

I have been praying for "thy will, not mine be done" all day and am praying tonight for the courage and strength to accept my Higher Power's will in my life and to learn the lessons.

Man, this sober thing sucks sometimes.

But the truth is, acting out is not any better. Sure, there was a time that there was good sexual returns, or when the "pursuit" brought on a feeling of euphoria. There is nothing strong enough now to raise the "kick" high enough to truly get the addictive hit anymore. I've worn out this drug of choice, and all that is left is the craving for the high. The emptiness has become too vast to even attempt to fill.

Only God can fill the God-shaped hole inside me. And I must be patient and diligent as this spiritual transformation takes place. In God's time.

The loss of the soul

2009-07-15T09:33:00.002-04:00

The reading below from today's entry in the Answers in the Heart meditation book, reminds me of this line from Step 1 of the SLAA Text:
"This loss of one's soul could only be all the more poignant if the body in which it lived continued to exist, unanimated spiritually from within, and monstrously driven by imperious instinctual drives which would now have become its masters."

July 15 - Answers in the Heart

"The spiritual life springs forth in the pastures of the heart, in its free spaces, as soon as these two mysterious beings -- God and man -- meet there" - Paul Evdokimov

Sex addiction is a spiritual disease. Living as a practicing addict strips us of our spirituality. We lose our connection with reality, giving more and more of ourselves to try to fill the emptiness within. Unfortunately, we often don't discover that the addiction cannot deliver what it promised until we've paid the high price of spiritual atrophy.

We once made compulsive sexual behavior our Higher Power, but it is only our real Higher Power who can remove our obsessesive attitudes and behaviors and make us sane. Seeking this Higher Power means changing directions completely. Step Two helps us find hope, without which none of us can live. We come to this step as people emerging from a long, life-threatening journey through a wasteland. It is then, as beings of spirit as well as of flesh, that we start another journey to a Higher Power of light, joy and unconditional love.

--

Step Two is a process, and I get all the time I need.

And so it is

2009-07-14T13:25:00.002-04:00

I feel sad today. The addiction has cost me another important friendship, one that has been valuable. I must accept that the friendship was God's gift to begin with, and the ending, God's will.

I became friends with a person in a 12-step fellowship, and in sharing with one another in the way that only 12-step friends do, we had become close ... and over the past few weeks, I have had to accept that the friendship had all the measures of an addictive charge. I looked for his e-mails endlessly. I got a charge when one arrived. I could not wait to see him and wanted to talk to him about everything.

In order to continue this journey toward wholeness, I had to be first honest with myself, then honest with others, including the person whose life I did not want to harm.

I was also honest with my therapist, who reminded me how important it is to make self-affirming statements. Playing the "poor me" game of deprivation, will only cause me to act out in one of my addictions, she said. "It's OK to be sad," she said. But it's not OK to eat it."

So, I affirm today that by setting healthy boundaries within this friendship, I am choosing to seek the best life available to me. I affirm my desire to live in accordance with the will of my Higher Power and I thank my Higher Power for the gift of a beautiful friendship that lasted only for a season and for the guidance that the season had ended and that new opportunities await.

One day at a time, I make progress. Just for today, I choose recovery.

Land of the Lost

2009-07-07T20:29:00.002-04:00

I feel lost. That's the best way to describe it. I feel caught somewhere between here and there and simply don't know what to do with myself.

Yes, life is good. I feel at peace after writing the letters to my stepfather. I had a great weekend with my husband and am looking forward to another one this weekend.

I have some good people in my life, but I am not certain I feel comfortable reaching out to more than one person at a time. I know that sounds odd, but it's the way I seem to act. It feels like more than one person to think about at one time is just too much for me.

This is odd behavior for a woman who as a professional, juggled numerous ongoing relationships and as an addict kept relationships with multiple men all the time.

But that's not even what I set out to write about. It just seems that I'm going through life these last couple of days with absolutely no direction. I know that I have not used the tool of making a list, and I guess that's what I am going to have to do, although whatever I put on the list will just be "stuff," and that still feels useless.

Someone suggested that I may be going through a hangover -- after the intensity of what I went through with my trip to visit my family and friends, I may just not be settled down again. That seems plausible, but I just want to say for the record -- I don't like it.

July is a hot month

2009-07-06T17:39:00.002-04:00

I had the idea that I would post something here every day in July. Well, like most of my ideas, this one clearly has not come to fruition. I admire those people who write on their blogs daily and really keep things up to date. It just doesn't happen for me.

I do have a desire to write every day however. The tag line for this blog is "My own brand of therapy." Writing is cathartic for me. I think in the beginning, when I started this blog, I felt I was writing to a bunch of people who didn't know anything about me. Somehow that felt easier to do than to share things about myself with people who know my story and some parts of it that no one else knows. I guess in a way it all goes back to that fundamental fear of intimacy.

I can remember crying about two years into recovery, asking God, myself, and anyone who would listen, "What is so wrong with me that I don't want to know myself?" Now I guess I'm asking myself, "What is so wrong with me, that I'm so afraid of letting others "into me see?"

People seem to like me, and even if they don't, I've become much less concerned with what others think and more focused on getting to know myself better and be at peace with who I am. So, what's the big deal?

I guess I still have some work to do in setting boundaries and accepting honesty as the solution for breaking down the barriers that keep me tied into my character defects.

I suppose one reason I'm having trouble writing here is because the focus of my convictions toward recovery seem to be shifting from my sex addiction -- no, I'm not cured -- to my compulsive overeating. I've shared before here that while it seems almost easy to talk about my sexual past, talking about my weight and my food seems nearly impossible.

Just as opening up about my sexual addiction helped me to overcome it, I know that opening up about my food addiction will also help me to cut the ties that bind. I continue to pray for the willingness to work a program of recovery around my food, but I find the minute I get close to making a committment I really, really pig out.

In "How it Works" in the 12-step programs, we read, "Remember, we deal with (compulsive overeating), cunning, baffling and powerful." I can surely say that my food addiction is all three -- cunning, baffling and incredibly powerful. I can also say that I am truly powerless over it.

I welcome comments and prayers in this hot month of July when eating ice cream, birthday cake, and watermelon by the patch full is my favorite thing to do.

I feel good

2009-07-02T18:58:00.003-04:00

At the end of a four-hour visit with my stepfather on Father's Day, as I was leaving, I hugged the man who raised me, told him Happy Father's Day, that I loved him, and handed him a Father's Day card with the two letters I had written addressing the abuse I endured, the results that abuse had on my adult life and the things I am doing to take my life back. It was a relief to hand over the Father's Day card with the letters inside, but I have to admit that it was writing the letters that was the most meaningful part of the healing process for me.

I also, for the first time in my life, sent a Father's Day card to my biological father on Father's Day. He was never a part of my life, and for the first time ever, I didn't resent that in the least. I also found during the visit with my stepfather that I didn't have to be hateful or rude to him either. As I expected, he did and said some things that caused my blood pressure to begin to rise. But I was able to stay present and protect myself when the conversation started to go in directions that made me feel uncomfortable. I said the Serenity Prayer when faced with observing things that were none of my business, but nonetheless uncomfortable, and changed the subject without yelling or screaming or even getting angry.

The program worked for me -- I was able to ask for prayers before that big day came and I felt the thoughts and prayers of the people who were supporting me. I was able to get away some time in the morning before I met my stepfather and spend time in quietness and prayer. I used the phone to connect to program friends and support, both before and after.

I am most pleased that for the week before Father's Day, the focus of my vacation was not on delivering those letters -- but on having a good time and enjoying the friends I was with. By staying present with them, I understood that I have no secrets from the people who I care for most. They know me and I don't have to hide anything. I can be me, without shame. And because of that, I had a lot of good laughs. Likewise, I have learned who I can trust with the most private details of my life and who I cannot. Not trusting someone with private details doesn't mean I can't care for them or love them. I am just setting boundaries that help me to feel safe. It feels good. I feel good.

The hungry wolf

2009-07-01T04:40:00.000-04:00

My sexual addiction became like an old comfortable friend over the past few years. It was the first place I would go to seek escape and comfort from any emotion -- good or bad. I didn't know how to feel my feelings. As I entered recovery, because seeking this escape was driving me to the point of complete insanity, I found that the more I tried to push away the addiction, white knuckle it and deny it access, the more difficult it made it to let go and co-exist. My addiction is a strong fighter. It was only when I accepted that I was powerless over my addiction's presence in my life, that I began to have any sense of peace.

I used to think that sobriety meant never having any desire to act out, or not automatically going back to the old standby (my addiction) when things got too rough to handle in my real life. Gratefully, today I accept that it's pretty natural that my still wounded spirit would go back to a place it found comfort and familiarity. Thanks to the gifts of the 12 Steps and SLAA, today I can make different, responsible, healthy choices that promote the healing rather than add to the pain. This realization was a hard one to internalize and I still get irritated sometimes and want to throw up my hands and say "Not again!" when I face a tempation or a trigger. But things are so much better now that I have accepted my "shadow friend," as a part of me.

I was reminded of this struggle recently as I finished up a two-week vacation back to my home state. On the last night of the trip, I opted to get a hotel closer to the airport where I could take a nice long shower and wake up refreshed and get off to the airport without all the hassle of being at someone else's house. Leave it to me to pick a hotel just next to an adult book store. I was just doing a "normal" thing -- renting a hotel, people do it all the time. But I forgot about my disease. I didnt keep it in mind. And in the midst of the emotional and physical exhaustion of my trip, I was very triggered to pay a visit to the adult bookstore and possibly bring someone back to the room to share the empty room with me. After driving around the store three times and finally locking myself in the room, praying, taking a shower and making a call, I fell into a restless sleep. I woke up sober and went to the airport, even though I'd thought of having breakfast at a nearby restaurant before I left town. Instead, I got beyond the security gates at the airport and was safe from the disease for another few hours.

The wolf is always at the door, as my old sponsor used to say. I have to be hypervigilant. I can't forget that it is there. I am powerless over its existence in my life. But I don't have to let it be my life or run my life. Just for today, I am grateful for a repreive.

Unscrupulous disease

2009-06-13T18:01:00.002-04:00

The letters I have written to my stepfather are on my mind from time to time these days ... the words that are written there and the memories that are caught up in them. I wrote the letters to unleash the hooks of those memories, and have hopes that once he reads the words of the second letter, which ends with "These are my truths. Now we both know them." the betrayal bond will be broken. Of course, these are only my wishes -- my Higher Power may have other plans. We shall see.

This afternoon, however, I did have a bit of an epiphany as I thought of the words that I overheard my stepfather tell my mother one night when I was about 10 years old. He wanted her to have sex with him and she was resistant. He said, "You know if you don't give it to me, I'll go and get it from Rae. I already did once today." I heard those words in my mind many times until a couple of years ago I was forced to accept them as proof that my mother did know what was happening to me, but felt as powerless as I did to stop it.

As the words ran through my head this afternoon ... "If you don't give it to me ... I'll go and get it from Rae." I realized that this was just the mentality that kept me tied into the compulsive cycle of my addiction. I would seek a man's attention, acceptance and affection and take absolutely all that man had to give, and when he couldn't give any more, when he couldn't possibly fill the endless gaping hole inside me, I'd go after someone else. I kept multiple partners so that I never had to be without my "drug." When I would go from one man to another, driven by my own selfish cravings, I was essentially saying, "If you don't give me what I want ... I'll go and get it from some other source." Like my stepfather, I was saying ... "Do what you will, but I will not go without."

I've said it before ... the disease of sex and love addiction has no boundaries, has no scruples. It is willing to hurt and devastate anyone in its path -- whether my friend or a stranger -- in order to be fed and nurtured. It is selfish and without a conscience. Without my program, it runs my life and ruins the lives of the people around me.

For these reasons, I will keep coming back, seeking recovery and a daily reprieve from the unending need of my addict self.

Two letters

2009-06-09T16:03:00.003-04:00

It's sometimes amazing how long it takes me to make it back here to write about what's going on in my world.

There has been a lot going on actually -- but I wanted to write today of some resolution to the "black cloud" that has been hanging over my head regarding whether to see my stepfather on Father's Day. We have not been communicating for some time and my life is pretty much more sane when it is that way. However, I also know that underneath I have a feeling of something unresolved between us and I have a fear that if I don't resolve it before he dies (which he's likely to do soon), I might be stuck in this limbo for the rest of my life. (As I write that I realize that there's an underlying need for surrender there.)

Anyway, in reaction to all this I have talked with my therapist and shared with program support people, and have been blessed with something beautiful. I was to have a letter to my stepfather drafted by last Wednesday outlining what happened to me as a child, the results of what happened, and what I was doing about it. I did everything under the sun to put it off, not necessarily conciously, but at least subconciously. Then when Tuesday came and I knew I had to write the letter, I started writing everything I remembered about my abuse in detail, but as I moved on to 'the results' portion of the letter, I kept zoning out and almost dozing off. (Traits of trying to slip away from reality for me.) I was so frustrated and I felt like I was babbling in my writing. Later that day, after sharing my frustrations over the letter with a friend in another fellowship, I got an e-mail from him with the outline of a letter that was the perfect precipice for writing all the words I needed to say. It was very simple, yet exactly what I wanted to say and couldn't find the words for. I was so grateful.

The next day when I met with the therapist, I read her both letters. When I read back the words of the letter I was so frustrated with, I saw that it made perfect sense and was filled with all the truths of what I had been through. Then when I read the more general letter that came as a result of my friend's assistance, it just seemed to bring everything together. My therapist suggested that if I do choose to see my stepfather on Father's Day -- which was a perfect reminder that the choice is mine and that it's OK to see him if I want to -- to give him both the letters as I leave and ask him to read them after I'm gone. Alternately, she said mailing the letters on Saturday, to arrive on Monday would be another option. She thought both letters were appropriate, because one was filled with the truths of what happened to me, and she thought that was important for him to read.

What I felt after finishing the letters was that what my stepfather needed and felt was irrelevant. These letters were for me. As I wrote to him, " It is not that I don’t care for you, but now I must care for myself. When I was small, I was powerless, but now I am taking back my power. I am working to heal my wounds through the help of a therapist and a network of support friends. I no longer keep what happened to me as a child a secret. The secret was the harm. And the truth has set me free. It has allowed me to recognize that forgiveness is not a gift I can give away. However, it is a gift I can give to myself, so that we both can be free. I pray for peace and love in both our hearts."

I do have some sense that he will get some closure as well from reading these letters. I know I certainly have felt a weight lifted in writing them. Once they are delivered, I hope that all fears of obligation to "act as if" nothing happened and everything is OK will be gone. If those fears do not disappear ... then I know I have more work to do.

For today, I'm grateful for the work that has been done.

Thanks for listening and being with me on this journey.

FOG = Fear, Obligation and Guilt

2009-05-21T18:29:00.002-04:00

The 12-Step Programs have a lot of great acronyms that help to keep us all sober and focused on recovery. Today I was grateful to read this one: "FOG stands for FEAR, OBLIGATION and GUILT. When we work on these three issues the FOG begins to clear."

These three emotions are exactly what I am feeling as I consider the fact that I'll be back in my home state where my stepfather lives during the Father's Day weekend. I just told my therapist yesterday that my FOO (family of origin) has a real committment to obligation. With the obligation comes guilt.

The truth for me today is that no one can MAKE me feel any emotions I don't choose to feel. However, I can make a decision to turn my sense of fear, obligation and guilt over to my Higher Power and ask for guidance in my thoughts and actions. I can ask for healing and acceptance in my heart and in the heart of my abusive stepfather who I truly want to forgive, not for him, but for me. I have realized I cannot give away forgiveness. It is a gift I give myself. But I cannot do it alone. I need others to help me learn to love myself enough to let go absolutely.

People have told me for years ... "You don't owe him anything." I KNOW I don't, but knowledge carried in the head, doesn't always make it to the wounded spirit that still wishes for those beautiful father/daughter relationships you read about on Hallmark cards. There's still that feeling of being unsettled, knowing that my stepfather could die at any time, and I might feel as if I never took the chance to release my pain face to face. I chose to stop talking with him about three years ago, because I was tired of "putting on a happy face" and pretending that I was not hurting, but unwilling to scream and rage at him either. At times my silence has been punishment, and at times it has been necessity. But because of it, I've been able to heal without continuing to live the lie.

I'm grateful today to be able to speak these truths, to have this wisdom and to desire healing that will come in God's time, not in mine. I'm grateful for the willingness to pray for God's guidance and to be quiet and listen for it. My therapist and a recovery friend have both recommended writing a letter to my stepfather (not necessarily to be mailed) which outlines what happened, what the results were and what I am doing about it. Both have said that unless I can own my own power, that going to see my stepfather during this trip was not a healthy move, but one based in classic codependence. Just for today, I can accept their guidance as gifts from my Higher Power.

Somewhere between the jagged edges

2009-05-12T08:53:00.003-04:00

I've been in a weird, bifurcated place lately. On one hand I feel as if I'm growing and on the other as if I am in the pits of hell.

I was able to release some tears last night during an SLAA meeting as I expressed how lonely it feels to be in a committed relationship with someone who often feels very absent from my life. My husband's workaholism is raging and my addict continues to knock at the door and remind me that it's there "to help."

I have always been open to my Higher Power's will in my marriage and continue to be so. I'm also acknowledging that I'll be open to my Higher Power's will in my relationship with my therapist as I meet with her tomorrow and tell her for right now I think it's most important that I focus on my own personal growth rather than on the growth of my marriage. My husband and I are at a place where I'm not sure we're ready to grow and after much prayer and discussion with others, I have to believe that I have to focus on the things I can change, which are within me. I have felt at odds with my therapist over this and skipped a week's session with her to get more clear in my own mind about how I wanted to deal with it.

It is true that my marital relationship could be more fulfilling and that is sometimes triggering to my addict. It is certainly not that I don't think our marriage needs work. It's simply that I know my husband well enough to know that he's living so deeply in his own disease (workaholism) that he will most certainly not be present for any joint work we might attempt right now.

In the meantime, I am reminding myself to live life one day at a time, living in the solution, feeling my feelings, whatever they are. I am reminding myself that medicating painful feelings with the disease means rather than practicing healthy behaviors such as setting boundaries and self care within my marriage, I am using those efforts on a dead-end situation, which can be incredibly painful. I am reminding myself that if I give in to the subtle call of the disease, I'll be caught up in a mental prison that keeps me obsessed with seeking reassurance, checking e-mails and feeling empty when nothing appears, feeling obsessed with a need to hear from and be with the unfortunate bloke who falls into the addictive trap. I am reminded, that while living in the disease, there are never enough emails, phone calls, text messages, dramatic expressions and blow ups. There is never enough face to face time, never enough committment, never enough balance. It's just an empty vat of never enough anything, and suddenly my life is completely unmanageable as I try to make it enough by reading the same e-mails over and over, thinking until it feels as if my head will bleed, and feeling as if my life is completely not worth living.

One day at a time, I am attempting to show myself before a power greater than myself who can restore me to sanity, rather than send me down a very rocky road where the lessons are earned on the edges of jagged rocks.

My body hurts

2009-04-29T09:33:00.003-04:00

Over the past few years, I have been releasing, little by little the emotional pain of being molested for the most precious years of my childhood. Yesterday my body began to experience the pain, the aches of being so tied up in tension, fear, dread. I could feel the presence of the wounded child spirit cowering. Today I'm not sure if the pain I feel is a continuation of those feelings or just soreness from the experience. Whatever it is ... my body hurts, from head to toe.

On an unrelated subject, I wanted to write here that I have "awakened" to realize that I fear the vulnerability of intimacy with my husband. He's too close. He knows too much about me. It's easier for me to experience some excuse for love and intimacy with someone who is all but a stranger to me than it is to even think of laying beside my husband and having him caress my body. Sometimes I can hardly stand for him to touch me. It makes me afraid of what will come next, almost as if he is the abuser.

I had already had this realization when I heard someone share at a meeting recently that he could more easily have sex with a complete stranger, than he could with his wife of 30-plus years. It felt good to know that I was not alone. The man followed his comment with, "How's that for insanity?" Sign me up, friend, I'm in the crazy line with you.

I've been reading and hearing so much lately about the importance of full-disclosure to spouses in order to have hope for recovery and healing. How's that for vulnerability ... being really, completely honest with someone else and still expecting them to love you.

I should also acknowledge that I have been focusing my attention in program on the people who just can't seem to make a relationship work in their lives. It's like they are either addictive or they are alone or they are so ill at ease in their own skin trying to pretend to be something they aren't that they can't make it work. But I also have to be honest with myself and say that I have seen recovery change some relationships and some people. There's no reason it can't work for me, if I'm willing to do the work.

The least I can do

2009-04-27T15:25:00.003-04:00

I have not written here, or most anywhere, for a month. I received a note from a blogger buddy who asked if I was a stuck as my blogging seems to be.

I'm neither stuck nor growing, neither clear nor confused, neither drunk nor sober, neither perfect nor imperfect, neither happy nor sad.

I'm in this bizarre place that I can't seem to find the words to describe, other than to use a tired phrase, "I'm in a state of transition and change." This particular state is not easy to describe and I have been unwilling/unable to write about it.

There's been a lot written, even by me, about living life in balance, in the middle, in the gray areas. Addicts are known as extremists.

I do find that I am not writing ... not e-mails, not blog posts, not journal entries, not snail mail.

I am also finding that I don't feel passionate or committed to anything. Everything, literally, feels fluid, as if there is nothing I can count on, and nothing that will last. I am reluctant to start new things because it feels like they won't last, and it feels impossible to accept that there is nothing on earth that lasts forever.

My therapist suggested some flow of consciousness writing to express myself, and I guess this is what this is. I'm emptying some of my confusion, some of my struggles out onto the table in hopes of making better sense of it.

While I'm writing I'm going to acknowledge a fear that I have to lose my husband in order to really get a chance to start over. Not only is he being forced, in very small ways, to look at his own contributions to the losses in our family. I am also seeing my part. I heard a man say at a meeting the other day that in order for his marriage to survive, the old relationship, filled with guilt, shame, fear, anger, resentments, dishonesty had to die. He killed it with complete disclosure to his wife about his past, and now, together they are working to rebuild from a point of honesty and commitment to recovery. She has her program and he has his.

I don't know what will happen in my relationship with my husband. I left that up to my Higher Power a long time ago. My heart is open to continuing the relationship with a man who I admire, love and have built a friendship with. My heart gets scared at the thought of losing what we have built, and my gut tells me to continue to work toward a place of acceptance with the things that are flawed and to live my life in a way that will do as little harm as possible. Only time will tell the outcome and the answer. When it does ... I'll write it down.

"You're too fat to fuck"

2009-03-26T07:14:00.002-04:00

No, that's not just an eye-catching title for this post, it is the first words of Judith Moore's brilliant memoir "Fat Girl." While plenty of the men I have pursued for sexual purposes in my disease found me perfectly acceptable for naughty chat, phone sex or even a roadside or office "servicing," they too have found me "too fat to fuck." Even more men, upon seeing my photograph, simply stopped talking, disappeared and pretended as if the online conversation never started. And while I might catch the attention of a few dozen men with my online antics, I've never been someone who would be picked up at a bar ... unless it was closing time and even the ugly fat girls get pretty then. A dear friend chose this week to disclose that while he had been sporting a hard on for me about a year ago, once he saw what I looked like he was "physically turned off by (my) weight." He told me this as if I weren't already keenly aware of why his attitude had shifted. We remained friends and value one another on a host of levels ... but the pain is no less.

My friend's disclosure prompted me to begin to write about something that has been calling to my writing fingers for a while now. For some time, maybe months, I have felt the need to write about and talk about the fact that for as long as I can remember I've been not just overweight, but obese -- to explore at some level how much I hate my body and at many levels myself.

Interestingly, it's far, far easier to share the shame of my sexual escapades than it is to talk about being fat. I suppose one reason is because in my addict mind, sex gives me significance. Obesity, while it is there for the world to see, strips away any significance I hope to have. Whether it is in a job, a friendship, or simply walking down the street, the first thing people notice about me is that I am fat. I carry my fat with me everywhere. Yet I hide its pain deep inside.

I'm the person for whom people have to think twice about which table to choose at a restaurant or even a dinner party to accomodate my fatness. I'm the person who has to ask for a "lap belt" when I ride on an airplane. I'm the enormous person in the room who is invisible.

And, psychology tells me that I am invisible because I want to be, that all my fat is "protecting me" from the things I fear most -- sexual attraction, intimacy, and transparency. I don't have to be anything else because I am fat. My therapist often tells me that my behaviors and choices are always serving me in some way. I suppose she is right, and at some level I can accept it, but I'm not sure I can dwell on it long enough to even absorb its truth, much less accept it.

So, at least I broke the ice in writing on this topic. I want to explore it more and hope to come back to it.

Drinking from a fire hose

2009-03-11T17:53:00.000-04:00

Some days I feel as if I'm "stuck" and other days it's like drinking from a fire hose. The "awakenings" and realizations come so fast that I can't seem to process them fully.

Today, I am realizing that my prayers that my character defect of dishonesty be removed and replaced with transparency are being answered one day at a time. I have been avoiding contacting my sponsor and even though I didn't know why -- I was honest with her and told her what I knew -- that it wasn't personal, that I wasn't trying to hide anything, but it just seemed to be something I was avoiding.

I talked with my therapist about this avoidance today, along with some goals I have for working toward healthy sexuality and intimacy in my marriage. In our discussions, a pattern was uncovered. I feel comfortable with giving to others -- whether it is physically or emotionally -- but I feel very uncomfortable, and ill at ease in receiving nurturing, care and support. I don't feel comfortable with my body, and this aversion to contact with my sponsor tells me that I also don't feel comfortable with exposing my spirit either. I love talking with the women I sponsor and other recovery friends. I love rubbing my husband's back at night. But turn things around and I'm so ill at ease. I don't have the answer for how to resolve this yet, but I have faith that more will be revealed. I am feeling certain that this continues to center around my need to be "in control."

These realizations come on the heels of reading this profound statement in Maureen Canning's book, "Love, Anger, Lust": "In the childhood abuse, we sexually addicted people suffered, we were forced to disconnect from ourselves. It was the result of sacrificing our authentic emotions in order to serve our immature and needy caretakers. The characteristic perversion resulting from this disconnection is that sex addicts lose the ability to get pleasure from sexual activity, even as they declare their need for sexual pleasure. In fact, they don't know what sexual pleasure is. The abuse they suffered in childhood caused them to fuse fear, shame, lack of power and intensity with sexuality. Until addicts recover from this abuse, sexual motives will carry the rest of the painful bundle."

Something that came up for me after my session with my therapist is the realization that, while being molested as a child, sex felt like rejection to me. I was being violated because I was the "step" daughter. If I'd been "real" - I might have been good enough. I have spent my entire life feeling that sense of "not good enough." But this concept of sex feeling like rejection is new to me. It makes it more understandable that sexual intimacy with my husband has been so difficult through the years, while sex with strangers and men I've engaged in extramarital affairs with gave me a "high." Again, it goes back to control - I sought out those men, I pursued them and "caught" them. In a marriage, sex is not about control, but about sharing -- yet it has felt like something I was not allowed to say no to.

I recognize that some of these thoughts have still not gelled and may seem disconnected ... I am trying to get them out so I can look at them and process them. I do know that I could never get to this level of self-examination as long as I was acting out. Too much of my time and energy was spent focused on one person or the process of finding the next "high." I am grateful to have the clarity to seek these answers and to have these awarenesses. I am grateful to truly understand what it means to say ... "This program is about you."

Sharing some space in the blogosphere

2009-02-19T17:23:00.006-05:00

I recently discovered Eli blogging over at Eli's Addict and really admire the level of honesty he uses in writing not only about his addictive self, but also about the complexities of being the spouse of a sexual abuse survivor. I encourage readers here to sneak a peek.

I also want to send out some blog love to Mary over at A Room of Mama's Own who is struggling to keep her head above water as she works her recovery program, keeps her readers informed about everything from autism to addiction, and actively participates in the blogging community at The Second Road, where life intersects with recovery. The story of Mary's relationship with her husband Mark, who among other things is a sex addict, has been a great inspiration to me and I'm so thankful to share a little space here on my blog to recognize her as a true hero.

I also want to thank Willow at Making My Peace, Margaux at Love in the Time of Addiction, and the speed demon herself at Vicarious Rising for all the wonderful support they have shown me over some very lonely months. Each of these women is one their own journey and again, I'm grateful to share some space here in the blogosphere with them.

I identify with my fellow codependent sex addict and bluegrass fan Being Made New, who is struggling with that question that comes to all of us who leave our addictions behind and then are faced with the question, "Is this all there is?"

Scribbling Mum asked me in a comment recently: Do you have issues/a pattern with "scanning" a room/restaurant for men when you are out in public? Like an automatic thing? Looking in cars, etc.? Does it bother your husband? Have you worked on this issue?

The answer Mum is I don't think that women struggle as much as men with this issue -- though I can really only speak for myself and say that overall scanning the room is not something I have a lot of trouble with. However, I do find myself looking at men and "reading" the likelihood of whether they are a fellow sex addict. I can usually spot my fellow addicts pretty quickly and now and then get triggered. What I do have trouble with is "eye sex" while sitting in the car at a stop light. I'll stop and look into the car beside me and just continue to stare at the male driver until I get his attention then give him a smile that has just a hint of "You are certainly sexy." Because I get such a "kick" out of it, I've had to go so far as putting it on my bottom line behaviors. I never do it with my husband in the car ... as for this addict at least, everything that is addictive is done in hiding.

Gentle Path has a great commentary on how to create a sex addict in her "About Me" section. I encourage you to take a look.

And, last but not least, I really liked Ken's approach to Step Six, which his has posted on his blog My Sex Drug. Ken is doing some great service and recovery work and I'm particularly thankful for his creation of the online recovery community Sex Addict Support.

The devil inside

2009-02-18T13:06:00.006-05:00

As the brittle wisps of the willow turn golden again, I am reminded there is hope for a better day. RMB

NOTE: This is an exercise in expressing some very angry and frustrating thoughts. The language and content may be offensive and triggering, particularly to fellow sex addicts. It is not to be taken literally or as a serious threat to myself or others. It is an attempt to rid myself of an anxiety that is plaguing me with unbearable frustration. Some people run, some people box, some people drink. I write.

I am filled with an animal-like rage ... an anger that seems to have no definition, no specific target, just a breathtaking power that leaves me screaming inside. As it screams it leaves behind dark, dark whispers of what a horrible person I am.

I am furious that I am trapped inside a mind that no matter how hard I try I neither escape nor understand.

I am enraged that every single day takes more effort than moving a mountain and that even the slighest variation in "plan" can cause each step to go all the slower, if there's even a step at all.

All I can think right now is that I would like to chop off a rock hard cock and slice it to bits, stomp on it and stuff it down some man's throat, then kick him in a sewage pond like the piece of shit he is.

With enraged anger, I want to bite off the horny tool of some asshole and rip still another off at the core using my bare hands, watching the blood drain right out of him.

I would like to slap the shit out of you -- whoever you are and scream and scream until all this anger is released. To kick you in the balls, to spit on you, to claw at you and scream "I hate your fucking guts!"

Then I'd like to turn to that high-talking buxom blonde you want to fuck and rip her hair out by the handfulls. To slap her the way I've slapped you and tell her to get a fucking grip. To punch her and tell her to stop acting like a twit, to kick her and tell her to stop pretending she is stupid and naive, to hold her beautiful body in front your dickless self and scream, "What are you going to fuck her with now!" To force her head between your bleeding legs and ask her if she likes to suck cock now!

I HATE you and I don't even know who you are!

You are everyone and you are no one. I find you in pieces in every man and every beautiful woman I see. I hate your power to decide who is good enough to fuck and I hate your body is the one that is always a lure for the hard dick radar. I hate your very existence.

And through it all ... I can't wait for all this anger to end, so that I can either live or die. I hate living with this anger inside. It scares me and causes me to feel bad about myself. The more I stuff it, the more it kills me ... but I'm afraid of expressing it for fear it will turn out just like this, that it will be out of control, that I will be crazy and never able to stop.

How does one person carry so much anger? How did it even get inside me? I didn't invite it! I feel its tension in my back, in my body, between my ears -- screaming in pain. It only takes a second for it to build, but it seems to be taking a lifetime for it to dissipate.

I remember an angry poet who once fucked me with wild abandon before I was married. I spent months being incredibly aroused as he screamed out words he called poems on a stage shared by other "performance" or slam poets, before one drunken night the opportunity arose for the anger to be expressed between us in full sexual force. Sometimes I wish I could take the rage that he had in his words and use it to just push all this anger out of me. Of course, the relief would only last a little while. It would all come flooding back when he didn't call the next day.

I'm not done but I don't know what else to say. I'm furious and there seems to be no relief.

Practicing honesty

2009-02-15T10:38:00.003-05:00

Wow, the miracles just keep coming. I just shared with my sponsor with complete honesty about some uncomfortable feelings I am facing. Dishonesty is an isidious tool of my addiction that has permeated every corner of my life. To have the opportunity and the willingness to practice transparency and honesty feels really amazing.

I've been feeling triggered lately and the triggers just keep coming. I know I am in an emotional/spiritual place where I have historically been prone to act out. The difference in today and the days and years of the past is I shared my feelings with someone. Previously, I would have fought the triggers with all my might, considering myself bad for having them, until eventually I would give in to acting out. Then I would have "failed to mention" my slip, felt shame around it, and yet secretly "empowered" that I could "get away with it." All of this would cut me off from my source of healing, my Higher Power and my true self. I am incredibly grateful today to have been given -- and trust me it was a gift, not something of my own making -- the willingness to share so openly with my sponsor.

Just a bit about where I am: Last week it seemed that one small trigger turned into another and then another and another. I shared those triggers with my sponsor, as well as my therapist, as they came up, and sought their source to the best of my ability. In usual form, my husband was the scapegoat, getting most of the blame for why I was feeling triggered. He wasn't paying enough attention to me, he was spending too much time at work, I was feeling lonely. This is that old tried and true strategy of putting the blame on him for my problems. As a result, I've been really needy with him and spent much of yesterday acting like a child who needed attention. Trying to manipulate him to be more romantic on Valentine's Day in all sorts of ways that would make me sick if I saw someone else doing them. This morning he got up and went to work and indicated he'd have to go back this afternoon. It just feels like we have no "us" time and I've put myself in a situation where he is too much of my source of entertainment, companionship, etc. By doing this, I know that I am in a state of depletion. Also, I'm doing a lot for him and feeling as if I'm not getting the same in return.

I think even deeper than all this with him is I am continuing to struggle with perfectionism. I am making these to do lists each day with full intention of getting through a lot of stuff. Some days I do, and some days I don't. I allowed myself the room when I said I would make the lists each day that I didn't have to accomplish everything, that they were just a guide for doing the next right thing. Still, I can feel that I am beating myself up for not being perfect.

For comic relief, I'll share one way perfectionism recently caused insanity in my life. In order to make my life more manageable and to have a focus for doing the next right thing, I make to do lists each day. On Friday and if I'm not mistaken maybe even on Thursday of this week ... I spent so much time and energy trying to figure out what was the "right" thing to do first, that I ended up feeling deflated at the end of the day because I had accomplished so little. What I needed to do was just do something, but I was too worried that I wasn't doing the perfect thing. Egads.

I'm grateful I have the slogans and a set of 6th Step Affirmations of SLAA to get me through one day at a time. And I'm grateful I have a sponsor and a fellowship that I can get honest with, so that my feelings and my triggers are "right-sized" and I'm far less apt to act out, and more apt to continue to grow in all my relationships.

Thank you to the women on the other side

2009-02-08T12:41:00.002-05:00

I wrote this to a fellow blogger this morning and wanted to share it here. It's not something I haven't said before, but it bears repeating.

The wives of my fellow sex addicts who blog about their feelings, experiences and struggles have saved my life and helped me heal in so many ways. You all have helped me to see the pain that my husband has never been able to express, and more than that to recognize that when I act out with a married man, I'm doing far more damage than this senseless act could ever be worth. Margaux at Love in the Time of Addiction, Mary at A Room of Mama's Own, Woman Anonymous7 and so many others are doing healing work. I'm just sorry it takes so much pain to be the healer.

I hope in some small way that by saying things that perhaps their loved ones cannot say right now, that I have been a healer too.

The opportunity was there

2009-02-06T16:41:00.002-05:00

The opportunity was there this afternoon to spend some time online, reading ads written to entice an afternoon lover, or maybe responding to someone 'looking to chat.' I even opened the site and found myself looking for jobs -- of the employment variety. I admit I browsed a bit in the casual encounters section, but felt a sickness in my stomach almost immediately. It wasn't shame or even judgment. It just didn't feel good. It's amazing really. A miracle.

"Don't give up before the miracle happens," is the program slogan. I didn't give up. And today there is no desire to seek that "high" I could have had. I am humbly grateful and admittedly a little lost. As I've slowly let go, surrendered this vice, in pursuit of a life that is real, I've found that there are a few disconnects. Addicts live off that rush that is bigger than life, or wallow in that misery that is lower than the belly of a snake. Life in the middle is hard to accept -- which is the reason I even found some temptation in the "opportunity" to play in the old playground today.

I want to see a movie ... I'm enjoying listening to music ... I'm doing some work. I'm living my life on life's terms. Thanks be to God.

Peace and Prosperity

2009-01-27T12:56:00.002-05:00

I am so grateful this morning to be fully aware of my presence in this body and my prosperity on this earth. I am thankful to have just returned from a walk with my loving dog, through my safe and diverse neighborhood, where I was able to connect through nature to a world much larger than myself. It's a world that whether hot or cold, wet or dry, flat or hilly has something magical to offer, a reminder of the perfection of an otherwise chaotic universe and its constant availability for my peaceful connection.

I am grateful to several years ago have had a Native American sponsor who taught me the beauty and connection of praying outdoors. I am grateful that I can say words like "prayer" and "God" and know that they are limitless expressions of my heart, unbound to the definitions others hold of them. I am grateful today to be working with a sponsor who is helping me to grow in areas much larger than the mere cessation of acting out, rather in the complex, but beautiful ways I connect with my fellow human beings, myself and my Higher Power.

I am grateful to have sat around a table in a small church last night, with six other sex and love addicts, from all walks of life, and shared our challenges and triumphs, and to read from our literature. I am grateful to have watched that fellowship grow from one to two, to three, and now a regular crowd of 5-7. And I'm grateful for a fellow addict there who I can love, support and pray for heartfelt peace, even though he incested his own stepdaughter, just as I was molested by stepfather. He is a gift, as are the beautiful women I sponsor in this fellowship. They inspire me and teach me and fill me with love, and I am humbled beyond words to have the opportunity to be one small part of their immense lives. And I am grateful for each and every person who has read this blog -- you've been with me in sickness and health.

I am equally grateful that I awoke in the night and couldn't go back to sleep because I was too warm -- not too cold like so many people who don't have the money to pay their heat bills, or who in the lower regions of the U.S. were without power last night because of an ice storm. And I was grateful to have the energy to get up and get a few things done before I had the privilege -- unlike most of the rest of the world who had to go to work -- to lay down and complete my rest. It goes without saying that I am thankful for a husband and a marriage that I disrespected, ignored and almost gave away in favor of living in my addiction, but which thrives today in friendship, acceptance and love.

I don't share any of this to brag. I share it because I feel it in my heart and I'm so very grateful to feel thankful, to feel present, to not be mired by a numbing and isolating depression just for this moment. And I share it because if an overweight, out of work, depression patient, raised up on a small town farm, where she was regularly molested and abused, who grew up thinking her only worth was sex and sought that worth with more men than she can count, who almost left her husband for an abusive alcoholic who she thought she loved can make it here ... can make it to this place of feeling fully aware of her presence and her prosperity ... you can too.

What will you do today to seek it?

10 Honest Statements

2009-01-25T21:38:00.006-05:00

How many ways can one woman write about honesty you ask? Let me count the ways.

My fellow blogger, Ken, over at My Sex Addiction, was recently tagged to write 10 honest things about himself. He chose not to tag anyone, but I chose to tag myself for this one ... because, after all, honesty is my favorite and most allusive pursuit. (Plus, I'm feeling a bit guilty for being so lax in posting here lately.)

So, here I go - 10 Completely Honest Things About Me

1. I'm currently procrastinating my work on Step 6 in SLAA for no reason that I can pinpoint other than I am a procrastinator.
2. Rae is not my real name and never was my nickname until I used it when I first started acting out online. Since then, I have also used it in recovery, and more recently when asked for my name for a waiting list at a restaurant.
3. I love country music, and my codependence sometimes lets me feel ashamed of that.
4. I sometimes worry that I'll never be better than I am now and I'm not happy with where I am now, even though it's light years ahead of where I was. It reminds me of the prayer, "I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, But, by the grace of God, I am not what I used to be." In a recent prayer I said to God, "I don't like who I am right now." The response in my heart was, "Then accept yourself."
5. I miss the feeling of family and deeply desire to have people around me, yet I doubt I could stand it for half a day.
6. My house is filled with books I've never read, and quite a few I have no desire to read.
7. I still struggle with little white lies, that seem to help me manipulate others' opinions of me, or how much "flack" I hear from my husband.
8. I don't like to exercise, but I like the way it makes me feel.
9. I recently began to see how closely my compulsive overeating patterns are to my sexual acting out. I get the most pleasure from it when no one in my "real life" knows. I feel great shame afterward. I make pledge after pledge to stop and the next day I'm walking into the convenience store buying two king sized candy bars. And in most instances both forms of my disease are about "stuffing" my feelings, most usually feelings that I am never even consciously aware of.
10. I am afraid to reveal something that would disclose in some small way my real identity.

Sunlight on the snow

2009-01-15T15:17:00.002-05:00

It's a sunny day, but the temperatures are frigid. The sunlight looks beautiful on the untouched snow and the sky is the color of periwinkle. It's something out of picture postcard.

I'm not sad, but I'm not happy. I'm just here. I'm not sure if I'll ever understand myself completely. My efforts to be transparent aren't going so well, but I'm thankful that at least I'm not hiding acting out behaviors. Instead I'm saying I did things I didn't do, making up stories about going to the gym when I didn't, eating pieces of chocolate that I swore to myself I wouldn't eat and letting my husband believe that I'm making healthy choices.

My therapist is helping me to understand that my dishonest and judgemental ways are all a part of trying to control everything around me. For as long as I can remember I have taken people to task for being less than perfect. I've always had someone to rail against. I've usually attributed that to my low self-esteem. The therapist is opening my eyes to the kind of person I really am behaving like underneath -- a manipulative, controlling dishonest person. Don't get me wrong -- she's not saying those things about me, nor am I saying I'm a horrible person. Rather she is revealing to me ways that my negative feelings are coming out sideways.

A woman in program said to me recently, "I don't want to be the person I am." Isn't that why all addicts use? They are trying to avoid being the person they are, the person they can't stand.

One question that came up in the course of my reading over the past few days was "If you saw someone behaving the way you are behaving what would you say to them?"

Well, if I saw someone writing what I'm writing right now -- I'd probably tell them that beating yourself up is not going to help. The whole point of this lesson you are being presented with is that you must first accept yourself as you are. Rejecting who you are is your first and foremost problem. Stop running away from who you are and work, practice each day to become the person you want to be.

That is my message to myself today, this sunny day in frigid cold.

A model of transparency

2009-01-08T16:36:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I met with my therapist who is quite wise in the ways of sex addicts and their problems with honesty and transparency, and shared with her my goal for the new year to become less of a leader and more of a participant.

I told her that I have subconsciously sought out leadership roles in order to support the facade of "having it all together." I fear judgment, because I fear rejection even more, and to compensate for that I like to pretend that "everything's fine and dandy!" I do not like to talk about myself, even to myself. I'd much rather be in a position of examining other people's lives and giving advice.

But this is not what recovery is about. Recovery, as I have so aptly told others, is about self discovery, self-acceptance and cultivating a fulfilling relationship with a power greater than myself.

My therapist told me that real leadership would mean working toward becoming a "model of transparency." My mouth dropped open. I thought, this woman clearly does not know who she is talking to. Transparency? As in a life lived in a glass house, free for the world to see? Are you kidding me? But I've done such a good job of setting a fine example without all that full disclosure.

This means that I have to admit my weaknesses, share when I have slip ups, let the world see my vulnerabilities! This means I have to be who I say I am and do what I say I do. Are you sure this is the only way, boss? I've made the shell of a life out of showing people the person I think they want to see and controlling their emotions by avoiding conflict and averting the truth. What if they find out the person I really am is not as good?

This is scary stuff, folks. Really scary stuff. So if you start scratching your heads and wondering where that other Rae went ... just remember that she's trying to expand her comfort zone and learn a little about this transparency stuff. On the other hand, feel free to ask me a bunch of questions in order to support my attempts to be transparent.

A new start

2009-01-05T15:09:00.000-05:00

As a school-aged child I used to love the fall, because it meant a chance to start again and as an adult, I have always loved the new year, because I see it as a chance to renew my commitments. I'm not one for making "resolutions" anymore, but I do take advantage of a fresh calendar to set some goals for the upcoming 12 months.

For many years, on New Year's Day, I would take time to write in my journal about the past year and to write down my goals for the upcoming year. I always found it helpful in honoring the passage of time and the growth in life.

As I reflect on my recovery in 2008, I see more progress than any other year since entering the program four years ago. I broke through some barriers that kept me stuck in a constantly revolving, reworking, procrastinating Step 4. Essentially I had been stuck there for almost three years -- at least one of which I was in complete relapse. I chose someone I trusted with whom to share my Step 5 and I am now working on Step 6 with a new sponsor.

I am no longer beating myself up for being a slow learner in the program. I am accepting my journey as my unique path. Likewise, I released the unrealistic expectations that recovery meant that God would take care of everything and I just had to wait for my Higher Power to show up and erase all temptations to return to my old patterns of acting out with anonymous partners or seeking out a new extramarital "love." I accepted, as a gift of Step 4, that I do have a part in my recovery, that ours is a program of awareness, acceptance and ACTION. I also began to anticipate the temptations that arise when my emotional immaturity doesn't know how to handle what it's facing. Today, I expect addictive temptations to arise, just as a diabetic expects to crave sugar. I take responsibility for my actions, and recognize that giving into temptations has dire consequences. I have a choice -- the quick high or the enduring consequences. I see this as a major step in letting go of the role of victim and embracing an inner strength that is real.

In the past year, I have added to and began to use more fully my recovery toolbox, not just for dealing with temptations, but for improving my life one day at a time. Our program draws on five major resources (sobriety, sponorship/meetings, service, steps and spirituality). I'm learning to use all of them. Being fully involved in service has been a timely reward. I've really gained a lot from service to my home group, this group and to four wonderful sponsees.

Some general goals for the upcoming year include:
* taking a step back and seeking less to be understood and more to understand
* to experience humility and inclusion by being a part of fellowship rather than always a leader
* to work toward embracing outreach rather than hiding in isolation (specifically making more phone calls and pressing my comfort zone by expanding my circle of support)
* to continue to nurture and grow in my relationship with my Higher Power and my sponsor.
* to experience acceptance and detachment more fully.

Ten years ago today

2008-12-19T19:00:00.001-05:00

Ten years ago today in a little chapel in the country, my husband and I exchanged vows we'd written just for us. The chapel perfectly held our closest friends and family and I remember being fully present, fully surrounded by love and support. It was a beautiful day ... that will always be remembered.

Little did I know that marriage is about far more than that first day and those vows. As we smiled for the cameras, neither he nor I knew what would transpire in the years ahead, the people we both would discover as our marriage progressed. Back then I was still living in numbness and denial about so much of my past and present. I was a sex and love addict even then, having had at least two lovers during the time I had dated my betrothed. Still, something kept propelling me forward blindly and as a result all the things that have progressed -- cross country moves, the emergence of a raging addiction, an affair that almost ended my marriage, illness, depression -- have been a part of our still relatively story. In many ways, I finally feel our story has a chance to begin.

Things are not perfect and the good news is I no longer expect them to be. I simply express gratitude for one more day to learn the lessons of being a present partner in my relationship. I no longer take for granted my marriage. I know that if it is the will of my Higher Power for it to continue, it will, and I will have received a blessed gift. And if it is not, then I will be facing the consequences of my past actions, and surrendering to the will of a power greater than myself, but I still will have received a tremendous gift -- the gift of learning to appreciate something more than I disrespect it.

My marriage and my husband matter to me, today. That in itself is a miracle. For much of my marriage, I was willing to break our vows and I was glad to get him "out of the way" so that I could act out. What an uneven tradeoff that was. Today I am willing to do the footwork to make it work, to make it valuable for us both, and to leave the rest to God. I am thankful that my husband has begun to ask me questions like, "What is at the root of that feeling?" whereas before he pretended like feelings never existed and ignored utterly questionable behaviors that allowed me to stay stuck in my disease.

To say I am humbled that our marriage has lasted and survived the intensity of my acting out in both my sex and love addictions, to say that I am humbled that I have even survived my dangerous and outrageous behavior -- would be a great understatement. I am humbled beyond words and grateful beyond measure.

My thanks to all who have been a part of our story through your support of my recovery. Your contributions have been invaluable and I am deeply honored to give you thanks.

Taking responsibility for the rage

2008-12-13T07:53:00.002-05:00

I had an epiphany this week as I wrote the answer to one of my sponsor’s questions. The question came in response to me sharing some things I had read in Kelly McDaniel’s “Ready to Heal.” McDaniel states that a woman who is violated sexually carries the rage in her body, and that in the triangle of victim, perpetrator and rescuer – she can only be the victim for so long until she has to somehow reclaim some sense of power.

I shared with my sponsor:
All my acting out against men and women (by way of having sex with their husbands) is part of my rage. Yet, I've never been aware of the rage. All my anger has been sexualized or comforted with food (or in rescuing others)and it is so demoralizing to think that I have to deal with that original trauma of my incest before I can begin to stop this uncontrollable rage from killing me and damaging the lives of everyone around me too.

One of my sponsor’s responding questions was:
Does the compulsion to seduce the husband have anything to do with pulling a power play on the wife? Or is she merely the supplier of an object to seduce and act out the rage on?

My reply:
It's interesting that you ask this. One of the greatest blessings for me in recovery has been discovering the blogs of several women who are wives of sex addicts. As I read their pain, I identify so very much with them and also connect to the reality of what I have done in my active addiction. I've become friends with a couple of the women and I've found we have a lot in common. Even in acting out, I was always curious about the wives of the men I was sleeping with. Curious not in a comparison way, but in a way of thinking ... "What would they say if they knew what their husband really was?" Or sometimes I would feel sorry for them and think how lonely they must be living with men like these. It's almost humorous the way the addict mind works. At times I would convince myself that I was doing these women a favor -- because they didn't want to put up with their horny ass husband's constant demands for sex. And as I write now, I think of the conversation that I overheard one night when I was about 11 or 12 between my stepfather and my mother. He was trying to convince her to have sex with him, and she didn't want to. He was drinking a lot back then and he told her, "Well, if you don't give it to me, I'll go get in from Rae. I already did once today." For years, I tried to deny hearing this conversation, or rather disassociate from it. I would not allow myself to believe that my mother, who I loved more than anyone in the world, knew what was happening to me and did not protect me. But the truth is she did - and she was too weak, too scared to do anything. She needed my stepfather's financial support. She had already gone through raising three kids (my older siblings) on her own and it had worn her down. It had worn down her health, her spirit, and what facing life on her own with three kids hadn’t done, living with my stepfather’s controlling ways killed. The only thing that wasn’t dead was her ability to make each of us feel loved unconditionally. The problem was – there were conditions. In her own way, she said, “Keep your mouth shut,” too.

I know today that one of the things I was trying to do with my silence as a child was to hold my family together, and to protect my mother from further suffering. I hated my biological father for leaving her and causing her and my older siblings such a hard life, and for forcing us into this miserable life with the bastard stepfather. Like most child molesters my stepfather would tell me that if I told anyone what was happening "between us" my family would fall apart, that I would be taken away and that my mom would be left alone because he'd have to go to jail. Today, as I think of the curiosity I had about the wives of the men I acted out with, perhaps I still thought somehow I was protecting them from the pawing hands of their dreadfully horny and animalistic husbands. Maybe somehow I tried to take even their burden. I never connected those dots, so thanks for asking.

--

I think I'm still trying to figure out if this is a crock of shit my addict is telling me... blaming someone else, now my mother. I've blamed all the men in my life for everything so far -- so now am I going to start blaming the women? Perhaps it's called working through the resentments. I don't know.

I’ve shared before that I’ve always had trouble with relationships with women. I found them weak and whiny and superficial at some level. Either that, or I found them judgmental and bitchy. It’s not that I never admired women. I have admired many women. Being friends with them and loving them without judgment has been more difficult. It makes sense that if I felt somewhere in my subconscious that I had to protect them in order to maintain the relationship – my internal rage may have pushed them away and resisted that tendency to take on one more person’s responsibility. A therapist once told me that my added weight may have been a result of carrying such a heavy burden inside. "It takes a lot of strength to do that," she said. "You needed all that weight to carry the burden."

I welcome feedback on this, as I’m trying to process it all. I’ll be honest and say that I fear provoking the anger and rage of some of the women who have helped me so much here … my fellow bloggers, whose husbands, like me, are sex addicts. I would tell you that your anger and true feelings are justified, whatever they are, but it is not my place. I will only say that I take whatever responsibility I have in creating the rage that lives inside the women whose husbands have lived in the throes of their own disease, and me with them. We have all been victimized. And today I am willing to take responsibility for being a perpetrator as well as a victim. It is painful and shameful to admit these things, but I have to so that I can move on.

My recovery story

2008-12-11T05:46:00.003-05:00

While this entire blog is in essence my true recovery story, I don't think I've ever encapsulated my story in a single post here. This summary was originally published on a website I recently discovered called In the Rooms.

Hi, I'm Rae, sex and love addict. I came into the rooms of a 12-step program for recovery from sex and love addiction in 2004 scared to death and ready to drive my life into the back of a semi-truck. My therapist had suggested a few months before that because I was seeking out one extramarital partner after another (using online chat to connect) that I might be a sex addict. I told her I wasn't addict to sex, I just liked the thrill of the chase (and the satisfaction of acceptance). But her "seed of suggestion" stuck in my mind, and a few months later I walked into the recovery rooms. Ceasing the chaotic, dangerous and very painful behavior was not easy. It took me a long time to get sober, and then even longer to stay that way. I am sure that I learned as much from my relapses as I learned from my recovery -- but learning in relapse was certainly a more difficult lesson. This is especially true of the relapse I suffered in 2006 when I "fell in love" with an extramarital partner, who turned out to be a verbally abusive, manipulative alcoholic who almost wrecked my marriage and me.

While I had a few sponsors along the way (most of them male due to the lack of female membership and sponsorship), I never really worked the steps with an SLAA sponsor until the last couple of years. Today I have a certified sex addiction therapist, a sponsor and I'm gratefully working on Step 6. For the most part, I find that the desire to act out has been lifted. But there are times of high stress, high opportunity when the addiction reminds me that "the wolf is always at the door," and that while I'm working my program the addict is doing pushups, growing and finding new and conniving ways to sabotage my attempts to regain a better life.

One day at a time, I give thanks to my Higher Power that I'm still alive, that there is a greater purpose for my life, and that I am learning to live life differently through the 12 Steps. I am grateful to be using the Internet today to connect to and gain the experience, strength and hope of a worldwide fellowship of men and women seeking recovery from the devastating personal and family effects of sex and love addiction. I do that in a variety of places -- an online Yahoo support group, Sex Addict Support community, a compulsive overeating group on The Junky's Wives Club and now In the Rooms.

Thanks for listening.

Are you a female sex addict?

2008-12-10T00:02:00.002-05:00

If you are a female sex addict and are looking for support, I would like to invite you to join the Sex Addict Support community started by fellow blogger, Ken over at My Sex Addiction.

Within the Sex Addict Support community I have started a Sisters in Recovery group for women in recovery from sex addiction. I look forward to seeing you there!

As an update to my recent post noting some triggering feelings -- they come and go, and I'm grateful that doing the next right thing helps me to move past the triggers, to search for the lesson in each episode.

A blip on the radar

2008-12-07T16:21:00.003-05:00

This is one of those thoughts that will pass, I feel pretty certain, but I wanted to write it down, just for the record. I'm feeling that sense of longing to be held and cuddled, to kiss and just feel good. It's not a sexual feeling. It's just a need for comfort.
The interesting thing is -- I've been having some of those very moments with my husband lately. Maybe they are triggering the dis-ease of "never enough." I'm not sure.
I don't feel like I am willing to act on these feelings by seeking some stranger out who would promise such kindness and then not give it.
Again, I'm just recording.

---

Update: These feelings have persisted throughout the day. They've shifted to more blatant ideations of acting out. Yet, each time they appear, I am simply saying to God -- take these, I don't want them. To be honest, at times it's pretty difficult not to just sit with the thoughts and let them linger long enough to give me a little buzz. But I know I can't afford that. I'm seeing this as an opportunity to practice turning over the urges to act out one at a time.

Sixth Step musings

2008-12-06T05:08:00.002-05:00

Step Six: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

Sixth Step Prayer: "God help me become willing to let go of all the things to which I still cling. Help me to be ready to let You remove all of these defects, that Your will and purpose may take their place."

I've been doing what I call a literature review on the Sixth Step this week. A literature review means I read from a variety of different texts the Sixth Step chapter. I am reading the step in the SLAA, SAA and SA texts, AA's Twelve Steps and 12 Traditions, and will search out a couple of daily reader readings on the step. I may even read from Paths to Recovery, an Al-Anon recovery book, and do some web searches for others who have written about the Sixth Step. As I read, I take notes on what stands out to me and write down any thoughts or questions I have.

This may seem a little excessive, but I find that my Higher Power has messages for me hidden everywhere, if I search for them.

What I find as I am reading through the literature is that my heart really is in Step 6. Occassionally, I've found myself working on one step in deed, while feeling my heart working on another (usually Step 3). I'm glad that my heart and mind are in sync now as I do the legwork toward completing this round of Step 6.

I've been pretty scared at the prospect of giving up dishonesty, and as I've shared before gluttony (by way of compulsive overeating). That seems ludicrous I know, to want to hold on to things that have hurt me. But as the SAA text says there's a big difference in wanting relief from the disease of addiction and wanting to let go of the old familiar ways of behavior. Both my overweight body and my lies have offered a veil of protection, at least to my addict's mind. They have both caused a lot of pain, as have the other character defects such as -- avoiding responsibility, living in fear -- which results in crippling perfectionism and isolation -- and ego-driven behaviors. (There's more, this is just where I'm focusing right now.)

So, for some time, after completing the Fifth Step, I have been praying around dishonesty, asking God for the willingness to have it removed from my character. I have seen my spirit shift from absolute fear at the prospect of being required to tell the truth as often as I can, to live an honest life, where there is no "alter ego," and abandoning my lies, to a willingness to let God do his work in my life. As far as I'm concerned, he's got a mighty big project turning me into a truthful, honest, whole person whose life is transparent, but I'll leave that up to him.

One of the things I read in the SAA text was that for every character defect, there is a character asset and that in order to prepare our hearts for the defect to be removed, we should begin to practice the character asset. That made a lot of sense to me. I am thankful this step calls on me to leave it up to my Higher Power to remove my defects. I am not able to remove them myself. But as the SLAA text says, "It was enough that we be willing to do the legwork, and be open-minded about what the end result would be. God's grace would give us freedom from the burden of our old self. In humility, we understood that we were only being asked to get out of God's way, so that, with our cooperation, God's work could be done in our lives."

Apart from that wonderful news that I just have to be willing to do the work, the most helpful message I've read thus far also came from the SLAA text, explaining that in working Steps 1-5 we addicts are walking away from the disease of sex and love addiction. Step 6, it says, is where the rebuilding of our lives begins. I felt such hope in reading that.

I also loved this passage from the SLAA text, "We came to understand that sex and love addiction appears to be a disease of actions when viewed from without, but is really a perversion of moral and ethical values as experienced from within. The spiritual dimensions of our dis-ease were now clear." As Don Henley says, "I've been tryin' to get down to the heart of the matter." I think I've found it, here in Step Six.

Seeking recovery

2008-11-29T12:09:00.001-05:00

When I first found SLAA I wanted to end the pain of my obsessional behavior, but I don't believe I honestly wanted recovery. I wanted to feel better about myself, but I kept turning to the disease in search of the only source of "feel good" I'd had in a long time. I had no foundation at that point to have faith in anything, even though the promises recovery offered sure sounded good.

I did come to believe, after the insanity continued, that it was going to take something bigger than me, bigger than any human power to save me. But, I wanted to be rescued from my insane behavior, not work for it. I had made a lot of half-hearted attempts at turning my will and my life over to the care of God as I understood God. But I was scared to death to surrender that illusion of control. I was seeking a self-made solution, but I had not been willing to follow the path to recovery as outlined in the AA Big Book and our SLAA text. I just wanted the source of that recovery to "appear" in my life and rescue me. I spent a lot of time in this particular phase -- thinking that if I just showed up that was going to be enough, that eventually the recovery would show up and I'd embrace it. And it's true that the fact that I just kept coming back did eventually get me to look around and say, "OK, all these other people are getting it ... what's going on with you?" And when I did that I began to truly seek recovery, rather than wait for it to find me.

The word seek means "To try to locate or discover; search for; To endeavor to obtain or reach; To go to or toward; To inquire for; request." The bottom line of all of those is some form of effort on my part. Seek doesn't mean to sit still and wait for it to land in my lap. One definition of recovery is "restoration from a condition of misfortune." Before I surrendered my will and my life absolutely, I wanted someone to just give me that restoration, so I could go on about my life. I was seeking serenity, a lifting of my desire to act out, great relationships and all the things that recovery offered, but I didn't have the willingness to work for them. After all, wasn't I entitled? I had been horribly victimized as a child, and my acting out was all about me trying to deal with that.

I heard something today that described my condition then: "Doing the right thing brought momentary happiness, but it was not enough to sustain me." I can stop acting out, but that's not enough. There's more. What?!? More. Isn't that enough? Withdrawal and avoiding relapses was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life! There's MORE???

Just as I have to eat three meals a day to keep up my energy; just as I can't exercise once a week and expect to lose two pounds; just as I can't read a single chapter of a book and expect to know its contents, seeking the path to recovery means working a diligent program of recovery throughout the day every day. It means building a foundation of faith by seeking a relationship and intimacy with myself and my Higher Power, not just once a week when I sit down to do step work, but through regular prayer and meditation -- improving my conscious contact. It means learning the tools that work for me and using them consistently, not just once but again and again and again, even if it makes me want to vomit.

Today I am seeking recovery not only because I want the restoration, the peace, joy and freedom it offers, but because I have surrendered my fallible ways and need to know what steps to take in an onward direction. It took every step I have taken to get here, and it will take one step at a time to go forward. I'm simply thankful that I can clearly see the direction is forward, because I am doing the work offered by my Higher Power to propel me ahead. The path is outlined in many texts including the AA Big Book, the SLAA Text and any number of religious and spiritual volumes. There are many people in my life and in the 12-step rooms who are willing to help direct and guide me and you. All we have to do is seek it.

Thanks for listening and being a part of my journey.

2008-11-25T11:54:00.003-05:00

I just finished my semi-weekly session with my therapist. I'm beginning to wonder if I should just call each session the great enlightment.

Today we talked about this troublesome feeling I'm having regarding my difficulty balancing my need to do recovery work and my need to live my life by way of keeping up with day to day chores and responsibilities.

I described to her a conflict I had with the hubby this morning in which he criticized me for doing so much work on myself, trying to help others, but not being able to get three simple "responsible" tasks finished yesterday.

She reiterated the story to me in her own words, and in a flash I could see that this conflict is a misperception rather than a reality, and that the misperception is coming from my addictive black and white thinking. I have some idea that I have to do EVERYTHING in recovery and do it perfectly in order to get it to "work," even if that means setting aside my whole life.

She explained that recovery is a place of gray, where I learn to integrate the black and the white and do the next right thing. Shifting my responsibilities as a member of the human race -- things like housework, paying the bills, walking and feeding my dog, taking care of myself, in order to try to do every single thing that has ever been written in a recovery book perfectly is not recovering, it's obsessing and it's not healthy. Neither is incessantly ill-planned use of my indiscriminate time a wise recovery choice. Doing the next "right" thing means spending set amounts of time nurturing my relationship with myself and my Higher Power, then setting about the progress oof meeting my assigned responsibilities first, followed by doing the things that are required, but without a designated time. This last category of time -- non-designated, is the area where I feel I most need to set boundaries.

I was really reminded in my discussions with my therapist of the value of practicing mindfulness. Things like planning my day by setting goals and boundaries (a to do list with time boundaries), focusing on my recovery program before I ever leave the driveway or sit down at the computer, are great tools for having a more productive, less compulsive day.

All that said, I'm off to pick up my dog from the groomer and get busy with a number of chores around the house. I owe my new sponsor some answers to some questions she asked, and I'll designate an hour this afternoon to answering those, and another hour to doing recovery work via sponsorship and service to my recovery program.

I'm thankful today to have began the day by turning my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand God, and for being willing to feel the feelings of frustration and disappointment with myself and my progress in recovery. It opened the door for some valuable lessons as I walked in to see my therapist this morning and as I take each step of this day.

Glimpses

2008-11-24T10:24:00.005-05:00

As I was walking Saturday, I had a profound insight regarding the value of my feelings. My feelings, I realized, are merely glimpses that I am alive. They are not to be feared, or shunned, but rather to be cherished. Out of habit and disease, I have walked around so cut off from the vast majority of my feelings. Feeling is one of my most unique characteristics as a human being, a valued part of my human existence. Being able to recognize that is monumental.

Regardless of this awakening, I can't suddenly "start feeling" just because I have accepted that feeling is OK. I have to work to change old habits, to continually become more mindful. I have been working recently on focusing on the present, of being aware that I have never lived this moment before and will never live it again. So many of the last years, and perhaps all my life, I have lived with my mind focused on the past or projecting into the future, saddened and scared, but reeling in the need to RUN! fast too escape any consequences. It takes practice to even bring myself to the present moment, to put away all those thoughts and the noise that runs like a soundtrack in my mind. However, when I am present, I am feeling the value of being still and being quiet. When I do this, I feel much closer to my Higher Power, much more in tune with the process of listening to the "still, quiet voice." This state of consciousness makes practicing the Third Step much easier.

Another realization I experienced as a result of opening my heart and mind to my Higher Power relates to the work I am doing on the Sixth Step. I had been sort of freaking out at the concept of being rid of all my character defects
and this morning it occurred to me the step says, "Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character." It doesn't say, "Get rid of all your character defects." I know from experience that the god of my understanding has his own timing. I have lessons yet to learn, work left to do, but all this step asks is that I be "entirely ready." It's most certainly true that I don't want to live with the defects of greed, fear, dishonesty and more. I see the destruction they have caused in my life and I'm willing to do the work of the Sixth Step to move from uncertainty to being "entirely ready" to have GOD, not me, remove my defects of character.

Both of these "awakenings" came during my morning walk with my dog. I have come to see this time as a great opportunity to connect to my inner being and Higher Power. In the process of breathing in deep breaths of the fresh morning air, feeling the sun rise above me or the cold wind on my face, I feel alive and open. One of my first sponsors in the SLAA program was a man of Cherokee heritage. He encouraged me to go outside to pray and I found his suggestion to be incredibly useful. It has helped me not only believe that there is a living energy that is a power greater than myself, but also to feel that energy within and surrounding me. The more connected I am to that power, the more safe I feel to experience and explore my feelings without searching for coping mechanisms.

In place

2008-11-21T13:36:00.000-05:00

Every city has them, one of those suburbs where all the people look like they've stepped out of a prim and proper machine. You know, the kind where the most underdressed person is wearing designer jeans and suede flats, along with a blouse that looks as if it is fresh from dry cleaner after having been worn for the first time last week. The kind where women sit with their backs erect and place little pieces of lettuce into "on the side" dressing, then bring it to their perfectly pink lips. I'm sitting at a cafe in one such place. Needless to say, my brown sweat pants and thermal undershirt are a little out of place, as is my oversized body and face without makeup. But that's OK, because Esperanza is here, smiling at me, knowing that I'll talk to her a bit, even though we struggle to communicate in each of our native languages.

This particular suburb is knowing for its conservative attitudes and multitude of churches. It is filled with suburban mothers who carry their children to preppy cafes with WiFi access and force their equally preppy, glossy husbands with plenty of hair product to meet them for lunch, so that they can be gophers and bus boys and show their abilities as fathers.

Perhaps I'm judgmental of places like this because I secretly want to be one of these prissy people. Or perhaps I am observant because I'm thankful that I have no desire to be like them.

Either way, I identify more with Esperanza, who cleans the tables and smiles pleasantly, feeling different than the rest, but in some way happy to be here, watching.

Thanksgiving terror

2008-11-20T22:39:00.003-05:00

As I stepped out into the cold, crisp midwestern air tonight, bound for a short evening walk with my dog, I heard a car engine start across the street, and as I walked forward I saw its lights come on. It was a white car, and the shape of the headlights looked familiar. Immediately I was struck with a flashback of terror, of the many days while living in another state -- literally and figuratively -- I walked outside my house feeling dread, fear and a state of panic. I would look around at every car, and wait for a figure to step out of the shadows, drunk and ready to fight, ready to reveal my secrets and ruin my life.

I have not felt that fear in a long time, but I cannot forget it. It was a fear that rose up in my chest on Thanksgiving morning two years ago when R. sent me a text message before 6 a.m., telling me if I didn't come and get my "shit" from his apartment, that he was going to bring it to my house and I could explain where it came from. I was terrified, knowing he was drunk and capable of anything. I was still living under the delusion that I loved him and that he loved me. In fact, I lived under the spell for four more months -- lay in his arms as my husband got the call that his mother was dead, made myself sick with worry that he would kill himself, lost myself in the insanity of fear that I might hurt him if I said goodbye.

Tonight's headlights were just the neighbor, but they were a grim reminder that lurking in the shadows are many hidden secrets that still could rise up to haunt me, to take away this marriage that is finally beginning to come together.

I heard someone say at a meeting earlier this evening that his sobriety was the most important thing in the world to him. It was the first time I actually nodded my head and agreed. Without my sobriety, I have nothing, I risk everything.

In the past few months a couple of newcomers to the program asked me if it couldn't be possible that in their own cases that the love between them and their qualifier was real. Who am I to judge? I don't know. I can only speak for myself, and what I know is that my "love" for R. felt like the most real thing I'd ever experienced. In hindsight, in sobriety, I can see it was the scariest, most terrifying experience of my life. I was willing to risk my marriage, my self-respect, and all my dignity, to please his never ending need for love and acceptance. More than all my dozens of careless sexcapades, losing myself in my cunning, baffling and powerful addiction to this man was the most dangerous risk I ever took. Walking away alive with my mind even slightly intact is a miracle I can only credit to my Higher Power.

Deeper and deeper

2008-11-20T11:56:00.003-05:00

I went to see my therapist yesterday after a five-week hiatus. I needed some time to absorb all that's been coming at me. She is so on point with so many things Yesterday I mentioned something about my husband working 13 hours and all weekend last week, and she asked if that was seasonal or if it was common. I expressed that he does have a problem with giving excessive amounts of time and attention to work and her eyes lit up. She gave me a list of characteristics of partners of workaholics. So many of them were dead on. She said it is important as I recover from all my "sickness" that it's important to know what all of it is.

I also talked with her about my fears of giving up dishonesty and how dishonesty has played a role in setting boundaries. I explained that I can set boundaries, but then I have come to find that I just lie about whether I kept them or not so I don't really value the boundaries. For example, if I set a timer to regulate how long I'm at the computer, the timer goes off and I just ignore it. The nutritionist says write down all your food, but I leave off the candy bar I ate. My husband asks did you go to the gym, and I say yes, even though I didn't darken the door. All of this is to my detriment, but I seem to be programmed to try to get away with things. My sixth step is where I'm supposed to become "entirely ready" to let go of my defects of character. I'm not feeling half ready, much less entirely. And that frustrates me.

My therapist also had me read a passage on deprivation from one of Patrick Carnes' other workbooks called Facing the Shadow, and showed me the cycle between binging and purging, with not only food but behaviors as well. She said a workaholic who marries another workaholic (both hubby and I were workaholics when we were married -- then work didn't give me a high anymore so I switched to sex) might tend to go into the purge mode after some time, and that might be what's going on with my "inability" to stay focused professionally.

As I said to her ... the onion just keeps peeling.

Sharing my day to day

2008-11-18T08:04:00.000-05:00

This time last year, one of the bloggers I miss so very much, Bella at Beyond the Map, committed to writing on her blog every day for a month. I've been lax in keeping up here, but am going to make a commitment to write more often.

Even though there's been a lot of growth going on in my recovery and my life, I have not been posting. I've written about that before -- that it seems I only want to come here when things are bad. However, I think it is important that I share in good times and bad.

I have been isolating a bit from everyone as I look inward, and I suppose not showing up here is a form or isolating as well. As I unravel the web of emotions and thoughts that race through my psyche these days it almost feels like I want to keep it all inside until I sort it out and THEN share.

Of course, just as I'm experiencing even at this very minute, I know that as I write things start to become more clear to me, less confusing and less chaotic.

So, as I said, I'm going to work on coming back here more often and writing.

Doing my part

2008-11-15T18:17:00.002-05:00

Since sharing my 5th Step with a trusted friend, I have felt myself open a more clear channel to my Higher Power. In doing so, this week I recognized a need to more thoroughly study recovery literature. I followed that "still quiet voice" into my first AA meeting on Thursday. Including that meeting, I've been to four AA meetings in the past three days.

Mind you that the AA Fellowship Club where I attended three of these meetings is less than five minutes from my house. It's been there for the full year I've lived in this house, and long before. I've never even known it was there, nor thought to darken the door of an AA room until Thursday, when that still, quiet voice said "Find it." I'm thankful to have been open and listening.

Don't misunderstand. I'm thankfully not plagued with the disease of alcoholism, though for the sake of my SLAA sobriety and my health, I do have a desire to stop drinking -- which is enough to qualify me to attend these meetings, particularly open meetings. Right now I simply need to study the 12 steps and 12 traditions and recovery literature in great depth. I need to hear the stories of recovery that I heard in those rooms where men and women have gathered for years together to read the AA Big Book and the 12&12. I need to hear from people whose sponsors have sponsored sponsors say things like, "It doesn't matter how you work the steps, you just have to do them." and "The most important step you work is the First Step."

As a result of attending these AA meetings over the past three days, I've gained a lot of insight into working my Sixth Step -- just by keeping my mouth shut and listening and applying what I learned to my SLAA program. I also heard a lot about the 9th step, and heard ESH from those who have done it. It was valuable insight, and I'm so grateful to have had access to it, to have been willing to go to any lengths to get it.

Because SLAA is a relatively new fellowship (founded in the 70s), I don't have access to multiple meetings with strong recovery, and in the SLAA meetings I do attend, the focus is often on the problem rather than the solution. I rarely even hear a person in an SLAA meeting who can say they've worked a 9th step, much less share their ESH on it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not running SLAA down, nor am I insinuiating that there aren't SLAA meetings all over the world where people are living in the solution rather than the problem. I am simply saying that those meetings are not, and have not been, in five years accessible to me. An online support group has been my lifeline to the SLAA program. I know that I am not alone. Thus I am committed to doing my part, with the strength and guidance of my Higher Power, to stay sober and continue to do service by serving as a sponsor and encourage others to join me in building a stronger culture of sobriety in our program.

Through this program, my life has been saved. I believe in it. I'll keep coming back and doing my part, because that's the only way it works for me.

I am forgiven

2008-11-11T11:36:00.002-05:00

After three long years of searching fearlessly inside myself, examining my motives, my behaviors, my resentments, my fears and my misconduct, I have completed my 4th Step, and shared it today with a trusted friend, in completion of my 5th Step.

When I finished reading the things I had written as part of my 4th Step inventory, my friend shared with me something a priest with whom he'd shared his 4th step with several years ago told him. "God is pleased that you have done this and you are forgiven."

Wow ... what powerful words. "You are forgiven."

Obviously, my friend, nor even the priest can speak for God, but the uplifting I felt in my heart told me that the words were true.

In John 1:9 of the Big Book of Christianity, it is written, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."

There was so much pain, resentment, anger and misconduct, as well as recognition of the positive changes and attributes of my character in my inventory. I offered up my whole truth and took full responsibility for it.

Today is an important day. I feel the peace of forgiveness. I feel lighter and more open to be filled with the loving grace of a power greater than myself.

Thank you sweet Spirit of Life for the gift of your grace and forgiveness, and thank you dear friend for the kindness of your ear. I am truly blessed.

Women are sex addicts too

2008-11-08T06:47:00.003-05:00

I found this article on the Fox News website, not a place I spend much time:

Sex addiction. The term conjures up visions of men addicted to pornography or unable to commit to one woman.

But the so-called disease isn't just for men. Women are sex addicts too and some experts say almost a third of people treated for sex addiction are females.

“In America, 30 percent of people coming in for treatment for sex addiction are female,” Don Serratt, director of Life Works, which offers sex-addiction treatment in the UK, told the Times of London. “They’ll come for help with alcoholism, drug addiction or depression and, in the course of treatment, the sex addiction — the root cause of the other addictions — will be uncovered."

Susan Cheever, a self-confessed sex addict and author of "Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction," said it is common for women to blur the lines between the compulsions of love and sex. “If there is a difference between sex and love addiction, I don’t know what it is,” she said. “Sometimes people say they just fall in love too frequently. Are they saying they don’t want to have sex with those people? Love addict sounds nicer for sure.”

According to the National Association of Sexual Addiction Problems, about 14 million adults are sex addicts. That’s 1 out of 17 adult Americans. But FOXSexpert Yvonne Fulbright isn't sold on the concept of addiction to sex.

"An addiction, such as to alcohol or tobacco, is a physiological dependence," Fulbright wrote in a column. "Deprived of a fix, an addict has physiological reactions, like increased heart rate or the sweats. Physiological changes take place — changes that a "sex addict" does not experience when denied sex. Thus, the addiction label is quite deceptive."

To Ms. Fulbright I offer my congratulations that she is NOT a sex addict, otherwise she would know that her statements that "sex addiction is a crock," and the following quote from the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous' chapter on withdrawal. Anyone who has not gone through this process might find it impossible to comprehend the physiological, not to mention the gut-wrenching emotional, reactions. However, having been there myself, I attest that there is a very real emotional and physical process of withdrawal from a very real addiction that affects men and women, young and old, poor and rich, fat and skinny, powerful and powerless, gay and straight, and any other combination of humans.

This unraveling was wrenching. We found it necessary to live through withdrawal in day-at-a-time, twenty-four hour compartments. We would awaken in the morning, sometimes very early, and inwardly exclaim, "Oh God! Another day of THIS!" Sometimes we found ourselves wishing that we had died in our sleep. Regardless of how we felt, however, we asked in prayer for God's help in facing the day at hand. If we had any grievances with God, we threw those in, too. No one was trying to force us to trump up gratitude! We were striving to be "honest," not "good."

We would then embark on our day. Living alone, as many of us were at this time, even the daily rituals of bathing, clothing and feeding ourselves became very important. Just going through these ordinary tasks was an affirmation of our caring for ourselves.

We then surveyed the day. There probably were tasks we needed to attend to, whether paying the rent, doing the laundry, shopping, or going to work. Physical activity, even as basic as taking a long walk, could get us out into the day a bit. Some took up jogging, or other exercises that required greater physical effort. These helped to provide a physical sensation of tiredness which could fill the void left by the absence of sexual release, or even replace it. Contact with other S.L.A.A. members or trusted friends, perhaps members of other Twelve-Step fellowships, was helpful. Attending open A.A. or Al-Anon meetings was likely to be possible, or perhaps we were fortunate enough to have an S.L.A.A. meeting in our area. Maybe we were trying to start such a meeting, and had tasks to attend to there.

The purpose of all this was not to clutter our day with activity. Most of us needed rest and solitude just as much as we needed other tasks, personal contacts and responsibilities. We were, within ourselves, expending as much energy as most people do who hold full-time jobs and maintain active family lives. In fact, most of us were "working" far harder than we ever had before. After all, we were working at standing still, at freeing ourselves from the tentacled clasp of a frightful addiction which had driven us to such a pitch of self-destroying activity. Simply not doing it took tremendous effort. We were suspending, for the moment, our very real fears concerning the outcome of all this by attending to those tasks immediately at hand. We were living in the immediate present, and discovering that we could indeed make it through an hour, or a morning (mourning!), or a day. And we were discovering that there was a joy to be had in successfully negotiating our way through each twenty-four hour period.

Destined to numb

2008-11-06T18:21:00.002-05:00

So I can't eat, can't have wild liasons real or imagined ... so I play Solitare to avoid, and occassionally read political blogs. I am working on finishing up some key step work. Maybe I needed to numb a bit today. Thank you God for the many ways I still have to avoid!

Feelings

2008-11-03T17:54:00.001-05:00

Today's reading in Answers in the Heart focused on my favorite topic -- honesty. One part that stood out to me was: "The more we grow, the more we develop our ability to make one choice at a time, to experience one feeling at a time, to tell the truth one situation at a time. We admit to ourselves when we feel guilty, angry, fearful, resentful -- the difficult feelings that are hard to face."

I certainly have recognized that it is important to "feel" rather than to continue to numb those feelings with sex and love addiction, but feelings do still scare me and I do find myself continuing to want to run away from them somehow, rather than get honest with myself about how I am feeling.

Most recently, I have began to face the "other place" I go to medicate when not using sex or love to avoid myself and my feelings -- that place is food. A little less than two years ago, I started working an addiction program around food and ended up relapsing in this program. Thank God I found my way back ONCE again to SLAA. But today I am doing my best to work both programs and have to admit that I'm scared. I feel lonely and empty and an overall feeling of sadness.

It seems so strange to me to mourn the loss of two things (the diseases of compulsive overeating and sex and love addiction) that I have used to hurt and injure myself in so many ways. Yet, just like surrendering dishonesty, being without these coping mechanisms that have served me for so long leaves me feeling very vulnerable and afraid.

Anyone who has known me at any level probably has understood that it is very, very difficult for me to feel vulnerable. Control and confidence feel much more comfortable to me. But those are no good if they are empty, if they are not based in reality, if they are fueled by acting out or eating to cover and soothe my feelings.

So, for today I will be honest and say that I don't feel good. I feel an emptiness in my stomach and in my heart. I want to isolate. I have no desires to act out, but I choose to be honest enough to say that I will continue to suffer until I turn to my Higher Power, not food or sex or love for comfort. I also am willing to admit that I feel scared to share these things. I am afraid of judgment and just as afraid of the intimacy required for someone to show me their genuine support. Just for today I'm facing those fears.

Some things don't make sense

2008-11-02T06:21:00.002-05:00

I have began, once again, to face my love-hate relationship with food. It is an addiction, no doubt. I use food as a friend and isolate myself inside this body, at times treating myself to a slow, but certainly early death.

I have been willing over these years to come here to this confessional and write about the dozens of men I've met and bedded or played sex games with, about my struggles with romantic and sexual obsessions, yet somehow coming here to write about my lifelong, daily struggle with food, seems more shaming than anything I've written thus far.

I live in constant shame as my short, obese body moves about in the world. I walk into a room and search for the chair where I'll be least obtrusive, the seat where I'll fit in best. I walk into job interviews knowing that the very first thing anyone notices is my weight.

I am ashamed as I sit in restaurants, or even in my car, for other people to see me eat. I feel their eyes, filled with shame glaring with contempt, thinking things like, "Disgusting. Don't you care about yourself?"

One of my compulsions as it relates to food is drive-thrus. I literally drive down the road, after stopping at a drive-thru, hoping I don't have to stop at any traffic lights so that no one can watch me eating that burger.

Another compulsion is buying candy bars, cookies and cakes from convenience stores. Again, I eat these all in hiding. Ashamed, beyond words, buying more and and more to cover the shame, and building a larger and larger exterior that will never hide the hurt.

I have lived this way since I was a child. I am not sure I would know how to act if I weren't fat. I grew up the fat kid in school -- a compulsive overeater, my love affair with food going back as far as I can remember.

I had some fat friends for a while who I could laugh with about it. We made jokes about all the things we couldn't do. But behind those laughs was a deep pain in our hearts that each of us understood without speaking. Two of my "fat friends" have recently lost their weight. When they talk about how freeing it is to go into a "regular" store at the mall and have something fit, I yearn for that feeling. It's only plus-size shops for me, for as long as I can remember.

It is very, very painful to live like this, and when I think about powerlessness ... it's almost unimaginable how powerless I feel over the disease of compulsive overeating.

So, here I go again, joining a program at my gym with other overweight women, thrilled that mine is not the highest weight in the room, seeking to move forward in becoming wholly healthy through better food choices and regular exercise. I realize that because of my shame, I have a lot self-will. Thus, unlike times in the past, I am very aware of my need to surrender my will and my life over to a power greater than myself. And that power mustn't be the food.

I have a lot fear (which is the absence of faith), because the last time I tried to tackle my compulsive overeating issues, I had a serious relapse in my sex addiction program. This all goes back to that constant need for some form of escape. I think for a long time I used work as my escape. I don't have work to turn to now.

I know, without a doubt, that it is my Higher Power that I must turn to. God please help me. I cannot do this alone.

Making note

2008-10-19T12:28:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure if I'm looking for someone to blame or just revealing those deeper truths I wrote about in my last post, but I've realized something I think I should make note of and explore further.

After my husband and I moved from my home state to the northeast, I developed a strong friendship with one of his friends. We became very close. Slowly I began to see my husband become more and more resentful of the friendship and eventually he told me that if I continued to talk to this person he was going to continue to be angry and irritable. I cried a lot of tears over this, but I followed my husband's lead and stopped talking to his friend. One weekend when my husband went out of town, I called the friend and told him what had happened -- crying all through the conversation. Since that time, I never initiate conversations with that friend or talk to him very long or in depth, when we do speak. There is a wall of silence and understanding.

Knowing what I know now, I realize in many ways I was intriguing with this friend, I was obsessed with him at some level. I simply appreciated the fact that he would talk to me, and laugh with me, and was not so self-absorbed in his work that he didn't have time for me. I don't believe I was sexually attracted to him, but I do see signs of my sex and love addiction -- as I'm sure my husband did, without understanding what it was all about.

My realization today is that it was just a few months after I ended this friendship at my husband's insistence, that I began to seek out other men via the Internet, and eventually began to meet them for offline affairs.

The layers of truth keep coming.

Where am I?

2008-10-15T18:57:00.003-04:00

In response to my sister's question, "How are you doing today?" I responded:

"I'm doing fine."

In response to a blog reader who wrote to check in and note my absent silence, I wrote:

"I'm not sure where I am to be honest -- somewhere between here and there, feeling shifts, as I have been for years, but uncertain at times if I'm capable of dealing with them. Like you, I've uncovered new things ... they relate to ... my own fundamental fears and faulty thinking. The truth is deeper than I realized.

The fear of what lies beneath these shifts takes me back to a familiar place ... a place where I feel pleasure and pain, freedom and imprisonment."

In response to EC about why I was not writing to him, I wrote:

"I really just feel like I've backed myself in a corner in every relationship I have. I've done it to myself, I'm not whining, nor seeking reassurance -- I just feel that there is no where to turn anymore. There's no where to turn, because my need to be perfect blocks my willingness to be honest. My need to be perfect is based on a fear of judgement, thus rejection. It's flawed thinking. I know. I can hardly even write these words because this fear grips me so completely. The irony is, that in the process of running away from rejection, I have closed myself off completely from acceptance.

I sat in (my therapist's) office yesterday and started crying at the thought of how very scared I am to be an honest human being, to give up that alter ego of disease, to not have dishonesty to hide behind. The idea of being whole, though I want it -know that it is God's will for me, scares me to death. I fear I cannot function. Is that a cop-out? Maybe. I don't know. I just know I felt that fear completely sitting there with her."

Where am I? That's a deep, dark secret that even I don't know.

Restless

2008-09-24T01:40:00.002-04:00

Just before going to bed tonight, my husband told me he had been approached about an opportunity to return to our home state again. I felt the heaviness settle in immediately. Already today I've been troubled at a core level by the current state of affairs in our country -- economically, politically, socially. And this just added to the pile of unsettled feelings.

The depth of my despair, the affair with R., the isolation and loneliness I felt when we returned "home" last time all came to mind, as did the possibilities of how I would want to do things differently this time if we did return. All of these worries are a million miles from premature, but they are with me. Thoughts of my family, of the strained relations, of the opportunities to spend time with old friends, of the lack of support systems in terms of recovery resources, of the lower cost of living, of hubby's leveraging power and long-term feelings of job security -- they all are swimming in my head. Nothing is concrete within me ... just restless feelings.

God knows what God has in store ... I guess the best I can do for tonight is turn it over to him and know that I will not be given more than I can endure.

A book review

2008-09-21T12:30:00.006-04:00

It’s been a long time since I read an entire book within three days, but Kerry Cohen’s “Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity,” kept calling me back until I devoured every word. In the end, I felt something more than understood, more than kinship. What I felt was connected … to myself.

As the book closed, I sobbed with a hurting heart, but I sobbed for me.

There are few parallels between the writer and myself except for the overriding theme of the book – sexual addiction, and perhaps her love of writing, although even that is different than my own love for the craft. So unlike me, Cohen grew up in a rich family in the Northeast, used drugs, was Jewish, and most of all she was unmarried. Her awareness of her behavior and her battle with it began when she was young. I was middle aged.

Still, it is not the differences that kept me turning page after page of this relatively short work. It is our commonalities and finding myself hidden in the pages, in her words.

She writes about relationships with specific boys, Eli, Leif, Zachary, Toby and others, and then she will have sections like, “Inevitably though, I get distracted. This time the distraction’s name is Matthew …. Next is Kyle … Then Miles. Then Jack. Then Randy. Each one I hope will be something more than sex …” Like me, she sometimes even forgets the names of the men she sleeps with.

Of all the men Cohen writes about sleeping with in this autobiographical piece, only one was married. Very few, if any of the men I have encountered along my journey of addiction have been single. But just like the author, I was selfishly driven by acceptance, the need for one person to want me (my substitute for love) more than he wanted his wife. I craved love and acceptance, was obsessed with getting it. Some days I still am.

Regarding the married man she meets at an artists’ colony, Cohen writes, “I want to be saved from myself, from my hurting. I want a boy like Frank to lift me up like a dead thing and breathe me into life.”

“I lie on my bed … and feel how badly I want Frank with me. How I want his interest in me to mean something, to mean I’m worth something as big as ending his marriage. It’s so selfish, I know. Some time later when I’m married myself, I’ll know just how selfish. After years of tangling your lives, making compromises and concessions, of building a shared life, it’s appalling to imagine someone else, some outside person, dismissing all of this for her own gain. But I don’t think of any of that now. I feel the wanting in my bone marrow. It’s like a nasty virus that won’t die.”

As she wrote of those moments when the addiction takes over, she described herself as being “all body and desperation.” Those moments, for her and for me, are void of any sane thought.

By the way, Cohen never uses the word addiction nor does she ever talk about recovery. This is definitely not a story of how SLAA or some other recovery program saved her life. This is simply the story of Cohen’s journey through years of longing, craving and sacrificing everything good and real in her life for that one little taste of acceptance that could never be found.

After a particularly revealing and rare conversation with her mother, Cohen lays in bed and thinks of her mom. I cry with connection to her words, “I think about her – how, like me, she doesn’t know how to keep love in her life. It pains me to think of her like this, lost and wanting, desperate for love. … I’m like that too, aren’t I? That little girl inside, clawing her way through life, wanting, always wanting, never, ever getting enough to feel filled. It’s so ugly. So profoundly sad and ugly. I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

I also cry when she writes about a particular moment when she realizes with clarity that no matter what she thinks of him, her drug addicted, love avoidant father who had no idea how to parent her other than to buy her things, really just didn’t want her to turn out to be like him.

But it is in the end, when after she has married Michael, and sits through her fears that he will reject her when he knows the truth of her behavior, or worse that she “will do something stupid” that I find the real connection to my own recovery.

One night not long after her wedding she is sitting in a bar watching a band with her friends, when a man in a booth across the bar catches her eye. “I’m back there, the yearning, the hoping,” she writes. But as they reach the door to leave, he makes his move and she has the courage to tell him, “I’m sorry. I’m married.”

As she curls up next to Michael that night, “he slips an arm around my middle and nuzzles his face into my neck. I close my eyes and listen to him breathing. How lovely that sound is. Maybe, I think, I don’t have to be great at this; maybe I just have to be good enough.”

Perfectionism has at times eroded all hopes of my recovery. Cohen’s final sentence was a beautiful example of self-acceptance. Just as I am, the best that I can be, that is enough.

Laying in bed, my body curled against my husband, the longing subsides, the void is filled. I am alive. I am at peace. Even if it’s just for tonight.

Practicing self care

2008-09-16T08:50:00.000-04:00

The first question my therapist asked me yesterday morning was "Give me an example of how you have practiced self care since I've last seen you." It often takes me some time to pull up examples from the long ago past so I shared with her how I had returned a phone call that morning that I really wanted to ignore in favor of isolation. It was a small victory -- but a victory nonetheless.

Her question -- as it was intended to -- has prompted me to look at self-care and think about how I practiced it since our session. One way I did so was by going immediately to the library and journaling about what we had discussed during the sesson, writing out the thoughts while they were fresh in my mind. A second way was that during the session I asked her to help me process my anxiety surrounding taking a couple of classes this semester to explore the possibility of a second career. I also got honest with her, and then later at a telemeeting and then an evening face to face meeting about how these anxieties had caused me last week to become "emotionally needy" with a male friend to a point of distraction for me and irritation for the both of us.

Another form of self-care that I have practiced over the past couple of days has been to allow myself to feel the feelings from a terse but honest e-mail from that same male friend and to ask myself what the lessons are to be learned -- there are multitues. During that same period I have responded only briefly to say thank you and that I would let things settle in and then write back later. I found myself practicing this same sort of self-care last night when just at bedtime my husband decided to get in a huff over something that hadn't been done and get all irritable and snappy. I don't feel good going to bed like that. So rather than engage him in a fight, or try to change his behavior, I prayed and asked God to release me from my need to control the situation and to have his will not mine. As a result I began to rub and scratch my husband's back, as I do most nights before we sleep, and just show him love. It released the tension for both of us and I woke up in the middle of the night to feel him closely snuggled against me, something that always feels like a sign of sweet intimacy and love.

I woke up with another thought of self care on my mind. I have a pattern, even a disease, of wanting to constantly care for others. The truth, however, is I'm operating without a net. I provide a network of support through service in the SLAA fellowship, sponsorship, starting meetings, leading meetings -- all the while operating without a truly active sponsor myself. Yes, I have a sponsor in another fellowship, but honestly she does not provide me the wisdom of the steps or even regular fellowship. I have come to depend on my Higher Power, my therapist, and the fellowship itself as my sponsor. Those are places I can go to seek feedback and guidance. Still, I am there on a daily basis for my sponsees, for others who seek my counsel, without thought that no one is really there for me on a daily or weekly basis. This makes me susceptible to feeling alone, which can in turn lead to a desire to act out. I think another area of self care I can exercise is reaching out for the supportive fellowship of a sponsor.

On a similar note, I woke up thinking, I have started a telemeeting, a step meeting, a face to face meeting in this fellowship, but I need to practice simply being a member in recovery. As the leader I get great satisfaction out of helping others, but I don't get the humility of simply "being." Being a leader puts me in a position of feeling "better than", which keeps me from feeling "less than," all the while opening the door for me to be less than willing to share honestly in meetings about my own vulnerabilities -- which is a great detriment to my recovery. I see this lack of humility as a character defect that is standing in my way of progress. I see recognition of this character defect and the willingness to get honest and examine it as a form of self care.

A quiet day for reading

2008-09-14T10:05:00.000-04:00

I'm thankful to have had some time yesterday to catch up on reading blogs. I was reminded today how helpful it is to my sobriety to read the blogs of the wives and ex-wives of male sex addicts. Reading about the pain they have been through reminds me that sexual addiction has many victims, and also renews my committment to do as little additional harm in my life as possible. The unfortunate thing is that reading those blogs and making a heartfelt committment to never hurt a woman like that again does not erase the fact that I am an addict. Sex and love addicts, according to their very characteristics, "sexualize stress, guilt, loneliness, anger, shame, fear and envy. We use sex or emotional dependence as substitutes for nurturing, care, and support." My committment has to be more than not hurting other people -- because that binds me to the shame of all the people I have hurt in the past, which I will without fail attempt to cover with the insanity of taking a sexual or romantic holiday from my emotions. If I truly had to bear all the guilt I "should" feel at once ... it would be equivalent to plugging the entire electrical system of New York City into the outlet that runs this computer. Everything inside me would be fried. So my commitment has to be learning healthy ways of relating to others and taking care of myself, joining with these women who have been hurt in the process of healing.

I am also reading, at the suggestion of my new therapist, a book by Kelly McDaniel called "Ready to Heal," written specifically for female sex, love and relationship addicts. The reading has raised a number of questions about the messages society sends to women about sex -- and the ones I have picked up on. McDaniel asserts that women hold one or more of four cultural beliefs that cause them conflict with sexuality and relationships. The four beliefs are: 1. I must be good to be worthy of love. 2. If I am sexual, I am bad. 3. I am not really a woman unless someone desires me sexually or romantically and 4. I must be sexual to be lovable. McDaniel contends, and it makes sense to me that holding two or more of these beliefs puts a woman in a double bind -- If she sexual to be lovable, then she believes she is bad. And if she is bad, then she is not worthy of love, and if she is not worthy of love, then she must not be a real woman. There is very likely a corresponding theory for men -- as men are often raised to think that they must be good too be loved and if they are not sexual then they certainly are not REAL men. Likewise there are cultural messages that say men are nothing more to women than sperm and cash donors. Reading this book is causing me to really look closely at the subliminal messages I have picked up on regarding sex and love. One more layer of the onion being peeled away.

I should also note that I'm getting a lot of what can only amount to Higher Power messages that are opening my heart more about more honest disclosure about my addiction to my husband. I am willing to wait and listen and continue to be open to God's will for our lives.

A day's difference

2008-09-12T10:28:00.002-04:00

Two days ago I was feeling so sad, crying, hurting. I had picked up the bottle of love addiction I leave sitting on the table and taken a drink. That was supposedly easier than dealing with my feelings of self-doubt, fear and frustration surrounding continued struggles with concentration and self-discipline. Rather than accept my lack of perfection and give thanks for my assets and opportunities, I allowed myself to be pulled into a self-created, self-absorbed drama so that I could escape feelings of inadequacy.

Today, after proving to myself that while I might not be perfect, I am functional, worthwhile and loved. I am grateful this morning for some quiet time to read, to get some extra rest and to enjoy the gentle flow of life. I'm thankful that my life feels lighter and that I don't have to worry about getting what I need. I know my Higher Power will provide it to me.

One by one

2008-09-10T17:25:00.003-04:00

I've written before that I probably never should listen to country music. Of course, I keep going back and listening to it and thinking about things that end up in euphoric recall.

I've already had my share of struggles today with feeling sort of triggered, and listening to some music about romantic love and sad goodbyes just doesn't help. If I'm honest, the underlying "jonesing" for a "fix" has been going on for a few days. When I ask what I'm needing to medicate it's probably a feeling that I'm just not capable of discipline, responsibility, and success. I know at some intellectual level that is not true, but when my behavior seems to indicate otherwise the floor slowly falls out from under me one little twig at a time. I've had some reading to do to keep up with a class I'm taking -- I'm way behind, I just don't seem to be doing "perfectly," and I'm having trouble accepting that.

For the longer term, my struggles have been for a desire for someone to be madly in love with me -- even though such episodes have proven to be very painful in the past. When these desires go unmet then my addict mind begins to believe that if I can't have someone love me, at least I can get them to treat me like they love me for a while, and give me a bit of an emotional holiday, with a round of intrigue and sex.

This afternoon as I was walking the dog, listening to this country music I spoke of earlier, I thought how one by one I have resolved the "issues" with the men in my life and have finally started to make female friends. I have always had a man to blame for something -- my biological father, my stepfather, my husband, E., J., R., M. others ... but as I said, one by one, I've resolved my feelings/resentments about them. But every time I pick up a "new man"... there's a whole other cycle of emotions to deal with that are so hard to put down. Today I recognize that emotions surrounding the friend who I went through a period of longing and loving with back in March -- I just went back to reread some e-mails to check the date and now I'm crying -- seem to still hover in my heart, demanding to be dealt with. Over time, due to solid friendship with this man, we have worked through our emotions, guilt and recognized that the loving and longing was more about our addictive qualities than a true committment to one another romantically or sexually. We both agreed that our marriages were important to us, and we have done our best to continue our friendship, sans sexual and romantic intrigue. Yet for the past couple of weeks I have felt the longing creep in again. I listened to the songs this afternoon and longed to hold him and hear him say that he was longing too. It hurts. And I suppose these tears are an indication that I haven't properly grieved what was lost. I don't know. I just know I needed to write about it. Thanks for listening.

I see some new readers commenting -- thank you for your notes and for being here.

Perceptive discomfort

2008-09-08T05:03:00.002-04:00

Being an addict my antennae are tuned to what might otherwise pass under the radar of a non-perceptive observer.
The man who scans the entire body of a waitress in tight jeans; the thin woman whose teeth have rotted, whose skin is colorless and who tugs at her hair as her fingers quiver; the obese woman who looks around to see who's watching as she nearly inhales the chocolate pie for dessert -- these are just a few signs of an addict walking around among the "normies."
Likewise I can spot an abuse victim in most any crowd. Just this afternoon, my heart ached for a little Asian girl in the grocery store whose face was bruised in all the wrong places. An overly obese female most always has a story of sexual abuse. A bodybuilder and an overachiever, almost always have some wounds of powerlessness they are trying to overcome.
In program we have a saying, "If you spot it, you got it." My beloved grandmother, who found no greater amusement than bodily function, had her own hillbilly version of the saying, "The smeller's the feller." It's almost easy for me to spot addicts and abuse victims in a crowd.
But occassionally I have a perception that I relate to addiction, that really is a sign of an increasingly difficult society to accept.
A few days ago, one of my anti-depressant meds rolled out of my hand and down the drain. It occurred to me that my insurance company will not pay for that lost pill. It's gone. If I want to replace it, the cost is pretty high.
My first thought was an addict's thought ... I need that pill to survive. Obviously, that's not true, and it wasn't a thought that lingered.
I'm in a position to pay for that capsule that rolled into the sewer, or at least smart enough to work the system so that one lost pill is not going to send me back to the treatment center. There are millions of Americans, however, who are not in such a position. Their health and their lives are being dictated and governed by some asshole in a cubicle at an insurance company whose main objective is to make sure the numbers line up at the end of the day.
As I look out at a world that has turned to addiction to numb the realities they can't accept, and men, women and children who not only are abused by others, but who can't stop hurting themselves, I pause to reflect on the emotional abuse and harassment, even sometimes the physical abuse, inflicted by a health care system dictated by money crunchers and legal eagles. I am angry and I am sad -- not so much for me, but for those who are losing their lives, their homes, their hope, while profits are rising among those who crunch the numbers.

Gratefully human

2008-09-05T13:06:00.003-04:00

I felt an incredible sense of sadness last night and found myself asking God to show me the lessons he had for me. I'm thankful that this request for "the lesson" is becoming a more automatic response. Rather than wallowing in the self-pity, I go to the lessons. I believe I was sent here on earth to learn, that we all were.

The source of my sadness was an incident that occurred on an online forum which I have participated in since early recovery. There is a person there, I'll call him GF, who is filled with wisdom, a constant presence, always sharing all sorts of good stuff with the group. Despite his sarcastic tone and occassional gruffness, he's adored by many. Well yesterday this "godfather" of the forum, posted a very tasteless and potentially triggering joke to the list. Many people were offended, but those of us who've been around for a while were truly shocked. Then when he apologized and said he'd been dealing with some mental health issues -- the weakness of this man, who (like me) tries desparately to portray an air of confidence, strength and recovery, just caused me to feel so sad and such a sense of hopelessness that I began to cry. I reached out to my support and also to God and asked, what's going on inside me? What's the lesson here?

The response (inside me) seemed to be that we are all human and I can find reason to put others above me and below me -- in order to feed my ego and my diseased need to continue that feeling of being less than. God's truth is we are all capable of fallacy and weakness, just as we are capable of wisdom, leadership and greatness. No matter how we "act" -- we are all human, we all need prayers, support, humility. On a simpler note, the incident reminded me that I often times put expectations and "assign magical qualities to others" without even realizing it. I have given GF some of those magical qualities just because other people look up to him. This was a good reminder to examine my relationships and attitudes for this very thing, protecting myself and others from future harm. I'm so good at making "gods" out of other people while ignoring the still, quiet voice inside me.

One of my friends reminded me: "I think as addicts online we can hide things that are going on inside of us. It's easy to come across as all healthy, all-knowing and shit but the truth is we are all just addicts. GF is no different. In my opinion, addiction IS a mental illness, so I think we are all nuts. Some of us just hide it better than others." That is ME in a nutshell. When I share with anyone that I had to go into treatment for depression they are stunned. I am able to hide behind this computer and be the queen of all knowledge. Like GF, I want to appear all knowing. But I'm just as terrified and fucked up as the next guy. Why do I try so hard to show only the positives? I grew up believing and being reminded with the straps of a switch or the slash of the tongue that weakness was not allowed, that it was despicable. In response, I learned to hide my weakness and beg for attention and acceptance with my positives.

God granted me some serenity

2008-09-03T11:34:00.001-04:00

I have been struggling lately with feeling irritable, controlling, and just not very serene. That has shown up in my life in a desire to want to "save other people," including a couple of sponsees who are going through some rough times. Now, intellectually I know very well that I can't save anyone's ass but my own, and I have to depend upon Higher Power to do that. So, I've known all along that Higher Power was trying to teach me something and I was just waiting for the lesson to be revealed -- driving a few people bonkers in the meantime, not the least of which was myself.

As I was walking this morning, I prayed the Prayer of St. Francis -- asking to be used as an instrument of my Higher Power -- and the Serenity Prayer -- as I was going over the Serenity Prayer in my head ... I had an epiphany -- I cannot change my sponsees, their behavior, the outcome of their behaviors, their thoughts, committment to recovery -- NOTHING. The worrying I do is fruitless. Higher Power has a plan and I can accept it and embrace it. If Higher Power chooses and finds it fitting I will be used as an instrument of peace and understanding in these women's lives. I just have to show up and work with them through the steps, and get out of Higher Power's way. That's all.

So, as I began to give thanks for that revelation and other blessings in my life, I began to recognize the presence of gratitude in my life is a form of a power greater than myself. Living in gratitude, expressing fervent and sincere gratitude -- these things lift me up, elevate my mood, give me a new outlook on life, empower me, cause me to walk tall (or as tall as I can at 5'1) and with a smile on my face. That is a great power with which I have to face the day!

Prayers for all on the coast

2008-08-31T16:19:00.002-04:00

My fervent prayers go up today for all the men, women and families whose lives are being turned upside down today in light of the threats posed by the fast-moving Hurricane Gustav.

A special prayer for my friend, EC and his family, as they make their way northward and out of harm's way.

God, please bless them all.