The tides

I just finished watching "Prince of Tides" for at least the 20th time. I've read the book and watched the movie and can never get enough. And whenever I need to feel, a deep, real feeling, I know I can count on this movie to connect me.

The problem is, when it is done, I feel hollowed out, empty and left on with tears and all the thoughts it brings to me.

It's a love addict's movie to some degree. I remember I was involved with someone very seriously the first time I saw it. I related so much to the line, "Before I met you, I was in a deep. deep sleep." It was true, I had been. I had never opened myself to love before that relationship and when it ended I was devastated and torn.

I remember too that I watched the movie -- or at least part of it -- with R. I couldn't bear to watch it to the end and made an excuse to get up and leave before it ended. Because even then, I knew that like Nick Nolte's character Tom, I would return to my home, to my husband, and I couldn't bear to let R. see my face and the tears that came as the movie ended and Tom drove across the bridge whispering "Lowenstein, Lowenstein."

This time as I watched the movie, I paid particular attention to the way Nolte fabulously acted the part of an abused child living as a grown adult carrying the immense burden of deep and horrifying secrets never told. "The southern way" was the way in my family too, so ingrained that the warnings never had to be whispered. I grew up, like my neighbors, my cousins, my siblings, my friends ... knowing that there are some things you simply never tell. Those things may kill you, make you want to kill yourself ... but never tell.

I was thinking this week that I am thankful to be an adult now who has the choice to tell.

Reappearance and disappearance

I got another e-mail yesterday from R. I was grateful to have little to no desire to communicate with him and saw him for the pathetic damaged soul that he is. I know that it was his damage that attracted me to him to begin with and ensnared me in my disease for one long, miserable year. The fact that I have recommitted myself to recovery, have been working my program and continue to grow one day at a time makes it possible for me to look at that pain through new eyes and say ... I'm worth more than that.

I feel unfamiliar with these feelings of strength and truthful awareness. And while I don't fool myself that they could disappear at anytime, (The disease of addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful.) I am doing my best to connect to them. I am recognizing that one little slip last week has me in a stage of withdrawal where these seemingly "psychic" connections can happen. That doesn't mean I have to succumb to them, and not being in a relationship ridden by fear, anxiety, confusion and absolute loss of myself, like the one I was in with R. reminds me of the value of staying sober. And, R's communication, in which he shared he's drinking and smoking and having affairs all over the place on his new wife, reminds me that nothing about the fantasy I created that relationship to be was true, and causes me to give great thanks to the power that guides my intuition to get the hell out while I could.

I am forever grateful to my Higher Power for keeping me in a safe place, putting people in my life who can support me and opening my heart to be supported by others.

Thanks for being here and being witness to each stage of this truly incredible journey.

Out of sorts

I'm having a tough day today. I can't concentrate on work, despite the fact that I really have some serious deadlines I have to meet. It's snowing outside like crazy and my husband took the car so I can't really go somewhere very easily. This all is stemming from the pressures of working again when my mind won't let me concentrate, feeling like I will never "fit in" in a workplace again, and on top of all of this worrying about how to handle paying off a significant debt I generated during my affair with R.

I am thankful to have rediscovered my conscience, realizing that I don't feel right about "sneaking" money from my current earnings to pay on the debt, but I also don't want to hurt my husband by telling him the whole truth about the debt either. Anyway, it's another opportunity to grow and I'm doing my best to be thankful, but it's through some major gritted teeth. It's bringing up a lot of shame, guilt and pain ... and in fact, extreme anger at myself for being so fucking wrapped up in my disease with R. back then that not only could I not be there for my husband when his mother died, but also giving him oodles of money that he will NEVER pay back, all so he could marry someone else and ruin her financial future. Thank God I didn't ruin mine.

I can't imagine that I gave him the money to help him get into an apartment that he stayed in ONE FUCKING NIGHT. The rest of the time, he stayed with her until he married her two months after I left. After terrorizing me, threatening me that he was going to expose me to my husband, scaring the shit out of me over and over saying he was going to kill himself. God I was so stupid.

All this is in the past and I know I'm hysterical now because I don't know what to do and I am afraid. I have prayed and tried to turn this over ... but I keep getting in my own way. I need to be present and know that God will take care of me.

I made it through three and a half

Thank God, I sent three letters cutting off ties with men who have fed my sexual addiction. I didn't have to tell them anything, but I felt that cutting them off automatically, rather than enduring phone calls and such for weeks to come would be easier. I also was able to write a fourth letter with someone who has fed both my sex and love addiction -- I told him I would be out of touch for awhile. It's all I could do today. But it's enough.

Thank you, Lord, for the strength and the courage to do this much.

One day at a time, by God's grace, I have been physically sober since Nov. 14.

I start with a new therapist in the morning. I also managed to apply for three jobs today and write to R. to ask him to begin paying me back (as he promised he would) the money I used to help him buy a car before I moved here.

Robbed - The consequence

The three months I remained in my home state, before coming here to live with my husband again, I practically lived with R. I never felt at home in his place though. I felt held captive much of the time -- captive in the world of a man who was trying to change my mind. I awakened at 3 this morning remembering a time during that period when I really felt that I just wanted to be at my house alone. R. pitched a fit, declaring in the most disgusted and angry voice, coming from the depths of his insecurity, "When two people want to be together, they don't want to 'be alone.' They want to be together." I only had a twin bed in my house at the time, but somehow I acquiesced and said he could stay at my house with me. So he came and tried to lay with me in my twin bed. Feeling crowded and uncomfortable, neither of us could sleep. Eventually he went to the couch to sleep. I remember feeling so glad he left and at the same time thinking he was a hypocrite.

It's both difficult and reassuring to think back to that time in life. Difficult now to consider how I ever got myself so enmeshed with a raging, insecure man who screamed at me as he declared his love and reassuring that there was some semblance of sanity left in me ... enough to get out. I don't know how it feels to realize that I lived my overwhelming life with him, not just in those three months, but in the nine months preceding, while carrying on a whole other life ... or at least attempting to. I suppose it is the same as living with my active addiction and even recovery all these years. Yes, it's true, I do sometimes think that living in recovery is simply switching one parallel life for another. It's just that presumably with recovery I'll be able to become "whole." That is my goal because it sounds so close to "normal."

My abnormal life has robbed me of so much. I wasn't here with my husband during the time his mother passed away, because I was with R. It will take me a long time to forgive myself for that. The isolation of and obsession of my disease has kept me separated from friends and family for so long that relationships that once existed have died for lack of watering, or at best have faded away to nothing. I have replaced some friendships with recovery friends ... but that is a constant reminder of my situation. The colleagues at my jobs have suffered greatly at the expense of my disease and for the most part, lacks the scope of my "normal" friendships. Because I have been unable to remain present, apply myself, for at least four years, and it seems like much longer, I have been robbed of the benefit of a fulfilling work experience. But it's the little things -- the little conversations I could have had with my husband, the time I could have spent with a friend or family member ... especially during that brief time mentioned above, when I was in the south, and my husband was in the midwest. I think of a time when one of my dearest friends in the world was coming to the town where I lived, and he asked me to stay with him, and because R. pitched another of his fits, I declined. This was just after this friend had lost his mother and was going through a very emotional time. He not only needed me, I needed him. Another huge regret for me.

There have been therapists and others who say that I have "repressed anger" toward my stepfather for abusing me. The anger that I feel is that I ended up with this disease. I will be glad when the day comes when I reach the point to tell this disease to go fuck off, just like I did him when he came into my bedroom for the last time when I was 13. I lived the first hell of being molested for 10 years, and now I am reliving it. I pray it won't take 10 years to figure out I don't have to.

Like friends do

I spoke to R. yesterday. His voice sounded familiar ... but the feelings (neither love nor hurt) didn't churn inside my stomach until they turned to hurt or anger. We just talked and then hung up, like friends do.

I went to a writer's group for the first time last night and absolutely loved it. It was great to be among other creative types and also to hear some really good work. Mostly it was great to have others hear my writing and say ... "Wow" and sincerely mean it. It was a good boost for me.

I'm doing some recovery writing work around my stepfather and that seems to be going well. When I know it is time for me to sit down with it, I feel a little scattered and try to distract myself with other things ... but at the moment, it's at least not sex with strangers. To be completely honest, I do have someone I am talking to daily, developing a friendship with that will likely be sexual during the times that he is in town, which is about once a month.

Whenever I am in these types of relationships I know I separate myself from my husband, not to mention the higher power that guides me in all my life's choices.