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.

A picture of disease

Anyone who is lucky enough to have no idea what sex and love addiction looks like, but for some sick reason wants to know ... go see the movie, "Love in the Time of Cholera." The book is actually better ... but the disease just ooozes out of this motion picture. It's the story of a man who at a very young age falls madly in love with a woman whose father has other plans for his daughter and she marries someone else. And while the man never gives up his undying love sickness for this woman, he goes about keeping a diary of all the women he sleeps with while he waits for her husband to die. At last count, the number was up to something like 621.

At one point in the movie, the man's uncle sums up sex and love addiction very well, when he says that the man's father on his deathbed said his only regret was that he could not die for love. But, the uncle says, "That didn't stop him from fucking every one in sight."

A fresh start

I am thankful that after writing here yesterday and sharing in an online meeting about my latest round of obsessions, I woke up this morning with the realization that ... It is OK if I get anxious and triggered over certain thoughts, obsessed about how to handle things. It is part of being an addict. I don't have to give in to them. I wasted a lot of time over the past few days worrying about whether I should respond to a posting from my former sponsor on an online group and also getting all wrapped up in my other recovery friends' need to be honest -- thinking it was all about me. In a serene moment, I could have very truthfully said ... "Thank you for being honest. I understand and relate to your feelings." But I was too enmeshed and frankly "too drunk" to do the right thing. So I handled it differently and learned the lesson ... for now at least.

I'm a little like Pavlov's dog I suppose. I don't ever learn things the easy way. I think if I read back just a few posts I'll find that I "discovered" a month or so ago that I can have feelings and urges, but I don't have to act on them. Hmmm.. that's didn't last long did it?

Oh well, I'm living life on planet Earth today ... going to exercise with my husband and seeing a movie (Love in the Time of Cholera) in the afternoon. This morning we spent time making plans for traveling on Thanksgiving.

Taking stock

I've had a rough couple of weeks that have just passed. I had been doing very well with my food and for a long, long time with my sex and love addiction issues. But relapse came on like a thunderstorm in both program ... the sex, notably after the food.

Today I went to the gym and walked for 50 minutes. I watched "Spanglish" on TV as I walked and it made me think of a conversation I had last night with one of the latest men my addiction is courting, in which we agreed (or I deferred to his sanity)that what we were pursuing was merely a friendship. God knows if that's what I was pursuing or not, but it certainly deflated any ideas that this man was going to become the next "love of my life." After my walk, I went to the bathroom crying ... I seem to be doing that a lot lately ... I can't stop crying. I cry at every emotion that comes up. Anyway, as I'm in the stall in the bathroom I just say to whatever force is listening ... "I don't think things will ever be OK." The message back was a "Do you trust me?" message and a reassurance that things will not always be this way. I was also reminded to keep going to the gym, quit lying about going to the gym, and actually go there and exercise every day, no matter what. Exercise is good for my mental condition and it also gets me out of the house.

Just for a point of record, I need to note here that over the past week I met a different man every day (M-F)and had sex with three of them. When I am away from the situation, it is hard to say how I feel about it ... Obviously, I'm walking around crying at the drop of a hat, so this behavior is emotionally damaging. Likewise, I can't focus on anything and the need for "more" is always there. Yesterday I was with my husband and also for the most part today ... so the food didn't seem to call me much. At some points the sex and love addiction did. I'm just trying to make it through this latest storm and am thankful that I see at least one window every day where I find the willingness to say a prayer.

I went to a meeting yesterday and the day before I called people on my outreach list ... but still I am in the mode of life where I am watching myself from the outside in. My behavior seems like my own, but there seems to be this sane person who just sits back and lets all the insanity happen, numbed to the effects. I guess this is all about PTSD, I honestly don't know. I wonder sometimes if I need to go to a psychiatrist for testing ... but then I'm not even making the appointments with the counselor.

One day at a time ... I am just going on. I am thankful for the small successes, the many miracles and the willingness to just keep going.