A month on the road

I have been away from home for most of the month of September and it feels good to finally be home.

A few things to note about the time I was away:

I saw R. when I went back home to visit my sick brother. The first day I arrived I went to his work and waited for him to come out to his car and then we talked easily, like old friends. I didn't get out of my car. As we said goodbye he said it was good to see me and that if I wanted to go to lunch while I was in town to call him. So, of course, I did a few days later. It was difficult to go through many of the same motions I had gone through before and it not be the same -- to pick him up from work, him get in the car -- not to kiss, hold hands, not to tell him I love him, not to worry about him pressuring me to leave my husband. We had a good conversation at lunch and it was between friends, which felt nice. He told me about his life with his wife and her family now. He also complained a bit about a few things, which reminded me of my gut feeling that even if I had left my husband for him, it would never have been enough to make him happy.

Before he got out of the car, he took my hand, which was attached like glue to the steering wheel and pulled it to his lap and said, "It was really great to see you. I miss you a lot." Then he hugged me and kissed my cheek, which by that point had a tear running down it. I just said, "Me too. I'll see you soon." I honestly don't think I will see him again, but it was the only thing I could say at the moment.

I felt a strange sense of closure after I had a good cry driving away. He has his life and I have mine. I saw my therapist while I was there as well and she said she thought it was good that we could see one another and simply say "I didn't use you and you didn't use me. We needed what we had, it is over." I agreed. And I agree that seeing her brought some closure to it as well.

Today's thought for today from Hazelden was:

Life has lessons to teach. We can remember them and share them with others, or we can forget them and have to learn them again.--Jan Pishok

What we are destined to learn in this life will keep presenting itself until "contact" has been made. Each experience is a minute part of the big picture that's unfolding. We will receive the information we need, again and again if necessary. Let's give up our fear about where we are going and how we'll get there. We are in caring, capable hands. We will get to the right destination on time.

In this program we are invited to share with others what our experiences have taught us. What better way to recall, and thus relearn, what we have been taught, than to tell another about it. Every Twelve Step program is specifically designed to simplify our lives. The Steps coach us through every situation, and they never shame us for needing reminders of our lessons.

I will help others through sharing my own experiences today. In the process, I'll recapture the essence of the lessons I have learned.

And to share some things life has taught me that have finally sunk in:

Over my years in recovery, it is the Fourth Step that I have needed the most time to work through. Up until entering SLAA, I had done everything I could to avoid looking at myself, my motives and what was really inside me. Now I was suppose to take an inventory of myself and be searching and fearless in my quest. Me? Fearless? That was a tough call. But one day at a time for a very long time, my Higher Power has lead me gently through this process. And like most things in recovery, discovering myself has been like unpeeling the layers of an onion. Some new realizations were revealed yesterday that I thought I would share here.

The trouble women often face relating to and enjoying the company of other women has often been a topic on this list as it speaks directly to the way we use sex and love to escape healthy, meaningful relationships with people of both genders. I read something yesterday morning that caused me to really give some serious thought to my own issues and the way I relate to members of the same gender. I was reading from a book about healing from childhood sexual abuse, which stated that while we don't always realize it, women often feel anger at their mothers first for not protecting them from their abusers. This makes it hard later in life for them to believe that women can be trusted. It makes it also difficult to respect women in ways that might otherwise be normal.

I have only in the past two to three years even been able to acknowledge that my mother knew I was being abused. She was someone I idolized, someone I felt loved me unconditionally. I have not wanted to let go of that idea. After all, men have disappointed me, abandoned me, used me, and I have returned that by doing what I can to disappoint, abandon and use them. But through it all, I always believed that my mother was my solid rock. And to some degree I still do believe that.

A few years ago as I struggled to maintain a relationship with my stepfather (my abuser), my huband said to me, "I see you constantly trying to create something that is not there, just for the fact that you want it." In other words, because I wanted to have a normal father-daughter relationship in my life, I was struggling to pretend that certain things that were false were actually true, and vice versa. My husband said he had observed this same behavior in me as I related to my younger sister, who was an addict and with whom I was very codependent.

So, now I sit and realize that I have also desparately hung on to this "ideal" relationship I had with my mother because I needed something to hold on to. It is one of the many things that my work through the Fourth Step has helped me to realize. Slowly I am discovering a life based in real truth, not the false truths my mind has created in order to survive.

I'm glad to be home, my dear readers. I hope you all are happy in your homes as well.

Back from PA

I'm back from a weekend trip to PA where hubby and I visited some old friends and enjoyed a nice getaway. I have gone back there numerous times since we moved away ... and this is the first time I felt relatively untriggered by the lure of old haunts. It's true that many of the places we went or talked about conjured up images of my past addictive behaviors, but they didn't linger in my mind. They simply passed through.

It could be that I am finally moving on from all that started there or it could be that I've started other "memories" elsewhere. I don't know. But I was glad the sting was not as sharp and that we were able to have a good weekend together with friends.

Tonight is the first SLAA meeting of the group that I am helping to get started. I keep telling myself that I have been physically sober for awhile now and that everything will go OK. But I know honestly that I am not emotionally sober, and it is in desparation for full sobriety -- I want my life back -- that I start this meeting. I am reminded of the saying in program ... "We don't work the steps to get sober. We get sober so we can work the steps." God, help me.

Reflections

Today, despite writing about letting go of the negative, the truth is I'm feeling down. I'm not sure what it is all about, but it is there. I committed to eating three meals a day today and no snacks and connected with two OA friends. I'm seeing a therapist now, once every two weeks. I posted to my online group this morning. So, I am doing some good things.
They are offset by the fact that I have an ongoing "thing" with a traveling man who is my area once a month or so. He's someone I don't want to let go. Nor do i want to let go of a couple of other people who are in my addictive circle. Still, I have let go of everyone else that I had "built up" in this last addictive rage, and am feeling empty, feeling the need to not be empty.
I read back over a post from a year ago and saw how desparate I was at this time. I was seeing R., had just lost his baby, was thinking of leaving my husband. Geeze, I wonder sometimes whose life this is anyway. People who know me in the "real" world would never, could never imagine this was my life. Just a few months prior to that I wrote about how my addict had awakened. It was just two days before I first spoke to R. It looks like I would have seen the railroad coming, but even today ... I still keep marching on, knowing the railroad is coming.

Letting go of the negative

God, help me let go of my need to stay immersed in negativity. I can change the energy in my environment and myself from negative to positive. I will affirm the good until it sinks in and feels real. I will also strive to find one quality that I like about someone else who's important to me, and I will take the risk of telling him or her that.
From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.

Today's reading from The Language of Letting Go is pertinent in my life because as an addict I tend to focus on the negatives in my life. I tend to find everything I did wrong, then focus on it and shame myself over it, procrastinate and put off my life and my recovery longer.

I have to confess honestly that sometimes I feel my recovery is taking too long, even think sometimes of just giving up the process of recovery. Then I'll think it's my fault it's going so slow, I'm the one who is screwing everything up, who keeps hanging on to the lure of the addiction. Why can't I just step out of the way and let HP take over? It must surely be easier than I am making it. That is all negative thinking that my addictive self, my diseased self uses to keep me locked in my disease.

Whether it is the wrong way I am working my recovery or the wrong way I am living my life ... if I am using the word "wrong" then I am not accepting myself, and I am not accepting that my HP has a plan for me, whether I understand it or not.

As the AA Big Book says, "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." And what better way to accept life on life's terms, on my HP's terms, than to find the things in it for which I can be thankful and can admire. That simple shift in attitude can make all the difference.

That said, I'll transform a couple of negative into a few positives this morning:

Negative:

My addiction leaves me feeling trapped, locked in its clutches and I feel powerless to move ahead with anything else in my life. It is stifling, like being locked in a cellar.

Positives:

I am powerless which clears the way for a power far greater than I to have a role in my life and help me to experience life at a level which I could never have dreamed.

I have seen life at a depth that few people can comprehend; it gives me perspective that helps me to handle situations with a greater understanding. In other words, some things that cause others to freak out, don't even faze me. I can see them in perspective and realize they are passing issues.

My addiction is a manifestion of the pain I felt as a sexually abused child and recovering from this addiction is helping me to recover from the painful feelings I never allowed myself to feel.

Negative:

My recovery is taking too long. I feel sometimes as if I am never going to get it right, that I might as well just give up, that I am one of those "unfortunates" that they talk about who is constitutionally incapable of being honest with myself. Either that, or I'm just too lazy and self-centered to do the work it takes to achieve success in this program.

Postives:

I can share these feelings with others and know they have been there too and that they made it through and have seen the miracles of the program happen over and over again.

I can pray and feel that my HP is there if I just reach out and make "concious contact."

Nobody is asking for perfection but me, and I do achieve success in this program in little steps that I can be very grateful for one little day at at time. For example, already today, I made a list of things I am grateful for about my husband and our relationship and I took the risk of sharing it with him, then let go of the expectation. That is one little grain of success for today. If it's all I get, I still have done something positive, which is a step in the right direction.

One day at a time, one moment at a time, I recover. And I'm certainly grateful that something inside me drives me to keep coming back.

Carry on

Carry on ... that's the best we can do, I wrote on the blog of one of my longtime blogging buddies, Summer.

Hubby and I returned late last night from a long driving trip to the eastern part of the country. We saw old friends there and realized that we live a pretty good life compared to those who constantly feel they have to keep up with someone else in order to have any worth. We also talked about getting a dog. I'm excited about that.

Today I read a post on A Room of Mama's Own this afternoon that made me cry the kind of tears you cry when you see something that feels so familiar but you never thought anyone else could ever understand.

The lines between sex/love addiction and friendship blur for me so easily, leaving me feeling empty and confused. I eat chocolate cake and buy ice cream and say it's going to be the last time and then horde money for later adventures. I'll try to go to an OA meeting tonight. My first SLAA meeting is next week and I'm feeling inadequate to run it, but I'll do it anyway in hopes that someone more sober will show up to lead the next week's meeting.

I feel out of sorts, I don't know if it is lonely or tired that haunts me. Maybe both.

Passage into a new skin

Thought for today from A Woman's Spirit

We are not unlike a particularly hardy crustacean. ... With each passage from one stage of human growth to the next, we, too, must shed a protective structure.
--Gail Sheehy

Our passage into a new stage of development was initiated by our desire to stop using (sex and love). The values we lived by while using (sex and love) no longer fit us. We need to shed our old skin and grow a new one that reflects our current worldview.

We are now, and always will be, in the stage of becoming, of trying to fulfill our changing dreams and aspirations. What we can accomplish at one stage of life is different from what we can handle at another. And yet an overall design is being shaped by all our endeavors. The more willing we are to shed yet another skin, the more centered, stable, and spirit filled we'll become.

Do my actions fit my values? As I outgrow my values, I will release them. I will relish my growth today and celebrate my new skin.
----

Sobriety for most of my recovery from sex and love addiction and food addiction as well has been rather allusive for me, as many of you who have been around a while can attest. I know well that it is primarily because surrender, my ability to give up my own will has been the most difficult task of my life. I learned very early in life that trust of any sort was dangerous and could lead to extreme pain. Failure to trust that there is a power greater than myself who can, if I will get the hell OUT of the way, restore me to sanity ... only keeps me in a cycle of self-defeat, just the place my addict wants me to be.

No matter where I am in my recovery I always feel the growth, as well as the deterioration. Sometimes the deterioration -- the progress of the disease as it changes from one form to the next -- feels like it has all the power to win the race in my parallel lives. Above sea level, where I work my recovery, live my day to day life, and am seeing a lot of successes and reasons for hope these days ... I thrive. I have recently made the moves to start and SLAA meeting in my area and I feel so proud about that, so thankful to my Higher Power for the courage and for paving the way. I'm in the process of making positive changes in my career, and I feel so excited about that. But underneath it all, the person I feel I can't trust the most is me. I have felt so vulnerable lately, not trusting the good feelings and just waiting to f*ck them up. I always do. Because I never surrender ... and shed the old skin, as the thought for today above says.

I must maintain a very disciplined life in order to stay above sea level. I must pray, write, exercise, read, have a to do list and a gratitude list, a daily food list, go to meetings, make phone calls and stay very present. As an addict, I am very undisciplined and reject discipline on the principle that I "need" the freedom of my own actions.

It is so hard for me to simply realize that I am sick, that addiction is a disease, a state of constant "dis ease," where I crave the opportunity to feel "normal" yet constantly am aware that I am not. Addiction, for me, is a state of "not enough."

I pray today, just for today, that I am enough and even when I don't feel like I am enough ... that I will open myself to the truth that there is a power greater than myself who is enough.

A good day

I'm glad to report that today was a good day. I met with a woman about a potential meeting spot for a new SLAA group in the area and it looks promising. I am thankful for the willingness to be open to God's leadership in my life. I pray for the continued willingness to be honest.

One of the things that is hardest about living life as an addict -- whether it is as a sex, people or food addict -- is the inability to be consistent. A good day never feels like it will last and enthusiasm feels like it will eventually allude me. But still, I have been consistent in my effort to "stick with" recovery, even when I thought it wasn't doing me a damn bit of good.

As a result, I am seeing the benefits of recovery in my life -- even if they are sometimes only glimpses. Still they give me hope for a brighter tomorrow.

I also wanted to report that it was a great weekend with my husband. We just enjoyed one another's company and did a few things together that made us both smile. That felt really good.

I have a class tomorrow that should help me get a head start on the freelance work I want to do. I am really looking forward to being in a classroom again and learning. In some ways, every day is a new class, a new learning experience. But sometimes it is nice to be in a learning environment. I am taking three classes (some of them, like the one tomorrow is just a one day class) this fall and I'm looking forward to all of them.

Thanks to all of you who read and offer your supportive comments. I really appreciate them and they give me a little more reason to "keep going."

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.

Today

Sometimes I think it would be better if I wrote here every day ... but some days I'm too wrapped up in my disease, other days I'm doing my best to run from it. In an old post -- from July 2004 -- I write about my parallel lives, and say that someday I hope me and Rae meet. So, sometimes I don't write here because I am totally out of tune with which life I am leading: the successful business woman (who, by the way, has recently decided to launch her freelance career), or the sex, love and food addict with depression who sometimes can't get out of the house, or only gets out to have sex with a stranger or two.

It's funny, along the way, I have had a lot of people who read this blog or in the recovery rooms and even my therapists warn me about the dangers of meeting strangers from the Internet. At one level, I always know they are right, at another, I think people would find it interesting to meet all the people I have meet online and in person. I've been lucky that I've never (yet, due to the grace and protection of God) met a real whack job, though I have met a few people who have wanted to do disgusting or humiliating things to me, or vice versa -- wanted me to do those things to them. I have been "fortunate" to have met some very interesting people. A lot of men who are lonely in their marriages, those who are simply wildly horny and as obsessed with sex as I am, and some genuinely nice people who don't know what they are looking for. I've had some amazing conversations, made some good friends, and even been inspired by some of these people I've met. They range from highly successful executives and business owners to blue collar, financially strapped husbands, who just need a little relief from the day to day stresses of life. Some of them, I feel, take bigger risks than me, and I often tell them so. Read my post from earlier this month, where I wrote a letter to one of my "suitors" who had sent me erotic pictures of himself using his real name. He responded with indignation and threatened to use "all his resources" to protect himself. From what? Me? I am not the threat.

A number of you have read my blog for some time ... some of you probably feel sorry for me, others may think I'm a self-righteous whore. You may wonder if I ever think of the wives and the families that are being impacted by my continuing to live in my disease. The answer is yes. It feeds my need to hate myself. I used to think of them a lot more. Now I often only think of the men, and how I use them ... and often toss them away, leaving them feeling rejected and worthless and used. Again, it feeds my need to hate myself. (By the way ... I welcome all comments and questions. Sometimes i can't see my own stuff as well as I can see the stuff of others.)

In the dynamic of my parallel lives, there is a part of me that actually likes many things about myself. This diseased self, I am afraid I will always hate who I am. It reminds me that my mother used to tell me, "Love and hate can't dwell in the same heart." I was talking today to a man I met yesterday. This was our second meeting, and after our first, he told me he felt guilty. Today again he feels guilty ... feels that he has let down himself, God, his family. Like me ... he has the civil war inside his head.

Respite

I've felt a little bit of relief the past couple of days from my need to find sexual partners far and wide and have a lot of anonymous sex. I still am corresponding with some potential partners and even had coffee today with someone who could have been a potential partner, but it was far more enjoyable just to talk to him. Sometimes creating this "connection" to the sexual partners is a horrendously tiring effort. Instead getting validation by having a mentally stimulating conversation, without sexual expectations is truly fulfilling.

I shared with the gentleman I met this afternoon ... There are three things that really muck up our happiness in life: 1. Ego, 2. Guilt and 3. Expectation. It certainly is so in my life ... and it seemed to resonate with him.

A letter to help someone else

Dear D,

I have given a lot of thought to the letter I am about to write. I write it out of understanding, not judgment.

You put yourself at a major risk this week when you sent me those erotic photos and video under your real name. (Name removed), Louisiana, to quote you is a "small town." And sometimes the United States is even a small town. As it so happens, you sit on a committee (according to a 1 minute Google search of your name) with a long-time friend of mine.

Had another person, a poser or even worse, someone insane -- been on the receiving end of those photos, or for that matter someone who was actually in (your town), this could have been disastrous for you. I'm pretty certain you probably have a wife, otherwise you would be online at night. Even if you don't ... I know you have a good job, and a good reputation, and if you were telling me the truth, a daughter.

I also know what overwhelming, obsessive sexual desire is like ... feeling like no matter what needs to be done in the "real world," no matter what is at risk, you have to get that "high." It feels like you can't live without it. I can see this in you, because you know all the tricks ... You have perfected it all. You know how to find the woman who can address all facets of your fantasy life. You're good at it and you can't live without it.

I also know what it's like to want to be loved and cared for and also to be hurt and used and demoralized. I know all of this, because it is my life too. I am addicted to sex in the same way that men and women are addicted to cocaine, gambling, whiskey and all other vices. I will do any thing for it, that little taste of heavenly high, but it is ruining my life, my marriage, my sanity. Despite all my efforts of trying to heal from years of childhood sexual abuse, I will always find my way to men like you ... who need to control and own and manipulate, because of their own pain ... and make me feel like small helpless child. Or to men like you who need to be used ... so that I can make myself feel like my abuser. It's what made that slap the other day feel so fucking good. I wanted to use you and hurt you and scream "How could you possibly be like every other fucking man on the earth who tells me he loves me just so he can hurt me?" Over and over and over ... I find men like you, so that I can continue to hurt myself.

I don't expect you to tell me your story ... I just wanted to tell you mine, so you would know I understand, and also to send up a cry for you to please get help before, like so many other men I have seen, you get yourself into a holy horrible mess. I am not one to share with you the successes of such help, because I'm clearly in relapse ... but, getting involved in therapy and more importantly a support group for sex addicts saved my ass four years ago. In all this moving, I have let a lot of things go ... and boredom and loneliness are two of my major triggers for the addiction -- thus you found me, throwing out hooks (online). This group www.slaafws.org meets in (your town) and is a place where you can find help and other people like you. For a list of meetings in the area ... send an e-mail to (address removed). It's a completely anonymous fellowship. There are others like it: http://www.sca-recovery.org/ which has online meetings. There is http://www.saa-recovery.org which meets tonight in (your town) at 7:30 p.m. at St. Mary's.

Again, none of this is an attempt to judge you or control you or even tell you what to do. I'm just telling you my story and sharing with you the information I have.

You seem like a very kind and caring man. I am the same. But I am filled with demons that won't leave alone.

Ain't No Love in Here

I recently heard a woman speak at an OA meeting ... she was fantastic in her story telling. Something she said about her refrigerator keeps sticking with me though. She said she has a note on her refrigerator that says, "Ain't No Love in Here."

For people, like me, who struggle with compulsive overeating, they find comfort and love and understanding in food. Food is a place they can retreat and be pleased ... not to mention, shamed and degraded.

I read this in an e-zine this morning, "Compulsive overeating is accompanied with much guilt and shame. People with this condition often feel that they are not good enough and are ashamed that they could not control their eating habits. This only makes it worse because their negative feelings only lead them to more compulsive overeating. Food is how compulsive overeaters deal with their craving for acceptance and appreciation. Some use their overweight appearance to keep people away because they subconsciously feel undeserving of love, while others use it as punishment whenever they feel bad about themselves. One does not become successful in overcoming this condition unless they gather up the courage to face the real emotions they are afraid to feel and unless they can honestly admit the issues that cause them to be stuck in this destructive behavior. All this of course, would be a difficult accomplishment without professional help and the support of friends and loved ones."

For me, my compulsive overeating and sexual addiction are closely intertwined ... for it was in being sexual violated beginning at age 3, that I turned to food for comfort and protection.

As I was trying to pull myself away from the computer this morning ... where I sometimes sit for hours, chatting, e-mailing, searching for that "hit" or that person to meet ... I thought of the woman's note on her refrigerator ... Ain't No Love In Here.

If I were to post a personals ad that said ... "There is a hunger of the body, a thirst of the mind, but it is the craving of my soul that cannot be satisfied," I wonder if any human power could ever satisify that? I think not.

Update

Well, it's 11:15 p.m. and I leave in a few minutes to pick up dear hubby from the airport. So far today, by the grace of God, I am abstinent in OA, sober in SLAA and rested enough to make the 30 minute drive over to the airport. I contacted five churches today about using their facilities for a weekly SLAA meeting, and am awaiting responses. I went to an OA meeting at a residential treatment center for girls with eating disorders. I called the woman I wrote about earlier who might be a potential sponsor. She said she already had too many sponsees, but I could call her anytime. I was thankful. I called someone else who could be a potential sponsor, but she was not home, and I left a message saying, "You don't have to call me back." And I looked up the names and numbers (for the third or fourth time)of some therapists that are in my insurance plan and called and left a message for one of them. I went to a restaurant for dinner, with the intention of eating some binge foods, and found myself full after eating a healthy, nutritious dinner.

I'm thankful to my friend for writing me, to God for allowing me to take an honest look at what I am doing. I know that this is just one day, tomorrow will have its own set of struggles. That's why we do this, one day ... and for me, one minute at a time.

A humble reply

I wrote the following in response to a recovery friend's question, "How are you doing?" It is a humbling truth about me, a woman who seems unwilling to work her program of recovery:


To be honest, I don't know how I am doing. I feel stuck in the warp of food and sexual addiction ... God "told" me -- not nuts, just the message I got while I was walking -- go to gym every day. If you don't do anything else, go to the gym every day. I stopped going. My doctor told me eat a little bit of protien and the rest fruits and vegetables, with only a few carbs every day. I didn't listen. My inner core tells me to pray and meditate every day, instead I waste my time looking for either new sex partners or new love partners. My OA friends say, you have to get a sponsor. I call people in OA, but never the people who I want to be my sponsor. I am paralyzed when I think of calling them. You've told me, others have told me -- get a counselor, but day after day I don't make the call. I need an SLAA program in my area, and at one time had the willingness to start it. But every day passes by ... I don't make the contacts to the church that I need to. I am still going to OA meetings, but have stopped my Al-Anon meetings almost all together. Instead I isolate and act out. I know, I have seen, God has shown me, honesty and acceptance are my two keys. I still lie, I still judge, I still expect outcomes, I still eat and have sex with strangers to make up for the "lack" of my expectations being met.


Why, you ask. Why, I ask. I don't know my friend, other than it seems that I don't want to get well. That's a lie and we both know it. It's all a bondage of self, a disease ridden self destined to kill herself one way or the other. The third step prayer says ... "God please release me from the bondage of self." Some days, the shame of all that has been and all that is keeps me from even praying, "God give me the willingness." Yesterday, when I wanted to go get a whole package of snack cakes and eat them, or go home and post an ad and find a dinner and bed partner for the evening (My husband is out of town.) I struggled with the voice inside that said, "make a call, go to a meeting." But I shrieked out ... "God give me the willingness." And I made two calls til I found someone who was going to a meeting and said "See you there." On the way home, I still wanted to stop and get those snack cakes, but I just kept driving and had the willingness to pray, "God, just get me home. There's nothing there that can hurt me too much." When I talk about the shame to even pray ... it's my codependence there ... I'm even codependent with God. I feel like such a disappointment. It's one thing when you do all these things and you don't know better. It's another when you know and you just keep going ... you don't take the action. But, guess what? The first step says ... "We are powerless." My friend, I am powerless. But I am not hopeless.


There is a woman who spoke at two different OA meetings last week ... and I feel that she could be the answer to my ongoing silent and spoken prayer to God for a sponsor who can help me. I had the willingness to ask if I could call her this week, to which she said, "Please do.", the willingness to write down her number and I am terrified to call her -- I can even at times feel the call of my disease saying "But I don't want to get better." But I am going to call. Let me rephrase that ... I am continually praying for the willingness to call her, without any expectation of the outcome, other than praying ... "If this is the one, let her say yes." The answer will come one way or another. There is something in "How It Works" in the AA Big Book that says ... "No human power could have saved us." And the further down the spiral I go, the more I realize how true it is. A sponsor can help me, but no one, and especially not me, can save me. That's the humble, honest truth.


Thank you, my friend, for asking. Thank you God for giving me the humble and sobering answer I needed to write.

All I can do ...

... is cry. I'm in a pain I don't understand. It's getting worse, now I can't even feel the pain. I can feel sadness. I can feel hopelessness at times ... just waiting until the disaster gets big enough to make me stop, makes me get off my ass and do what I need to do to get a job, to get the house in order, literally and figuratively.

I really am treating myself badly lately, hating myself, unable and worse, unwilling, to step out of the cycle. Standing on the outside ... looking in.

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.

Feeling blessed

I am truly thankful today for the grace of God in my life, that there are people who truly and unequivocally love me, they think I am a wonderful person, they see in me what I cannot always see in myself.

I am thankful today to have had calls and messages and e-mails from family and friends old and new, all expressing one single message -- I am loved.

I am thankful today that someone cared enough about me to pass along my resume to an important person at an important company and that tomorrow I will go for an interview there.

I am thankful to see the absolutely beautiful success of my niece, who I mourned over the fact that she got married right out of high school and never went to college. Today she told me of the new business office she is setting up and we talked about marketing plans. I am so proud of her and thankful for her presence in my life and thankful for the example of a 17-year marriage that has had its ups and downs but keeps going strong.

I feel so totally blessed to be a part of the 12-step fellowship, and specifically to feel a part of the family of my OA home group. I need that sense of family in my life ... and am thankful to God for giving it to me.

I am thankful for the words inside a card today from my husband that said, "Thank you for coming to (this place) with me and for going through all the trouble." That was a precious acknowledgement.

I am thankful that 39 years ago today a baby was born to a single mother struggling already to feed three kids, and that that baby grew into a little girl, a young woman, and the woman who writes to you today with tears in her eyes filled with humility and a true sense of gratitude for ALL that she has become.

Happy birthday to me. I didn't open a single wrapped package, but oh what a wealth of gifts I have received.

It only starts with one bite

I just ate two packages of M&Ms to "get them out of the house" since I bought them the other day when I bought the chocolate cake.

One day last week, I had the choice to buy an apple fritter or not. I did ... and every day since then, I have eaten compulsively.

I had the choice ... I struggled with the choice ... I made the choice. I remember hearing God's voice say inside me ... and if you buy this, how are you going to say no tomorrow?

Lessons learned the hardest ...

My life as a food addict and a liar

I just sat in my car outside and abandoned building in a strip mall and ate a double serving size of chocolate cake from the local grocery store, so that I could throw out the evidence of the cake's existence (the package and the fork used to eat it with) in the trash can in front of me. I drove home, unloaded the rest of the groceries -- which included many healthy items that went into the fridge -- and three packs of peanut butter M&Ms that went into a secret hiding place in the guest room. I then loaded all the recycling into the paper bag I brought from grocery store (which still contained the receipt from the store) and took it to the garbage. There! All evidence gone. And when I came back in ... I moved my tennis shoes from the location where they were this morning when my husband left to a different spot, so the he will believe the lie that I actually went to the gym this morning to work out.

Thus is my life as a food addict and a liar. We won't even go into the ongoing online conversations I am having with men about sex or why it is I need to lie to my husband rather than tell him the truth.

I had been doing so well in recovery -- in all aspects. Then suddenly I stopped praying first thing every morning, stopped doing daily meditations, cut back on meetings, began to isolate, and here I am -- eating chocolate cake (which is just one in a long line of binge foods I have eaten over the past few days) and putting more effort into hiding my behavior rather than change it. I find it hard now to ask for the willingness to begin my program again. I want to continue to get attention from strangers who can tell me sight unseen that I am the sexiest woman they've ever known. I want them the want me to the point of frustration ... only for me to decide to go back into recovery from sexual addiction.

The food plays into all of this ... because it is my comfort from loneliness ... and often in these online endeavours I am rejected -- often because the person who was so keen on me before seeing my picture, suddenly becomes extremely disinterested, sometimes to the point of not wanting to talk after seeing my picture. So with each encounter I am putting my self-esteem, which is already in the toilet, on the line. And when it is raped (well, they say you can't rape the willing right?) one more time, I am lonely and hurt and turn to the food.

It's a cycle that goes on and on. One that only recovery can stop ... and recovery comes one day, one decision at a time.

I can still hide the truth

During a recent exchange with a new writer friend, I shared a couple of pieces of my writing. One of which is posted below. He wrote back saying, "Even with your education and world travel, your cultural and family ties run deep. Definitely sounds alot like The Waltons, something I can't relate to. I envy you what you miss. My house was somewhere to stay away from when I was a kid."

I had to smile when I read his words ... The secret was still hidden behind the laughter wasn't it?

I wrote back:
Thank you for your note, some keen observations. Though I must say, it's interesting to know that I can still fool people. I grew up in a home that I needed to escape as well. I did it every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night and as soon as I could I went to college. I was raised in a poor, uneducated family, filled with shame and a constant feeling of being less than. Some of my life, which I have written about in "Country Music," was filled with love, but there was never a doubt in my mind that I was going to get out quickly and go to college. I was never going to be as weak as my mother who had no choice but to stay with an emotionally abusive husband, and listen to the silence as I kept the family secret of what was happening to me while she wasn't around. Marrying a man who is brilliant, educated to the highest degree, and from a culture so different than my own, a set of values much different than mine was another form of escaping. I've been on the run for a long, long time. Now maybe you know what's really missing.

The writing that I sent him:

Country Music

“Country music singers have always been a real close family,” Hank Williams, Jr. told the world back in the 70s.

I grew up listening to the stories of love and the heartbreak told to the rhythm of the guitar, whine of the fiddle and beat of the drum.

I, too, have felt that country music singers were a part of my family, because their rhythms have defined most every step of my life.

My earliest memories revolve around watching Hee Haw with my grandma on Saturday nights. In my early days, I spent most every Saturday night at her house, and we’d just laugh and “have a big time,” as she would say. She loved Minnie Pearl, with her big hat – the price tag still dangling from the brim – and Grandpa Jones. Myself, I always loved to hear Roy Clark and Buck Owens when they’d declare, “I’m a pickin’.” “And, I’m a grinnin’.”

We’d watch the whole hour as if it were a new experience.

Generally, earlier in the day we’d watch Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner as they performed on their own show. Porter would be in his rhinestone-covered leisure suit and Dolly looked beautiful in her long, sequined dresses and big, blonde wig and “painted-on face.” But regardless of what they wore or even the songs they sang, it was just so good to be there with Grandma enjoying a country song.

Grandma also had an 8-track tape of Porter with songs about the “Carroll County accident” and a bear that was “big around the middle and broad across the rump.” She played it over and over on her old console stereo and we’d smile and sing along, laughing every time the bear song came on, and crying sometimes when we heard about the accident.

All we had at home, for most of my life, was a standalone record player, where Momma would let us listen all day long during the hot summer months to scratched up albums of Loretta Lynn and Lynn Anderson.

There were some old albums my older brother had left behind with funny looking singers with names like Herman’s Hermits and The Animals, but I never liked to listen to those.
I’d much rather sing along with Momma as we listened to Loretta Lynn tell us, “I was born a coal miner’s daughter.”

I loved that song because it sparked Momma to talk about her father and his days in the coal mines, and it reminded me of the first movie I ever got to see at the drive-in theater – “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

My mother and my grandmother were my two best friends in the world. They died a year apart in the early 1990s, but they live on in the country music that I used to hear and the music that I still hear today.

It’s as easy as pie for me to close my eyes and remember Grandma begging my oldest and dearest niece – the only one of our family blessed with a singing voice – to sing the words of Conway Twitty’s “Tight Fittin’ Jeans,” or hear Momma’s voice singing along with Lynn Anderson as she reminded us all “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.”
Grandma never wore a pair of jeans in her life, and Momma never had a rose garden – but they both got joy out of those songs that left a special smile on their faces and in their hearts that they couldn’t have found any other place but in a country song.

I find myself smiling those smiles sometimes when I hear a song that takes me back in time or holds a special meaning in my heart.

There are literally hundreds of country songs that touch me in those ways.

The late Charlie Rich sang a song, “Rollin’ with the Flow.” My oldest brother, Larry, has driven a truck since he was old enough to – which was before I was born. His trips all across the country delivering what other people needed usually meant he wasn’t home to visit Momma very often.
But every time I heard Charlie Rich’s voice over the radio, singing, “On and on I go, I keep on rolling with the flow,” I knew Larry was coming home.

Within a day, or at the most two, of hearing the song, Larry would call Momma on the phone and we’d all load up in our little Pinto and drive over to our small town's little haven for truckers, to meet him.

I remember other times when our family would go off on a day-trip, my younger sister, and my niece (who was just four years younger than me) and I riding inside the camper shell of Daddy’s pick up truck and singing the songs of Ronnie Milsap, Kenny Rogers and anything ever recorded by Alabama at the top of our lungs.

As long as we live, those will be memories that only the three of us can truly understand or treasure.

As I’ve grown older, country songs primarily remind me of certain times or certain people in my life. If I hear an old Alabama song, I think of those growing up years, thinking Randy Owen was the sexiest man I’d ever seen. If I hear Brooks and Dunn sing “Boot Scootin’ Boogie” I think of those college days when “Slappin’ Leather” was the craze and when I hear the Judds croon out, “Mama He’s Crazy,” I think of that first love and how I tried to tell Momma about him through the song.

When a new job for my husband uprooted me from the only home I’ve ever known, Kenny Chesney gave me company and made me smile with his song, “Back Where I Come From.” There was comfort in hearing “It’s where I’ll be when it’s said and done,” and knowing I wasn’t gone forever.

Alan Jackson captured almost every emotion that rushed through my veins September 11, 2001 when “the world stopped turning” and soon after Brooks and Dunn reminded me just how special it was to live in this great country with their song, “Only in America.”

Almost every step of my life can be directly linked to a country song or artist. There are songs that make me smile, inside and out, because they are funny or uplifting or remind me of a simpler time and life. And there are those that make me cry real face-wrinkling tears, either because they touch me or because they make me remember.

Country music has given me a voice, an understanding, and a friend.