Wednesday check in

Thanks to all of you for your condolences regarding the loss of my brother and for your encouragement as I continue to work toward recovery.

Someone posted on an old post that it didn't seem like I was really in recovery and at times I think that's pretty accurate. They call it in the program, "playing around in recovery" and it seems to fit me at times. The honest truth is there is a part of me that wants to recover and another part that feels stuck in the idea that I don't know any other way to live.

A recovery friend noted the other day that it is very hard for her to handle emotions in their raw form. Having numbed them out with years of addiction to food and sex and love and codependency, the idea that I could take any of these emotions related to my brother's death, dealing with my family, meeting my father, being compassionate with my stepfather at a level in which I am really feeling the full effect of the emotions seems totally foreign to me.

I went to my SLAA (Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous) meeting on Monday and I was the only one there, so I sat there and read from Answers from the Heart (the meditation book) and I read a story from my SLAA book. The story touched me as it was about the reconciliation of abuse and love. The woman who wrote it felt the most loved when she was in an abusive relationship. She had grown up in a home filled with abuse of all kinds and filled her adult life with the same kind of relationships. It was only after she entered recovery and began to eliminate abuse from her life. "SLAA and God can save me if I put them first before my sex drive and my need for love," she wrote. This has been my problem ... when my desire to have sex comes along, when my need to feel loved feels like it is ripping my heart out, I feel that I have no choice, but to act on it and seek to fill that which I need. It's not true, what recovery gives me is a choice, but I have make it.

I was particulary touched by these words in that story (pg 260 SLAA text), "I believe there exists a parallel world of the spirit, which contains all the experiences of my childhood and the active phase of my sex and love addiction. When I stay sober and fully experience the pain and joy of the present, I claim those experiences and grow towards becoming a whole person again. As I call upon God and SLAA for help, the power of the disease lessens and the reconciliation of love and abuse can take place. It takes place within me as I learn to accept and love myself."

It is my prayer that I be given the courage to make these transitions.