What I'm supposed to say

What I'm supposed to say today is Happy Birthday to my marriage and happy birthday to my mom, who has been gone for far longer than I've been married.

But what I feel today is the ultimate escape would be to go completely insane, to curl up in a ball, and just be there, closing out the world and absolving myself of all responsibility to it. I have no idea why I feel this way, except that while I walk around as a "functioning" ... even a "high functioning" addict at times... the inside feels at its best crazy and at its worst like it is dead.

I have been trying to force myself for the past three hours to go out the door to buy the finishing touches for the gift I have have chosen for my husband, when in reality what I really, really wish I could give him is the opportunity to come home to a smiling, energetic and joyful wife who loves him more than she wants to escape.

Progress not perfection

I lead the Al-Anon meeting this morning on the topic of perfectionism. I began believing in the early days of my life if I would just be a little bit better, if I would just be closer to perfect, if I got everything right then MAYBE, just maybe I would be good enough. Likewise, making everyone happy meant that I didn't have to deal with anger and criticism and judgment -- all things that scare the living daylights out of me -- and that they would love me. These thoughts are flawed and have been replaced with the very useful Al-Anon reminder that when I desparately want to be in control of everything and for everything I do, everything everyone else does, and everything I see to be absolutely perfect, that I have to ask myself "How important is it?"

I was thankful to God this morning that while I was bemoaning feeling down and isolated, there were some really important things going on in the lives of the people in the room. Just this week one person had lost a parent, another a close friend and still another was going through Christmas for the first time without her husband as they are in the midst of a divorce. It helped me to realize that when I sit in the quietness of my own mind, my own problems seem immense. However, when I force myself, however hard, to be in the presence of others, I learn that the world is much bigger than me and has much to offer.

One thing I didn't touch on in the meeting this morning was that I certainly don't pursue perfection in every facet of my life. There are some areas of my life where I, frankly, do a half-ass job and just hope it is good enough that no one notices -- or at least calls me on it. I've done it that way to make time for my acting out. I've needed all the time and all the space in my head I could muster to be with my disease (either in thought or deed). It's been like a child that I made time for and pampered and helped to grow. Someone told me when I first came in to recovery that I had to put just as much effort into recovery as I had put into acting out. Whew! That's an awful lot of time, work and effort. But the rewards -- being present with those around me, regaining a sense that my life belongs to me, being responsible for myself, and developing feelings of self-worth and dignity -- are far greater. So I keep working towards progress, not perfection, one day at a time.

Isolating

I'm not much in the mood to write or talk or interact with people. It's part of who I am lately -- an isolator. God sends me people to connect with, to talk with, but I have a hard time wanting to connect back. The psychologists would say that this is a product of my shame, and I suppose it is, though I don't connect with that thought right now. I just want to be quiet and uninterrupted.

Despite this, I took a call today from a woman in recovery and had a decent conversation with her, and also called my sponsor back to say I would take her place in leading an Al-Anon meeting on Friday. I still have other calls to return and make, but they are calls to OA friends about meetings and retreats and, you know, I'd rather just make my rum balls and feel connected to Christmas in some small way. It's hard to keep all these recovery balls in the air at once, especially when I really want to reject the most critical tool of all -- phone calls and reaching out to others.

Oh hell, I'm writing all this for someone else. I'm in a bad mood, feel like isolating and that's the bottom line of it all. It won't last forever, it's just for right now.