Adjusting to the feelings

I find myself feeling something that reminds me of the way it felt to begin to walk again after my leg was crushed in a car accident in the early 90s. For weeks, I walked with a "boot" and then one day the doctor put a little brace around my ankle and told me to get up and walk. I was terrified and uncertain that I would be able to take those first steps. I took them, but with great trepidation.

I sometimes visualize the feelings I am having by seeing myself standing sideways on a road, looking back to where I had come from and a bit uncertain of what to do next. Clearly there is a road in front of me, but I am just standing, still shell shocked from the experiences of what has passed.

My sex and love addiction has been terrorizing. It has stolen my feelings, my values, my friends, my sense of self, I could go on and on. Living through it has been like living through a tornado, pieces of my life strewn about and hardly anything recognizeable left behind.

I "let go" last week of someone who has served as a "stash" for my disease as a relationship ended that kept my toe or maybe my whole foot in my addiction. When I did I felt the earth move, my soul shake and I knew for the first time in years I was honestly sober -- not just in word, but completely. It has been difficult to let go completely.

Yesterday I took my husband to work and as I drove away it felt odd not to have a "secret partner" to think about, no one to consider calling just to talk, to simply drive home, present as myself. I had the same feeling as I left this morning to pick up a prescription. Also yesterday, I had a new reader to the blog who wrote me an e-mail, and then responded to my response and so on ... until I told him "I have to be honest and say that there are a number of men who have found my blog and engaged me in conversation for the purpose of acting out. ... I hope that is not your purpose and I apologize in advance for even having to say that if it is, I am not willing to engage. I am working on my recovery." I didn't hear a word from him after that e-mail ... so either I offended him, or I caught him red-handed. To be completely honest, there was a part of me that simply wanted to continue the e-mails, to draw him in, to get a hit, to start something new with someone new. I was flattered that he had spent almost four hours reading my blog, and was intrigued by the fact that he was within driving distance away. But the bigger part of me knew I had to take care of myself. I feel better that I did. Each "pass" builds strength and helps me reach my goals.

As an aside, it's interesting when I look at my stats to see how people find my blog. Though few people stay long enough to read, they find me by doing Google searches like "Husband, orgasm", "my beautiful body", "confession sex with stepfather", "confession secret sex with dog", "I have sexual feelings for my father" and "divine rae." Divine huh? Divine intervention maybe.

Breathing deeply inward

There has been a monumental shift inside me. I am sorting it all out, trying to sit with it, soak it in and not escape it. Prayers have been answered, things have clicked. I can feel it. I can't describe it, nor am I trying to "overreact" to it. No one is ever "cured," in my opinion of the disease of addiction. However, as it has manifested itself in me, Sex and Love Addiction seems to have surrendered to the will of my Higher Power. For the first time in years, I feel as if that ever present threat and ever present fear have been lifted. Yes, occassionally, I'll see remnants of it, but nothing a little "This too shall pass" or a "God, this one is yours," prayer doesn't help.

But that's not even the most monumental part. I feel. I feel pain, sadness, loneliness, nervousness, excitement, frustration, hope and more.

AND

I know that pride and ego cometh before the fall, so again I am very cautious to recognize this all as a gigantic, perfect gift from God, and to recognize that the solution still rests in living life ONE DAY AT A TIME. I am thankful for these days of reprieve, for this glimpse into the world of sanity and feeling, for the sobbing tears that have flowed, for the understanding that has settled in, for the desire to absorb my recovery literature and talk with other addicts and to do service ... all to hold on to these moments.

Not long ago, maybe a couple of weeks ago, I kept coming across readings that alluded to the fact that too often we are not thankful enough for our sobriety. They struck me and resonated with me. Had I focused on my slips, on my temptations, on the little thoughts that slipped inside my head a couple of times a day? Or had I focused on the miracle that today was a sober day, thank you, God? In a recent telemeeting someone shared about how his therapist had picked up a blank sheet of paper and put one little black dot in the middle. He asked the patient, "What do you see?" The guy said, "A little black dot." The therapist said ... "What about everything around that dot, all this white space?" Clearly the message was, there is more to life than the things we focus on and I do have a choose on where I choose to put my focus. And today I choose to focus my attention on gratitude for my Higher Power, and everyone who has been a part of my recovery -- both in and out of progam -- who serve as angels who have brought me to this place of sobriety.

Living one day at a time, in gratitude.

In mysterious ways

A tearful night here as I told the man I was with last night that I cannot see him anymore, just as he was trying to tell me that he had met someone else for whom he had strong emotional feelings and had agreed with her not to see anyone else.

I'm too tired to recap it all ... and it doesn't matter. It's just the reassurance that God is working in my life, helping me to close this door that I've been trying to close for several months.

I wrote this today ... it's sort of an extension of what I wrote here earlier:

I shared with a recovery friend today that I think that Valentine's Day is a time when most love addicts at some level feel a sense of dis-ease. I certainly am feeling that today.

Waxing philosophical -- It is hard to give up that deep down magical thinking that is reinforced by the media, books, movies and fairy tales that every day should be Valentine's Day and that this powerful, intoxicating, all encompassing thing called "love" should trump everything and that it should be ours.

After recovery, it's easier to see why we were never able to get enough love -- mainly because the love we were looking for doesn't exist at a core level. Love is a part of life, an important life, and something that most addicts didn't get enough of during their formative years. Then they spend the rest of their lives trying to find something they can't recognize because they've never seen in or realized it properly.

Speaking from the heart -- My disease doesn't work for me any more. What was once a refuge, a place to escape into countless hours of searching out anonymous sex partners, plotting to meet them, and spending the short time it took to act out -- or lost in the obessions of the mind over someone "who swept me off my feet" and made me feel "love" more deeply than I ever realized it -- it's all gone. All that is left is the pain and the wreckage and I am grieving the loss.

Don't get me wrong... Yes, this is what I wanted, for the temptations, the ever present desires, the constant obsessions to be lifted. I am thankful for the answered prayers. But as part of my recovery, I must also acknowledge that I feel a deep and grieving sense of loss. This too shall pass.

Feeling sad and looking back

A year ago today I wrote this: My State of Mind

A few days later I wrote Emotions vs. Thinking, which I consider to be a reflection of the beginning of my deepest level of understanding of myself to date.

It is interesting that I had forgotten what my therapist had said when I told her I felt insane. What I wrote in My State of Mind is almost identical to how I feel today. I have had such difficulty after returning to work. I have trouble concentrating, I can't focus and I wonder how in the world I'll ever hold down a full-time job. It is not that nothing has changed within me in a year, I can look back to where I was a year ago and realize that at many levels, I'm not nearly as "insane" as I was then -- stuck in the middle of an affair that was driving me crazy and moving to a new place, not knowing what it was I wanted or needed to do, trying to please too many people and having no clue how to please or take care of myself. I know there has been growth, and I know that for some reason that growth has had to be very, very slow.

I dropped my husband off at the airport last night for him to go on a three day business trip and drove back to lay in the arms of another man. I was exhausted from the drive through the snowy conditions, but I had already told this man, who travels to our area once a month, that I would see him. My codependency far outweighed my sexual addiction in this scenario, though I would say my love addiction was in full-swing. I couldn't seem to bring myself to have conversation with him, though he's a great conversationalist. Instead, I simply engaged him sexually -- honestly deep down wanting to be finished and to go home. It is not that I dislike this person nor is it that he gives me a high. I was just there ... going through the motions, not uncomfortably, but without feeling. I ultimately faked an orgasm so that he would stop his efforts to bring me there, and two silent tears fell from my eyes, as I pulled him to me and asked him to hold me. I felt comforted there in his arms, as he slowly drifted off to sleep and I got up, kissed him goodnight, and went home, feeling empty and uncovered.

Today, I have chosen not to beat myself up over the events of last night. They serve as a reminder that this addiction is no longer serving me. Yes, I am still drawn to it -- because it has become a way of life, but it has no return. Or I should say, the only return is emptiness and pain, a far cry from elation and euphoria. In AA,they say recovery messes up a good drink. That's for sure.

Happy to be on the journey.

Really? This was part of a plan?

I had the opportunity this morning to read the chapter on withdrawal as part of the work I am doing with a sponsee this morning, and it felt like it was something I had never read before. Sure, a couple of the phrases were familiar -- but it seems like today I was reading it for the first time with an open and sane mind.

It was very helpful for me to read that withdrawal comes to different people in different ways. I have struggled and exposed myself to a lot of self-hatred because it seems that it took me so long to "get it" in this program. Other people set their bottom lines and stuck to them, while I set them and broke them again and again. Even though I "kept coming back" to the program ... I also kept going back to my addiction. At times I thought "What's the use?"

The chapter on withdrawal says that some people come to withdrawal by exposing their addict behaviors to their friends and family (or being exposed), while others quit cold turkey. Still others -- including myself -- come to withdrawal -- in a gradual process. As the book describes it ... " Some of us approached withdrawal gradually, chipping away at obvious problem areas. Even marginal success in doing so increased our awareness of other aspects of the addictive pattern that we really hadn't known were there. This process of increasing awareness led inevitably to a final surrender of the whole addictive pattern, and thus we were launched into withdrawal, and sexual emotional sobriety ...

"... by the time we let the concept of withdrawal into our thinking, the addiction was not reliably delivering the oblivion or pleasure we sought so ardently. More and more energy had to be poured into the emotional and sexual activities just to break even, let alone "go to the moon." It was as though an inner voice was saying, as we embarked on each new sexual or romantic episode, "Wherever I'm 'going' with this new face, or body, or mind, I've already 'been there' a thousand times before!"

What? I could never have accepted this in early recovery -- that even though I wasn't completely sober right away ... I was still working toward recovery. Instead, I just kept beating myself up, searching for more ways to cause myself pain so that I could soothe that pain by acting out ... and the cycle goes.

But, the SLAA text says, "Of course, to speak of "ways" of entering withdrawal from active sex and love addiction is a bit misleading, because we are not really the conscious architects of how we get there."

Oh? You mean I was powerless over how this whole thing progressed? I'm aghast!

Again, it's not as if I haven't read these words dozens of times -- every time I would relapse and go back into my disease (a path I would never advocate if I WERE the architect of this plan) I read them again, praying for the pain and hurt and obession to just PLEASE go away. But I think I was so "drunk" during those times that I couldn't find that stillness I needed to really hear what was being said. My life is progressing exactly as it needs to.

I think the words that stood out most to me in the reading were these: "You have been hiding or postponing this pain for a long time now, yet you have never been able to lastingly outrun it. You need to go through withdrawal in order to become a whole person. You need to meet yourself."


Well, I'll be darned, if that isn't exactly what I've been trying to do ... become a whole person ... to relate to myself from a state of wholeness.


Thanks be to God for all these spiritual awakenings I've been having lately.

In my thoughts today ...

Today my thoughts are with:

Jen at The Comfy Place -- who asks her readers to reflect on what they would do if they only had 12 months to live. She asks because that's how much time the doctors have told her she has left before the cancer that has moved into her body takes her life. I found Jen through Bella at Beyond the Map, who wrote a very moving answer to Jen's question.

and

The Junky's Wife, whose blog I have read for some time now and whose recovery and honesty inspires me. She's married to a heroin addict, and this past week she had to ask him to leave. She loves him. It's a hard struggle.

and

Vicarious Rising who is scrambling to put together some writing after being nominated for a scholarship for a summer writing program!

and

Sawyer at Sawyer's Walk, a sex addict who on Friday night completed his Ninth Step with his wife, expressing his apologies and then handing over $1,300 made from selling the hand-painted models he had spent two years and hundreds of hours creating. He said he wanted to pay back some of the money that he had spent on his addiction and show her how serious he was about making amends. "I wanted it to be a starting point," he wrote. This is so inspiring to me, as I face my own issue with getting honest about the money I have spent in my addiction.

and

LostBoy60645 at Living Sobriety who has the courage to tell his story of addiction and recovery and whose meaningful revisit of his first step was very touching to me. He writes:

But unfortunately for me and all other addicts, I've come to realize that our disease is a progressive one, and no matter how far down the road we are in our journey, the gutter is still right next to us.

and thus ...

I send my thoughts, prayers and love today to the addict who still suffers, especially as we approach this week of Valentine's Day, which is so very difficult for those in and out of recovery who suffer from obsessive compulsions and addiction to love.

and,

Last but not least, to my friend EC -- Thank you so much for being there for me over this past year as I've worked through some heavy-duty stuff. I look forward to finding your writing in print soon.

Burden of extremes

I had a bit of an Aha! moment, as Oprah calls them, yesterday during an Al-Anon meeting. I had just come from a session at which my therapist told me for the first time, "Self-esteem is a choice." I was still deciding if I believed that, when someone read this reading from "Hope for Today."

"Before (getting into recovery), I always compared myself to others, particularly my family members, and vowed to be better than them. I sought the elation of winning and wanted to be praised. My constant comparing and competing gradually edged most people out of my life. Ultimately I was not even good enough for myself, an attitude that led me to harsh self-abuse.
As I attended meetings, I gradually learned about the concepts of balance and perspective. I listened as other members shared about their mistakes and character defects. Their reactions to them -- self-acceptance, making amends, and patience -- showed me there are different ways to behave in the world. ...
In studying the steps with my sponsor, especially the 4th and 5th steps, I realized that beneath my extreme competitiveness lurks the true nature of the problem -- pride and fear along with a sense of inadequacy. I'm afraid of not being liked, of making mistakes in front of others, of being vulnerable. In short, I'm afraid of being human.
Today I know that in trying to be "better than," I am actually diminishing my opportunities for fun and spontaneity. I'm isolating myself from those very people I wish to invite closer to my heart. I'm putting myself in competition with my Higher Power. In battling God's will for me, I risk losing the thing I really want to win -- personal recovery."

Wowza, wowza, wowza! So many times I have shared my feelings of being "less than" in almost every situation in life. Yesterday I realized that one of the reasons I feel that way is because I have had the idea that if I am not "better than" someone else, I must be less than. I have constantly been "battling" not only all these people around me, but also my Higher Power to be "right" and to be "good" and "best." And having fallen short of those unattainable goals, I have participated in all forms of self-hatred and abuse, operating with no sense of equality and acceptance -- either of myself or others.

This is powerful stuff for me and I am thankful to God that I was able to be at that meeting and that my heart was ready to hear this message. Truth be told, I didn't catch all of the reading in the meeting ... but I caught enough that I knew I needed to go back and read it again, and enough to write in my notebook -- "All this time I've been feeling less than, while trying to be "better than" others. I have no sense of equality." I look forward to having a different perspective and moving forward as I pray for this burden of extremes to be lifted.

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.

Promises kept

Day after day, the Promises of this program are being revealed to me and I am so grateful. I would say, “About damn time,” but I know it has taken all these days and will take all the days of my life for the miracle of recovery to show its full glory in my life. My impatience with “When am I going to get well!” passed some time ago and I learned to live one day at a time, realizing that I am on a journey, not running a race.

Today’s reminder of my disease was a rough one, but worth every anxious moment. It came when I opened up my e-mail and found a note from E. -- the very first person I acted out with in my marriage. If you want to read more about him -- you can click here or here. There were many more extramarital affairs and anonymous sex partners that followed E., but he holds particularly painful memories of how desperate and dark my life became just before the disease of sexual addiction knocked me into recovery and my journey upward from the bottom of hell began.

My immediate reaction to seeing the e-mail was terror and physical illness. My head was spinning and I was uncertain of what to do this surprise “innocuous” note, when I looked at the clock and saw that it was time for me to leave for a noon meeting. Once I got on the train to go to the meeting, I said the Serenity Prayer and then a prayer thanking God for reminding me of just how excruciatingly painful my addiction can be and for giving me the opportunity to go to a recovery meeting.

At the meeting, we read about the slogans, “One Day at a Time,” “Easy Does It,” “This Too Shall Pass,” and others that were very helpful to me. I came back to the office, deleted the e-mail and all those feelings of anxiety and sickness and worry are now gone.

It’s not one of the recovery slogans, but Dr. King’s words … “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, I’m free at last.” come to mind. I will never be “cured” from this disease, but it feels monumental to no longer be a slave to it. I can remember just four years ago that despite his abusive nature and the horrible way I would feel after seeing or even talking to the man who wrote me this morning, I would still get in my car and drive myself kicking and screaming to see him again. Today, thanks to my recovery program and my Higher Power, I had control of my life (Promise #1), felt dignity and respect for myself (Promise #2) and expressed thanks for what has been given to me, what has been taken away and what has been left behind (Promise #12).

The love we give away

I have been giving some thought about how difficult it is for we sex and love addicts, and co-dependents as well, to be alone with ourselves. As I shared yesterday, it's very painful for me to be present and alone with myself. I always try to find something outside myself to focus my attention on -- whether it is television, the computer or a book ... or in my disease fantasies or phone calls.

But this morning I had a thought ... one of those that comes to me in the way that God speaks to me rather "out of the blue." That thought was that maybe all this love that I've tried to "give away" in order to get someone to "make" me feel loved is really the love I'm trying to give to myself, but I simply don't know how.

The awareness of knowing that I am giving away something that I really need for myself is enough to help me begin to at least TRY to understand how I can give that love back to me. I know this may seem elementary ... but I think many of you can relate that it really is difficult to let go of the shame and guilt and learn to not only love who I am, but to give myself love.

Things are different

A woman shared today at a meeting how different her life was today than it was a year ago. Mine too, I thought! In fact, my life feels a lot different than it did just a couple of months ago. I think the antidepressants are helping, as is having a job and getting out of the house more.

But my attitude is also different and one of the things I attribute that to is I have recently started helping two other women in SLAA work their recovery programs. I was hesitant to do it at first. Given the fact that I always feel I am not good enough and also worried that I would be a hypocrite -- giving them all sorts of advice when I wasn't sticking to my own bottom lines -- I almost passed the opportunity up. But, I prayed about it, and decided to say yes. It really is making a difference in my life. In addition to wanting to continue my recovery, I also don't want to act out because I want to continue to help these two women.

Still, I think there's something even deeper going on ... I'm beginning to truly see what it means to turn my will and my life over to my Higher Power. My husband told me on Tuesday that he's going out of town for a few days in a couple of weeks. That happens to be the same time that one of my former acting out partners will be IN town and staying at a hotel just a five-minute drive away. You can imagine that my addict went into "party" mode at the thought of having three days to do nothing but run wild. But instead of picking up the phone first thing the next morning and calling that acting out partner, I asked God, "Please just help me not tell him today." And every day since then I've done the same thing. I haven't told him yet.

Tonight two of my girlfriends were supposed to come over for a get together. The weather was bad and we had to cancel, creating the perfect opportunity to reschedule for one of the night's my husband will be out of town. Then a service opportunity opened up for me in one of my fellowship programs for another night. So, God is taking care of me, I can see it and I'm acknowledging it.

Where I am today

I feel so good to have made it to a recovery meeting today at lunch. It’s become much easier/less intimidating to being the only woman walking into a group of all men and share. I’ve always known I was in the right place and kept coming back no matter what, but I have been a bit worried at times that my sharing would trigger others in the room or that they would not feel comfortable sharing their stories because I was there. But today I know that I need recovery and that the similarities in our disease, no matter our gender, are much more than the differences and the person I need to be worried about is me. If God creates the opportunity for me to go to a meeting, I want to be there.

One of the things that keeps coming up for me lately is boundaries. It’s something I’ve heard a lot about in recovery, but nothing I’ve given a whole lot of thought to. But when I hear or read a word over and over again, I usually know that my HP has something for me to learn and I try to listen. The reading in today’s meeting included the story of a man who when he got into recovery he blurted everything out every chance he got. I definitely related to that – when I came into recovery, I was just so happy to be among people who understood what I was saying, who could relate to me and with whom I could finally be honest. Wow, that was refreshing. But I’m learning today that I don’t have to blurt out every detail of my past acting out and past history … because I am recovering and there’s a lot of that acting out, that abuse, those resentments that thanks to my Higher Power and the program that is no longer a part of my life. I can focus more on where I am in my recovery and share parts of my past when someone asks for ESH or when it is relative. But I don’t have to keep reliving the past over and over again.

This is not to say that it was wrong for me to blurt it all out in the beginning … I did need to purge what was inside me. It just reinforces the slogan that we are always exactly where we need to be. As I make progress in recovery, my behaviors and attitudes change and for that I am thankful.

I am also thankful that while I had decided that I wanted to get a dog to help keep me company and as a friendly companion, this new member of our family has proven to be quite a catalyst for communication and understanding between my husband and I. We are working together to meet the dog’s needs, to adjust our schedules so that they are more balanced and family focused, and through her I am seeing that my husband is able to give love and affection, and to share with him … “See, that’s what I’ve been talking about all these years. That is what I want for myself.” He seems to get it and that is rewarding.

Even a free bus pass

Reading today’s edition of Chicago’s infamous free tabloid, the Red Eye, I had to think of my fellow blogger The Junky’s Wife, when I saw an ad that read:

Heroin and Pain Pill Addiction
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*FREE Vitamin Pack Daily
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*FREE Week of Services on Your Birthday

And if that wasn’t enough free stuff … FREE Seven Day Bus Pass for Joining when you Mention this Ad.

The Red Eye’s big cover story “The Lying Game” made me think of myself and all other addicts. The story highlights a new reality show, “The Moment of Truth.”

I tried to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth one day … I lasted about three waking hours. Of course, I used to tell people I was incredibly honest, and I believed it. Thank God for recovery.

A weight lifted

About four years ago, maybe three, I wrote a letter to my stepfather asking him to tell me why he had sexually abused me for 10 years of my life. I told him that I was suffering through depression and absolute hell because of what I went through. He wrote back and said that he was very sick during that period of time, to please let him die in peace (not tell family -- i.e. please continue the lie), God had forgiven him he hoped that I could too. Not long after that, I made the decision to cut contact with him in order to "take care of myself." During these period of years, I have seen him at a few family occassions and talked to him now and then, but overall the contact has been minimal. Still, I have lived with this underlying guilt and frustration that cutting contact with him made me feel even further abnormal than I already was, and that I was a bad daughter and I was causing friction in the family. (All of these were feelings I had, by the way, about my abuse. That I had to lie about it in order not to cause discord and separation in my family, that I was always the "bad" daughter who held a secret that could hurt my family so badly.) I have always felt "less than" to the point that I think sometimes I should have worn (and sometimes still should put it on) a t-shirt with a big < on it. Now having a father (he raised me from 9 months) who was alive, but dying, who I didn't talk to and had not resolved past issues with just compounded my feelings about myself in the family and in the world around me.

Fast forward to Tuesday night when the leader of the Al-Anon meeting I attend read from Courage to Change, March 15 -- a passage which says forgiveness is not something to be used for power or as a weapon, forgiveness is something that allows me to see that I am on equal footing with all children of God. "We all do good and noble things at times; on other occassions we may offend. I have no right to judge punish or absolve anyone. When I behave self-righteously, I'm the one who suffers -- I separate myself from my fellow human beings, focus on others, and keep busy with hateful and negative thoughts. By taking this attitude, I tell myself that I am a victim, and I remain a victim. The most forgiving thing I can do is to remember that my job is not to judge others, but to think and behave in a way that makes me feel good." In the thought for today it goes on to say, "I don't know the motives or circumstances that cause another's behavior, I do know that when I hold on to resentments and blame, I occupy my spirit with bitterness. I will find a more nurturing way to fill myself up."

This reading hit me so completely, lifting the burden of forgiveness off my shoulders. Forgiveness really only means acceptance of my stepfather as a human being, a child of God, who was also a sex addict (with the mental disease of pedophilia), whose behavior, motives I don't know. And it's not mine to know. He has a Higher Power who is ultimately the one who offers true forgiveness. I don't have to carry around that burden any longer. Leave it to God. Wow, what a relief. In working my fourth step, I have learned that as long as I hold on to the resentment -- blaming him for my disease and overall dysfunction -- I separate myself from my own Higher Power and for my own accountability. Certainly there are those who would say... "You have every right to blame him." Yes, I have every right, but blaming him for my life today, only keeps me stuck in the past, and I want so desparately to move forward.

Does that mean that I renew the relationship with my stepfather? I don't know. But I feel some release in my heart, hopefully enough to let go of him, give him to his Higher Power, and focus all that energy that has consumed me in my resentments and worry and hurt and anger, on the soul that still has a chance to live, free of ties to the disease of yet another addict.

A great answer

Last night as I was sitting in my SLAA meeting of one doing some reading, the thought came to me: First, in order to turn my life over to my HP, I have to build trust through building a relationship. How do I build a relationship? The EXACT same way I built a relationship with the people I acted out with, especially those I "fell in love" with. To build a relationship with my HP, I talk to him all the time, I write to him all the time, I think about him all the time, I make every decision with him in mind. My HP has to be at the forefront of my mind. I'm not suggesting that we become addicted to our HP, rather I am saying that we (or at least I) have shown ourselves capable of doing the things necessary to build a relationship, and to turn our lives over to "something." Up until I entered recovery, and even during relapses, I sure knew how to turn my life over to someone else. I think I might be able to figure out how to turn my life over to my HP.

Recovery is a spiritual program. Filling that God-shaped hole with something other than addictive obsessions is crucial for my recovery to work.

Admitting my powerlessness

Every now and then, something crosses our eyes just long enough to "click." This morning I was reading on the online SLAA list I belong to and saw that someone had set a boundary around "obsessively checking e-mail searching for a hit." It stared at me in the way things look back when they belong to you and you can no longer deny them.

When I first started seeing a therapist after my life had become completely out of control with acting out in my addiction, I told her I was addicted to the Internet. That's what I thought. I had no clue and sex and love addiction at the time. All I knew is I couldn't stay away from the Internet for more than an hour or two at a time, and some days, even work days, I was there all day long, chatting, checking e-mail, writing e-mail and searching, searching for that next "hit." That belief that I was addicted to the Internet was what brought me into recovery, but once I got into recovery I released the idea that my obsessions with the Internet were truly a problem. And honestly, it's still not the Internet that appeals to me -- it is using the Internet to connect to others, that often leads me to my sex and love addiction, keeps me in isolation at times, and keeps my life out of balance. When I am home alone, I spend hours on the Internet, pushing aside all other interests. When I have other work to do, I am still drawn compulsively to check my e-mail, to send e-mails that I hope will get responses, to read and respond on blogs, with the hopes of getting responses as well. As I have gained some semblance of sobriety in my sex and love addiction, it is not that I am seeking "acting out" partners, but I am still looking for external validation and stimulation. I am proscratinating and not taking responsibility for the things I need to do. Using the Internet, like having sex, falling in love, caring for others or eating, is not wrong. But when not kept in balance, it can make me insane and I can use it in an unhealthy way.

So, the time has come when I have to admit the truth -- I am powerless over my addiction to using the Internet to seek connection to others and delay progress in taking responsibility for my life. I am powerless over my obsession with taking every opportunity to use the Internet to check e-mail, searching for some quality "hit." My life has become and continues to be unmanageable because of this powerlessness. I do believe that with God's guidance and help, I can set some healthy boundaries around my use of the Internet and that my sanity will be restored. I am praying today for guidance on setting these healthy boundaries and doing the difficult work of replacing this behavior.

I feel special ... I've been Tagged

Jen over at 12 Steps Closer To God has tagged me for a meme. I don't even know what that means ... or if I said it right, but I know that it means that Jen wants to know more about me ... and for that I am thankful. Although after completing this exercise, I think I must feel miserable today ... or that I only write about miserable stuff here ... because everything I've linked to links back to my pain. I'm glad to have been connecting to that pain over the past few years and look forward to connecting to hope and friendship and a sense of freedom in the years ahead.

So, according to Jen's post, the rules for this tagging thing are:

1. Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words : family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like.
2. Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Oh I get it, it's sort of like those spam e-mails I get all the time that say I'm going to have a horrible life if I don't forward it to at least 10 people! Haha. I'm only joking of course. I am happy to have the chance to share and to tag some other people to let them know they are special to me.

So here are my five posts:
1. Family - Over the past few years, I have had to come to grips with a lot of truths about my mother, but this loving tribute still stands true.
2. Friend - Interestingly, in doing this exercise, I have realized that I haven't really written about my friends here. I suppose some of that is to protect anonymity and another part is a realization that I am totally self-absorbed. However, I have elected to post Emotions vs. Thinking under this category as it deals with the friendship that is forming in my mind.
3. Myself - There is one post on this blog that completely defines the way I see my life. I wrote Parallel Lives in July 2004 and have spent the following months and years trying to learn how to reunite my wholeness.
4. My love - Anyone who has read my blog knows that over time I've had a hard time figuring out exactly what love is. I thought I once knew and this is a post about how my confusion looked on one particular day: How the Big Day Went for Me. For those who haven't been reading long, R. was a man I had a torrential one year "love affair" with. After I followed my heart and returned to my husband, R. married another woman -- the same one mentioned in this entry -- two months later.
5. Anything I like - Mine is not a blog of happiness -- though I often share a lot of hope and recovery here. My blog is a place where I have shared my story, my recovery, my awareness and my acceptance. It is through writing that I have began to understand my journey and it was through Thoughts Finally Surfacing that I began to see where a vibrant young woman who had surpressed the truth and her pain began to live in the misery of all that was coming to the surface. It may not make sense to include something so sad in the "Anything I like" category -- but I do get to include anything I like, right?

And I would like to tag:
1. Summer at 107 Madison Street
2. Vicarious Rising
3. Andrew at 4th Avenue Blues
4. Woman.Anonymous7
5. Kellee at Crossing My Bridge

One cold Saturday

It's freezing cold here, but the sun is shining, so I'm happy! It feels like it's been a long time since I've been here to write and share my thoughts. The work week went well, though I have to admit that I did have to struggle a lot with focusing on my work and I had some addictive triggers that caused me a bit of anxiety. Still ... I made it OK. Well, at least with my sex and love addiction. The food issues are exacerbated by the fact that every fast food joint in America, and a few great pastry shops have a space on the second floor of the building where I am working. Luckily after the first day or two of temptations, I became desensitized to the "opportunity" to overeat and indulge in all sorts of unhealthy foods.

I also spent some "down" time this week really grieving the fact that I have continually punished myself by bringing people into my life who perpetuate my underlying belief that I am "less than." It made it difficult to make it through one of the days at work, and with so much emotion laying on my sleeves, I was incredibly sleepy and staying focused was even more difficult. I found myself incessantly checking e-mail and writing e-mails and procrastinating in one way or another. I guess this is some of the remnants of the depression, which I continue to take medication for.

I also wasted my time listening to someone I know say that he wasn't quite sure that incest was a bad thing -- that learning about sex from someone who you love and trust firsthand seemed to make sense. He went on to say that there would probably be far fewer hangups if families talked more openly about sex. I sat in silence, feeling both defensive and misunderstood. I didn't even want to scream out, because it felt like it would be a waste of breath. It brought back a feeling I often have that no one can hear my voice.

A friend of mine recently referred to my behavior as "punishing myself." He suggested perhaps I was punishing myself for not being a good daughter ... for not maintaining contact with my stepfather. I wrote to him:

As much as it doesn't make sense, I feel bad about myself for cutting off connection to my stepfather, not calling to check on him when I know he's been in the hospital, not rushing to "clear things up" and pretend again that I am not hurting. Sometimes the farther I go into my thoughts on these things the more depressed I become. In other words, I thought I was "doing the right thing" cutting off connection to him ... and that has resulted in a whole other set of feelings -- feelings like I am only punishing him, it's not really that I am trying to take care of myself, because if I were taking care of myself I wouldn't make myself feel bad by being a bad daughter. It's crazy thoughts like this that keep me spinning. And in the meantime, I'm trying to recover from not just one but two or three lures that are so overwhelmingly attractive that the pain they cause seems better than living without them.

All of this seems a little more sad than my week actually was. My husband was very supportive and encouraging this week and it did feel really good to be among the workforce. I liked learning to use the transit system downtown and had some great conversations with a few fellow riders. The work I am doing also allows me to talk with people all over the world and that has been very satisfying as well. I enjoy meeting new people and hearing parts of their stories -- even if it is just what they do for a living.

Well, it's time to walk the dog ... on this nice sunny but cold day.

Working woman

Wow ... it's amazing that I've been sitting around for so long, bitching about not being able to find a job, wasting time acting out at times, and now all of a sudden, once again, I am a professional. It's equally amazing how much of a sense of "worthiness" that gives me. I'm not exactly sure that's healthy, but for now I'm going to count it as a gift. It's true that this job I've landed is only temporary, but it's a job and it makes me feel like I am "out there" in the world again, amongst the "normal" people who go to work each day and come home and bitch about it and feel a sense of accomplishment when they do a good thing.

Today I had a couple of great moments -- one was when I stopped to ask a man for directions for the train station and he asked if I wanted to share the cab. That showed such kindness and we had a good conversation about the work he did. On the train on the way in I also talked to a woman whose work complements the work I'll be doing for the next few weeks. God was doing some work in my life today and I'm so very happy.

Oh, and did I mention ... I don't have to be to work until 9:30 each day? Could life really be better?

The truth

I talk a lot about recovery and searching for wholeness and all that on this blog ... and that is honestly what I am reaching out for. But I need to say something honestly and get it out of me.

I think if I were not married I'd fuck every man I could and have one hell of a time doing it. I would hopefully be less inclined to married men than I have been in the past -- in my addiction I can believe that we are "just helping each other out." But without a husband and as many social "expectations" to live up to, I could see myself moving to a town where I knew no one, where I didn't care what others thought of me and just have one hell of a time. All of this because I constantly feel that I am fighting against my addict -- that part of me that just wants to go out and be wild and free. I feel conflicted in my acting out because I am married, because I could be found out, because I could hurt my husband who I love.

I know intellectually that I would feel just as empty using men and being used in that way as I do now, that the conflicts and the feeling used would be no less ... but every now and then this thought goes through my mind. The magical thinking lets me imagine that "At least there wouldn't be so much inner turmoil."

These thoughts make me worry, Do I stay married just to prevent myself from going hog-ass wild? In some ways, I think that's the reason I got married. I had started to do just what I had described above. I was becoming very promiscuous before I met the man who would become my husband. And then there he was he was so stable, so secure, so safe, so interested, so unaware.

Anyway ... I said it, my piece of truth. In some ways I want to take it back, erase it all and hide it. I fear judgment and anger over what I've said. But I'm only as sick as my secrets. Moving past this secret to a point where I love myself more than this, where I can find joy in some freedom other than this ... that is what I want. I do want the internal turmoil to stop. I hate fighting with myself 24/7. It's depressing, it's frustrating and it's tiresome. It's why I have to surrender one day at a time.

Speak to me

I wrote this in a note to someone in SLAA recovery this morning. As usual, in speaking to others God spoke to me.

You know, it's very hard for me to admit, but I have never been absolutely faithful to a man in my life. Even before my husband and I married, from the time we met, through the time we were dating, I always had at LEAST an emotional relationship with another man. I even was unfaithful to the men I was being unfaithful with. I would tell them they were the only one ... but there was ALWAYS someone else, even if it was just a "small" zing I got off a friendship with someone, or a recurring fantasy that danced in my head, taking me away from my present relationship and into the arms of someone else. Like the alcoholic who always needs that bottle stuck in the back of the laundry closet, I have lived in fear of not having someone to give me what I cannot give myself -- love and acceptance. I have lived this way because I have an addiction that renders me powerless over my cravings for another person. That addiction has almost robbed me of my life. I am in recovery to restore my life and my power by filling those voids with the love and acceptance of my Higher Power and to begin to recognize myself again as more than just my disease, but as a lovable, acceptable human being. The steps take me through this process.

Prayer for Divine Connections

This morning as I was picking up the newspapers to take them to recycling, I ran across a sheet of paper where I had taken some notes from an inspirational program I was watching on television. I had written down, "Pray for divine connections."

I love the Prayer of St. Francis, "Lord make me an instrument of thy peace." I have prayed it many times, asking God to use me as an instrument of his work. Likewise, I know that he has put people in my life, some momentarily, some for long-term, who are his instruments for speaking to me and helping me to better understand myself. Sometimes, I have done the work to "seek out" these people -- trusted servants such as therapists, a sponsor, recovery friends. Others, like the woman I spoke to yesterday in the online meeting, just appear.

This morning I pray:
"Lord, my life is yours, and I need the guidance of your wisdom today and each day.
Show me your strength, your beauty, your wisdom and your love in others and show yourself to them through me.
Open my heart, open my mind and let me lay down my weakened ego, so that I can feel and experience the daily gifts of connection you create for me.
When someone touches my hand or touches my heart, let me know that it is you. When someone opens their heart to me, let me know you have sent me a gift. When I feel fear and frustration, shame and guilt, come to me in stillness or with wild fire or a simple scene that assures me you are there.
As the wind blows, let me feel your presence, as the rain falls, let me feel your tender gentleness, and as laughter wells up in me, let me feel your love surrounding my soul, offering me divine connection too all that is in you, and all that is in me."

Today is not the day

Today I made it to an afternoon online meeting for SLAA and had the unique occassion to reach out to a woman who was going through a rough time. Our childhoods were similar as were some of the deep rooted beliefs about our damaged selves. I had never talked to this woman from half a world away before. She told me she struggled with the notion that she would never be able to have a love relationship because she was "damaged." She could at least accept that maybe she was wrong and that miracles do happen. I know myself that there are plenty of things I thought would never happen in my life that have and that I really can't predict the future. But I was able to share with her something that is ringing in my ears tonight. I reminded her that ours is a program of living one day at a time, being in the present. I encouraged her (this is a bit of a paraphrase) that instead of spending her day thinking "I'm never going to find a man," to say to herself, "Today is not the day for me to share my life with someone else. Today is my day to work on connecting to the part of me that was lost."

I firmly believe that the one reason that the 12 step programs work is because in helping others we are able to help ourselves. I believe that God gives us the opportunity to help someone else so that we can say the words we needed to hear. I had no real reason to go to that online meeting this afternoon. I wasn't Jonesing for a fix, in fact I probably went because I had some step work to do for a meeting with my sponsor tomorrow and I haven't finished it. Procrastination in any form is better than no procrastination at all. But my point is ... there are no coincidences. I needed to hear those somewhat unspoken words that came with me saying to this woman "Today is not the day ..." What I heard back for me ... focus on today, today is not the day when everything is going to happen, but today is the day when something is going to happen, be here.

One of the best gifts God has given me recently is my new dog. She's a great companion. I've had to learn to pay attention to her, to read her body language, to figure out what her barks and howls mean. And she keeps me in better shape -- I walk with her two to four times a day and when I sit at the computer for too long she comes and starts nudging my elbow and whining and howling a bit to let me know she needs something.

Today is not the day for everything to be right in the world. It's not the day for me to get a new job. It's not the day for me to do get everything done that I need to do. But it is the day for me to cook a nice supper for my husband, for me to not get angry because he's already an hour later than I had hoped, for me to take care of my dog, and for me to help someone else, so that I could help myself.

Today is also a day for me to feel some changes stirring inside me. I'm not going to project what they are, because I can't predict the future. But I will say that where there was no hope just a few weeks back, I am beginning to feel that there is hope that I will get my life back, that I am getting my life back, that I am living my life in its present form ... one day at a time.

To all my blogger buddies out there ... I am still having computer issues and haven't had the chance to read like I would like to lately. Also, the new antidepressant I'm taking has me both focusing better and not focusing as well ... Don't ask me what that means, but it does mean that I'm not getting to the blogs I like to read and the lives and recovery partners I like to keep up with. But I'll be back to visit. I hope you are all well.

Connecting to a loss of direction

Since moving here almost a year ago, there have been weeks where there have been many tasks to do each day, or weeks when I was planning my time around acting out, or participating in recovery.

For the weeks before the holidays and now the days that have followed I have had more of a sense that my life has no direction. I need direction, goals and a to do list each day. Life somewhat surrounded my husband while he was here for the holidays, and then have been focused on getting the new dog acclimated to her our home. But today it feels like there is nothing to do ... and not in a good way. I don't have a desire to act out, thank God. But I also don't have much of a desire to do anything else.

I guess there's still a bit of the depression hanging on ... I'm hanging on too, and promise to outlast it.

Connecting to my feelings about food

Yesterday in my appointment with my therapist she asked me what I envisioned when I thought of when I connected to the part of me that wanted to be healthy and fit. I told her that I get so frustrated because what I really want is to just be "normal." She sort of poo-pooed that away, saying ... "Forget that, no one is normal. All women have body image issues of some sort." I was angry at her for her flippancy. So I stopped for a minute and then said, "What I am telling you is that inside my head, I have the idea that there are people out there who don't have to constantly think about what they are going to eat, when they are going to eat it, they don't think about food all the time, they can shop in any store they want." For me, normal means I don't have to battle with food and exercise issues every day of my life. I can work out every day and love it -- I don't have to worry about what people think about me when I'm at the gym, or have a constant feeling of "I can't do this. I'm too out of shape." The truth is ... I am not "normal" ... I am a compulsive overeater, and I will always have struggles with using food as something other than nutrition. I doesn't mean that I have to let it run my life, but I have to give up that pipe dream that I'm going to be "normal." And honestly, she's probably right, there are few people out there who really can just say they have NO food issues.

One of the reasons I chose "kindness" as my secondary "focus" word for the year, was because I am trying to learn to be kind to myself, including to my body. While kindness to others (when I pay attention to them) comes pretty easy for me, kindness to myself is so much more difficult. I am really hard on myself and that is something I want to work on. But I am also continuing to realize -- peeling the proverbial onion -- how little I have seen my own responsibility for myself. For all of my life I have sort of seen things as "take what you get." Whether it was my health or my happiness, even though I worked hard, I always sort of just lived life without much discipline or thought, never recognizing that part of being "lucky" in life was doing some work to prevent disease and unhappiness.

A friend sent me this in one of our New Year's exchanges. It was something she read elsewhere: If you (1) want to change, (2) decide to change, (3) learn how to change, (4) take action to change, (5) persist in your attempt to change, and (6) start again when you backslide, there's a very good chance that you will change in the ways you want.

My word for the new year

So, instead of making New Year's Resolutions this year, I was inspired by a post by MPJ over at A Room of Mama's Own to choose a word to focus on in the new year -- something of a mantra. (I see that she posted her own very inspiring word today!)

After careful consideration, introspection, and some fervent prayer, I have chosen the word "connect." In the new year, I want to connect to myself, my spiritual self, my body, my friends, my family, my husband, the people and the things in the world around me. Over the past few years, for a variety of reasons that honestly are unimportant, I have slowly disconnected myself from so many things and I have come to feel very alone and empty. This has fueled depression and unhappiness. However, at my core is much love, much happiness, a love to laugh and learn and be a part of the world. I want to reconnect to that part of me by focusing my attention and intentions on connecting to all that is within me and around me. I considered the word "kindness" and that may still be a secondary word (kindness to myself, my body, my spirit, to others), but connect seems to be the one that resonates as a "focus" word. This certainly feels more manageable and doable than a long list of things that I've tried over and over again to no avail.

I also heard something else that I hope I can call to memory many times in the new year this morning. It was a phrase I had heard a few times before, but it seemed to speak to me this morning. "Everything, absolutely everything, is subject to change, except God." Wow. My Higher Power, whom I call God but who "looks" nothing at all like the God of most of the religious and secular world "visualizes," it is a spiritual force that guides the universe of my life. To focus on the fact that absolutely EVERYTHING in my life, my addiction, my depression, even my marriage, my friendships, my health, my relationships with my family, EVERY single thing is subject to change, but the one thing that is not subject to change is that spirit of life that lives in me and connects me to every other living thing in the world ... I love that.

A state of wholeness

I sometimes get so discouraged with myself when I struggle with my addiction. I think I should be smarter, better, more dedicated. I forget that I am powerless and I gain a big ego ... thinking, "I can beat it this time!" It takes me and my HP and working the program to stay sober. The key is I'm sober today. In the beginning and even sometimes in the midst of recovery, it can be very hard just to make it through one single day.

In my experience, that is because all the focus of my thoughts remains on the other person or persons, or rather my "need" or desire for them. In other words, all the thought is on my disease, not on myself and my recovery. As I work my way through recovery I have begun to focus my thoughts on myself and to feel the emotions and feelings I've been masking by acting out.

It is not easy, but self-awareness and the ability to actually feel and be present in my life has been one of the greatest gifts of my program. Though I've had a hard time working through the self-hatred, I know am not a bad person for acting out. I was very, very sick. And as my addictions grew over the years (as I fed them by acting out), they become more of a way of life than my real life, until I reached the point where I no longer recognized this person who was doing things she could never imagine herself doing "in real life." I was living parallel lives, but more and more the sane, successful, vibrant part of me seemed to fade away.

When I walked into an SLAA recovery room and heard the SLAA promises, which say, among other things, "We will relate to others from a state of wholeness," I knew I was in the right place. My life has become so fragmented and empty and I have bene living so many lives even I didn't know which one is the real me at times. I still don't sometimes ... but that's why I keep coming back.

After Christmas check in

I've been welcoming a new dog into my family and my computer is on the blink ... so I haven't had much chance to write. But I wanted to check in and say ...I know why I keep coming back to recovery, why I keep working to learn about myself and learn how to deal with my feelings. It is because every now and then, I can see the light of day, I can feel hope and I know that it is only because I keep coming back.

The most recent example of hope I've found is in realizing that even though I've been at this for a long time, my journey toward recovery has only just began. One of the first things I learned in recovery was that I had to replace my old addictive behaviors with new behaviors that helped me fill the God-shaped hole that I had been filling with useless and demeaning extramarital relationships. Though I took this lesson into my head, it has been one of the hardest things to actually put to practice.

When I would give up one addiction, I always wanted to go to another -- no sex? OK love, no "love"? OK food, or codependency or any number of things. But .. it seems this lesson is getting closer to reality as my relationship grows closer with my husband, enjoying being present with him and in some ways getting to know him better. And now I am finding joy in getting to know our new dog and playing with her and opening my heart to her as well. I can tell already, she is going to be a great joy in my life and also fill my life with plenty of work as well! And if any "strange" man tries to cross her path ... they are going to face one ferocious bark!

Merry Christmas friends

I wish my friends who join me here at this confessional a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you all for being here and supporting my recovery -- my choice and my need to work my program.

I am thankful today to be happy about the holidays. My husband and I will open presents in the morning and then share a simple holiday lunch with some local friends. And for the first time in a long time ... I can't think of a thing in the world to complain about. That's a wonderful feeling. I have been whining for so long -- upset about my addiction, crying through the pain of a difficult childhood, mad at the world because I was sick of myself, but for today I am happy to be present, alive and aware. I'm happy that although I'm not perfect, by any means, I've made progress. I owe it all to my Higher Power and the fellowship of the 12-step recovery rooms, and I've drawn a lot from the wonderful people I've found here in our common home on the Internet. Without the opportunity to keep coming back ... I think I would have just simply quit life all together. I'm glad I didn't give up and that I still have the chance to keep coming back as long as God sees fit for me to live.

All my best to you on Christmas and in the new year to come.

The Woman Within

There is within me a woman who loves the way she feels when her body is exerted and stretched to its limits by exercise. I can feel that woman.

There is a body surrounding that woman, a body built for protection, that prevents that woman within from living.

May 2008 be the year the woman within begins to live.

Realizations

As I sat last night with my two recovery friends, talking and working together on an art project, it was telling them of how very horrible I have felt (emotionally) over the past few weeks that made me realize I have to seek professional help for mental disease. I've never tried to deny my addictions, my codependency, my PTSD. But at some level I have always taken the diseases of my mind lighter and more manageable than the idea that I have a very serious problem that without treatment could steal my life forever.

I've never been one to run to medication or doctors to fix my problems. For the most part I mistrust the medical field. But doctors certainly are more trained to assess and treat mental illness than I am.

God helped me to see the severity of my brokeness through my friends last night. Jumbled around in the isolated confines of my mind, I could only feel hopeless. Brought to the light of day, I can feel hope.

I went to get my blood work done this morning that will allow me to increase my dosage of Effexor. At the same time blood was drawn to test for HIV/AIDS and for sugar and cholesterol issues. I followed that up with an Al-Anon meeting, lunch with my husband and then a call about a prospective job in a new field.

Now I'm going to take a nap and rest.

A hurtful story

I dragged myself to my therapy appointment this morning, kicking and screaming. I tried to do everything I could to put it off. I don't think that it was just the therapy appointment ... it was just that feeling of isolation that made me not want to show up for life, much less the appointment today. But despite my best efforts, I went and I shared. I told her how horrible the past couple of days have been inside my head and how frustrating it is to want to curl up in a ball one minute and then excited about decorating my house for Christmas the next.

After I posted here yesterday, I went through the painful process of getting myself out of the house and to the store to buy the final part of my husband's anniversary gift. When I got to the store I found all the Christmas stuff on sale half off and started buying up stuff to decorate my house for our guests next week. These are the same guests that honestly I don't want to entertain at Christmas. But ... I will and I will do it graciously.

So, my therapist asked me a bunch of hard questions this morning, things I didn't want to answer and things I feel inept to answer about what it is that is holding me back, causing me to sabotage myself again and again. I don't know the answer. I don't connect to the emotions I am trying to avoid. It's hard to even find them. But then she started asking me about trauma and traumatic experiences. I repeated the story of how at age three my stepfather called me into the bathroom and asked me to touch his penis. That same year or maybe the next he locked me in the family's underground cellar and told me I was going to have to sleep there all night because I had been bad. He walked around outside making noises like a panther or an angry lion to terrorize me. My future sexual abuse all seemed pretty "routine" ... I don't really connect to the trauma, except for one incident. It is horrible to relive and when I told the story today I thought to myself, "I don't want to have to tell this story to another therapist ever again."

I told the therapist that I always knew when the molestation was coming. I never had to guess. I felt it coming. It was no different that day when I was 8 or 9 years old, my stepfather was doing some plumbing work underneath the house (there was no basement). He asked me to crawl under the house with him to help him. I knew immediately that was not what he had in mind. He told me that he was going to teach me something new. He then began to stroke himself and told me that when he told me to to put my mouth over him. He said some stuff was going to come out and that I was not to spit it out. He wanted me to learn how to swallow it. I remember being terrified of the whole thing, but followed what I was told. When he came in my mouth, the taste was bitter and I couldn't hold it. I spit it on the ground almost involuntarily. He told me, "I told you not to spit it out." He said it sort of angrily, but not with the same voice that I was usually spoken to "in the light of day." He didn't beat me or hurt me. I just felt his disappointment in me and I felt like such a failure.

I often wonder if the men I act out with knew what fuels my enthusiasm for giving oral sex ... would they still be willing to enjoy it as much?

No matter what was done to me, it does not give me the right to use other people, and other people's husbands to fix my stepfather's mistakes. I continue to build the shame and guilt.

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.

How stubborn?

I've been thinking for some time of writing a letter to God. It would start something like, "Dear Lord, my life is an absolute mess. I have no idea who I am or how I got here, all I know is it sure doesn't feel like the me I want to be or even the me I know. I don't feel like I can go on like this ..." It's when I get to this point that I start that old familiar mantra, "I know, I know, I HAVE to turn my will and my life over to God. I have to give in to God's will for my life and be sober enough to listen for it." And the old Southern gospel hymn of my childhood begins playing in my head, "I surrender all ... I surrender all, all to you my precious Savior, I surrender all."

But then that little voice .. the scared one, the one that thinks it can fix anything ... the one that just will not give up, kicks in and says "Yes, but ... " and "What about?"

The "what about" today is a man I've had an ongoing relationship with since summer. He was the one holdout in that series of five letters I wrote a few weeks ago saying, "I'm done for good, I'm focused on my marriage." He is the one I left the door open to and the one who walked back through it last week. As Gomer Pyle says, "Sooprize, Sooprize, Sooprize."

If anyone wants to believe that addiction, sex and love addiction is not a disease of the mind, tell me this: what good is a limp-dicked (literally) man, who can only describe love as "the L word" and has far more attraction to transgendered men than to women themselves to a female sex & love addict 16 years his junior? Yet, somehow, for this person and my obessive thoughts about how I can make him love me enough, I can't give up my stubborn will. Insane much??

So, I prayed this morning for the willingness to be willing to turn my life over, shed a few tears and prepared for a job interview I have later today.

Who are they?

Codependence is at the root of all my addictions, and it is what so often keeps me cut off from my HP. Because I want to please and control and manipulate everyone around me, I am not true to myself or with anyone else. Eventually this leads me into the arms of some stranger or into the cookie jar. I want everyone to like me, I want to make them love me. I want to make sure they don't get angry or upset, that I don't disappoint or discourage them. I give myself an enormous amount of ego-driven power, which makes it very hard to submit to my powerlessness and turn my will and life over to a power greater than myelf. What??? A power greater than me? Are you kidding? Haha.

I almost drive myself bonkers every year writing a Christmas letter to our friends and family painting the perfect written picture of the perfect year filled with traveling and work accomplishments (or our latest move). But as I write about travels, I spend time thinking -- "Oh no, this person will get upset because we didn't see them while we were in the area!" "Oh no, that person doesn't like that person and we can't let them know we associated with them!" It just goes on and on, when the fact of the matter is that people may not really give two hoots about where we went or what we did ... and the whole sum of the letter doesn't add up to one thing truly important. But EVERYONE (my ego again) expects our letter every year and we just HAVE to send one.

During a meeting yesterday, members, including myself, spent some time in discussion about how we fear judgment, how we always have to live up to what "they" might think? But when I stop to think who is this mysterious "they" and "everyone" and how truly important are they really ... compared to my recovery, compared to the things I actually struggle with each day, to the true achievements in my life (which sometimes just include making it through the day sober or even alive) ... "they" are not really that important.

What is important is that I can keep the focus on myself -- not on changing others, saving them, controlling them, manipulating their thoughts. I can examine my life daily and learn to recognize and examine my feelings, be true to myself, and do my very best. Improving my concious contact with God is critical to my recovery and to hope in my life. I cannot connect to the higher power I call God if I am always putting someone or something else before him in my mind.

In the struggle to live with the disease of addiction (whether to people or food), God is my only hope. The "theys" that I put in the way are my path to continued destruction.

One day at a time.

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.

From "Hope for Today"

This is today's reading from "Hope for Today." I thought it would be a good thing to read often. It also gives me an excuse to post, even though I just haven't felt like writing lately. I'm not in a bad place, other than I just want to be by myself, within myself. And I'm thankful not to feel lonely there.

When I feel my serenity being crowded out by fear and anxiety, I break down the Serenity Prayer in a clear and precise way that cuts through the deluge of my shortcomings. First, I broaden my acceptance to include EVERYTHING exactly as it is, not only the things I cannot change. I look at my entire life through the lens of gratitude, trusting that everything is unfolding exactly as it should. As my sponsor reminds me, God's planning and timing are perfect. I ask my Higher Power to help me accept things exactly as they are and to see the opportunities in the circumstances.

Asking God for "courage to change the things I can" is dangerous for me at times. If I'm not careful, I overwhelm myself with all the various things I COULD change and I become paralyzed by inaction. It helps to pray for knowledge of exactly what God wants me to change at any given moment. I think of the "things I can change" as the things God WANTS me to change.

Asking for "wisdom to know the difference" can provoke my perfectionism. I yearn to know exactly what God wants me to change. I don't want to make any mistakes. To regain perspective, I remind myself that everything is already in God's hands and that decision making is a self-correcting process. Wisdom is something I sense in my gut. If I change something and still don't feel right, I go through the process again until God's will becomes clear to me.

Thought for the Day:
How deeply and broadly do I apply the Serenity Prayer to my life?
"I ask God for direction and wait, placing the problem in His hands. I ask for clarity in what I must do. He gives me clear direction." Having Had a Spiritual Awakening, pg. 40

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.

Relationship issues

Few people believe that I have a very hard time building close relationships. I had the fortune this afternoon of meeting with a fellow female sex addict in recovery for coffee. I had made the effort to reach out to some recovery women in the greater region for support and since this woman lived nearby we agreed to meet. In the course of our discussion we both lamented how difficult it is for us to build close friendships with women.

I recognize this as a sense of insecurity in myself. I tend to prefer to isolate and in relationships with women to compare and contrast or simply judge. There is a part of me, the authentic part that truly wants to feel a sense of belonging and safety and happiness with other people -- there was actually a point in my life when I enjoyed and thrived on being around others. I see close women friends who tell each other everything and love to be in one another's presence and I either am amazed or think they are putting on a show.

As a result of living in the disease of sex and love addiction, I have built up fear and isolation and insecurity that blocks me from my desire to interact with other people. I feel "less than" or extremely uncomfortable. Tomorrow night I have to go to my husband's Christmas party for work. I am ready to come unglued. I don't want to go. It seems I can no longer have that "chit chat" conversation that makes people enjoy themselves at these events. I feel highly insecure. But I won't tell him that ... and I'll go and I'll smile and I'll hide in the bathroom when I'm at the point of insanity and then we'll go and I'll be testy and cranky.

It is those same feelings of fear and isolation and insecurity that cause me to want to act out in my disease. Go figure, I don't want to see or talk to people who genuinely care for me, or understand me or even people who are just doing the harmless act of celebrating the holidays ... but I want to talk and interact with men who I can manipulate, control and hurt myself more with. Feeling insecure this afternoon about this meeting with this woman and being fearful that I'll always lack the skills to make genuine and meaningful friendships, I began to think about a man I acted out with recently who lives nearby, whose car I started looking for on the road. I thought how it was really only right that I contact him and see how he was doing, it wasn't fair that I just dumped him. That's the cunning thought pattern of my addiction. Luckily, I was able to set aside those vulnerable feelings and make a healthy phone call.

So what to do about this fear of relationships and insecurity and judgment in friendships? I do have to accept that this is where I am today. I can be thankful that I had the chance to practice reaching out. I can pray for the willingness to turn those fears and insecurities that lead me to isolation over to God. And I can continue to work my program -- which goes one step at a time through the process of recovery. I tend to want to solve all problems in one fell swoop. But I have to take these issues one day at a time and recognize that there is a time and a purpose for all things.

In pursuit of power

I went back to the therapist who doesn't know shit about sex addiction today, full of myself that this would be the last appointment and that she was of no use to me. I forgot that God sometimes has lessons for us in places we think we'll never find them.

In the early parts of her conversations she asked me what I got from my compulsive overeating and what I would gain from letting it go. I told her that letting it go would help me to regain my health and self-esteem and that what I gained from it was protection and comfort. In regard to protection, she responded, "But that's a lie, you don't get protection." Her response (considering my already pissed off state of mind) made me even more pissed off. Of course, I don't actually get protection from all this extra weight, but that is the lie that I began to believe deep down inside. Anyway, I stood my ground on that and realizing my anger wasn't going to get me anywhere I said a short prayer, "God, please let me hear what I need to hear and give me the peace to hear it."

Almost immediately the defensiveness of sitting there with a thin, tall blonde woman disappeared as we began to talk about my sexual addiction. To the question of what I gain from recovering from the addiction, I answered that I would be able to regain my life, that it has become unrecognizable, that very few things or people actually interest me anymore, I am filled with shame and guilt. As for what I gain from the addiction -- she began to ask questions that again made me feel like she didn't understand, but as we talked I began to express that in the beginning of my acting out I told the anonymous sex partners I sought out over the Internet that I was looking for an intimacy that didn't exist in my marriage -- one that transcended just a physical act and was more emotional in nature. However, my actions were just the opposite of that. I went from one man to another, sometimes a different one every day, sometimes more than one a day, seeking a feeling of worthiness and value from them. If I could make them feel good, the best they'd ever felt, then I had some value and worth. I had no concern about whether I felt good. Their praise and acceptance was enough. But as my disease progressed, so did my motives and the needs of my addict. I began to actually need to be something to these men more than just a free whore, more than good sex.

While this was not cognizant behavior, looking back at it now, I know that I began luring men (usually men with some form of power -- whether it be physical strength, intelligence or business success) into emotional situations, giving them things (attention, acceptance, understanding, a willingness to explore) that they could not get otherwise and truly trying to "hook" them. I was like a spider, weaving a web, exploring and extracting every part of these men's psyches, while keeping my own self at bay, never letting them in, or at least only enough to manipulate them. I remember literally thinking about one acting out partner who I actually cared for very much, "You may think you can deny me, but I know how to bring you to your knees in a second."

What then? Nothing. I didn't seek this power in order to blackmail or get my way with them. I never accepted gifts from them. I simply relished the power. That was the high that fed my addiction. Even worse, was that in luring these men in ... I knew that at any minute I could drop them, leave them, as I had so many others, and never care at all. That is the coldness that is addiction.

In most people, addiction feeds a need that was never met, or addresses a matter never resolved. For me, wielding this power was a way of reliving my childhood sexual abuse in two ways, well really three, if you consider that it was all done in secret. First, it was revenge. I wasn't the one who was powerless and vulnerable any longer. I wasn't the child who couldn't say no. In fact, I could (at least in my addict's mind) say no at any time and never think twice. That was the power trip. But what corroded my system was the fact that in pursuing power in this way, I was reiterating the message that the only value and worth that I have to others, especially men of power, is of a sexual nature. I could not deny that I could never have lured these men into any situation without the promise of sex. And after all, I was keeping my emotional self completely separated from them, which was my own way of reaffirming that my feelings and needs were irrelevant.

From my early adulthood, I always knew that knowledge is power. It's probably why I pursued a career in journalism. I loved knowing things that other people didn't know, and telling people the parts that I wanted to share, then using the inside information to essentially manipulate others to like me or give me more information. I remember when I was promoted from reporter to editor and it was part of my duty to write a weekly column, I hated it. I didn't want to share my thoughts and opinions with others. I wanted to keep those to myself. I felt vulnerable putting myself out there like that. I preferred it that everyone around me tell me everything that they thought and did, so that I could tell others and use it for my advantage, for my career success, for my feeling of power.

All of this is so ugly and arrogant and quite sickening to look at ... but wow, is it good to get in there and really see the truth. I have to drain these sickening truths from me in order to make room for what's to come. That, as I discussed with my therapist, is the hard part. When we take something away, we have to replace it with something equally meaningful. We can't just leave a gaping hole. That's why change is so hard. Until recovery, and even pretty far into recovery, this pursuit of power, denial of my emotional self, was the only way I knew how to live. Finding a new way to live and being courageous enough to accept it requires a decision -- the decision that comes in the second step.

It is no wonder that I have had difficulty succeeding in a program where the very first step, "admitted we were powerless," strips away the very thing that has been the mainstay of my inner child's (my addict's) existence. Thank God the rest of the steps follow.

“Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point. We asked His protection and care with complete abandon.”

Their side of the story

I have began over the past couple of months to read the blogs of women whose lives have been horrendously affected by their husband's sexual addiction. As I read how hard it is to rebuild trust, to not feel inferior, to go through divorce or try to rebuild the marriage, my whole body aches, but my heart truly hurts.

I could stop reading and avoid the pain, but at some level it is a part of the truth I really need to see. I seek it out not as self-punishment, but as a way of seeing what is real and what is a lie.

In my addiction, I have closed myself off from the feelings of the women who wash the dirty underwear, raise the kids, and put up with the egos of the men I took to bed. It's not that I never thought of the wives of the men I slept with. In fact, I often did. But I never allowed myself to think I was hurting them. It makes me think of the lies my stepfather must have believed while he was molesting me -- Everything's fine as long as no one finds out. Those are the same lies all sex addicts believe until they realize their soul has been stolen, and their life is no longer recognizable.

There is a usually unspoken lie that is perceived as the truth among people like me and the men I have slept with -- it is that our affairs have nothing to do with our partners. We are motivated, rather, by the screaming lie that we cannot go on, that life is incomplete and impossible, that we are nothing without that "zing" we get from acting out. We express our love and care for our families to one another and in the latter stages of the disease wish desparately that we could just stop and get back to our real lives. Thankfully it is when we get sick and desparate enough that we hit bottom and it is what brings the worst of us into recovery.

Even that doesn't stop the bleeding pain ... not for either side, not for a long, long time. What it does do, is give us hope where there was none.

Up and then down

That's the way the mood cycles seem to be going lately. It is hard sometimes not to want that reassurance of worthiness from someone else -- and to want to reach out in the wrong direction. But, I'll post some recovery writing I did this morning, while I was on one of the Ups of the cycle and then go get what I need to get done out in the world.

--

Just about a month ago, at almost 40 years old, I met my biological father for the first time. He had left my mother almost 10 years before I was born, came back for a weekend reconciliation and I was conceived, though he never acknowledged the conception. (It took two people to make that mistake, by the way. I now know not to blame it all on him.) I actually was raised by another man, my stepfather, who in addition to molesting me, was extremely emotionally abusive and sometimes mildly physically abusive.

As I look back on my life, I see so many ways I have understandably tried to fill the need and want for a "real" father in my life. Every little girl wants a Daddy to be her hero and protector, right? I see how that child's search has played into my sex and love addiction. I have insisted on acting out with men at least a few years older than me and in some instances, old enough to be my father. I have sought out powerful, protective men (who also usually turned out to be controlling, but that's beside the point). All I ever wanted was a man to say he loved me and truly mean it -- for love not to mean sexual favors or submission to control, but to mean that I was cared for and that I mattered. (I bet you'd never guess that I never found that in any of my acting out partners.) And in all of this I have been scared to death of abandonment -- scared to the point that it has been very easy to push people away.

Looking at this through the eyes of an adult in recovery, not a helpless child, I know that all of the stuff in the first paragraph is on the men who brought me into the world and raised me. Everything in the second paragraph is on me. Although those men were woefully inadequate as parents and even spouses, in my estimation; they never had the benefit of recovery, they didn't have the best of upbringings themselves, and their judgments were impaired with addiction and ignorance. That doesn't excuse them and it doesn't excuse me. I was lead to recovery through my despair in acting out, and have the opportunity to end the cycle of addiction and ignorance in my own life.

For me, the true gift of recovery lies in unveiling the truth. My recovery is about me, no one else. The 4th step has been paramount in helping me unveil the ways I have kept myself tied to the people who hurt me through resentments, and how I have lived my life in fear (fear of failure, abandonment, and inadequacy -- messages I received as a child) and how that all has fed my need to run and hide in sex, love, food, codependence or any other thing I can find. Equipped with the truth, I have a whole lot less to turn over to my HP every day -- I'm turning over what is mine, and leaving what belongs to others to them. With faith in my Higher Power and a willingness to be honest and responsible, I can begin to clean up my side of the fence and healing and positive change continue to come one day at a time. Dishonesty, resentment and fear only stall me, and I'm not delusional enough to think I'll never get stalled. But I'm thankful that recovery is helping me see the
truth, which for me has become a guiding light.

The good stuff

This morning as we began our slow process of awakening for the day, my husband lifted the covers he had wrapped around him and moved his body against mine. Our legs and feet touched, he wrapped his body around my bottom and back and it felt perfect. Yesterday, in the middle of the day, on a mere whim, we took a break from doing Christmas cards and paying bills and all on his own -- no prompts from me -- he gave me a wonderful oil massage with a very happy and intimate ending.

It seems that little white lie I told to those acting out partners worked. :)

As I lay there this morning, enjoying his body against mine, I thought of two things. First, I remembered the times that R. would wrap his long body against mine in the bed, and make sure that every inch of him was against me, including his feet against mine. I loved that, found it so loving and enduring, it made all the other drama in our lives disappear. And I remember thinking then that I could never have such tender moments with my husband. That was a lie, a lie of my addiction. I also thought of the lies I felt last week as I lay in bed in withdrawal, thinking my life would be sexless for its remaining days, or at least there would be no pleasure and fun in it. That, too, was a lie of my addiction. My addiction wants to own me. I'm glad I have a choice to turn my will and life over to the care of a Higher Power than that stinking, rotten disease.

The second thing I thought was how I wanted to bound out of the bed and write about this moment, about how good it felt, about my thoughts on how most of the lies of my life live within my addiction. But I stopped myself, and I said, "Lay right here and enjoy this moment. It is a gift." It caused me to think of how I always, always want to give everything away. I wanted to write about that moment to give it away. Sure, I kept the treasure of it, but I needed to get it out of me and share it with someone else. When I read a good book, I can't wait to tell someone else. When I read or see something inspiring, I immediately want to tell or show someone else. But when I hurt, at least to the world outside this little confessional, I'm not so eager to share. It's food for thought, without judgment, just something to think about for me. What do I keep for myself?