Accepting my own beauty

Yesterday I spent five hours with a hairstylist, getting my hair cut, colored, and for the first time ever, highlighted. It looks really cute and because I did it at the local beauty school, it took a little longer, but the price was SO good.

I really like the cut and the new look. I feel younger, lighter and more attractive.

It is not surprising that one of my struggles in feeling this way is that I want validation from someone else of my beauty. I also want to "give it away." I mean after all, what's the point in being beautiful if it can't be used to lure a man into bed?

Today, thanks to the strength and love of my Higher Power, I chose to come here and to write rather than to take the opportunity to meet someone for coffee and use my beauty to try to seduce them. I accept my beauty for myself, as a gift to me. I release my need for anyone other than me to acknowledge my beauty. I'd be a liar if I said that was easy. But in shifting my focus on to what I can learn from this experience -- I learn the gift of self-awareness, I build self-esteem and I remind myself that because I have the disease of addictions it is only natural to have temptations, but it is what I do with this temptations that truly matters.

I chose today to be a productive day -- to get the most out of every minute. I have EMDR therapy today, and if I chose to meet someone before or after, I release a big part of my ability to be present and productive in that session. This therapy as painful as it is, is tremendously effective in helping me work through my past, and focus on the truth of what exists today. I want to make the most out of every session and I cannot do that if I give my beauty away. I am choosing to keep it.

And this afternoon when I'm all sweaty after planting the beautiful flowers and vegetables that my husband and I bought together for our yard ... I'll relish in the beauty of the garden and all it will produce, and in the beauty that still exists in me because I can make a choice not to act out, not to give in to those very natural temptations, that are so cunning, baffling and powerful they make me think they are good for me.

Just for today I embrace my inner beauty and the pleasure of my new hairdo. I smile because I feel good inside and because I made a conscious decision today not to give that inner smile away for the cost of an empty,fleeting acknowledgement that I'd never believe anyway.

Finding the willingness

It feels like I could write 10 posts about the seminar I attended this weekend with my niece. However, if I were to sum it up, I would say what I gained most from this experience was a deeper understanding of the acceptance of all things as perfect gifts from a higher power, and a willingness to examine every aspect of my life for the potential lesson. To quote the seminar leader, "Everything is of service." I simply have to be willing to accept that even when I don't like what it going on in my life ... it has some purpose. This same truth shines through on page 449 of the AA Big Book. "Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today."

I picked up a lot of tools at this seminar ... some affirmations, some ideas for deeper and more meaningful meditation and connection to my Higher Power, and a reminder that any story can be told from a variety of different angles -- and it is up to me what I choose to focus on. The seminar leader had us tell the story of the most disturbing experience of our lives first in our own words, with our own focus. Then she asked us to get up, shift to the next seat and tell the person in front of us the same story as if it were the funniest joke we'd ever heard. (This was VERY hard for both me and the listener, who had to laugh. However, it oddly lifted a big burden from me.) When we got up again, we sang our stories to our listening partner. It was the fourth time that we told our story that I had a major shift. We were asked to tell our story from a new vantage point -- as if we had intentionally attracted everything in our most disturbing story to ourselves for the purpose of fulfilling a need to have a certain set of experiences that filled a critical void in our spiritual beings. Talk about taking on responsibility. Wow. This was at a whole new plane. The thought that I could or would attract something horrible to myself was very tough to swallow. But as I was able to retell this often told tale of my childhood sexual abuse, I shifted my focus from the pain and horror, to the lessons I had learned, the soul-deep experiences I have had, and the realization that forgiveness is a gift I give myself, not something I give away to others. This whole experience goes a lot deeper, and I am thankful to still be processing all that I learned, applying it to my life and to my recovery.

For me, recovery has been a process of self-discovery, filling the voids in my life that were never filled at the appropriate age. This weekend focused on "getting to the core" of myself and setting intentions for my life was very helpful in propelling me past a "stuck place" I was in.

Another helpful part of me moving past that "stuck place" was my willingness to speak, after all these years, with my dear niece, who is the closest member of my family to me, about my past acting out and my road to recovery. For years I have believed that as much as I didn't want my husband to know about my extramarital affairs, I wanted her to know even less. She went through her teenage years watching her mother (my sister) have one affair after another and it scarred her deeply. I feared if she ever knew I had been unfaithful she would know longer hold me close in her heart and that she might reject me outright. Those feelings were based in fear, and by the grace of my Higher Power about a week before she arrived, my heart began to open to the idea of sharing with her the basics of my behavior. I feel this opened a huge door in my heart and it also brought her and I closer together than ever before.

One day at a time, the Promises are being fulfilled in my life and I cannot possibly express the depth of my gratitude.

Observations of a non-parent

Being childless myself, I take pleasure in observing the interactions between parents and their children. I am often awed by the sheer responsibility these mere humans take on whenever they give birth to a child. How do they decide what to do in even the smallest of situations like answering the question, "Can I spent the night with Susie?" much less the huge ones that often never come in the form of a verbalized question.

This morning as I was walking my substitute for a child -- my dog -- children all over the neighborhood were waiting for the school bus. Some of the high school students were all dressed up for what seemed to be an awards ceremony. They all looked bright and shiny.

It occurred to me as I approached one bus stop after another that in addition to the children, there was a group of parents also waiting there, watching over their children, sending them off with hugs and kisses. It made me think of my own school days. My sister and cousins and I, we walked to the bus stop all by our lonesome. We fought our own battles with the neighbor kids. Whatever happened, we were on our own.

Now the people of my generation have grown up and had kids of their own, and they apparently have determined that rather that throwing their kids to the wolves to fend for themselves, they are going to be there to protect them, to show them they are loved, and to make sure nothing happened to them.

Knowing that life goes in cycles, I wonder how this generation of kids will grow up to raise their own children? It's an interesting thought to ponder.

Gratitude

A huge scoop of gratitude to all of you who responded with such acceptance and loving kindness to my last post. I felt so uplifted and encouraged by your words.

I have been away the past few days attending a seminar and filling my heart and mind with goodness. Of course, the goodness is sometimes triggering ... but I'm really finding a new sense of willingness surrounding examining my feelings.

I hope to write more write more soon about some of the growth I experienced at this seminar.

For now, I just want you all to know what an incredible part of my support system you are ... and I wouldn't know you if you hit me on the street.

Do I have the willingness to be happy?

My life has been going so good that it hurts. A newfound intimacy and committment to honesty with my husband, uncovering painful but useful parts of myself, building new and close relationships with women for the first time in my life, even having the willingness to get honest in ways I've never been honest before.

Today I want to act out, to fall deep into a relationship that I can get lost in. Find an extramarital partner who I can make my Higher Power, so that I don't have to build and intimate relationship with a true power greater than myself, or get close to the REAL people in my life. I want to do this because yesterday I acted out.
After months of physical sobriety, but still playing too close to the fire for too long ... testing myself and God ... I let it sneak up on me. Today I feel disgusted and ashamed with myself. And I have to realize that something about this horrible feeling works for me. Perhaps it is that it propels me further into my disease ... that giving a quick hand job in a parking lot leads me to be obsessed with the need for more, more, more.

I'm so sick of writing about relapses. But apparently not sick enough. I'm so angry that I was so stupid to let this happen, to skip meetings and isolate ... to cut myself off from what I needed to stay sober just long enough to be drawn back in.

I can't change yesterday, and I'm having a hard time changing today, even though I did ignore two messages from people I could have engaged with. Those two messages tell me that I'm putting the energy out there. I'm ready to scream. The quick hits don't get it anymore, but they can set off a shit storm of hurt.

I knew there was a chance for this. I came so close to acting out just a couple of weeks ago. I just didn't take it seriously enough. I got too cocky (pardon the pun). I literally despise myself right now and that makes it all the more enticing to go out and find someone to "love" me.

Thankfully my niece is coming tomorrow and will be here through Monday. I hate it that my withdrawal will interfere with my chance to be close and open with her.

Am I really even willing to accept the real love that is around me? Am I willing to be happy? I thought that's what I was working for? Why do I keep fucking it up so royally?

I'm just writing because it's the only thing I know to do. And I'm crying ... because I don't know if I'll ever be better. If it will just be a few months of getting better only to have another painful slip. How can I forget all the things I've learned? How can I forget how many people hurt?

Thankfully my friend EC was there to listen and not yell and to remind me that I have made progress ... just refraining all these months. But now I may act out for a few months. Who knows?

Someone shared recently that they couldn't take another relapse because they weren't sure they could come back. Coming back to recovery is the only thing I keep doing right. Everything else I keep really, really screwing up.

A stone of love

About a month ago, Bizy Lizy over at Alma and Demos, found my blog and was willing to wade through it and hear my story. Thanks to her comments, I was able to return the favor and found myself lost in her search for the perfect love story. Today, I was incredibly humbled and moved by the insightful words she wrote as she included me in her collection of stones. She wrote:

There is Rae, who I fondly refer to as "Sweet Rae." Her love story begins as a sweet and intuitive spirit, filled with the wonder of childhood hopes and dreams. Sadly, her sacred spirit was subjected to abuse at the hands of her stepfather. She would reenact this abuse over and over again in her own life for years. Her stone has many cracks, and her sharp edges turn inward, so that we don't see them as we run our fingers across the smooth surface. But Rae, like so many others, has a color, a sparkle that longs to be exposed, longs to be expressed and acknowledged. Her childhood hopes and dreams claim validation that only she can give. I am touched by her determination to live the love story she is entitled to. What I suspect Rae struggles with, is that she sees her cracks as shameful reminders of her past, when, in reality, they are slivers of light that give us glimpses into the beauty that she holds within.

As I have blogged here over the past four years (my first post was May 29, 2004), I have enjoyed immensely the opportunity to connect with others in the blogosphere. Some I have cried out to for help, and still others I have simply cried for. Some have made me laugh until I cried, and some have struck me to a point of breathtaking inspiration. Though there have been a couple of less than desirable run-ins, for the most part I have developed some truly treasured connections with women and men who also find solace and satisfaction in sharing their stories in this vast cyber universe. I have learned as much about myself from these people and their stories as I have from any self-help book or therapy session I have sat through. Likewise, I have found more classic literature in the writing of some of the people whose blogs I read than I could find at the local Barnes & Noble. Sure, there's a lot of horseshit on the Internet, but I have found that as someone searching for my own path, I have been inspired and awed by the journeys of the people I have met here and I am thankful for the many of you who have cheered me on and shared my passage with me. Today, I am especially thankful to you, Lizy, for including me in your collection of stones. May the gentle water of love glide over us all, smoothing our surfaces and revealing our inner strength.

I'm angry

I want validation. I want attention. I want to feel loved. I don't want to want any of these things. I want to be able to get up in the morning and say, "These are the things that I need to be doing" and get busy doing them and not care about validation or attention or my concept of love. I just want to be happy with what I have.

Too much

I went in for more exorcism today ... revisiting the past in EMDR therapy with hopes of reprogramming my sick brain. The therapy is working pretty well at culling out emotions and shifting them in the right direction. Rather than being angry at myself, I'm beginning to show some real anger at my abusive stepfather. Today I succeed at calling him a fucker and saying I hope he rots in hell. I sort of stopped myself with the rots in hell part because I didn't think it was a nice thing for someone to say about anyone, even if they don't even really believe in hell. I believe that hell exists on earth and I think he and I both have lived through it. I also said that because of what he did I have felt like a failure, and while I've spent the past few years reeling in disease, recovery and therapy he has been rotting in his own misery, but doing nothing to acknowledge my pain or his part in hit. I thought of him with pure disgust and a feeling like I wanted to spit in his face. Even writing this I have those feelings.

The more I felt my anger, the more I connected with the idea that what had happened to me made me feel like a failure, the more angry I became,realizing that I had been cut off from all that was good in me. I acknowledged that I am an intelligent, productive, talented part of the world and screamed internally with anger that I have been cut off from that part of myself. My therapist asked me to think of what it would feel like to connect to that part of me, to eliminate the obstacles that cut me off from my core goodness. As I did, I imagined myself wrapped around the world, taking it all in and offering it all up, dancing in unison, whole and complete. I am not a failure. I am enough. That's what it feels like to connect to that goodness. I know that goodness is there and I want to reclaim it as my own. I want to give and accept love, to be carefree and compassionate, to let go of selfish ego and embrace my part in the world. I can do it. I have what it takes. I saw it today.

But it was too much to take in at once. I can't hold on to all of it right now. I can't contain it all and have to let it soak in and process a little at a time. I feel sadness and emptiness right now, because I want to embrace all those good feelings right now. But I also acknowledge my hope and my patience. Today is just one day in my journey. These are all huge emotions and they are just too much for this one day.

Humble and grateful

Back in February I posted here about what was beginning to feel like a crisis situation in my life. I had developed a "secret" debt in the midst of my last relapse that included a large sum of money spent on R., as well as a few other "stashes." My financial situation was such at the time I posted that I was reaching a point I could no longer pay on the debt without further dishonesty with my husband. Thanks to the the wise counsel of my sponsor, my therapist, and several friends, I was able to establish the willingness to get honest with my husband about the existence of the debt, while continuing with my decision not to tell him the details of my acting out (also a conscious decision made with the help of my support network, my sponsor and my therapist).

I had the peace of mind to sit with that willingness and pray for my Higher Power to open the door when the time was right for me to share with
my husband. I have maintained the willingness over these months and have waited for the time to come when I felt it in my gut, not in desparation, that it was time to talk with him. (Thankfully I was supplied with a short term assignment that allowed me to have the money necessary to pay on the debt while I was waiting on "God's time.")

The moment of truth came this afternoon. And with no fanfare, I simply opened my mouth and began to tell my husband -- the man I have hid everything from, the man who has shown me over these months that I've been present in our lives that he is my partner and that I am loved unequivocally -- about the debt. I did my best to be honest without divulging the details, by saying, as my therapist advised, "I spent this money and I have absolutely nothing to show for it." If that ain't the truth, nothing is. Obviously, it was a blow, but he was kind and supportive, and even though he asked some tough questions, we made it through. He knew that I had been struggling immensely with my mental health over the past couple of years and he hugged me and told me that my life was worth far more than any amount of money. I know he is hurt and I will continue to pray for him and continue the prayer that has been flowing from me since the conversation was over "Thank you, God."

I am humbled beyond words that love is offered to me in the way my husband offered it today and that I have the opportunity to live a more authentic life. It is becoming more and more real that while I have a troubled past -- first of someone else's making and second of my own -- I have a future filled with hope and a present filled with inspiration and gratitude.

I am gratefully breathing deeply and soaking all of this in.

I Cried

On Tuesday, I sat through a meeting thinking, "If I say a word, I'm going to burst into tears." After the meeting, I sat in a prayer room, my eyes and heart filled with tears, asking, "God, please help me ..." My sponsor sat with me a short while later as I cried more tears ... the first tears I've cried in a long time.

I cried with relief that I had narrowly escaped yet another relapse. I cried because it is so frustratingly difficult to simply accept the goodness that has come into my life -- the love and affection of my husband, the blessings and support of my recovery family, and my Higher Power. I cried because I am glad to be feeling, but feel ill at ease doing it.

I used to cry all the time, literally like a baby -- it was the only way I knew to release the pain or express feelings of hurt. Somewhere along the way I stopped crying. I simply hurt and started sharing some of my pain through words of truth. I cried Tuesday because it was a natural way to release the feelings that were overwhelming me. I cried to God because I was scared. I cried with my sponsor because she opened her arms to me and made me feel supported.

I think the number one reason I cried on Tuesday is that one by one, I am giving up my reasons and excuses to act out.

I can no longer believe the lie that my husband does not love me and show me that love.
I am beginning to believe that I am worth much more to others than the sexual favors I can give them.
I no longer am convinced that my self worth is determined by what others think of me.
I can no longer legitimately say I feel alone.
I am feeling my feelings and surviving, realizing that I do not have to escape them in order to survive.
Although I am powerless over the disease of sex and love addiction, I am not powerless over my choices. I am empowered by the strength of my Higher Power and the fellowship of the 12-step programs.

Getting back up

I had a little Eureka! this morning. In addition to realizing that I don't have the courage to change some of the things I can ... and need to pay a bit more attention to ALL of the Serenity Prayer, I was listening to a CD of a new country group, Halfway to Hazard, and found empowerment in the lyrics of a song called "Got Back Up." The lyrics to the chorus are:

Life's gonna hurt you but you brush it off
Well, naw you can't quit, you gotta fight back son
When you find yourself on the ground, you gotta get back up

Sounds pretty country doesn't it? :)

Music has always spoken to me, and at this time when I feel like the wind has been knocked out of me, I am feeling like I'm finding myself face down on the ground, struggling to get up. I have always been against fighting, war and agressive conflict of any kind. To some degree I have a pacificist mentality at levels that extend beyond the political definition. My style has always been to kill them with kindness. But as I feel my anger, I realize it is a valuable resource that fuels the fire in me to fight back, to take back my life, to tell my disease to go to hell and to find peace, balance and comfort in the care of my Higher Power. In an effort to control everything, especially anger, I have been fighting so hard against myself, that I have been denying myself my own God-given resources, and misdirecting my anger all over the place -- most often to myself and the things that I am powerless over. Depression -- which is anger turned inward -- has paralyzed me.

I truly appreciated a question from a member of my SLAA group this morning -- how have my patterns changed? I am giving that a lot of thought, as it is true that my patterns have changed and it is valuable to see what progress has been made and what difficult changes I have survived. I certainly have been in a far worse place than I am today. There were times that I constantly "stayed ready" to act out, even after coming into recovery. Today, if I were to decide to cross my bottom lines and act out I would have to "get ready" to act out ... and considering the effort that takes ... the pay off is no longer worth it. I can recognize those as changes to be thankful for right off the bat.

I just want to say that yesterday I really was on the verge of wanting to cross those lines and act out, but instead I did the next right thing all day long, still thinking all day that today would be the day that I would act out. I was cut off from my Higher Power because of all the fear of my anger, but I connected myself to others in program, talking at length with sponsees, with program friends, participating in a telemeeting, showing up at an SLAA meeting I started that rarely has attendees, writing to my support group, writing here, praying for the willingness to let go of that part of me that I was desparately holding on to and afraid to release to my Higher Power, and following the advice of so many people I heard from, including one friend who said "I honestly don't know what to do, so I just keep doing whatever other people tell me to do until it's time to go to bed." I went to bed early last night because my body was aching so badly from the anger and feelings I was holding inside. My husband rubbed my aches and pains as long as I needed him too. (Again, he is becoming important to me, enough for me, good to me. I am so grateful.) This morning, I had a dentist appointment at 7 a.m. and at noon I have a meeting, then a meeting with my sponsor. In between seemed like a great time to meet a qualifier. But after all the work I did yesterday, proving to myself that I do NOT want to act out, no matter what my disease tells me, the obsession that has plagued me for days has been lifted.

I hope that my own struggles serve as a testament to anyone who struggles with the disease of addiction that recovery is not a perfect process, and that this is a lifetime disease, but it is absolutely true what they say ... this program works if you work it. And I'm glad to be working it ... because I am worth it.

I want to run away

Things are shifting for me, as they have been throughout my recovery. However, the shifts lately seem huge in proportion. I am feeling anger and frustration in ways I never have, my husband is becoming more important to me and he danced with me on Saturday night for the first time, I have some wonderful sponsees who depend on me, and service positions that require me to make decisions and be responsible. I want to run so fast I can hardly stand it, and even though I'm not running I sit paralyzed, afraid to move for fear of what might happen. Afraid that I will act out and afraid I won't. Afraid I don't have another relapse in me, and scared to death I do and it will be the nail in the coffin.

All of these shifts are a part of me "growing up" again, retraining my mind to accept love, refuse abuse, be honest and responsible, let go of the past and live in the present. Oh my goodness, do I want to act out in this present. And while the disease tells me, "Oh, won't it be sweet?" I'm smart enough to know that it will only delay my process even MORE than it has already been delayed, and for all I know ... might end it all.

No matter what I want to do ... I have to keep working my program, working on my step work. I have a meeting with my sponsor tomorrow. I still want to act out. But I don't have to. These feelings, like all feelings are not facts. They will pass. I just have to keep turning them over, walking through the fire that is coming up with my current therapy and the long-ass process of finishing this fourth step I've been working on for eight months, and know that the Promises do come true. Others have walked this path before me and are here to show me the way.

A place for God

I made it to a meeting yesterday at noon and walked away with a far greater understanding of myself than I walked in with. I walked in feeling down, depressed, and undervalued. I also walked in feeling the effects of wanting to act out for several days in a row, due to some triggers related to my therapy.

As I have blogged here, I recently had to come face to face with the invasion of my disease into a close friendship with a male friend. I had an expectation, otherwise known as a premeditated resentment, that even though we agreed that we could not continue to pursue a "love" relationship, we would continue to be close friends. And, of course, I had the outline of what such a close friendship would look like and in retrospect it looked very much like it had when it was running in a dangerous direction, except it would allegedly be void of the planning for sexual liasons. Well, surprise, that's not what happened. My healthy friend had his own expectations and they didn't involve spending every waking hour hanging on to my every word and reassuring me that all was going to be fine. He has a family and a job and a life ... and those things need his attention as well.

My resentments stirred in me a feeling of having no value as a friend or really as a person. That core belief that I really only have a sexual value to men is never far from my door. Thankfully I have enough recovery to know that's a bunch of horseshit, that my value is not determined by others. So I made up my mind yesterday to stop wallowing in resentment and self-pity and to get to a meeting.

What was revealed to me during the meeting was a pattern that might have been clear all along had I been ready to see it. Over my life I have consistently put the majority, if not all, my energy, into one person. I become intensely intimate with and dependent upon them and they become my everything. It's not that I don't have other friends, even ones I care deeply about, but they are at nowhere near the "level" of this one friend in whom I put all my trust and energy. Everything I think about, I think of routing through that one person. All my advice and feeback needs to come from that one person. Yes, I may talk to others, or hear others ... but I seem to focus on this one singular voice.

There is only one power that belongs in such a position in my life ... and that one is the God of my understanding. And that God of my understanding has blessed me with many, many people who love me and care for me and want to be a part of my life. However, I have diminished their importance, isolated from them and closed them off from me so that I would have the energy and attention to devote to one person, whoever that person might be in my life at the time. I can name them off, one by one, the people who have filled this void in my life. And, regardless who that one person was I just needed to be able to make them into a god and so intensely turn my attention to them (become so enmeshed with them) that they become at first flattered by the intensity, and then overwhelmed. We are only humans after all ... we are not meant to be God. No one is meant to be used or drained in this way.

Bringing this into my awareness is huge. Now that it is with me I feel like banging my head against the wall and saying, "Why couldn't you see this before?" It is so obvious. But when the student is ready, the teacher and the lesson appear.

After the meeting, which was held at one of these megachurches where you can hardly find your way around, I stumbled upon a prayer room that I had spotted upon entering the building. I walked in and began to pray to the God of my understanding, which I define as simply the living force that moves through all living things.

I often write my prayers in order to both give and receive thoughts. This is what I wrote:

"Spirit Divine, please help me to surrender myself -- all of me -- to you. I have for so long surrendered myself -- my goodness, my sexuality, my friendship, my self-worth -- I have given it all to other people. And as I surrender myself to you, help me to recognize and accept that it is not what I give away to others that determines my value and my worth. Help me not just to push outward in hopes of being enough, but to open myself and accept inward the love and energy that is your grace as it comes to me in full abundance. Please let me accept the power and strength and courage that you offer to me daily, and help me not to channel it through one person, but through the multitudes of people who are in my life. There are people who want my friendship and love who I have closed off because they were not "the one." In doing so, I have closed myself off to your power, strength, courage and love. Help me today to open my soul, so that I may accept others and myself as no less and no more, let me not set expectations, but rather give up my need for perfection and accept the perfection that is offered. Thank you, God, for opening my heart to all that I have discovered today. I feel immensely blessed. All that I am is within you and all that you are is within me. And so it is. "

Living in the dark

I had another one of those nights last night as I was walking the dog. I was flooded with feelings of extreme unrest, feelings that I simply am empty and there is nothing left. I feel that all that is left is severely damaged and that anything I touch, no matter how innocently, becomes damaged as well. It's like having leprosy. I have to admit to trying to numb these feelings throughout the week by not eating, or gorging on sweets or spending long periods of time on the computer looking for human connection. I make to do lists and plans and it seems like to get a list of 10 simple things done it will take 10 days. I got angry with myself as well because it still feels like I am waiting for something or someone to "save me" from this mess and I know it is all on me. It's a vicious cycle -- I know I need to do certain things each day to manage my life, then when I can't seem to force myself to do them, my life feels even more out of control.

After the walk with the dog, I was feeling very tired, numb and again, just completely empty. So I decided to go to bed early. My husband fell asleep on the couch and came to bed much later. I woke up before he came into the room, but just laid there silently. As he crawled into bed, he did what many husbands do, he spooned up next to me, his interests apparent in his body as he began to get mildly sexual. I grabbed his wrist firmly to stop him from touching me that way. He sensed there was a problem and that it was more serious than, "Not tonight, honey, I have a headache." He asked if I was OK ... and I simply said, "No." Of course, he pressed for what was wrong and I was at least able to tell him that I was scared to tell him, so I was struggling to find the words. He was very patient and said it was OK... just to take my time. I'm not sure I was able to relate to him fully, though he got the picture, that his coming into the room in the middle of the night and touching me with his erect penis and his hands had evoked a childhood terror that had not happened to me since I was a child. There was dread and disgust and my body ached from the way I was holding it so stiffly. I also felt such shame for bringing this past into the bedroom with my husband who had nothing at all to do with my abuse. I told him how sorry I was, and of course, he was understanding. But I have to think that no matter what he says, this has to be horribly frustrating for him. I am doing my best just to be thankful for his patience and support and relieve myself of one less burden. In the meantime, I just have to say it was horrible to feel those feelings of late-night violation again and I hope this EMDR shit is over soon.

Handling my feelings

RECOVERY MEDITATIONS
One Day at a Time
April 9, 2008

~ FEELINGS ~

:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:

Few are those who see with their own
eyes and feel with their own hearts.

Albert Einstein

:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:. .:~*~:
Before working the Twelve Step program,
one reason I used to overeat was that I
couldn't manage my feelings. My feelings
were overwhelming and incapacitating to
me. I would also overreact to feelings
and this would make them truly more than
I could handle. So I would then overeat
to make the feelings stop. I would stuff
myself, to stuff them down!

In working the Twelve Step program, I
got a chance to work through past hurts
and resentments that intensified my
feelings. I learned to feel my feelings,
just as they are, and how to stop
overreacting to them. I learned to sort
through messages my family gave me about
feelings, that it's not okay to have or
feel or express them. I learned to
decide what is true for me, today, about
feelings. I also worked through my
codependency issues and learned how to
communicate feelings in an appropriate,
effective and loving way.

Now feelings are a part of my life and
not something overwhelming and
incapacitating. In fact, they have
become something beautiful that enrich
my life and give it color and texture
and even pleasure.

ONE DAY AT A TIME . . .

I honor the blessing of having my
feelings returned to me. I enjoy them,
and I respect my feelings and those of
others. I thank my Higher Power for this
wonderful gift.


This daily meditation from an online recovery group spoke to me. The AA Big Book says "Alcohol was but a symptom." Whether it's food or sex and love, the truths of my addiction are parallel. And if I replace "eat" with "intrigue" in this meditation ... the same sentiments still apply. The most prevalent thought here to me is I don't know how to manage my feelings. They baffle me and confuse me.

I used to think it was ridiculous when people said this -- What do you mean you don't know how to manage your feelings ... just deal with it! But the longer I live, the more I realize how little I understand and know.

I've had so many feelings and emotions come up in my latest round of therapy and I have no idea what to do with them. It's not like they are things I can just sit on a shelf and look at and decorate with. They are things that feel foreign and all I can think to do is run away from them. Whether it is by eating or intriguing or simply letting them overwhelm me to the point that I feel completely isolated and beaten -- I am not handling them, not really even accepting them as part of me. All of this IS an overreaction. I don't need to have sex with some stranger or eat three candy bars in order to deal with the emotions that come up. What good would that do, for goodness sake!?! I have felt myself numb out this week, using peripheral acting out behaviors to fill the void where feelings would usually reside.

The 12 Steps are a simple program for complex people ... people like me who can overreact and exaggerate and act out over the smallest of things -- but can't see the simple truth that feelings cannot kill me, they are not the big bad wolf, they are just a part of the human experience. It is my actions and inaction that can get me.

As an aside, my sister called over the weekend to tell me that the doctors had found a spot on my stepdad's lung that could possibly be cancer. As usual, she gave the most dramatic version of the story, which had him likely living on a respirator for whatever life he has left. I chose not to engage and wait to respond until the doctors have made the follow up review of the spot some time next week. I am thankful that I have learned a few things along the way. I acknowledged my sister's anxiety and worry and told her I was sorry she was hurting. And I let it go at that. A short time ago in my recovery, I would have started to have panic attacks about needing to resolve the issues of my abuse before my stepfather kicks the bucket. Today -- I know that either dead or alive, his demons are his and mine are mine. Neither of us can take on the other's stuff.

I'm grateful to be alive today.

A prayer from Debbie Ford

Debbie Ford, one of the few self-help gurus whose work really resonates with me, sent this prayer in her weekly column this week. I thought it was beautiful. I can pray it today because I feel some of the heaviness that has been with me is lifting ... and for that I am thankful.


Dear God, Spirit, Divine Mother,
On this day I ask You to grant this request --
May I know who I am and what I am, every moment of every day
May I be a catalyst for light and love
and bring inspiration to those whose eyes I meet
May I have the strength to stand tall in the face of conflict,
and the courage to speak my voice, even when I'm scared
May I have the humility to follow my heart,
and the passion to live my Soul's desires
May I seek to know the highest truth
and dismiss the gravitational pull of my lower self
May I embrace and love the totality of myself --
my darkness as well as my light
May I be brave enough to hear my heart --
to let it soften so that I may gracefully choose faith over fear
Today is my day to surrender anything that stands between
the sacredness of my humanity and my divinity
May I be drenched in my Holiness
and engulfed by Your love
May all else melt away
And so it is

Thy will, not mine

God, I feel myself spiraling downward, sometimes at an incredibly fast pace, to a place where a silent, sane part of me sits in a corner and watches my mind and body become overtaken with the actions and obessions of my disease.

Something inside me is so afraid, it is craving what I now know it believes is that safe place of total acceptance in my sexuality. When my counselor talks about going to "a safe place inside my head" as I try to process the feelings that come up as a result of EMDR ... she means I should breathe into images of that quiet morning sitting on a bench watching the ocean and the tide and hearing the birds. But that is not the safe place my mind is taking me.

Every day it feels like a miracle that I didn't act out. If I make it through today without acting out it will be another miracle. I am in such a place of surrendering to my disease.

I prayed this morning saying "I'm trying to feel the feelings," and the response thought was, "Are you really trying?" OK, so let's try, "I want to feel the feelings," to which the response thought is, "You have to really try then, like a sportsman training for a race, you have to push yourself and not give in to the temptations to quit."

I pray for the willingness today to try. That feels like the best I can do.

False Evidence Appearing Real (FEAR)

Over the past month, at the advice and direction of my counselor, I have began undergoing EMDR therapy to help treat my PTSD. The most accurate way I've heard EMDR described thus far is "talk therapy on steroids." It is certainly stirring up the shit that has been eating me alive underneath for a long time. To say it is unsettling is an understatement. To know there are underlying feelings that I've been avoiding is one thing, to begin to feel them all at once is a whole other ballgame. But I'm not complaining -- I'm ready to begin to live with some level of freedom. I have struggled and fought against myself for so, so long. I'm willing to walk through whatever this therapy brings to the surface in order to feel it and recognize that past trauma is over with, so I can live fully present in today.

One of the most surprising realities that has surfaced as a result of the EMDR is the fact that I felt some sense of safety when I was being molested by my stepfather. In the "outside world," where we weren't hiding everything from the rest of the family, he was constantly yelling at me, telling me how I could do nothing right, hitting me, all causing me to feel afraid and so very small. But, during the acts of molestation, all I had to do was show up, endure, get it over with and I never had to face any of his chaotic berating or anger. From the time I was three until I was 13, that was the only time I felt safe around him, otherwise I felt worthless and like I was in the way. I carried that definition of safety with me into adulthood, and into the secrecy of my acting out in this addiction. While I might never feel I could do anything right in the eyes of the world, while I might not be good enough, pretty enough, or smart enough ... there was one thing I could do that was right ... do what Daddy taught me. I'm ready to put an end to this lie at all levels of my psyche. I have violated myself in ways my stepfather could never have thought of, and put myself in more dangerous situations than anyone ever would consider "safe." I am tired of being used by men who have a skewed view of acceptance and of using my sacred sexual self to gain a false sense of acceptance, safety and control. I am ready to accept myself as an imperfect human being, who doesn't have to control the world around her in order to live.

One day at a time, I am getting better. I could never have tackled it any other way. It was simply too much. It still is and always will be. I thank God for these 24 hours and the opportunities that lay within.

The storm is almost gone

The storm is almost gone,
the storm is almost gone;
I can see the sun peeping through the clouds,
the storm is almost gone.

Dorothy Norwood sang these beautiful words of hope and today I felt them. The storm that has surrounded my life over these past few years as the forces that had been laying in my underneath emerged to mix with the person who was living on the surface has been turbulent. At times I have fought when it would have been easier to go with the current, and at times I have floated along when I could have been paddling. But by God's grace I have survived against all odds. And at last I can see the sun peeping through the clouds ... the storm is almost gone.

This morning I woke up and like my mother and her mother before her, I began to sing. I can't even remember what it was I sang ... but I sang to fill my heart with joy, and to fill my home with the sound of myself. My grandma used to sing the old southern hymns as she walked around her house and she taught me how to do the same. It's a way of soothing myself and remind myself of innocent days, and roots that run deep.

Over the past month, I've been amazed at what God has done in my life, and I have been humbled beyond words. I have felt happiness, longing and temptation for someone I genuinely care for, but I have been able to use reality and responsibility to reach a decision that did not involve me ruining my recovery, and the hard-earned blessings of my friend's life. There was pain and uncertainty, but I was willing to accept it as a small price to pay for the rewards of knowing that at last my life is being lead, not by my disease, but by a power greater than I could ever be. I was thankful to know beyond all doubt that God was taking care of me and those I loved. For so long, I have been hopeless and scared. I am no longer hopeless and I have learned through many experiences -- not the least of which this last one -- that faith and perserverance are the things that help me become willing to walk through the fire and reap the rewards of a genuine life.

Anyone who knows me can attest that I am not a religious person. But I have a deep sense of spirituality, one that has grown as a result of my participation in the 12-step programs. As I have seen the God of my understanding do for me what I could not do for myself ... the doubts of what can be accomplished in my life, and the expectations of what must happen have gradually lifted.

As I have peeled the layers of the onion off I have a whole new sense and understanding of the first three steps of recovery.

1. We admitted we were powerless over (sex, love, food, controlling others), that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

There's nothing there that says I'll never act out again, that I'll never develop feelings for someone who is not available, that I'll have a perfect marriage, that I won't buy a full-size bag of M&Ms and eat the whole thing. It simply says that in the course of life, I admitted to myself that I really was powerless over these "substances" that I have used to numb myself and that not showing up in the present has turned my life upside down and inside out. It says that in the course of that same life I came to believe that something bigger than me could help me get my life back on track and that I had reached a decision to stop fighting against what I could not conquer and hold up my hands and say, "I surrender." There is more to the steps than this, more work to be done, and continued maintenance. But, just for today, I am thankful to be at this point where surrender is mine for the giving.

Hiatus

I have decided to take a short hiatus from writing here. While in times past there have been times I have simply not posted anything, this is a conscious choice to take a break from writing. I need some quiet time and need to spend some time with my life.

The gift of our stories

Over the past couple of months, I have felt a lot of emotional shifts taking place in my life, as if some flood gates of awareness are opening up for me. I find that acceptance is becoming more and more a part of my life and my ability to see reality in new and different ways is helping tremendously. During this past week's therapy session I was able to recognize and accept that when my mother slept with my biological father during a brief encounter during their 10 year separation and I was conceived, she was using sex as a way to lure him back into her life to save her from the destitution of trying to raise three children, including two teenagers, on her own. I was also able to acknowledge that my biological father (who I have never had a relationship with and only first spoke to last year at my brother's funeral) was her only concept of what a family could be. They had been raised up in a very, very small mountain town, married when they were still in their teens, and gone on to start and raise a family. I have no doubt that my mother loved him dearly -- but he left the "smallness" of the world, joined the military, got a job driving a truck, and found someone else to love. He moved on, my mother stayed still. I can accept them both for their humanness. And while I had reached some of these conclusions about my biological father a few years ago ... it is only recently that I could begin to recognize that my mother wasn't a martyr who was left and abandoned and saved us all. She was a good woman, who suffered a lot of emotional pain, who knew that her daughter was being sexually abused and did not take the steps to stop it because she was afraid, but that my role in her life was only one part of her whole existence. Today, I can accept that she too had a life and a story and feelings and struggles and that each of my siblings have had their lives affected by our parents, their separation, their divorce and my mother remarrying my abusive stepfather.

A precious friend of mine recently shared some details of a very painful past with me. They were details that despite a year of close conversations, I never took the time to ask for, but that I was very moved by once I heard them. I could feel my heart break and tears flowed as I felt the pain of someone I cared for so dearly. I felt I knew him not as my friend, but as a human being, so much better. A few weeks ago a young woman who is still struggling to find her way into a recovery program shared her story with me. It too was heart-wrenching and filled with moments that made me want to reach out and take the hurt little child inside her and rock it gently to sleep, giving her a reprieve from the pain. I am honored and humbled to have two wonderful sponsees who share their stories with me and give me a broader vision of this disease and of this life. Their stories are sad and beautiful and uniquely theirs.

Each of us has our story that continues to develop one day at a time. I've been so wrapped up in my story and how it has affected me and shaped me, stuck in a world where everything about everything was all about me, all the while feeling like me wasn't worth the life it was wrapped in. I haven't honored my story as one of many, and I haven't honored the stories of others as being one of a kind, special and unique.

I'm thankful for this gift of a spiritual awakening, an opening of my eyes to the people and the world around me. And I'm thankful especially this week for my friend EC for being with me and opening me up in a way I have not been opened ever.

What to confess?

What is it I need to bring to this confessional today?

Is it that I am feeling growing feelings of love for someone who is not my husband? That I feel like I have to acknowledge these feelings, hold them up in the light, express them, make mistakes, have victories, be cared for, and feel every feeling that arises in order to come out on the other side of this journey I've been on for so long.

Is it that I feel scared that I'm fooling myself and that my addict has taken over and is trying to ruin an incredible friendship that has carried me through this past year, probably the roughest year yet in my self-discovery?

Is it that I feel utterly ashamed that I am 40 years old and I haven't a clue what healthy boundaries are within the confines of an adult relationship? Or is it that the shame that I'm really feeling is that I crossed those boundaries and feel like a dirty, filthy, nasty, bad person who has degraded herself because she doesn't know another way to express herself?

Maybe it is that I am grateful to be feeling all of these feelings -- elation, intimacy, shame, guilt, pain, fear, confusion -- all feelings I know I have to feel in order to survive and stop living in darkness. And I'm thankful to have someone in my life, for the first time ever, who is strong enough in himself to let me feel without taking those feelings away.

Maybe it is that I have the urge to act out with some semi-anonymous partner to make all the bad feelings, maybe even some of the good ones, go away, because I'm not sure what to do with them. Yet, still thankful that I have the presence of mind to know that acting out will only delay my opportunity to take those last steps out into the glaring light that is a true and authentic life. I know that acting out is not the answer ... and I know I have the choice to cut myself from all of these miraculous things that are going on in my life or to walk through the fire, no matter what the uncertainty.

Maybe it is that I'm feeling guilty that all of this is about me, when there's another person who is also struggling to understand his own feelings, also unsure of what to do with these feelings of closeness we have found in our friendship, insecure in his own ways, facing his own demons. Maybe even guilty that I'm not strong enough to let him feel his feelings without wanting to make everything OK. Maybe even deeper is a feeling that loving me is a dangerous and degrading way to live.

Maybe I just needed a place where I could be quiet for a while. My place. This place. A place to think with greater clarity, so that I could lift up my head and walk out into the light and face the world today knowing that I am OK.

Thanks for listening.

Growing some values

I've been alone at home since Sunday and have not felt the slightest urge to act out. I still don't. I am so thankful. I am also feeling a bit lost. It's not that I don't have things to do. There's a cluttered house to clean, a room I've been wanting to organize for months and reading that I want to do. There's even step work and real work to do. In fact, I just got some new "real" work today. My interest in writing has resurfaced. But my mind won't settle down. It's not racing, it's not focused on anything in particular. It's just unsettled and unfocused. When I was acting out, my mind had full focus every day, and I just had to work the rest of the stuff in between. Now, with no distractions it's difficult to navigate. I'm not complaining per se -- I'm just telling my truth.

I keep being drawn to the recovery literature -- more so than I ever was when I wasn't acting out. This verifies the theory that we stop acting out so we can work our program. Anyway, this afternoon I started reading a chapter in the SLAA text called "Living with a Sex and Love Addict." It is somewhat similar to "Lois' Story" in the AA Big Book -- written by and for those who love the addict. I had never read this chapter before and couldn't help but think of my blogging buddies who are the wives of sex addicts as I started the chapter. As I read through it though, I felt an even broader sense of pain -- one that transcended people whose stories I knew -- to the overall pain and horror of living in a desparate world trying desparately to be "enough."

"Many of us had the feeling of 'needing to be needed' that left us clinging to the addict, certain if we made ourselves necessary or indispensable to the addict we would be 'safe.' We, too, had sacrificed our personal dignity and hidden behind self-deception in order to make the relationship work, no matter what the cost." It goes on to talk about how partners want desparately to believe the remorse and the excuses and take on the responsibility -- thinking if they were only more sexy or wouldn't have made their partner angry -- it would have been different. "We were too afraid of losing the one we loved."

Whether as a codependent in my marriage and in my friendships, or as a co-addict with my acting out partners -- I have lowered myself, rationalized, and hidden feelings just in order to feel loved, in order to feel enough. I can even relate this to my stepfather -- whose love and acceptance I wanted so badly, and truthfully still want, that I carried the shame and guilt of his disease for all these years.

The things the chapter goes on to talk about makes me hurt for others -- for the wives of the men I know in fellowship, for women who have so kindly accepted me here in the blogosphere, despite what I represent. It talks of the addicts demands for sexual satisfaction and a feeling in the partner that they must meet it or risk the partner going elsewhere.

"We envy those in relationships who do not have to bear the painful intimacy of knowing about all the former lovers and each day's temptations. ... The need to be honest about how we really feel -- and to be willing to accept the same honesty -- demands trust and self-confidence that are often hard to summon, much less deliver. ...

"Even the addict's necessary involvement in SLAA has been a source of real discomfort for us at times. So much of our security has been based on being needed. Now it seemed the addict could and would go it alone, and if he/she needed anyone, it was the Fellowship, not us. It was painfully apparent that if we demanded that our partners choose between us and SLAA, we would be the losers. And yet the needs of every other SLAA member at times seemed to take precedence over ours."

This last sentence causes me to feel for my husband, who has to set back, put aside his own needs while I have taken calls, made calls, answered e-mails, gone to meetings and after-fellowships and done service work. I was thankful for the reminder that even though he doesn't have to live with all the details of my acting out, he does pay the price of my time in recovery -- time, if not spent, would likely mean, time acting out.

Reading on ... "Then, too, our privacy was always on the line it seemed. We cringed inwardly as we imagined these strangers hearing the most intimate details of our lives, of our sex lives being discussed at meetings."

I've never really thought of this much -- all the privacy boundaries that are broken in meetings and individual discussions between recovering sex and love addicts. I know that my husband is incredibly private and it is one of the hardest things for him even regarding me being in recovery. Without even knowing how very much I share with others in recovery, I know that it is uncomfortable for him. Likewise, I hear the stories, one by one of other women's homes -- the deep and intimate details. This must be very, very difficult to be on the other side of. I am thankful to have read this -- as I think it will make me more reverent and honoring to the stories I hear. There is great sacrifice in those stories being shared.

I found it interesting that the chapter said the thing that differentiates the addict from the co-addict is a sense of values. I have mourned my own loss of a sense of values, and even see that as I've laid out my story here on these pages for the past four years, I've had very little sense that doing so was invading my own space and privacy. Readers have commended me for the bravery to tell my story -- and I've not felt brave at all ... I felt I was doing what I had to do -- to get my truth out, to help myself. I guess I did have the sense to know that sharing it anonymously with an unknown audience was better than writing it in a journal that could be found at home and cause lots and lots of damage and hurt. And day by day I do feel a growing sense of values returning -- I can't say that feels better or worse. It just is. Life is slowly getting evened out.

Taking liberties

MPJ over at A Room of Mama's Own was tagged for a reading meme that works like this:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
2. Open the book to page 123
3. Find the 5th sentence
4. Post the next three sentences
5. Tag 5 people

Now, MPJ didn't tag me, or anyone else, and that's just fine, because I'm not going to tag anyone either. However, I did like the concept of this meme and happen to be in love with books.

Of course, I'm sitting next to four bookshelves and there is not one book closer to me than the others ... and selecting one of these now becomes very difficult, so I'm going to go over and the first book I put my finger on, I'll pull it down and do the meme.

Here I go ...

Ahh, good, it was one I was hoping for -- as if they all weren't in the running:

The book: "Living to Tell the Tale," by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It is the first installation of what is to be a trilogy of his autobiography. This particulra volume was published first in Spanish in 2002, and then in translation in 2003.

Pg. 123, sentences 6,7 & 8

"I felt very uneasy about this change in my life. I had been to Barranquilla several times to visit my parents, as a boy and always in passing, and my memories of that times are very fragmentary. The first visit took place when I was three and had been brought there for the birth of my sister Margot."

Marquez wrote the book on which the recently acclaimed movie "Love in the Time of Cholera" was based. However, I most love his book "One Hundred Years of Solitude." In fact, many of my favorite writings bring to mind solitude. Thoreau's "Walden" comes to mind.

And just since I am making up my own rules here, I'll do one other "reading" from Pg. 123 of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, a book that I always keep close.

Sentences 6,7 & 8 from this book happen to be the 7th, 8th, and 9th traditions of the program:

"7. Every SLAA group ought to be fully self supporting, decling outside contributions.
8.SLAA should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. SLAA as such ought never to be organized; but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve."

What does it feel like?

When I use another person to get the euphoria of my sex and love addiction, I am also allowing myself to be used in return. And there is no high so high in using that it can balance out the pain and humiliation of being used.

I want to write today what it feels like to be used. I do it because I want to get it out of my head and truly look at it.

I must write by example ...

First example, there's a man in recovery who was such a close friend to me in my early days in the program. When I needed to cry, I called him. When he needed to cry, he called me. We could be honest with each other and we could share at a level only two people could who had known the demonic feelings of having had our childhoods stolen. But we were not ready for that kind of intimacy with a member of the opposite sex, and what was a friendship turned into a love addiction, for a short while a sex addiction, and then into only pain, then resentment, then a note:
"Rae, I'm not sure what's happened between us, all I know is that without it, I am incomplete. I am sorry if offended you in any way. I love you very much."
And thus started my flurry of responding, waiting for his response, texting, waiting for his response ... needing even a crumb, hearing nothing, feeling sad, even more resentful. I know him well enough to know that on his end, he couldn't handle a friendship that did not give him the choice of isolation. And I had not, still have not, let go of the resentment that prevents me from having a friendship with him that does not involve enmeshment and a "savior" mentality. The last conversation we had ... all I could do was try to solve his problems, as if he weren't a full grown man, with as much recovery as me.

Next example:

I used my last acting out partner to help me feel adored and special and I also used him to help recreate the idea that I would never be quite special enough. He was truly more interested in transexual males than women -- but he couldn't admit that completely, and he used me to remind him that he really did like women. After all he was married and very "devoted" to his wife. We both used each other to pass the time and enjoy doing fun things together like see movies, go to plays and have dinner.

Next example:

I guess one has to expect when they keep a public blog about their recovery from sexual addiction, that there will be unrecovering sex addicts who will find it and want to engage in conversation about what sex addiction has meant in one's life. This happened to me recently, and while the intial contact gave me no reason not to respond to the reader, by the second e-mail my response was against my better judgment. I felt my temperature rising, my desire to engage in discussion fervent, and thus flew a string of e-mails that while tempered, grew gradually more sexual in nature. By three or four e-mails I knew I was dealing with a regular old addict, just like me with the same justifications for his behavior and mine as well. I began to feel uncomfortable but said "Keep the questions coming." That's that part of me that sits in one seat and lets the addict take charge while I watch, my hands tucked under my legs and my lips persed together. In the end I was able to stand up and say ... "Enough!" and walk away. I was using him for a hit, he was using me. We were both anxious to know where it would lead ... but for me, I was hoping that this was a test of my sobriety, and as it turns out, the part of me that wants to stay sober was stronger than the part that wanted to act out. I was thankful, grateful actually, and humbled.

So, what does it feel like to be used? For certain, it feels familiar. At some level, I suspect it even feels justified. After all, I do believe at a deep level that I am a bad person. Being used hurts, it makes me cry and feel unimportant. It contributes to the thoughts that I'm not really worth being treated with respect. It makes it difficult, if not impossible, for me to trust anyone who says they care. I feel very alone, because after all, didn't I bring this on myself by using them in the isolation of my disease? It makes me feel angry because some part of me knows I DON'T deserve this. And it makes me even angrier that I have nothing to justify my anger with, because I was an equal partner in the using. Those who reject me, at whatever level, make me feel as if I'm not enough. I take it personally, which means my ego is in the way. The healthy truth is ... their disease is no more about me than mine is about them. But it is not easy to see that when the disease has a face and a voice (or at least an e-mail address and a name).

I don't guess I was looking for answers here ... just the opportunity to own my feelings. More will come, I have no doubt. Getting them out of my head and out in front of me helps me to sort them out.

An answer to my letter

I was lying in bed yesterday afternoon next to my husband who is sick with the flu, thankfully present and feeling the comfort of being next to him. My SLAA text was next to the bed and I opened it up to start reading. No surprise, it opened to the chapter on withdrawal, which I have been reading like a fiend lately. And, in answer to my letter to my HP yesterday morning, my eyes fell onto these words:

And now you are there, and withdrawal is upon you. What are some of the dangers involved in going through it? What is the experience likely to bring you? How can you survive the inevitable temptations to slide back into old patterns?

The dangers can be described as being of two types. The first type involves the dangers inherent in the inner process itself. The second involves dangers stemming from outside yourself which can make it seem impossible for you to go through withdrawal, and can influence you to abort it.

Perhaps the greatest inner danger comes from finding yourself face-to-face with the unknown. It is one thing to make a decision to withdraw when the painful stimulus of a recent addictive episode is still fresh. It is quite another thing to be open to withdrawal, not as a reaction to a specific addictive situation, but as a response to a recognizable life-pattern of addiction. Yet this larger perspective on the withdrawal experience is crucial if it is to be endured. What we have found is that once we have recognized certain bottom-line behavior which we know is addictive for us, and refrain from acting out in these "bottom- line" ways on a daily basis, we then discover numerous habits and traits of behavior and personality that have been addiction-related.

The chapter goes on to talk about how in withdrawal we discovered many behaviors that surrounded and promoted our addictions, but had been covered by the intensity of acting out. It also talks about the ways we dealt with this new life -- doing the simple things like paying the bills and taking a shower, going to work. Then it says:

The purpose of all this was not to clutter our day with activity. Most of us needed rest and solitude just as much as we needed other tasks, personal contacts and responsibilities. We were, within ourselves, expending as much energy as most people do who hold full-time jobs and maintain active family lives. In fact, most of us were "working" far harder than we ever had before. After all, we were working at standing still, at freeing ourselves from the tentacled clasp of a frightful addiction which had driven us to such a pitch of self-destroying activity. Simply not doing it took tremendous effort. We were suspending, for the moment, our very real fears concerning the outcome of all this by attending to those tasks immediately at hand. We were living in the immediate present, and discovering that we could indeed make it through an hour, or a morning (mourning!), or a day. And we were discovering that there was a joy to be had in successfully negotiating our way through each twenty-four hour period.

We found that the most healing antidote to the gnawing pain of our struggles and doubts was to turn over any questions concerning the outcome of our withdrawal to God, or to whatever Power we felt was helping us to abstain from our old patterns.

Through all of this we became, one day at a time, available to ourselves. By the simple act of "standing still," we inaugurated a relationship with ourselves based on growing self-honesty, trust, and intimacy. Now we knew that our goal in withdrawal was to lay the foundation for personal wholeness. How this would translate into personal relationships or careers, we did not know. But what we did know was that the externals would eventually develop around this inner foundation of wholeness, and come to reflect our inner state. We were able to embrace this feeling of our growing capacity for wholeness, and leave specific outcomes to God. This shift in our attitude eased the sense of existential crisis.

As I have mentioned in recent writings -- in my early days of recovery, throughout my countless relapses, I have read these words in the Withdrawal Chapter again and again. But now, at this phase of my recovery, they sing to me like a song and I can hear them. I can hear them, because I am not drunk, because I am not absent. I am right here ... open to the process of true withdrawal from this disease, willing to endure every uncomfortable feeling and thought that arises, willing to sit in the quietness of this vast hole and trust.

Thanks for being here to listen as I have walked through every stage of this process one day at a time for four years to get to this point today. It’s by no means the end, only finally, a beginning.

It was easy in the beginning to wonder why it was important to read literature and go to meetings and make phone calls. These days the answer seems so simple. These are the ways that my HP speaks to me.

A letter to God

Dear God,

Thank you for today, whatever it may bring. As is the case every day, I need your help. Today I need your help because I don't know what to do. I have lived so long - even when I wasn't physically acting out - waking up, thinking about one person or another, checking e-mail and messages for what might be there, just hoping for a little something. But thanks to your grace, I no longer feel compelled to do those things. I feel freed from the obsessions and I am so thankful.

Today I feel the vast emptiness of that hole my addiction was seeking to fill. I see myself in the bottom of that pit, looking up and out, feeling the wind and the rain, and feeling alone, and uncertain of what to do. I know that there is something more, another step, but maybe that's not today. Maybe what you are asking is for me to just sit here, faithful, and breathe in my presence in the quietness of my mind. I have heard before that doing nothing is doing something.

I guess that it is just different than I expected (there's a red flag word -- expected). I thought once I was no longer acting out, that the obsessions had been lifted, that I would be living fully engaged in my life -- full of energy and presence. But that is not today. Help me to recognize, Lord, that this disease and my absorption in it, has been a terrorizing trauma. I need to be gentle and let your healing powers work in me. Help me to feel that it is OK to be still and to still have a little trouble moving quickly or making decisions. It's just for today. I can deal with tomorrow as it comes. Give me the knowledge of your will, Lord, and the strength and courage to carry that out.

In your name I pray,

Amen

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.