How do you feel?

I have been practicing what I've been learning in my outpatient treatment program for depression, by trying to be mindful of my present feelings and circumstances. The program is teaching me how to live in the present in a way I've never learned before. I am asked on a consistent basis, "What is your mood today?" "What are you feeling?"

Being a person who has spent her life trying to avoid feelings and my mood depended on what was happening around me, these things are new. But I'm realizing that living one day at a time, really means taking stock of my life right this very moment, being grateful for what I have right now, avoiding things like fortune telling, all or nothing thinking, and being mindful of the fact that my thoughts are often distored and can cause disturbing feelings and initiate inappropriate behavior.

One thing I am very grateful for is that I am coming into this program with four years of SLAA recovery under my belt, as well as several years of therapy. SLAA has taught me that "acceptance is the answer to all my problems today" ... and that if I keep an open mind there is no problem too great to be lessened. As uncomfortable feelings surface during my treatment, I am able to embrace them as learning opportunities -- to separate what is still useful to me and what is no longer useful, and to reframe my thoughts using the tools provided to me by my therapists and doctors.

To be honest, I was very saddened by the idea that my depression had gotten the best of me and I needed serious treatment. I'm kind of a stubborn goat when it comes to things like surrender. I don't like to admit my weaknesses. I don't like for things to be beyond my control. But I'm thankful that to have learned there are things I can change and things I can't, and I'm thankful to a wonderful and loving Higher Power, ever present, who has stuck with me through my stubborness and has given me the wisdom to know the difference.

Depression is an illness that runs rampant in my family. Years of silence about my abuse (PTSD), and years of living in the throes of my addiction, not to mention the effects of medication I take for another illness, and relocating three times in six years, have only served to escalate the severity of my depression. I'm thankful today that I have had the opportunity to address this with medication, professional treatment and today -- a positive attitude.

I feel very blessed.

A night off

It's a rare night off around home. Hubby is out of town for work and I came home just to enjoy the silence. I thought of watching television -- you know actually having control of the remote -- but it's no fun without someone to argue about the volume control. So, I thought I'd do a quick check in here.

My partial-patient treatment for depression is going well, though I have to admit that I have trouble staying there all day. I just want to get up and run out and start living at times. But I'm so tired by the time I get out, that I don't have much energy to do anything at the end of the day.

It has been good to learn more about mental disease, the psychological world's perspective of it, and the medications that are used to treat it. I've met a lot of interesting and inspiring people. I'm feeling less irritated by the idea that I am in treatment for a mental disease as I see others struggling with issues far greater or equally frustrating as mine. There are people of all ages and diagnoses, and I know that I've gained greater empathy for those people who suffer from bi-polar disorder.

It's funny the words that trigger some of us ... one woman said she became offended these days when people would jokingly say, "You're crazy," and another woman became irate when someone suggested she was a "victim." I remember years ago walking into NP's office -- she was my first therapist -- and saying "I am not a victim." I have gone through the roller coaster of living as a victim and then a survivor, and know that being a victim is a self-defeating attitude. Nonetheless, I think taking the victim's stance, rather than the survivor's stance, in my recovery has been one of my biggest issues. Using statements such as "I can't ..." rather than "I am determined," has been detrimental. But it took those I can't statements to help me to surrender to my powerlessness over my addiction.

Another thing I'm hearing a lot about is anger. We've all heard the adage that "Depression is anger turned inward." I know I have a lot of anger issues to deal with, but am not really able to identify what they are right now. Slowly it's all being revealed and I'm doing my best to understand it.

My one prayer after all of this treatment is over is that I have the willingness to move forward, to move past this point of being stuck in depression. If I don't though, I'm going to keep chugging along, working hard until my life does move from dead center. I'm not happy and I intend to do something about it.

It's OK to be OK

It's OK to be OK ... that's what my therapist at the hospital told me yesterday. That seems pretty simple, huh? But it's not a concept I've grasped very easily.

I talked to my younger sister this morning. I sometimes think I call her as punishment. She is a constant state of "not OK," and in my opinion that's the only way she knows how to live. I was thinking of how I have tried to protect her from the reality that her father was a child molester so that she could have a better life. The truth is ... she wants her life to be just as it is -- a little too dramatic to be enjoyed. What I regret more than anything is that she is raising three children to think just like she does. All that said ... I realize that she's doing the best she can with what she's got. A single mom of three, working the night shift so she can be with her kids in the daytime ... that's no easy life. She is primarily responsible for her father (my stepfather) now, as all the rest of us have pretty much abandoned him.

Sometimes I feel guilty that she is in the position she is in, but then we all make choices. I've made mine and I respect hers.

I recognized while walking the dog yesterday that when I think about some members of my family, I consider their cases hopeless. I don't think they will ever change. Like I have no real hope that my sister will ever live life differently -- even though she is living much differently than she was when she was an active drug addict. I have a nephew whose abilities were severely minimized by his parents while he was growing up -- and I have the idea that he won't likely live much better than he does now. I think of my sister's kids -- each with different fathers and a whole screwed up idea of what makes up a family -- and I just have no hope that they won't grow up with little hope for a brighter future. It caused me to ponder if I think I am hopeless too, that I'm just reaching the point of life where I was always intended to be -- wrapped up in drama, hopeless and just getting by. Many people would call it white trash.

I made a determination many years ago I was not going to live like that ... and I don't intend to. I just need to take one day at a time and look upward rather than downward and realize that we all have our own journey. The journey of my family doesn't determine my journey.

Instead, the genetic mental disorders of my mother's side of the family have me off for another day of a treatment. I'm thankful to be willing to get the help I need.

Reprieve

I am currently undergoing treatment for chronic depression in an outpatient program. IDespite what it may look like on the outside, I have struggled immensely with depression and isolation (and some major withdrawal from my relapses) over the past 18 months and these have kept me unemployed, and in a regular state of misery. When my therapist called me a couple of days ago to ask me to give the hospital a call and set up an appointment, I felt enormous sadness. I could not stop crying. For so long, I have felt desparate for someone else to acknowledge the extent of my struggles. Finally somone had, and now it was my turn to acknowledge the truth I had wanted others to validate. I was sad.

But today, I am willing and ready -- whatever treatment options are available, I am willing to explore. I prayed yesterday asking my Higher Power to guide me to a message in Answers in the Heart, and opened to a page in Sept. where the reading was about asking for help when we need it. I've not been so good at that, but yesterday I reached out to my Higher Power, and I felt an unfamiliar willingness to reach out to my husband, and to talk to others in recovery about how I was feeling. I also felt the willingness to seek the help I need from professionals who have tools, to supplement the tools of this program, to help me move forward.

Likewise, I am opening my heart to the idea that no gain comes without some level of self sacrifice and change. My depression might never have escalated thus far if I had been taking the measures necessary over the years to maintain proper health. But those things are in the past and all I can do is work on today.

Today I am grateful to be alive. Since I was born, I've had all kinds of chances to simply die. I've thought a few times I was going to die when I was no where close, and contemplated doing the deed myself in the midst of despair -- but here I am fully alive and seeking help and surrender, one day at at time.

Honest

I'm closer, more engulfed in sobriety than I ever have been. I am more aware of myself, my behaviors, what is driving my feelings. I see my life through a clearer lens, and I have a more truly intimate relationship with my husband and myself than I could have ever dreamed possible. I am more respectful of myself and more willing to try to make responsible decisions for myself, to try to practice the traditions and principles of the program in my life.

Yet, I still have a strong desire to act out lately, to slip away from indescribable feelings of discomfort and unease into the oblivion of sexual acting out.

I am accepting this today as a reminder that the disease does not go away, recovery simply helps me to manage it. I am also accepting it as a reminder that addiction is a disease -- a disease of the mind and body. It affects the way I feel inside and out. It feels differently from day to day and slight changes of mood, emotions, attitude or circumstances can cause it to flare up. But it is a disease -- not just a phase, not just a bi-product of some past life experiences.

Just for today I will live with my disease, trust my Higher Power to guide my life, work my program, and remember that without sobriety the disease is not just a part of my life, it is my life.

One day at a time, thanks to the grace of God, I am recovering.

Past and present

E. decided he would continue his efforts to weasle his way back into my life today by forwarding the e-mail he sent two weeks ago along with a note saying he had been checking his e-mail daily to see if I had responded to him. What an asshole.

I was traveling over the past week in the region where E. lives and where I spent my most active acting out days. While the trip was overall a very positive visit with friends, I have to admit that I felt more deeply than I have in a long time a sense of loss for all the time and energy that was lost to my disease.

I am thankful today to be sober, to have made a meeting tonight, and that it's bedtime and I can push the delete button and forget E. for one more day.

Anger right in the face

(Warning: This post contains information that could be triggering to sex addicts, pedophiles and incest victims.)

In EMDR yesterday I had ideations of kicking my stepfather in the face as he knelt between my legs, then kicking his shoulder until he fell backwards, then standing over him and kicking in his chest, his face and placing my heel squarely in the jaw -- all the while making it clear to him that I was NOT enjoying what he was doing to me.

For the purpose of repairing extreme emotional damage, the therapist and I were revisiting an incident in which my father was performing felatio on me in my parents' bedroom, a common location for my abuse scenarios. I don't remember how old I was, but it must have been somewhere between 10-12. I know this because I remember that my stepfather became more aggressive in what he would do to me as I got older. I'm not sure I've ever shared, but one of the reasons I got the courage to tell him to stop when I was 13 was because he had already experimented with putting his penis partially inside me. If he ever went all the way, I've blocked that out completely. However, I was scared to death that he was going to try to become completely sexual with me and I could not bear the thought.

But back to this particular incident. In the midst of his experimentation with my young, innocent body he asked me if what he was doing was feeling good. I told him without emotion the absolute truth. "No." The truth was I wasn't feeling anything. I was just laying there dissociated hoping it would all be over soon. But then he asked me a question that has terrorized me ever since. He asked, "Then why are you breathing so hard?" Oh my God, was I doing something to indicate that I liked what he was doing? Was it possible that I was enjoying it? I was beside myself with shame. Again, I blocked myself quickly from the pain of those emotions but they make me shudder even today.

Thus came yesterday's violent ideations of not only making it clear I was not enjoying myself, but putting him in a vulnerable, helpless situation and asking him, "Does that feel good?" What a miserable piece of sick shit this man was.

It is so difficult to be reliving all of this 30 years later, to be trying to reclaim innocence lost, after giving so much of my innocence away. I sobbed last night in pain. I cried earlier in the day thinking of the fifth characteristic of a sex and love addict: "We feel empty and incomplete when we are alone." I feel so empty, so incomplete, so irrevocably damaged.

My stepfather was a sex addict too. He also felt empty and incomplete when he was alone. And he used me to medicate that. I have used husbands that weren't mine. I wonder if he also thought, "As long as no one knows, no damage done." If he did, he was under the delusion of his disease, just as I have been under the delusion of mine.

I don't know what else to say. I am empty and I am praying for God's guidance and fulfillment today.

If ain't one thing, it's another ...

... as the hillbillies used to say back home.

My food is so completely out of control. I am powerless over my compulsive eating right now. I know, know, know I am not powerless over my choices, but I am really in a bad place when it comes to food.

I had begun attending Overeaters Anonymous meetings more than a year ago. I even had a sponsor for a short while. However, when my sex addiction issues started going haywire, I had to focus on the disease that was killing me the fastest.

There is no doubt in my mind that I am very slowly killing myself with food. For the past 48 hours, I have eaten nothing but sugar, fat, carbs, milk products. It's just gross to even think of all that has gone into my poor body. And this is simply a continuation of behavior that I've been engaged in for months with sugar and carbs. Right now I am powerless over $1 item menus in fast food drive thrus.

I went to an Al-Anon meeting today at which a woman shared whatever our "substance" we turn to for comfort becomes our Higher Power. That must surely mean that God is nowhere to be found in my life, because he's being gobbled up in junk.

I know the message is that I have to get back into OA, start working the steps with a sponsor and really commit to getting truly sober in SLAA and abstinent in OA. I'll be perfectly honest, I'm scared shitless if I start to work my OA program, my sex addiction issues will rise again and I'll feel out of control in that area of my life.

I know that there is a power greater than me who can restore me to sanity, and I stand at the turning point, am I willing to turn my will and my WHOLE life over to God as I understand God. All I can say today, is God please help me find the courage and willingness to do what it takes to regain my sanity.

I love you still

Answers in the Heart, June 15

“The last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Victor Frank

There are days in recovery when life in recovery seems like a bad play we are unable to walk out on. It would be wonderful, if after we’d bottomed out, we started recovery and made nothing but progress for the rest of our lives. Recovery, however, isn’t like that. It’s a day at a time, a step at a time, a problem at a time. We struggle sometimes with no idea of where we’re going. We discover that our brothers and sisters in recovery are fallible, just as we are. Sometimes we want to throw up our hands and say “Is this what recovery is like?”

The answer is yes and no. To modify our unrealistic expectations, change our attitudes, and work humbly on our character defects teaches us how to live life beyond powerlessness. Yes, we will sometimes run out of patience with the process of recovery. But we can never go back to how we lived before; we know too much. We can feel the feelings, yes, but despair and give up for good? Never.

If today is a difficult day, I will still be hopeful. I’ll act as if and have faith that things will get better.

---

Fifteen years ago today, I got a call from my stepfather saying my mother had had a heart attack and was not expected to live. I rushed with my sister and niece to make the two hour trip to reach her, praying for the chance to make it there, and for her to live. But during our trip, she died and there was no chance to say goodbye. My mother had been my safe haven, that source of love I never had to doubt. I thought I would die from the sadness I felt.

As today’s reading promises, every year my sadness has lessened, my acceptance and understanding has grown, and things have become better. Back then, I could never have said that my mother died so that I could have the chance to begin the healing process from my childhood sexual abuse. Back then I would never have admitted that my mother knew about that abuse and was emotionally incapable of doing anything to stop it. Back then, I simply could not have admitted that my mother was anything but perfect.

Today, because she often told me, “You have to work out your own salvation,” I am in recovery and I am able to say that in dying my mother was saved from the 25 years of abuse she herself endured from my stepfather and she allowed me to begin my own unraveling from a lifetime of lies.

I still miss you, Momma, but I am thankful that I know you in a whole new way, as you are, not as I imagined you to be. You can rest easy that I love you just the same, which gives me hope that I too can be loved, flaws and all. Thank you for the lessons you continue to share even in death.

Letting go of a lie

I've written here several times about E. He's one of the first people I did write about. He was the person I first acted out physically with in my marriage. I got an e-mail from him yesterday with the subject line "Long time." Thankfully, it had been a long time since I had reached out to him, seeking the validation of a man who only chose to hurt me, defile me, use and abuse me. I have reached the point that I am finally ready to let go of the lie that held me captive in his disease and mine.

I don't have any desire to have any attachment to E. for any reason. I am completely ready to let him go. I realized this morning that because of him I was propelled so much farther into my addiction than I might have ever gone. Shame and a desire to correct the past (please love me, don't hurt me, see the good in me, don't use me -- that's what I was hoping I could change) kept me going back to him again and again, finding the same abusive bastard, but hoping like a naive little girl that I could fix it. When I couldn't find it in him I kept searching and searching, looking for someone, anyone to fill that emptiness inside. I can be thankful that God put the obstacles of sex addiction in my life so that I could grow and overcome all the sickness that lies inside me, so that the little girl could grow up and learn that I don't need another's acceptance to be lovable.

When I met him, E. represented the acceptance and loving kindness I had always wanted from an intelligent, successful, passionate man. Over time, he also represented my stepfather's emotionally distant, conniving, abusive self. I wanted him to want to talk with me and to enjoy our conversations, to see my worth as a human being, to feel my genuine feelings for him, to enjoy my company, and return to me love and acceptance... but instead he performed vile acts on me, played dirty mind control games with me, bruised and defiled me, and then would make up lies and say he had to be somewhere when it was time to share conversation as two intelligent professionals, involved in successful pursuits of our careers. He really only wanted to use my body and feel the "high" of controlling my mind, something he was painfully good at.

In my disease, I became just like him in some ways ... I shut myself off emotionally, used men's bodies without caring anything about them or the damage that was being done. Even if they pretended or maybe genuinely did want love and acceptance and intellectual stimulation ... I never believed them. I just thought "ahh, cut the bullshit and let's get to it, I know what you are here for." I became disrespectful of boundaries and overt in my advances to the point that it made the other person feel uncomfortable. I guess in that way I was trying to please men by becoming what I thought they wanted, so they would want me, accept me, love me ... that never ending search for a loaf of bread at Home Depot. I had come to accept they didn't want a woman who had a mind or anything interesting to say. In my mind, and many times in theirs, that was all useless ... they just wanted someone who would give them what they wanted, and in my own way, that's all I wanted too. I wanted the impossible ... make me feel loved and important, take away my emptiness and loneliness, and do it all in a few stolen moments or a couple of hours in a cheap, dirty hotel room.

E. had his own demons, but I kept believing if I gave in, if I just kept going back, I could change him, his heart would soften and he would love me and care for me, and stop coming up with new ways to hurt and defile me in unimaginable ways. But each time I came back there was something worse, until there were things so disgusting and painful that I could not even bring myself to talk about them. But I got angry when I saw his e-mail yesterday. I got angry enough to get this man out of my life for good.

So, all the secrets, all the shame that only me and him shared, I spilled it all in a note to a trusted friend, breaking all bonds of secrecy and sickness. I was sick to write about it, sick to think of how disgusted the other person would feel, I didn't care ... I wrote it all, all the ugly disgusting vile truths of what I accepted as a substitute for love, honor and respect; all the anger, all the delusion drained out. I was so ready to be done with the hold this man had on me.

I prayed to God to help E., to save him from his demons, and to lift any remaining delusion I might have that he held some secret power to my happiness. I prayed hard and I continue to pray if he comes to my mind. This is a lie I am determined to be rid of, to let go of and to feel the lightness that comes from being free of the hold of my shame and guilt.

Oh great ... I'm coming back as a water buffalo

A few of my blogger friends have posted this book quiz on their blogs. So, here I am, following in their footsteps. I have to say ... the synopsis is pretty head on, although the questions needed some room for "none of the above."

You're The Things They Carried!

by Tim O'Brien

Harsh and bitter, you tell it like it is. This usually comes in short,
dramatic spurts of spilling your guts in various ways. You carry a heavy load, and this
has weighed you down with all the horrors that humanity has to offer. Having seen and
done a great deal that you aren't proud of, you have no choice but to walk forward,
trudging slowly through ongoing mud. In the next life, you will come back as a water
buffalo.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

It's not time

I've been feeling some "pull" to send my stepfather a note for Father's Day. I sat down to pray about it this morning and the question I got back was "Are you doing this for him or you?" When I thought of sending a note that simply said "Thinking of you on Father's Day," I knew it was for him. But when I began to think of writing a card of gratitude, thanking him for being there on the day my mother died (June 15, 1994) and for showing up "in spite of the demons that lived inside." I thought the card would have been for me, from my heart.

I sat down and wrote the card a few minutes ago and I'm sick to my stomach. I wrote "It is the demons that have done the damage" and then sat there for a long time thinking of what to say next. Finally I wrote, "Thankfully we are all more than our demons."

As I reread the card, I am filled with resentment at every line. I know that I can't send it.

I am exhausted. My body tells me that today is not the day.

A few musings

OK, first of all, I think it's important to say that I am feeling lonely, tired, and overall like I don't matter to anyone in the world. I know this is not true ... but that's what I am feeling at this moment on a Wednesday afternoon.

I'm also thinking about an AA speaker I was listening to this afternoon on CD who was talking about the 7th Tradition in its context to daily life. The 12 &12 teach us to be self-sufficient through our own contributions. I've spent the past year or so balking at that tradition. I had always said I would not be dependent on a man's financial support, the way my mother was ... and look what I attracted to myself: an unwillingness and inability to find work. Sure, I've gotten a few little jobs here and there, but nothing that can truly show I'm self-sufficient. Also, I have not been very sufficient around the house either. I feel a lot of shame around my lack of energy and motivation to do anything.

The good news is I'm sober and I made it to two extra meetings this week, and have the willingness to go back. More good news is I finally finished the work that I've been putting off for months and I have a list of other things that I want to get caught up on. I am accepting of the fact that I might not get it all done today, but some of it is manageable and I know how to prioritize.

The bad news is my dog keeps releasing her silent but deadly gas into the air and is making it difficult for me to breathe and type at the same time.

So, with that I'll close ...

My haunting little girl

WARNING: This post includes material that may be severely disturbing, particularly for victims of childhood sexual abuse.

Last year I went to a workshop in San Diego where we did some guided imagery meditation surrounding our inner child. I remember the person leading the meditation asking us to imagine our inner child and then reaching out to that child and hugging her. I brought to mind my little-girl self dressed in a faded purple yard sale dress with yellow and white stripes and white rounded collar, curly black hair and a white face sprinkled with a few genetic freckles. She looked at me with fear and distrust and when I reached out my arms to her, she ran to my mother and began to hug and play with her, laughing and enjoying the innocence of childhood.

I came to use the image of that mistrusting child as a tool to aid in my recovery. I wanted to earn back her trust, to show her that she didn't deserve to be used and abused the way she had been. I knew the reason she ran from me was because I had continued to hurt her with my acting out in my disease. I covered her up in mounds of added body weight and pounds of emotional burden.

In my most recent struggles, I lost sight of that little girl, forgot about her pain and my need to nurture and care for her. I haven't thought of her as I have begun the difficult task of reliving and feeling the emotions she never got to feel. I forgot that it was really her that was connecting me to those feelings and helping me to experience them now. Instead, I met a man last month and another this week while my husband was out of town... all in my weakness and unwillingness to walk through the fires of temptation.

I didn't think of her until I received a note from EC this morning saying he considered acting out in his alcohol addiction a slap in God's face. Then I remembered my little inner girl, the one who I promised to protect and take care of and not let her be hurt again. By acting out again, I had slapped her in the face, broken her heart, and came up empty, sad and alone, with nothing to show for the trip I took to the dark side. There is no way to explain such weakness to a fragile hurting child.

After my husband returned home last night there was a big blow up in which his anger raged over an incident that had happened while he was gone. When I picked him up, I had just left the motel where I had met another man, feeling empty and unfulfilled, wishing I'd felt what I went there to feel, but instead ... as my husband roared, I felt all the feelings of being a child again, being screamed at, hit with the thundering blow of words, and feeling scorned and stupid. I took the dog for a walk -- as she was a major source of his anger -- and with her I walked and cried and cried. I know it was that little girl inside me who was crying too.

I think now again of the imagery of what my acting out does to that little girl inside. I am letting her be violated by men who want to use her as a worthless piece of trash, call her dirty names, use her body for their pleasure, spill their semen into her mouth and her vagina, or all over her, then zip up their pants and go on as if nothing ever happened, as if she never existed or had any worth. I invite these men into my body and into my world to do these things to her.

And even as sick as those thoughts make me, I am reminded of how powerless I am over the disease of addiction, when I still entertain thoughts to do it all again later this month when yet another opportunity arises. Although the desire is lessening, and I can see that there is hardly any high in the acting out anymore, my horribly sick and disgusting addict still wants whatever it was it didn't get the last time. I see opportunity, like my stepfather saw opportunity when my mom went to the store and left me alone ... when he would call that little girl into his bedroom and violate and abuse her innocence, stealing from her piece by piece her dignity, self-respect and her very sense of being alive.

His sickneess killed a part of me, and mine is doing its damndest to kill the rest. It lives in that lost little girl's soul, which lives inside this big girl's mind, whispering in self-defeat ... "Daddy did it and Momma let it happen ... why shouldn't you?"

I am the one

In the workshop I went to a few weekends ago, we did a meditation in which we stood facing east and meditated on the thought of all the women who had come before us in our families lined up behind our right shoulder, then all the men who had come before us on our left, and thought of parts of all of them coming into us, and then the leader asked us, "Will you be the one who breaks free from all the past hurt that was carried into your physical and spiritual being by these generations of people?"

For a long, long time we meditated on and breathed into the phrase "I am the one." It was so powerful.

And even though I don't have children, I feel my decision, and God's decision, for me not to have children, was about ending the cycle of incest and abuse and women laying down everything they are to give themselves away in every way to others. This is my way of being "the one." ... The cycle stops here. I am the one. No other child will have to carry all that I have carried into the world, nor the hurt that I have brought into and attracted into my own life in order to learn some incredibly dynamic lessons.

One of the greatest lessons I am learning now is that my Higher Power is real. There is something bigger than this disease of addiction, much bigger.

I have been struggling in a way I haven't struggled in a long, long time. The opposite of struggle is letting go and letting God ... but I have been resistant to that. I've wanted to fight and I've wanted my addict to win. I've been living the characteristic of sex and love addiction that says "Fearing emotional and/or sexual deprivation, we compulsively pursue and involve ourselves in one relationship after another, sometimes having more than one sexual or emotional liaison at a time." Even after all God has given to me ... I was feeling the fear of being deprived for the rest of my life of certain things that don't exist within my marital relationship. And rather than having the patience for the willingess to break through my own fears of asking for what I need in my marital relationship and working to rebuild trust in that relationship, and having the patience to hear God's answer to my prayers, in fear, I decided I needed to take charge of my life again and get my needs met my way.

But God is allowing me to witness the miracle of my willingness changing, of my Higher Power at work, still with me, even when I jump ship and head off in my own direction. It's not that I haven't been in situations where my willingness changed, but I have never really stood outside myself and been witness to the internal shifts happening. Yesterday, after going through the motions of doing some recovery work, and literally ignoring a message from my Higher Power earlier in the day to simply ask him to take charge of my life just for that day, I was in the shower at the gym and I physically began to feel the shift of the willingness, and watched it blossom, until I was able to come home with full intention to cancel plans to act out today, only to find that the heart of the person I was set to act out with had also been changed. We both were relieved, and I was humbled.

I won't lie here and say that I'm clean and sober, but I know in a way I never knew before that God is with me. I want to be honest here, because I'm not honest with the recovery people in my life about my most recent transgressions, and that is because in taking on sponsees and doing service, I have developed an ego ... that I am important. But I am not. God is and it is only by his grace and love that I am alive today, that I didn't act out on a whole new low today (with someone nearly the age of my stepfather, which was sure to send me into flashbacks and a state of insanity that I might never return from), and that I have enough awareness left to see all this stuff in pure light.

My friend EC, who is the one person I feel like I can be honest with lately, reminded me again this morning, "God cares for you very much." It's amazing and incredibly humbling how much really.

The next life

I sent this in a note to my dear friend EC earlier today ...

"You don't have to die the miserable wretch your father is or my stepfather is. It can be different. That's why I am working so hard. Before this life passes, I want my soul to be cleared ... not for heaven, but for the next life, where I can live a carefree childhood, filled with light and laughter, date beautiful young men, break a few hearts, fall in love, and have babies and watch them grow and love them with the sweetest most gentle love I know."

I am coming to believe that my soul is eternal and that the things I have experienced in this life were necessary to fill certain needs of the soul. However, I am also feeling a sense of loss of the things I never did experience in this life. I do want to experience those things. That's why I am here.

Just as an update: I had a little scare this morning when my husband told me he was going out of town next week and my mind started it's usual reeling. It has passed and I'm thankful for the reminder that I don't have to let those "run aways" last forever. I can do something different and move on. I wrote to a couple of girlfriends to see if they could get together before my SLAA meeting that night he is away and I'll make a fun night of it.

Also, I should say ... we survived the family visitors and I'm a better woman because of it.

Being

I sit here, unable to sleep, a ball of tension in the back of my neck, still stinging from the biting words of anger shared by my husband earlier tonight after he simply could stand no more of my anxiety-ridden behavior. Faced with holiday weekend visitors from his side of the family, I simply cannot grasp what it means to simply "be." I must do, and perform, and manage and it is driving me and everyone else nuts. Or at least me and my husband, and the resulting tension is neither of us are enjoying our guests, and somehow I doubt they are enjoying us. Hopefully with all the things both hubby and I are "doing" for them ... they are at least well fed and entertained.

Yes, it's true, my husband has his own anxieties and is deficient in the human "being" capacity. We both do nothing to improve each other's chances of success during times like these because we are always trying to control the other's behavior in order to make sure the guests are satisfied. I admit to being the worst at this of the two of us. But that's not the point.

The point is, I'm struggling with simply letting go, being myself, realizing that I really am more enjoyable when I just let things flow. I know a big part of this is letting go of my attachment to my husband's approval. If I can look at things realistically and realize that his expectation that all our guests, regardless of who they are, are well taken care of (in the ways he sees fit) is about his own sense of social anxiety and cultural upbringing, I can release a bit of anxiety. He grew up in an environment where extreme emphasis was placed on feeding people more than they could possibly eat and showing them a good time until it hurts. I grew up in an environment where people came and went as they pleased, we fed them what we had, they were least interested about the mound of clutter under the window, and what we enjoyed most was one another's company. Likewise, people who came to our house and were quiet and stayed to themselves, were considered "kinda odd" and talked about a lot. In other words, people were judged by their personality. As long as you showed up and talked and laughed, you were alright. Otherwise people thought you were stuck up or something worse. It simply was not acceptable.

So, when I try to cross my past experiences with his, entertaining (though we both sadistically enjoy it) becomses an extreme source of anxiety. I get those old feelings of "I'm not enough." It all begins before they arrive. I cook, I clean, I put out photos that will please my guests, I take down things that might cause them to ask questions. And, I'm not the only one. My husband scans the rooms to make sure there is nothing "too personal" laying around in view -- like letters from my cousin in prison or some random Al-Anon literature, or God-forbid SLAA info. To be fair, he also looks for credit card reciepts and things that have nothing to do with me, and a lot to do with his deep value of privacy. And once every carpet thread has been separated, I have obsessed over everything from dressing myself to whether they'll be scared of the dog, and the house is filled with more food than we could (or even plan to) possibly eat, a new dance begins once the guests arrive. I begin constantly thinking of what I can "do" to make the guests not only comfortable but entertained and happy. They can't get in the door without being offered food and drink (which was common in both our upbringings. I begin doing everything I can to get this quiet, reserved husband of mine to engage in conversation (by running my trap 90 miles a minute to fill air time) and try to control the way he behaves and responds to me. I get so irritated at him for even the smallest thing, as I think he does me as well.

God, it's a nightmare. I was thinking today that we must make our guests feel like they are intruders, because the two of us do so much to control one another and exert our power that we can't get along.

So, what can I do? I suppose this awareness is a good start. Just sitting down and writing all this out so that I can actually sleep. Doing some quiet breathing exercises, focusing on "I am enough," is another possibility. But right now I think I just need to admit my powerlessness over needing to control and do, and ask my Higher Power to restore me to sanity. I think it may be too much to ask to change overnight and simply be allowed the opportunity to "be," rather than do. But I'm praying for the willingness to simply try it on for size as the dawn breaks.

Reappearance and disappearance

I got another e-mail yesterday from R. I was grateful to have little to no desire to communicate with him and saw him for the pathetic damaged soul that he is. I know that it was his damage that attracted me to him to begin with and ensnared me in my disease for one long, miserable year. The fact that I have recommitted myself to recovery, have been working my program and continue to grow one day at a time makes it possible for me to look at that pain through new eyes and say ... I'm worth more than that.

I feel unfamiliar with these feelings of strength and truthful awareness. And while I don't fool myself that they could disappear at anytime, (The disease of addiction is cunning, baffling and powerful.) I am doing my best to connect to them. I am recognizing that one little slip last week has me in a stage of withdrawal where these seemingly "psychic" connections can happen. That doesn't mean I have to succumb to them, and not being in a relationship ridden by fear, anxiety, confusion and absolute loss of myself, like the one I was in with R. reminds me of the value of staying sober. And, R's communication, in which he shared he's drinking and smoking and having affairs all over the place on his new wife, reminds me that nothing about the fantasy I created that relationship to be was true, and causes me to give great thanks to the power that guides my intuition to get the hell out while I could.

I am forever grateful to my Higher Power for keeping me in a safe place, putting people in my life who can support me and opening my heart to be supported by others.

Thanks for being here and being witness to each stage of this truly incredible journey.

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.