running on empty...

Holidays this year mostly so far went off without a hitch. With the exception of pre holiday run which resulted in not seen since drinking days emotional tidal wave complete with overwhelming feelings of inadequacey and self doubt. Pathetic is probably the word I should use to describe me running behind my husband and crying because the entire I am thinking the following: I am in terrible shape, I am a bad runner, I am pathetic, I cant follow thru on anything, I am bad at everything, I am worthless, I am a terrible wife, I am terrible mother, I am lost, I am not going to stop, I am going to stop, I should not be running at all, I need to be running--and then finally, I am tired and I am going home. Except home was not my house but my mother in laws house full of family. Suffice to say these epic feelings of self doubt, self flaggelation, are not new to me but are new to me more recently. I guess what all of my thinking has in common is that it is about me. The leads me to real confusion since I frequently feel like I never get to do what I want or get to feel how I want and so the constant thinking about me is really at odds with how I act which leads me only to think that maybe if I acted more in my best interest I would be thinking less about myself in the long run. I read somewhere that narcissim is so closely linked to addiction that when a person is active in their addiction you cant clincally tell if they are indeed truly narcissitc or just a person in the grips of addiction. This makes sense to me except I am not even drinking anymore so what the heck? The only thing I can think is that somewhere along this crazy path of mine that I somehow missed the self care class or skipped it. Now I spend all of this time and energy just trying to learn how to take care of other people and then being surprised and confused when I bottom out and feel terrible bc I have been running on Empty for days. Somewhere, somehow there has got to be a way for me to refuel my tanks. Exercise. Aromatherapy. Antidepressants. Therapy. Yoga. Green Tea. Mint Tea. Spearmint Tea. Journaling. Blogging. Knitting. These are just some but not all of my attempts at figuring this out. I admit to not sticking with any of these except therapy and meds. It seems like I have exactly 1 hour every two weeks and 1 minute everyday to do something for me. Anything of top of that is really hard to come by. This is my own doing to some extent--young kids, working parents, strange schedules, and yet I cant help but think deep down that figuring out what I need to do for me to feel somewhat relaxed, ok, connected is pretty important. I've got no answers yet but I was thinking this--the f'ing miracle question. If whatever I think I need (exercise, the right meds, meditation, spirituality) if I woke up tomorrow and had it--what would the first thing be that I noticed to know that something had changed? So far I am thinking that I would know something is different bc I would wake up early and have time to myself, I would have time to journal or walk or run or listen to music or write before anyone wanted anythign. I would be showered and clean when everyone woke up. In other words I'd take time for myself without feeling bad, without postponing, without snoozing. Maybe tomorrow is the morning I'll start...F the snooze button. x

Sunday

I hate Sundays. I specifically hate Sunday nights. This has been going on for as long as I can remember but seemed to get worse when I was drinking a lot and often just felt terrible by Sunday night. Now, I dont drink and so you'd think Sundays would be ok but not so. I still dread them. Maybe I need to get a religion--except I think most of them are fear based and hypocritical or maybe I just need to stop my negative thinking and stop predicting my Sundays will be long and terrible. Whatever the reason, I have got to stop hating on Sundays. They, afterall, are a part of the weekend which should be when I feel happy, joyous, and free...whatever that means. I realize that part of the struggle here is my difficulty managing time without the structure of work. I have been investigating the Women For Sobriety program and really connect with their goal setting stuff. I need some goals--that dont involve kids or work. I have tons of things I want to do: learn to knit, learn Spanish, become a beekeeper, grow a garden, become more enviromentally aware, investiage possibly becoming a Quaker, get a tatoo, write more, run 10 miles, read more. This is my short list. So with of all these things I want to do why the f can't begin even trying to do one of them and why not use Sundays. Granted, I have two young children but certainly I could carve out sometime when they fall asleep. I seem to always be tired which maybe is just another way of saying unmotivated or bored. To this point I do think that it is true---boredom is symptomatic of a boring person. Certainly this amazingly diverse large and life filled universe is not boring. Me and my stuck inside on cold weather self is...boring. I am going to get on this. I am tired of being stuck. Just bought a new alarm clock called the Zen. Hoping to begin my earlier wake up time tomorrow. With so much to do and learn who has time to sleep late? Hope someone is reading this. I think only my Mom reads which is funny bc I talk to her more then anyone else already. Ah well, it actually has been helping me to feel better--which I guess is sort of the point. I read this other blog a few days ago had all of these cool pics and way cool things. Made me feel inadequate in blog world. I'm keeping it simple though...x

stop the insanity

today is thursday. i've been manic busy all day and now am home because my daughter is home sick. this puts my crazy day into a grinding halt. anyway, while she is napping i started cleaning and attempting to decorate for the holidays--something that likely should have been done last week. then the postman comes to the door and delivers a holiday card from an old friend complete with perfect family picture, with perfect handwriting, with perfect address, and all with perfect names. for only a moment i felt bad. then i realized how ridiculous it is that i am somehow turning someone else's beautiful family and holiday wishes into something about me. none of it is actually about me. the narcissim coupled with insecurity runs deep here though. i wonder why is it so easy to feel jealous, envious, inadequate? and what does it mean when my first thought about someone else is what their universe means when compared to mine. to me it means one thing. i need to find some sort of spiritual connection and fast. how disconnected must i be feeling if when given a choice to be happy for someone else or jealous for myself--i pick that later and dont even really know it. i do have a choice though now. a choice to be conscious about my thinking. to say stop to my crazy brain that wants to use everyone elses happiness to make me feel bad when really it should make me feel good that the people i love are happy and healthy. i am trying hard not to reject myself for this whacky thinking but to just gently correct myself. as in, nope, wrong way. i think spirituality, when it works, it sort of like a spirtual gps. the voice inside you that says--you are making a wrong turn. go back. though hard to hear often, today my spirtual gps said, wrong way dude. come on back to the happy, secure, and groudned side. it really is where i belong...x

healthy behaviors. f*ck.

As the title indicates, I thought I'd write tonite about healthy behaviors and there contribution to my recovery. I read this great thing the other day it said what you do everyday matters way more then what you do once in a while. It made me think. So many of my good habits I have trouble sticking with while the old standby bad habits seem to come naturally & daily (e.g. running late, procrastinating, negative self talk). I wondered about how different my day would be if I could practice healthy habits as much as I practice my bad ones. This reminded me about when I was drinking I always felt so...good at it and how it only later occured to me that I had practiced nearly everyday for a long long time. Then I thought about all of the different skills I'd seen other people acquire and how it never once had occured to me that they had had to work hard to learn these skills. I just saw the finished product (e.g. the A on the paper, the song on the guitar, the great backhand) and assumed that, unlike me, they were born with natural talent. It has taken years for it to sink in that those people had learned how to work hard, how to not give up, how to develop habits that contributed positively to their sense of self. How had I missed that? and why had I never before thought about just how much practice I was getting drinking and what other practice I was missing out on in the process. Maybe this is why teenage drinking worries/interests me so much. At such a critical time in our development how easy is it for us to learn to identify ourselves as the crazy, wild, party people and what price do we pay when we wake up the next day and have to go back to the real world where we feel dangerously insecure and inadequate--not to mention hungover. I wish we could teach this in school. An entire class on why alcohol, and its companion drug marijuana, can be dangerous for some people, how to know if you're on of them, what to do if you are worried about yourself or a friend. What are signs that you might be heading in the wrong direction with substances. Anyway, maybe someday I'll figure out a way to teach a real class to middle school kids that is honest and applicable. For now, I am just happy that I hit the treadmill again today and got up on time. That is progress. x

tuesday night at hannaford

Had to pick up milk tonite at Hannaford for my daughter. Found myself in the checkout line in front of this young girl who is holding only one thing--a case of Coors Light. True that even when I was drinking I found this beer revolting but still, it was there and this young, not buying milk or diapers, girl was holding it. I was a weird mix of jealous and sad when I thought about it. Jealous bc some people drink normal and sad because other people dont and you never really can tell by looking who they are. I dont want to drink, not for today or tomorrow but there are times in the grocery store where it is just all around and it is hard not to at least notice. I find it strange that my destruction is so readily available and then cool that I just go about my life and mostly forget this. Someone once told me that she always tells herself that she can drink whenever she wants and she just doesnt want to. She said that if she ever told herself she was not allowed to drink then she would want to more. At the time I didnt get this but I am starting to. I can drink but choose not to. This helps bc then I dont feel deprived and it makes me see that I have made this choice and that no one took it away from me. It is boring really but the constant barage of alcohol at the grocery store felt mentioning as sort of funny and strange and thought provoking. Also worth noting that there have been times in my life where I didnt even notice the alochol when I was shopping and I am sure that part of me noticing today was that I was tired and feeling worn out.

Also, I miss my therapist which would be funny if it wasnt so darn sad. Only I could get dependent on the person who is supposed to be helping me and then get depressed after I am not depressed bc I am done therapy. Long (sort of laughing) sigh. As far as therapy goes, I will say for the record that I am highly in support of therapy in general and substance abuse counseling in specific. So, that is that. My weird sadness coupled with my nostalgia over tonite being my son's first birthday makes for a strange and not so chatty mood. Also, I dont think anyone reads this so I am basically writing to no one. A little self indulgence is not a bad thing.

Monday night. Third post. At some point I have to stop numbering these posts but this is all still a novelty. So. Today is the eve of my son's first birthday. What an accomplishment it feels like to me that I have gotten both of us this far. It was a tough year full of everything. It both flew and crept by. It is strange how time seems to do that--both speed up in terms of weeks, months and then slow down in terms of minutes, hours. I noticed this when I first quit drinking and I notice it all of the time with kids. Sunday morning is eternal and all of last year is a blur. This baffles me. Parenting mixed with sobriety really baffles me. I guess they are sort of natural companions--who really wants to be a drunk or stoned parent? But there are so many mixed messages. Put your sobriety first. Whatever you put in front of your sobriety you lose. Then. Your kids always come first. Nothing is more important then your children. I dont know if people without addiction stuff deal with this but for me it is just one of those things that I could argue both sides of forever.

Recently I was thinking you need to do both. You need to both put yourself (ie your sobriety) and your kids first. It is almost like you have to combine it all into one thing called a healthy life and make that the priority. If I start breaking it down into me or my kids all hell breaks loose. I am my kids. My kids are me. We're all ourselves and each other. We are all connected in this crazy web of life. When I feel connected (at meetings, in good conversations, when I am working, or cooking, or playing) all is well and when I am not--all pretty much sucks. I generally start deconstructing the universe when I dont feel connected. That is where the trouble starts for me. I start breaking things apart that really are all connected. I think this is obvious stuff but for me this is like a psychic breakthru.

AA is good for me to the extent that I can use it to feel connected and can mess with my mind when I take it too literally. I wish more people could go to AA or to any other 12 step meeting or support group for recovery only because I keep encountering young women in particular who could benefit from having some friends that were not getting high. At some point I was one of those girls though and I would have laughed myself to the bar if someone had suggested I hit a meeting and not happy hour. It is confusing. People have to get there on their own and yet I keep wanting to sow seeds or whatever dumb phrases we human svc workers tell ourselves we are doing so we dont feel bad about seeing no results for all of our work. We're sowing seeds.

As far as this night goes and me. I am sober. And I am actually grateful--for real. Tonite at a red light listening to this Joni Mitchell song called How do you Stop or soemthing like that...I actually stopped, for a minute. I turned around and looked at my daughter. She was just perfect. Just this little moment of perfect. She looked so grown up though and I realized then why parents get so nostalgic. All of this work to get kids to grow up and then they do. It was a painful moment but I did think. I am grateful. This is gratitude. I dont always hit the gratitude mark so well. I can always say it but feel it, for real. Way way harder. Hit the mark tonite though. Bingo. Bulls eye. Amen.

second post sunday

Today is Sunday. After reading my first post I had all of this ambivalence about blogging about my life and my recovery but I am determined to try. If it becomes too much then I'll just stop. Anyway, I have had a tough few weeks but am finally pulling thru to the other side. I read this book called "Thinking Simply About Addiction" that has really helped me recommit myself to making meetings and just given me more insight into myself and everyone else who shares this weird confusing and all too common illness of addiction. I've been sober long enough that I no longer have any physical issues related to my drinking and so, for me, it is way too easy to slip into feeling cured or just curious. Maybe I could have one drink. Maybe I could take one Xanax etc. It is silly when I read it but the internal dialogue is no laughing matter. I am a skilled rationalizer and unless I say these things out loud it is possible that I'll just convince myself that it is all ok. I also have the strange burden of having what some people might call a high bottom. I didnt lose a job, or have any family or friends intervening. I just finally realized that when I drink I usually cant stop. Then I realized that most of my major problems were related to drinking. Then I realized that since I was terrified to stop drinking that I probably should stop drinking. Then I saw this amazing counselor (who I saw for the next five years) who suggested I try AA. Once I heard other alcoholics talking there was no getting around that I had found my people. So...here I am. Trying to be a good mother, trying to be a good wife, daughter, sister, worker and the whole time doing it sober. Sometimes I feel like I have entered some alternate reality and the real me is drinking a pint at some seedy bar in Manhattan and dreaming up this crazy fictional alter life but it is not so. This is the real thing. For better or worse I am here committed to my recovery one day at a time and trying to stay sane too. Today was ok. I lost my patience a few times but I didnt do anything major or bad. At dinner I poured myself a seltzer and cranberry and laughed about how it was really good for my kids that I dont drink anymore bc I would have poured one big drink after this day but I didnt. I just sat and ate with my daugther and my mom and smiled knowing that there was no me sitting in a bar in NYC anymore. The only me is right here and that makes this one pretty ok day. Long sigh.

night one recovering k blog

Hello, my name is Karen and among many other more fun and interesting things (wife, mother, employee, coffee connoseiur) I also am an alcoholic in recovery. I have been sober since April 11, 2004. I decided to start this blog because I think, hope, know that there are many other women like me who are either in recovery themselves, know someone who is in recovery, or are curious about what recovery is. I titled my blog recovering k because my recovery has been the process of finding myself again. It is a bit cheesy, I admit, but it makes sense to me and I am going for it. I feel compelled to start my first entry by saying that my recovery from alcoholism and to some extent marijuana has been amazing, scary, hard, beautiful but most of all it has been work. Plain and simple hard work. I have been known to say at 12-step meetings that I am not a hard working kind of girl and so working hard has been hard for me. In the first few years of my recovery I went to lots of 12-step meetings, I made coffee, I gave people rides--I guess from an AA perspective I followed suggestions. Here I should say that I realize that there might be some who take issue w/ my mentioning of AA in my blog as there is this whole thing about not talking about AA in press or something. While I understand the inclination to protect AA from bad press I really believe that not talking about recovery, addiction and how to get help from it is part of being in the problem and that being open about our problems and how we got better is part of being in the solution. Sorry Bill W and anyone else this might offend but my hope is that by mentioning how AA has helped me that perhaps someone else might be more likely to give it a go. So suffice to say that I go to AA meetings, I try to follow suggestions, I read about recovery and I try to do the right thing as soon as I figure out what it is.

That boring stuff said, here I am. Tonite it is December 8, 2009. My sister has just announced her engagement and I am perusing locations in NYC for possible shower when I hit on the website of a bar that I used to go to fairly frequently when I was drinking. This was not your average bar but a beautiful, glamourous, expensive warm fire place kind of spot. This was the spot where I drank martinis and enjoyed them. This was the first place I drank really good red wine--albeit 5 glasses but still. The memory is there. Deep. Embedded. Stuck. I am not going to drink over this website or this memory but it hurts in this sort of aching way that only someone who has given up one of their great loves and sees them again and their totally and completely unattainable. Painful. I guess upon further reflection if alcohol was a great love then it was a pretty abusive relationship. I gave it so much and it gave me, epic hangovers, shame, guilt, credit card debt and low self esteem. That is not even getting into the alcohol fueled relationships which always seemed to self destruct right around the time that the buzz wore off. The alcohol infused relationship is a whole other post or million posts. Well, I guess my point here is that it is hard to be in recovery but totally doable and completel worth it. Baby crying. Must go. More later.
K