thursday third step

hi friends. today is thursday. a rare occasion where i am writing in the morning. i've been struggling big time with some third step stuff. for those who are not in the 12 step know this means that i am having a lot of trouble turning my will over to a higher power. for a while i hated this step, didnt get it, but lately it has been making a good deal of sense to me. i have to do my best, work hard, and then i have to accept the life that the universe gives me. in other words i have to turn my will over to the care of something bigger then me. the extent to which i suffer seems to be directly linked to how often i take my will back and get pissed bc shit is not working out the way that i want it too.

a friend in the program recently offered the great wisdom--let go of the results. seems so simple but it really gets at the heart of the issue. acceptance. i struggle with this concept so much that the paragraph in the big book that is dedicated to this concept is actually underlined and highlighted-- and this is big bc i am not that into the big book anyway. i do think though that acceptance is the answer. of people, of events, of life. i need to flow and not push back so hard, not struggle for my way all of the time.

last night in my recently new nightly walk i was thinking about this. i spent about thirty minutes looking for headphones that dont even exist. i was determined to find a pair of headphones even when i couldnt recall actually owning another pair. i was that determined to distract myself on my walk. i finally gave up and accepted that i had to buy new ones and that for htis walk i'd have to be w/ just myself. ugh. not always great company.

i walked in the quiet and was struck again by how much i love vermont. i just love it. i look around and see this little town, my town that i love. i want to cry with having to leave and i find myself again trying to sort out how to accept a change that i know will bring good things when what i really feel like doing is digging my heels in and staying right here. over and over i take my will back and then suffer. when i accept that change happens, that life is unexpected, that sometimes we have to have faith and just go in the direction that life takes us--then i feel happy, ok, even good. when i push back--pain, misery, and sadness return. i realize that i better get my act together w/ this third step. i know how to do this. i just need to practice--often, all of the time. not let my lazy brain return to my own special brand of suffering bc it feels familiar.

letting go of old ways is hard though. i am trying to be gentle with myself too. which is also hard. i am big into making me feel bad. need to get over that too. i am only me, one person, trying to do better and to be better. lets hope for today i can accept my flawed self with the love and softness we all deserve for ourselves. xx

you can take the girl out of vermont but...

hi all. today is thursday. i am doing this community based health activity that involves wearing a pedometer and making yourself excercise. the good news is that i've actually been exercising. tonite though i was walking/barely jogging when i was struck with just how beautiful vermont is. my throat ached. i seriously thought i was going to cry. i was running thru southern vt medical center parking lot and thought about having both my kids there. i looked over and saw ucs and nearly strained my neck to possibly catch a glimpse of my old therapist. i was nostalgic and sad and immediately started wondering if maybe i should have just said no to this move.

then i realized that the voice i was hearing was not my own inner voice but rather my inner fear. this is an important distinction. while my inner voice may guide me and encourage me to have faith, be optimistic, dream, etc. the other voice--my fear voice aka my alcoholic voice just tells me not to take any chances. the fear voice tells me that my good life is fragile and could break and change with any sudden movements and that i need to be still and not change a thing. having lived in this way for a pretty fair amount of time (like 15 years) i am luckily pretty familiar with this cunning and powerful voice which just wants me scared, sad, and feeling victimized--even when i am not really any of those things. i guess the natural progression for it all would go something like--dont take any chances, dont try anything new, feel sad, feel stuck, feel like a victim, blame other people, feel hopeless, decide that given how shithouse everything is that a drink would be just fine. ha. i am smarter then this voice now.

that is not to say that i wont deeply miss vermont. vermont is the first real home that i made for myself. i love the people i have met and who i have learned from so much that i actually could cry with gratitude for it all. how a broken, sad, and lonely girl ended up a (sort of) strong woman with a family and home is beyond me. the thing that finally shifted in my head tonite though is that me, my sense of being home and safe, is going with me wherever i go. i dont have to leave anything behind because it is all in me. my friends, my teachers, all of my memories--good and hard come with me. vt is coming with me wherever i go. xx

bad habits and monday

today is monday. i pretty much hate mondays and always have. i am not sure where that comes from but it seems so natural to me that i do it, that i rarely stop to wonder why. i like my job and so the idea of returning to it is not so terrible. i dont know, maybe it is just a habit to hate on monday. today i am grumpy though and unmotivated. i dont want to do what i know i should which just makes me feel worse and not better. not doing what i know i should is a bad habit. procrastination--it sucks the life out of me and leaves me with nothing but free time that i feel guilty about and cant even enjoy. pretty pointless.

there is also this other thing. this hating people who like mondays thing. the best way i can explain this phenomena is to reference aimee mann's album "f#@*$ the smilers." i think the smilers are the people i hate on on days like monday. it is not terribly sober to not like happy people though and so i'd like to distinguish truly happy people from people who act happy--all of the time. ugh. those people just kill me. either they exisit in a world i cannot understand or they are truly fake and act happy because they dont have the courage to act how they really feel. this again leads me to wonder what the f is wrong with me though since acting happy in of itself is not so terrible--i guess i'd just like some recognition of the faking it part. jeepers. i sound crazy.

my whole life i am one kind of person though--messed up. late. tired. funny and loveable but self defeating and self destructive. suddenly (or not so suddenly) i am not really that person anymore. not so messed up. sometimes late but not pathologically. not so tired anymore. not so self defeating and not self destructive. what is a girl to do when faced with a new identity. one that might just involve being actually happy and maybe even successful. if you're me then you rebel until you come to some sort of reconciliation with who you once were and who you are now.

today, i guess i will try to stop writing and go back to what i am supposed to be doing. wish i had some insight for you but really just getting thru it today. maybe procrastination is both self defeating and self destructive. maybe letting go of those bed fellows is scary and so i return to them over and over. suprised each time that they dont work for me. now that is behavior i can recognize...

6 years

six years of no drinking and here i am. i am always nostalgic on my sober birthday. it is sort of like the birthday i picked for myself. i sit here and think about where i was, where i am, where i am going. now it is days after my sober birthday because i didnt have a chance to finish my post before this. 4.11.04. a good day for me.

where i was: lost. back then it was just getting harder and harder to be myself without a drink. every year i was becoming a little less who i wanted to be. then i quit drinking. it was hard. i struggled. i cried. i felt sorry for myself. i thought about drinking again. i thought about the person i wanted to be. i thought about the relationship i wanted to have. i thought about the kids i wanted to have. i thought about going backwards and not forwards. i went to therapy. i went to aa. i went to bed on time. i slept. i worked out. i ate better. i played with my dog. i started feeling something solid inside me. i began to feel that i could depend on myself. that feeling was sort of intoxicating, especially in the beginning when it was new--though i admit to still really being in love with that feeling even now.

where i am now: each year since then has just gotten better. each year i feel a little closer to who i want to be. feel a little more comfortable in my skin. a little less confused. a little more present. a little smarter. a little more capable and a lot more focused. i know this--i like myself most of the time.

where i am going: (woodstock,ny specifically) but where i am really going is forward and out. from a life that once felt so backwards and in. i just want to keep going forward and keep getting out of myself when i can. i want to help others. i want to stay hopeful even when it is stupid, against all odds, and everyone else walks away. i want to continue to believe in all of our ability to change--at any moment that we commit to it.

to anyone else out there in recovery or wanting to be--i cant encourage you enough to consider the life that you want and then work towards it. maybe your problems have nothing to do with substances but are something else entirely. it doesnt really matter i dont think--we all can recover our lost selves whenever we decide we are really ready to take action, to do the work, to begin again. and by all means if you need help or want it--ask for it. i can say without almost any hesitation that the ability to ask for help when you need it really separates the people who get better from the people who think about getting better. for my own self i would like to self indulgently thank ts and the bennington aa community for a six years like no other. xx

signs

today our century 21 sign went up outsid our house. i drove up to the house and there it was. we are selling our house. we are moving. i thought i was really going to freak out, but i didnt. i was calm. i felt basically ok. i wondered if some of my early worrying and anxiety about moving has helped me accept that i am indeed moving and then also helped me sort thru my feelings about it. maybe. i did also run (or walk and run) today outside and that was humbling but helpful. i listened to a song i really love. a lyric--even a bad life is still the life that you know. it made me think back to when i moved to vt from nyc nearly 9 years ago. how different these moves are. where i was then and where i am now.

i dint really move to vt. i sort of escaped to it. i was running away from myself, my drinking, my fears. i ran far from nyc and ended up here in vt, and found myself mostly alone with myself, and confronted with the reality that the only person that i had to blame for my unhappiness, insecurity, fear--was me. there was no person that could make me ok. no one is strong enough, stable enough, ok enough to make someone who is not ok feel ok. i was sad. i was scared. i saw people who were stable, whole, curious, engaged and interested in life and i wanted to be them. i knew something was wrong but i didnt have the courage to really look at it for long. i guess i was afraid of what i'd find if i looked too hard at myself and so, like anyone who wont like at themselves, i looked at everyone else. dissected their problems and blamed them for mine.

even now looking back i am barely able to connect the dots from that time to this. have trouble recalling exactly how i extracted myself from one life and found another. all i remember is that something deep deep inside of me told me that i was going in the wrong direction. i wanted love, security, acceptance. i thought if someone gave it to me first then i could give it back to myself. of course, it took a while to figure out it had to start with me. i am still figuring it out. still gently reminding myself that both the problem and solution are in me. long sigh.

lastly and maybe unrelated--i went to a meeting tonite. it got me thinking about surrender. surrender is not something i am good at. it is more like something i try to do, do, and then undo over and over. i dont know that this is wrong. maybe i am alone in my sometimes unbelievable ability to convince myself that things i know are problems are not really problems. then i have to do all of this crazy mental gymnastics to outsmart my own brain back into what i really know--which is that one drink this girl will never have--and be satisfied with. never had and was satisfied with.

one nice glass of wine always made me want another. always. no exceptions. one cold beer always made me want another. always. if i couldnt have at least 3 then i didnt want 1. nothing else in my life is quite like this or ever has been. i know this. deep down know this. remember vividly at times how the desire for more feels and how quickly (with just 1) it starts.

i guess it is vigilance in the end. i know what i know. when i am honest. when i am real. when i listen to myself then my own truth is always right here with me. i dont need to convince you, my neighbor, my coworker, a friend--it doesnt even really matter what you think about me or what i think about you. it just matters what we know about ourselves. in the end--it is just sober me alone with sober me and finally--after years of running from myself--being alone with me is actually just fine. xx

easter sunday. aside from sometimes dying eggs this day means not that much to me. maybe i feel a touch of guilt bc of this but mostly i dont. mostly i just feel grateful that the weather is good and that my husband is home on sundays now and not always working. though i sometimes feel ungrateful today is not one of those days. today i (at least sort of) get it. i get that everyone in my life is healthy. i get that this in of itself is something to feel happy for and to celebrate. i get that the gifts that i have been graciously given by the universe are not necessarily mine forever and that i need to love them, right now, the exact way that they are-not later, not when the become what i want, but right now--here in this moment. i get that people and events are perfect exactly as they are and that my version is not better.

i heard someone at a meeting recently say that they head soemone else say--what makes you think that you can make a plan that is better then gods plan for you? this sentiment is not my favorite. i have god issues, big time, but there was something in there that i like. maybe i could revise it into what makes me think that my plan for myself or other people is somehow better then anyone elses plan for themselves, their life. how many times have things gone what i thought was wrong--only for me to later learn that things went exactly right. many many many times.

today i am working on acceptance. i think i'll be working on this for a long long time. accepting the picture that is blurred. the person as they are not as i want them to be. myself for the imperfect, but trying, person that i am. the serentity prayer says we need to accept the things that we cannot change and as this relates to others this almost is always the case--the part i can change--is me.