Denial - "We can't handle the truth"

When I got into the program I didn't really understand what I was doing there. When my counselor ask me if my husband drank a lot I couldn't honestly say what was a lot. He was never drunk at least the way I had seen drinking growing up.  My uncle the family drunk drank until he passed out on the floor. Not my husband he had great job and he was smart and the world was in love with him and so was I.

He had become a stranger to me as the drinking had increased but I couldn't see it. I was in complete denial with the evidence right in front of me. This is the number one coping mechanism for all humans if you don't acknowledge it then it isn't happening. We live in the pretend world in our head. La La La - I can't hear you! 

It takes something horrible to break through a well dug in persons fantasy especially if they have a strong personality.  From my own perspective I had tackled some major stuff and I was too strong to admit that this was happening to me.  

I am sad to say we have had a lot of deaths here close to home of those who chose not to get vaccinated. One family hit especially hard and now everyone is devastated. There is no going back and a lot of lives will be affected forever and there is nothing to say. 

Maybe it is denial.  I understand that it is easier to just pretend that everything is fine then to face something we have no control over. If we find other people to join our own fantasy it makes the story in our head even more legitimate.  

That first meeting someone told my story and I felt the first crack in my denial.  At that moment I saw the truth but the damage had been done and my marriage was over.  How could I have deceived myself all those years?  I had to eventually forgive myself for being human. I couldn't handle the truth because it meant that I wasn't in control and I was about to lose everything. 

The pandemic has put us all into a position of feeling helpless and some have chosen to just pretend it isn't happening.  I get it but in the end is costing lives and there is no going back. Just because it hasn't happened to me doesn't mean it isn't happening. 

These days I still don't completely trust the story I tell myself. I know that my view of the world and my life is only real from my perspective. I question everything knowing that I am capable creating a world that only exist in my head. 

Mental Health - Denial - Lives are wasted

This is the moment when we find out what we are made of and if the tools we have picked up along the way will sustain us. It is natural to feel shocked and overwhelmed by the people around us that don't feel the same way we do or worse they assume we believe the way that they do.

I got a pretty outrageous text from someone that said the people on TV were hired by the government to impersonate normal flag waving patriots despite the fact that their leaders have been identified. I did not reply because I wondered if I had given them the idea that I would be be happy to get this message. I thought it might be a group message but it was only for me.

Our chemistry dictates that we feel better when we belong to a group. Our serotonin goes up and stays up when we feel like we are some how part of a special group. That need is strong especially now when we have to rely on our own emotional stability to survive. Hours and hours alone with the our media of choice pumping us full of fear we want to feel like we are right and they are wrong. This is our brain at work. 

We aren't feeling stable and safe enough to take a time out and be okay not knowing what will happen tomorrow. Our brains want more information so we can solve the fear and uncertainty we are feeling or to make easy we just choose black or white. 

I have had a lot of experience with feeling so insecure and scared that my mind literally took a time out. It broke and I felt blank for awhile. You know this if you have been here before. 

The good news is that we will make it. The world and politics moves slowly whether we like it or not. Healing moves slowly whether we like it or not. All we can do is control what we are letting into our brains. We have to stop feeding the fear and find peace for today.

The text made me sad and I am not sure what I will say about it but for now I am putting that relationship on hold until I decide what needs to be said.  Although the relationship is casual it feels dishonest to me to just pretend I am on the same page. 

Denial is our way of coping with when we can't come to terms with the truth. This is why we stay in relationships too long or ignore the abuse in an alcoholic relationship. The thought of facing the pain that comes with seeing the truth is too terrifying. We get stuck thinking things will change. 

I do think we stay denial until something bad happens and then we either say enough is enough or we dig in deeper. I am a coward when it comes to this and something bad has to happen to make me snap out of it. In relationships this hurts everyone and the end result doesn't change it just gets postponed and lives are wasted. 

I have a lot experience with denial and it saved me on more than one occasion. It has it's purpose and while our sub-conscious is sorting things out it is a nice place to visit. Living there will alienate you from the people that want to help you to get better and to move on. You are left with those that are like you that feed the sickness and keep you stuck. Only we can only decide when to face the truth and go from there. 

When faced with the denial of others we can only watch. We have to wait until they are ready to move on but can't pretend to go along with it. This prolongs the inevitable awakening or in some cases the loss of someone we love. 

This post is mostly about relationships and not politics but the denial of another does force us to choose our own sanity over trying to change another person. We can still love them from a distance and not banish them from our lives but we have to protect our own peace.  

Confronting the past - our unique fears - denial is coping - forgiveness

One of my favorite bloggers seems to be missing along with all his comments.  I hope everything is alright.  Over the years many bloggers have drop off but usually with some kind of farewell explanation.  In life everything runs its course and maybe it is just his time. 

I was painting my deck yesterday and pulling weeds today and had time to think.  I did sleep long and hard last night and got up this morning and gathered my thoughts.  I have been reading my mother's Bible mainly because I have be looking through family pictures and thinking of her.  I will say this is the same Bible that she taught me to read with.  It is not translated other than in English to bring it up to more modern standards. We read a chapter every night and I was particularly fond of the "verily - verily I say unto you" parts.

Don't stop reading because I mention the Bible. I have been treated badly by people who professed to be God fearing Bible lovers and I chunked the Bible out along with them a long time ago.  Anything that represented what those people said they believed in was off limits. Today know that it isn't all or nothing. 

What Al-Anon did for me in my early 30's was to find the God of my own understanding. It was good start for me realizing it was up to me to come to terms with how I was treated and establish the God of my own understanding. I didn't really trust my childhood God because he took my mother and replaced her with one of the most selfish unloving people on the planet. With that I lost the rest of my family because I could not tolerate the hypocrisy of those who professed to be Christians.

Of course this is totally my problem. I was never great at pretending things are one way when it is obvious that they are totally another.  I say that when I lived with bold face alcoholism and totally ignored it until it was too late and it had destroyed my own confidence and my marriage. I am no different than anyone else when it comes to denial or living in a fantasy.

Some many things in this world are hurtful and sometimes devastating and denial is how we survive. When something rocks our world we find other people that think like us and huddle together chanting our own beliefs until the storm passes. There is a lot of this going on right now on both sides.

Sometimes individually we break from the group because we know that no one could possibly understand how we are suffering because it feels too personal. For me I broke away because I felt that I couldn't possibly put the burden of my pain on another human. This left me alone to find the strength within and to rely on something greater than myself. 

This is the point of God or whatever you believe in that doesn't depend on you to have the answers. I have found strength in ultimately letting go of everything I ever believe to be true. With letting go my life began to flow again. Every difficult thing I faced was resolved without my tight grip on it. I let go of my idea of the way things had to be and received peace. Nothing even now seems to move when I have an agenda. I have tested this over and over with every part of my life and it is always true. 

I know that forcing a solution on my terms never works. Turning my will over to a power greater than myself is humbling and freeing. My thoughts and prayers over any situation without demanding a certain outcome can result in a literal miracle.  Sometimes leaving me thinking "I never imagined that as a solution to the problem". 

I am not afraid of my past anymore or the God that I was raised with. I can read the Bible without attaching what people have to done to me in his name. People are flawed.  I am flawed and everyday I have to live with my own humanness and walk in faith that I haven't done too much damage. 

I have done my best just like everyone else.  I have ask for forgiveness from my God the universe and from myself. I have hurt myself the same as I have hurt other people along the way. Just as I offer forgiveness to them I can offer it to myself. It may not seem like it but we all live in fear and this causes us to react in unique ways based on our own past. 

Today I am feeling peace and for that I am grateful. 

 

Step 1 - Denial to Acceptance - Life goes on

I have been back to a more normal schedule this week with customer appointments and spending more time in the office than at home.  Just when I was starting to get use the working at home and getting things done around the house.  I am grateful to have some business right now.  Life does go on no matter what.

I visited our grocery store midday yesterday thinking that it would be less crowded.  I only go once every few weeks when I am running low on salad.  It was pretty peaceful there and not too crowded. One of my customers said he had gone to the store one morning and check out took 90 minutes.  I thought I would have to be really desperate to wait 90 minutes. 

He told me that both he and his wife are psychologist working for a hospital supporting patients facing medical crisis.  The hospital is taking steps now to reduce the staff since the hospital is mostly empty. I don't think people realize just how this will touch everybody.  I left there feeling a little disheartened.

After going to the grocery store and having a pretty calm experience I felt a little better.  They had one way arrows on the isles and a tape box to stand a the register with lines on how far apart to stand.  I ask an employee where the sauerkraut was and he took me the wrong way and a man glared at me pointing to the arrow.  I explained that I was following the employee.

Some people had mask and gloves and other people did not. While waiting for a woman in produce with no gloves  I watched while she picked up and put back a half dozen plastic boxes of already diced vegetable. I thought about why some people conform and some don't.  Maybe she doesn't have access to gloves or a mask right now.  Maybe she thinks this isn't real.  This is what one of my co-workers to me yesterday. I said "I am sure those people that have died would disagree with you".

I am sure those taunting "fake news" will continue to do so especially since the death toll will not be as bad as originally thought because the country has been shut down. Let's face it in the world of economics money always trumps people.  We have always had to force corporations to protect their employees and this always cost them money. Is it good business or greed it is hard to say. Remember history when during the industrial revolution children worked in the factories and in some countries they still do. People were just trying to survive and this is how they did it back then. Kid were a commodity to work on farms or to work in factories.

This happens because people need to feed their families and if that means going to work sick then that is what you do especially if there is an abundance of workers and a shortage of jobs.  The people in the Smithfield pork factory went to work sick because they don't want to be seen as less interested in working than the person next to them. Work while you can because the future is uncertain at this point.

I am still optimistic at this point even if it doesn't sound like it.  The other thing I read that if anyone took one of the government bridge loans they have to put people back to work by I think June 1 to get those funds.  Also we are adaptable even if we are forced into it. We are creative in this country and will figure out how to move on in every part of life.

The more adaptable you are the less this will feel like a punishment. We don't know what the future holds but if it makes people feel better I am going to wear a mask and gloves when I am in the public. Pretending that this isn't happening doesn't stop the virus and it feeds denial.

I know the power of denial when I lived with alcoholism I just couldn't bring myself to believe it.  Even after he was gone I still stayed in denial about my own behavior. How my own coping mechanisms had kept me from seeing the truth about my life.

We bury our heads in the sand because the reality of the situation is more than we can handle at that moment. It was a gradual process for me back then and it saved me from feeling the full brunt of what was happening to me all at one time. I eventually through the 12 steps was able to see the truth little by little.  Everyone has their on speed for this and can really dig in when they are not ready to accept the new reality. It all starts with that first step. 

Denial - Survival - Manipulation

I am happy to be off this weekend.  I am still in the purging mode at my house touching everything I own to make sure I still want to own it.  I came across the family pictures of mostly dead people now some I know and some I don't.  Because I lived in the same city as my Aunt and she was the last surviving sibling on my mother's side I got all the pictures. 

In my constant desire for order when I got the pictures originally I separated them by aunts and uncles and thought that I would put them together and send them off to the kids.  Now with time I don't really know where the kids are or whether anyone would care at this point. 

I also had one file for my grandmother.  I have been writing my story and her character is pretty prominent and a character she was.  By necessity she was one of the most manipulative people you would ever encounter.  Her husband was killed in a sawmill accident when she was 30 leaving her alone with nine kids to support.

Under the circumstances my grandmother became the most resourceful person you can imagine.  She never remarried because she said "I don't want another man disciplining my children."  She was totally immersed in the the Pentecost even though she was raised Baptist. She never joined the church because they wanted her to be re-baptized and she that the first baptism was in the name of the same Jesus so she refused.  Even though the church gave her a piece of land and the materials to build her own house and she did of course.

My grandmother built a very thick wall of denial that rarely was penetrated.  She had her own version of everything.  She was very opinionated about a lot of things and didn't readily accept new people in her inner circle.  She kept  most people in that second ring in case she needed something from them.  She especially like strangers and they loved her because they were the easiest to maneuver and she hadn't exhausted them the way she did her family.

When my mother was alive grandmother would plan her own birthday party and invite all kinds of people. She had this one lady make her a fancy decorated cake every year as a gift.  At my grandmothers funeral the same woman came up to me and said "your grandmother would ask me to do things that even my own mother wouldn't ask me to do." I knew what she meant.

Once my grandmother invited everyone to her party she would call my mother and say "I got 20 people coming for a party at my house tomorrow."  knowing my mother would feel like she needed to make that work.  I felt for my parents because the wants of my grandmother dominated our household but no one stood up to her.  If you said anything she would cry and pout and then quote the Bible about disrespecting your elders. My mother was the youngest and took most of the heat.

I really couldn't understand why she got away with it. Every year we took a trip to visit my aunt in Michigan and up until the last minute she would say she wasn't going. Everyone would beg her to go but she would refuse then at midnight the night before she would call and say she was going.  Sometimes when we got to the house at 10 she would still be in bed not packed.

I can see my dad patiently sitting in the car or on my grandmothers porch while my mother helped her pack.  This was a regular routine.  She did this with her other son in law the day before she was to fly to my wedding and he left her. She manage to get a plane ticket and a neighbor to take her to the airport and got there before my aunt and uncle did.

She loved me almost as much as she loved my mother and after my mothers death and my dad remarried our visits were limited. My dad wouldn't have anything to do with my mother's family after that. Once my uncle stopped by and my dad was cleaning the gutters he never even came down from the ladder.  He loved my mother more than life and I think he only tolerated her family for her sake. Once she was gone he was done.  I don't think there was malice but he had moved on.

Looking at the pictures of my grandmother mostly on her birthday or Mothers Day always wearing a corsage and usually a hat I see a pretty happy person living a life that only existed in her mind. My mothers death did break denial for a few years.  She cried forever until she said God ask her to stop. 

When she was afraid or sad she wrote scriptures on random pieces of paper.  I have dozens of those writings that I saved.  Her faith was unbelievable and kept her going until the end.  She died at 85 in 1984 of bone cancer.  I can't say I remember too many specifics I was newly married living with active alcoholism and maintaining my own world of denial.   My plate was full and couldn't face the loss of the last person who I knew loved me for sure. 

It is weird how denial works it protects us from the things we can't bare to see for as long as it takes.  Why own up to a life that isn't living up to what we had hoped for? My own life of denial kept me in places far longer than I needed to be there because if I acknowledged the truth I thought it would kill me.

The problem with denial is that no one can reach you and you miss out on real connections. You can avoid immediate grief but it is still there underneath sucking the life of you so you don't feel anything.

I think the research I have been doing on my family has helped me to acknowledge a different reality than the story I have been telling myself. It got too real a couple of times and I to take a break.

I loved my grandmother and I understand the denial that she lived in most of the time.  The reality of her many losses was too much for her. She had to survive and take care of her family so in her mind she created her version of reality.  She loved me even though I called her out on her manipulating tactics and I can see eyes now behind those glasses with a little grin on her face.  She knew that knew.

Graves - Tragedy and Denial

I was looking for an old receipt for my shower unit and came across some paperwork of my deceased aunt where she had been sued over the family section of the cemetery. I had forgotten about this but it was a very big deal for her.

My mothers family is from a small town that still has only one light,  After my grandmothers death she decided that the family area of the cemetery should be spruced up. She had a concrete border poured around it and gravel filled it in.  She was really proud of the work and thought that at last she did something for her family.

She received a letter from an attorney stating that she had covered over the graves of another family. A local family that claimed their brother and still born child were buried there. The family still lived there and the matriarch of the family who had dementia became disturbed by the change at the cemetery and wanted it changed back.

My aunts paperwork had a neatly drawn layout showing the graves and the people they believed were in them. I also found records of funeral provided by the funeral home for almost everyone buried there after 1930. Before that it was here say and children were buried on top of other graves which is why we had this dispute..

My aunt her small town in shame.  Her husband left her for another woman the first year she was married.  She was pregnant and after the baby was born she got a divorce and left town leaving her baby with my grandmother. She moved to the closest town and found work waitressing sending money home. An escape from that small town where she was disgraced. She never went back.

Her son died of dysentery at the age of two in the care of my grandmother. My aunt was never the same after that. She stayed in the city working. She meet my uncle a navy pilot. He wore a uniform and drove a red convertible. She had movie star looks and he was in love. They married and she moved about as far north as you can in this country.

Over the years she created a carbon copy of the life she saw on TV right down to the Cape Cod house with the white picket fence. They were not able to have children so they adopted a boy and a girl exactly one year apart both blond. He golfed they belonged to the country club and on the outside it looked perfect. Over the years she built a delusional fortress around herself that could no one penetrated.

Her baby was buried in that cemetery and I imagine that was what drove her to put such effort into fixing it up. She was nearing the end of her life and she wasn't mobile. Everything she did concerning the lawsuit she did over the phone.  She denied the one request from the other family to remove the headstone over the grave of one of there members. Her 4 year old sister was buried there. She refused.

They went to trial with a jury and everything. It wasn't a jury of her peers to them she was just some highfaluting northerner getting into southerners business. She lost and was required to remove the gravel covering and head stones over the disputed graves. She didn't do it and I am guessing that because of the age of everyone involved it never got done.

My aunt was cold and unloving to her husband and her children and frankly to everyone that tried to make her see life in a truthful way. Her two kids were emotionally disturbed to start with and she never really bonded with them. Her son turned to alcohol and her daughter has had a tragic life. She stayed in denial until her death. No one came to the funeral but myself and her caregiver.

I was the closest to her (except her caregiver) at the end of her life. She was more likeable to strangers than those of us who knew the path of destruction she left behind. Literally crushing the people close to her daily with her words.  I was her favorite mostly because I didn't anything from her money or even approval. I can't say back then I had compassion for her like I do today.

Before she died we set up a trust together for her kids and one grandchild. They don't live in luxury but they are not homeless like they have been. She often told them they should be like me. When I was getting my interior design degree she told everyone I was going to law school. To her lawyers, doctors and nurses were stars and so in her mind I had to be a lawyer. I am real popular with her kids.

She was the first born and my mother was the last.  She moved back to the city where she waitressed and that is where I live now. I distanced myself from her until after my uncle died it was too painful to see how unhappy they were and how things got worse as they aged. I spent one day a week there bringing her back into reality for just one day. I was the heavy and she fought me all the way.  She never left her world of denial and in the end she died peacefully. She told me that she was seeing Jesus and other family members that had gone on before her.

When she died we buried her in that same little cemetery in the deep south. Not in the area where she did the improvements but off to the side.  That is appropriate because the rest of the family might just come to life and get up and leave.

Life can be so hard that your mind guards you from reality.  When we can't accept that life didn't turn out like we imagined or some dream we had has been shattered we do our best to survive first and then if we are lucky we get help. We can't rely on our own mind to always tell us the truth. My aunt suffered her whole life and died basically alone it didn't have to be like that.







 

Christmas Trees - Denial - Rapture

I am working a lot which is great this time of year for a single person living alone.  There is some forced Christmas cheer going on at work.  We always have a Christmas tree and one OCD person always puts it up.  They decided this year that they did not have the time so and innocent new person with nothing to do called their manager and got permission to put the tree up.

Well apparently there was a scene in front of customers when the keeper of all things arrived to find the tree up. This person has done this before and I am sure the outburst was more about the fact they had fallen short of their normal duties.  When you believe you are the only person that can do anything correctly and then someone has the nerve to do it and not meet your standard of perfection then this is reason for a meltdown.

Nothing will happen it will just be one more story about this person to spread throughout the company.  I was happy I was working at home like I am today.  I only know what happened because I innocently commented on how beautiful the tree looked..

This time of year feels like a farce to me and reminds me of when I use to force Christmas when I lived with alcoholism. We were pretending that there wasn't a volcanic eruption just below the surface and that any moment the relationship would be covered with molten lava.

I was so afraid of losing everything that I just kept moving.  I was doing all the things that other people do at Christmas.  Hoping that the outside decorations would somehow transform the horrible loneliness and fear I felt on the inside.  I pushed out reality by staying busy I was afraid of losing the one person I felt really knew and loved.

The year he left at Thanksgiving by Christmas I was still deep in denial and guilted him to go with me to cut down a Christmas tree like we had done every year we were together.  I didn't know that his girlfriend was impatiently waiting back at her apartment. I used my Al-Anon persuasion to get him to go with me.  I was going to pretend nothing had changed. I didn't know about the girlfriend and thought maybe we could talk things through and re-kindled something.

I did find out months later and the truth of my situation sent me to Al-Anon. The severity of the situation broke open the fortress of denial I had been living in alone. No Christmas tree or lights on the house or candles in the windows could mask the truth anymore.  I was awake for the first time and the pain like nothing I had ever felt.

Since then I have stopped hiding behind the Christmas fanfare. Since getting in the program my internal life is not dependent on these rituals to complete me.  Some years years I do a tree and some years I don't.  During my last relationship my ex wasn't that interested either way so it felt like I was alone with the idea of Christmas trees and decoration. At that point I wasn't interested in forcing another Christmas tree purchase on anyone.

I am a little sad this year that my life is only full of mostly work. I can't change the path that my life has taken or mentally erase the past.  I was sitting and eating my lunch yesterday and remembered one Christmas when we were going north to the in-laws for the holiday and had decided to open our gifts before heading to the airport.  We made a huge mess and just left. My friend stopped to check on the house and he said it looked like the rapture had taken place and we had been taken right in the middle of Christmas.  The memory brought tears to my eyes and then laughter. Life goes on.

Gray - Fear

After reading some of the post today about both marriage equality and  the shooting in South Carolina I feel both encourage and saddened. I think that it is hard for people to accept that the world is becoming more and more gray. Some things changing and some things staying the same.

I imagine that the supreme court decision struck fear into the hearts of many this past week.  I heard someone at work state that this would lead to church losing their tax exempt status if they don't accept gays. I was on the other side of the wall and had to laugh what a leap. It is always about the money isn't it?

The world is becoming more and more interconnected it is getting harder to isolate ourselves with people that think like we do. This scares people that liked the world when everything was black and white and you knew what was right and wrong. Especially the generation before me.

It was clear who the good guys were and everyone rallied around the TV and the 4 stations if you count PBS and were told exactly what we needed to know and life was simpler. Life has never been simple and it was just easier before the information age to pretend it was.

We have to think more than we ever have had to before. Today everything out there is testing what we thought we knew to be true. It requires us to live in the moment and make judgements in our lives on a day to day basis and that constant shifting is stressful and too much for some people.

The truth that life can never be totally safe goes against everything we live for. We just want to be safe and happy and with change it wakes us up sometimes with a hammer like the shootings and the supreme court decision. Showing us that the dream we are living in isn't real.

We have to step out of the world created by our own thinking and see that we live there alone and that other bigger things are happening. We have to accept that other people live in a different worlds than our own.  Sometime those worlds can collide and the result isn't always positive.

I am sad about the shooting and know that such an act was inspired by fear of change. Seeing ones inner truth tested by outer reality can be too much. Denial is in my opinion trumps everything and you can be right all the up until the minute you see you are wrong. Some people can't accept being wrong no matter what the consequences.

I think shootings will always happen. We live in our minds and if the story we tell ourselves is destructive of fixed on blaming someone else for our problems it can end in violence.  By nature I think we want someone to be responsible for how we feel it is easier than taking responsibility for our own lives. Luckily it doesn't normally result in attacking someone physically but this idea can take over our lives and feel us with fear and hate.

I feel lucky that I was raised by parents that believed and equality and love. Christ message was ultimately love one another. They also taught me that you have to be responsible for yourself and you would be accountable for your own decisions.  This along with if you don't do right you will go to hell.  I have chosen to focus on equality and love and dismiss the hell part.

I am happy today to be off in celebration of the 4th. Three days to work on my house and celebrate my mental and emotional freedom.  Hope everyone is celebrating something with someone.

Denial - New Eyes

I watch a lot of shows about transformation and today was no exception.  When a prominent chef is ask to come help a failing restaurant and the owner is in total denial about how bad the food is or that the menu is so complicated the servers can't explain it. I thought how can he not see what is so obvious to everyone else. That my friend is the way denial works.

For me I have huge pockets of denial about my own life.  First living with alcoholic and believing every lie that came out of his mouth even when my mind was screaming something is terrible wrong to being part of a business that was doomed to fail. Again my mind screaming this is not going to ever work I couldn't give it up.

Today while watching the show I thought, why is he doing this? Why to we refuse to see the truth until it is so painful that we can't breath or we have panic attacks?

I believe the cause of my own denial has been the future I have predicted for my self is over. I have to face my own fear of the unknown. If don't admit there is a problem then I don't have to start down that road of the many bad outcomes my mind can imagine.

Because of my unpredictable childhood I wanted to find a "normal life" and settled in where every day would be be nothing but happiness. Seriously I thought I could do this I could control the universe every detail all the time. I was immature with those beliefs. It wasn't my fault I grasp those ideas at a time in my life when the best I could do was survive. A child in survival mode sizing up the world from that perspective.

Of course life kept dealing out one crisis after another I made the assumption that I needed to work harder to prevent the next one. This worked and things got better and then I found myself there again surprised at the cards life had dealt me.

What has changed for me is that the last time when I had totally done my best and things still fell apart. The truth is I thought I was bad. Something was wrong with me and despite all the spiritual work I had done I could never be fixed. I would never be a finished product worthy of the good life that other people have. This idea made me want to die. I was not good enough and I had proof.

How crazy is that? My whole life's thought process was a child's survival mode. If I do things right and I am good then everyone is happy and life is good. If you aren't good and you disobey then your mother gets sick and dies and the rest of your family goes there separate ways and you are left alone.

I didn't want to left again so I started working on myself to become someone others could love and would never leave. Everybody left and this was proof enough for my eight year old self.

My life has been tiring living this way thinking this way. Waiting for the next mistake and I have made plenty and interpreting the fact that I have been left as proof that I am bad just like I was at eight.

No one told me in all those books I read that you can't be good enough for people to love you. Either they do or they don't. It isn't conditional on your performance all the time. Sure if you are a monster then you might spend more time with less people but some people really like monsters.

Today I try to not let the little girl in me take the blame for everything that goes wrong in my life. I try to accept that life is just life and everyday can bring good times or bad. Most days I accept that this is the case for everyone and no one has a magic formula for being happy all the time.

I really felt for the guy today that couldn't believe every belief he had about his life and his situation wasn't going to work. With the proof laid before him the success of the changes made against the failures of his own ideas was just too much. Change and maybe succeed or not change and definitely fail. I vote for change.

With the evidence so overwhelming he did have a breakthrough and accepted that to succeed he had to let go of old ideas and beliefs and try to look at his life with new eyes.

Denial - It is there when we need it

When I first came to the program there was a lot of things I didn't really know and I found there were a lot of things I didn't want to know.  I was living in denial and as the layers of my denial fell away I felt worse about the person I had been up the that time. How could I have deceived myself how could I have not seen how terrible wrong I had been about everything?

Denial for me over the years has become the enemy and seeing things as they are and not as I wish them to be a goal I strive for everyday. Today I realized that denial is really there to protect us until we are ready to see the truth about a situation that could possibly devastate us. We are not ready until we are ready.

We went to my friends house for dinner tonight. She cooked a leg of lamb for a belated Easter feast. She has done this so many times and we have enjoyed many incredible meals there.  My friend has Parkinson's and she is getting more and more fragile every day. She has been functioning independently pretty well but things are now starting to slip.

She like all us hard core Al-Anons she is as tough as nails and would never think of given in to the disease or even asking for help. This changed recently when she had an episode with the battery that stimulates her brain and keeps her from shaking. She accidentally turned one side off and her arm shook wildly until she realized what she had done. She has mentioned this every time I have seen her since and it seems like her own denial is being tested.

As I cleaned her kitchen tonight and I saw how rundown everything was in her house my own denial started breaking down.  While I was depressed these past years I was present in her life but I didn't really see her or acknowledge what was happening to her. I feel ashamed now of my own self absorption.

I know it is just life and I also know that if I could have done better I would have. We all live life today as if everything will always be the same when nothing stays the same. This is how we survive we stop looking at what we aren't ready to see and if we are never ready then it is forced on us. Something happens that we can't deny and we have to deal with. I think we are there in this situation.

I am a strong person and now that my confidence has returned I will be able to offer my support.  My friends and I are moving past denial and into acceptance and we will face whatever comes together.

4th Step - 5th Step - 6th Step

I talked to a friend the other day about going to meetings. She has recently returned to her 12 Step program and doesn't feel that it really pertains to where she is now. She said the exact same people were there telling the exact same stories and she had issues with the Six Step.

I get this and have taken my on breaks from meetings myself over the years. I don't feel the same about the Steps as I did when I first started. It was simpler in the beginning because I had serious issues to deal with and a big pile of debris to clear away. Today my issues feel less like a crisis and more like obstacles to happiness.

Back when I started I was dealing with a lifetime of denial and I could barely function. I like the Steps because they were simple and straight forward which when you are on the edge is all you can handle. Luckily I have matured in my life and my program and every crisis is not life or death. Denial still is a problem in my life it has just become a little more sophisticated. It is more like a light veil across my face instead of the iron curtain of the past. I am still good at hiding things from myself that I don't want to own up to.

When my friend called she said the meeting was about the Six Step "ready to have defects of character removed" she didn't like the idea of defects and didn't think that sounded too loving towards oneself.

For myself over the years I have had to reinvent the meaning of the Steps for where I am now in the program. In my mind Four, Five and Six are about identifying what is still holding me back from the freedom and happiness I am looking for in my life. Four is about seeing where my thinking is screwed up, Five is talking it over with someone that I trust and Six is about accepting once again that it is still my thinking that is the problem.

What I am working on now is that I have realized that I am not the driven person I once was and therefore I am not reaping the benefits of working non-stop. The defect isn't that I am not driven, it is that I haven't accepted that I am not that person anymore. I am not willing to do the work to be the first to the finish line and so second place has to become more comfortable.

I know my approach to the Steps is unconventional but it works for me so take what you like and leave the rest. As far as people repeating themselves in meetings and being stuck their story I didn't have an answer for that if you attend the same meeting for a long time this is bound to happen. The information might be just what a newcomer needs to hear. Sometimes things bother us because it is reflecting something in ourselves we aren't ready to look at.

The Fourth Step - Beyond Denial

I wrote a long post on the Fourth Step the other day and got so bored with it I ditched it before I posted it. At least I think I ditched it my mind isn't what it use to be it is better in some areas and worse in others.

What do I know about the Fourth Step? I have done the dirty deed a few times over the past 20 years but finding the truth about yourself can be difficult depending on the thickness of the layer of denial you have built up over the years. How honest can you be if you have spent most of your life hiding things from yourself?

My sponsor a very smart and enlightened person started me out with an easy assignment for the Fourth Step. She told me to write my life's story or the story of my life up until that time. I was pretty excited it seemed like a fun task actually after all it is all about me.

I started with all the things that happened to me and all the people that hurt me. At that time most of my life I had been a victim of one tragic thing after another and I was pretty hurt. I don't do anger just hurt. It helped me to see just how sad my story was. It was good to get it out on paper.

I still wasn't ready to take any responsibility for my part in anything. I was always victim without control which turned me into the most passive aggressive person on the planet.  I controlled everything in my own way and when alcoholism came into my life it gave me the very excuse I needed to hone my skills even further. With the steps I began to see who I really was and the my world of denial began to come crashing down.

My worst fears came true I was a terrible person after all and I did deserve everything that happened to me. It isn't true of course. This is where Fifth Step come in handy. The Fourth Step is about finding out your not perfect you are just like everyone else and maybe just a little bit like the people you are complaining about.

Admitting that we have flaws makes us more human and compassionate. We can relax and not spend so much energy maintaining that perfect exterior we show to the world.

It was actually very freeing to let go of the denial.  As long as I focused on other people then I couldn't move forward. With the Fourth Step the program could start to be about something I could control, me.

Admitting we have flaws especially when we feel that alcoholism has ruined our lives is really hard. Not admitting it doesn't mean we don't have flaws it just means we are in denial. With the Fourth Step we only admitting them to ourselves and not making them public. Baby steps is the way to go here.

Denial is a place of protection for me when I can't deal with the reality of my life. When I don't feel I can control anything that is making me unhappy or I don't feel I have the energy to make a change. This is a reoccurring theme in my life each time to a lesser degree. I find that eventually I will get there or something will happen to force me to change. At this point I think I am talking about my life right now.

Magic Words - Possibilities

I have been dealing a lot lately with emotions and reactions. My own and a number of people around me.

Everyone has a different way of dealing with stress. I define stress in my own world and something I am not willing to accept. Whether that is the lack of funds or the behavior of someone I just can't accept the situation as it stands. This causes me stress. I just don't like what is happening.

My immediate reaction is to just dig in and refuse to see the obvious this is also know as denial. The length of this period depends on how bad I wanted things to go my way or if my slight belief that I could change the outcome. I say slight because if there is a shred of hope I can make that into a mountain of possibilities.

I wish I could by-pass this merry-go-round and shot straight to acceptance. It would save me some time and a lot of stress but I am stubborn. I believe that I can change things and sometimes people. It isn't true if people change it is because the want to and not because I said some magic words.

When I use to meet my husband, you know the one from 20 years ago, I would pray that God would give the perfect words to keep him from leaving me. I wanted him to see what a mistake he was making but he didn't.

When it comes to dealing with people, especially the ones we love, there is no magic words. Everyone is on their own path and sometimes we travel great distances together and other times just for a short while.

I am not sure why he has come up so often lately or why this post got so sappy.

Letting go is the name of the game and sometimes you have to just keep letting go until you get someone or something out of your system.

I see a Frosty in my near future.

Denial - What I am not ready to see - Step 1

I had a long talk with a family member last night and she is in a predicament. She young and her family has been living under the strains of addiction for most of her life. She wants her mother to at least acknowledge whats happening, but she refuses to admit there is a problem.

As they say and elephant in the room. She has reached an age where she can just choose not to come around anymore. To abandon her efforts and her hopes that that things will change. Her older brother has already made the decision to stay away. It is her mothers denial that makes her the most crazy, not the addiction.

I felt like I had to tread lightly because this is my family. I wanted her to know that addiction and denial go hand in hand and any sudden changes in assigned roles within the family can cause a fire storm. Maintaining an atmosphere where someone can continue to use perpetuates the disease. The habit of buffering someone from the reality of their choices just keeps things the same. If she decides to leave then she has to be prepared for upsetting the dynamics of the family situation.

I understand about denial. I was in denial about my husbands addition and how messed up I was from my own childhood. I was dead inside and didn't feel I deserved to be happy. I attracted my equal someone as self-loathing as I was and we were in misery together. I had been in survival mode since I was eight and it was the only life I knew. It was a perfect fit.

I think sometimes you think if you admit something isn't working then you have to be ready to do something about it. Maybe you just aren't ready to do the work. For me I just thought with time things would work themselves out. In the case of my husband they certainly did he packed his bags and left. Talk about being yanked out of denial.

Denial catches up with you or it kills you slowly from the inside. There is no getting around the what is there whether you acknowledge it or not. It is still there and with addiction it doesn't just go away. Even when someone leaves or you leave it has done the damage long before that happens.

Last night I felt I was listening to a sponsee and not someone so close to me. She is analytical and is sure there is a solution to this family problem. I thought there is where the pain comes from believing you can make people see what you see. Not if they are not ready.

So what is next. She wants an intervention where the whole family goes to counseling and airs all the dirty laundry. You have to actually admit you have dirty laundry for that to work.

I suggested counseling for her, someone with experience with addiction. Someone that isn't easily manipulated by a smooth talker with a quick mind. I said, start with yourself and then you can invite your mom to join you. A true Al-anon cannot resist the invitation to help someone else.

I didn't tell her that getting past thinking you personally can solve someone elses addiction is first step towards saving yourself. Admitted we are powerless... You have to experience this for yourself. I searched for a solution until I was exhausted and someone had the good sense to send me to Al-anon and I had the good sense to listen.

The miracle of giving up and focusing on your own emotional health. It is part of healing and taking the spot light off the person with the addiction. It gives you your life back and that is the true miracle.

Faith or Denial

What is next? That is what I am asking myself today. I treated myself to a big fat juicy hamburger for dinner last night. It was technically a Patty Melt a new item on the menu at my favorite local restaurant. They have become like family and since I decided that I a want a life of solitude I go there once in awhile alone. I needed some comforting food in my grief and they are always very kind.

Now that Sandy's gone there is even more open space in my life. I can revisit getting a roommate and leaving town if I want. With the work situation I have no funds so the latter probably won't happen soon. It seems strange all the emptiness all this uncertainty but for the most part I feel like it is going to be fine. Denial or faith, does it really matter?

My horoscope said today it didn't matter how carefully I planned that things were happening too quickly to keep up and to just go with my gut. Paraphrased of course. I read them every day along with the hexagram. Always just for inspiration take what you like and leave the rest. The hexagram is ancient Chinese proverbs or something. Today it was Patience. It talked about when one is fishing it is the patient fisherman that ultimately gets the catch. It also said waiting builds spiritual strength and in times of waiting the wise use the time to focus on God.

Truthfully in all my whining I have gotten better at waiting than I ever have been. It is my nature to jump ship plunge into the next thing right or wrong just to stop the anxiety related to uncertainty. Better to be wrong than to feel any discomfort.

This I am afraid is my lesson. I don't really understand God's plan he didn't ask for my approval or consult with me to get my ideas. This is really hard for me a doer just to float along and watch life unfold.

I am having heart palpitations at night and dreamed I was trying to get a job at Subway. So maybe I am having a little anxiety. I am still waiting on the call back about the job.

Here I am in the boat with no oars today. Hoping that my faith will carry me through and believing that it isn't just denial.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts about my loss it is appreciated.

The Miracle - When your ready

Here on Christmas Eve I thought I would write about a miracle. Not that miracle but something in the spirit of the season and what working the steps has to offer.

My personal miracle is that I am happy. I won't bore you with a repeat performance of my grief and depression. I think if you have ever read this blog you have heard it before, over and over again and frankly like you I am sick of it. But it was honest and where I was in my life and I have moved on.

I want to write about my own spiritual awakening that resulted from the steps. Not just once but over the years many many times. Some were just ah ha moments others were oh my god moments. Some obstacle that has been there all along reveals itself. I think it suddenly appeared but really I had used my cloak of denial to hide it from myself, in some cases for years.

All the pain in my life comes from my inability to accept the situation at hand and my need to hold on to what no longer works for me. The only way I can do this is with denial. I must keep the dream alive and if that means I have to deny reality than so be it. This is of course and art form an takes years of practice. When I came to Al-Anon I found so many people just like me. I could clearly see their denial and really wanted to help them. Come on now their problems were so so obvious.

The steps worked for me then and still work for me now. They help me to slowly reveal what has been there all the time. It can be something small which I can buzz through the steps sometimes all in one day. With other problems it took years to really get to the core of the issue. The time it takes me has to do with the degree of denial I am in.

Sometimes I have to overcome a lifetime pattern that has set me up for failure over and over again. I can't seem to break the pattern the pain is familiar and I hate to admit it but comfortable. Same play different actors, still no happy ending. A better version maybe but the outcome is always the same. Then I, the star, am shocked that the ending was the same. The audience, my friends, are bored to death and say they have seen it all before.

Then it happens somewhere along the road I here that small still voice OK it isn't so small or still it says. What the hell are you doing? One eye open. Can we not do this anymore, haven't you learned anything? Both eyes open. The spiritual awakening has began and it isn't pretty. Next comes the what I call the scramble it is really uncomfortable denying the denial. It takes some serious pain for me to get past this point. But I eventually get there when I decide I can live without that belief or person or dream. The ironic thing, by this time, all that is left of it is in my head.

This is where I have to be nice to myself. I am letting go of patterns developed over a lifetime. A power greater than myself comes in handy about now. I am fully awake and I am pissed. Why didn't someone point the obvious out to me so I didn't waste all this time. It is all so clear. At this point those who love me roll their eyes and yawn. I wasn't ready, maybe I needed all the little things that led up to this and maybe it wouldn't take if I didn't get the full lesson

So there you have it my version of a spiritual awakening and when your ready you are ready. It all takes time. In the beginning you think it is the drinking that is the problem (yours or theirs), then you realize you are the problem and luckily the solution all wrapped up in the same package. A present just in time for Christmas.

First on emotions - then a family disease

It is the time of year for me that brings up a lot of emotions. Being dumped twice at Thanksgiving gives me cause to be just a little cautious this week. Deciding what are emotions from the past and what it is I am actually feeling today.

What I have learned is you don't have to be a slave to your emotions but ignoring emotions will only delay them. I dreamed this morning that my ex not only had an affair but was sleeping with everyone in our high rise apartment building. Everyone knew but me and they were all consoling me. We lived in a house not an apartment so I interpret this as me thinking I should have known. It is pointless to go there but it tells me my subconscious is still acknowledging the date.

I am feeling sadness just below the surface today. I can accept that this too shall past and know that leaning into it is the fastest way to move on. I have learned the hard way that resistance is where the pain lies.

I went to lunch with my co-worker and ran into my original sponsor and she said I was thinking about you last night. I was thinking about her last night too. So this afternoon I called her and we discussed the above issues. I have known her 20 years and she knows me probably better than anyone emotionally, all my fears and how my mind works and I trust her to be honest with me. I felt relieved after the call and went on with my day.

Just as I was getting back to the office my nephew called. I had to look twice because he has never called me before. Unfortunately he got his brain from our side of the family the analyzing side. Thinking too much, being keeper of all things the beacon in the storm. Most reliable in a crisis.

His dad is an angry adult child of two parents addicted to prescription drugs. His volatile unpredictable behavior over the years have brought out different traits in their three kids. My brother in law recently started taking medication himself to cope with his sister's addiction to drugs and they haven't seen much of him since.

My nephew is in his early 20's and is trying to decide a career path and his mother wants him to go to law school and take over her practice. She told him to call me because she thought since we have similar personalities I could maybe give him some insight. He started by giving me the run down on the Thanksgiving plan and how he's forcing the rest of the family to go the his aunts house because this is what his dad wants and if they buck then there will be a scene.

I feel for those kids and I know their road with be tough. My sister has done a good job raising them to be confident and not follow the crowd. But the things they have endured with their dad and my sister's denial will shape their lives forever.

This is why it is a family disease. The grandparents didn't need help because they were taking drugs prescribed by a doctor. They are both gone now leaving a legacy of addiction behind.

On the bright side they have me and they can have a program if they need and want some help. My sister has been to Al-Anon but didn't feel that she could relate since she isn't married to an alcoholic. She went because her husband sister's son needed someone to go with him. She did have some advice for the group. We have all the answers and I lives are still unmanageable.

What was my advice to him about his career? Well I said if he is like me he is probably ADD and will need a variety of different kinds of tasks to keep him busy. He is a people person and can be disciplined when he in interested in a subject so law might actually work.

Do what you love and you will be a success, at least in your own mind.

When is one day at a time denial?

I opted to go to a meeting at lunch today. It has been about 3 months since I went to a meeting, I just felt like it, so I went. The meeting was on gratitude to follow the Thanksgiving theme and I do feel grateful that the program gave me a new life and a new way of thinking.

After the meeting I got a sandwich at the AA snack bar and sat down at a table outside to enjoy the warm weather and eat my sandwich. I woman from my meeting was getting in her car and suddenly turned around and came back an sat beside me. She began to tell me how after 20 years her husband stop drinking and now he has been sober for a year and things have only gotten worse.

His friends did an intervention but when he got out of rehab he didn't go to AA. So she is living with a angry dry drunk. She has determined that she is in grief over the fact that sobriety didn't solve the problem and she is still alone. She has been in Al-Anon for the whole 20 years and now what is next?

She says she is just going to wait it out and live one day at a time and see what happens. I have done a lot of waiting in my own life because I thought if I just stuck it our some miracle would come along and things would be better. In my first marriage I waited while the alcohol virtually erased the man I was married to and by the time he left there was nothing left of me either.

Is the one day at a time scenario just a form of denial? I have used it when I was in crisis and could not imagine a way out. I know that it is another story for those staying sober one day at a time, but denial is dangerous and you can wake up and decades have past and nothing has changed.

This is how I felt about the conversation today a lot of people stuck and not thinking they deserve more or can't even imagine the possibility of more. It is easier than facing the unknown to stay in the cocoon of our own making. You will never turn into a butterfly if you don't eventually come out and it might turn into a body bag at some point.

Seasons come and go - Living in the wild

I am sitting on my porch here on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. I bought this house almost three years ago, really just for the porch. It has a large porch over looking a little inlet off the river. The subdivision is tucked in between some apartments and some swanky riverfront homes. It has some pretty amazing wildlife mixed with the sounds or emergency vehicles and whatever is going on on the river.

The porch is on the second floor because I live on a hill, so it is like a tree house. I have been watching the squirrels and now I can hear a bird of some sort washing their wings. With all the growth this year I can't see but a patch of water, but I did venture out a few weeks ago when I heard the noise to see what it was. The bird was going under and then flapping it's wings to dry off.

The first year here I was catatonic for the most part and really don't remember much except for sitting on the porch. Last year I was better and decided that I should do something about all the critters I was living with. The raccoons were taking over and living on top of my porch. I saw a momma and two babies through the clerestory windows from the living room. The squirrels were living in the walls in the winter time and it wasn't until I came out on the porch and disturbed them that I decided to do something.

I can't kill anything except an occasional water bug so I just decided to just make things a little less inviting. I hired a friend to close up the holes around house including a mouse hole leading to my attic. When my air went out this summer the guy was in the attic and informed there was quite a party going on up there.

I have been out of it for a long time and when he said that I wasn't embarrassed in the least. Someone or something should enjoy this house because certainly I wasn't. I was lucky to find it when the market had tanked. I really needed this porch and a place to call home. I spent 13 years fixing up someone else's home and somehow I never felt like it was permanent. You would think I would relax at 10 years but I think somehow I knew it wasn't forever.

Being with an agnostic can be lonely at times. I think that they are probably happier than we are at times, always seeking the truth. When we met I was past the point of trying to change anyone and was in a place of accepting someone as they were. I know I will look back on this time and see how it was for my benefit. I was content in that relationship but I wouldn't say happy. I stayed because I thought I should be happy with being content. So here I am neither happy or content.

I am making progress though, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning last night putting the finishing touches on the re-designing of my house. This is my core of happiness my home, my space and I haven't felt like I belonged here until now. I was resisting where I was at the core level, as long as I didn't acknowledge it, it didn't exist, just going through the motions.

It has been ugly, all of it, feeling like it was all a lie and facing that I am on my own again. None of that is really true but that is part of the acceptance the anger the denial. Today I am at peace and have a beautiful home to call my own and the ability to take care of myself. I have people that love me and a program that has expanded my life in ways I could never imagine. It was the program that taught me about freedom, freedom to be who you are and the freedom to change who that is daily. No rules, no limitations only the ones you give yourself.

Spoon Feeding - Expectations

I had to tell someone today that their kitchen would not be ready for Thanksgiving. I did not know until yesterday that this was the expectation. The project was turned over to the general contractor and he told me this morning that he was unaware of this expectation. It is part of the job.

I my business it is a delicate balance between the expectation of the customer and the reality of construction and design. I try to gently inform my customers the reality of the process of a renovation before we get started but most people don't want to hear it. There is no way to factor in the time it takes for people to make selections or if some unknown construction issue is found.

First it always cost more than you would expect and then it always takes longer than you think it will take. I have found that the process starts out based on generic selections and what happens when it gets down to it we want something nicer and that cost more a little here a little there. I call it spoon feeding and I do it to myself, I want to deny the reality and then I just adjust as each expenses comes along.

It has been a hard lesson for me to realize that not everyone really wants to know what it is really going to cost. I know what your thinking, you are thinking well I do and there is the rare bird that really does.

If I bring in my general contractor and he gives the whole cost up front every one thinks it is too much and they are in shock, even me. So they go off on their own and hire individuals and in the end it usually cost about the same. It just feels better not to see the big picture.

I think the remodeling senario translates to most situations. When I first came to the program I couldn't even see the alcoholism to admit my husband was an alcoholic seemed so permanent so uncurable a label, to much. Then finding out that I was the one with the problem whoa wait just one minute, then it started to sink in and I adjusted and started to see some truth in those words. If you told me it would take me this many years and I would always be in recovery myself, I would have walked out the door.

Life is a process and we have to accept things when we are ready and some people are never ready and that is not our responsibility. I can only do my best and accept that spoon feeding can be a little easier on everyone.