Tug of War - With myself

I am little burnt out right now. I know this because I keep letting things slip through the cracks that I shouldn't. I am not my usual creative self and for some reason can't force myself to keep working.

It is good to be busy but I haven't been able to restore myself. I was thinking that going to my sister's house would give me an excuse to forget about work but since I didn't go that didn't happen.

Yesterday I had a tug of war with my inner child who refused to go into work. The adult in me refused to find something fun to do. At an impasse I sat paralyzed. I kept thinking if I catch up on my work I can get some relief from the stress I am feel right now. In my heart I knew this was not going to happen when the kid in me digs in no work that will be done.

So I sat there for a couple of hours refusing to work and refusing to have fun. I finally broke the stalemate between me and me and went to the movies.

I got in my car and just drove straight to the movies without any idea what was showing. Arriving a 1PM I had three choices Twilight, Hugo 3D and Anonymous. I opted for Hugo I figured it would be a little less stimulating than the others.

It is not really a kids movie. It was visually very interesting and the characters were likable for sure. It was a little slow and very quiet I couldn't imagine kids sitting through the whole thing. Even one couple in our theater just started having a conversation. I didn't care the kid in me was just happy I wasn't working.

It is probably progress to see that I really need a break right now. In the past it was easy to get lost in my work. It was all that I knew and didn't have much experience with joy or fun. I am working to find some balance now.

The truth is what I do most of the time doesn't feel like work. I still need a break though to get my creative edge back but the timing isn't good for that now. I will do my best and God will have to do the rest.

Picture from: nakedpastor.com

Today is the day

So this is it, the day I got dumped four years ago. Sometimes it seems like a million years ago and sometime like last week. I am over the bulk of the emotions but today there is something simmering just under the surface.

I was feeling quite good last night alone reading some new art books I picked up and watching my new favorite show Parenthood. The perfect couple having a fight he was talking and trying to use reason and she was in her own head not listening and talking herself.

We never fought, this is not a sign of a healthy relationship. A lot can go on between the lines when there is not arguing. Relationships can die from disinterest or apathy. I really can't tell you exactly what happened. Not that I was without fought because I let sleeping dogs lie.

I did for a long time try to keep the lines of communication open but I grew tired of using my interviewing skills to get the emotional temperature of our relationship. I always got I am fine we are fine and why do you always ask me that?

I stopped asking and put the focus back on myself and let it go. I guess without my efforts to keep us tethered together the relationship failed. Just like any long term relationship we go into a routine that made us feel safe and secure. That routine ultimately turned to boredom and killed the relationship. Secure but dead.

Along comes someone that is new someone that thinks your the best thing since sliced bread. Your a star again the apple of someones eye irresistible perfect in every way. How can you resist that? So you start seeing the flaws in the person you have committed your life to and all the reasons why you shouldn't be together. You made a mistake and now your long lost love has finally showed up. This is your one chance for happiness so you got to be free and you lower the boom.

The day before Thanksgiving. You didn't plan it like that it wasn't on purpose. It slipped out, I love someone else. Maybe the alcohol was to blame but maybe it is just an excuse because you want to start living the life you have always wanted. So what if you are going to ruin the holiday for the family. You got to get the ball rolling. It is all about you after all.

So that is how it all came down. Of course I don't really know the thinking that was going on at the time and I will never know. As you can imagine I tried to get answers but I never got them. There is no talking to the dead and that is what it felt like.

We stayed in the house together for the next few days. There was no Thanksgiving dinner even though most of it I had already cooked. It all sat out until it wasn't fit to eat. I couldn't look at it or touch it. It was spoiled just like the relationship.

I went into shock that night and didn't come out of it until a few months ago. In the beginning I summoned all my courage and all my friends and to take care of the necessities. In 60 days I packed, bought a house and moved.

My heart is heavy while I write this I can feel the pain of those 60 days. Life is not fair and you can't make someone love you or even talk to you if they don't want to. I never got the answers that I needed in order to heal faster.

It was harsh it was thoughtless the way it all went down. But it is the past and I am becoming the person I was always meant to be. Every day I feel stronger and more able to face life and my dreams are coming backing. Dreams that I have always had for myself.

I have shed some tears today but that is normal. It was thirteen years of my life. I wasn't happy for a long time in that relationship but I thought it was just me. I had it all in the eyes of others. God does for us what we can't do for ourselves.

Will Thanksgiving ever be the same for me? Who knows I am thankful that it is not four years ago.

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.

Psychic - I can predict the future

I had to get up extra early this morning for an appointment 1/2 hour from my house then make it back to the shop and open by 10. I also had another appointment scheduled at 11 that I was feeling like wouldn't go well.

The couple older but newly married doing their first renovation together. He wants to please her and she wants to be pleased. I went to their house last Saturday after a lengthy visit in the showroom. In the showroom he said very little and smiled a lot and when I got to their house he didn't really engage with me at all.

My spidey senses were tingling and I surmised that they wouldn't want to pay for the quality product and finish they selected. I do try to qualify people ahead of time by getting a budget from them and seeing what their expectations are, but with them I didn't. I find that it helps to prepare them for the cost. He just kept saying what ever you want honey as she kept picking the higher priced doors.

I think my ability to read people has helped me in the past, but maybe not. It seems like a good skill, but how do I know? I am just writing them into the story in my head and I could be completely off base. Maybe my egos need to feel I have special powers is really holding me back. Maybe I am just dismissing perfectly good customers on a hunch. Self-full filling prophecy.

The skills I learned as a child to avoid getting in trouble when my mom was sick. Knowing how to test the emotional temperature of the room before asking for something. What would happen if I didn't do that and just went about my own business and stopped using that emotional antenna?

This morning on the ride in I started to project how they wouldn't like my design or the price and I stopped myself. I ask God to let the meeting unfold naturally without me putting my expectation on it. I would do my best without worrying about the outcome.

What a surprise it went very well. They loved my ideas and actually weren't shocked at the price and then added some stuff.

Have I been wrong all my life, that it is an advantage to be able to read people. Maybe I can just wait to see what happens instead of trying to be psychic. It is a hard habit to break.

My first drink - A piece of my story.

I talked to my sister last night and I don't think she was too keen on me coming for Thanksgiving. I didn't take it personally and was actually a little relieved to be free from obligations.

We have had an estranged relationship for many years both suffering alone without each others support. She left for college when my Dad remarried and didn't really stand up for me when the emotional abuse started. This is really behind us now and we both made our amends during our last visit.

I have built my life around the story of being the outsider. That is why I fit in with Al-anon. It feels like a room full of outsiders. I liked alcoholics because they seemed to fit in better than I did.

I realize now that we really aren't that different. I think they drink to fit in and to quiet the same ugly voices that us Al Anoners have.

When I first came to the meetings I was the victim and felt superior to alcoholic in my life, then I felt sorry for him. Then as I matured in the program I really started to see we were the same people. I just didn't have a liquid escape route. I was just as sick without any excuses at all.

I don't know why I am not an alcoholic but I can definitely relate to the need to escape. In the beginning when I attended AA meetings to summoned some empathy, which was in short supply at the time, it made me think about my own first drink.

I was 15 and life was unbearable at home my co-workers at Long John Silvers offered my a ride home. They really wanted me to buy beer because I looked the most mature. I purchased it at Kroger and we drank in the car.

I can still remember now the relief I felt at the moment the pain of my life dissolving away. The stress of trying to make my stepmother happy, she is still not happy. It felt good to let my guard down to fit in just for a few moments.

I don't know why I didn't become an alcoholic. The grace of god I guess, I had plenty of reasons to escape and after leaving home at 16 I had plenty of opportunities to become one.

In my younger years I worked in restaurants where there was free drugs and alcohol for anyone that wanted them. I did drink a lot and dated bartenders and cooks. That is how I met my husband. Once we were married I decided we needed to get out of the business, it was a bad influence on him. This is where my Al-Anon story starts.

Filling and killing time

Acceptance is place I want to be these days but I can't seem to get there. The angst I feel has to do with thinking I should be somewhere else other than where I am now in my life.

Isn't this an age old human problem, never being satisfied. It is a luxury I know. If I had to spend my days hunting and gathering I would be too tired to think about what is lacking in my life. But with a protein bar in my stomach and work piling up on my desk I am taking this moment to feel unsatisfied with where I am in my life.

I know this is a time of thanksgiving and gratitude but I am just not there. I really don't want to make a gratitude list or think of all the hungry people in the world. Please don't tell me I need a gratitude meeting.

Don't get me wrong I have am thankful for a lot of things. But I am restless right now and nothing seems to sooth my spirit. Is it because at this time of year everybody seems to have a plan. I use to be the plan maker but I gave up and for that I am grateful. Ok, maybe I should start a a gratitude list. Yuck.

So I am drifting and waiting for these feelings to pass. My greatest fear is they won't and I will feel like this forever. I know I will get over it it is just that time of year for me.

My friend says just accept that I am going to feel crappy until this month is over and she is probably right. So I am riding it out and trying not to take my feelings too seriously.

I don't know you - Heroes and illusions

I watched the end of Face the Nation and they mentioned the scandal at Penn State. I don't keep up with the real world much but the idea of someone held in high esteem doing something so low made think about how we really don't know anyone.

We only know our version of that person who we want to believe they are because that is all we have to work with. When we have heroes we somehow expect them to be better than average instead of worse than average. They are setting the example they are keeping our dream of perfection alive for us and we want to believe everything is exactly as it appears in our own mind.

We are all the same no matter whether our picture appears on the screen or not. We wake up and face the day. We feed ourselves and fill our days trying to get our needs met. Some of those needs are not so healthy and hurt the people we know.

I think about the people who know that something awful is happening and can't bring themselves to tell. I imagine the first thought is, what about me? How will this affect my life my family? They might tell someone or just let it eat away at them. Justifying they need more time to decide what to do.

You might say it is about the money but I think it is more about not rocking the boat and wanting to stay in denial. The bigger you are the bigger the ego and the more you have to lose.

You think you know someone because you work with them or even live with them every day and then you find out they are doing something really bad. You don't want to believe it because in your mind it is out of character. Obviously not since it happened. So you do nothing and hope by magic it stops. Meanwhile more children get hurt.

Lets face it no one likes a whistle blower. History has shown that it is usually the end for them as well as those they have turned in. We don't like our heroes tarnished because we need them to prove there is perfection out there.

In this case there are victims as we all know abuse has been around forever. Is it worse because in our mind we thought he was a hero? Are we mad because we were fooled. There are no heroes just people just like us with wants needs and desires.

We get up each day and listen to the voice. If it is a healthy voice we can do great things and if it isn't we can damage people for life.