What is wrong with me? The final solution

I haven't written here since my birthday and thought I would see if I have anything to say. First I am great probably the best I have ever been. My life as you know has been a search to figure out how to do better and most of all to feel better.

I give recent credit for healing to my therapist and to EMDR. I have handled life by bracing my self for something awful or swimming through treacherous waters, I have felt like an alien visiting here watching other people just move through life not thinking too much and not worrying too much.

I took a trip to see my family earlier this month and is actually felt good. Everyone older and wiser including me. On the way I listen to a book "What happened to you?". It summed up where I have been and where I am now.

The author is a trauma specialist and said something that spoke to me. She said instead of saying "whats wrong with me?" say "what happened to me?".  I have said the first for as long as I remember even now if I feel sad or just not interested in life I say "whats wrong with you?"

My work with EMDR has brought forward some significant events to the surface. Things that I have known about intellectually for a long time. What happened to me early in my life and the guilt I have for even thinking about it after so many years.  

I have written about those here hoping I could just let them go by putting them on the page. I have let those painful experiences go so many times but not really. The book talks about trauma in the body mostly early trauma and how it stays with children forever. 

The EMDR has helped me experience these painful times as an adult. Going back to the moment in mind as an adult and walking through my feelings until they dissipate. When I have my next session I can hardly remember what was addressed before. 

There isn't anything wrong with me I just had some things happen to me that made me think I was a problem and a real burden to everyone around me. I was regularly punished for being who I was and asking too many questions all in the name of love.

 I lost my family after my mother died and I found the best way to be loved is to earn it by doing things people wanted done and doing them perfectly. I learned to anticipate their every need.  As an adult when I had a crisis and couldn't fulfill my previous roll I was left.

I thought this was my fault that I was flawed in some way and didn't deserve love. I am free from that thought now and have moved through the events that created this belief. I have forgiven the child that I have been trying to solve the problem of me. 

This blog saved me and gave me a place to tell my story with honesty and freedom. I want to let you know to never give up on finding a way to feel better. Finding a way to knowing there is nothing wrong with you.  Finding peace with the past and loving yourself when it feels impossible. 

Poker Face - Cold as ice - wasting time

Every time I write here I think I should stop.  I started this blog during the great recession when I spent six days a week in a shop alone waiting for customers to come in.  They did come in once every couple of of weeks.  I had hours upon hours to kill and I was suffering from a mental breakdown that I didn't know about. Brought on by the stress of my relationship ending - having to move - menopause - and ultimately Hashimoto's disease. 

People just mostly thought I was nuts.  I didn't have insurance or money so I did not go to the doctor until the worst of it was over. I am stubborn and self sufficient and can seem others put together on the outside when I am falling apart on the inside. The catch phrase "never let them see you sweat" is my motto. Ask my ex's they will say I am cold as ice but only when I am losing everything and there is nothing I can do to stop it. 

I didn't want their pity or guilt even though with both endings it was followed by emotional breakdowns I held my poker face until they weren't watching and then dissolved into my grief. Hey "If you don't want me then I want to make sure you think I don't need you". Sick I know but this is how I have battled the storms of my life. 

I cry at sappy commercials and can't watch parts of movies where I know someone is about to get emotionally hurt. This is why I watch movies over and over because I know how things are going to turn out. 

This blog has helped me to stay alive when I wasn't sure it was really worth it. It has helped me to have compassion for the actors in my story and to have compassion for the me the person who helped write the story. I have done my best with the skills life gave me even if I hurt other people and myself along the way. 

I have built my life around the circumstances of my childhood.  I believed the words of other mere mortals and took them as gospel and lived my life thinking something was wrong with me. This sounds crazy to me now so I guess I am making progress.

Getting older - something I was sure would never happen to me - makes see how much time I have wasted trying to sort this out. This meaning "what is wrong with me?" 

My life is pretty empty now pulling away from the relationships that don't really support me. I feel more free than I ever have but in the back of my mind I sometimes I think "you have no one".  This a disturbing thought but not disturbing enough put myself out there.

About this blog - If you are interested in the words I put here - let me know. 

Immaturity - Looking for a cure for deep sadness outside myself

For some reason this time of year is my favorite it seems like even if it is hot outside the light is changing. I feel more energized and feel like I need to do some housekeeping. Not literally even though I do like order I am not a clean freak.  When I was young waiting for my drinker to come home I spent that time cleaning and watching the clock. This broke me of my cleaning obsession.

My sister recently said that I should spend more time at the beach.  She lives in the mountains so the beach seems like the perfect solution to anything.  I have lived near the beach since I was 17 and I did go not for real pleasure but as a place to grieve. I associate the beach with all those years and I not that person anymore. I was grieving a lifetime of loss and now I just deal with loss and grief everyday as it comes up. 

I don't feel lost and alone anymore and I am not waiting for the people that say they love me to do the right thing. I thought their love would cure the deep sadness I had inside left by the loss of my mother.  I picked people who had the same idea that I could cure their deep loss too. They left me because they thought someone else would cure the sadness. I interpreted this as "I am not lovable".

This idea I thought was based on facts and I didn't realize that it was also based on immaturity. I have been without adult support since my mother got sick.  My dad took living in the present to a whole new level more like out of sight out of mind. I didn't mind and knew how to take care of myself.  The only problem was that my expectations of life and dealing with people stayed from that eight year old perspective. 

It didn't help that I am strong and appear confident even though inside I am sensitive and can see and feel every emotion in any person around me. If your sad then I am sad. I think this is something I was born with I can also see motives behind emotions. The subtle manipulation between people even if they don't realize it themselves.   

I stayed true to myself until I ended up in a bad situation when my dad remarried. I am smart and realized I had to become who she wanted me to be to survive. It worked to begin with but then as with all sick people the rules changed and I could not keep up. At 14 I became seriously depressed and slept when I was going to school or doing chores. 

This was the eight year old in me trying to survive.  I felt trapped in this sadness and my life was a prison. I did try to escape but I was too young and I was brought back and the situation got worse. This was the beginning of my feeling shut down and I have repeated this situation with all my adult relationships.

When your in a situation where there isn't any way out your mind just blows a casket. For my own analytical mind it just kept looking for a solution a way out. This was the first time I thought it would be easier not to be alive. I never acted on this because I really felt too paralyzed to do anything. 

I felt totally trapped with no way out of my own misery. I have felt that feeling my whole life like I am not where I should be and worse I am not like other people who can just mindlessly go through life not thinking about too much.  

When I have been in relationships I felt stuck and stagnant doing routine things that felt like a weight tied around my neck under water. I tried to speak up but everybody liked that I was taking care of them and I liked feeling needed. Nobody thanked me for my service and the eight year old was expecting something in return. 

I can do a lot and I enjoy doing it but I also get tired and any routine is the death of me. I have wanted love all my life and I have experienced it but it felt conditional. Life is conditional is what I wish my eight year old understood all those years. You should do what you want and either people love you or not.

You can't do this until you know your own worth. I needed to be needed to prove to myself that I was lovable. This wasn't love it was other people being happy to have me do everything for them who wouldn't? Don't get me wrong I have been loved and I was the one who gave them everything without demanding anything in return. I was earning their love. 

I have always felt like a servant in my relationships when I wasn't performing then support and love was withdrawn. As an eight year old I blamed myself for not being good enough and tried to make myself better never realizing that this does not work. 

I have been happy for awhile now an only recently have felt a since of true freedom. Taking care of myself for myself and only interacting with people that love me "just the way I am". 

My job gives me the opportunity to do for other and get paid.  Even with that I don't take on anyone that doesn't at least respect my time and energy. This has made me much happier and the kind of customers that end up with me are happier too. 

I will say that I didn't know I was trying to buy love in my relationships.  I just thought I love these people and I want to take care of them.  Even when they stopped being worthy of my love. That is hard to write but it is true everyone doesn't deserve my love and attention. I can be kind but I can draw the line when it is warranted. 

This has turned into a long complicated post but it feels right to share this today. I want to let you know that we have all been selfish and self absorbed just trying to sort out the overwhelming sadness our eight year old self feels inside. 

I have ask myself a million times "what is wrong with you?"  I thought it was something to be fixed and it really has come down to immaturity. I have worked hard to looked at my beliefs about myself and ask myself where they came from and if they are really true now.

I also can look back and see all that I have contributed throughout my life and be proud of those things. Today I tried to encourage people that cross my path. I don't accept the pain of others as my own anymore. I can love them from afar if I need and be there as an adult without strings attached.

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. 

Someone has to leave - Embracing Sadness - Grief

I was watching TV and heard the owls calling back and forth and decided to go out on the porch to listen. They called back and forth a few times and then one called out and the other one didn't. It made me think of relationships and how they sometimes just stop and one person calls out and the other one doesn't answer and it is over.

I have been in a spot of grieving for whatever reason. It is good sometimes to stop and grieve but most of the time life really doesn't give you that luxury.  I passed the man who lost his wife a few weeks ago in the hall and said hello. He smiled as he always does trying to appear like his life wasn't in shambles.

We all do this we run from grief and bury ourselves in the next thing. It makes other people more comfortable than showing them we are not alright. No one wants to know you feel sick and that you can't imagine waking up another day with yourself.  

We are no match for grief you can run fast and hard but not forever. Someone I knew told her husband that I should just get over my grief when I lost the life I thought I would have. He left her the following year and I am sure she understands better now. It is hard to lose it all at once just like death you are left with a shell of of life. You are starting from scratch. 

I know death is worse than the ending of a relationship but is it? How do wrap your head around someone choosing a life without you. Deciding that no matter what you gave to the relationship it wasn't enough and you weren't enough. How do you decide that you are enough when clearly you weren't. I do think if I had made different choices then maybe I wouldn't be alone now. 

It has been along time since my breakup and it seems ridiculous that I still have grieving to do. I think the last year coupled with the pandemic being over has made really think about what I am going to do with the rest of my life. Maybe triggered by recent funerals. 

I can't change the past and the decisions I made or decisions other people made that affected me. I think it is okay to grieve from time to time. I imagined a different life for myself but I have to work with what I have. I don't regret anything at this point but as time goes on I want to find happiness for myself.

I went for a check up today and discussed my recent sadness.  My doctor suggested trying hormones and I agreed. I will never be as sad as I was before and I compare any depression to that now and it isn't even close. Some grief and sadness from time to time is normal if you are not staying so busy you just push it down. It will bubble up in anger or sickness so it is best to just let it out.

I am not afraid of sadness anymore because I have been there and come back.  I can face it without fear and know that it will pass and if I embrace it it will pass quickly. I am going to be kind to myself instead focusing on making it go away.  

The truth - Forgiving ourselves - Self-care

I had to drive north about an hour for an appointment on Thursday. It is a beautiful drive and I decided to put in an old Dixie Chicks CD and while listening tears started running down my face.

I was surprised by this and wondered what was going on. It was the first CD they made after their country music fall from grace.  It has some great come back songs that everyone can relate to but this isn't what moved me.  I bought this CD just before my own life imploded. 

One sound with these words "I love the silence you create for me." I thought I had found the person I would spend the rest of my life with and they understood me. It turns out that this was in my mind only and almost laughable now. We create our reality mostly in our heads and refuse to see the truth mainly because it is just to hard to accept. 

If I had known that my life was about to break open and it would lead me to the darkest times of my life I would have stopped living. 

I lost everything that defined who I thought I was during that time. My relationship, my home my career.  It was so devastating that it sent me into to menopause overnight. Most of my friends ran from me because the person they knew was missing. I knew I was missing too but there was nothing I could do about it.

What happened me I think was caused by my inability to accept the changes being forced on me. I could no longer identify with the person I thought I was up until then. The stress of it all caused my body and mind to start rejecting itself.  I didn't get help because I thought I could handle it myself. 

I shut down and walked through my life like a robot. I showed up when it was absolutely necessary but when it wasn't I sat alone and stared or I walked in the woods alone. Being with other people felt like putting on a sandpaper suit. I had one person who let me just be without expectation. 

I thought about ending my life everyday mainly because I couldn't imagine feeling this empty and uninterested in life forever. What would be the point in continuing was what I was thinking.  I was past grief and sadness and really felt nothing. The more I tried to figure out how I got there the worse I felt.  I finally just quit and just accepted that this is the new me.

I didn't act on my feelings because of some great reverence for life but it required me to do something. I told myself everyday that I could decide again tomorrow. I remember one moment I heard a voice in my head say "you are doing this to yourself." What did that mean?

I sat with that for a long time and realized that I was punishing myself for not being enough. I believed that there was something about me that caused these losses in my life. I thought that I was, at the core, not lovable and I had proof.  I had list of the rejections or blatant indifference from the people who said they loved me.  No one wanted me.

I thought I was a strong person and was happy to take care of other people. I am strong but I also have needs even if I never acknowledged them. I finally turned this self care back to myself and decided to be enough for me first instead of always looking outside myself for proof that I am lovable.  

I know what happened to me was both physical and mental. I was too out of it to care about what was happening to me. When I finally went to the doctor my thyroid was barely working and I was close to Hashimoto's disease. Living in crisis had exhausted my body's ability to function and my brain wasn't working right either. 

My recovery was slow and with time I started to function better. I never have returned to the person I was before and for that I am grateful. I am worthy of the love and care I give myself today. I can't say enough the role that food has played in the way I think. My mind is clear and I am happy.  Our emotions are fueled by the food we eat.

The tears those songs brought to my eyes were tears of gratitude.  I can forgive the past even if I can't always forget it. I can see that I was a child emotionally in that relationship looking for something that no person can give you - unconditional love. 

I can make that drive now and see the beauty in the surrounding marshes and enjoy being alive.  I can forgive myself for being lost so many years missing what was there all along. The gift of today and all it has to offer me.  

 

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. 

 

Love Letters - Forgiveness - Healing - Freedom

I am home today taking a short break in the middle of my work week.  I was cleaning and moving my art stuff from downstairs to move it to the upstairs.  I converted a closet to a art work space. Sometimes I think I will never actually get around to do the art but I am hopeful.  With work taking 100% of my creativity it is hard to muster up enough enthusiasm to paint.  I am pretending that " if you build it they will come" ot it in this case. 

While cleaning things out I found a few old photos of my past lives at different times. It started the wheels turning and I remembered having several boxes in the basement that I haven't looked at in a long time. I know I am healed from my past because these pictures no longer evoke strong emotional responses for me anymore. 

I look at the girl in the photos and think about how much I missed trying to keep bad things from happening. "You can always see it coming but you can never stop it" a line from a Cowboy Junkies song that is so true.  I have kept something from every relationship I have ever had. From my ex-husband I kept letters he wrote me after he split and left me for a co-worker.  They married and have grown kids now.

Two letters the first before therapy and the second after therapy. In the first he blamed me for everything that was wrong with his life and felt just starting fresh would cure everything. He didn't know what had happened to us or why he couldn't love me like before. We really never had closure or counseling he refused to talk about anything. A year after the divorce he called and wanted me to meet him at his counselors appointment so we could clear the air.  I agreed hoping this would help to heal me but it was ugly when he confessed that there had been a number of infidelities over the years.  

I always felt that it was my fault that bad things happening to me. I would rather take the blame than really believe that the people I loved and trusted were so horrible. I felt like it was my fault for not seeing just how things really were.  My denial of the truth of who they had become made it impossible to move on. I internalized the pain to the point that I didn't want to live. 

The second letter was an amends letter where he admits how mean he was to me and the lies he told and the constant manipulation of my emotions. This manipulation was the worse for me because for three years he courted me leaving notes on my car and gifts in my mailbox. While he was with someone else that in the beginning I didn't  know about. Telling me one week before he was getting married that he would never love anyone the way he loved me. 

In the second letter he said he could see how much pain and anger he had built up inside and only the drugs and alcohol could manage them until they stopped working. This letter was hard to read because he was becoming the person I knew he could be but I wasn't going to reap the benefits of this new found awakening. 

I loved him like I never have loved anyone else. We were two very broken people whose pain matched perfectly for almost a decade. I was not complete without him and when I felt I was losing him I froze and stopped living which made me really attractive.  You can hear that it was still my fault. I remember falling into depression with him coming home at midnight and avoiding me altogether.

I have felt all my life that no one ever really wanted me. I was a high strung ADD child and after my mother died all the grown ups deserted me to manage there own grief. From the time she got sick I knew I was on my own so I made the best of it. Only people with strong wills ever broke through. 

As an adult I attracted people who were crazy in love with me to a point in some cases stalking me. In my mind this was proof of true love. My husband would have done anything to protect me and he made me feel safe until that obsession moved to someone else. He made me feel safe even though in the end he hurt me more than anyone. 

I can read those letters today without pain and I can forgive myself for not being able to do anything about what was happening to me. My own pain was equal to his and I couldn't feel any joy without  looking over my shoulder waiting for the next crisis to strike. With alcoholism there is always the next crisis. 

It took a lot guts for him to write those letters and they did heal me a little bit every time I have read them over the years. It still makes me jealous that he got the life we always wanted with kids but I am sure it has been no bed of roses. The devil is in the details.

Looking at the pictures and reading the letters I can see over the years the progress I was making. I still never felt I was enough and was always striving to be a better me. It is a good goal but it is time for joy now and because I am alone I don't have to meet anyone's expectations but my own. I am loving myself and not looking at happiness as something in the future. I can be happy today I just have to decide to be,

I have always done my best even if it wasn't good enough for other people or even myself. I can forgive them and forgive myself.   

 

Scared to move - Alcoholism - Part of my story

During one of my meditations this I saw my ex-husband standing on a large rock in the middle of a river. The sight brought tears to my eyes this really happened. We were on a trip to our engagement party in New York and had stopped to visit my family in North Carolina. I stayed in the car and watched him jump around the rocks I was too scared to get out there in the water and he agreed it was too dangerous for me.

I think about that girl in the car I had so much fear because I loved this man and I felt like at any moment it would end in disaster. I was afraid to move. Life was tough then we had no money at the time of our marriage we had 50 dollars in our account. Our bond was around the sadness we had had in our childhood and our ability to survive. I felt like I would die without him. 

Like me his mother had died when he was 11 she had a brain tumor and left six kids behind. Two in diapers, two in middle school and two in high school. The older kids were shipped off to an uncle and the younger two to an aunt. He and his middle brother were left with his father who drank non - stop for three years leaving the boys to fend for themselves. They did what they could to get by sometimes stealing food to survive.

We were survivors and our connections was so strong that we never spent a night apart in almost eight years. I loved him because he was a mirror of the pain in me and I knew he understood what it was like to be on your own. He had something I did not have he had anger and he wasn't afraid to stand up for himself or for me. This made me feel safe because my own family never stood up for me. He was loyal something I really longed for I have felt alone since ever before my mother got sick. 

My husband's alcoholism increased with every year along with his anger. He was mad a his dad even though he had stopped drinking after meeting a single woman with no children. She was kind and generous and took on all those kids and they had two of there own. My husband couldn't reconcile the anger he had towards his dad. His dad was such a great guy now who was loving how could he be mad at him. The anger got re-directed towards mostly strangers and eventually me. 

The verbal abuse that came out towards the end of our relationship was really scary. Because of the bubble that we had created around our relationship I was isolated with only his drinking friends around us. I felt even more like an alien surrounded people that could drink for days. As the drinking progressed the meaner he was and I believed everything he said about me. My own anger was turned inward and I became depressed and scared to move.

I did feel physically threatened but nothing ever happened. I watched every word I said to make sure not to provoke him. I walked on egg shells but I couldn't imagine my life without him.

I tried many things to get the relationship back on track.  All the things that worked in the early days but things got worse with me being alone all the time just waiting for him to come home. I tried to talk my way back in to make the perfect house to fix the perfect meal. I didn't know about alcoholism back then "cunning baffling and powerful" I thought I could fix it if I just kept trying. Our relationship ended one Thanksgiving when he said he that he didn't love me and wanted a divorce. 

That was probably the most honest thing he ever said to me. He didn't tell me he had a girlfriend I am sure to save himself from being more of a bad guy. Alcoholism knows how to protect itself and how to manipulate the opinions of others. He was the life of the party and I was just dragging him down and this is what I believed because he told me it was true. 

He left and I was no one without him. I am smart and kept my life together financially so that when I wasn't working I could lay on the couch and sleep with all my clothes on sometimes the whole weekend. I lost my identity to alcoholism and didn't even know it.

I remember when I went to counseling and she asked me about the drinking. I said I never saw him drunk but he was always drinking. My only experience with alcoholics was my uncle who would be sober for six months and then binge until he passed out on floor.  My husband had a good job and was very popular. It was me that holding us back and I wanted to fix that. 

He was gone by the time I began to attend Al-Anon. It was the only thing I did besides sleep on the couch and go to work. I had a great sponsor who at first insisted on picking me up every day to go to a meeting if there was one. I had one hour of peace every day and I eventually was able to drive myself.

I was using the slogans because I was dead inside and they were simple. I listened to collections of positive phases in my car even though I didn't believe them. I was a zombie on the inside just doing a list of things I was told to do. Alcoholism had broken me I didn't have any solutions left inside of me. I surrendered my will over to a God of my own understanding.

I don't think I will ever really get over that relationship because it made me feel so safe when I needed that. It also ruined me and made me hate myself because I couldn't fix it. It saved me in the end because I found Al-Anon and I had to work through all the problems created by the death of my mother and the indifference of my family towards me. I had to see that my suffering was cause by the beliefs I had about myself. 

Yes other people planted some of those negative ideas and yes over the years those ideas were re-enforce by being rejected over and over but it was my own self talk that believed this crap. People are messed up and if you rely on what they do or say as proof you are enough then you are never on solid ground. We are all born complete and whole and deserve love and if we don't get it it isn't because we don't deserve it. 

I believe in forgiveness and letting go. You have to learn the lessons life teaches you or your just stuck forever with the same thoughts with the same kind of relationships. I don't really like to go back and tell my story anymore but today I felt it needed to be said. 

I can romanticize those early days watching him standing on those rocks but things were already heading for the rocks but I was young and he saved me momentarily from my own suffering. He made me feel safe and wanted. I have forgiven him and being able to feel that moment of love for him in my meditation made me see that I can love what we had even if it didn't last. This is an old story but one that made me who I am today. Today I am whole and happy most of the time. 

 

 

Daily forgiveness and lies we tell ourselves

 I am still doing my daily out loud forgiveness. Saying the names of the three people I still feel resentment towards sometimes. It doesn't seem like lip service anymore and it really doesn't seem like anything at all. The solution is always inside my own head but it has taken this long to get to the point where I know I have the solution.

The brain is the collector of all the things we have ever experienced the words that have been said to us and the things we have seen. Repetition is the root of all the negativity we have experienced  Starting with when we are young and a  seed of negativity planted by someone we thought knew everything or someone that loved us or maybe someone that was trying to help.

For me it started when I had problems in school.  The first week of school ending up in the hall of Mrs. Outz's class a women my mother went to college with. This was stressful and was the beginning of a long life of just not fitting in really. I quickly got the impression that there was something wrong with me and it was very upsetting to my my mother.  

She addressed this as a discipline problem and up the number of whippings I received then put me on a sugar free diet.  In the second grade I had my eyes tested and I am legally blind without my glasses.  This did help my grades a lot but not really my behavior.  There was some discussion of medication but my parents didn't like the idea and although they weren't hippies but they did think diet was important hence the no sugar regimen. 

I even spent a few months in special ed with Bobby who lived on my street. I thought it was strange that they gave me this time off from class to play with Bobby who obviously had some serious problems. The truth is no one could explain why what we were doing in class was so important.  It seemed so dull to me I could think of a million different things I could be doing with my time. 

When my mom got cancer in the third grade the focus shifted to her and I had to figure things out for myself.  I had to make myself invisible as much as possible and entertainment myself. This led to many hours in our basement alone coming up with projects constantly creating things. I had some friends mostly younger kids who didn't mind having a leader to follow.  I made things fun and no one got into trouble. It was a good time in my life but it did shape the person I became.

I have always believed that I am a problem and even to this day I try to not bother people if I don't have to. I am self sufficient in every way possible which makes me come across and not needing anyone. I am sure my exes would agree with that. They wanted someone who didn't need anything from them and could be autonomous. I remember the few times I needed emotional support they ran away.

This how I have become me. The difference now is that I don't think I am a problem. The child in me learned that a long time ago.  I have made it a habit to not ask for help because in the past I haven't gotten it from the people that said they loved me. The difference now is that I know it is not my fault. Humans are messed up and we live alone in our heads with only our own feedback. We hurt the child in others as well as the child inside without even realizing it.

I am constantly listening to what I am telling myself and when it is negative I ask myself "why do you believe this?" It is always the patterns we have laid down in our brains that we have repeated over and over again. We have to make an effort to stop repeating and replacing them with positive thoughts about ourselves.

My 21 days of forgiveness is an exercise of re-writing the past and replacing the bad with the good. My point is that we have the power to stop the words in our own mind. We can stop believing they are true and get out from under the lies we tell ourselves. We can experience freedom for the first time.

Panic - Flow - Spiritual Awakening

I was planning on writing yesterday but had a little scare with my computer.  It crashed and wouldn't even turn back on.  I jumped into action and got dressed and drove to the Best Buy like a maniac.  When I got there the guy said well if it won't turn on then there is no hope.  He proceeded to plug it in and like magic it came on as if nothing was wrong with it.

I felt relieved of course but decided to start moving my stuff to another computer which took most of the day.  I have had that one so long that a few of the keys have stopped working but did that stop me? No.  I just bought a wireless key board. Why do something now when you can wait for a crisis to motivate you into a quick action.

I have to admit that I deleted a ton of stuff yesterday mostly pictured from hundreds of jobs I have done over the past 10 years.  It felt sad but liberating to purge the past. The only jobs on that computer were before the place I am working now. 

It did give me time to wallow in my personal photo past too.  Looking at the people who are no longer part of my life and letting that go again. Sometimes you are just there and you have to it ride out.  I was in a funk the rest of the day with my to do list left untouched feeling flat.

I woke up today feeling like a new person.  I watched Joel and his message was inspiring. He said once we ask for forgiveness the slate is clean. There is no need to mull over our past even to ourselves.  Rehashing the mistakes we made is something that we do to punish ourselves.  It isn't loving and kind to ourselves we need to move on and let go.

It was what I needed today because sometimes when I am alone I think "how did i get here?" and I want to blame myself for bad decisions I have made.  

I have done my best and I am alone because other people decided to move on and I was left behind.  Also I have decided to move on and left other people behind too. Sometimes holding on to something that doesn't work because it is better than nothing isn't good for anyone.

I had an spiritual awakening today with my own tears and forgiveness. In my mine I kept hearing "remember the date"  I wasn't sure what that was about until I remember that today is my mother's birthday.  I am sure she was smiling and consoling me through my tears. 

I have had a life that has dealt me some blows but I feel grateful that I am from sturdy spiritual stock and that I have chosen to search for strength through the pain.  I do believe that if you are open to it you can have a life that is divinely guided and you move with flow instead of against it. 

Parents Wedding Facing the truth

I am spending the weekend alone which isn't such a shock but this weekend I am not particularly inspired to do anything.  I did pull weeds yesterday morning but that is about the only routine thing I have done.  I usually have a least a to do list my head but I decided to just do nothing.

This isn't something I am at all comfortable doing and lets just say that my idea of doing nothing can sometimes translate into another persons doing a lot.  I talked to my sister for a couple of hours yesterday while she fixed herself lunch and then walked to the bottom of her property and pulled weeds while we talked. Our friendship is growing as she realizes we are more the same then she imagined.

Today I got up and decided to clean my home office and move towards changing it into a studio. I don't really like this room and when I bring work home I sit at the dining room table. The office is paneled at the bottom and has a large bookcase a perfect set up for a working space.  It is northeast facing and seems dark and uninviting.  I painted it a saturated blue to contrast with the dark paneling but it made it worse. I do write my blog here but that is really it.

To start the cleaning process I first took the two last boxes of my old business files upstairs. When I got there I faced a bed covered with family photos.  A few months ago I started looking at mostly my mothers family photos and got too overwhelmed and left it. Today I decided to put them away and move on and then I stumbled upon my parents wedding album. It is the original with thick white pages with plastic on both sides of each page. It has no cover or order and some of the plastic has cracked.

This album used to be kept in the bottom drawer of my mothers secretary. As a child I loved to pull it out regularly and look at my parents getting married.  I have often thought of creating a new album but this one has a smell that reminds me of my childhood.  Probably off gases of the plastic they used back then but I could bear to get rid of the original album.

Today I brought it downstairs and started scanning the pictures.  I want to make a digital photo album for my sister.  Along with the wedding the album has all the professional pictures of our family.  Ones with Santa and a few during a time when my mom bought one of those packages from Olan Mills.  I have added a few random photos I have found over the years. 

My mother had dreams for herself and for us.  She made every moment count with her entrepreneur spirit she made our lives feel full and safe.  She kept us motivated and everything at our house was organized and drama free. Her own family growing up was plagued with addiction and lived drama to drama this sometimes invaded our lives with phone calls in the middle of the night. She always downplayed the situation and everything went back to normal. 

Looking at my little family today starting with my mothers late teenage years.  She was at a dinner getting and award for vocational leadership to the last professional family picture just before she got sick. Her smile from the first picture change from genuine to fake to even forced in the last one.  She gave up her own ambitions mostly at the direction of the church. It was a choice she made and certainly had nothing to do with my father who would have joined the circus to be with her.

Her mother and the indoctrination she received from her church kept her on the straight and narrow.  She chose that path and lived it with her whole heart and would not be happy about me writing this.  We make choices based on what we know and who is influencing us day to day.  My dad raised a Methodist loved the rigidity of my mothers religion. He didn't like to make decisions for himself so it was great to have the church do this for him.

Looking at all the pictures together has helped me to see the bigger picture and where I come from.  I can see where everything is a choice and how I can choose again. My mother didn't choose to get sick but I think she lived against who she really was and that can make you sick. I only remember her wanting to get well for my father.  Anything treatment he found she would try.  In the end because she had to have faith she couldn't be honest with us girls that she wasn't going to make it.

I am glad my sister and I are getting closer.  We have been alone most of our lives emotionally and spiritually with only our faith to get us through.  I am grateful for my family history and the values both my parents gave to me.  It has served me well.

Accepting each other - family - So much alike

I spent a few hours on the phone with my sister last night.  Our lives have ended up very different and now that we are older we are trying to narrow the gap between us.  We have the same genes but had very different life circumstances.

She wanted to never make waves and I was born making them. At first I wanted to be like her but when realized it would never happen I was free to do what I wanted. I remember even now one time coloring together she stayed perfectly in the lines and how beautiful her page looked. My page was terrible my hand always slipped and there was the crayon outside the line. Once that happened my interest in coloring for the moment died and I left the page half done.

I really didn't understand that she was four years older and that her motor skills were ten times what mine were or that she had four more years of practice than I did. I yearned to be just like her because my parents really loved her.  I knew this because they constantly said wonderful things about her.  She was always respectful to them, she kept her room spotless, she had straight A's and practiced her piano lessons for two hours a day.  She was perfect.

I am not saying they didn't love me because they did.  The fact that they loved me despite my constant questioning of their authority, messy room, a report card that was celebrated with some "B's" mixed in with "Cs" and the fact that I refused to practice the piano.  I never understood why girls were expected to play the piano.  Even with that I was still loved not praised but loved anyway.

My sister now says my mother wanted to be a concert pianist.  I can see now why my sister pushed to become the perfect piano player my mother imagined her to be. Especially after my mom got sick. My sister was old enough to see that things were not going well while I was told not to worry and I didn't.

While she was being perfect I was exiled to the basement where I built cites out of cardboard with stores and restaurants.  I also held art classes there for the neighborhood kids with art supplies stolen from school.  I only charged a small fee for the class.  I loved art and often won contest at school.  My  dream was to decorate the bulletin boards at school for the holidays but you had to have grades like my sister's to be chosen.  Art wasn't considered a talent like piano in our house but it made me happy.

With our effort to get to know each other my sister and I have found that we are the same in a lot of ways.  The death of our mother made us different from other kids we knew a bond we are only sharing now. Ironically who we were as kids reversed when we became adults. When my dad remarried I had to learn to keep quiet and do what I was told perfectly. This was what was needed to be loved in the new household. 

My sister's desire to be perfect left her when my mother died. She stopped cleaning her room, playing the piano or even ironing her clothes.  With those perfect grades she got scholarship and left for college the summer my father remarried.  She stopped trying to fit in and blazed her own path ultimately becoming the youngest female lawyer in her state. 

Today we are more comfortable in our own skins and don't worry too about what other people think.  The work ethic that was instilled in us by both of our parents has made us successful in whatever we have done professionally.  Emotionally we are still a little too self reliant living in that fortress we built so many years ago.  Today we are trying to be a little freer and happier and accepting of each other.

Blame - Grief - Voices

I had my weekly meal last night with my friends.  This has become a little more difficult with one managing a new diet after getting out of the hospital and the other managing changing symptoms of Parkinson's.  For months I have felt like the only able body person in the group and going out at the end of a long work week was something I had to prepare for instead of look forward to but last night was different. My friend with Parkinson's decided to make Pho a Vietnamese soup at her house.

He daughter an her husband are out of town for two weeks and she is enjoying the peace and quiet.  We all sat around the table and talked about a lot of things.  She confessed that she is depressed and that living with her daughter and her husband is too much but she feels trapped. We have never seen her like this before.

It seems like having them there is the perfect solution for her but there is a back story.  Her daughter and her husband are both recovering addicts. Both with seven years which is a miracle in itself and for that she is grateful. Recently the daughter was diagnosed with cancer and is currently in remission which is also great news.  Since her diagnosis she blames her mother for the fact that she was an addict and wasted her life being high. She constantly criticizes her when she is slow or makes a mess.

We all know when you start a program it takes a long time to grow up.  To see your part in how you got where you are and accepting that this is what you have to work with.  They have forgotten that she is physically sick too and at 78 can't be the person she was and needs encouragement instead of blame. I think with them gone the weight of the situation has really showed itself.

We don't get what we want in life and the older you get the more you have to accept it and do the grief work around it. We are lucky that we are still here but that has its on burdens.  We can spend our time with the "what ifs" and even see our own part even clearer.  It takes forgiveness and acceptance to see that we did our best even if it wasn't good enough sometimes.

Yesterday I did my own dumpster driving into the past. Since tomorrow would be wedding anniversary I decided to write a little about my ex-husband in my journal. He was the person that shoved me into recovery and for that I am grateful. I was free writing to see what came up.  It was an ugly story of co-dependency, drinking, controlling and adultery. I participated in two out of three of those.  I was severely depressed before he left because I was trapped in something I didn't understand and couldn't do anything about. I did get my freedom eventually even if it was forced on me.

The point of the writing I think was to see the truth of that situation instead of the faraway fuzzy romanticized version. Where I blame myself totally for that loss.  Sometimes I think if we had stayed together I would have had children and my life would be different now.  Since I was married to an alcoholic I might have children that blamed me for their addictions. 

For the three of us sitting at that table we all have things to grieve. My other friend is having to change his relationship with food and give his body nutritious food. He mentioned last night how expensive it is to cook healthy good food.  I know I was cooking for him until the end of the year. I have felt guilty backing away but I have my own life and he has to learn to love and take care of himself at some point.

Writing things down really helps me to see where I am emotionally. Right now I am in a good place accepting that I am alone but for the most part not lonely.  My life didn't turn out like I imagined it would.  It might actually be better than another route. 

I will keep a closer eye on my friend and I did ask her if she thought of anti - depressants and she said her Parkinson doctor gave her a prescription a year ago.  She got the bottle out and agreed she would call her doctor on Monday to check with her about taking them. I use to think all emotional problems could be solve with therapy but sometimes you need boost to deal with the day to day.  When you are in a better place you can ignore the voice in or outside your head that blames you for everything.

We only have where we are now to work with and being loving, kind and patient with ourselves is the only healthy option. One day at a time. 

You are dead to me - Severed relationships - Peace

I saw an old friend in the nursery department at Lowes yesterday.  He was polite but dismissive towards me I thought "I am dead to him".  We have a lot of history between us over a mutual friend I have written about here before. In his relationships you are either in or out and there is nothing in between. He severs people and I have been severed.

This encounter is a juicy tidbit for my mind to start analyzing the past and how I went from a rich full life (from the outside)  to a place of isolation and being cut off from people who use to act like they loved me. It has almost been a decade since my break from my old life and I am just now willing to commit to taking care of plants so it is no wonder that I haven't made strides to reconnect to people.

I wonder why.  On my worst days I blame myself and think "why couldn't I just move on" but I had a spiritual break and by the time I recovered everyone had moved on including me.  Frankly I lost the desire to conform to what is considered normal social interactions. I don't belong to anything or anyone so this just leaves me here on my own wondering what I should do next.

I could change and I probably will eventually but not having any obligations except work feels pretty good most time especially compared to the life I had before where I felt drained and running all the time. I said yes to everything because "why not?" I wasn't sure what I really wanted so I should just go along with what or who was in front of me.

On my worst days I feel I am running out of time and that I have wasted a decade being sad and have ended up alone with not much direction.  On my best days I realize that I am just a person experiencing a life today and it is a pretty good one.  No it didn't turn out like I thought it would but I am healthy and have a job that I love most of the time.  I have a few close friends and a family that would at least show up at my funeral.

Why do I think there is a bigger life out there that I am missing.  Thinking this makes me discontent with the day I have right here in front of me and I end up spending it in my head and ultimately wasting it.

I can't changed the past and really I wouldn't at this point if I could. My spiritual death and re-birth taught a lot and I am awake in my life where before I was just running and filling the empty moments with anything that crossed my path.

Even though I am dead to some people I am more alive than I have ever been.  I love those people that were with me before and I wish them all well even the ones that hurt me the most.  This post has brought some welcome tears I can acknowledge what has been lost and forgive myself for just being human.  I can let go of the thoughts that I am not enough and celebrate the peace that I have found.

Dreams - The body - Peace

I slept too long this morning.  I was lost in the dream world and it seemed so interesting I wanted to stay so I did.  The dream had to do with renovating a very old house for some customers the house definitely had some potential but what we were doing felt like a band aid. I decided to exit the dream because I looked down at my bare feet and there was a spider biting my toe.

I wonder about dreams are they some other world that maybe after we die we return there permanently. Maybe they are just clusters of a the parts of our mind that aren't very neat and organized. All our interest and worries jumbled together and we have to be there in person to deal with them.

I have been a little annoyed since I came back to work after taking a week off. I got a taste of what it might be like to take care of some of my own personal priorities.  Maybe that is what the dream was about the biting of the spider a painful wake up call for me bring my focus back to me and maybe even my body.

I have spent a lot of my time dealing with my mind and my emotions.  I finally feel that I have found the answers that will allow me to be free of the need to continue trying to fix myself spiritually. During that process my body was never a priority.  It just followed my mind around without much complaining.

So I have decided to go to a more plant based diet no extremes just more plants.  This past month I have been just eating when I am hungry and mostly just one bigger healthier meal a day.  This has satisfied me and I have lost a few pounds and took the focus off food.  I now think I am ready to go one step further and start focusing on preparing more meals at home and eliminating meat from my diet.

In my past I identified myself as a good cook I spent years in the kitchen preparing tasty meals to show my love. When that piece of my life ended I lost that part of me along with many other labels I had given myself. I didn't cook for others anymore and if I did cook the joy wasn't there for me. I just cooked to get by the passion was gone.

While on my healing journey and have reached a place of peace. I no longer feel that I am broken and need to be fixed.  I know I have been looking for someone to love and cherish me but really I needed to love and cherish myself first. I can do that now and stop looking for the external world to show me I am worthy of love.

What does this have to do with diet and food.  I guess it is just me listening to my inner self telling me it is time to start nourishing my body and giving myself the love I so freely gave to others with my cooking. A slow migration towards taking care of myself physically as well as spiritually.

Over the years I have given up things like Diet Coke which I craved. I woke up one morning and was done. Then I gave up sugar in my coffee and then coffee. None of this felt like deprivation I knew in my heart that I was using these things as crutches or little rituals that helped me escape from a life that scared me.

It feels good now to just trust the process and not pressure myself into big changes. My inner spirit will take me where I need to go if I will just stop long enough to listen. That is what time off did for me it gave me a chance to listen.

This is an appropriate theme for Easter a time of year for awakenings. I have given up who I thought I was for a more whole less needy person.  This came with a lot of suffering and has brought me to a place of forgiveness for myself.  I was never enough for me I can see that now and therefore never enough for anyone else. My journey I can see now has been truly a miracle.

Phone messages and Time travel

I feel like I am in this strange place taking the time to review my life not in a harsh way just as mostly as a spectator.  Today I finally decided to look at my phone and get rid of the saved voice mail messages.  I have a habit of keeping the voice mails I have listened to from the numbers I don't recognize thinking I would go back later and delete them.  I had messages going back three years.

I had to listen to a little of each of them to see if there was some reason I was keeping them.  I wasn't prepared for this to turn out to be "this was your life" a little time travel for me which made me feel a little sad. Mostly customers that I don't even remember maybe missed opportunities. Some were just normal problems with customers. It took me back to where I was emotionally back then.

With every message I felt a little regret knowing I wasn't always able to meet some of the expectations of the people on the other end of those calls. I couldn't keep up for the first time in my life I was not 100%.

I did make promises I couldn't keep.  Of course not intentionally I don't think anyone intentionally makes promises that they can't keep. You think you can keep them when you make them but sometimes you just can't be the person you want to be or in my case the person you use to be.

I was overwhelmed at the time and was in survival mode dealing with only what was critical. I am not proud of that time in my life but I understand and forgive myself for it. It has been a humbling experience to admit that I can be human and not live up to the expectations of others.

I have spent my life fixing things and helping people get things done. Making things work pulling things together despite the obstacles. I couldn't this time I couldn't shut out my emotions and soldier on like I usually demanded of myself.  In the end there was nothing to draw on I was all used up.

I am in a good place today and I am trying to find my place again.  I want to enjoy my life and feel that I am enough for me. I can feel that I am getting there today. I can look at where I failed without judgment and see that I did my best and let the rest go.

I have been harsh with myself and frankly harsh with other people in my past.  I had no compassion for myself and therefore I didn't extend it to others very willingly. Over the years I did change and offer compassion to others but I was still at the bottom of that list. I guess now it is my turn.

Taking an inventory - Seeing things as they are and not as I wish them to be.

I am in a quiet place these days feeling inspired about my life. For the first time in a long time I am not pushing something back or closing my eyes to what is instead of what I want I would like to be. Taking a objective look at the past and seeing if there is anything I would like to address.

I guess that is what the new year is really for taking inventory.  This isn't an easy task and must be done with patience and compassion.  I have been thinking about one particular issue related to my own indifference to people that probably loved me at some point but with my continuous indifference have moved away emotionally.  This happened while I was in survival mode and had nothing to offer.

I have to say that none of the these people were emotional givers but I always maintained the relationships from my side.  I accepted where they were and was content to be the one who reached out and kept these relationships going. While I was down I decided it was "every man for him or her self".  I was at my most selfish and wanted someone to reach out to me I didn't have the energy to do the reaching.

I have been better for a awhile now but haven't made any effort to do any mending at this point. Distancing myself from the emotions of others is easy for me. It has felt freeing to me not be with people that have been stuck in the same place for a long time.  It doesn't escape me that I was that same person stuck in the same place for a long time.

I have become the "indifference" I have talked about in my own family. I do want to help people when they are stuck in their own repetitive dream but you can't really do that for someone else. People do come to me and tell me their problems and I tell them about my own experience but that is all.  I don't want to be the emotional dumping ground I was in the past. I felt their pain in way that was too draining for me.

I know now that pain is self created by the thoughts our mind is constantly feeding us. Life can be ugly but the pain comes from thinking that I can control this ugliness.  Getting lost in finding a solution instead of accepting what is and letting the situation heal itself. I had to do this when I was at my lowest I had to just stop and say "this is my life this is who I have become" immediately my life got better. The lack of struggle open the door for divine healing instead of my own limited abilities.

This inventory of myself is on going. I didn't do any of what I did intentionally or to hurt anyone I just had to withdrawn and face the truths I had about myself. Cash in all the good things and bad things I believed I was and decide who am I really? None of the things on the list were really tangible just ideas the best one and the worst ones residing in my head.

It seemed crazy to me that I had built my whole existence on these ideas about myself. My mind is strong and some of the ideas I had about myself were harsh and hard to let go of.  Today I focus mostly on the next thing and if the idea of taking an inventory comes up I look at it for awhile and decide whether it warrants any action.

I can be honest with myself now.  I am no longer trying to hide anything from myself.  Taking an inventory can be simple and the point is not to label myself as a "bad person" but to accept who I was at the time and to forgive myself.  I can then consider what amends if any that needs to be made to the anyone else involved.

It is nice to let go of the suffering for today and just live with what is right in front of me.

Miracles happen sometimes it just takes awhile.

I had my belated birthday dinner with my sponsor last night. We met about 20 years ago when I kept seeing her following me to the meetings. We were instant friends and she never gave me too many rules. She was real patient with me and always positive.

She is still the most uplifting person I have ever met. Even though her home life wasn't too uplifting and her husband spent his evenings standing by his pick up truck drinking beer from a cooler. I guess he didn't think she would catch on after a few decades.

I always really liked him he was a large bearded man with a sand paper personality. Very smart but pretty mad at the world. We always got along because I can be pretty scrappy too when I want to be. He never intimidated me with his mean exterior.

In those days they never went anywhere together. He worked and then stood by the truck most nights. I remember for years she cooked him something and left it on the stove and we went to dinner.

With what she learned in the program she started creating a life of joy for herself. She started traveling the world with friends and let him stay where he was for as long as he wanted to be there.

A few years ago something changed. He stopped drinking and started attending mass each week. Six months ago he started a diet and has lost nearly 100 lbs. This week they joined a gym together.

Last night we all went to dinner together. He talked about love and forgiveness and letting go of past resentments. Living in the moment.

Just writing this has brought tears to my eyes. It is a miracle and one that is a mystery to me and her. When he left the table she said that she has no idea what woke him up. She said it certainly wasn't anything she did. She just lived her life and let him live his. Maybe it was something she did. She let him live his own life.

So miracles do happen. People can get sober without us Al-anons pushing them along. Everyone has to find their own way. It is hard when you love someone to just sit and watch while they destroy themselves. This is why the program works. It says you have to take care of yourself and let the other person do the same.

We want to help someone be somewhere before they are ready. I think when you push people they push back. I know I do. The child in me says I don't want to do it if you want me to. I want it to be my idea not yours.

Just sitting across from him last night I thought wow is this really happening? I am still amazed that even when we give up, God's grace is endless.

Storms - forgivness - choosing my thoughts

I watched another baby squirrel fall a few minutes ago. He scrambled away. I guess that is the perils of being a squirrel just like being human. Taking your falls and deciding to get over yourself and move on.

I have fallen a lot in my life and by the time I reached the program I was pretty battered by what life had dished out to me. I was desperate and wanted answers. This was the first time I was willing to shut up and listen.

I was still looking for someone to blame for my situation. At first I felt relief because when I got to the program I identified the alcoholic as the source of my excruciating pain. But that didn't help me feel better. In the program I learned that my thoughts and my own actions were the real source of my pain.

We make decisions and with any decision there is consequences. I remember early in the program when no one was giving me much sympathy for the situation I had put myself in. I thought they don't understand me or my suffering. When I realized I had to be accountable for my own life my own feelings I was shocked. It felt awkward to see my life as choices and to see my thought and feelings as choices.

Until then I thought I was hurdling through life and being showered by meteors. I was helpless and powerless. I had to brace myself for the next unknown storm. I always got exactly what I expected to get, more storms.

I am not saying bad things don't happen or that everything is my fault but I do have the ability to at least look at it from a less personal perspective or change the way I think about things. If I just lay down in the middle of the road it increases the odds that I will get run over. Especially if it has happened before.

Once I realized that was not a victim that I was the key player in my life I was overwhelmed with sadness. I did this. I picked this. This is my fault. This is not helpful and only leads to more feelings powerlessness. I can still get there when I am resisting where I am.

The steps gently clear a path to acceptance and forgiveness. Acceptance being important because if I don't acknowledge and accept my own power I feel helpless. I can spend a lifetime waiting for someone to say they are sorry or rescue me from my pain. If I accept my own power to screw things up I can accept the power to make better choices for myself the next time. I can choose to not let the past control my future.

The forgiveness is tricky. Somebody should pay because what happened was wrong and I should be compensated or at least acknowledged for the pain I have suffered. It takes a pretty evolved person to acknowledge their own mistakes and the odds of that coming from a sick or addicted person is slim.

If I stop focusing on getting that ever elusive apology I can move on to what is wrong with me. Which is nothing really. If I step down from my throne of judgement, I can look at myself and everyone else as human. Back to acceptance. I can see I made mistakes and choices that altered the course of my life. On a good day I can just accept that this was the course I was suppose to take because I took it. There are no mistakes just more learning. I did the best I could with the information I had at the time.

I can admit my emotional limitations and even admit I have hurt others on my own path an evolved moment. If everyone is just trying to make it using the skills and information they have been given, how can I not just let it go.

Keeping that fire going by living in the past takes a lot of energy and for me those people are not even in my life anymore. The steps don't speak of forgiveness just acceptance. I think that it is because it take the focus off the one thing we can control, ourselves. When we stay in acceptance it slips into forgiveness without us even realizing it.

Every day I have a chance to make a better choice for myself.

I have to say a word about my mother. She wasn't perfect even if over the years I made her into perfection and blamed all that was bad about my life on my father. I could do that because I was eleven when she died. She didn't have as much time to make as many mistakes as my dad did.

She was strict and believed in spare the rod and spoil the child (he didn't). Being ADD this was hard on me. She did her best she loved me and taught me how to be independent. She also taught me to not let other people put limitations on me. I could do anything I really wanted to do.

My life changed the day she died. I have coped by living most of my life in my head. I can see that for the first time today, maybe a gift from mom. I had to entertain myself as a kid and I just continued this as an adult. The constant searching for truth or God and trying to understand myself is like chasing a moving target, but it keeps my mind entertained.

I have been the only person putting limits on me and mainly because I spend so much time in my head. I am starting to just live and let go. There is nothing more to figure out and the past can't define me unless I let it. I can see I am gonna have a lot of free time.