To practice these principles in all our affairs - step 12. This is what has been on my mind lately - not so much the part of the step about carrying the message - but the part about practicing these principles in all of our affairs. I think people always think of service work when they think of step 12 - but that's only one half of it and it isn't even really the point. Service work is the easy part. It is easy to carry the message but it is difficult to live it. Over and over again I encounter people who do just that - they can talk the talk, but it's all just talk.
It is one thing to be sober in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous - but that isn't reality, or even a close approximation really. It is this safe little cocoon but it isn't reality. It is one thing to show up in the rooms and tell the truth and to have accountability to the people around you - it is something completely different to be an honest person and to take responsibility - for your choices, your past, for the way that you treat and have treated people, and so on. Being accountable to the people outside of the rooms is different. Being sober in the rooms of alcoholics anonymous isn't the same as living your life on a sober basis, by the AA principles. If you never get there, you've missed the point completely and I don't think it takes being on step 12 to practice the principles in all of our affairs.
What the hell is the point of any of this if when you walk out of the room - you don't tell the truth and you don't take responsibility. What about acceptance, faith, willingness, courage, humility, forgiveness, perseverance, patience - all principles of the program - do they translate into the rest of your life, have you, or haven't you really changed? "I had to face the ever-present knowledge that my every action, word and thought, was within or outside, the principles of the program. I could no longer hide behind self-rationalization."
Self-rationalization. One of my favorite things to say when I first got sober was, "yeah, but...." Everything - was a yeah, but - yeah, but I...., yeah, but he...., yeah, but it's not...., yeah, but I don't want..., yeah, but he said.... They told me that the only thing that comes after a "yeah, but" is a lie, a rationalization or a justification. I mention it only because a lot of things have suddenly become clear to me and this speaks to so many things about not sober behavior. The moments of clarity that I do have - when I have them - are sudden. It comes all at once in a burst of realization and you know things will never be the same. You will be unable to ever excuse yourself again - that's the hardest part - that you have no excuse and you know it.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
A non-event
My mother called - a week and two days ago. It was such a non-event that I haven't bothered to post about it. She caught me by surprise. She called my work phone from her cell phone and I didn't recognize the number. I answered because I thought it was my cousin calling me from her husband's phone. I was more than surprised actually, I was shocked. I thought our relationship was over when after refusing to give her 2k, and some pretty difficult conversations, and her not talking to me for 5 weeks...I did really think it was over. I was okay with it. I was. I was prepared to never see her or talk to her again. In some ways I felt relieved. I felt lucky - compared to my brother and sister-in-law who seem intimately more tied to her, even if it is only about my nephew and even if it is only on the surface.
She called me up to talk about nothing - in fact she called like nothing happened 6 weeks ago - though it was pretty clear that the existence of it hung between us even on the telephone, so dense you could have cut it if we had been in a room together. She sounded sad more than anything. She tried to tell me she wasn't drinking (yeah right), she started a job (after the failure of her business - which is what the 2k was for). She has no where to go for the holidays (me neither). She talked a lot about my brother's job opportunities. She never asked how I was, she just asked what I've been up to. I told her work. She asked if I had any friends. (When did I ever give her the impression that I don't?) I said yeah, lots of them, in AA. She managed to slip a little poke in there - she said, I sure wish you could find a man to be with. I tell her I've given up on that, partly to be dramatic (which she says makes her feel really sad). And then she had to go. The whole thing was relatively harmless, but sad.
It was apparent that she basically called to make herself feel better - because it is always about her. When I had breast cancer - it was about her. Clearly it wasn't about making me feel better - I mean, there was and never has been an apology in my life from her. My sister-in-law pointed out an interesting thing - the only thing she ever wishes for me is that I find a man. She doesn't wish that I find happiness - she only wishes that I find a man. Ironic because she would blame the failure of her life on my father.
She has tossed the ball back in my court. I feel like flinging it in some other direction. I have a feeling that she thought the ball was probably in my court all along - and I thought it was in hers and that she wouldn't touch it. I was content with that. Now what am I supposed to do? Do I have to see her around Christmas? Do I buy her a gift? What am I supposed to do? What has changed since I thought it was over? I still fell guilty.
She called me up to talk about nothing - in fact she called like nothing happened 6 weeks ago - though it was pretty clear that the existence of it hung between us even on the telephone, so dense you could have cut it if we had been in a room together. She sounded sad more than anything. She tried to tell me she wasn't drinking (yeah right), she started a job (after the failure of her business - which is what the 2k was for). She has no where to go for the holidays (me neither). She talked a lot about my brother's job opportunities. She never asked how I was, she just asked what I've been up to. I told her work. She asked if I had any friends. (When did I ever give her the impression that I don't?) I said yeah, lots of them, in AA. She managed to slip a little poke in there - she said, I sure wish you could find a man to be with. I tell her I've given up on that, partly to be dramatic (which she says makes her feel really sad). And then she had to go. The whole thing was relatively harmless, but sad.
It was apparent that she basically called to make herself feel better - because it is always about her. When I had breast cancer - it was about her. Clearly it wasn't about making me feel better - I mean, there was and never has been an apology in my life from her. My sister-in-law pointed out an interesting thing - the only thing she ever wishes for me is that I find a man. She doesn't wish that I find happiness - she only wishes that I find a man. Ironic because she would blame the failure of her life on my father.
She has tossed the ball back in my court. I feel like flinging it in some other direction. I have a feeling that she thought the ball was probably in my court all along - and I thought it was in hers and that she wouldn't touch it. I was content with that. Now what am I supposed to do? Do I have to see her around Christmas? Do I buy her a gift? What am I supposed to do? What has changed since I thought it was over? I still fell guilty.
The anticlimactic ending, after which always follows a let down
It's over. The project. It's done. The one I've been stressed about, working endlessly on. It's over. With the click of a button - send - at 11:50 last night. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. Hundreds of hours of my time, and others - sent off in an email. I thought I would sleep in, but I couldn't. In fact I slept terribly and I kept dreaming that I was at work all night. And then I dreamed that I came to work the next day and told the partner that I dreamed I was at work all night. I thought I would sleep in, take it easy, and then wander in around 10. But I got here at 8. Why? Because I can't sleep and I don't know what else to do with myself except come to work.
I should savor it right - the accomplishment - the fact that I probably won't have to work another weekend until the New Year - the fact that I did this project largely alone, and it was huge. I should enjoy the fact that I can go back down to normal hours (170 per month) and the holidays are coming. But oh wait - I hate the holidays. I need something to fill up the time around the holidays so I can forget that I have no where to go and no family to be with. Suddenly I wonder what happened in this past month that I inadvertently missed and what's going to happen when I come crashing down from not having felt anything for a while?
I should take pride in the accomplishment or something - but the feeling is short lived. It is like all accomplishments in my life - they are followed by disappointment. Plus, it's just a job, and yeah, it was a really good project, but it's just a project. The disappointment isn't in myself or that it didn't turn out how it was supposed to - cause it turned out quite well actually. The disappointment is in the fact that I don't enjoy it - that I don't feel like I accomplished something. The disappointment is in the fact that it didn't feel like enough of a high - it just felt like, well, any other thing that I do, and then it's over. I want it to be some big deal, but it isn't.
I'm just on to the next thing. All accomplishments in my life are like this - a split second after it's all over, I find myself saying what's next? It's all a part of that looking for something outside of me to make me feel better...except I don't really do that anymore - this is just a remnant of that belief I think. I don't live under the illusion that anything can "fix" me - not a job, or a guy, or the raise I just found out that I get come January 1, or a new car - but I used to believe that. Sometimes it's a matter of distracting myself - I can get through something difficult if I am distracted. When the project ends and suddenly I have 70 hours extra in a month - back to myself - I guess I don't know what to do with it. I want to enjoy it - but it's not that easy for me. It takes effort.
There is only one accomplishment in my life that didn't feel like a let down - that would be getting sober and staying that way in the beginning. Everything else I've ever done has felt easy - college, law school, getting jobs, being successful in a career - even surviving breast cancer was easy in comparison to what I went through when I came into AA. The only thing really that hasn't felt disappointing after the fact - was my one year anniversary last December. Probably a combination of how difficult the beginning was and how much I went through in that first year. I mention it only because I worry that my anniversary won't be that way this year - that it will instead be like all other things - a build up and a let down.
My friend that gave me my token last year can't be at the meeting this year and my brother probably won't be around. I actually think no one will even remember. To me it is a big deal though. I know that my anniversary isn't about me - the purpose of it and announcing it is to show someone newer that the program works - but my anniversary is the most important day to me. More important than my birthday - more important than then day I finished breast cancer treatment. December 14th, 2005 - that's my sobriety date and it's the most important day - because without it, I wouldn't be alive. I don't know why - I want it to be like last year - but it won't be.
Anyway, there are a lot of things I have been meaning to write about - but I just haven't had time...so, I'll be back with more later.
I should savor it right - the accomplishment - the fact that I probably won't have to work another weekend until the New Year - the fact that I did this project largely alone, and it was huge. I should enjoy the fact that I can go back down to normal hours (170 per month) and the holidays are coming. But oh wait - I hate the holidays. I need something to fill up the time around the holidays so I can forget that I have no where to go and no family to be with. Suddenly I wonder what happened in this past month that I inadvertently missed and what's going to happen when I come crashing down from not having felt anything for a while?
I should take pride in the accomplishment or something - but the feeling is short lived. It is like all accomplishments in my life - they are followed by disappointment. Plus, it's just a job, and yeah, it was a really good project, but it's just a project. The disappointment isn't in myself or that it didn't turn out how it was supposed to - cause it turned out quite well actually. The disappointment is in the fact that I don't enjoy it - that I don't feel like I accomplished something. The disappointment is in the fact that it didn't feel like enough of a high - it just felt like, well, any other thing that I do, and then it's over. I want it to be some big deal, but it isn't.
I'm just on to the next thing. All accomplishments in my life are like this - a split second after it's all over, I find myself saying what's next? It's all a part of that looking for something outside of me to make me feel better...except I don't really do that anymore - this is just a remnant of that belief I think. I don't live under the illusion that anything can "fix" me - not a job, or a guy, or the raise I just found out that I get come January 1, or a new car - but I used to believe that. Sometimes it's a matter of distracting myself - I can get through something difficult if I am distracted. When the project ends and suddenly I have 70 hours extra in a month - back to myself - I guess I don't know what to do with it. I want to enjoy it - but it's not that easy for me. It takes effort.
There is only one accomplishment in my life that didn't feel like a let down - that would be getting sober and staying that way in the beginning. Everything else I've ever done has felt easy - college, law school, getting jobs, being successful in a career - even surviving breast cancer was easy in comparison to what I went through when I came into AA. The only thing really that hasn't felt disappointing after the fact - was my one year anniversary last December. Probably a combination of how difficult the beginning was and how much I went through in that first year. I mention it only because I worry that my anniversary won't be that way this year - that it will instead be like all other things - a build up and a let down.
My friend that gave me my token last year can't be at the meeting this year and my brother probably won't be around. I actually think no one will even remember. To me it is a big deal though. I know that my anniversary isn't about me - the purpose of it and announcing it is to show someone newer that the program works - but my anniversary is the most important day to me. More important than my birthday - more important than then day I finished breast cancer treatment. December 14th, 2005 - that's my sobriety date and it's the most important day - because without it, I wouldn't be alive. I don't know why - I want it to be like last year - but it won't be.
Anyway, there are a lot of things I have been meaning to write about - but I just haven't had time...so, I'll be back with more later.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Even on my worst day
I imagine how this blog is starting to sound. One minute everything is great - I'm happy, content, at peace, grateful, life is good, it couldn't be better. The next minute - I sound like I am complaining - I'm devastated, life is miserable and what is this thing called happiness that I can't seem to find? Then it's great again, my job is great, things couldn't be better, I have acceptance, I wouldn't change anything. Then I'm crying on the floor again about why I'm not happy. Are you picking up on the pattern here? My therapist actually suggested that I track this for a while, and that I try to pay more attention to what sends me spiraling downward rather than just acting surprised when I find myself there. Except that it isn't like a downward spiral, it's more like I teleport there. It's like flipping a switch.
I don't have the faintest idea how it happens. One minute I am one way and the next minute I'm not that way anymore. Nothing triggers it really. I guess I'm just used to it. I've cycled through this up and down every few days since I can remember - at least since I was 15. Sometimes the cycle is more than a few days - and it's never extreme - I just hover around the middle. Slightly better than normal, slightly worse, slightly better, slightly worse. Okay, maybe saying that I am devastated on the floor sounds more extreme than slightly - but I don't go very far into depression and I've never been manic. Although one could make a definite argument for depression. Anyway, I'm having a hard time sorting this one out. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the more I work the AA program the better I feel - and though I shouldn't say this - it's like a drug - work the program better, feel better. Which makes me wonder if at least half of feeling bad, if not more, isn't really depression, but instead, just untreated alcoholism
So anyway, today is a good day. If I had to really rate the day, I would say it is a "good day plus." It's not a "plus plus" because I am staying up too late and I have to work all weekend, but it's definitely one plus for being better than average. And I'm talking about the way I feel - I feel good - it's not just that my day was good. Today is one of those days when I feel overwhelmed with gratitude, happy (wait, did I just admit to feeling happy?), content, at peace with the state of things, accepting of the things that have happened to me, my faith is strong and I love AA. I know how it must sound - like I can't make my mind up. Am I grateful or not, happy or not, do I believe in AA or not? Of course I do.
I just have bad days sometimes - I have days where I slip into old ways of thinking and old ways of behaving, where my thoughts and actions are fear based and where I lose sight of the purpose, and can't pick out the details, where I lose myself in the future instead of staying present in the moment. I slip into the me of my former life, like slipping on a different pair of clothes. I just lose perspective sometimes. But even on my worst day, my most negative, and unhappy and miserable day - what I really believe is this - that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. That it saved my life and changed my life and I had nothing to do with it. I have nothing but humility about it. Even on my worst day I am grateful beyond words and I believe deep down to the very core of me that the program works, that miracles will happen right in front of you, and that your life really does become infinitely more amazing than you could have imagined. Even on my worst day I know that I have happiness - it may not look the way I wanted it to or be what I want it to be - but it is there. Even on my worst day, I still believe that anything is possible and that things really will be okay in the end - even if okay doesn't look the way I want it to. Even on those days, I have unshakable faith. And I know that I'm lucky, even on those days - I don't have to be sober, I don't have to go to AA meetings, I don't have to carry the message - I get to. It is a gift.
Congratulations to A. on 30 days sober. You continue to inspire and amaze me.
I don't have the faintest idea how it happens. One minute I am one way and the next minute I'm not that way anymore. Nothing triggers it really. I guess I'm just used to it. I've cycled through this up and down every few days since I can remember - at least since I was 15. Sometimes the cycle is more than a few days - and it's never extreme - I just hover around the middle. Slightly better than normal, slightly worse, slightly better, slightly worse. Okay, maybe saying that I am devastated on the floor sounds more extreme than slightly - but I don't go very far into depression and I've never been manic. Although one could make a definite argument for depression. Anyway, I'm having a hard time sorting this one out. Unfortunately (or fortunately), the more I work the AA program the better I feel - and though I shouldn't say this - it's like a drug - work the program better, feel better. Which makes me wonder if at least half of feeling bad, if not more, isn't really depression, but instead, just untreated alcoholism
So anyway, today is a good day. If I had to really rate the day, I would say it is a "good day plus." It's not a "plus plus" because I am staying up too late and I have to work all weekend, but it's definitely one plus for being better than average. And I'm talking about the way I feel - I feel good - it's not just that my day was good. Today is one of those days when I feel overwhelmed with gratitude, happy (wait, did I just admit to feeling happy?), content, at peace with the state of things, accepting of the things that have happened to me, my faith is strong and I love AA. I know how it must sound - like I can't make my mind up. Am I grateful or not, happy or not, do I believe in AA or not? Of course I do.
I just have bad days sometimes - I have days where I slip into old ways of thinking and old ways of behaving, where my thoughts and actions are fear based and where I lose sight of the purpose, and can't pick out the details, where I lose myself in the future instead of staying present in the moment. I slip into the me of my former life, like slipping on a different pair of clothes. I just lose perspective sometimes. But even on my worst day, my most negative, and unhappy and miserable day - what I really believe is this - that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous saved my life. That it saved my life and changed my life and I had nothing to do with it. I have nothing but humility about it. Even on my worst day I am grateful beyond words and I believe deep down to the very core of me that the program works, that miracles will happen right in front of you, and that your life really does become infinitely more amazing than you could have imagined. Even on my worst day I know that I have happiness - it may not look the way I wanted it to or be what I want it to be - but it is there. Even on my worst day, I still believe that anything is possible and that things really will be okay in the end - even if okay doesn't look the way I want it to. Even on those days, I have unshakable faith. And I know that I'm lucky, even on those days - I don't have to be sober, I don't have to go to AA meetings, I don't have to carry the message - I get to. It is a gift.
Congratulations to A. on 30 days sober. You continue to inspire and amaze me.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Even more reason to drive
Okay, so clearly I haven't made this okay for myself - this driving to work thing. But, here's the thing - it's "CTA dooms day" here in my city on Tuesday, and unless some sort of magic funding happens - rates are going up and routes are being cut. BOTH bus routes from my neighborhood are being cut. Can you believe that? How is everyone going to get to work? (Um, I'm going to drive). You might suggest that I walk two blocks the opposite direction and take the train - BUT no. You might also wonder why I don't purchase that $75 CTA card as per the comment on the previous post and take public transportation everywhere. Well, given that rates are going up and routes are being cut - I need to recalculate. But the truth is - I dismissed that idea before I even considered it because it is simply unrealistic for me (or rather, I am unwilling to do this).
I guess this really isn't about the weather at all - cause, well, I have a lot of coats. (Note that I walked to work today and I didn't enjoy it). This is really just a simple question of how much your time is worth. Mine is worth a lot apparently, at least $16 a day. It 's really pretty easy to rationalize actually (then why have you written so many posts about it?) - any time I spend commuting is a loss of my free time - not my work time. Because no matter what - I am going to work probably at least 2250 hours per year (that's in order to bill 2000). So - given that I leave the house by 7:30 a.m. every day, and don't get home on average until after 8 p.m. (whether I am at work or an AA meeting), it's important that I get there as quickly and as painlessly as possible. If I worked 9-5 - you can bet I would be taking public transportation. But all I want to do is get home by the end of the day or the end of a meeting and I am willing to pay a small fortunate to make it as easy as possible.
People frequently tell me that I should move farther away from my job - I should disconnect - separate myself - distance myself - and if I live farther away, it will be easier for me to do this. But why would I want to make getting there any more difficult? I actually think that the answer would be to move across the street from my job - I would love that. That would be the ideal - walk out of my house and into my office. I wouldn't even have to park and I wouldn't lose any time commuting. That is the best of both worlds. I seriously would love that.
You know what I think this is really about - I think I worry what people will think of me for driving to work. I imagine people thinking - all you do is whine and complain on your blog about how unhappy you are and how miserable you feel - but if you can afford to pay $320 per month to drive your car maybe two miles to work and park it, just for convenience - how bad can your life possibly be? Maybe you shouldn't complain so much. Well, I don't think I've ever actually said my life is bad - in fact - I've said it's great. It's just that it isn't the way I thought I wanted it to be and therefore because it doesn't meet my expectations, I feel unhappy about it. Anyway, I could have avoided the problem of judgment altogether by never mentioning it here. People who read this blog don't need to know how much I spend to park my car and people who don't read this blog think I'm happy (which makes paying to park seem more acceptable or something?).
Back to the driving thing - so I feel judged I guess. I feel like people think bad things about me because I waste so much money on parking. (when the truth is, no one really cares). I guess some part of me feels guilty or something. I have guilt about money - I have no problem spending it on other people, but I feel bad when I spend money on myself - whether it's parking or buying myself stuff that I want.
In any event - the short story is - I'm going to drive to work (except in the most ideal weather conditions) and love every second of it!
My mother called yesterday by the way - you know - my mother - the one who I thought I no longer had a relationship with...that might be the next post...
I guess this really isn't about the weather at all - cause, well, I have a lot of coats. (Note that I walked to work today and I didn't enjoy it). This is really just a simple question of how much your time is worth. Mine is worth a lot apparently, at least $16 a day. It 's really pretty easy to rationalize actually (then why have you written so many posts about it?) - any time I spend commuting is a loss of my free time - not my work time. Because no matter what - I am going to work probably at least 2250 hours per year (that's in order to bill 2000). So - given that I leave the house by 7:30 a.m. every day, and don't get home on average until after 8 p.m. (whether I am at work or an AA meeting), it's important that I get there as quickly and as painlessly as possible. If I worked 9-5 - you can bet I would be taking public transportation. But all I want to do is get home by the end of the day or the end of a meeting and I am willing to pay a small fortunate to make it as easy as possible.
People frequently tell me that I should move farther away from my job - I should disconnect - separate myself - distance myself - and if I live farther away, it will be easier for me to do this. But why would I want to make getting there any more difficult? I actually think that the answer would be to move across the street from my job - I would love that. That would be the ideal - walk out of my house and into my office. I wouldn't even have to park and I wouldn't lose any time commuting. That is the best of both worlds. I seriously would love that.
You know what I think this is really about - I think I worry what people will think of me for driving to work. I imagine people thinking - all you do is whine and complain on your blog about how unhappy you are and how miserable you feel - but if you can afford to pay $320 per month to drive your car maybe two miles to work and park it, just for convenience - how bad can your life possibly be? Maybe you shouldn't complain so much. Well, I don't think I've ever actually said my life is bad - in fact - I've said it's great. It's just that it isn't the way I thought I wanted it to be and therefore because it doesn't meet my expectations, I feel unhappy about it. Anyway, I could have avoided the problem of judgment altogether by never mentioning it here. People who read this blog don't need to know how much I spend to park my car and people who don't read this blog think I'm happy (which makes paying to park seem more acceptable or something?).
Back to the driving thing - so I feel judged I guess. I feel like people think bad things about me because I waste so much money on parking. (when the truth is, no one really cares). I guess some part of me feels guilty or something. I have guilt about money - I have no problem spending it on other people, but I feel bad when I spend money on myself - whether it's parking or buying myself stuff that I want.
In any event - the short story is - I'm going to drive to work (except in the most ideal weather conditions) and love every second of it!
My mother called yesterday by the way - you know - my mother - the one who I thought I no longer had a relationship with...that might be the next post...
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Two dollars really is significant (and I am not the only one who thinks so)
So I have posted multiple times about the habit I got into of driving to work and how I conducted this very careful time and cost analysis aimed at making myself feel better about this activity. Mostly I was trying to justify spending $280 a month on parking when I live in a city with such great public transportation. Yes, that's right - $14 a day to park at my office when I already live downtown. Why do I think I have to justify this? It's a luxury I can afford and besides - my analysis yielded the following result: I only save $14-20 per week if I take public transportation (and that means driving one day a week - cause let's be realistic people). Saving $56-80 dollars a month wasn't worth the time it would take me to take the bus/walk to work in the morning. There is a catch though to the $14 a day thing - you have to be in the office parking garage by 8 a.m. - otherwise it costs you $21 - in which case the time/cost calculation changes. I frankly think $14 a day is really reasonable.
It all started last year, at exactly this time, when I was doing radiation treatment and had to go to the hospital every day for 7 weeks, what a pain. It made sense to drive. Then it continued through the winter, cause, well, it was winter. Then it continued into the spring, cause, uh, well, it rains in the spring. Then I felt guilty so I did some calculations and realized that by the time I drive one day, take the train to a meeting a couple of days a week, take a cab home from two meetings, and take a cab one other day when I work late - well, I don't save that much money. Plus, I really like the convenience of the car - I like to be able to leave and know that I can be home in less than 10 minutes - that I can drive to a meeting, or stop at the store. I just like it. I did feel bad about not getting any exercise though and I do really love to walk. It takes me about 30 minutes or a little longer to walk to or from work.
Turns out I like to drive when: it's snowing, raining, might rain, is extremely windy, excessively humid, if I am going to a meeting anywhere north of Division street after work, if I think I may be stuck there really late, am running late and have an obnoxiously early conference call, if I don't have the right shoes already in my office, or I am extremely busy. You might wonder whether that doesn't cover literally every day of my life. It doesn't though - I did walk quite a bit for about 3 weeks - but then I got busy, it rained, the wind was blowing and well, I've been driving again lately. So here we are - trying again to prove to myself that I might as well drive because I don't save that much money if I don't.
Much to my shock and horror when I pulled out of the parking garage two weeks ago - the rate had gone up to $16 a day. That's $16 if you are in by 8 a.m. Shocking I know. $280 a month to park seems reasonable. $320 however does not. That's almost 4K people. Suddenly we are talking about a savings of $24 -30 per week or $96-120 a month. What would I do with that money - it's not like I would save it. I would just buy clothes. That amount does seems a little more significant though. That might make me re-think my desire to drive on days when it might rain, and um, well, on days when it might rain. When I look at it on a daily basis - I think $6 - I save 6 by taking the bus/walking part way to work and taking a cab home. But that's still only $120 a month and some days it isn't even a savings of $6.00 - it's more like $4.00. For an extra $120 a month - doesn't it just seem worth it to drive?
I am being completely seriously actually about the rate increase. $14 was reasonable. $16 is not. I might need a new strategy. But who am I kidding anyway (I wonder how high it would have to go for me to actually stop driving) - there is no way in hell I am going outside in order to get to work all winter when for just $16 per day I can go from inside my condo to inside my office without ever setting foot outside. I mean - who wouldn't do that who could afford the luxury right? I might now have to bite the bullet and do monthly parking - which I swore I would never do. I just kept telling myself that I would maintain a balance where it would always be slightly cheaper not to do monthly parking. Plus - that always gave me a reason to walk - I wouldn't be wasting my monthly parking fee while walking - I would actually be "saving" money. They have probably jacked the monthly rate up also.
Anyway - I got in the elevator and a colleague said to me - did you notice they raised the parking rate? I said yeah - it's ridiculous isn't it? She said yeah - for $14 I'll do it, but for $16, forget it. I'm glad I am not the only one who feels that way. (Except she stopped driving, and I am still trying to make myself feel okay about the fact that I am going to do this every day until at least March).
So - who here wants to see if I can make it through another winter without turning my heat on even once? No - this isn't a matter of I would rather park than have heat (cause yes, I can afford both) - it's just that for some reason, I don't need to turn the heat on in the winter - it just stays 68-72 degrees no matter how cold it gets outside. The good news is that my gas bill never goes above $12 per month - in fact last month it was $3.96. Which can only mean one thing - that I am only eating microwavable food.
It all started last year, at exactly this time, when I was doing radiation treatment and had to go to the hospital every day for 7 weeks, what a pain. It made sense to drive. Then it continued through the winter, cause, well, it was winter. Then it continued into the spring, cause, uh, well, it rains in the spring. Then I felt guilty so I did some calculations and realized that by the time I drive one day, take the train to a meeting a couple of days a week, take a cab home from two meetings, and take a cab one other day when I work late - well, I don't save that much money. Plus, I really like the convenience of the car - I like to be able to leave and know that I can be home in less than 10 minutes - that I can drive to a meeting, or stop at the store. I just like it. I did feel bad about not getting any exercise though and I do really love to walk. It takes me about 30 minutes or a little longer to walk to or from work.
Turns out I like to drive when: it's snowing, raining, might rain, is extremely windy, excessively humid, if I am going to a meeting anywhere north of Division street after work, if I think I may be stuck there really late, am running late and have an obnoxiously early conference call, if I don't have the right shoes already in my office, or I am extremely busy. You might wonder whether that doesn't cover literally every day of my life. It doesn't though - I did walk quite a bit for about 3 weeks - but then I got busy, it rained, the wind was blowing and well, I've been driving again lately. So here we are - trying again to prove to myself that I might as well drive because I don't save that much money if I don't.
Much to my shock and horror when I pulled out of the parking garage two weeks ago - the rate had gone up to $16 a day. That's $16 if you are in by 8 a.m. Shocking I know. $280 a month to park seems reasonable. $320 however does not. That's almost 4K people. Suddenly we are talking about a savings of $24 -30 per week or $96-120 a month. What would I do with that money - it's not like I would save it. I would just buy clothes. That amount does seems a little more significant though. That might make me re-think my desire to drive on days when it might rain, and um, well, on days when it might rain. When I look at it on a daily basis - I think $6 - I save 6 by taking the bus/walking part way to work and taking a cab home. But that's still only $120 a month and some days it isn't even a savings of $6.00 - it's more like $4.00. For an extra $120 a month - doesn't it just seem worth it to drive?
I am being completely seriously actually about the rate increase. $14 was reasonable. $16 is not. I might need a new strategy. But who am I kidding anyway (I wonder how high it would have to go for me to actually stop driving) - there is no way in hell I am going outside in order to get to work all winter when for just $16 per day I can go from inside my condo to inside my office without ever setting foot outside. I mean - who wouldn't do that who could afford the luxury right? I might now have to bite the bullet and do monthly parking - which I swore I would never do. I just kept telling myself that I would maintain a balance where it would always be slightly cheaper not to do monthly parking. Plus - that always gave me a reason to walk - I wouldn't be wasting my monthly parking fee while walking - I would actually be "saving" money. They have probably jacked the monthly rate up also.
Anyway - I got in the elevator and a colleague said to me - did you notice they raised the parking rate? I said yeah - it's ridiculous isn't it? She said yeah - for $14 I'll do it, but for $16, forget it. I'm glad I am not the only one who feels that way. (Except she stopped driving, and I am still trying to make myself feel okay about the fact that I am going to do this every day until at least March).
So - who here wants to see if I can make it through another winter without turning my heat on even once? No - this isn't a matter of I would rather park than have heat (cause yes, I can afford both) - it's just that for some reason, I don't need to turn the heat on in the winter - it just stays 68-72 degrees no matter how cold it gets outside. The good news is that my gas bill never goes above $12 per month - in fact last month it was $3.96. Which can only mean one thing - that I am only eating microwavable food.
Monday, October 22, 2007
San Francisco in August
I have this day - at the end of October - that I both don't want to remember and can't seem to forget. It is burned in my memory. It holds a different meaning than it used to in light of the things that I have recently been through. In fact - as the years go by - it becomes more painful, as opposed to less. I would have expected the opposite. The pain sharpens while the rationalization seems less clear and it is all mixed with regret and uncertainty about the future. I always hope that the end of October will come and go unnoticed, but it never does.
So years ago - years after the fact - I wrote something, about that day - it was about that day but it wasn't. I had wanted to replace the day with another memory. I just wanted to remember something else. I can only talk about it here on my blog without actually talking about it, so I'll just post the only thing I ever wrote about that day.
August 23, 2003,
She has spoken only to a limited extent about that day in October. And she has certainly never recorded the words, perhaps never even spoken them aloud. The most she has ever been willing to say is right now – that she remembers the smell of the room, the inappropriate conversation between a mother and her teenage son, what she was wearing, and the absence surrounding the days that followed. She remembers the pain like it happened yesterday and she knows that such intensity is reserved for those moments in life we are meant never to forget. And she knows that she did not belong there because she was the only one in that room not crying. She thinks that it is telling, what we choose to remember. The way we sometimes like to carefully select the words believing that what we are recording is a memory with such precision and such accuracy that it is like a photograph – but distorted in its own way. And it is equally as telling, what we choose not to remember, whether out of a fear that the words will not be enough, or perhaps out of a desire to forget the moment altogether. Things unwritten, but conjured up later in a form all their own. Her memories, like all things, are a fabrication.
She says that day is like San Francisco in August – a night unrecorded in history. Unrecorded, because like that day in October, she wanted there to be no distortions and no mistakes. She uses that night in August as a substitution for the day. She remembers the density of the air and the color of the paint – she could tell you what it felt like, as if that same perfect picture of a San Francisco night in August, could make a day never exist.
What has been lost in the space in between? In the days and the pages that are missing? Not everything is as vivid anymore. She has wondered all this time if she had given up her self respect for him, and has concluded, finally, that what was lost upon those nights, is not in fact regained in the morning. The question for her has always been – how to live through the day that you wake up and realize that you are not who you thought you were – and in so many ways.
She is acutely aware now, like on that day in October, just exactly how every moment, every interaction, can change your life. Those split seconds in time in which a choice is made – to utter the words – to reveal the truth – or to keep the secret. A yes, instead of a no.
So years ago - years after the fact - I wrote something, about that day - it was about that day but it wasn't. I had wanted to replace the day with another memory. I just wanted to remember something else. I can only talk about it here on my blog without actually talking about it, so I'll just post the only thing I ever wrote about that day.
August 23, 2003,
She has spoken only to a limited extent about that day in October. And she has certainly never recorded the words, perhaps never even spoken them aloud. The most she has ever been willing to say is right now – that she remembers the smell of the room, the inappropriate conversation between a mother and her teenage son, what she was wearing, and the absence surrounding the days that followed. She remembers the pain like it happened yesterday and she knows that such intensity is reserved for those moments in life we are meant never to forget. And she knows that she did not belong there because she was the only one in that room not crying. She thinks that it is telling, what we choose to remember. The way we sometimes like to carefully select the words believing that what we are recording is a memory with such precision and such accuracy that it is like a photograph – but distorted in its own way. And it is equally as telling, what we choose not to remember, whether out of a fear that the words will not be enough, or perhaps out of a desire to forget the moment altogether. Things unwritten, but conjured up later in a form all their own. Her memories, like all things, are a fabrication.
She says that day is like San Francisco in August – a night unrecorded in history. Unrecorded, because like that day in October, she wanted there to be no distortions and no mistakes. She uses that night in August as a substitution for the day. She remembers the density of the air and the color of the paint – she could tell you what it felt like, as if that same perfect picture of a San Francisco night in August, could make a day never exist.
What has been lost in the space in between? In the days and the pages that are missing? Not everything is as vivid anymore. She has wondered all this time if she had given up her self respect for him, and has concluded, finally, that what was lost upon those nights, is not in fact regained in the morning. The question for her has always been – how to live through the day that you wake up and realize that you are not who you thought you were – and in so many ways.
She is acutely aware now, like on that day in October, just exactly how every moment, every interaction, can change your life. Those split seconds in time in which a choice is made – to utter the words – to reveal the truth – or to keep the secret. A yes, instead of a no.
At least I am predictable
At least I know that when I feel as good as I did the past few days, that I am going to crash eventually. It's inevitable and predictable, although I never know exactly when it's coming. It's inevitable because this way that I feel - it isn't real - it isn't sustainable. It lasts for maybe a few days and then I cry on my floor, like last night, while I talk to my higher power about what isn't fair and that I do have things to be angry about. And there are simply things that I can't get over. I can only pretend to - for days at a time.
I was talking to my therapist today about just exactly how I see my life. We concluded that I see it as neither good or bad - but that I am just indifferent about it. It's fine I guess - it's okay - I am neither happy nor unhappy. I know it isn't bad - because I objectively know that. I know how other people perceive my life. I just can't for the life of me seem to see it the way that other people do - at least not with consistency.
The expression - you can't see the forest for the trees - I seem to have the opposite problem. The trees are like a blur - the finer details of my life - and if I could see those - if I could pick those out - delineate the edges - I might find things to be happy about. You know - being present in the moment and enjoying the moment - those are details in which I find happiness. But all I see is the forest - all I see is the whole - and on the whole my life is not what I want it to be. It is true that today, right now, my life is fine, my day was fine, there is little about the present moment that I would change. But beyond the day, in the greater scheme of things - nothing is what I want it to be.
I was talking to my therapist today about just exactly how I see my life. We concluded that I see it as neither good or bad - but that I am just indifferent about it. It's fine I guess - it's okay - I am neither happy nor unhappy. I know it isn't bad - because I objectively know that. I know how other people perceive my life. I just can't for the life of me seem to see it the way that other people do - at least not with consistency.
The expression - you can't see the forest for the trees - I seem to have the opposite problem. The trees are like a blur - the finer details of my life - and if I could see those - if I could pick those out - delineate the edges - I might find things to be happy about. You know - being present in the moment and enjoying the moment - those are details in which I find happiness. But all I see is the forest - all I see is the whole - and on the whole my life is not what I want it to be. It is true that today, right now, my life is fine, my day was fine, there is little about the present moment that I would change. But beyond the day, in the greater scheme of things - nothing is what I want it to be.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Just close your eyes and try not to feel sad
That's what I've been telling myself as I try to convince myself to go to sleep - just close your eyes and go to sleep - it will be tomorrow before you know it and tomorrow will be different. You will get up and you will walk 5 miles for breast cancer with your colleagues and you will pretend to be strong and you will tell the story of your own survival as if you are amazing. Mostly you will just hope you get through it. I don't want to tell this story tomorrow. I don't want to re-live it. I don't want to talk about it anymore. I don't want to answer anymore questions and I am tired of pretending that I am okay about what happened when the truth is, I have not even begun to comprehend it. I tell the story the way I tell it because I wouldn't be able to tell it otherwise. And the truth is - when people say to me - you must be such a strong person to have gone through that, and to have kept working 50 hours a week - how did you survive - how did you do that? What I feel like saying is this - I survived because I had no choice. Because I couldn't figure out how to kill myself quick enough and there wasn't anyone to take care of me. I did what I did because I had no choice. I had no disability benefit because I had been employed by my firm for only 3 weeks when it happened. I had to pay the bills, no one was going to pay them for me. Neither of my parents even showed up for me. I just did what I had to do - it wasn't because I wanted to, and it certainly wasn't amazing. The truth of it is - if I dig deep enough - if I really dig for something relating to this whole mess that happened to me, I am so angry that I almost can't stand it. The last place I want to be is surrounded by people and talking about it.
I knew there was a reason why some part of me didn't want to walk tomorrow. It wasn't conscious or anything, it's just that on most days I try to pretend it didn't happen. I try to just live, you know, but I am surrounded by breast cancer awareness month and constant fund raising at work. When I let myself be talked into walking tomorrow - I didn't realize that I would have any emotional reaction to it at all. I thought I would be fine. I thought I would just show up and be one of them, but I am not one of them. I am different. I didn't realize that to show up for an event surrounding the very thing that feels like it destroyed my life, would cause me an emotional upheaval.
I knew there was a reason why some part of me didn't want to walk tomorrow. It wasn't conscious or anything, it's just that on most days I try to pretend it didn't happen. I try to just live, you know, but I am surrounded by breast cancer awareness month and constant fund raising at work. When I let myself be talked into walking tomorrow - I didn't realize that I would have any emotional reaction to it at all. I thought I would be fine. I thought I would just show up and be one of them, but I am not one of them. I am different. I didn't realize that to show up for an event surrounding the very thing that feels like it destroyed my life, would cause me an emotional upheaval.
This is how it works
I've been thinking a lot lately about how AA works - mainly because I have been working with two sponsees who are in really early recovery - and in trying to impart the message to them, I spend a lot of time thinking about this. How does it work? Not why, but just how. I've been feeling really good lately, better than I have in a long time actually. It can only be because I am working with these two women and have been working the program even more diligently than normal, and in so doing, I feel my life and myself changing, rather rapidly. I have experienced these times in my program where I stagnate for a while, and then something pushes me back into action and things change quickly and then I stagnate again. I think I am just entering a period of rapid growth, brought on by the pain of living the same and the desperation of wanting the relief that I know is possible. I really don't know why it works, but it does work.
One thing I learned from my sponsor is that I shouldn't tell a sponsee to do something if I am not also going to do it. This means that I've been going to more meetings than I normally do, being more honest, praying more sincerely and more often, reading the literature more...I do the things I tell them to do - they may not do them, but I do them. I can tell them how to stay sober - and when I do - that almost guarantees that I stay sober. They may not stay sober - but I will. That's how it works when you carry the message. In some ways, it is a selfish thing - you have to give it away to keep as they always say. Not only that, but I've had to change some behavior - I can't very well tell a sponsee to stop doing X, while I go do Y, when Y is just as harmful to me as X is to her. So - I stopped doing Y, just like that. It's no wonder I feel better. You have to do something different to get a different result.
I find it frustrating sometimes though - trying to convince someone that it works - how to articulate it, how to make them believe you, how to get them to try anyway. All I can do is be an example of the fact that it works. I mean - the odds of me staying sober through moving to another state, changing jobs, surviving breast cancer and marrying and divorcing my boyfriend in my first 15 months of sobriety - the odds of me getting sober and staying sober through that - were 0%. I am a walking miracle by all accounts and I have nothing but humility about that. I had nothing to do with it. It was the miracle of the program and the miracle of how it works.
The thing about how it works is that the Big Book gives us very specific instructions. I used to sit in meetings and listen to the reading of "How it Works" and hear the words but not hear them. It probably took hundreds and hundreds of readings of these paragraphs before the words meant anything to me. Today, I love to hear how it works at the beginning of a meeting. I like to close my eyes and listen to the words as someone reads them. I like to really hear them - process them, think about what they mean. There are things contained in how it works that I remind myself of on a daily basis - the things that are the key to this program that were lost on me in really early sobriety. I've written about some of them below, though I haven't included the entire thing - just a few key things that I wanted to point out to someone.
This is how it works from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 58-60 . "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." It doesn't say - you might succeed or sometimes it works. It says, "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." It says thoroughly - that means completely, not partially.
"Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest." Rigorous honesty - the half truth is not enough. You have to be brutally honest. You have to tell the truth.
"If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it - then you are ready to take certain steps." Willing to go to any length - that means willing to go to any length. That means I must be willing to work this program thoroughly - completely - not partially. I must literally be willing to do absolutely anything that is required. - as if my life depends on it - because it does. Anything short of "willing to go to any length" will not be enough.
"We thought we could find an easier softer way. But we could not." This is the easier softer way, trust me.
"Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." I have to let go of my old ideas - that means my thinking and my behaviors - and try it another way. You have to do something different to get a different result. I have to let go completely, not partially. Anything short of completely will not be enough. The result is nil until you let go absolutely. That means you do what you don't want to do, even when you don't want to do it. You do it anyway. You do it just because. You have to surrender to it.
"Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point." This is the most important part. Half of the effort does not get you half of the reward. Half measures get you nothing. Half measures will get you drunk and if you don't stay sober you can't change. And if you don't change, you won't stay sober. I have to let go absolutely and surrender, I have to work this program thoroughly and completely and with the willingness to do absolutely anything necessary to save my own life. I have to tell the truth while doing it.
"We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection." It is progress, not perfection. I don't have permission to beat myself up for not doing this perfectly.
"Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas: (a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives; (b) that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism; (c) that God could and would if He were sought." This last paragraph - it says the same thing that it does at the beginning. It doesn't say, God might help you. It says "God could and would." Here's the catch though - it says "if He were sought." You have to seek Him (or Her). It also doesn't say that if you seek God, you might be relieved of the desire to drink. What it actually says is that if you seek God, God will relieve your alcohol-ISM.
One thing I learned from my sponsor is that I shouldn't tell a sponsee to do something if I am not also going to do it. This means that I've been going to more meetings than I normally do, being more honest, praying more sincerely and more often, reading the literature more...I do the things I tell them to do - they may not do them, but I do them. I can tell them how to stay sober - and when I do - that almost guarantees that I stay sober. They may not stay sober - but I will. That's how it works when you carry the message. In some ways, it is a selfish thing - you have to give it away to keep as they always say. Not only that, but I've had to change some behavior - I can't very well tell a sponsee to stop doing X, while I go do Y, when Y is just as harmful to me as X is to her. So - I stopped doing Y, just like that. It's no wonder I feel better. You have to do something different to get a different result.
I find it frustrating sometimes though - trying to convince someone that it works - how to articulate it, how to make them believe you, how to get them to try anyway. All I can do is be an example of the fact that it works. I mean - the odds of me staying sober through moving to another state, changing jobs, surviving breast cancer and marrying and divorcing my boyfriend in my first 15 months of sobriety - the odds of me getting sober and staying sober through that - were 0%. I am a walking miracle by all accounts and I have nothing but humility about that. I had nothing to do with it. It was the miracle of the program and the miracle of how it works.
The thing about how it works is that the Big Book gives us very specific instructions. I used to sit in meetings and listen to the reading of "How it Works" and hear the words but not hear them. It probably took hundreds and hundreds of readings of these paragraphs before the words meant anything to me. Today, I love to hear how it works at the beginning of a meeting. I like to close my eyes and listen to the words as someone reads them. I like to really hear them - process them, think about what they mean. There are things contained in how it works that I remind myself of on a daily basis - the things that are the key to this program that were lost on me in really early sobriety. I've written about some of them below, though I haven't included the entire thing - just a few key things that I wanted to point out to someone.
This is how it works from the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 58-60 . "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." It doesn't say - you might succeed or sometimes it works. It says, "Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path." It says thoroughly - that means completely, not partially.
"Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves. There are such unfortunates. They are not at fault. They seem to have been born that way. They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living which demands rigorous honesty. Their chances are less than average. There are those, too, who suffer from grave emotional and mental disorders, but many of them do recover if they have the capacity to be honest." Rigorous honesty - the half truth is not enough. You have to be brutally honest. You have to tell the truth.
"If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it - then you are ready to take certain steps." Willing to go to any length - that means willing to go to any length. That means I must be willing to work this program thoroughly - completely - not partially. I must literally be willing to do absolutely anything that is required. - as if my life depends on it - because it does. Anything short of "willing to go to any length" will not be enough.
"We thought we could find an easier softer way. But we could not." This is the easier softer way, trust me.
"Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." I have to let go of my old ideas - that means my thinking and my behaviors - and try it another way. You have to do something different to get a different result. I have to let go completely, not partially. Anything short of completely will not be enough. The result is nil until you let go absolutely. That means you do what you don't want to do, even when you don't want to do it. You do it anyway. You do it just because. You have to surrender to it.
"Half measures availed us nothing. We stood at the turning point." This is the most important part. Half of the effort does not get you half of the reward. Half measures get you nothing. Half measures will get you drunk and if you don't stay sober you can't change. And if you don't change, you won't stay sober. I have to let go absolutely and surrender, I have to work this program thoroughly and completely and with the willingness to do absolutely anything necessary to save my own life. I have to tell the truth while doing it.
"We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection." It is progress, not perfection. I don't have permission to beat myself up for not doing this perfectly.
"Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas: (a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives; (b) that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism; (c) that God could and would if He were sought." This last paragraph - it says the same thing that it does at the beginning. It doesn't say, God might help you. It says "God could and would." Here's the catch though - it says "if He were sought." You have to seek Him (or Her). It also doesn't say that if you seek God, you might be relieved of the desire to drink. What it actually says is that if you seek God, God will relieve your alcohol-ISM.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Just an update
I feel a bit better than I did the other day - quite a bit actually. I didn't work at all this weekend, which was good. It really allowed me to reconnect with reality (i.e., my feelings) - and granted it didn't feel great the entire time, but it's good to feel human and now I feel better. I don't enjoy those times of feeling numb the way I used to. I always think it is appealing, but I didn't really enjoy it. It's kind of scary actually to just be able to turn everything off like that. Anyway, it's going to be another couple of weeks of working crazy hours - but I think I can handle it. I just feel a little better about it in general. I feel more serenity than I have over the past couple of weeks about it. I'm not really sure why, I just feel differently about it - it's all in perspective I guess.
I have decided to do an experiment with my higher power. My sponsor is currently engaging in such an experiment so I am going to do this on the theory - what have I got to lose? This is the same theory on which I got sober. The same theory on which I started praying to a higher power. The same theory on which I have tried anything in this program. I actually think it might already have worked - but I was going to give it 30 days of trying it. So I guess I will see if it's different in 29 more days. I'll report back on that one.
My mind is pretty clear surprisingly - I don't have much to say. I feel calm, content, connected to my higher power. No complaints really. I was thinking about progress today, about how it happens for me. When I change - it isn't subtle. It doesn't happen slowly over time. It isn't a gradual process. It isn't like I try and try to stop engaging in character defects and slowly my behavior improves. Instead I just keep blatantly doing the same stupid shit over and over again, and then one day I just wake up and I don't do it anymore. I literally just wake up a different person. It's like I just feel different - something is different and I can't always put my finger on it. It just feels like what once was a character defect is gone - it just vanishes - poof - it's like magic. I know I've posted about this phenomenon before. It's step 6 and 7. Became entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character, and humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
I think this is what happens at the exact moment that you become entirely ready and then asked to be freed. Poof.
Two days ago, I had just such a moment. I woke up different.
I have decided to do an experiment with my higher power. My sponsor is currently engaging in such an experiment so I am going to do this on the theory - what have I got to lose? This is the same theory on which I got sober. The same theory on which I started praying to a higher power. The same theory on which I have tried anything in this program. I actually think it might already have worked - but I was going to give it 30 days of trying it. So I guess I will see if it's different in 29 more days. I'll report back on that one.
My mind is pretty clear surprisingly - I don't have much to say. I feel calm, content, connected to my higher power. No complaints really. I was thinking about progress today, about how it happens for me. When I change - it isn't subtle. It doesn't happen slowly over time. It isn't a gradual process. It isn't like I try and try to stop engaging in character defects and slowly my behavior improves. Instead I just keep blatantly doing the same stupid shit over and over again, and then one day I just wake up and I don't do it anymore. I literally just wake up a different person. It's like I just feel different - something is different and I can't always put my finger on it. It just feels like what once was a character defect is gone - it just vanishes - poof - it's like magic. I know I've posted about this phenomenon before. It's step 6 and 7. Became entirely ready to have God remove all our defects of character, and humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
I think this is what happens at the exact moment that you become entirely ready and then asked to be freed. Poof.
Two days ago, I had just such a moment. I woke up different.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Who here is fooled?
I am not an optimistic person. I'm just not. Not at all really. I consider it a character defect, and I work on it. I am mentioning this because this post that I am about to write - it could be a totally different post - it just depends on my perspective. This post could be about what a great and wonderful life I have and how I owe it all to AA. It could be hopeful and happy - but my natural state isn't either of these things and I tend to come at things, I guess I would say, from a darker angle, from the down side - it is all in my approach. Tomorrow I may write that post about how great and wonderful my life is and how I wouldn't trade it in for another life. Sometimes I actually do feel that way. But this is not that post. This isn't the direction from which I am looking at the moment. It could just be the time of year. The fall makes me sad. I got sober in the fall two years ago, the holidays are never happy and it is just a time of reflection for me.
I have had some hesitation to post about just anything and everything lately. I have a sponsee reading this blog - which is fine of course, but I have such hope for her that I don't want to ruin it with my lack of optimism. Sometimes I feel like I am supposed to be this great example of how to work the AA program. Sometimes I am that. Sometimes I fall short of that. Other times, I just fail at that completely. Sometimes I don't try all that hard. I am supposed to be happy, joyous and free - those are the things that we are supposed to want and get from AA. Happy, joyous and free. At the moment I feel like a bad example of those things and I don't want to discourage her. But this blog is the one and only place in my life that I don't censor myself, so I can't start now just for her sake.
Sometimes I worry that we in AA have all fooled ourselves and each other, and that she will find out that we are all just a bunch of fakers and then she will pretend right along with us, maybe, hopefully. Sometimes I think we have actually fooled ourselves to such a degree that we do really believe anything is possible. When in fact, what I feel like telling her, is that this is still just life, and it is difficult and sad and disappointing. I worry sometimes that this amazing life that we tell each other is possible - it is just fiction - it is something we have imagined up for ourselves and we talk all about it like it is happening all around us, because we all need something to hang on to or to look forward to - without which this really would be intolerable wouldn't it? What I should probably remind her of - is that those things - the happy, joyous and free part of life - those things are a choice. That really is the answer to all of this - it lies in what you choose for yourself and this is all about learning how to choose differently.
I do feel those things sometimes, happy, I have even posted about what those times feel like - but my default is laced with negativity and for me to live in a state of serenity, contentment, happiness and hope - requires a very deliberate effort. It is no secret that my mood fluctuates rapidly and that I might wake up tomorrow feeling completely the opposite. It is probably silly really to even post right now, while I feel this way, because I know that it is fleeting. I have learned to pay little attention to my moment to moment feelings because I know they change. But I do think sometimes that even in those moments of optimism and hopefulness, and happiness - what underlies those things is still the same because I am still me.
I have been trying for a while to figure out why I'm unhappy. Is it chemical - should I try taking something again even though it didn't work? Would I just be fooling myself? What is this thing that we all talk about in AA that I have posted about before - a more amazing life than anything you ever could imagine? What is that? A life beyond your wildest dreams. What is that? People always talk about getting these things. I think I have figured it out, and this is going to sound horribly negative probably, but again, tomorrow I might write a different post about the exact same thing. What you get is just a life, no more amazing than the next one, or maybe you get to keep the one you had, and maybe it seems amazing and beyond your wildest dreams, but that is only because you have learned to adjust your expectations - or rather, you have been forced to. Maybe you have let go of your expectations completely. Suddenly what looked intolerable, seems more amazing than anything you could have hoped for. But what underlies it is really the same and it is still disappointing.
My life - it isn't what I expected. Sure, it is amazing, if I look at it independently of those expectations. If you expected nothing, how could you be disappointed? You wouldn't be. This is about changing yourself to meet conditions, that's all. This is about acceptance. You can be happy under any circumstances, you just have to accept it whatever it is. Is my life better than it was 2 years ago when I came into AA? Yes, infinitely. Is it very much the same as it was 2 years ago. Yes. I live in a different city and I have a different job and make a lot more money, but my life is the same. It looks different, drastically in some ways, because I have done just what AA tells you to do - change yourself and your expectations to meet conditions over which you have no control. I think I fool myself sometimes into believing that I have really let go of the things I thought I wanted out of life, but I haven't. I have glimpses of what it is like to feel happy with a life that does not include those things - that does not include finding a man or having children - but I am not actually okay with that. So the happiness is only fleeting and it feels fake to me. It feels contrived.
People have never been able to understand why I would be unhappy with the life that I have - because I have a great job and good career and I'm financially successful - those are the things that other people focus on because those are the things you can easily see. That is only a matter of someone comparing their insides to my outsides though. Trust me - my insides don't match my outsides. It isn't that I am unhappy necessarily. Of course I am grateful, tremendously. I guess I do have AA to thank for the happiness that I do have because it is AA that has enabled me to shift my perspective at all. I am not unhappy with what my life is, I am not disappointed when I think about it. I am not ungrateful. But I am unhappy with what it isn't, and I am definitely disappointed.
I have had some hesitation to post about just anything and everything lately. I have a sponsee reading this blog - which is fine of course, but I have such hope for her that I don't want to ruin it with my lack of optimism. Sometimes I feel like I am supposed to be this great example of how to work the AA program. Sometimes I am that. Sometimes I fall short of that. Other times, I just fail at that completely. Sometimes I don't try all that hard. I am supposed to be happy, joyous and free - those are the things that we are supposed to want and get from AA. Happy, joyous and free. At the moment I feel like a bad example of those things and I don't want to discourage her. But this blog is the one and only place in my life that I don't censor myself, so I can't start now just for her sake.
Sometimes I worry that we in AA have all fooled ourselves and each other, and that she will find out that we are all just a bunch of fakers and then she will pretend right along with us, maybe, hopefully. Sometimes I think we have actually fooled ourselves to such a degree that we do really believe anything is possible. When in fact, what I feel like telling her, is that this is still just life, and it is difficult and sad and disappointing. I worry sometimes that this amazing life that we tell each other is possible - it is just fiction - it is something we have imagined up for ourselves and we talk all about it like it is happening all around us, because we all need something to hang on to or to look forward to - without which this really would be intolerable wouldn't it? What I should probably remind her of - is that those things - the happy, joyous and free part of life - those things are a choice. That really is the answer to all of this - it lies in what you choose for yourself and this is all about learning how to choose differently.
I do feel those things sometimes, happy, I have even posted about what those times feel like - but my default is laced with negativity and for me to live in a state of serenity, contentment, happiness and hope - requires a very deliberate effort. It is no secret that my mood fluctuates rapidly and that I might wake up tomorrow feeling completely the opposite. It is probably silly really to even post right now, while I feel this way, because I know that it is fleeting. I have learned to pay little attention to my moment to moment feelings because I know they change. But I do think sometimes that even in those moments of optimism and hopefulness, and happiness - what underlies those things is still the same because I am still me.
I have been trying for a while to figure out why I'm unhappy. Is it chemical - should I try taking something again even though it didn't work? Would I just be fooling myself? What is this thing that we all talk about in AA that I have posted about before - a more amazing life than anything you ever could imagine? What is that? A life beyond your wildest dreams. What is that? People always talk about getting these things. I think I have figured it out, and this is going to sound horribly negative probably, but again, tomorrow I might write a different post about the exact same thing. What you get is just a life, no more amazing than the next one, or maybe you get to keep the one you had, and maybe it seems amazing and beyond your wildest dreams, but that is only because you have learned to adjust your expectations - or rather, you have been forced to. Maybe you have let go of your expectations completely. Suddenly what looked intolerable, seems more amazing than anything you could have hoped for. But what underlies it is really the same and it is still disappointing.
My life - it isn't what I expected. Sure, it is amazing, if I look at it independently of those expectations. If you expected nothing, how could you be disappointed? You wouldn't be. This is about changing yourself to meet conditions, that's all. This is about acceptance. You can be happy under any circumstances, you just have to accept it whatever it is. Is my life better than it was 2 years ago when I came into AA? Yes, infinitely. Is it very much the same as it was 2 years ago. Yes. I live in a different city and I have a different job and make a lot more money, but my life is the same. It looks different, drastically in some ways, because I have done just what AA tells you to do - change yourself and your expectations to meet conditions over which you have no control. I think I fool myself sometimes into believing that I have really let go of the things I thought I wanted out of life, but I haven't. I have glimpses of what it is like to feel happy with a life that does not include those things - that does not include finding a man or having children - but I am not actually okay with that. So the happiness is only fleeting and it feels fake to me. It feels contrived.
People have never been able to understand why I would be unhappy with the life that I have - because I have a great job and good career and I'm financially successful - those are the things that other people focus on because those are the things you can easily see. That is only a matter of someone comparing their insides to my outsides though. Trust me - my insides don't match my outsides. It isn't that I am unhappy necessarily. Of course I am grateful, tremendously. I guess I do have AA to thank for the happiness that I do have because it is AA that has enabled me to shift my perspective at all. I am not unhappy with what my life is, I am not disappointed when I think about it. I am not ungrateful. But I am unhappy with what it isn't, and I am definitely disappointed.
Friday, October 12, 2007
It takes your breath away
I've wanted to write, but I just haven't had time. I don't have time now really either - this is day 12 of working with no day off and well, I don't even feel like talking about that. There are other things on my mind - so many things, and I just need to write.
I have this inability to maintain perspective. I find it amazing, that after everything I went through - I cannot manage to hang on to a little perspective about life. It comes and it goes. I lose it and then get it again, and lose it again. I remember the first time I realized I had lost it - I just thought that the perspective I had gained about life by surviving breast cancer was something that would stay with me - but I woke up one day and I didn't have it anymore. It was in living my life that I had lost it. I manage to find it again every time though. I find it when I see my nephew laugh and play or when I sit in a doctor's office for 3 hours waiting for mammogram results. I find it - but I only really have it in moments.
Ever since the beginning of September, when I had my last mammogram - I have been living largely out from under the fear of dying. I just haven't felt that fear. I have been operating on the belief that I will get to live the rest of my life. Living as if - I guess. And in living that life, that I so desperately wanted to get to live, I have lost sight of the point again.
I have been working for days, I am stressed about this project, the partner isn't helping, it isn't getting done, am I going to get a raise in January, I want a raise in January, I better get a raise in January, I deserve one don't I, how the hell is this project going to get done, am I going to have to work 12 more days before I get a break, probably, should I pay my loan, what if I don't quite have the 100K for my down payment, how am I going to get this project done, I'm tired, I better get a raise, I hope they are aware that I practically live here, I need to find a guy, what if I don't find one before I'm infertile, what am I going to do. This is the pathetic contents of my head right now. I have lost it again, that perspective that allows me to see things for what they are, to appreciate them, to love them, to enjoy them, to believe that it will be okay, to understand what matters in the end, to not freak out over nothing. I have lost it.
I was getting undressed last night and my rib cage hurt. My rib cage hurts, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Wait, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Shit, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Shit. I fall on the floor and start praying to my higher power who has been basically missing these days. I don't know where my higher power has gone - I just don't feel the presence of it since that night in the restaurant. My sponsor tells me to pray anyway because obviously something kept me from drinking that night and it obviously wasn't me. Isn't this conversation getting old though? Dear God, sorry I am such a fuck up and I can't seem to remember the point of life, but please, I am begging you, don't let me die of cancer, please don't let it have spread to my rib cage. I promise - if you just let me live, I'll remember the point this time. I swear. I promise. I get it this time.
My rib cage hurts. I know - scientifically, it is probably nothing. But I can't explain it - it hurts for no reason and there is nothing rational about the fear of breast cancer spreading and having my life ripped out from underneath me again. There was a point when suddenly it became enough to just be alive - it didn't matter anymore whether I found the right guy or was able to have children or made partner at my firm, or got a raise, or whatever - nothing mattered in those moments when I thought my life might be cut short. To just get to live, and to live whatever life I was given, was enough. It was a gift - truly, every second of my life is a gift. I feel like I am careless with it sometimes - because then you live and the fear dissipates a bit and suddenly the things that didn't seem to matter seem to be the end of the world. I go along the way I have been for a while now - living I guess, free of that fear that unfortunately grounds me in some sense - and let me tell you, when I felt that pain, and when the fear enveloped me, the reality of the uncertainty that I have to live with, when your perspective gets shifted like flipping a switch and you find yourself on the floor, begging for your life again, it takes you breath away.
I have this inability to maintain perspective. I find it amazing, that after everything I went through - I cannot manage to hang on to a little perspective about life. It comes and it goes. I lose it and then get it again, and lose it again. I remember the first time I realized I had lost it - I just thought that the perspective I had gained about life by surviving breast cancer was something that would stay with me - but I woke up one day and I didn't have it anymore. It was in living my life that I had lost it. I manage to find it again every time though. I find it when I see my nephew laugh and play or when I sit in a doctor's office for 3 hours waiting for mammogram results. I find it - but I only really have it in moments.
Ever since the beginning of September, when I had my last mammogram - I have been living largely out from under the fear of dying. I just haven't felt that fear. I have been operating on the belief that I will get to live the rest of my life. Living as if - I guess. And in living that life, that I so desperately wanted to get to live, I have lost sight of the point again.
I have been working for days, I am stressed about this project, the partner isn't helping, it isn't getting done, am I going to get a raise in January, I want a raise in January, I better get a raise in January, I deserve one don't I, how the hell is this project going to get done, am I going to have to work 12 more days before I get a break, probably, should I pay my loan, what if I don't quite have the 100K for my down payment, how am I going to get this project done, I'm tired, I better get a raise, I hope they are aware that I practically live here, I need to find a guy, what if I don't find one before I'm infertile, what am I going to do. This is the pathetic contents of my head right now. I have lost it again, that perspective that allows me to see things for what they are, to appreciate them, to love them, to enjoy them, to believe that it will be okay, to understand what matters in the end, to not freak out over nothing. I have lost it.
I was getting undressed last night and my rib cage hurt. My rib cage hurts, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Wait, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Shit, I have a pain in my rib cage again. Shit. I fall on the floor and start praying to my higher power who has been basically missing these days. I don't know where my higher power has gone - I just don't feel the presence of it since that night in the restaurant. My sponsor tells me to pray anyway because obviously something kept me from drinking that night and it obviously wasn't me. Isn't this conversation getting old though? Dear God, sorry I am such a fuck up and I can't seem to remember the point of life, but please, I am begging you, don't let me die of cancer, please don't let it have spread to my rib cage. I promise - if you just let me live, I'll remember the point this time. I swear. I promise. I get it this time.
My rib cage hurts. I know - scientifically, it is probably nothing. But I can't explain it - it hurts for no reason and there is nothing rational about the fear of breast cancer spreading and having my life ripped out from underneath me again. There was a point when suddenly it became enough to just be alive - it didn't matter anymore whether I found the right guy or was able to have children or made partner at my firm, or got a raise, or whatever - nothing mattered in those moments when I thought my life might be cut short. To just get to live, and to live whatever life I was given, was enough. It was a gift - truly, every second of my life is a gift. I feel like I am careless with it sometimes - because then you live and the fear dissipates a bit and suddenly the things that didn't seem to matter seem to be the end of the world. I go along the way I have been for a while now - living I guess, free of that fear that unfortunately grounds me in some sense - and let me tell you, when I felt that pain, and when the fear enveloped me, the reality of the uncertainty that I have to live with, when your perspective gets shifted like flipping a switch and you find yourself on the floor, begging for your life again, it takes you breath away.
Monday, October 08, 2007
Just checking to see if I am still human
If I don't write now, I may not get a chance. I need to just check in - am I alive? I feel like a robot. I mentioned in my last post the ability I have to not feel, and well, to work (literally, work) my way into oblivion. I'm operating on autopilot at the moment. This is the morning of my 8th day of working with no day off, which granted may not seem like a lot - but just given the status of things at the moment, I am expecting another 12 days before I actually get to have even one whole weekend day to myself. I am not complaining (me, complain? Never). All things considered, this happens maybe once every three months and that's really not bad at all. I am tired though.
I just go through the motions. 6:20 get up, 7:45 get to work, 8:00 read blogs, 8:30 start working, 7:30 finish working, go home, eat, email, return phone calls, go to bed, get up, do it again. Sometimes there is a meeting squeezed in there. I have to say - despite the level of stress I am feeling, I am handling it pretty well. I have to think it can only be because the number of meetings I am attending isn't suffering at the moment. Because I have been helping someone new, I have been going to more meetings than I normally would in the middle of being this busy at work. When I am at work 11 or 12 hours a day, and working Saturday and Sunday, something has to give. Usually it is the number of meetings I get to. This time though - I am sacrificing a bit of work time to be there for someone new - which is a good thing.
But I don't feel very human when I work like this. I did cry though. Yesterday, in Target. I went there at 7 on my way home from work. I was tired. I cried because someone died yesterday while running the marathon (which was cancelled about half way through because of the heat and only 4,000 of 24,000 runners crossed the finish line). It made me terribly sad to think about his family and all those people who trained for it. And then I thought about my mother and it was like my heart seized up and turned to stone. Rock solid and impenetrable. I was trying to figure out why I have had no reaction to our last conversation and the possible end of our "relationship."
The truth is - there is nothing there to miss. The absence of my mother feels, well, it feels the same as the presence of my mother. I've taken care of myself since I was a little kid. For a brief moment when I thought about what that would mean to never talk to my mother again - I thought - oh my god, I don't have a mother, what am I going to do? The same thing I have always done. Take care of myself as if I don't have a mother. I was thinking - you can miss what you have never had - you know the nice happy family with the happy stories, the really great parents who are supportive and there for you and loved you and took care of you. I can miss that - but it is really only the idea of it that I am missing. I don't even know what that looks like and I can't even really imagine it or articulate what it would have felt like to have that. I just miss the idea of things, that's all. But I don't really know what I'm missing. I only know what I know.
The truth is, everything is the same - in her presence or her absence. I am the same - and I am not lost. I felt a little bad for feeling so cold - for feeling like I didn't care. I felt like I should react, I should be devastated. I am not devastated. If I am anything - it is only sad for her, and even that is difficult to come by because the misery she lives in is of her own making. Maybe it's okay - to feel like I don't care. And to think about her makes me grateful because I have been blessed with a gift that she doesn't have - which is my sobriety. I have also been blessed with the knowledge that I have a choice to live differently. Not only do I know it is a choice, but I have been blessed with ability to choose differently and to live my life differently than she has and it is amazing to actually be able to put that choice into action. The irony of that - is that my mother always used to say - you always have a choice. Everything is a choice - you always have choices. That might be the one and only thing I learned from my mother.
I just go through the motions. 6:20 get up, 7:45 get to work, 8:00 read blogs, 8:30 start working, 7:30 finish working, go home, eat, email, return phone calls, go to bed, get up, do it again. Sometimes there is a meeting squeezed in there. I have to say - despite the level of stress I am feeling, I am handling it pretty well. I have to think it can only be because the number of meetings I am attending isn't suffering at the moment. Because I have been helping someone new, I have been going to more meetings than I normally would in the middle of being this busy at work. When I am at work 11 or 12 hours a day, and working Saturday and Sunday, something has to give. Usually it is the number of meetings I get to. This time though - I am sacrificing a bit of work time to be there for someone new - which is a good thing.
But I don't feel very human when I work like this. I did cry though. Yesterday, in Target. I went there at 7 on my way home from work. I was tired. I cried because someone died yesterday while running the marathon (which was cancelled about half way through because of the heat and only 4,000 of 24,000 runners crossed the finish line). It made me terribly sad to think about his family and all those people who trained for it. And then I thought about my mother and it was like my heart seized up and turned to stone. Rock solid and impenetrable. I was trying to figure out why I have had no reaction to our last conversation and the possible end of our "relationship."
The truth is - there is nothing there to miss. The absence of my mother feels, well, it feels the same as the presence of my mother. I've taken care of myself since I was a little kid. For a brief moment when I thought about what that would mean to never talk to my mother again - I thought - oh my god, I don't have a mother, what am I going to do? The same thing I have always done. Take care of myself as if I don't have a mother. I was thinking - you can miss what you have never had - you know the nice happy family with the happy stories, the really great parents who are supportive and there for you and loved you and took care of you. I can miss that - but it is really only the idea of it that I am missing. I don't even know what that looks like and I can't even really imagine it or articulate what it would have felt like to have that. I just miss the idea of things, that's all. But I don't really know what I'm missing. I only know what I know.
The truth is, everything is the same - in her presence or her absence. I am the same - and I am not lost. I felt a little bad for feeling so cold - for feeling like I didn't care. I felt like I should react, I should be devastated. I am not devastated. If I am anything - it is only sad for her, and even that is difficult to come by because the misery she lives in is of her own making. Maybe it's okay - to feel like I don't care. And to think about her makes me grateful because I have been blessed with a gift that she doesn't have - which is my sobriety. I have also been blessed with the knowledge that I have a choice to live differently. Not only do I know it is a choice, but I have been blessed with ability to choose differently and to live my life differently than she has and it is amazing to actually be able to put that choice into action. The irony of that - is that my mother always used to say - you always have a choice. Everything is a choice - you always have choices. That might be the one and only thing I learned from my mother.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
During the pause
I am taking a second - to breathe, to asses how I feel, to asses my mental state, to check my connection to my higher power (which, oddly, is missing). When things get crazy at work and I lose myself in the midst of what feels like chaos, I really have to make a conscious effort to check in and see just exactly what is going on with me. It can be easy for me to go for weeks, or a month even with no real awareness of myself. I just go through the motions. I often find, in that moment when I pause - that things aren't what they seem - my reality and actual reality are not the same thing - and I also find that I am right in the middle of trying to ignore or avoid something. It doesn't take alcohol, or anything for that matter, for me to check out for a while. It's automatic and unconscious even. I don't realize until I come out of it, where I've been. I repeatedly have those moments where I think wow - I don't think I have felt anything in like a month.
My stress level is pretty high at the moment. I haven't had the greatest week - between the stress of my job, the fight I am in with Volkswagen, the aftermath of the situation with my mother (I'm still waiting for that to hit me, aren't I going to have an emotional reaction to this?), and last Friday when I almost drank...when I actually stop to think about how I feel, I don't feel great, which isn't surprising. I feel tremendously stressed and on edge. I guess if you look at the situation from a higher, broader level - everything is fine, great actually. But down here where I'm at, in the moment to moment, it feels sort of unbearable and like it's never going to end. My natural tendency is to look for immediate relief. My tendency is not to want to go through the feeling, it is to go around it or avoid it altogether if possible. I'll go through the experience - just so long as I don't have to associate any emotion with it. That is how I have always survived. There is a just a disconnect between what I experience and what I feel associated with my experiences. You might say the feeling part is lacking altogether.
People tell me that I tell the story of surviving breast cancer as if I am reporting the story of someone else going through it - as if I have no emotional connection. I would say that is quite accurate. I really don't feel much of a connection to that experience. I have only bits and pieces of emotion here and there that I associate with certain things that happened during those 7 months. I have anger over some things, I have sadness, I have mostly fear, but, for the most part, like all things, I have compartmentalized the pieces and removed myself almost completely from the situation. I was there right, I must have been. Or was I just working 50 hours a week and pretending to be somewhere else? If it weren't for the fact that my hair is still shorter than it used to be, and if I didn't have a physical reminder every time I take my shirt off - I think I could seriously convince myself that it never happened. Much like my childhood actually - my brother and I will tell stories and there always seem to be a lot of things I don't remember. It's like I wasn't there - and in fact, in a lot of ways - I don't think I was.
That's how I feel right now - not here. I do this sometimes, where I let my job consume me. I just let it swallow me. It wasn't planned, it just happens that I have a major deadline on a major project and the whole thing is riding on me. And while I am not enjoying the stress of it or knowing that I will be working all month with little break, even on the weekends, part of me thought - ahhhhhh - here's a little relief. This is what it's like to escape from myself, to escape from the emotion - it is to be somewhere else completely while physically present in front of you. It's like a drug sort of. I've learned though to both love that and hate that about my job. It's like dreading the up-swing of my mood which can change pretty rapidly, because I know there can only be a down swing to follow. There is no easy way to come off of the high of working like I'm working and the stress that goes with it. The only way is to crash. I love it and I hate all at the same time.
It's different this time though - I don't usually realize that I've been in a period of total avoidance of myself and my emotions until I crash, somehow surprised every time that it's happening. It hits like a tidal wave and knocks me over. I'm more aware of it this time. I know there is something there and I'm stuffing it. So aware that I paused yesterday for a second - it was like flipping a switch - just to see what, if anything, I am not processing. And there it was - in that pause, all I could think was - but I'm still not happy. I had written all those posts about why I can't just be happy - what is wrong with me that I can't just be happy? And when you strip it all away, my job, the stress, the money, my car, my friends, my family, there is a very definite hole, a very definite emptiness. You take those things away from me, all those things that I am trying almost frantically to lose myself in the midst of - you take them away and there isn't anything left. Something is missing.
My stress level is pretty high at the moment. I haven't had the greatest week - between the stress of my job, the fight I am in with Volkswagen, the aftermath of the situation with my mother (I'm still waiting for that to hit me, aren't I going to have an emotional reaction to this?), and last Friday when I almost drank...when I actually stop to think about how I feel, I don't feel great, which isn't surprising. I feel tremendously stressed and on edge. I guess if you look at the situation from a higher, broader level - everything is fine, great actually. But down here where I'm at, in the moment to moment, it feels sort of unbearable and like it's never going to end. My natural tendency is to look for immediate relief. My tendency is not to want to go through the feeling, it is to go around it or avoid it altogether if possible. I'll go through the experience - just so long as I don't have to associate any emotion with it. That is how I have always survived. There is a just a disconnect between what I experience and what I feel associated with my experiences. You might say the feeling part is lacking altogether.
People tell me that I tell the story of surviving breast cancer as if I am reporting the story of someone else going through it - as if I have no emotional connection. I would say that is quite accurate. I really don't feel much of a connection to that experience. I have only bits and pieces of emotion here and there that I associate with certain things that happened during those 7 months. I have anger over some things, I have sadness, I have mostly fear, but, for the most part, like all things, I have compartmentalized the pieces and removed myself almost completely from the situation. I was there right, I must have been. Or was I just working 50 hours a week and pretending to be somewhere else? If it weren't for the fact that my hair is still shorter than it used to be, and if I didn't have a physical reminder every time I take my shirt off - I think I could seriously convince myself that it never happened. Much like my childhood actually - my brother and I will tell stories and there always seem to be a lot of things I don't remember. It's like I wasn't there - and in fact, in a lot of ways - I don't think I was.
That's how I feel right now - not here. I do this sometimes, where I let my job consume me. I just let it swallow me. It wasn't planned, it just happens that I have a major deadline on a major project and the whole thing is riding on me. And while I am not enjoying the stress of it or knowing that I will be working all month with little break, even on the weekends, part of me thought - ahhhhhh - here's a little relief. This is what it's like to escape from myself, to escape from the emotion - it is to be somewhere else completely while physically present in front of you. It's like a drug sort of. I've learned though to both love that and hate that about my job. It's like dreading the up-swing of my mood which can change pretty rapidly, because I know there can only be a down swing to follow. There is no easy way to come off of the high of working like I'm working and the stress that goes with it. The only way is to crash. I love it and I hate all at the same time.
It's different this time though - I don't usually realize that I've been in a period of total avoidance of myself and my emotions until I crash, somehow surprised every time that it's happening. It hits like a tidal wave and knocks me over. I'm more aware of it this time. I know there is something there and I'm stuffing it. So aware that I paused yesterday for a second - it was like flipping a switch - just to see what, if anything, I am not processing. And there it was - in that pause, all I could think was - but I'm still not happy. I had written all those posts about why I can't just be happy - what is wrong with me that I can't just be happy? And when you strip it all away, my job, the stress, the money, my car, my friends, my family, there is a very definite hole, a very definite emptiness. You take those things away from me, all those things that I am trying almost frantically to lose myself in the midst of - you take them away and there isn't anything left. Something is missing.
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
CAN I GET YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE?
You are not immune. So don't think for even a second that you are. You have to be vigilant, always.
I feel better today, but wow, these past few days, since Friday, have been about getting my attention. Maybe I just needed a reminder, that's all. I didn't think that I was being complacent in my program, but I guess you can never think when you walk into such a situation, like dinner with non-sober people, that you are really safe. These past few days have felt like very early sobriety. A lot of my past feelings and thoughts are in front of me, I am experiencing them, my sensitivity to everything is heightened, and talking to this new friend of mine is like talking to myself two years ago. I am sure that it has just brought stuff up and she describes what it's like to feel that anxiety and compulsion to drink with such precision that I feel it right along with her.
I do feel better though. I feel grounded again. I feel like my sobriety is stable and in tact and like I might not lose it to the bottle of vanilla in the cupboard. Yes, that's right. If you stop drinking and you are suddenly obsessed and all you can think about is whether there might be something you could do with the vanilla in the cupboard - the only thing in the house with alcohol in it - maybe mix it with a little cold medicine - to get some relief - you might have a problem.
What I wouldn't give for a little relief.
I am extremely stressed about work, not to mention the fight that I am in with Volkswagen. Sometimes I think my ability to deal with stress was better before I was sober - not because I consciously drank to deal with stress but because my life was in constant chaos and I am good in the middle of the stress of it. Before my life was drama, chaos, stress, turmoil, upset and I used to operate on auto-pilot in that world. Today my life is relatively uncomplicated and stress free. I have a certain amount of serenity or a certain calm about me so that when the chaos switch gets flipped I am not used to dealing with it anymore.
It's probably no surprise that I nearly lost it on Friday. The holidays are coming - which is always upsetting, my level of stress at work just doubled over what it has been the past two months, then there is my car situation, the situation with my mother...I know these things don't seem like a lot, but they are getting to me. I really feel like my level of stress at work is going to push me over the edge. I'm not making it to meetings this week - I already can tell that I am not going to make it tomorrow, I am going to have to work this weekend, and probably 12 hour days to get this project done and I seem to have no ability to concentrate.
I wish my sponsor would call me back. I feel better, but I don't feel right. Something is still off.
I feel better today, but wow, these past few days, since Friday, have been about getting my attention. Maybe I just needed a reminder, that's all. I didn't think that I was being complacent in my program, but I guess you can never think when you walk into such a situation, like dinner with non-sober people, that you are really safe. These past few days have felt like very early sobriety. A lot of my past feelings and thoughts are in front of me, I am experiencing them, my sensitivity to everything is heightened, and talking to this new friend of mine is like talking to myself two years ago. I am sure that it has just brought stuff up and she describes what it's like to feel that anxiety and compulsion to drink with such precision that I feel it right along with her.
I do feel better though. I feel grounded again. I feel like my sobriety is stable and in tact and like I might not lose it to the bottle of vanilla in the cupboard. Yes, that's right. If you stop drinking and you are suddenly obsessed and all you can think about is whether there might be something you could do with the vanilla in the cupboard - the only thing in the house with alcohol in it - maybe mix it with a little cold medicine - to get some relief - you might have a problem.
What I wouldn't give for a little relief.
I am extremely stressed about work, not to mention the fight that I am in with Volkswagen. Sometimes I think my ability to deal with stress was better before I was sober - not because I consciously drank to deal with stress but because my life was in constant chaos and I am good in the middle of the stress of it. Before my life was drama, chaos, stress, turmoil, upset and I used to operate on auto-pilot in that world. Today my life is relatively uncomplicated and stress free. I have a certain amount of serenity or a certain calm about me so that when the chaos switch gets flipped I am not used to dealing with it anymore.
It's probably no surprise that I nearly lost it on Friday. The holidays are coming - which is always upsetting, my level of stress at work just doubled over what it has been the past two months, then there is my car situation, the situation with my mother...I know these things don't seem like a lot, but they are getting to me. I really feel like my level of stress at work is going to push me over the edge. I'm not making it to meetings this week - I already can tell that I am not going to make it tomorrow, I am going to have to work this weekend, and probably 12 hour days to get this project done and I seem to have no ability to concentrate.
I wish my sponsor would call me back. I feel better, but I don't feel right. Something is still off.
Monday, October 01, 2007
It still looks the same
So I have been taking this trip down memory lane - and it is, well, it is acutely painful. I keep reading these old emails - we are talking hundreds of emails - daily emails recounting every detail of the journey. I can't stop reading them. It is fascinating. It is just fascinating to feel what I feel at the moment, which is raw, and to read this story of my life. And it reads very much like a story. The honesty strikes me because I am not all that honest of a person, or I wasn't - but I am in the privacy of these emails. I am incredibly honest. I always find the truth there.
Anyway, when I read this below, I thought - some things never change. Some things, like the fear, the loneliness, abandonment, the self-hatred - mostly the fear, running, from yourself. I stayed sober for 35 days initially, and the last time I drank was December 13, 2005. What I included below is what I wrote to my friend just hours before I walked into the hotel bar. I feel it all, right now, with the same intensity. These are the things I still write about - the things that I am afraid of, the things I seek relief from.
December 13, 2005
“I think my panic about this is mostly over going out tonight. Plus I haven't seen this guy in 2.5 years - and we dated twice, so that will be weird. It's incredibly powerful fear. The thought that I am going to drink coupled with the feeling that I can't stop myself - it literally scares the absolute shit out of me. It is terrifying in a way that I can't even explain. I hope that I get it this time and I stop making plans like this. It is this kind of fear that finally got me to get powerlessness in the way that I think is actually required in order to give into to this program.
That night before Thanksgiving when I thought - I'm going to drink and I don't want to, and if I can't drink and I can't stop myself, I would rather die - I had new found appreciation for this. Until that night I was not sure. I mean, I believed I had a problem, but I didn't understand. Yet I still can't seem to get the choice part. Of course I'm choosing to drink tonight. I've set myself up to do it and to be able to blame it on the circumstances. And that's just a completely alcoholic way of doing it though isn't it? It's too easy, cause I can blame it on someone or something else. The thing is, I don't want to drink tonight. I've never not wanted to drink so bad in my entire life.
I'm scared I think. I have been for days. It's why this past weekend was so hard. I usually don't identify fear like this. I hate admitting this kind of thing. I hate admitting to being afraid. But I'm afraid to let go of this. I liked that numb feeling more than I realized. I'm afraid to live without it. I mean, I know I've been managing so far, but I've also been stuffing a lot of my feelings from the past. And I am afraid to feel any of them. I'm terrified of it. I just remember that when I was feeling some of it, it was so bad that I thought it could kill me. I'm afraid to even try. I'm afraid of being alone when it happens. I scare myself when I'm alone.
I'm afraid that I'll never feel okay about myself as long as no one else wants me. I'm afraid I'm always going to feel bad about myself in that way. That whole, what's wrong with me? What's so horrible about me? I'm afraid of not being me and afraid of being me at the same time. Of never being able to connect with anyone. I'm afraid that my attachments will always be what they are, which is non-existent and that I will always be running so that I don't get left. Always running, always leaving, always detaching. Because leaving is not like being left. There is something different about it.
I have a surface kind of closeness with a lot of people. At a glance I have really close friends but I am not intertwined with them. There is a serious disconnect between me and other people. My friend Andy – the friend who told me 3 weeks ago that he didn't care about me and wasn't going to be my friend anymore - guess how much I cared? Not at all. I was angry for a day because he made that decision not really understanding my circumstances - and then once the anger dissipated, I had no reaction. I literally didn't care and this was a person I had known for 8 years - we were really pretty "close." It is like I said - literally as if he was never in my life at all. Like he slipped out unnoticed and there isn't anything left behind. I have everything and everyone neatly compartmentalized - safe in their own box. Now I just need to stuff you into yours and I'm good.”
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
Anyway, when I read this below, I thought - some things never change. Some things, like the fear, the loneliness, abandonment, the self-hatred - mostly the fear, running, from yourself. I stayed sober for 35 days initially, and the last time I drank was December 13, 2005. What I included below is what I wrote to my friend just hours before I walked into the hotel bar. I feel it all, right now, with the same intensity. These are the things I still write about - the things that I am afraid of, the things I seek relief from.
December 13, 2005
“I think my panic about this is mostly over going out tonight. Plus I haven't seen this guy in 2.5 years - and we dated twice, so that will be weird. It's incredibly powerful fear. The thought that I am going to drink coupled with the feeling that I can't stop myself - it literally scares the absolute shit out of me. It is terrifying in a way that I can't even explain. I hope that I get it this time and I stop making plans like this. It is this kind of fear that finally got me to get powerlessness in the way that I think is actually required in order to give into to this program.
That night before Thanksgiving when I thought - I'm going to drink and I don't want to, and if I can't drink and I can't stop myself, I would rather die - I had new found appreciation for this. Until that night I was not sure. I mean, I believed I had a problem, but I didn't understand. Yet I still can't seem to get the choice part. Of course I'm choosing to drink tonight. I've set myself up to do it and to be able to blame it on the circumstances. And that's just a completely alcoholic way of doing it though isn't it? It's too easy, cause I can blame it on someone or something else. The thing is, I don't want to drink tonight. I've never not wanted to drink so bad in my entire life.
I'm scared I think. I have been for days. It's why this past weekend was so hard. I usually don't identify fear like this. I hate admitting this kind of thing. I hate admitting to being afraid. But I'm afraid to let go of this. I liked that numb feeling more than I realized. I'm afraid to live without it. I mean, I know I've been managing so far, but I've also been stuffing a lot of my feelings from the past. And I am afraid to feel any of them. I'm terrified of it. I just remember that when I was feeling some of it, it was so bad that I thought it could kill me. I'm afraid to even try. I'm afraid of being alone when it happens. I scare myself when I'm alone.
I'm afraid that I'll never feel okay about myself as long as no one else wants me. I'm afraid I'm always going to feel bad about myself in that way. That whole, what's wrong with me? What's so horrible about me? I'm afraid of not being me and afraid of being me at the same time. Of never being able to connect with anyone. I'm afraid that my attachments will always be what they are, which is non-existent and that I will always be running so that I don't get left. Always running, always leaving, always detaching. Because leaving is not like being left. There is something different about it.
I have a surface kind of closeness with a lot of people. At a glance I have really close friends but I am not intertwined with them. There is a serious disconnect between me and other people. My friend Andy – the friend who told me 3 weeks ago that he didn't care about me and wasn't going to be my friend anymore - guess how much I cared? Not at all. I was angry for a day because he made that decision not really understanding my circumstances - and then once the anger dissipated, I had no reaction. I literally didn't care and this was a person I had known for 8 years - we were really pretty "close." It is like I said - literally as if he was never in my life at all. Like he slipped out unnoticed and there isn't anything left behind. I have everything and everyone neatly compartmentalized - safe in their own box. Now I just need to stuff you into yours and I'm good.”
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
- Eleanor Roosevelt
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