In six days I have

The full list:

• Invited and accepted encouragement and support.
• Followed directions.
• Trusted my life in the hands of a stranger, more than once.
• Climbed to the top of a rock wall (this I did not think I could do (actually, I did not think I could do any of the challenges)).
• Smelled bad and not cared.
• Decided it's okay if this is as good as it gets (meaning the circumstances of my life).
• Realized that not everyone is looking at me and making fun of me, and if they are, oh well, how sad for them that they have nothing better to do with their time.
• Reached out for help without feeling bad about it.
• Not been afraid of feeling stupid when I express what I am feeling or describing what something means to me.
• Not been afraid to eat dessert five times in one day (two days actually and I might just do it again today).
• Walked across a log the width of your shoe 35 feet in the air with nothing to hold on to, and made it to the other side.
• Realized that I am capable of a lot more than I think I am.
• Discovered confidence.
• Seen an energy healer who opened my top three chakras (supposedly).
• Had a facial for the first time (an anti- aging one, cause you know that one line appearing on my 31 year old face is freaking me out a little (okay, a lot)).
• Talked on the phone to almost no one (can't say the same about gmail chat - I need some connection folks).
• Realized who I miss the most.
• Confirmed that I can no longer work when I'm sick or on vacation.
• Committed to focusing less on my billable hours.
• Planned to work less in general.
• Decided to enjoy every second more.
• Gone without makeup.
• Gone without "doing" my hair.
• Climbed to the top of a 25 ft. pole on top of which is a disk 10 inches in diameter that you have to step on top of without anything to hold on to; and then jumped off.
• Been hoisted 40 ft. in the air by eight other women and then swung like a pendulum.
• Helped hoist the other 7 women into the air (I'm going to be sore tomorrow).
• Met some amazing people that I intend to keep in touch with.
• Heard some amazing things about letting go.
• Tried acupuncture for the first time.
• Had an aloe wrap for the first time.
• Felt comfortable in my own skin.
• Eaten dessert with abandon (three desserts with my lunch today actually).
• Cared less about what my body looks like.
• Spoken up when I had an idea.
• Pushed myself to try things that I did not think were possible.
• Challenged myself, my thoughts, my feelings and beliefs.
• Pushed the limits of my comfort zone.
• Stepped outside of it.
• Cared more about what I think of myself and less about what others think of me.
• Not been afraid of looking stupid when I try something new.
• Done something even if I thought I might fail.
• Not been afraid to be myself.
• Spoken up when I had a question.
• Felt better about myself than I ever have before.
• Taken better care of myself.
• Learned how I handle fear of the unknown.
• Experienced true presence in the moment.
  

In five days I have

Here is an update on my progress...

• Not been afraid of feeling stupid when I express what I am feeling or describing what something means to me.
• Not been afraid to eat dessert five times in one day (two days actually and I might just do it again today).
• Walked across a log the width of your shoe 35 feet in the air with nothing to hold on to, and made it to the other side.
• Realized that I am capable of a lot more than I think I am.
• Discovered confidence.
• Seen an energy healer who opened my top three chakras (supposedly).
• Had a facial for the first time (an anti- aging one, cause you know that one line appearing on my 31 year old face is freaking me out a little (okay, a lot)).
• Talked on the phone to almost no one (can't say the same about gmail chat - I need some connection folks).
• Realized who I miss the most.
• Confirmed that I can no longer work when I'm sick or on vacation.
• Committed to focusing less on my billable hours.
• Planned to work less in general.
• Decided to enjoy every second more.
• Gone without makeup.
• Gone without "doing" my hair.
• Climbed to the top of a 25 ft. pole on top of which is a disk 10 inches in diameter that you have to step on top of without anything to hold on to; and then jumped off.
• Been hoisted 40 ft. in the air by eight other women and then swung like a pendulum.
• Helped hoist the other 7 women into the air (I'm going to be sore tomorrow).
• Met some amazing people that I intend to keep in touch with.
• Heard some amazing things about letting go.
• Tried acupuncture for the first time.
• Had an aloe wrap for the first time.
• Felt comfortable in my own skin.
• Eaten dessert with abandon (three desserts with my lunch today actually).
• Cared less about what my body looks like.
• Spoken up when I had an idea.
• Pushed myself to try things that I did not think were possible.
• Challenged myself, my thoughts, my feelings and beliefs.
• Pushed the limits of my comfort zone.
• Stepped outside of it.
• Cared more about what I think of myself and less about what others think of me.
• Not been afraid of looking stupid when I try something new.
• Done something even if I thought I might fail.
• Not been afraid to be myself.
• Spoken up when I had a question.
• Felt better about myself than I ever have before.
• Taken better care of myself.
• Learned how I handle fear of the unknown.
• Experienced true presence in the moment.

On the same theory that

Sometimes I force myself to do things on the same theory that I force myself to go to an AA meeting. Any good AAer will tell you that if you don't feel like going, then it's precisely the thing you should do, and probably need to do. I apply this elsewhere in my life. Oh - you don't want to do that - well, good, now you are definitely going to. It's the only way sometimes to force myself outside of my comfort zone - which really only has everything to do with familiarity.

Yesterday I decided not to do the tightrope challenge because I am so sore from these other challenges. Then I said, wait a second, no, I am doing it - so I am signed up for tomorrow.

This morning, as I was laying there at 5:30 a.m. contemplating getting out of bed to go walk across a log, I thought, nah, this isn't what I want to do. I really don't want to do this. This doesn't sound like a good idea anymore. This sounds too hard. I don't think I can do it.

I mean, it's one thing to get up at 5:30 if you want to choose to exercise, or if you have to be in to work early or have a long commute. But it's something else to get up at the ass crack of dawn for the purpose of scaring the shit out of yourself entirely (granted there are other more important and more meaningful purposes).

I knew that I had to do it.

And so I did. And I did do it - I walked across the log 35 feet in the air, no hands (duh) and made it all the way to the other side. I even have pictures this time - someone was nice enough to take pictures for me on my camera. I also have pictures of the pendulum swing but not the pole - so I may try to run over and take a picture of the pole, just to show you.

So anyway, I did it - and I am so glad that I did.

Tomorrow - rock climbing and tightrope walking.

Oh - and a mani/pedi!

This blog needs a new

Name, description, feel, purpose, energy, layout, URL probably, everything.

This blog started when I was in early sobriety and had breast cancer so I could talk about those two things. Those two things are no longer true. I need a new blog.

In three days (three and a half really) I have

I am adding to my list from yesterday. I know these lists probably seem silly, it's just that most things on these lists are things I have either never done, or don't do - like ask questions, yeah, I don't do that. I am doing a lot of things here and I don't want to forget them.

So, I have:

• Climbed to the top of a 25 ft. pole on top of which is a disk 10 inches in diameter that you have to step on top of without anything to hold on to; and then jumped off.
  
• Been hoisted 40 ft. in the air by eight other women and then swung like a pendulum.


• Helped hoist the other 7 women into the air (I'm going to be sore tomorrow).


• Met some amazing people that I intend to keep in touch with.


• Heard some amazing things about letting go.


• Tried acupuncture for the first time.


• Had an aloe wrap for the first time.


• Felt comfortable in my own skin.


• Eaten dessert with abandon (three desserts with my lunch today actually).


• Cared less about what my body looks like.


• Spoken up when I had an idea.


• Pushed myself to try things that I did not think were possible.


• Challenged myself, my thoughts, my feelings and beliefs.Pushed the limits of my comfort zone.


• Stepped outside of it.


• Cared more about what I think of myself and less about what others think of me.


• Not been afraid of looking stupid.


• Done something even if I thought I might fail.


• Not been afraid to be myself.


• Spoken up when I had a question.


• Felt better about myself than I ever have before.


• Taken better care of myself.


• Learned how I handle fear of the unknown.


• Experienced true presence in the moment.

Tomorrow I will walk across a tightrope that is 35 feet above the ground. If I can get on top of that pole, I can cross a tightrope. I'll report back on how it goes. I also have a facial tomorrow and hopefully a sunset photography walk if the weather clears up. Yay!

One of the women at the pendulum was kind enough to take pictures of me and said she will email them to me - so I'll post those. I'll also try to run over to the pole tomorrow and take a picture of it so you know what I'm talking about! And the tightrope.

In two days I have

Pushed myself to try things that I did not think were possible.

Challenged myself, my thoughts, my feelings and beliefs.

Pushed the limits of my comfort zone.

Stepped outside of it.

Cared more about what I think of myself and less about what others think of me.

Not been afraid of looking stupid.

Done something even if I thought I might fail.

Not been afraid to be myself.

Spoken up when I had a question.

Felt better about myself than I ever have before.

Taken better care of myself.

Learned how I handle fear of the unknown.

Experienced true presence in the moment.


I still have 5 days left. This place will change you.

Modus operandi

I sometimes wonder why it's so hard to change the way you operate when you know so well what underlies it and what is wrong with it. But I guess changing the way you are is just difficult no matter how well you understand it. It isn't like I should be surprised about the way that I feel at the moment - it is so not surprising and so predictable that I should really feel stupid for kind of being surprised.

I don't even know where to begin, so this may be unorganized. Let's begin with this - I am unhappy. (And since the last time I said that, did I achieve "happiness?" Did I lose it? Did I mistake happiness for unhappiness? Did I have it, and I didn't know it? Is happiness just plain not what I thought it was?). I don't like the way I feel at the moment - and what I really want is some relief, except I don't know how to get it - I mean I know how to get it. I have to wait for it. But it isn't coming quick enough.

Also note that I am a goal oriented person. I like to have goals, I like to be always in the process of trying to accomplish something or get something or achieve something. I like to have a plan and be on a path and be executing on it. The destination is happiness - that undefined thing that I can't describe and also can't locate. And although a friend will tell me that happiness is not a destination. I will insist that, nevertheless, I will be happy when I get there. When I get there.

I have no goals today. I have nothing tangible to get and happiness is just too, well, illusory. I always defined happiness in terms of the tangible things by which someone may measure it (someone, not me necessarily, just someone) - career success, financial stability, relationship, family, house, travel, etc. In my mind I have always associated happiness with achieving certain things. You get X and you get to be happy.

And here is the problem. In my previous life (which means before I came into AA), I was able to operate under the illusion that something would fix it. It turns out, I liked that illusion. I liked it a lot. It kept me going. It was my motivation, it drove me, it pushed me to try ever harder to get everything I ever wanted. It is the reason I am so successful in my career and financially (though admittedly I do not have so-called success in other areas). Anxiety, coupled with a quest for the happiness that would always elude me is the reason I am right where I am, sitting right here writing this.

I operated under the illusion that whatever it was at the moment that I was trying to get was going to be the thing that would make it all okay and would make me happy. I'll be happy when, and I'll be happy if. It might have been going to law school, getting a job, getting a different job, making more money, a new car, new furniture, a new boyfriend, a new location, X amount of money in my bank account, paying off a student loan. In case you were wondering, none of these things worked.

I have known, well, since the very first AA meeting that I ever went to what had gone so horribly wrong in my quest. And even though I know that the key to my happiness and unhappiness lies on the inside - knowing that almost makes it harder. Having a goal doesn't even help me because I know that whatever it is that I am trying to get isn't going to make a damn bit of difference. It's just not going to make any difference, so why bother at all.

And I can't figure out just what exactly I need to change on the inside. Or maybe I am just tired of trying.

What is the point of all of this? I am unhappy. I am slipping into the blah again and I don't feel like stopping myself. How long has it been? I can't remember. It isn't a steep decline this time and it isn't coming out of no where. It is slow and it makes sense and I am just riding the elevator down. Where is it coming from and why is it so predictable? I am coming off of a really busy time at work. I am coming down off the stress of it. My job is such that it allows me to check out. I can get so busy at work that I don't even really have a sense of what is going on with me. I don't feel anything - it numbs me out.

And then suddenly, I hit a lull, I get a breather, I get a moment to stop and check-in with myself. The feelings of uneasiness and anxiety rush over me, the unhappiness, the sadness, the things I didn't feel because I was too busy to notice them. I forget for a moment that I wasn't happy. I trick myself I guess. And this is where we find ourselves. It happens every time I get busy at work and then things slow down. It's cyclical. Work is cyclical and my mood and my awareness of my unhappiness cycle with it. And I sit here wondering what will fix it, knowing that it isn't external, or material or tangible even.

From an undisclosed location

I set out about finding the answer to a question (actually a couple of questions) that has bothered me for a long time. And what I found out is that there are questions that are meant to remain unanswered. There are things you simply aren't supposed to know, and those things that you wanted to happen, so badly that you thought you couldn't live if they didn't - there is a reason things didn't work out that way. There is always a reason. And it's probably a good one and it probably isn't for you to know or understand. And yeah, maybe this goes along the lines of saying everything happens for a reason - and sometimes I believe that and sometimes I don't - but I can tell you that I won't go venturing to prove it again or to find out just what lies beneath the way that things are or turn out to be. Sometimes the *why* behind it is worse than just the fact of it.

I've been asking myself a lot lately if it's better to know the answer to the question or to live with the uncertainty - and I guess you would say that it depends on the question. But it depends on the answer also. And the thing is, even when you know the answer, that doesn't make setting out to verify it less painful when it turns out just exactly and horribly as painful as you knew it could be. Whether or not it's better to know the answer or to live with the uncertainty is something you can only know, well, after you know the answer. And then it's too late. I decided to go walking down a road that I've been down before - metaphorically of course - it's a road that I've been down so many times that I can find my way in the dark, in the silence, just by the feel of it. It's a road that doesn't go anywhere, and I know that. But I go walking down it as if just one of these times it is going to lead to the place that I want it to lead to. But it doesn't, and it isn't going to.

Going down that road is pretty easy and familiar. Coming back, however, is not. Because walking in the other direction - the road is different. It's different every time you have to come back. You hope that the unintended consequences of what you were trying to discover are, well, possible to live through - or stay sober through - that's what I really mean. That's the most important. I suppose though that the ability to stay sober through something is not the best indicator of whether or not to do it. I mean, knowing that you can walk down a street lined with bars and all of your worst temptations, and get to other end in tact and sober, doesn't mean you aren't going to be completely and totally fucked up when you get to the other side. Knowing what taking responsibility means shouldn't be used as an excuse - you say to yourself, but if I don't make it to the other end of the street - well, I choose that, and I take responsibility for it. So sometimes, taking responsibility turns into an excuse to make a wrong choice, when what you would really do, if you were behaving in a really sober manner and taking responsibility, is to choose differently. That's how you take responsibility, by making a right choice.

I'm getting off track. I probably don't need to tell you that I wish I had not walked this way this time. Most times, I don't feel that way. But this time is different. I think it was inevitable that I would find myself here though. Because I think I needed to have the answers to the questions in order to move beyond the things that I was unable to move beyond. At least that was what I thought before I was sitting here. What I set out to find the answer to, are some of the questions that lie at the very heart of what has made me unhappy and what has gone wrong in my life. This is one of those moments when, like in the process of coming into AA, the illusion is yanked off of everything, suddenly and all at once, and you know that things will never be the same.

I hope I find my way back in tact this one last time. Just a couple of hours ago - I wasn't so sure that I was going to. I went to a meeting and I shared about what was going on with me - and I was talking to this woman after the meeting and she said she would never forget me - and that she knew my higher power had something in store for me - because I wasn't done with what I needed to do yet. And we also talked about the Serenity Prayer and how in accepting something, you give it back to your higher power in faith. Lack of faith is the reason I am sitting here right now. And people always say that the opposite of faith - is fear. The less faith you have, the greater the fear you will be living in. That's definitely true for me.

Well, anyway, I won't be coming this way again.

Edited to add: morning changes everything. Things always look different in the morning. The realizations that come out of these situations are many and varied. Sometimes I think the best way to tell whether or not you have changed is just to pause for a moment and look around yourself. And what I realized, during that moment when I slowed down just enough to consider it, is this - it is painfully and excruciatingly obvious, and pointedly clear, that if I had changed, even a little in the past two years, I wouldn't be sitting here.

How fewer miles can make you feel farther apart

The physical distance between you isn't the thing that defines how close you are to someone. I know this because my best friend Heather and I don't live in the same state. When we did, we didn't live in the same city. She moved away when we were 7 - and she's been my best friend, well, ever since then or since I can remember really. I don't remember not knowing her - we met when we were 3. And 27 years later we are as close as we ever were. She is the one thing that I know will always be a constant in my life - no matter where we live or in what direction our lives take us, she will be there. I wrote this post called To My Best Friend Heather back when I started this blog. Everyone should be so lucky to have a friendship like this one in his or her life.

I was thinking about my brother, who has moved back to the U.S. from Germany - and how much closer I felt to them when they were so much farther away. Maybe it was the time difference and the fact that my long day was his afternoon and evening so it was easy to connect - coupled with the fact that we were all logged into Gmail chat all day and could talk nearly every day the entire time they were over there. Lately, I feel like there are thousands and thousands of miles between us. I've talked to my brother on the phone once since Christmas and only a couple of times and very briefly on instant message. There are other people I feel less connected to these days also. Maybe it's just the natural progression of things.

I would have hoped to feel the comfort of having them closer - even though they are in Boston and I'm in Chicago - because in many ways they are all I have. But I don't feel that - I just feel kind of disconnected and lost and alone over here. I don't feel bad - things are good actually - I just feel a little alone without them. I hope it's just temporary, that's all. They moved right before the holidays, were living in two places, trying to find a place, start new jobs, get settled, etc. Extremely stressful I'm sure. Of course it is selfish of me to want to see them and talk to them - so I'm selfish then. Is it really so terrible that I want to feel connected to them?

It just scares me I guess. Our lives change and we go in so many different directions and have so many different things going on that I worry it will become harder and harder to meet in the middle. I don't want them to be people that I only see or hear from at the holidays - an obligatory phone call or that kind of thing. Or I worry that they aren't that interested in being close to me - that's all in my head though, I know. I have this "alcoholic" way of thinking about the world - which I'm sure some of you know what I mean and others of you have no idea what I'm talking about - but let's just say my perception is off - it is a disease of misperception.

I guess I just feel sad about it for some reason today. As uncomfortable as it makes me to say it, I miss them.

Not everyone gets a "do over"

There are a lot of things that I think I know, that I think I've learned, by surviving breast cancer - and by being in AA while doing it (and the AA piece matters because if it weren't for this program, I would have killed myself instead). I have learned important things about life in this program. These things that I've learned are hard to quantify, hard to articulate. They are hard to put into practice - these ideas I have about the way I want to live my life and the standards that I want to hold myself to. It is one thing to say that I will live without regret, it is something else entirely to live that way. Maybe these things that I've learned are things that most people know, though I suspect that more often than not, a true appreciation of what these things are comes only when it is too late. Unfortunately, I think it takes a real life and death moment sometimes to make you appreciate the little things, to make you truly grasp what matters in life, to place you squarely in the present moment. In fact, I am not sure that it's even really possible to get it, and I mean really get it, if you don't have such a moment.

I thought when I came into AA that I learned what life was about - I thought I had changed so much and I thought I really got the point. I thought I had gained a real appreciation for life and for what matters in life. Yet there I was struggling just the same with the very things that I have always struggled with and the very same things continued to make me unhappy. It was almost as if my higher power knew I wasn't getting it, so it was yanked from beneath me, never to be the same or look the same again. That's the thing about these life lessons, I think that we repeat mistakes until we get it right and situations will keep happening to us until we get the point. Sometimes, for some of us, it takes great pain to get it. When I get something - when I finally get it - it is never in a moment of subtlety. If I had never been diagnosed with breast cancer, I wouldn't have learned what I've learned, at least not by this age.

When I was diagnosed, I experienced a sudden and dramatic shift in perspective that slowly over time shifted back. Over time I became stressed about my job and career again, obsessed with money, worried no man would ever date me again because I had breast cancer (among other reasons)...the list goes on and on. Where did all that wonderful perspective on life go? It seems I lost it when I realized I would live. The shifting of my perspective is something I have struggled with. I have been frustrated over and over again with the shift in one direction and the shift back. Why can't I seem to remember the point or why can't I implement it in my life? That I don't know. But I do know that something happened to me over the week and a half of before the follow-up appointment and mammogram that I had on Thursday. It might have gone unnoticed but I suddenly felt different. I felt certain fears melt away and I realized that it wasn't just that my feelings had changed, but that my thinking had changed also as I felt a new degree of openness born out of desperation. Maybe just maybe I could be open to the possibility of something I didn't imagine or foresee.

Those most powerful moments of surrender have always come out of such desperation. The more desperate I am, the more willing I become to surrender. For me, such moment are always tied to my life and my death. When I am faced squarely with my mortality I become willing to give up anything. There was a time when I didn't feel this way, when I negotiated with God for my fertility and I was willing to give up my hair, or my life even, or so I thought if I could just keep that one thing. It seems silly I know. I had such a really powerful moment of surrender the night before that appointment and in that moment I had a real appreciation of the fact that the degree to which anything is possible is directly related to the extent to which I am able to surrender. This journey has been a process of negotiation. Of hanging on and then letting go, of taking my will back and then surrendering it again. Until finally, in the most powerful moment of desperation that I have ever had, I let go of all of it. Everything I ever thought I wanted out of life, everything I ever thought would make me happy, I traded it in, in exchange for my life, and whatever it may turn out to be.

I suddenly felt the peace that comes with such surrender and being free from the expectations that have contributed to my unhappiness. I have given it all up, every last thing, which means that anything is possible. If I believe in AA and the things that I've learned there, then my faith tells me that what my higher power has in store for me is more amazing than anything that I could ever imagine for myself. The worst thing that I have ever felt in my entire life was the moment when I thought it might be over and I was only 29. The moment when I thought I might not live the rest of my life and that the life that I had lived might be it. What do I have to show for this life that I've lived but unhappiness and fear, bad relationships and anger, hatred, resentments and regret. The regret was unbelievable - I realized that I was going to regret most of my adult life and that moment when I realized that I might not get another chance to get this life right, was the moment that changed me and scared me the most.

The greatest gift of my life today is that I get to live it differently. Not everyone gets a "do over" and that's exactly what I've been given. For that I am blessed. Those days before that last appointment have planted me firmly in the place that I most want to be - in the moment, with a perspective that feels firmly rooted - I doubt this time that it will shift back in the other direction. I get it this time. You don't ever know, ever, whether you will have another chance. The moment, this one, right now, it matters. What are you going to do with it?

Bon voyage has a double meaning

Well, tomorrow night I leave on a much awaited two week adventure in Germany to visit my brother, sister-in-law and nephew. You can check them out here Air and Sun and Nudeln. This trip has been a long time coming - I was supposed to go almost a year ago and couldn't because of being diagnosed with breast cancer. And despite the insanity of my job and my amazing inability to live in the present, I am determined to enjoy every second of it - to be in the moments instead of in between them, to be fully present and in the now. Because if know one thing - it is that life is short and can be ripped right out from underneath you in a life altering split second. Like we always say in AA meetings, we all have the same 24 hours. I try to remain ignorant to the unpredictability of life, but the fact is, you just never really know, do you? I have failed repeatedly to appreciate the journey - focusing instead on the ever changing and always disappointing destination.

The moments I most enjoy, are the moments right after I feel the most afraid. Those are the only moments that I can seem to remember and appreciate what matters in life - like I have probably said, the worst feeling I have ever felt is thinking I might die, and not have another chance to get this right. Can you even imagine the kind of regret that you feel - I can, I have felt it. So it is the journey, and not the destination - and I will try to remember that on Friday morning around 6 am my time when I've been up for 24 hours and am dead tired and ticked off at all of the people who are irritating me.

Anyway - I see this trip as something else, not just a trip to see my brother but as an opportunity for something greater. I am afraid that in the past 5 months since I finished cancer treatment, I have already lost much of the perspective I had gained about life. I have been plagued lately by a feeling that things need to change. Frequently it is about escaping - how can I escape myself, how can I escape what I am feeling? Just because I don't use alcohol doesn't mean I don't use something. I use other people, sometimes, when I have the opportunity. Usually I use my job. This isn't about escaping though - this is about changing. I told my sponsor that I need to come back and be different. I need to be different. She says, of course, if you want to be different, then you have to act differently. I need to experience the complete psychic change that the Big Book talks about. How does one accomplish this? Pray your ass off she tells me. And by the way, my sponsor also says that a spiritual experience doesn't have to be this white light moment when you connect with your higher power. A spiritual experience may be as simple as having the ability to choose that which you could not choose before.

Fortunately, lately, I have been experiencing a lot of discomfort with old behaviors. I always say that we do what we do until it becomes painful enough, and then we stop. We never stop a second sooner. There is this threshold of pain - and my tolerance is incredibly high. But I realized today, for the first time in a quite a while, that something I do, suddenly feels painful enough that I want to stop. For the first time - with this particular situation, the pain that I feel when I don't engage in it is ever so slightly less painful than the pain that I feel when I do. The scale has tipped, finally.

So, this is about regaining perspective and letting go of a bunch of old stuff that I don't want in my life anymore. This is about changing - this is about really getting down to the very root of what makes me so uncomfortable with myself, and choosing to live differently. I don't know why, but it's just time to be rid of old behavior and old people in my life that don't belong there. It's just time, I don't know why now, and not before, but it's time. And I know from experience, that amazing things happen in those moments when you finally surrender.

The Uncomfortable Comfort, Among Other Things

So a friend of mine has suggested that perhaps I do not want to be okay. That perhaps I like to be miserable and unhappy and that maybe my hesitation in changing is that I won't know what to do if there isn't anything to do anything about. What would I actually do if everything were just fine? What would I do with the space in my brain? Why does it feel so uncomfortable when I am comfortable? Why do I not want to be comfortable?

I have always been too afraid to take any kind of anti-anxiety drug or anti-depressant - though it has been suggested to me several times. Currently my sponsor is on my case to see a therapist and take an anti-anxiety drug temporarily - to at least be open to it. The fear is that I will somehow not be myself if I take something like this. That I will feel differently, perceive the world differently, exist in it differently. Some would suggest that this is the point. But I am not sure I know how to be different in a world that looks different.

I am torn, because I am not sure I can keep going the way I have been going - meaning change is required to stay sober - and I think I am either not going to stay sober, or going to have to change. This roller coaster of emotion that I am on - the up and the down - interspersed with the anxiety - is becoming difficult to bear and I am starting to wish for a way out of it. It is not unlike a moment of surrendering - of giving up and saying fine, I'll do it your way - or at least a different way.

On an unrelated note, I have this situation in front of me that I desperately want to be a certain way - the alcoholic is an extreme example of self will run riot. I want what I want and I want it now. But I can't have it - so my only choice is to look at it differently. And to try to tell myself that some things are a blessing in disguise. Acceptance etc.

I need to try something different this time. Do something different to get a different result. I read something today that really made me think about this - in one of the daily recovery readings I do - it said,"determining to risk the outcome resulting from a changed behavior or attitude will enhance our self-perceptions." I am willing to risk the outcome of this particular situation in order to try something different. I am willing to risk the outcome of this in order to eliminate the pain I am in. Maybe this applies to both situations, this and taking some kind of medication for anxiety. Maybe I am in enough pain to be willing to just see what would happen if....

Also - a good friend said something to me today that stuck with me all day - it was something that her sponsor said to her - she said, "I can't believe you think so little of yourself that you can't behave differently." It stopped me dead in my tracks for a second. The option is to change, or to change. Those are the only two options.

Did You Say 7-3-4?

So for some reason, although I live in Illinois and have lived here for over a year - I haven't wanted to fully commit to it - meaning, I haven't wanted to give up my Michigan residency, driver's license etc. In fact, up until a week ago - I was still buying cat food in Ann Arbor. My cat has to eat prescription cat food, which requires a vet visit each year, and until he was due to go last week, I just bought cat food whenever I went to Ann Arbor.

I've been driving around with my Michigan license plate and driver's license and am even still registered to vote there. I also have kept my Ann Arbor area code. Tomorrow I will go and relinquish my Michigan driver's license, and change my license plates. I have to, because my plate is about to expire on Thursday, and since I don't live in Michigan, I can't exactly renew it there and just keep pretending I live on Columbus Drive. Did you know that in Illinois, to get a driver's license, you need every kind of id on the planet? A driver's license from another state, your birth certificate, passport, social security card, a piece of mail proving your address...

I've never moved before and felt like it was permanent. I did a lot of moving within my home town and some temporary moving back and forth to Chicago, but I've never moved with the intention of staying anywhere. I've always wanted to keep that last connection to my hometown and I've always wanted to feel like wherever I was, it was temporary. But this is it I guess - I won't be going back there to live, probably ever. I am going to retain my Ann Arbor area code though. I am pretty attached to this phone number - I've had it for a while, and people all over the place in AA both here and there have it. I guess it's about time to commit to living here, and maybe to sticking around for a while.

Becomming Entirely Ready

Step 6: Became entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I notice a distinct difference between becomming entirely ready, and just wishing I were ready. Usually, I just wish I were ready, I think about being ready, I mentally try to be ready, I pray about it (when I start to get desperate) - yet I am still not ready. I think - for God's sake - can I please be done with this now? Nope - not ready. Sometimes I even think I am ready, only to find out that I'm not actually entirely ready. That's the difference, I have to be more than ready - I have to be entirely ready. The fact is, until I achieve the level of entirety, nothing happens. I just spin in circles doing the same stupid behaviors and kicking myself - feeling powerless to stop the behavior - thinking, this is painful, why am I still doing it?

An amazing thing happens when you become entirely ready though. It's like magic. I don't become ready over time. It isn't a slow unfolding of becomming ready, Tuesday I am more ready than Monday, and so on, eventually getting to entirely. It doesn't work that way - for me at least. I'm either not ready, or suddenly entirely ready - with no varying degrees of readiness. For two weeks I have been praying about something in particular, a specific character defect and behavior - please God help me WANT to be free of X situation (among other things) (and truthfully, part of me doesn't even want to be free of it - but the fact is, I need to be). Today, while walking down the street, in the beautiful sunshine, talking to God in my head, please God help me do something different, help me handle X situation differently, help me let go of my expectations about the way my life is supposed to be - poof, like magic, it was gone. Well, not my expectations unfortunately, those are still painfully in tact, but the behavior and my handling of it - my feelings about it, everything - lifted, much like people describe the compulsion to drink suddenly lifting. Relief. And when this happens, you feel like a new person, like anything is possible. If God can do that, if God can make me not act that way and make me not need that and make me not want that, then God can do anything.

That is what happens when you finally achieve entirety. It is like the moment in which you finally ahieve acceptance - in that split second, everything changes. I never understood it until it finally happened the first time. I just struggled and struggled and couldn't figure out why nothing was working, why I got no relief - only to eventually realize that the key word in the step is entirely. Half ready doesn't get rid of half of the character defect. Just like half measures avail us nothing - because half measures get us drunk.

The more evidence I have, the easier it gets, yet it always surprises me and there is always a quality of magic about it.

The Thought Process that Unexpectedly Brought Me to the Underlying Feeling of Failure

I was reminded yesterday, in the subtle (or not so subtle) way you sometimes are when you go to an AA meeting, that I am the problem. I know this, but sometimes, I still like to think that the problem is actually you. You being any one and every one of you. My life seems easier when you are the problem. The collective "you" are relatively easy to blame and it means I don't have to change or take responsibility, because I didn't do anything. You did, and I don't control you and I can't change you and you are not my problem. But believe me, I feel justified in being ticked off at at you.

Then, I walk into a meeting and someone so kindly reminds me that if I am disturbed (which is an understatement), then the problem is me. If I am this pissed off - it isn't simply because you are an asshole. Because the theory is - even if you are an asshole, I don't have to be bothered by you. But since when do you get to tick me off and I have to take responsibility for it? Why do I have to change my attitude and my behavior to accommodate your assholish self - as opposed to - why don't you, stop ticking me off?

This isn't really going anywhere - it's just that I've been in a bad mood for a while now. What can only be described as restless, irritable and discontent. I feel slightly bored, extremely agitated and highly annoyed, constantly. My sponsor cleared one thing up for me today though - very simply - you don't want to be with someone who has to ask whether they can go to coffee - simply run the other way. Yeah, run the other way. I wish I knew how to do that. Instead I think - his sponsor won't let him go to coffee, what can I do to get him to go to coffee anyway? HELLO???!!! This is old behavior.

So, at the meeting she was talking about how we get to choose every day how we are going to be in the world, regardless of how everyone around is behaving. Great. Which means, I am choosing to be restless, irritable, discontent, bored, agitated and annoyed. And I've been complaining, a lot. Which is the way I used to be. Constant complaining and constant negativity. But I can't figure out how to choose something different. I feel like I'm trying and it isn't working. I feel like ever since I had that breast cancer scare (I know, get over it already right?), I can't get back to normal. I just don't feel right. I feel anxious, all the time.

The stress of my job is getting to me a bit, and the uncertainty about my life - the options I have and the choices I have to make - the fact that I have never really found a way to deal with what I went through. The loneliness is overwhelming sometimes - sometimes I just want something instead of nothing, even if the something isn't really what I want. I've isolated myself too much and not maintained any kind of closeness with people in the program in Chicago. I don't really have that many close friends back at home in the program right now either. I have friends, some I would even call close, I mean, they would show up for me - but I feel closer to the edge than I do to the middle, and honestly, I don't really feel particularly close to anyone right now.

I keep saying my birthday is a bad time of year...which is bothering me as it gets closer. And I know it just sounds like I feel sorry for myself - but the truth is, just once, I want to have a good birthday. I don't know how it is that my birthday has been so built up in my mind over the years that it feels like a big deal. It never was a particularly big deal, I guess it's just that I have such negative associations with it. Growing up my birthday was frequently ruined because my mother was drunk, not to mention the fact that most of the family wouldn't come to me and my brother's birthday parties anyway - but the family went to everyone else's - we have always been the odds one out. As I got older, my birthday just seemed sadder and sadder, the family more and more fragmented, my relationship with my parents more and more dysfunctional.

I always reflect on my life around my birthday, but never in a positive way - and the older I get, the faster time goes and it just feels like a reminder of how my life isn't the way I thought it would be or the way I want it to be. I fail to look at what I do have - I fail to look at what is right. But I could tell you every way that I am sad. It still feels like the pieces of the puzzle that I was left with - after everything I went though last year - don't fit together. Nothing lines up, nothing is recognizable. Very little makes sense. And it has been almost exactly a year - I was diagnosed with breast cancer, two days before my 29 birthday. I feel like I can't live through those days - those days right before my birthday. Most of my life I just figured I had more time, I could always see opportunities and chances - the possibilities. Now all I see is an end point. It's like a wall that I am standing so close to, that I can't see around it. And it's too high to climb over.

The problem is, unless I can give up my expectations, of life being a certain way, I think I will always feel this way and go through this around my birthday. I think I will always feel like I have failed.

The First Step To Freeing Yourself - Actually, the Fourth Step

Okay - people are bothering me to post something - and it isn't that I don't want to. In fact, I would like to start posting more. There is a lot on my mind. Namely because of speaking at meetings - besides my Wednesday meeting that I am speaking at right now over the next few weeks, and the dreaded open talk I have to give in March, I am speaking next Sat. on the 11th step - which is - "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us, and the power to carry that out."

I take this way too seriously - speaking at meetings - I really put a lot of thought into what I say, really trying to carry the message. So, this Wednesday, I have decided to talk about steps 4 and 5 - the searching and fearless moral inventory. Mainly because the focus of the meeting is on change in sobriety with an emphasis on steps 6 and 7 (the steps related to your character defects) and how can you free yourself of your character defects without first identifying them? You can't. The way I see it, you pretty much have to do the steps in order at some point. At meeting after meeting I hear people talk about how they have been sober for years and years without doing an inventory and they express how much fear they have around doing it, so they simply avoid it. I completed my first inventory and 5th step by my second 30 day AA anniversary - for me, I could not have stayed sober for years, or even months for that matter, without getting this vital step done.

I understand the fear that people associate with an inventory though. It basically asks you to review your entire life and tell another person every last little deep dark secret that you have been keeping. I personally am all too aware of how dangerous an inventory can be. In ACOA I did two of them, the ACOA way and unsupervised (I had no sponsor to guide me). The result was that I damn near killed myself - but instead, I just drank a lot. Six months later I landed at an AA meeting, and now my entire life has changed. Anyway, the point is - an inventory done wrong can be extremely dangerous, but an inventory done the right way can be incredibly powerful and very freeing.

The problem with the ACOA inventory is that it simply asks you to list your character defects. How the hell am I supposed to know what those are? When I did the first inventory, I hated myself. I had no self-esteem and no self-respect, I had been treated terribly in relationships and I blamed myself for everything. And I, me, this person with no self-esteem, was supposed to sit there and list my own character defects? You can see why this wouldn't work. The AA inventory is done totally differently - you identify the patterns and from there the character defects and you get at the patterns by looking closely at your resentments, fears, harms to others etc. It's really clever actually and I didn't understand until I did it, why it would work. In any event - among other things, I realized that I am utterly incapable of accurate self assessment. Even on a good day, on a clear headed and really spiritual day, a really positive day, I am basically incapable of accurate self assessment.

Anyway, I feel like I was given this amazing gift when I was diagnosed with breast cancer (um, hello - I can't believe I just wrote that) - it was a chance to look at my own life from a perspective that most people don't get to see their own life from - or at least, most people don't do this until much later in life and often when it is too late. I might have said before that there is something tremendously powerful about facing your own mortality and then getting to continue to live - you get to live completely differently. You get to live the authentic life you always wanted, you get to be the person you want to be, you get to live with no regrets. That is the biggest gift I got from surviving breast cancer - the chance to live differently. I remember during the process, begging God to please just let me live so that I could experience life differently. Well, I feel like that's the chance we are all given when we come into AA. We just don't always appreciate it as such. I am not sure I would have understood this either, simply by coming into AA - it took something far more devastating for me to get this.

In a sense it is very similar though - you are facing your own mortality - alcoholism can and will kill you. You are given a chance to review your life in its entirety, to learn from it and then to live it differently. Why would someone not take this opportunity? This is not something most people ever get to do. The chance to do this is a tremendous gift - the power of which I cannot even describe to you. The catch though is that you actually have to do it - despite the fear of what you might uncover, you have to do the inventory. My life changed when I did this - my program changed, my sobriety changed and I started to change. It was the most freeing thing I've ever done. (Taking off my fake hair comes in second)!!

No Action Equals Action

"This is a program of action." "The hardest action you will ever take is to simply do nothing when you want to do everything."

I went to an amazing AA meeting this morning. It was the Sunday morning gratitude meeting at the Lincoln Park Alano Club. I love talking about gratitude - probably because I had so little of it when I showed up to AA. I laugh in my head when people come up to me after a meeting to talk to me about gratitude - commenting on how much of it I have - I think, if only you knew the way I used be! More and more people are telling me that I need to talk - that I need to tell my story to help other people. Anyway, this meeting is more like the meetings I am used to at home - the table meetings - where the topics are more broad and there is less structure to the flow of the meeting and somewhat less predictability. You get more variety I think in terms of the comments. Anyway, the topic evolved into "doing the next right thing." Doing the right thing, even when you don't want to, even when the pay off is bad or there is no pay off, doing the right thing anyway even when the pay off of doing what you want to do is so much greater. Doing the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing. I wish I always did the right thing, instead of doing what I want to do, but I don't.

I spend too much time in my own head. My relationships with people unfold there - in my mind - without the participation of the other person sometimes. Occasionally I have thought - wow, I feel really sorry for all the people who live in my head and don't even know it. How difficult it must be for them to carry on their end of a relationship there. I've realized how much of the chaos in my life is of my own making - and that at least half of it is in my mind. If I could just shut my head up - things would improve. It all originates there in my head, as I scheme and plan and try to get what I want - or what I think I want - only to find out that I don't want it once I get it. The biggest part of this problem with my own head, is the inability to not act on the things that are going on in there. That's why part of Joanne's comment stuck in my mind - it is hard - it is incredibly hard to do nothing when you so desperately want to do something. The hardest thing is to just sit there and be.

I am really intent on changing my behavior though because I have become so painfully aware of the ways in which my own behavior has harmed me. I repeatedly do things that hurt me, knowing that it hurts, and knowing that it is familiar, I just keep doing it. I keep doing it, somehow expecting different results, and the result is always the same. I am trying to get to myself to try something different here, which in my case, means doing nothing and simply being. That is the key to changing my relationships. The more meetings I go to, the quieter my head is, and the longer I stay sober, the more I appreciate the quiet. I appreciate the peace and serenity that I feel, when I work for it, and slowly but surely the frantic, racing mind, the imaginary chaos - it is becomming more and more uncomfortable where I used to seek it out. I still don't always do the right thing, but I am trying. I know that the only way to change what goes on in my head is to change my behavior - change your behavior and your thinking will follow - you have to act your way into right thinking. I love the AA slogans!

This Too Shall Pass

My brother seems to know a lot of people who are doing this, writing blogs I mean, so I thought I might give it a whirl. Of course, like any overly self-conscious person, I’m afraid I have nothing interesting or intelligent to say and that no one will take the time to read this anyway. Fear of rejection I guess - just like the fear of having a party and no one showing up, so you don’t have the party, and you will never find out whether anyone would have come. I’ve actually never tested this out. I’ve never thrown a party at my own house. Besides the unnecessary stress over what to title this blog, I seem to have a lot of anxiety about what to write about. I don’t live in a foreign country or have a new family to write about, my job is not particularly interesting to anyone else and I have no real hobbies to speak of at the moment – something I am trying to remedy. I’m basically a corporate lawyer at a really large firm in a big Midwestern city – which is not really inspiring me here.

Unfortunately, the biggest things in my life – the two most life changing things that have ever happened to me, both in one year – are the two things that I’ve tried the hardest to keep secret. I am nine months into the best and the worst year of my entire life and unsure whether to write about it or where to begin, although I am quite sure that these are the things that now define me, and these are the things that will shape me going forward. I live every day in fear of people finding these two secrets out, and I am beginning to feel like my life is not authentic because I can’t seem to just be honest about who I am.

The title of this blog and this initial post is one of my favorite slogans from twelve-step programs although I hear these slogans elsewhere from time to time. If I had to capture everything about my life right at this moment in a single phrase, it is summed up in this slogan. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, reminding myself that the good and the bad and everything in between is momentary. I was sick a couple of weeks ago and I spent most of the time lying in bed and wondering if I would ever feel better, if I would ever feel the way I used to and dwelling on the thought that the moment I was caught up in was permanent – a permanent state of feeling bad, a permanent circumstance that I could not live with.

I’ve learned a lot in the past nine months that I am not even sure how to put into words - like I said – I don’t even know where to begin – in fact, I’m starting to wonder if this blog won’t be nothing but an account of life lessons I probably should have learned (like everyone else did) but somehow missed. Anyway, the temporary nature of things is what has been plaguing my mind lately. People say, if you don’t like something, just wait a few minutes and it will change. Even those circumstances in life that have turned out to be permanent – and there really aren’t many of them – the way I feel about them always changes. What seems to trouble me right now about knowing that everything is temporary, is accepting that the good stuff is temporary also, and that I’ve been so caught up in everything except the good stuff, that I have missed out on moments that are irreplaceable. Why is it that the things we most want to be over seem to last forever and the things we want to savor pass us by in a second?

So, I guess I am just going to be honest. I am going to write about myself here, the secrets I’ve been keeping, my experiences as of late and my struggle to live through them and learn from them, while I try to savor them, appreciate them, and also let go of them.