Monday, July 29, 2013

A Journey through the 12 Steps



When a newcomer walks into a meeting there are a set of guidelines we collectively give them that will aid them in their success.  This is my rendition of that advice......

Meetings are the most important element of a twelve step support program.  Salvation Army put out years ago the 90 meetings in 90 days concept for which they have now rescinded.  The idea was the more meetings you attend the easier it is for you to integrate into the fellowship and build a strong support group.  The downfall to the 90/90 rule was that it fed an addicts all or nothing mentality.  When the addict failed at attending that many meetings they allowed that to be a reservation to their entire recovery and they gave up, thinking if they couldn't even do the first suggestion then they would never stay clean.

Building a support group then for me is the first suggestion I give the newcomer.  Move outside your comfort zone and begin building friendships with people in the rooms.  Get a sponsor as soon as possible because this person will help introduce you to people within the fellowship.  A sponsor clears a path for you .  Reaching out to people is a scary thing, I don't advise waiting until your destitute to do it.  Reach out when you are feeling good and confident.  Build relationships when your mind is clear.  Then when you feel shitty and want to use you already have a support group that has gotten to know you and can see that your starting a cycle of defeat and can help you out of it before it consumes you.

When I look around at my friends that are healthy I see that they all have strong family relationships or spiritual fellowships or a close network of friends that know them inside and out.  This is imperative to a healthy mind, having people see things we cannot.  Having friends that love us enough to tell us when we are walking into a trap and when we are being bitches.  I used to side step this by sharing only small parts of myself with each set of friends I had.  My coworkers seen one side of me, my family a different side and my girlfriends yet another side of me.  No one person actually got the full view of me, until I came into NA.  Now I see the importance of self honesty and full honesty with those people that I love and trust.

Having several fellowships is that same concept of only showing parts of yourself.  To move entirely from one fellowship  to the next after one outgrows a fellowship is okay.  As long as that person leaves in a comfortable fashion for all involved and takes the time to tie up loose ends and leaves on a happy note.  I am all for growth and moving along on ones path as I will do one day as well.  However to attend three separate churches but not fully integrate into any of them is still living in the half truths of yourself, your still hiding pieces of yourself.  Secrets keep us sick.  That is probably the largest lesson I have learned coming through the 12 steps and connecting deeply with a fellowship. Becoming Vulnerable.

After establishing a support group.  The steps begin.  Meetings promise the obsession to use will be lifted if you attend regularly.  In my words it means that if you attend meetings and integrate into the fellowship you will stay clean.  You wont recover however until you begin the work of the steps.  The steps are like  taking the doctors orders and following them.  Most of us ignore the doctor.  Most of us are comfortable in our sickness.

I am not.

Step One:  We admitted we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

This step is the hardest and  most rewarding.  It is the step that teaches us to let go.  When something doesn't work out for a healthy person they let go and try something new, change directions.  To an obsessive/compulsive mind we keep on pushing and kicking the door until we break it down and barge in.  Most time life greets us on the other side of that door negatively.  Our lives have become unmanageable.  To admit we are bulls in china shops is the hardest thing for us know-it-alls to do.

Step Two:  We came to believe a power greater then  ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I have two takes on this step.  The first one was taught to me in a Re-hab.  We Came.    Just keep coming back, is something we tell newcomers.  Keep coming back.  We Came.  Then We Come To.  Slowly we begin to wake up.  90/90 meetings helped this awakening process.  When we use we numb out not only our feelings, but our minds fall asleep to the truths of who we are and what we are capable of achieving in this lifetime.  Coming to, is to awaken to life's beauty.  For some people this takes years of coming to meetings, for others mere days.   After awakening then we begin to  believe.  In what you believe is irrelevant.  My Ex husband during a guided meditation I was testing out on him seen his higher power as Silent Bob, a movie actor. I didn't care I was just excited that he seen someone to guide him through it.

Working the steps will help awaken our beliefs.  Its not normally until the tenth step that we begin to truly believe in something.  I feel sad for the people that stop halfway through thinking that its not working for them.

Step Three:  We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understand him.

This step also has two meanings for me.  The first one being the simple act of making a decision.   In my active addiction I was either avoiding or running, those were the only decisions I was making.  To make a decision now in my life takes on a whole new process that I never practiced before.  Weighing out the pro's and cons, looking ahead at the consequences of the decisions are new for this impulsive addict.  Step three teaches us how to play the tape entirely to the end.

It also teaches me to pray before I make any decisions.  To seek my inner knowing and to open to my own intuition in situations.  To not always listen to what others are saying or follow what others are doing.  It took me many trials and errors to finally hear my intuition and still I make mistakes, but that is the process of step 1,2,3.  I will always be cycling through those steps with every dark turn I take in life, and I am not ignorant enough to think I wont take a few more wrong turns in my life.  The first three steps are my life long tools to get me back on track

Step Four:  We made a searching a  Fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

As a society we are so focused on other people that we are unable and unwilling to look deep into our own eyes.  We are unable to love ourselves for the incredible beauty that we are.  We will hide behind Internet addictions, food addiction, drug and sex addictions, alcohol and sugar addictions, work addictions.... you name it there is a distraction from ourselves.  Step four begins to slowly peel away those outward focus's and begins to redirect your gaze at yourself.  For some people this is so painful that they relapse or get nothing out of the fourth step.  I had to work this step three times before I got entirely through it and got something out of it.  Now its my most favorite step to work.  I can see now that I am not the devil incarnate as I once really believed.  Okay maybe not the devil himself, but surely his sexy ass wife!!

Step Five:   We admitted to God, to Ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I think this is the most miss read step of all of them and being the unstable energy of a five I can see why.  The key word there is 'Nature'.  We are not setting ourselves up to air every piece of dirty laundry to our sponsors, we are looking at the common threads of our misdoings and revealing the nature of those wrongs.  When we voice anything out loud it either gives power or removes power.  In step five we remove the power of our own self deflating thoughts by putting them on the table for another to look at.  Once we understand the nature of why we did those things we can forgive ourselves.  Forgive ourselves is the whole key to step five... To have a sponsor that digs for the nature is to have a really good sponsor.

Step Six:  We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

This step starts to  peel away all the shitty behaviours we have cultivated in ourselves from years of unguidance.  I am grateful I had someone walk through this step with me that countered my shitty defects of character with the positive character traits I already embodied.  To look deeply at how these behaviours hurt or helped ourselves and others is the first step in changing who we were then into who we are now.  This step for me was truly the hardest of them all.  When your defects becoming glaringly obvious its hard not to want to crawl out of your own skin.

Step Seven:  We humbly asked God to Remove our shortcomings.

Moving into this step quickly after six was the only thing that saved my ass because I learned how to cultivate patience with myself and to seek out hope from something greater then me.  This is where my faith in a power greater then myself began to grow.  It wasn't three of five, it was now.  At the end of the day when I was left alone with me and didnt like who I was... that pain of staying the same became greater then the pain of change.... I was surely willing to change.  I began to pray.  Really Pray.

Step Eight:  We made a list of all the people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to all of them.

Ah relief.  This is where my must do personality trait could finally begin to work on fixing all the shitty things that the steps dug up for me.  This is where I could begin to take an active part in cleaning up my side of the street.  By this step I was so eager to rush out into the world and explain to everyone why I did what I did back then.  Making this list began that process of doing it right.  I felt tremendous relief and a release of the pain that had been building from step four till now.

Step Nine:  We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

Slow down little pony, was the message my sponsor had to repeat to me numerously.  I began to learn that making amends to certain people would actually make the situation they were in worse for them as they were in a place of beating themselves up already.  To say sorry for something you did to them, was in their mind to rub salt in their wounds.  This is where my prayers began to manifest.  As I began to project the amends I wanted to make old friends would call me out of the blue, family would approach me with an amends of their own out of nowhere.  And I am talking amends from people like my father for childhood hurts.... out of no where.  It was actually eerie to me.. even to me who believes in the power of that.

Step Ten:  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By far my favorite step for recovery.  I think as soon as you start step one your sponsor should teach you step ten.  Every night before falling asleep think of ten things your grateful for.  Then run through your day to see what else transpired.  This will keep the cycle of obsession from ever getting to relapse point and your mind in a place of humility.

Step Eleven:  We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood her, praying only for her will for us and the power to carry that out.

This step is one I have been working for well over ten years and will still be learning and growing from for the rest of my life.  The layers here are truly deep and can be peeled back for a lifetime.  It was at this step that I was so amazed at my higher powers workings in my life that I was eager for a deeper connection.  Even all my meditation from years before had never connected me on the level these steps have.  To me our higher power is our inner power.  If we are unwilling to do a fourth step and look into ourselves and then a six step to peel away the darkness that covers our inner power, we will never connect to that higher power.  This is where all other spiritual programs in my life have lacked true authenticity.  The steps guided me through falling in love with myself..... the exact image of the Goddess.  The God in all her glory and dark nature.

Step Twelve:  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts and to practice these principals in all our affairs.

Today I see a much broader picture of this step then the one limited to the rooms.  If an addict has already found her way to the rooms she is walking in the right direction.  I am more interested in the addicts in the world that are still lost and trying to find their way.  My work place has connected me with three separate addicts two whom I have had the privilege of being the light for.  That is what carrying the message means to me and practicing this in all of our affairs.  Once your light is turned on, you will want to share that with the world.  There are many many paths to igniting your inner light, the twelve steps is but one way as is religion but another way and there are a thousand more ways out there.  We all have the choice to embrace our lights.... we ALL have inner light.

Working the Steps, attending meetings regularly and setting up a strong honest support group are the three things that I did without fail this time around.  I know without a doubt that I am still clean and clean the longest I have ever been only because of the marriage of these three aspects of the program.  The twelve steps have given me what I have been seeking for well over ten years.  I am beyond gratitude.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Step 1, 2,3,11... Repeat!

Bide the Law ye must
In perfect Love and Perfect Trust
Eight words this Rede fulfill
'An ye harm none, do as ye will'
Ever mind the rule of three
What ye send out comes back to thee
Follow this with mind and heart
And merry meet and merry part.




I have known  of this rede for many years.  I have claimed to live by it for most of those years.  Just recently however I became aware I lacked true understanding of the meaning behind the words.

My lesson to learn recently has been about the impact of my decisions on the people and thus the world around me.  Coming from that place of my selfish inner six year old, I was unable to see beyond my nose.  I acted in a way always that suited my needs of the moment and didn't even consider that there may be people outside my realm that would be effected by meeting my needs, wants... needs.

Dont get me wrong I am not a fool, my momma taught me to be concerned for others.  It's not like I didnt know I could hurt others... duh, I understood that.  What I couldnt see is how a selfish choice that seemingly only effected me and another person actually started a domino effect in my little realm.

Always weighing the consequence of my decisions I tend to make sure the people directly involved with my choices are brought into the realm of my understanding.  What I am learning today is that my realm is very small.  In the selfish nature of my addict I tend to want what I want right now and will tunnel vision to get it. 

The part of the above Rede that I claim to live by that has me sitting in some of my shit is...'An ye harm none, do as ye will'.   In the past this fed my selfish nature as I was unable to see how I hurt people with my actions.  Today it is becoming blaringly clear how my actions have far reaching ripple effects and that harm none has a wider span now.   This is where humility enters.  To know that each action I take will directly and indirectly create a ripple in the pond of my reality and those realities of the people in the pond with me.

Where I once seen only those directly infront of me, I can now see those to each side, and behind me.  I never seen her coming at me but now I can feel every movement behind me because of that missed awareness before.  I am highly attuned to all actions of those around me now and this brings me out of my tunnel vision back into the realm of community.  Obsession creates the tunnel, choices made in obsession bring harm.

'What ye send out comes back to thee'  claims the law of three.  I do not have the option any more to  send out negative energy.  It is like a boom-a-rang, super fast and fucking painful when it smacks me in the face.  So why would I even want to go to these harmful negative places in the first place?  That is the question that mildly haunts me.  I say mildly because I am begining to understand that I won't always receive all the answers to my life questions.  Cunning, baffling and powerful is  the disease of obsession and compulsion. 

I am  back in the light today and walking with the Goddess energy of Quan Yin and feel tremendous gratitude for my life and my higher powers.  I can see clearly now where I went off course recently and all the warnings begining with whispers escalating to screams from my gaurdian spirits.  The next time my intuition will be recognized quicker and I will hopefully steer clear of the impending danger.

All this criptic talk and spiritual energy comes from the place of inner sactuary that I am sitting in right now.  Letting go of  this past hurt has been a peeling of the layers, physical... followed by mental and today in the spiritual.   I think for me I always stop or get stuck in the mental and stay repeating the cycles.  As I sit in deep meditation as the 11 step teaches us I am gifted with deeper understandings to let go entirely my hurts and hang ups of the now passing process in my life.

Merry meet and merry part, all beings and situations that bring me to higher levels of awareness and consiousness.  This is what the program of the twelve steps has gifted me... simple steps to walk up to become a better person.  A less selfish and more community minded person. 

An odd ramble for today....  I blame it on a 60 hour work week and way way too much sugar in my system.

Love to you all, until next week stay clean.

Monday, July 22, 2013

The Moon is Ripe for YOU.



Full Moon in Aquarius today, Moon of reasoning for the medicine people.   The ascension or spiritual awakening process for me includes my hearts passions, and that is for everything metaphysical.  So days like today are very important to me and my little ritualistic, cosmically connected soul.  Aqaurius says its time to step into your creative personality and let  go of the fear of being weird.  Moon of Breaking Masks which we just came out of on the medicine wheel speaks of shattering the illusions of the mask you hide behind.  Combined both are yelling at us to step into our true passions of who we really are.

So who am I?

My story goes way deeper then addiction, much further back.  As does all peoples that struggle with an addiction of any kind, drugs, smoking ciggerettes, sugar, sex, internet...... the list is as large as the population that is inflicted by addiction.  To me addiction is the way we create illusion or masks to hide behind.  To say I am an addict is to hide the true individualistic me, its to morph into a group of support and safety and be able to cocoon away from the world.   Truly a wonderful expereince to an infantile being that needs nurturing to be able to grow into the soul potential its destined for. 

This is the gratitude I share for the rooms of NA and the twelve step program.  As I released all my addictions one by one, food first then smoking shedded away I was only left with sex and drug addiction.  For food and smoking I had a weightloss team supporting me, Only seems fitting now that I also need a team supporting me for the sex and drugs.  This teaches me how interconnected we all are and how we cannot do any growth process alone.  It takes a village to raise one child, and we are all children of this galaxy. 

The reason why I point this out first when trying to discover who I am is because I tend to get trapped in the phases of my growth.  Identifying myself as an addict limits who I am and sticks me in a place  that I could potentially sit forever.  I never stood up and said I was a fat girl as I was losing wieght.  I was actually taught to not see myself as fat at all, only to imagine who I was inspiring to be.   In drug and sex addiction it seems only fitting to do the same thing.  I have been seeing myself as a lowlife drug addict instead of seeing myself as the flowering human spirit that I am.

So what does that flowering human spirit look like?

Before the weight loss and the shedding of my addictions I began to embark on a spiritual journey that ignited a passion within me that I never knew exsisted.  I fell in love with the Goddess.  I began  to study astrology.  I played with the energies of spirits to create charms and talismens.  I studied religions and began to see a much larger picture of life then just the one created in my own closed mind.  I dived deeper into my study of tarot cards and increased my ability to read accurately.  I became a reiki practitioner.  I embraced mediation as a part of my daily life and created a solid relationship with my higher powers.

For 6 years my life went along bumpless and blissful in this state of passionate discovery.   During those years I worked at creating internally the life I wanted externally.  Soon my manifestations would come to pass and I would land in detox broken and completely shocked.  How did I get there??

Looking back now and through watching people go through the  same expereinces as me I can see what happens when we ascend.   As you move into greater consciousness or become more awake, things of lower energy must be stripped away from your life.  Addiction of any kind is of a lower energy, its what keeps you asleep or numb the the realities of who you are... or more positively put, the passions of your heart.  Soon I was losing  weight because food was keeping me sick.  Starches keep me in a slumber of depression.   Once they were removed my life got even more passionate.  It was easy to throw away the pack of smokes after that.  I was fit and feeling fabulous smokes brought me down.

It was at this part of my life that the question of, how good can it get was presented to me.  I was on top  of the world.  The body I had always dreamed for, the job beyond my wildest expectaions and the perfect nuclear family. Life was soo good..  I kept up my meditation and all my spiritual practices until things started to feel off.   The energy shifted and I began a sideways slide.

Soon I found myself drinking one to many glasses of wine each night.  Which quickly lead to a joint here and there, which progressed scary rapidly into cheating on my husband.  Before I even knew what happened I was wired to crystal meth and my family and job nowhere to be seen.  Sitting in detox new years eve I had plenty of time to reflect on my life and how I had gotten there.  One of my gifts is that I am able to see the larger picture of a situation in the moment and accept the lesson presented.   This situation was no different.

I got to big for my ego and lost my humility.  Complacency is another word for it. That was part of it.  This phase of my life the lessons were layered.  I lost my job because of ego.  The drug addiction showed up at that time to be shed away as it had been hiding from my teen years.  This is where the larger picture and examining ones past to understand the present and change the future resided for me.   My family break up was a tougher pill to swallow but the truth of that matter is my husband and I had just grown apart and were no longer energetically compatible.  17 years is hard to peel away from so explosions tend to hurt.  My whole life was stripped away in one clean swoop over a period of three months.

The one beautiful thing about losing everything all at once is that you can start from scratch to recreate yourself into whomever you choose.

Today looking at where I have been gives me clues to who I am now and who I am aspiring to be.  Moon in aquaruis is all about embracing those secrets goals and bringing them into the light.  Medicine moon of reasoning is about figuring out the hows and why's.  So with this cosmic energy readily available to me.  I beg to question.... who am I?

I am not an addict.  It was a  phase of my life that brought me to my knee's.  I am not stupid enough to think that it wont again if I dont actively work a program of recovery.  Recovery for me is a spiritual program of connection to my higher power.  Which I now know i have been working daily for well over ten years.  So through the weight loss phase of addiction removal and now through the drug addiction phase of removal I will continue a spiritual program always.

So if I am not an addict then where do I go from here?   I keep getting tugged back to my passions for the metaphysical.  I am a Witch.   I love working with energy, I like creating magic, I love the study of the stars.  I connect easily with my spirit guides and ancestors.    I am an Earth Mother.  I love being  outside with nature.  I can communicate with the animals and understand their wisdom.  I am grounded and can see the paths through the forest. I guide and teach the children.  I am a Lover.  I love people, all people, even the ones that hurt me.  I want to experience all there is to with each person I meet.  I want to fall in love with every man and woman I know.  I put most of my attention into relationships as this is the only thing we take to the other side with us. 

Tonight I will fall back into the behavior of moon rituals to invoke the power of my being.  To embrace the beauty of who I am at the core and will send that energy out to everyone I know.  Encouraging each of you to dig inside yourself and find out who you truly aspire to be, who you already are and all the beauty you have been in your past.  The moon is ripe for your expression to shine and hold!! 

Sunday, July 21, 2013

A Tale of Living Dirty







I need a new computer, this one just is not great for blogging.  It overheats and then crashes losing me all my hard earned sentences.  I have been on a spending spree these past few weeks maybe I should be planning my expenditures and getting myself a new computer instead of the Egyptian cotton sheets and sun stone ring.  Treating myself is not something I am used to and maybe am getting a bit carried away with it.  Food for thought I guess.

Rambling even before I begin, good sign or not?   I have been off on a grande adventure these past few weeks.  I have been slinking in the shadows instead of standing in my Power and Light.  Processing my lesson and licking my wounds in private before stepping into this page to share them with you.  It's time to share the full story and move on.

Here is my side of the current tale....

Long ago I had a wonderful sponsor, a new budding friendship and a beautiful ending to an obsessive romance.  Long ago in my story is about three months back.   Three months later I have a new sponsor, a destroyed friendship and a new obsessive romance came and gone.  How quickly time travels in the shadowy depths of the land of fire.

Let me begin with the budding friendship as this  is where the bulk of my pain resides.   She is a beautiful woman who I thought struggled with the same affliction I do.... a weakness for the bad boy (Assuming makes an ass out of me and u... just saying). I invite my new friend for coffee to gain insight and direction over letting go of the current manifestation of my obsession, bad boy number one, previously mentioned several times at the beginning of this blog.  I sought out this friends advice and support.  I was desperate for change and freedom from how my disease was playing out in my life.  I felt she held the answers for me, she too was getting over a bad boy.

After an amazing deep conversation where I got a multitude of inspiration and empowerment I felt the need to gift her in return of all she had given me.  As a reiki practitioner I offered her a treatment which she eagerly accepted.  I was happy.  I offered her my advice and gave back what she had given to me... empowerment.   It ended all so wonderfully on my end.

 I was about to learn that it did not end the same way for her.

Having taken a new job the week after our life changing coffee date I was working 12 hour days and falling into bed shortly after  getting home only to get up and head back to work the next day.  I barely had time to eat and shower let alone keep up  on my friendships.  I felided a few texts from this new friend about my motivation for the coffee date.  Confused I just left them alone, not really knowing how to answer them.  Had I known how magical this friend was and the prophesy hidden in the texts I may have acted much  differently in the next paragraph.

After a couple months of this crazy work schedule, I began to feel the effects of a non existent recovery program.  As a bad boy began to creep into my subconscious, I started to skate on some thin ice.  Backing into my old behaviors. Soon the bad boy of my current fantasy was trying to contact me and I found myself being snarred in a net of excitement and attraction.   Still holding on to a program I contacted my sponsor as I was taught to do when my thinking turned stinking.

This was the turning point of holding on to a program and throwing one entirely out the window.  This is where my story dives into the pits of Hades.

My sponsor came across very clear and matter of fact with her advice after I explained my thoughts about responding to this cute guys request for my attention.   'Contact him and you will kill him,  He will go out and use again.  I know of this guy from .......(budding friendship in the first paragraph of tale).  Stay away from him'.  Said my wonderful sponsor.  Pretty clear really, stay away or you will kill him, got it...... ?  Nope, All I heard however was, 'He is a bad boy and no one wants you near him, perfect.'  When I hung up the phone from sponsor I texted Bad boy number two for me.

The bad boy that just broke the heart of my new found friend.

Where in that moment did logic and reason escape me all together?  When did my addict rise up and completely take over and  say Fuck you all, I will do what I want and not care who the fuck gets hurt.  Where did all my hard worked compassion and considering others go?  How did I slip so quickly back into the dark?

The friends with benifits turned briefly romance ending in just friends, bad boy and I were off and running in a direction far from recovery.  Romancing using, bashing the program and shirking our responsabilities.  Or on my end that was what I was doing.  I just wanted to have fun and my program was saying I couldn't so I pushed far from it.   I can see that only today as I step out of the darkness of where I was and back into the light of where I am now.  However in that moment of darkness I was having fun and I was enjoying his company.  I don't regret that part of my story.  Live and learn... I gained excitment and pain, lessons learned.  Lessons to share for another time.

... My new budding friendship in that moment of fuck you decision was destroyed.  My relationship with my sponsor in that same moment was severed forever after.  Those are the regrets I have, those are the true amends needing to be made.  I hurt both parties and for that I am working a step four and nine to clear the guilt and shame of always opting for the guy at the scarifice of the platonic relationship.  My pattern to clear.

Now before all was lost I did try to contact my sponsor, who for whatever reason was unavailable to me.  I turned to my support group instead.  Through the bad boy romance, I did stay tethered to my support group and therefor the program even if I was not actively working it the way I had in the past.  It is this support that I am entirely grateful for today as I am still clean while all other parties have already relapsed or are in process of now.  My heart breaks at my part in those relapses.  My sponsors prophesy was right.  I am humbled beyond anything I have ever felt before.

While I was trying to reach out to my sponsor my now destroyed friendship was also reaching out to her and connecting.  I could see the frienship building between them and I felt abondoned and a bit ganged up upon.  I guessed it is the consequences of my actions and I accepted that as such.  That is until the facebook confrontations turned into verbal attacks in front of my 12 year old daughter turned into physical attacks at the meeting of my 9 month tag.  This coming from a woman with 9 years in recovery, a slip at the 5 year mark and clean since.   No longer was my compassion with my consequences.  This went to far.

Where was my sponsor through these attacks?  Standing to destroyed friendships side and via social media firing me as her sponsee.  My heart was utterly broken.  My addict whispered how I deserved it.  She told me how I brought this on myself.  I would have slipped very quickly into shame had I not had an amazing support group walking along side me the entire journey.

It was through the eye's of my friends that I could see how I never once reacted poorly to destroyed friendships attacks, only trying to make amends in the emails and then severing all contact when I realized she was not ready to recieve any amends, even the physical attack provoked nothing of the like return in me.  It was through my friends that I could see how the bad boy was playing a very dirty game of turning two friends into deep enemies, inflicting his pain for the gain of power.  But it was my own ears and eyes that seen my sponsor come out in my destroyed friend.  It was hearing my sponsors words verbally attack me that really brought awareness home.

I was humiliated in front of two newcomers and for that today I am totally humbled.  My fuck you all action had some very serious consequences.  My desire to hurt and be hurt has been exausted.  I have been shown in my humilation that I am no longer that person with shadowy morals.  I can no longer act from that place of dirty and live clean.  Sometimes my higher power has to show me the hard way because thats the path I choose to learn the lesson.  I realize now that I always have a choice.

I have severed all ties to bad boy.  I have stepped away from destroyed friendship.  I have set boundaries for myself with my old sponsor to include what is nessesary for home group interaction.  I am hurt and this will overshadow the two female relationships until I can work through my feelings in this area.  My higher power will work that out for me.  I am back nose deep in step four working the relationship section and am back to regular meeting attendence.  My program has again become the most important thing in my life.  Why?  Because I AM the most important thing in my life.


Saturday, July 13, 2013

Avoiding to Self Protection

Its been awhile, since I have been here.  There are a couple of reasons....

...... the last time I posted my computer crashed at the very end of what I thought was a fabulous post.  I lost everything! Which normally doesn't happen because this program saves as I go.  But for whatever reason all was lost and I just didn't have it in me to rewrite it all.   That is reason number one.

Reason number two is Avoidance.  As I was just opening the blogger window I was contemplating what to write about today, my first thought was tolerance as it is something I am learning on a daily basis lately.  However the real reason I have not been here is because I have been avoiding.

What I should process through here is if I am indeed avoiding and if I am, what exactly it is that I am avoiding.   So lets start there......

I have always known that I am a runner.  When things get tough  I hit the pavement at mach10, never looking back.  I have walked away from great jobs because I couldn't handle the situation.  I have lost friendships because of unresolved conflict.   Many Many broken hearts have ensued from my lack of facing issues within romantic relationships.  Ultimate avoidance at any cost has always been my coping strategy.

So why do I do this?  What am I so afraid of?    Am I just a big fat coward??

I live under the assumption that I am a lover not a fighter and choose peace over chaos.  Which to  some  extent I do stand by.  I will not  engage in a physical battle with anyone, it's not in my nature.  I will not let someone push me around or  talk down to me, I have a growing  respect for myself.  Do I always run from upholding that respect?  No, just recently I had a  sit down with my bosses for this exact reason.   So maybe I am learning to not run away all the time.

I can see now  from that last paragraph that I am in the process of learning not to avoid. That was a scary situation to sit down with my bosses and not just quit my job and run away like normal.  So growth is occurring.    Maybe what I am processing through right now then is learning what needs to settle on its own and what I need to take care of for myself, for myself.   Avoidance or stepping back till the air clears and calmer minds prevail?  Avoidance or silence and inner connection to understand my part in the situation?

I am learning that I cannot clean up other peoples shit.  I cannot hold the hand of another through their shit, I cannot lead another out of their shit either.   Assuming responsibility for other people has been my problem in the past and contributed to my need to bolt and avoid when things don't work out the way I want them too.

I can only be responsible for my part in things.  To avoid is  to ignore that.  I make amends when I have hurt someone or did something that goes against my own morals.  In this particular current situation in my life of a love triangulation strangulation, I made amends to the person I hurt.  Its not  my responsibility to force them to accept the amends.  And sadly in this case the amends were not accepted and the emotional energy on their part has escalated to physical attacks directed towards  me.  Where does avoiding end and self protection begin?

Cleaning up  ones side of the street is sometimes painful business.  Making amends for me goes deeper then  just words, its in my actions and continued path.  I have matched my actions to my words which has pushed me into a place of heart break and loss.  Not a bad thing as I brought it on myself from the beginning but to ignore the heartbreak is to ignore my real feelings and that is the bottling avoidance I have lived under my whole life.  So really am I avoiding the situation if I am taking action by not contacting and staying involved?  Outwardly it looks like no action is happening but inwardly I am fighting an incredible battle between my will and morals.

So if I am doing my part in this situation to correct my inner demons, how do I deal with the little physical demons that yank my hair out from the back of my head when I am not looking?  Jesus says to turn  the other cheek and let her slap both of them... you can say I did that.   However now I find myself not wanting to face that conflict again so choosing to stay insulated in the safety of my home and circle of friends.  It reminds  me of isolating and I  wonder if the fear will cause my world to shrink again until  I am back at the using game.   Rounding the finish line of my one year cake, I am too close to a major milestone to allow that to happen.   So a new level of unavoidance must be conquered I think.  I will attend my own beloved home group, feeling the fear of confrontation and doing it any ways.  I will continue on my own path of recovery and know that between me and my higher power I am walking in the light and doing the right thing.

Coming up against people that actively live and love their character defects is something I am going to have to learn to accept and tolerate along my journey... learning to have love and compassion for these people is the ultimate lesson I will learn...... once I get through avoidance.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Nine Months Clean!!


Nine Months Clean.   Wow.  Honestly I never believed I would get here.  I took my first clean 6 month tag this time around and I remember how great it felt to be clean for six months.  How do I feel now?

Surreal.

The excitement is not there like it was 3 months ago, it has been replaced with a more subtle sense of rounding the finish line.  I feel more serious and focussed on my recovery now.  I truly did not ever believe I would make it to a year clean.  With all my relapses and my need to learn things the long, hard, painful way, I just didn't see a medallion in my future.

Today I am allowing my self to explore the possibility that I may see a birthday cake at my home group after all.  I get a momentary jolt of excitement at the thought before I am made very aware of the work that still needs to go into my recovery before getting there.

I am still allowing my past to haunt my present and threaten my future.  Working through a second set of steps more focussed this time on the codependency side of my addiction, I am made painfully aware of how I still cycle the pattern of abuse in my world.  We are but Victims once and then become willing volunteers.... that is where I am at now.

To make it to my one year I need to stop volunteering my self for others peoples growth or sickness.  Momma was wrong when she taught us little girls to be there for everyone else and put yourself last.  In order for me to fully recover I truly have to put myself first and take care of me.  It is only through being strong in myself that I can help others.  The help I can offer is by leading the way, thats it.  I can no longer jump into the snake pit and pull the suffering friend out.  I cannot afford another bite.

There comes a point in ones life when that pain just becomes to great and the option of a simple quiet existence becomes more enticing.  To get to my one year I need to release the drama and chaos my addict so loves to be in the dead middle of.  My addict is dying and truly thats a good thing if I want a new life.

Letting go of my addict has been the true process here. Lady Vixen, the one I have lived under for the better part of my life.  The persona that has kept me safe from the light, kept me guarded and shielded from any hurts, the lovely vixen that got everything she wanted and more.  It has been a hard battle in my little brain to let that energy go, to let that ego go.  However I fully understand now that she must be put to the grave if I want to see and maintain long term sobriety.

Nine months clean has definitely brought a whole new feeling of understanding and acceptance that I was not anticipating.  My work is cut out for me, the next three months I will go within and leave the outside drama's to those still living in their chaos.  Trudging the Happy, but sometimes Lonely path to Recovery.....