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.

Emotional Maturity is Overrated!

As I come back into my light I am faced with the reality of my personality.  Sometimes living in  my addictive personality is much easier, wearing the rose coloured glasses affords me my little fantasies.  However when I come out of that persona I am always disgusted by the truth the light shines on my creation.

Emotional maturity.    What is that and once I figure that out, how do I achieve it??

I have heard it said in the rooms that when you start using you stunt your emotional growth.  I can clearly see that in many people, but I didn't start really using until my adult years and I have been made very aware lately that I have the emotional maturity of a newt.  lol  To exaggerate my point.... I don't even know what a newt is, I just like saying the word.

Looking at my own life I find myself wondering what extreme trauma does to ones emotional well being.  When a child must go to other places emotionally on a regular basis does that do permanent damage reflected in the adult years?  I have never been able to handle my feelings.  As A teen I drugged them, as an adult I ate and smoked them away.  Recently I was back to drugging them.  It has only been this  past year that I actually began to work through them.

And let me tell ya.... they are Ugly.... with a capital U.    And I don't handle them well.

I find I over react all the time to my feelings, making those mountains out of mole hills.  Sitting in the black or white of them, never able to just be in the  gray with them.  I am all drama or completely removed.  I am a lover or an enemy, never just a friend.  I have to place everything in its little compartment neatly and if it doesn't fit anywhere nicely I discard it completely.  Things must follow a pattern I have laid out or I get very out of sorts.

I am emotionally immature.  Yup there I said it.... the emotional intelligence of a Newt.  I can be smart as fuck in the way of reading people.  I can grasp concepts quickly, my mind is sharp... but this ol heart of mine is fubarred.

I have a heart that was broken before it even had time to grow.... now its all deformed and ill functioning.   Can an old dog learn new tricks?  Its not that I am trying to be negative here, I am just feeling the crunch of my age and the bitterness that it has taken me this long to come to understand just how much life has been wasted repeating the same sick patterns of broken heartedness.

I always referred to the term of broken heart to mean from romantic relationships, but now I see a much larger picture of the heart of Love.   A child who's definition of Love was distorted and made ugly before she even knew what healthy love was.  Thats the definition of a broken heart.  Love is not about the opposite sex as my intellectual brain has been telling me  for years,  Love is about having a heart filled with the capacity to give and receive love of others.  The heart is about being able to feel and express ones feelings in a healthy manner, to accept ones feelings..... to be open to feelings.

The heart is Feelings.  Its more then Love I see now.  The heart is where all my feelings are processed.  My dysfunctional heart, my broken heart has contributed to my emotional immaturity.  Aha, moments dawning!

So how do I grow up emotionally?

 I heal my broken heart?

Holy fuck how do I do that??

That seems scarier then just dealing with an infantile emotional out burst every now and then.  I have been doing well with band-aids and duck tape around the cracks in my ticker.  I am so not going to the doctor just so they can open me up and tinker with my feeling center.   Oh wait, wait wait....... thats what those freaking steps have been doing isn't it.  Sneaky buggers!!!!!

Light bulbs are flashing like the paparazzi chasing a Kardashian......I love writing my shit out.

Damn.  With that I better get back to Step four.  And go figure folks I am just starting the section on feelings.    I guess this is why they say the programs works of you work it.  I feel like I am gonna puke most days again, so something is moving again.  Can't say I miss this feeling but I do know the results of last time were mind blowing for me.  So here is too the roller coaster ride we love to hate.

Regrets that Lift You into a New Life

Do you live with regrets?

Better question still, do you let your regrets hold you back from living life now?

I know I let my regrets hold me back for a long time.  Its actually one of the reasons why I used so much, to numb out all those failures.  But then I had to ask myself what is failure?  Really?

I was just discussing this with a good friend, a normie, about making mistakes in life and how to come back from them.  I have always lived my life to the fullest.  Wait.  Let me think that through a moment.  I didn't always live my life to the fullest.  When I was playing wifey to my ex husband I was not living but mearly existing   When I finally peeled out of the marriage...  like slowly inching a band aid off a hairy arm, I decided I would live fully.  And I have.

One thing I am learning about taking risks and living life is that there is gonna be mistakes. I am gonna make some bad decisions and I am gonna fall sometimes.  However those falls are worth the view they provide and the lessons the equip me with.  Taking risks and  living life gives me so much excitement and adventure to carry with me forever.  I cant take possessions to my grave but I can take memories. Following my heart creates passion in my world and I wouldn't give that up for the regrets that balance it along the way.

 I am not trying to focus on the positive RaRa flip side of making mistakes.  How do I get through my regrets is what that was about in an overall picture.  In the moment however living with mistakes is about correcting them as soon as possible.  Dealing with my past regrets that threaten to prevent future growth are handled best by living the correction now.

I quit a job in my chosen field of expertise many years ago that I deeply regretted for a very long time.  That job is always posted and I have re applied three times only to be faced with an accepted amends by the boss I had offended when I quit.  I cannot fix what I broke  in that situation.  For a long time I abandoned all jobs in that field out of self punishment.  Also known as guilt and shame.  Today I am finding my way back into the field and through seeking out positions I found my passion coming back alive and the guilt over that one regret fading into the past.  .......Into the past where it belongs.

I have a choice whether I let my past dictate my future.  Letting it go and ignoring it is not an option for me.  Living amends are the path to my freedom in this area.  Seeking out to correct the mistake is the way for me.  Actively working towards letting go is the only way this analytical brain will loosen its grip on regrets.

I have also heard it in terms of keeping our side of the street clean.  Cleaning up our side of the street behind us is important.  Correcting the regrets I can and making a living amends to the ones I can't is how I keep my side of the street clean and therefor my mind is freed of shameful debris.

I try not to live with regrets any more.  Everything I experience in life serves a purpose in shaping the  life I lead and I wouldn't trade it with anyone.  I love my life.

Who are you becoming?

 Topic: Fearless Moral Inventory

I was so afraid to do the fourth step the first time.   I had heard horror stories about it.  How painful it was, how people relapsed during the fourth step and how many people fired their sponsors and started from scratch every time they got to the fourth step.    So naturally I relapsed just before the fourth step and headed back to square one.  The second time attempting step four I heard how much a gift it was to work that step and how much freedom you come out with after finished.    I heard that I would learn to love and accept myself through this step and how I would get to know who I really was.     I relapsed again during this step and headed back to square one.

It took me three go rounds to finally face the demon I thought I had become in active addiction.   It took a steady build up of courage for me to finally be ready to face the person I was, became and was about to become.    It wasn't that it was all bad and I was afraid to see the monster I was capable of being.  I was quite comfortable in that.   The fear that overwhelmed me was at as soon as I could see my potential I knew there would be no going back to ignorance.   The bliss I knew in addiction and prior to it would be shattered and I would have to start taking responsibility for my actions and my life.   That's why I kept relapsing.   I was holding on to my ignorance.  I was trying to keep a bliss that hard turned toxic long ago.

I think it would have been easier if I was not the type to do it to the deepest of my ability.  Go big or go home, all or nothing, work it fully if your gonna spend time working it at all.   Maybe if I was more laid back and gave it fifty or sixty percent I would have been able to hold some of my ignorance.  Maybe then it would have been a slower more subtle awakening.  But no, I do things to the fullest of my ability and the fourth step was no exception.

When I finally did complete the fourth step, it was not with put two relapses both during the relationship section.  I have come to learn I give my power away within my relationships, both male and female, both friends and family, both romantic and platonic.   I meld into the person I am hanging out with.  To become aware of that was too painful.  To embarrassing.   The acceptance part of that has been a continual process of working through with each of my relationships in my life.

The fourth step has peeled away the layer that was hidden to me and causing my inability to see myself and life situation clearly.   By becoming the person or group I was spending the most time with, I was going against who I was as an individual.   That caused so much disharmony in my being that I was on a constant spin.   However to finally accept that was even worse in the beginning because if I was not 'them', then who the hell was I?

That is what I am walking through today.  Learning who I am.  Spending time alone with myself, not in isolation but in curiosity of building a relationship with this new person in my life.... Me.  I am defining who I am by tapping into my feelings and developing my intuition throu meditation.   Taking those new found insights into the world and maintaining my balance within relationships and groups.  Each time I succeed in staying true to myself, I grow stronger and uncover another cool personality trait that's all mine.  Not gonna lie though, some are positive traits and some not so glorious ones.  But all the same I get excited just to know that I am capable of something all on my own.

I no longer feel a slave to my addiction, nor the people around me.  The fourth step has kept it's word that I would learn who I was and I am always amazed by what I am capable of.  The freedom that comes from peeling back the layers of crap that I hid behind for so long definitely out weighs the rawness of standing naked.   I now look forward to tomorrow to see who will emerge from this darkness I have hid in for way too long.

Who are you?  Do you know?  Are you  willing to do the work to find out?   I hope you are standing  in all the glory that you posses inside and out??

Relationship... What is that?

Topic:  Relationships

What a hot topic this one is in the rooms of our meetings.  My first and only thought for the longest time, until just recently actually was the relationship of the romantic kind.   I was either all for it or all against it depending on the stage my own romance was at.   Last night I officially made the final break in my toxic two year roller coaster ride of a relationship with a man from the rooms.   This was the third time I have 'officially' broken up with him.   I won't go back on my word this time, I feel much differently about relationships through my understanding of the fourth step and the entire program.

Having the limited beleif that romantic relationships were the most important relationship in my life robbed me of some truly great relationships with other women, my children and my own mother and family.   I was always so absorbed in a man that I lost sight of everything and everyone else... Including myself.  The first relationship you need to build is with yourself.   This is what the fourth step try's to teach us.  By looking at our part in our relationship interactions we get to know who we are and how we communicate.   I could not see any of that while I was trapped in a toxic relationship that was always keeping my entire being locked into his.

The freedom I experienced the last time we broke up for six months, I got to see how intolerant I am. How manipulative I am, and how closed minded I am.   These things I could not see while a man was standing by my side telling me how great I was.  I have had to stand in friendships without my man to hide behind when I didn't want to face a conflict.   I have had to reach out to others in my times of need, lacking my man to comfort me.   These have all been great truths in learning who I am and how I function within relationships across the board.

I find I have way more love and time to give to my children.  I am sure they are all kinda creeped out by this new Hugh mom they have... Actually my oldest jokes about her party mom turning into 'nanny McFee'.   It's a good feeling.  I have gone out of my way to work through my resentments and uncomfortable feelings with my mother, healing very old dark wounds.  I am gearing up to rekindle my relationship with my estranged brother.  These are all things I did not have energy for when I was chasing my next compliment from my boyfriend.

I feel grateful and free today.  This program hasn't given me my life back, it has given me a whole new life.    I pray that more people find their ways to the 12 steps from whatever fellowship fits them.  This world would be a much better place if we all fell in love with ourselves.

Self love is the only path to God

......'The last thing we expected was an awakening of the spirit.'.... Basic text, p.49

I agree fully with thAt statement. When i landed in the rooms i was so done with trying to find and please god. In my mind i was fully neglected by all spirituAl forces so there for i would devote my attention to the dark forces of the world.

I had spent many years prior to getting lost in loaded land actively seeking my higher power. I tried all the new age progrAms from deepak, louise hay, wAyne dyer, any one who claimed i could find my higher power. With each program i failed at the deeper my belief went that even god could not love me.

Then i found the 12 steps.

It was through getting to know myself and learning to be gentle with myself and finally learning the very tough lesson of loving myself that i have found my higher power. I am so grateful to this progrAm. It was a brutally uncomfortAble process but one for which i have found freedom from my own self defeating patterns.

 Recenting i have found myself out of mu job, for which i cAn now respect the lArger picture of the situation because of step one. Step 2 and 3, brought me to communicTion with my higher power so i didnt let fear over take mE. Step four helped me to see who i am and what direction i want to go now. Step 11 has kept me calm And open to spirits guidAnce.

This program has given me new tools to cope with life and that tool is self love and a connection to an energy way larger then myself.

So just for today i will awaken my sleepy spirit, i will use the twelve steps.

Thank you for letting me share in my new crude fashion. I apologize for the spelling mistakes. I am a recovering addict named brandy.