Coming to Believe

Be Still and know that I am God.   That has been my new mantra when my mind starts to go into overdrive. I have to say its working very well.  It helps me bring myself back to my inner light and reminds me that I have control over only one thing... and thats my mind.   When I say 'Be still' now my mind stops the ridiculous thought process it was in  and settles for a moment, sometimes longer if I am lucky.

But that is not what I want to talk about here.  I spent some time in contemplation at work today about all the ways I try to get out of my feelings.  I thought about how hard it is for me to even identify my feelings when they are occurring because I am so proficient in getting out of them before they escalate into anything.  I also thought about how my mind works in over drive when intense feelings come up.

When i am having a feeling my mind is all over that feeling convincing me of something that its not.  Is like my brain hates my heart.

 Today my day started out wonderfully, but as the day progressed and it got hotter I got more tired.  Not cranky or anything just tired.  Slowly my thinking turned stinking, like a cancer spreading through my happiness.   I found I was blaming my misery on people in my life.  No one was texting me and that was the focus of my mind  for a solid hour or so before I had to become still again and know that God would text me if he had an Iphone.   How ridiculous is that?    How quickly my mind moves my attention outside myself and the immediate feeling of being tired.

I had an epiphany a few months ago when I was just beginning to get comfortable with being single.  When a man is in my life he takes me out of my feelings.  Just knowing  I will see him later or talk to him later was enough to help me over whatever crap feeling I was experiencing.  I learned this when I was going through some tough stuff at work and having to actually deal with it because I couldn't get out of the feelings until I did. When I have a hearty distraction in my life I don't have to deal with the feelings that come up and are wanting my attention, because my attention is already in single focus elsewhere.

Todays feeling was mild tired, but can you imagine what my mind does with extreme overwhelm?  I talk myself into a disappearing act and split.  The constant runner that I am will have me turning tail and heading for the hills if I dont have a distraction to keep me grounded where I am.

..... Re reading that last paragraph seems to have a contradiction in it.  A distraction to keep me ground and a distraction to take me out of my feelings?  Which is it?  Is there a time and place for a distraction in ones life?  Are we meant to feel every feeling or can we get some relief from minor distractions?  Are there healthy distractions?

My distractions in the past have all been pretty unhealthy.... drugs, sex, romantic relationships, food....  So what do I turn to now?  I still eat a tub of ice cream when I am feeling yucky, and still do find the cute boys irresistible.... is that detrimental to my recovery?  Maybe.

I think that whatt I need to be looking for here is focus nd not distraction.  I need to find a happy focus that is healthy for me and stick to that focus through any negative feelingss that come up.  Finding that focus maybe is where I should be putting my attention. Work has settled now, although I  am looking at he journeyman program so could this be a deeper focus for me?  Have I not taken my focus far enough?

Realizing I am tired and is nobody's fault was pretty cool for me.  Planning a relaxing might in to recoup has settled this poor  old brain of mine.  She really does work out hard, but as I go deeper into my meditative practices I find she is getting some peace and I am experiencing some serenity as a result.

I am in love with my life again.  I am falling inlove with myself again.  It is a constant ebb and flow process of coming to believe..... in ME.

Gentle Drugs

I wonder if there is a point in every ones recovery when they are faced with the medication fork in the road?

I am at said fork.  It has been suggested to me lately by two separate people that maybe some mind calming prescriptions will help me find the balance that I am so eagerly seeking in my life today.  It was only upon the second suggestion that I began to listen.  Do I need to medicate my mind to find Peace?

I struggle with this on a few levels.  To the addict side of things is prescriptions not just another  form of drug use, legalized?  Looking back on all my years I see how my weed consumption in the beginning was self medication for the monkey mind that was devastating my life.  Prior to weed consumption I kept a fairly safe numbed state  of well over 200 lbs.  Now that I am not using anything to slow this mind down and ease the anxiety that is building within me do I really need a doctors approved pharmaceutical money grabbing drug?

Maybe.  Is my quality of life worth it?  Will it increase my quality or will I become zombified?

On a deeper  level, I believe that everything we need to heal our bodies is in nature.   I don't even take headache medication on the belief that if I have one my body is trying to tell me something and I should find the cause before seeking the cure.  It is a bit more complicated with anxiety and racing thoughts.  They tend to get in the way of reason and cloud my process.

I am having a hard time writing this post out.  My mind in a million different places.  I guess thats just testimony to where I am at in life as well.  Let me try to keep focussed and clearly state my course of action as I have already decided not to seek professional help yet.

I am  blessed to have a healer as a dear mentor in my life.  She is schooled in the way of herbs and has recommended an  elixir that has already begun to bring me  peace and some serenity.  For that I am entirely grateful. She also pointed out my rapid weight loss of 21lbs in two months may be off setting my hormones.  I have also become aware that I am beginning to over indulge in the sugars again and that is never good for my mind.  I used to believe it was because it caused me weigh gain but now I realize the sugars fuck with my chemicals in my body.

What was  originally thought a couple weeks ago as the disease of addiction manifesting itself in my life,  I now realize is my body tellin me it is out of balance.  AS Within So Without.  If we are not well in our health, body mind and spirit our outer world will reflect that.  I always seem to go right into the disease before looking at anything else in my life.  Every ill thought, ill feeling or off quilter imbalance in my world is the by product of my disease and guess what?  It's not.  My whole genetic make up is not about addiction, it is not who I AM. It is a part of me that needs healing but it is not the whole of me.  This is a new understanding hat is just beginning to dawn. The light it has shone on my world has filled me with Hope that one day I will bee free of the lifestyle that devastated my little world.

So taking care of my body has been the focus I have been missing these past two months.  Bringing myself back to intense meditation has helped me see this.  The elixir my mentor gifted me is now beginning to balance my mind and I feel myself returning to the land of the high functioning.

I still do not believe that medication is the way out for everyone.  Yet I have made a promise to my friends, even my healer that I will seek out medical advice if this plan does  not bring me relief within the next three months. I am open minded  these days.......

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.

Running to Change

'When the pain  of staying the same becomes greater then the pain of change, surely  you will change or.... die'.   That is a saying that has stuck like a popcorn seed in my teeth for years.  It was the reading last night in my  meeting.  I shared  passionately about it.

Have I not always loved change?  Have I not always been the one that will spew about how life is boring and mundane without the shake up of change?  Have I not worked in careers that promote and practice change? Have I not went through some pretty intense transformations?   So why then is the kernel of that saying  stuck in my damn teeth??

Do I really accept real change in my life or am I just containing my chaos to a little box thats comfortable for me?  Do I allow only the kind of change that I am comfortable and used to into my world, masked as courageous steps?  I move geographically often, is that not change?  I start new jobs on a clockwork pattern of  every six months to a year, is that not embracing change?  I make new circles of friends at the same rate of job changes and city moves?  Are these not all changes?

Or Am I just running??

 Is that kind of change what I am used to and have actually built my life upon?   It is not change for me, it has been my normal life existence.  I have been living under the illusion of change when in reality I have been running fast and furious away from every thing good for me.

Security. Stability. Growth. Inner healing. Friendships. Career. Life.

Thats the popcorn seed right there.  I am a runner not an embracer of change.  And now the pain of that running is getting harder to cope with as I work deeper into a program of recovery.  My recent complacency and emotional slip has left me a bit bruised and it hurts like a mother fucker.  Self induced pain like a hangover is no longer welcomed or tolerated in my world any more.  I cannot function from that place any longer because I no longer vibrate from that frequency any more.

I am making some huge changes in my thinking these days and I am taking some steps I have never taken before.  Where I used to hide I am no longer going there.  Although I did recently, but I am desperately holding dear to my Goddess for strength and support as I peel away a layer that no longer serves me.  Its pretty painful but I know when the scab is removed I will begin to start a new journey in my life that will be walking into unknown.

Like the black panther I am embarking on a journey away from my own shadowy past into the brilliant light of my future and for the first time in my life, I will not run from it.  The pain of running is too great, so today I continue to change and ignore the fear that lurks all around me.

Beautifully Broken Fantasy

Fantasy.

Do I live in a fantasy world??  I was presented with this idea at dinner with a few women the other night.  As one women shared her experience of creating these fantasy scenarios in her mind about what her love relationships should be, yet never acknowledging the reality of them in actuality, I found myself questioning my own fantastical mind.  Do I create a reality that does not exist??

My whole spiritual plight for the past ten years has been about manifesting my own reality.  I am fully aware and am an expert at creating my desires in my reality. Or am I?  Is this the illusion I live under in my fantasy world?   The program teaches me to live on lifes terms, yet I still believe I can manipulate the universe to get what I want.  And for the most part  thats a pretty accepted concept.  I think my deeper question is, whats my reality and whats my higher powers reality??

Is my reality Fantasy?  Do I keep getting into romantic situations thinking they will become something that they never can be?  Or do I say one thing and actually mean another?  Do I see my partner as something that he isn't yet but has the potential in becoming?  Owe.... that one hurt.  Yes I do  see them changing because of me.  Not that I want to change anyone, but I do feel like I will make a difference in their lives.  I want to feel important to the other person.  Is that where my fantasy begins?  I see the potential and live from that place instead of the reality of where they truly are?

What about other area's of my life?  Do I live in an alternate fantasy there too?  Have I ever been down to earth and just accepted life the way it is?  I am beginning to think not. My ex husband kept the household grounded, I was always off on some quest.   Maybe my childhood scarred me so much that I went into a safe place of make believe and have been stuck there ever since.  That  thought kinda makes me sad for me.  However it also makes a truck load of sense as well.

I have been saying for days how broken I am.  Even though its a negative term, I really do feel like some  pretty deeply damaged goods.  Not that I cannot be fixed, but its never an easy realization to see how fucked up you still are.  Remove the numbing out drugs and the distracting boys that tell you your great and your left with the broken little girl that needs some serious TLC.  And not from another cute boy.

Humpty was put back together again, I know I can be too.  But the only way to restore myself to sanity is to tap into that higher power and begin to live from that reality instead of the one I continually create for myself.  Its scary to begin to step out of the cushion of make believe into the reality of brilliant light, it blinds my eyes. My dreams and nightmares in the dark have kept me company for over thirty years.  I am comfortable there.

I meet all these single older women that tell me they enjoy and prefer to be single.  I don't want to be one of those women.  I want to have a man in my life one day... a healthy man and a healthy romance.  Once my fantasy pops will all my dreams and hopes go out the window too?  Will I just be living day to day, in the normalcy of  life with no more excitement my fantasies afford me?

Its not like these women are unhappy.  They are so serene and beautiful.  They reassure me its well worth the work.  Yet I cry just a little bit about giving up my illusion that one day my knight in shining armour will swoop in on his white horse and whisk me off into a fairy land of constant love and lust.  I don't want to grow up.  I don't want to give up the fairytale my life has been.

Even with the chaos of realization when my illusions are shattered seem more bearable then a life without the illusion in the first place.  I guess change is always scary and stepping out of ones insanity is an intense process.  I have already rocked the boulder at the top of the hill.... nothing to do now but  let it roll.

Oh this is gonna hurt I just know it.  Good-bye fantasy world,  hello........ REALITY?

How is the Disease of Addiction Manifesting itself in my Life Today??

How has the disease of addiction been manifesting itself in my life today??  This is one of the first questions in Step One.   The first time working the Step I was put off by this question.  How else would it be working, I couldn't quit dope... duh.  What a stupid question I thought.  Now upon the third time answering it I see how brilliantly layered the Steps are.  No matter how many times you work them you get something new out of them each time.

I vowed loudly in my excitement upon finishing the entire set of steps the first time that I would never do them again!  Once was enough.  .... And more will be revealed....., was apparently lost on me then.

So how is my addiction manifesting itself in my life today??  First defining what addiction is for me is key to understanding if I am in its grips or not.  Addiction is when my thoughts become obsessive and my actions compulsive to those obsessive thoughts.

My brain is such a tricky place to manoeuvre.  The past couple months have put some serious pressure on my program. At first I allowed myself the grace of a new job and big changes in my life, but that grace quickly turned to complacency.  With that came my Lower Self the lovely Lady Vixen,  as my beautiful Higher Power got pushed to the side forced to watch my decent back into a suffering mind.

Upon working the first three steps yesterday I have learned a great deal about the way my mind works and how this disease effects me personally.  I had been working the steps previously but got caught up in step four as seems to be the pattern for  me each time I work the steps.  I had started them originally, specifically for a guy I was struggling to let go of. I restarted them yesterday and broadened them to all romantic relationships, because it turns  out I cannot be without one for long in my life.

Now its not  the romantic relationship that's the problem for me, or the guy involved in it, these are new understandings.  Its the obsessive thoughts about that person that are the problem.  My disease cannot just go with the flow in this area and allow something to just progress naturally in whatever direction it is meant to go.  No my addict needs to control and manipulate it to fit into a safe little box that I have full control over at every little moment.  The obsession is all invasive in my mind, reaching out like deadly climbing vines towards the object, penetrating every area of their  lives.  The insatiable need to know exactly what, where and with whom they are sucks the life force out of my own life

This is where the compulsion steers me off track of my life.   I begin  to make decisions based on this obsession.  I slowly begin to cut out things that will interfere with my thoughts, the time away from my thoughts  as well as opposing opinions to my thoughts.  I begin to slowly move away from my goals redirecting myself towards the object of my obsession.  I start to lose the sense of myself and assume a sense of them.  Its a horribly scary process that  I have endured one too many times in my life.

Why did I open the door in the first place if I new this was a pattern??  Complacency told me that I could just play and not let it go beyond that.  Complacency told me that I could just be friends... something I desperately want to learn to be with the opposite sex.  Lady Vixen told me it would all work out well, she painted a beautiful fantasy that was just to enticing to ignore.

I caught myself before I lost complete dignity and entirely stepped out of my integrity.

I made a decision last night to turn it back over to my higher self and to cut off my lower selves obsession.  I have to take that first step and then my Higher Power will take the next one for me.  So I stepped up and asked the object of obsession to step away from me. I did it quickly before I changed  my mind.   Luckily I picked a better obsession today and it was an easy graceful situation with no confrontation.  For that I am entirely grateful.

Working the first three steps shed some brilliant light on my patterns which I was already aware of but thought I had already overcome.... turns out I have not.  I redefined my higher power and  recommitted myself to standing in my truth and integrity again.  I do not have enough time or energy right now for anything remotely romantic, sexual or even friendly with a male.  My focus needs to be upon my career and raising my beautiful daughter.  That is all I have energy for in my life after recovery.

My reservation is that I will dry up and become an old bitter lady.  I was shown in meditation last night that I will find love again one day.  After my career and my daughter are fully stable and have a strong foundation.... that takes time and work.  So for the first time in .... ever, I truly feel the obsession to be with a guy lifting and my heart coming alive again to all the possibilities my life has in store for me.  I tend to forget hooking up with a guy is the definition of insanity for me..... been there done that..... but living single and exploring new things on my own.... now thats trying something so different!!

How Quickly I Forget

How soon one forgets the hard times.   How quickly we tend to forget where we came from when the going gets good.   Is it arrogance or is it busyness?  Is it that classic out of sight out of mind mentality?   How dangerous is that for the addict that still has the disease of addiction pumping through their veins just waiting for the opportunity to kill them.

Thats where I am today.   Complaining about my lack of time and balance in life.  Stressing about my loss of time in meditation and prayer, lack of meetings and No step work.  To busy working stupid long hours in a physically demanding job, rushing home to cook for my daughter and spend a few moments catching up with her before crashing into my bed.   Is this really life?

..............I do remember a day when my only concern for the entire day was getting loaded.  No job to worry about.  No kids to rush home too.  No prayer other then whining to God that I am outta dope.  Life was so full of suffering and yet I forget so soon those days.  I forget the shear pain of waking up each day to the full misery of what my life had become.   The intense loneliness of isolation.   The pure animalistic nature my personality had assumed.  I forget these things as my life settles back into normal.

My gratitude has been lacking lately.  I have been focussing on the long hours of my job and missing the fact that less then three months ago I was stressing about not having a job at all.  I have been nitpicking my job apart lately where I used to hand it over to my higher power and accept things that rolled in my direction, which always seemed to work out brilliantly.  I have been fighting with my daughter more and my house is far from being taken care of properly.  What is going on with me?

I am taking back my will.  I am losing contact with my higher power.  I am stepping into my Ego.  I am making things go MY way.  How quickly I jump into the driver seat of my life.  When will I learn that I never have a good map to follow and end  up lost in the back woods?   How many times must I cycle through this pattern before I can just stay forever grounded in my higher power?  Is that not a possibility?

I find it hard to work around coworkers that live in their wills for their lives.  At first its so clear to me how much easier their lives would be if they just surrendered and turned it over, but then after time that energy of getting what I want the moment I want it wears off on me and I am back in the drivers seat of my life.  It seems to take me a few weeks before I realize that things are starting to feel shitty in my world and to begin to question why.

Thats where I am right now.  Questioning why I have fallen back into judgement and am not accepting of the way things are.  When I accept life on lifes terms then my life becomes simple and joyful, how come I trade that in for my misery so quickly?   I guess I am truly experiencing how hard it is to break old patterns and ways of thought.  Self sabotage such a huge issue.  I just cannot seem to sit comfortably in happy for two long.  I want to distract myself from it or I want to exaggerate it just to make it ugly.

I am sure this boils down to a worthiness issue.  I question what I am worth alot these days.  I am defining that in the area of romance and the opposite sex and what I am worth to them, but I never thought to step up my worth on the job front or even on the personal level of self care and my higher power.  I touched my own divinity a few months back and really embraced it.  For a short period at least before it got to bright for me and I began to slip back into comfortable.

Can I grab it again and hold it this time?

It looks like I am rained out of work again today.  I think I am going  to use this day to deep clean my house and soul.  Its time I get back to my true power and stop this misery train that I have unknowingly hopped on.  I am sure glad I have this avenue of writing to help me see my life clearly.  Thank you for being part of it.

Bursting the Fluffy Bubble

Spiritual teachers have personality defects too.

I am always shocked and offended when someone I look up too for guidance and advice shows a negative character trait.  When the person I put on a pedestal of super human knowing actually displays a humanistic character trait I get pretty frustrated.

Why is that?

I am not completely naive to the fact we are not all perfect, so why is it when my mentor of the moment supports that idea I am irritated?  Do I strive for perfection so deeply that it blasts all hope out of the water? I guess I still do live with the Rose colored glasses on.

Or is it that I am unwilling to face my own defects and therefor get easily offended by other peoples?

I am sure it  is much more this concept then any others.  I refuse to acknowledge that there is anything negative in my world.  I did this for many many years, until one day my perfect little bubble pooped like a water blister and I was completely submersed in the world of complete negatives.  It was a traumatic period of my life, one that I did not fair well through.

Who is perfectly pure then with no negative traits in their persona's?  I think even Jesus, Gandhi, Mary..... all our written about spiritual leaders had some dirty dark personality conflicts of their own.  Do we focus to much on the positive qualities and ignore the negatives that equally balance the good?

I have so many question about this topic of the negative aspect of my personality and not many answers.  I am sure it just is what it is, but today I cannot yet accept that.  We all need to balance ourselves out, I am just too sensitive to be around a person when they need to express their negative natures.  I cannot stand myself when a negative trait rears its ugly head to be acknowledged.

How do I learn to function in the world of real when I cannot accept the shadows for what they are?  Service to the light?  And truly how can I even dance with the illusion that the shadows do not exist?  Too ignore them is to be sucked deep into their pits where no light exists.  How can I forget so soon the painful water blister?

Learning to embrace our defects and treat them with the same love and care our positive traits receive is the trick I guess to mastering ones entire personality.  As uncomfortable as it is for me to accept those negative traits in my mentors I must learn to have more compassion and less judgement for those that were in the exact same spot as me once... and for those I will be in their exact spot shortly.

Here is to a beautiful day folks... Hoping mine gets called off at work so that I may enjoy a day cleaning my house and catching up with life.

What are Your Motives?

What are my motives??  I ask myself this often these days.

I am coming to realize that in the past my motives for everything I did were never about me.  I lived my life for other people.  I was good as a child because if I wasn't my dad would kick my ass.  I did what my friends were doing as a teenager.  When romantic affairs entered my world it was always about him.  Then my kids came along and I became the faceless mom.  Always my motives have been for other people.

I am a people pleaser.

To have someone not like me is such an incredibly uncomfortable feeling.  One that gets little tolerance from me.  I will go out of my way to be liked by all people, even the peeps I dislike.  I cannot sleep at night knowing someone harbours ill will towards me.

That of course was until I worked through an entire set of steps.  Now I am cured.  lol

I still find myself people pleasing but stop myself and ask what my motives are.  Am I doing this for them or me?   Most of the time its still about them, I find I am struggling to peel away from this pattern of putting others before myself.  Such an unhealthy thing to place others well being before your own.  Lack of respect actually for thyself.

I am learning to respect myself.  I still make mistakes.... plenty.

When I decipher if the motives are truly mine then I must begin the process of identifying myself or Little lady Vixen in the motive mix.  Vixens motives are always dark and dangerous.  Getting loaded would be her motive.  I got asked to go to a rodeo with a friend and motives where in question.....

Half of me see's the 'saving the horse and riding a cowboy' potential there as well as the possibility of slipping a little shot or too past these lips.  The other half of me is looking forward to hanging out with a close friend and learning to have fun without the sexing and drugging.  People do you know, have good clean fun.

I have been cocooned in recovery cowering in the sand wanting so desperately to get back out there and live yet I am so afraid of any challenges that should come my way that I would rather turn tail and run.  But what are my motives??  I just want to live and laugh and socialize with people.  Does that mean I have to get loaded?  

I work a program.  I have a life today that I love so much.  My life is better today then it ever was before active addiction.  I would not want to lose what I have worked so hard to build.  I would lose everything if I let that sweet poison pass my lips.  Its not worth it.  I can have fun without ruining my life.

My motives today in life are to be happy, live life to the fullest, take healthy risks and laugh till I pee my pants.... Which my daughter made me do tonight btw!

What are your motives?  Ask yourself.

Heart Racing Serenity

Balance.

I have been on the search for balance my whole life.  Whether its in the form of moderation for whatever form my addiction is taking at that moment in my life or whether it is trying  to maintain serenity within a chaotic situation.  I am always aware of my balance or lack there of.

I was sharing with a few friends lately this concept and my thoughts and theories about it.  I figured I would bring it here where I gain the most understanding of a topic I am processing through.  I have lost my balance again and strangely enough am enjoying it this time.

While I was cocooned in the rooms of my twelve step fellowship I found a solid balance.  I found my centre.  I was deep and comfortable in serenity and truly believed that I would never be removed from it again.  I prayed, meditated, and connected constantly to my higher self.  Actually all my posts in the beginning of this blog is me at my root center.   Today I feel like I am far from that place of calm and serenity.

I am not in that place of addict craziness where my world is crumbling around me and I just wanna run for the hills and bury my head in the sand.  No those days are behind me.  Not saying they couldn't find me again if I looked over my shoulder and decided to head back there.  No this knock off balance is of a different kind.  Its excitement, busyness and building.

I really thought work would slow down after spring cleanups (landscaping), but it hasn't.  I am still putting in 12 to 13 hour days and working my ass off, which is toning up mighty nicely I must say.  These long hours and focussed thought on my career as a journeyman landscaper has me busting my girl balls but taking away time for my mediation and hence my serenity.

Spending all that time at work leaves few hours for my beautiful daughter, which I spend with when I can.  I make quality out of our time now, instead of the quantity she had before I started work.  Which has been an exciting challenge for me and one that I enjoyed.. although again balance was knocked out in left field for what we had become used too.  She had me all hours of the day, now she gets me only a few a week.  Those few however are spent doing something fun together.

Between my daughter, my house keeping(cleaning and bill paying, grocery shopping) and work, where do I find time for me and my recovery?  Where do I find time for my friends and more?   This is where I am still hard at work trying to find balance.

Self care is a huge area where I find serenity and peace, making time for it has been the toughest challenge, yet the most important one as its the one that will take me back out if neglected to long.  I have been keeping up with my personal care routine which has kept me tethered, but getting time alone for myself to be one in nature has presented the most solid wall of no go.   Having no vehicle has definitely added to this challenge.  I struggle with my original reasons for not having one(cost, environmental concerns, weight gain), thinking maybe my time is more important then those reasons now.

A friend and I went out to a lake for a bit last night and I was amazed at how quickly all my stress seeped into the cool sand beneath my feet as we walked along the beach.  Walking in the lake up to my knee's in water helped me connected and balance.  I found serenity doing something for me in nature.  It was then that I realized getting knocked off balance is part of the journey of life.

We are not meant to find serenity and hold it at all moments.  We are to find our centre and then venture out from there knowing that we can always come back to centre whenever we need to.  I found my center last night in a place I wasn't looking.  I find my peace now in quality moments not quantity ones.  I don't need to stay cocooned in recovery 24/7 to be trudging the happy road of destiny.

Working, playing, mothering, loving, stressing, crying, laughing, romancing are all parts of achieving that overall serenity.  I never realized I even had a center until I was far removed from it.  I couldn't practice gratitude on a daily basis until I found myself out of serenity again.  I find myself tear filled with gratitude when serenity finds me on a road trip where I was not looking for it.

Life is meant to be lived, experienced, enjoyed.  Risks are meant to be taken, your heart wants to beat fast with excitement.  Serenity is not in those moments and I am learning to enjoy those healthy moments of excitement, of pushing myself out of my comfort zone... of growing and thriving.  No longer is my adrenaline induced by dope, its brought on by following my passions and excitements.  Sometimes that means going against the judgement of others.  Testing waters that are familiar but creating a new ripple.   Breaking the patterns, converting fear to love, living life!!

I am off balance and I am loving every minute of it.  I am going with the flow and the river is a wild one  these days.  I do know that at some point I will run into a calm pond and there I will find my center and balance again.  Until then.... whitewater rapids!