Emotions: Energy in Motion

Wow.  I have been in an incredible place of processing and learning these past few days.

But first I have to say... staying home from work the past six weeks has not only afforded me a very quickly expanding waist line but my nails are seriously long and I can barely type anymore.   I just hate when i actually have to cut my finger nails.  I was a terrible nail biter my whole life until about eight years ago and now I grow these fabulous nails.  They are a sense of pride for me to cut them is like gouging out a piece of my Ego.

Just saying.

Moving on.

........So I am really starting to feel the opening of my heart.  I am really starting to feel the expansiveness of my soul that was trapped behind my twenty foot walls.  I am seeing the effects in my life from having had the courage to keep the walls down after the explosion of July '014.   And the rewards have been out of my scope of reality amazing.

I think the largest realization for me is the ways in which I keep everyone locked out of my life including my own feelings.  I need to focus mostly on my feelings here because it has been through them that I have invited people in to my life again.  How hard I worked at keeping myself closed off and shut down, not even getting close to venturing out to let people in.  I was so blind to it that I didn't even know I wasn't letting people in.

Thats the definition of denial.... Don't Even kNOw I Am Lying.    (To myself)

I had no idea I even had walls up let alone how I kept those walls securely in place.  I think until you are cracked wide open, you cannot even know there is another way.  This is why I am an advocate of taking risk's and experiencing things.  Books and study cannot provide a cracking seed experience. Books and study only provide comfort to get through the opening experience.  I was tackling it all wrong before.

Giving forgiveness before I even touched the pain, did not work.

So what were the walls made of,   you so eagerly want to know??

Drugs.  Over eating.  Sexing.  Over working.  Staying ridiculously busy.  Getting absorbed in TV shows.  Pretty much anything that takes me out of my feelings and helps me to manipulate them is what I used to keep my walls up with.

I see how drugs were the most direct and effective way to not only kill my feelings but kill myself in the process.  I am discovering a whole new layer to the walls coming down.  And thats the way I would keep myself in pain.  I am learning that no matter what, pain will be expressed if it is there within you.  It is far to powerful of an emotion to just stay as a seed behind your walls.  So drugs killed my body physically and mentally retarded me.

Over eating puts me in immediate physical pain as well as provides a fat buffer between me and the world, thus creating physical walls.  Plus eating gets me out of overwhelming feelings in the moment.  And its so socially acceptable to plow through a huge piece of cake when we are emotional women.

Over working keeps me too busy to deal with anything.  My full attention is on creating something for someone else so I don't need to look at myself.  I push my body and mind to hard, creating stress which harms my nervous system causing colds and flu's, illness and cancer.  Again our society is very okay with getting a cold.  sympathy is eaten up and accepted easily when we have proven just how hard we work by taking ill.... oh poor woman look how hard she works and now she is sick.

Smoking used to be a way I smoke screened people out and effectively implemented a slow seeping death as rat poisons entered in through my lungs and were moved into my tissues and muscles rendering me tired and shortness of breath.  Again all these things i did not learn until I gave up these ways of hiding.

Sexing by far was the worst way for me to act out on my feelings.  I think I either suppressed my feelings or found a way to act out.  So eating and smoking suppressed.  Over working, being to busy and sexing were the way I acted out the pain.  Sexing put me in harms way of sexually transmitted disease and seriously hurt my soul and auric energy.  Letting people into your intimate space like that suggests a serious lack of boundaries.  I didn't care who came in because I was in pain and needed to express that.  The rougher the sex the better.  The dirtier the sex the better.  The more rules I broke with the sex the grander the hurt in the end would be.  And a world of hurt is what I was seeking.  Its what I deserved.

I was in pain and needed to express that.  Emotion is energy in motion.  Its gonna find a way to release itself even if you refuse to acknowledge it.

I only know this because I have been cracked wide open lately.  I don't want to be in pain anymore.  I don't want to hurt others around me anymore because of my toxic seeping of pain all over the place.  Second hand smoke, poor romantic partners that actually tried to love me, sorry boss for losing you contracts..... the list goes on and deep in the ways I have hurt people.  But more important the list is heavy with the way I self torture.

I am tired of hurting myself.  I have had enough hurt inflicted outside myself to be treating myself even worse then my abusers did.  Yo stop hurting myself I have had to work so fucking hard this last couple months to not build up the walls that crumbled in the explosion.  I still struggle hard with over eating, but I am working diligently on removing each brick I replace with this self harming tactic.

I set out to seek Love.  Stopping the torture is apparently the first step.  Who knew??

The Messy Business of Feelings: From Drug Suppression to River flow

Sometimes I wonder who I should be marketing these writings too.  I go with drug addicts because its my main affliction.  But is it really?  The more I look back at my writings the more I see a trend of a woman dealing with feelings and how to express those feelings in a healthy way.  Drugs where the way I suppressed them.

Having gone to a kick ass counselling appointment yesterday and a great two hour chat with a friend and then another two hour womens healing circle,  I am broken wide open once again.

Having understandings about my life and why I do the things I do has not only shocked me but has also helped me to know how to move forward and make different choices in my future.   Being entirely open with where I am at in the moment and sharing that openly with people is the largest lesson I am learning today.

I am always learning something more about self honesty.

I am always learning something more about my feelings and how they are playing out in my reality.

 In the summer I experienced extreme overwhelm with my job.  I knew I was tired.  I knew I was pushing myself really hard.  But I had no idea how to slow down and set boundaries for my own safety.

I ended up in a detox center and now with three months off work.

Through all the counselling yesterday I see now that I was not being honest with myself.  I was way over tired and I had no idea how to ask my boss for help.  I did speak to him on numerous occasions but was never clear on what it was that I was seeking.  I just knew that things weren't right with me.  I had no idea at that time I was heading for a serious drug relapse because my feelings were lacking a healthy outlet.

I have a feeling problem.

I don't know what feeling is cursing through my veins most days.  Learning the hard way has always been the way for me.  I am seeing a therapist for dissociate identity disorder.  I have this disorder because I shut my feelings off a very very long time ago.  I lived under manufactured feelings most of my life and when a real one snuck through my thick crust I reacted with a temper tantrum.

This is  new layer of self honesty for me.

To realize my whole life has been lived from an emotional place of monkey see monkey do is kinda stomach turning.  My one goal after leaving my ex husband was to find Love.  Real Love.  I knew what him and I had wasn't real.  I had no understanding that the journey I was about to embark on was going to show me that I had not felt ANY real feelings for  a very very long time.

How is that even possible?

Feelings are such a huge part of our bodies make up and defense system.  How is it that I was able to function and get along relatively normal in my world without tapping into my feelings for protection or creation?  Have I truly never had any feelings?  What about when my kids were born?  Did I not feel anything when I walked down the isle at my wedding?

Learning what is a true me feeling and what is a manufactured feeling because that is what I am suppose to feel is the dawning realizations that are knocking me out into left field.  Seeing where real feelings have been so quiet and subdued and usually effectively taken care of by another aspect of me is very scary.

Learning not only how I have suppressed the feelings has been quiet a process but now learning how to express the feelings and setting boundaries around them is a whole new path I am taking.

I have felt very open and raw in my heart lately.  Like my entire core and feeling center has been busted wide open.  All my walls have been broken down and I feel very raw and exposed.  My feelings are oozing out into my reality and as good as it feels its kinda messy as well.  Well messy for someone who has manufactured and controlled them her whole life...  messy meaning that I don't have control over them.

Although I am not having temper tantrums now that I am allowing them their time in the spotlight.  They are not having to erupt and cause chaos for me now that I am slowly letting the air out of my huge  balloon of raw life long unexpressed emotions.

My therapy appointment was riddled with talk over an emotion that took over the session and was scary as hell for me, can you tell??

I find it fascinating and equally exciting that I am learning this whole new aspect of myself.  Yet at the same time I am fully understanding of that fear of moving forward.  I have embarked on a lot of journeys in my days.  many new programs, career choices and talents developed but nothing even comes close to this inner journey of change that is causing these huge ripples in my rushing river and is changing the course of where I am going at such a rapid pace its damn near impossible not to feel fear.

To end my day last night I got to watch a video I was in for promotional purposes for my hypnotherapy teacher.  As I watched myself speak animatedly about his course my self critical nature turned from picking myself apart to a growing self love for where I am at today and who I am becoming.   So the fear is very present but the rewards are equally as great.  I am finding that Love I set out five years ago to find.

I guess to answer my original concern this blog I guess is just a place for me to express my emotions and thoughts about those emotions.  Everything I do lately has started out one way with an intention set by my mind but then has taken a different current somewhere along the way of my emotions.

 I think this is what they call letting go and letting your higher power direct the way.  I take the first step and then I let the control go.  So weird. So Uncomfortable.

Freedom to Choose Misery

Self care is paramount to recovery of any sort.  Self care is a number one priority in a healthy persons life.  Self care is something I focused on a lot in this blog over the year I was maintaining my sobriety.

Whats the flip side of self care?

I am not in self care yet.   I am still pulling out of my relapse of self harm.  Coming to understand that relapse is just that.... a trip back into self harm.

Self harm for me might not be the same for others.  Self harm starts simple in my relapse pattern.  It starts with a single thought.  A thought that I need something outside myself to 'complete' me.  I have had enough relapses now to be able to trace each one of them back to a sense of incompleteness or lack of self worth.

Self care gives me a sense of wholeness.  I feel love for myself when I am taking care of all my needs for myself.  Paying my bills with money I have earned.  Cleaning my body with products I have made from organic items.  Feeding my body with healthy foods and exercising in a way that nurtures me.  Building supportive relationships in my life and connecting regularly to my higher power.

Those are the things that start to slip when I begin to seek outside myself for that Love.

I seem to always get it in my head that an easier path for me is to find a man that will take care of those needs for me.  A man to pay my bills.   A man to take me out to eat because cooking is a terribly redundant task, This one and only guy will be all I need for supportive relationships... it will be him and I against the world and he will be my god!

Yup that is always the single thought..... hhahaha yup I will repeat 'single' thought that leads me away from my self care program and back into the realm of self harm and the 'I give up, this shit is too hard!'

It is after that thought that I actually stop going to the gym because I am bored with it.  I stop all the self care practices one by one for different reasons and soon find myself away from my once profound happiness and back in the blackness of misery. Sitting in the misery with no guy and shocked at how I got back to this place of 'yuck'.

Why do we actively choose misery over happiness?

I make the choices in my life systematically that take me back to misery every single time I reach happiness.  Why is that?  What does misery still hold for me that makes me give up my happiness?  What is the magical allure misery entices me with to give up all I have worked for and trade it for where I have come from?

I ask this most humbly as I claw my way back out of the whole that is so well known to me, back up to the mountain of happiness I have built for myself.

I do know as I work my way through the landslide I am taking new awareness's with me this time.  I do understand on a much deeper level the why's of my life and the hows as well.  For this I am entirely grateful for my recent back slide.  Seeing my life as a spiral that is constantly moving forward has helped me accept the dips back into the hole which is wonderful, yet at the same time terribly frustrating.

Coming out if this dip I am faced with my impending self care and the grip I have on my self harm.

I 'know' from previous personal experience what to do to feel better.  I know all the steps and actions to take to get my body back in good health and my mind too.  I am working on a new area, the emotional body and that's exciting, but the rest is known deeply enough to be second nature.... yet I resist.

Why is that?

Why after all this time and all this experience am I still holding on to some misery.

 I blog it here to figure it out.  My therapist asked me last week what it is I am still getting out of my obsessions.  Because I am getting something from them if I prefer to live in them, then in my happiness that is so easily obtained.

Why do I resist the treadmill when I know my body will ache less and I will feel tremendously better after I run for a bit?  Why do I choose the cold pizza over the apple, knowing I hate the way the grease of the cold pizza is gonna taste on my tongue?  Why do I choose to lay on the couch watching movies instead of calling one of my amazing supports and gaining valuable insight into my life?

Is ignorance bliss?

I started a course a few months back.  A course that took that little seed sitting in the pit of my stomach and fed it  a growth hormone.  That seed now has busted through its shell and is making its way up my esophagus.

It's so easy to follow the sheep.  Its so easy to do what everyone else is doing.  Be it the lazy self harm way or even the get fit cause that's what we are all doing way.  Following blindly what others do is how this course started out.  It was a course on societal trance.  The proverbial sheep.

Todays Just for Today reading was about making choices that are good for us and owning those choices.  When I came into narcotics anonymous I did the suggestions cause I was told to and when they didn't work for me I left the program thinking everyone in the program was an asshole.

Suggestions are just that..... suggestions.  Some work and some don't.  Being told what to do was the way I lived my life and the rebellious nature in me was to do the opposite but only because I was following what I was being told.  Contradiction, I understand.

Self care I am starting to see is way way more then just eating right and paying my bills on time.  Even more then being connected to my higher power.  Self care is about knowing what I need in that moment and not feeling like I am suppose to being doing something because it made you feel good in the past.

It's really about feeling good, isnt it?

I have always sought to feel better.  I am constantly chasing the feel good dragon.  When I am not copping out with dope I am busting my ass at the gym to feel better.  Always with the positive and running fearfully from the negative.  What is so wrong with the negative?

I get that to a person that is always in the negative then yes lets teach that person the flip side and the light.  For me personally I have always been in the light.... superficial light albeit but light none the less.  For me to accept the negative is absurd.  For me to embrace my shadow is not okay.  For me to have a negative feeling when I know a million and one ways to get out of it seems ridiculous to stay in it.

That is the societal conditioning that I learned about so many months ago.  Take Care of yourself.... go to the gym.  Take care of yourself.... pay your bills.  Take care of yourself.... raise your kids well.

Whats if taking care of myself right now was just sleeping and eating the cold pizza.  Whats if taking care of myself was fantasizing about my knight in shining armor coming to rescue me from my miseries.  Whats if taking care of myself was letting my girls pamper and care for me just for today.

I think I am learning that listening to my body and my inner knowings is what self care really is about.  I know that going to the gym will give me energy, but I am also learning that a great deep breathing yoga meditation does the same thing and is much easier for me right now.  I am learning that getting out of my feelings has always been my way and sitting in them is actually pretty cool too.

I am seeing that when I go into relapse there is almost always a reason for me to dip back down into the pit of healing.   I knew what I was doing when I picked up that first drug.  I knew what kind of world of hurt I was in for when I brought that first drug into my lungs.  Yet I still did it anyways.

As much as I have beaten myself up for the why's and hows I have not given myself enough credit for having the courage to move in that direction in the first place.  I am not condoning conscious relapse for anyone, but for me it was the necessary path for me to finally get what I wasn't getting any other way.

Relapse brought me to a personal crisis that needed to be broken wide open in order for me to finally move forward and away from the constant need to have a man take care of me.  I am sure I could have taken a softer easier route to come to that lesson.  And many of my friends have been preaching that lesson to me along the way, but I am one that has always needed to learn through my own experience.

What my friends could not teach me was the opening of my heart.  Through this current manifestation of addiction in my life my heart has been cracked open.  My emotions are finally flooding my reality.  The dissociation I had with my feelings for my entire life has been lifted and for the first time in my adult years I am feeling again.... truly feeling.  not superficial feelings, not mimicked feelings but real emotional outbursts of feelings.

This is the self care I was missing in my recovery before.  This is why I was always seeking the guy to fix me..... because I knew somewhere deep within me that only a guy could awaken me to my feelings.  Had I continues to listened to my friends, I would not have awoken my feelings.  I now can finally move on from having the need for a guy to take Care of me because I was only leaning on societal hypnosis as my avenue to get what I really needed.

I guess through this entire post I have finally come to understand what my choice to be in misery is really giving me..... balance.  To really feel the full range of my feelings.  I choose to be in misery today because I have never given myself the choice to sit here before. I am always trying to feel better...more more more better.  I have never allowed myself the luxury to actually consciously choose a negative emotion knowing that I can easily get out of it if I wanted to, but I choose to sit in it instead.  Misery is giving me something today....  a choice.

And I am learning......  Misery is not the bad guy.  It is just part of all that is.  It is not 'sad' to be in the negative... it is balance to my abundant light.

When Obsession Chooses You

I choose recovery.

So whats my next step??  I think this is the part of my addiction recovery journey that I tend to lose track of where I am going and why I am going there.   After having a few days clean and by few I do mean just over thirty days. Which is just a very few in the scope of forever, yet to the addicted mind it feels like forever already.

 That forever seems to be very cunning at teasing me into believing that I am ready to jump back into life with both feet.

I feel almost desperate to get back to work.

My energy returning and my mind starting to need more then a just for today thought.  I can feel my addict starting to tell me that if I don't get back to work soon I am gonna gain all my weight back. Several years ago the scale used to read 250lbs.  I am a landscaper today partly to keep in shape... that shape is quickly rounding again.

I want to go back to work.

My addict also tells me that my boss wont hold my job with his sights removed from me. My oldest daughter works as his receptionist.  He hasn't forgotten me.  My addict then shows me my very meager bank account and tells me I will never make it through the next couple months on those pennies.

You see I just transfer my addictions.  I have always lived from a place of obsession.  Workaholic.  Overeater. Sex and Love obsession is the worst and the one you see most of in this blog. These obsessions always lead back to drug addiction.

Can I live in some form of obsession and survive?

 I used to spend hours and I mean like two to five hours a day at the gym when I was losing my eighty pounds.  I would rather be at the gym then home making supper for my three young children and husband.  I would rather work out then hang out with my friends and family.  I was so into my body that even when my husband wanted to touch it, I was annoyed.  He was overweight.

People tell me to get into a healthy obsession.  I don't think that works for me.  Obsession for me makes my life unmanageable.  No matter how I slice it when my mind is obsessed with something it exhausts every resource available to me until I am sitting in a detox center hanging on by a thread.

I cannot afford to be obsessed.

How the fuck do I live then??

I look back to my early formative years and all I see is obsession.  I see nothing but one obsession after another.  My mind was molded at a very young age to be obsessive.  I have, through years of counselling. traced my obsessions back to younger then six years old.  Too young to be even able to comprehend obsession as a mind that young is nothing more then a perceiver.  Yet all the perceptions I got were from the people I loved and every one of them was deep in their own obsessions. Unavailable to me.

I struggle very hard to be in my life and present with my own children.  I learned that obsession was the only way to function my mind.  Trauma's supported that lesson and turned it into a belief.  The rest of my life I continued to play out the belief.  

I am always trying to get out of my life and my feelings as I have watched my own parents do my whole life.  Except now I am too old to blindly follow my parents examples.  Wish I woulda figured this out in my early twenties.... damn ridiculous slow learner that I am!!  And people say I am smart... ahahahaha.  Not!!

So let me move back to the original statement at the beginning of this post before I digress... where do I go from here??

I have until the end of December before I must go back to work.  Going to a drug rehabilitation treatment center has not panned out.  I  have an amazing therapist that is moving me swiftly through some pretty major stuff.  So I am not worried about a treatment center, what I need to work through here is time management and self discipline.  I have been to treatment before.  Its eight hours a day of intensive counselling and work book stuff on trauma's.  I have that kinda time and I have tonnes of resources and even the old work book from the center I attended the last time I landed here.

I finally feel ready and up to the task of ripping the obsession band aid off and get down to the dirties in my life.

 The rose colored glasses have already come off and pretty much every moment of my day is spent feeling gross, uncomfortable and wanting to crawl out of my own skin.  Every time I open my mouth to speak its almost like I regret it, I say shit that's not congruent to me anymore,  I don't know who I am, I feel like I have all these caged personalities fighting for my attention within me and the anxiety is almost overwhelming.

I stress again I have an amazing therapist walking me though as well as a psychiatrist on stand by in case I feel the need to self medicate with some blow, he promises me he has better shit in a prescription bottle... shit that wont kill me if I get a bad batch.

 And I have my family in Narcotics anonymous that wont let me go even half a day without word from me.  Man I love my sisters in recovery... its the only thing besides my girls that makes my heart glow even in the middle of a tar slimed, skin crawling dawning realization about myself or my life.

I have everything I need to move forward and get on with my recovery.  To really actually overcome my obsessive mind and change the way I think and act.  I have been doing a fair amount of study on the mind and it is a muscle that can completely and I mean completely regenerate itself.  I need to put in the work but I am slowly beginning to believe I can fully change the way my brain fires up.

So time for me to move the focus away from everyone else and the obsessions still playing out in my life.  I say that with some sadness.  I still really do enjoy my love obsessions... the fantasies it creates for me are way more enjoyable then the current reality I am manifested in,  But alas I know my life is unmanageable because of the thoughts so I must let go of them..... but its still sad for me.

Eight hours a day of step work, therapy, homework and self care.  Fuck I thought I was a mess before.... look out my friends Its about to get really real for me.  Dorthy is coming home and taking off the red shoes.

30 Days Clean!!

I got up at a meeting last night when the member handing out key tags for clean time called for anyone taking thirty days clean.  As everyone cheered, I finally relaxed and allowed myself to feel excitement over my achievement.

I was just told, to be gentle on myself, thirty days clean is a big deal.  I find I am needing to be given permission to feel these days.  This is not my first kick at the can, not my first ride at the rodeo.  I have taken thirty days clean before.... several times.

 Last night started out as a reminder of all my previous failed attempts.  Story of my life.  I finish nothing I start.  However as the meeting progressed I began to start to turn my mind around at how I looked at my thirty days of sobriety.

My glass can be half full or half empty.

I keep seeing meme's(?)  those pictures with sayings on Facebook, I don't know what they are called, but whatever... I keep seeing motivational quotes about the difference between a master and a beginner is that the master has more failed attempts then the beginner has ever tried.  ....Thats me.

Queen of failed attempts.

Yet when I look at it from the angle of all the experience I have now at understanding deeply my patterns.  I understand without a shadow of a doubt how the relapse pattern gets started and how it plays out.  I know myself pretty well now from one too many bad decisions.

And to be honest I now can see the similarities between me and the junkie on the street eating out of a dumpster.  I don't have to force myself there anymore to prove I deserve a seat in a Narcotics anonymous meeting.  I am a drug addict in recovery,  a drug addict,  I indeed am.

Why?

 Because I simply refuse to feel my feelings and deal with life on life's terms.

I would rather check out of life and live on the streets some days then have to put in another minute playing nice with a corrupt society of manipulative people willing to stomp on you to make another buck.   I would rather eat out of a dumpster some days then to have to face my abusive past and finally walk through those feelings of pain before I can get better and move on.  I would rather be high and live in my fantasy world then work on building my dreams in a reality that sometimes takes way to much work.

Now saying that, I must admit, at thirty days clean is a bit of a contradiction to the way my mind normally works.    I do check out of life when I don't get my way.  I am a bit of a spoiled rotten brat who hasn't grown up yet.  But I have also created an amazing life for myself that I truly love.  I don't see the world as that harsh on a good day, I love life and the way it works, corruption and all.  I have a tremendously exciting higher power that makes life a huge game of fun for me.

Just today however with the understanding that I can never again throw a drug related temper tantrum and check out of reality is making it hard for me to see the beauty in life at this moment.  For the first time in my years on this earth I am removing the rose colored glasses and seeing life for what it really is, shadows and all.  I am feeling all my feelings, not just the fluffy light ones.  And I am accepting my past for the truth of what it was and the players involved for the truth of their parts in it.

.... And it sux.  Life is not all roses and butterflies.

This is a harsh new understanding for me.  It's not that I didn't know there were injustices in the world.  Just that when an injustice happened to me, I was so, so, so good at keeping the mask of pleasantness plastered to my face that the feelings and actions involved with the injustice were swiftly brushed under the carpet of my heart and on with my life I moved.

Well I have this amazingly wonderful psychologist whom I see on a weekly basis, who has effectively ripped up my fucking carpet when I momentarily left the room and now all the bugs that have been feeding off my festering pile of shit under the rug are pouring out into the room of my heart and I am a bloody mess trying to clean everything up.

My best friend has said it for years and years upon years.... deal with your shit.  And for years and years and years upon years, I ignored her.

So at thirty days clean I am learning a new way of dealing with my feelings and life's situations.  At a time in my life where I am being faced with all and I mean every single one of my past trauma's, I cannot get loaded.

I cant have a 'drink' to take the edge off the hard truth I just learned about someone I love.  I cannot smoke a joint to ease the pain of having to call my boss to find out if I still have a job.  I cannot go hit up a club to dance off the fear of getting to old to make the changes I need to make in order to become the person I wanted to be when I made my lifes wish list at 16.

Hahaha... reading that above paragraph to proof it, makes me realize how ridiculous it sounds to even cope with life that way in the first place.  But its the truth of how I dealt with shit and well my life apparently reflects that today.

Learning a new way to live isn't the hard part.  Its facing the shit, that's the hard part.  Its standing in the room of my heart, looking at the mess I have allowed it to become and knowing I am responsible for it all, that's the hardest part.

So thirty days clean for me today is a big fucking deal.

One foot in front of the other, right?  and focused on ... JUST FOR TODAY!!

I am Powerless over my Obsession.

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

At every meeting I hear this read.  In every Recovery book.......Narcotics, Alcoholics, Co-dependency or Over Eaters anonymous this is on every first page.  Every time I come back into recovery after a relapse this is the first step I must take.

Yet it is still the step that trips me up before I ever get started.

I find I am working very hard today at not rushing back into my life, like a bull staring down a red flag.  Angry that I have had, yet another, set back. More determined then ever to get it right this time and FAST.   This is why I fall time and time again.  I build shoddy foundations.  Always focused on the stars and never on the branch right in front of my feet about to trip me up.

I started Step four recently after having ripped through steps 1-3 while still in detox.

.......Ya that isn't working out so well for me.

Let me give you a quick run down of the steps for those of you unfamiliar with them.  Personally I believe these steps can be applied into anyone's lives regardless if addiction rains supreme or not.

First step is to admit your life has become unmanageable due to your powerlessness over your addiction.  The second step is then about coming to believe that a power greater then yourself can restore you to sanity.  The third step is then making a decision to turn you will over to the care of this higher power as you understand them to be.

Those first three steps for me are the ones I rush through because I know from personal experience when I am controlling my life without the support of my guides(higher power), I make terrible decisions based on my Ego or addict and well .....then I land back in drug lala land,

I am learning that I need to slow this down however and really work these first three steps which I will share about in a moment..... Let me not digress.

Step four: Made a searching a fearless moral inventory of ourselves.  This is the step that peels back the layers of who you were in order to emerge who you are becoming.  I have to stop here because I do not have a solid enough foundation to face more demons in my closet, nor do I have the confidence of divine guidance that I will become something pleasant at this point.  Hence why this post and the return to step one.

Step five we admitted to God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step Six, we were entirely ready for God to remove these defects of character, step seven we humbly asked her to remove these shortcomings.  Step eight we make a list of all the people we have harmed and step nine we begin making amends where we can.  These are the action steps that we work in order to peel back the negative energy that holds us back from entirely stepping into our personal lights, our personal powers.

Steps 10-12 are a repeat of one through three but now you are ready to actually starting walking in your higher power and giving back to the world what you have gained.  This is the glory that I am rushing to achieve.  Yet I keep tripping up on the first step.

I refuse to admit my life is unmanageable.  I refuse to see how powerless I am over certain things in my life.  I sit with the step twelve understanding of remembering what it feels like to be in my full power but refuse to admit I have lost that power.  It may be only temporarily and I do fully understand I am never disconnected from it entirely, but I have clouded the truth of who I am.

Admitting I am powerless is such a nasty thing for me.  Nasty in the sense that its hard to do, but when I do the freedom I achieve is out of this world.  It makes no sense to me and therefor my Virgo analytical mind cannot wrap around it and thus my constant trip ups.

 How can I be powerless and yet strive to step into my full power?  Why am I being asked to admit I have no power when the entire set of steps are teaching me how to take back my full power?

I have been blessed and equally cursed with having devoted friends of the twelve steps who have made this program their lives.  These friends eat, sleep, breath the program and have spent many years in deep study of these steps.  They tell me its not about ever having any power but turning all power over to God.

Then I have beautiful, spiritually mastered friends who speak very wisely and who have the lives I wish to achieve one day, teach me that God is within us and the power we seek is already in our souls and all we need to do is to step into it.

Equally blessed and cursed.  The twelve steps teach me how to peel back all my own limitations of stepping into that power, but I am being bombarded with the teaching that God is still outside of myself.  Hence the constant focus on the stars and the logs in front of my feet tripping me up.

But this is not where I wished this post to go......

Moving back to step one.  I am reminded of how powerless I am over the temptation and desire that my obsessive thinking leads me too.  I am an addict.  I have an addictive personality.  I am working the steps to let go of these limitations, but I must first admit that I indeed have them right now.

I cant stop obsessing in this now.  I go back and forth between wanting to get high, to over eating to thinking non stop about a guy.  My over thinking leads me to sit on my couch or lay in bed doing nothing so that my mind has full freedom to play in the obsession.  The torment it brings causes me to hide under the covers begging it to stop.  Begging for sleep so my mind gets peace.  And on very bad days... wishing to die so the torment will stop forever.

I know full well that if I get up and do some house cleaning or call someone, the thoughts will cease.
Yet I am paralyzed by my own mind.

This is powerless.

This is causing my life to be unmanageable.  When I am home all day because I have taken a leave of absence from work to get my shit together and I am spending it in obsession instead of cooking dinner for the three other people in my home that are spending their days working and in school..... my life is unmanageable.

I am learning to recognize when my thoughts are moving into obsession.  I have a sponsor who gives my wise counsel on steps to take to stop the obsessive thoughts from starting in the fist place and I am reminded yet again to work a more thorough first step.

I must admit at this point of my life I am powerless over my addiction.

I must take very small steps and look down at my feet lest I trip and land with my face in the mud again.  I need to focus on the little things to make my life manageable again.  Like getting groceries to make a healthy dinner for my family.  Like paying my bills and cleaning my house.  Like practicing a ten minute yoga routine every day and keep working at my treatment.

You see I may not have had a major surgery that you can physically see my illness, but a major illness I do indeed have.  The mind is a deep sess pool, full of things many of our doctors and scientist still have yet to understand.

Why some days I cannot function because my brain has decided to malfunction is beyond many understandings... sometimes I wish it was my right leg that was the problem, then at least I would understand myself better.

I didn't ask for this malfunction of Spirit, of a plaguing mind or a traumatic life.  But I got them none the less.  Sitting and whining about it as I have done for way to long now is tripping me up,  Its time to admit I am powerless over my lot in life and work at gaining the power back to better that lot for my future.

So I guess just for today I will move back into step one and focus on not tripping on that branch and leave the next step for tomorrow.

Losing Self Will

I am dry eye'd and a little tired from a good cry had already this morning.  Its always a hard realization when I come to understand I have been once again caught in the grip of obsession.  Lost in my own mind of torment.

I hate when I lose my happy and replace it with desires that are not attainable.  Two days ago the topic of conversation was being in the now, I thought I understood then that I was getting lost in being to focused on the future or the past.  Apparently not.  I only came too, after hours of pacing when I should have been sleeping, that its more specific then that for me.


I am in obsession.

The topic of conversation today is about self will over Gods will.

 I get these topics from the Narcotics anonymous, Just for today, daily meditation book.  These

meditations are good for everyone not just drug addicts, that's why I choose to share them here in my ramblings.

Self will to me is a form of obsession, or can be.  When I am taking my will to extremes it is obsession for me.  I have been to extremes in my mind as of late.

I have to remind myself as I rush through into step four of the twelve step program, that I am less then thirty days clean.  I think my little mind is working over time at getting me back to my full year of clean days.

As I paced my living room at four this morning, I cried to God about what the fuck was going on in my head.  I desperately wanted to know what was so seductively stealing my peace.  Not that I have really achieved any as of yet, but where I have been is definitely not a healthy place for a healthy journey of recovery.  I felt tormented.

It was in those wee hours that I realized just how much my ego was at play.  I say ego for the sake of the topic today.  I would prefer to use my 'addict'.  In the past I would have said it was 'Lady Vixen' but I am learning she is a totally different personality side of mine that isn't into the addictions as much as she is into all things boys.... so she very well could be at work here too... who knows.

Apparently I am just learning myself(s) right now... So to keep it simple I will just go with the Ego.

But I digress...

Ego over self will.  It turns out I have been spinning in a cycle of what my ego wants over what is best for me.  I lose focus when I let my egos will for my life take a drivers seat.  My ego wants Love, romance, drama, theatrics and all things flashy and fun.  Ya.... those things land me in a dry out center for five days.  My spirit cannot handle play like that anymore.  I am too sensitive for the harsh realities of what my ego wants.

But she masks her dreams and desires in beautiful packages of Love.   Something my Soul longs for.  My Ego is smart.  My ego is relentless.  My ego is obsessed with Love, turning the one thing my soul desires into something toxic and dirty.  I have been flying on self will the past week and in the middle of the night last night I crash landed.  And yes, again it hurt.

My ego brings me embarrassment.  My self will bring me shame.  You would think the ego is about fitting in and being a part of that those two emotions would not be in the egos repertoire.  They are for sure in mine.

I prefer to live in my Goddess nature, to be in waking meditation, to be of service to people, to wear what I want to wear and be friends with the under dogs.  I prefer to not be compared with others, to stand in my truth and follow my dreams even when they make most people question what I am doing.  I am much more comfortable being different.

So I am always frustrated when I fall back into self will after working so hard to get and stay in Gods will.   And I am even more ashamed when my self will turns into obsession.   Drugs have a way of switching things up for me.

Its been really tough this time roping in my ego, coming back from this relapse has opened my eyes to many many things I have been missing in my recovery these past few years.

My self care has got to be number one in my focal range.  Sleep. proper diet. Exercise. Clean home. Financial responsibility. Fellowship. Mothering. These come before I can dive into Step work, counselling or any kind of study or practice that betters me personally.  Self care is the foundation to build upon.

My foundation has been smashed a bit this relapse. Luckily I have ranted and raved about self care this past year and have made it a priority in the past.   I have three months off to rebuild my self care regime and get some stability happening again in my little world.

Then I can begin to clear the debris from my heart and mind that have kept my beliefs looping and my patterns cycling.  It will only be then that the will of my self will settle back in to the will of my highest power.   It will be then that I can continue on my journey where I left off at a year clean.  This is my consequence for taking that first drug. This is also the reward of of getting healthy.

The Pain of a Blooming Flower

When the pain of staying the same becomes greater then the pain of change, surely you will change or ...... die.   When a seed can no longer contain its growth it must bust through a hard shell into the cold elements of the earth in order to grow up into a flower.

That sounds so delightful to become a flower doesn't it?

Everyone knows change normally works out for the better, right?  Well thats what they tell us when change is happening in our lives, don't they?  How can mother nature make this process look so unbelievably, beautifully magical, when in truth its very painful.

For me I think there are two kinds of change:

I have experienced much change in my life.  Change of jobs, homes, boyfriends, these changes are easy, these changes are within my control.  They still bring an element of uncomfortability with them, but they also bring an equal amount of adrenaline,,, I am hooked on the adrenaline drug.  So this kind of change is bad kind of change for me.  Destructive change.

What does healthy change look like?

I guess this truly is what I am learning right now.  The change I have been used to in my life is the running kind of change.  The easy way out kind of change.  The throw up my hands, I don't wanna do this anymore. kind of change.  I am not so sure that is the change the flower speaks of when she blooms.

I have felt pain more intense then I ever have experienced in my adult years recently.  I say that with theatrics because its not true.  I have experienced intense hurt and pain in my marriage at one point and completely missed the boat on that change, choosing instead to ride out another 7 year cycle numb.  I didn't choose to run away from the pain this time.

I was brought to crisis in my life as of late and find myself facing very hard truths about myself and my family and my past and how all of these are playing a major part in how my present is developing.

 I am in a constant flux of emotional pain right now.  I want to say that its horrible but it really isnt.

What it is, is hard.  Its very tough for me to push through this, to keep walking forward when the information I am receiving through counselling and NA meetings about myself and the world I have created is terribly disturbing.  To finally see the light of who I am and what I am creating is equally liberating and painful.

Without pain we wouldn't know joy.

Last year was one filled with tremendous joy for me.  I was creating and moving forward in my life at mach speed.  The speed factor was probably the largest problem to my shaky foundation but it afforded me a glimpse at the future I could create for myself.

This year I am experiencing the growth necessary to achieve that amazing future.  Personal growth.  This is the kind of change that I am learning about today.

Change of ones nature.

I have been on a self help kick my entire adult years.  I have read every book on the shelves and have practiced every art of self change I could understand.  I see now they were only small onion peels on the surface of who I am.  I was never in deep enough pain to actualize the changes for real.

I went to counselling because I was smart enough to know my childhood abuse was gonna fuck me up at some point in life.  But counselling never worked because I was not in any pain.  I hid in a marriage that enabled my continued comfort thus keeping me safe from any experiences that would inflict pain.

Until recently I was not ready to open up to the pain of my past.  It wasn't until I stumbled upon something I really really wanted that I couldn't have until I became healthier that the pain of staying the same became greater then the pain of change.

I am in crisis.

That crisis has brought me to the necessary avenues to help me through this tremendously painful process of bursting through the dark cold earth into the warm awaiting sun.  I am engrossed deeply in the support and fellowship of Narcotics anonymous and I have an amazing counselor, who is guiding me with confident, expert knowledge on this process and I even have a psychiatrist on standby if the emotions threaten to kill me.

I want to bloom.

I am tired of running.  I am tired of hiding.  I am so tired of just surviving.  I want to thrive and I want to achieve all the things I have talked about.  This is not easy... actually this is by far the hardest phase of my life.... I have never experienced this before and to a perfectionist its highly disgusting, messy process to me.  But I remind myself as I shoot up past the earth worms and the creepy spiders that the Sun is waiting on the other side for me and soon I will be bathed in warmth.

I am not sure what will come of this process.  I have no happy endings yet.  I am deep in the process and again its not a pretty one.  My posts have reflected my withdrawing humour, being replaced with uncomfortable ramblings that make even little sense to me.  I am desperately trying not to edit and delete so that in the future I can look back and be reminded of the truth of this process... not the edited to be fluffy versions that I like to present.  So.....

I tell myself in sing song..... I will Survive!!