Her Will for Me and the Power to Carry that out

I am gaining weight again.  I have told myself in the past that when I begin to over eat there is something I am not dealing with.  I always move to immediate emotions being the culprit.   I am seeing now that it is sometimes a little larger but yet simpler then that.  It's a situation I am unwilling to confront.

My Oracle Cards of late have been speaking of avoiding confrontation.  As my mind moved to my little witch that could and her posse of little eager learners, I was side tracked by the real conflict.  An issue that I have been dancing with lightly until now.

Reading over my own posts and reviewing my own history has flashed some insight on the ways in which I handle closure.... or letting go.

 Oh shit..... here we go again!  She is letting the broken boy back in again!  

.... lol.....  No that's not what's happening, but I can see now that if I don't close the door on that option entirely it will be an issue again for me one day soon.  I will continue to cycle the same issues until I move on to something entirely new.  The confrontation that I need to have was brought about by other flashes of insight.

When I lost those two close friends from my change in lifestyle (from yesturdays post) I was very hurt and lacked understanding.  I didn't realize that I could not have my old life and my new life at the same time.  Like a puzzle the pieces just did not fit together.  It was terribly painful for me to let go of two women that kept me sane and happy for many years, I felt like I was betraying them.  Looking back now I see that my life was moving in a direction they 'chose' not to go.  I wish they had chose to follow, sometimes I miss them dearly.  This was flash insight number one.

Taking down the Focus cutout on my vision board was insight number two.  If you missed that post a few back I made mention to a vision board I have in my kitchen.  I put all the things I want to achieve on there as well as motivating sayings and such.  I had a cutout of the Ford Caption 'Focus is here for you because you are here for Focus'.  I originally put it up when I could not pull myself away from Dope.  Every time I looked at it, it reminded me to keep my focus on staying clean.  It worked!   Its been over a year now and I am clean.  However recently when I looked at it, before taking it down, it reminded me of that terrible struggle.  I was always flashing back to the horrors of addiction and my vision board was inducing feelings of shame.

When clients came to me to lose weight the first thing I advised them is to not put the fat picture on the fridge as a reminder of what they don't want.... but to put the skinny picture of what they do want.  It's more motivating that way.  My focus picture was motivating in the beginning but had turned sour in the end, it had become my fat picture.  My new level of living standards had raised, I had achieved it.  The awareness of other things that needed to move out of my life began dawning on me then.

I was unwilling to make that choice though to move on.  Deal with your shit..... lest your shit deals with you.  Man that's my favorite saying these days.

There is a third insight I have had but I think I will share it after sharing what I need to confront.   There has been a white elephant floating on these pages lately.  I have been trying to ignore it and replace my focus in hopes that, that was enough to move forward.  It's not though.  Damn.  I have always tried the cowards way first hoping that less people would be effected and that I would have to deal with less confrontation.

I understand now what it means to stand for something or fall for anything.  I have been dabbling my toes in standing yet have been unwilling to fully stand when it means there may be confrontation from people that oppose my decision.  Not even confrontation but even just causing people to make comment on what I have chosen to do.  I am still that really impressionable girl that falls for anything.  Learning to stand is.... yuck,  .......it's just really hard.

I have decided to Leave Narcotics Anonymous.

There I said it.  My all or nothing attitude it struggling so hard right now.  I was trying to gracefully slip out the back door keeping one foot in.  Just in case I needed it or it needed me.  My beautiful mentor last night said something though that clicked in a large way for me.  How can you walk into your future when you have a foot in the door behind you?

My counter question is then this, why do I even need to close the door, why can't I find my future and keep tethered to the rooms of NA.  This is what I have been processing for a few months now as my energy slips dangerously low.  The Focus slogan flashes in my minds eye.  What once gave me strength is now draining me.  I do not know why that it is.... it just is.  If I still felt good going to meetings this would not be an issue at all for me.  But I don't.

Even with the ill feeling I get after leaving a meeting, I could hear many many people share how much they didn't want to come to a meeting that night but did.  So I keep going.  Over and over I hear the same things drummed into my mind and soon I was feeling like a drone.  I would go tired and I would leave tired.  So I made a decision to begin to gracefully back away and move back into my spiritual circles where my energy was being renewed and I felt good.

Spirit had different plans.  The oracle cards warned of a confrontation.  I am flashed back to gracefully falling out of grace with my two best friends.  It wasn't so graceful the cowards way.  I just started avoiding them.  I didn't understand.  Ignorance is bliss.  They were still angry and threw that energy at me, maybe even angrier.  I am no longer ignorant, nor can I take the cowards route.  Not because I don't want to.... I do, but because Spirit isn't going to let me.

Another member of my home group basically put it on the line for me.  If I was not going to attend every meeting then I must back down completely from my service position.  At first I thought that was pretty harsh.  Being a treasurer of a meeting that had very small sevenths, I wasn't really concerned about it.  However maybe that was wrong on my part and this was the time for me to step out.  See how my first thought was step out not up.   I cannot commit to a meeting every week even if I wanted to.  My work is where I draw my strength from right now and when the snow flies I must too.  It has fallen every weekend for the past four with the exception of the most recent, yet I still had to work to clean up the recent Friday snow fall.

Between work, my self care, my daughters and my new adventures I just do not have time or energy for NA.  I feel bad about this because it is that path that lead me out of my darkness.  It was those meetings that fed me the light when I was still too sick to fill myself.  I am reminded that what I put before my recovery I will lose.  Again my interpretation of this has changed... I now understand my recovery is my self care, my mothering and my job.  My recovery is listening to Gods will for my life and having the courage to follow it.

I have nothing but amazing things to say about NA.  Just as I have nothing bad to say about my two best friends that chose a different path then me.

We all have our paths.   For awhile I believed that my role was to stay in NA forever and give back what I had been given.  In my narrow focus I was only able to see sponsorship within the rooms as a way of giving back.  However now I can see all the ways in which I have brought the twelve steps too people outside the rooms that need them yet don't have any addictions.  I see how great my giving back has been and that's what feels good to me and that's where I want to go with this.  Sometimes I even wonder if My Spirit brought me through the doors of NA for the twelve steps alone.

The third insight I had is from a dear dear broken boy, that I did truly love.  I did fall in love with a man from the rooms.  The insight came in understanding the cycle of recovery and the getting caught in that cycle.  I have always believed that we cycle through things, issues, situations and all matters of such.  When we complete a cycle we are given an opportunity to break out of that cycle and step into something new.  This is often scary and many people choose to stay in the comfortable norm of the old cycle.  This is what this man had experienced for way to many cycles to count.  This is where I am at now.

I have an opportunity to move on to something new.  In order to move into that something new I need to take both, let me say that again... both feet out of the door.  I need both my feet to launch off the ground.  There is no way to keep one foot in your old life and still move into your new one.  Knowing what your life path is and knowing who you are helps in understanding where you are suppose to go.  I really did believe my life would be forever NA, but the more I get to know myself the more I realize that is not the truth of Me.

I will sign over my treasurers books today and let go of the crutches that have held me up these past couple of years.  I will close the door once and for all on the darkness of my past and move into the light of my future.  I have been sitting in this limbo since Samhain when I blogged about ending this chapter in my life.  Again with the trauma of letting go I struggled.  Yet.....Where there was once tremendous fear, now i am filled with a sense of relief and excitement.   Like the college kid leaving home... I am ready to re-start my life.

This Pile of Sh!t Stinks!

Depression.  Detoxing. Bi-polar pendulum swing.

As I stay home from work the second day in a row I question why.  Yes I feel ill.  However it is a come and go ill, of wanting to vomit but not, of wanting to sleep but not, of feeling sore and tired but not.  Almost like a faint illusion, I feel these things and when I focus on them they go away.  It's kinda weird actually.

I am doing a metal detox cleanse as well as a spiritual meditation body cleanse.  When I take the pills I tend to get nauseous.  Today while doing a body meridian clearing through guided meditation I found myself dry heaving over the toilet.  So yes this cleanse is definitely bringing up some unhealthy stuff physically in my body.

Which I already know the cause of really, and have been complaining about it for weeks.  Yet have done nothing about it.  I cannot eat like crap anymore.  I just can't.  Let me explain what crap is so people get a better understanding of what I am talking about here.

Healthy eating for me clears my mind and helps me function from a happy place.  Eating six times a day, every three to four hours is healthy.  Lately I have been having my morning smoothie then not eating again till suppertime because I have filled up on coffee.  Healthy eating has no coffee in the day, as coffee makes me tired and not hungry.  For every cup of coffee one has you should have two glasses of water.  When I drink coffee I stop drinking water all together.  That from a place of only drinking water in my day, I drink no other beverages, all your body needs is water...and its cheaper.  Our bodies are made up of like ninety percent water, drinking it helps flush the toxins out, coffee holds them in.

Not to mention when I eat six times a day, I am focused on fruits and veggies which are made up mostly of water as well.  When I eat unhealthy I eat my entire six portions in one sitting and I choose 'white' foods, which consist of no water.  So my entire day has been about feeding myself energy that sucks the life out  of me not the normal life giving energy my poor body is used too.

So knowing this, why is it that I am still planning to make a pot of coffee as soon as I am done this paragraph now that the nausea from my meditation has subsided?  Why am I refusing to make the changes necessary to feel better?  Why does an addict continue to use knowing full well that she hates it and knows the end results will be disastrous?  An addiction.

Read the book Wheat belly.  I haven't even got fully through it because it was simple for me to see by the first page how it was going to play out.  The chemicals in your food are very similar if not exactly the same as the chemicals in your dope.  It's the chemicals that our bodies become dependent upon.  It's why the weed smoker suffers the same fate as the crack addict.... everything is grown and produced with chemicals.  It's these chemicals that hook us.  Every smoker knows and entirely accepts this.  Don't get me wrong, crack fucks with your brain on an absurd level and for many addicts it's this brain functioning they seek.... not all addicts are created equal.. contrary to popular belief.

I am once again hooked on the chemicals in food.  Where does it end then?  I look back to my entire life and I can see the switching of chemicals.  What is it that the chemicals do to my body that make me want to continuously crave them?  That's really what this post is about.... filling that stupid proverbial void that every religion sings about and every twelve step fellowship tries to uncover.

I am not worthy.

I eat crap knowing full well it will make me feel like crap because that's what I deserve.  I am not seeking out sympathy or to feel sorry for myself here.  It truly is a deep seated belief that I am not worthy of any good in my life, so when the good happens I self sabotage.  Or when good gets stripped away from me it reinforces that I am not worthy and I fall back into self harm.  Normally the good that I perceive as being stripped away is actually not so good and its being removed because it does not fit with the good that is actually in me.  hmm.. that was a mouthful, hope you got it.

I can see now my evening of fun with my coworkers triggered a not worthy response in me and I have been suffering in that for three days now.  Many factors in the work situation have lead up to this feeling of unworthiness and I am just putting the puzzle pieces together now.  I get feeling nauseous when I see all the individual pieces.  It was the same in early recovery for me too.  I relapsed each time I really started to feel like maybe I would get it that time.  I see now how much I didn't feel like I deserved recovery.  Just like I feel like I don't deserve a job or career that nourishes me.

I have so many skeletons in my closet that haunt each success I achieve.  So many ghosts whispering in my ear.  Reminding me of the major fuck up here or the horrible thing I did there.  I see visions from my past that support my unworthiness.   On good days I can keep these naggings at bay.... what are those good days?   Days that I am already in that place of less then... because when I am there it's called humility.   Hmmm as I added that last word, it doesn't resonate properly, but I am gonna leave it because I lack another word there.

You see Saturday night was good, way good.  I felt worthy and wonderful, I felt like I was in my power.  Today I feel like I wanna crawl in a hole and die.  Bi-polar?  Maybe, but I am more leaning towards my low self worth and inability to allow my true light to step forward.

So I kill my light with chemicals.  No longer using dope and my main source of chemical I have found another one.   You see I am learning that I am not in the twelve step fellowship just to get off the dope, I am there because of my low self worth.  Peeling back the layers through the steps is why I am there.

I am not sick today, I am depressed.  I am falling back into a pattern that I have lived with my entire life.  A pattern hidden when I was married because my ex carried me and our family when these times hit.  He took extra jobs when I couldn't work, he fed the kids when I couldn't get out of bed, he covered for me with our family and friends when all i wanted to do was die.   I no longer have that support.  I believe it's one of the reasons one should not get into a relationship in recovery.  You have a partner in your own self inflicted crime.  A partner to hide behind and blame.... even if you are completely unaware of it.  For whatever your inflicted low self worth outlet is.  Mine has always been depression.

Depression is anger turned inwards.  The skeletons in my closet make me angry and instead of dealing with them I kill any feelings I have about them with chemicals.  I am still, on a new level, refusing to deal with my shit.  Not a new higher level, maybe that was bad choice of phrase.  I think a new layer of ghosts have emerged to be faced.  These skeletons go a little deeper then the ones I have faced and conquered over the past two years of recovery... actually three years of recovery.  (Time has a way of standing still as I age).

Progress not perfection is something I used to stress to my weight loss clients and that's some advice I see shining behind the skeleton threatening me today.  The ability to balance the good with those scary memories is a new tool I have for dealing with my shit.  However dealing with my shit is the focus.  Slipping into depression is not dealing with my shit, it's hiding.  Three days of nursing my low self worth is enough, all is not lost or even dented yet.  I watched a Youtube Movie called Kymatica on my TV yesterday thanks to my super cool daughter hooking me up with the 21st century.  Its not a movie for the faint of heart or one with a deep connection with our society, but it does talk much about dealing with our inner demons before they manifest themselves in the world we live in.

This is me dealing with my shadow side.  Not all is rosy and bright in my inner world.  Not all is dark and scary either.  I speak lots about people being all about the positive, which is definitely good to strive for, but to ignore your shadow self is to run into some serious trouble down the line.  I fully understood this when I sat in the pits of hades a few years back and wondered how the fuck I got there through practicing my white light meditations faithfully.  Don't ignore your darkness, that's what keeps taking you back out.  You can only keep it at bay for so long before it will want some attention.

 Deal with it on your terms......  Today I won't let depression be the terms, it's but a warning.  I will heed the warning and walk through my fear.  Time to focus on self care today.  Get my house ready for my baby girl coming home and get better so I can kick ass at work tomorrow!  Thanks for reading my rant.  I Love You.

Getting High on Feelings?

The thread of my posts for the next bit are surely to continue on with the element they have been seemingly assuming.....  feelings.

Such an intriguing concept to me now that I am opening to them.  A very large playground for my analytical mind to dive into and pick apart.  The reason why I am stating this now is to warn those people that don't wish to walk this journey with me.  For some people feelings are still a foreign understanding and for others a repulsive action.

I have observed recently how much our society feeds the feel good feelings and teaches us how to go out of our way to avoid the not so good feelings.  I am beginning to see how we are rewarded for our positivity and shunned for our balanced counterparts.   Staying overly busy is the norm in this western world we live in,  being busy leaves no time to feel our wide range of feelings.  Thus only affording us time for the feelings we choose to cultivate.

That sounds wonderful... choosing our feelings.  Except we can't always choose them, sometimes they choose us to communicate something to us.  Our feelings I think... still working on the understanding part... are not like our thoughts.  Our feelings are deeper.

I was reminded of our societies idiosyncrasies when a beautiful Spanish man shared at a meeting last week.  His accent captured my full attention but his expression of feelings reminded me of a dear Love of mine.  I call him Merlin.  He was the first man I dated after I left my ex.  He was Lebanese raised in Mexico and world traveled, he was in tune to his feelings also.  I sometimes long to live in a country that honors and nurtures our true full natures and not just the sunny shine self help in full control of your entire thought/feeling process one hundred percent of the time country for which I was sentenced this lifetime.

Alright I am done my rant...

I have come to understand that I am extremely uncomfortable sitting in my not so blissful feelings.  I have come to learn this by identifying my patterns in my life.  This is what Step four gifts us, a chance to see the patterns playing out in all areas of our lives.  Each time I have worked step four I am shown a different pattern that needs to be removed or changed.  It is the same concept as the new agers see as belief re patterning.  Our beliefs create our realities, step four shows us very detailed ways our beliefs keep us sick.

How have I been keeping myself sick?  By never allowing myself to feel anything negative.  Now for myself I must define what is negative and what is positive.  Because its not good or bad terms I am dealing with here.  I don't believe anything is bad in our realities, everything is balance.  To have a good feeling is to also at some point experience an opposite feeling.  This is also not referring to a bi-polar pendulum swing of good one day not so much the next.  In my youngest years to feel a feeling of anger or sadness or anything on the down side was not good.  I can hear the words ring in my head..'stop crying or I will give you something to cry about'.   So I have stopped crying about my life.

However that's not entirely true either I am beginning to see.  In order to give myself permission to feel my feelings I must be engaged in some kind of situation that is acceptable to my mind to express negative feelings.  Oh I see a deeper understanding developing here then the one I originally intended to write about.  How exciting,  this is why I blog folks!!  You see what I wanted to write about was the ways I get out of my negative feelings, but I am seeing that these same ways to get out of them are actually ways of getting into them.

Let me explain.

I live in a feel good mentality.  I am always starting something new to create passion and excitement in my world.  New job every six months to a year.  Once a job gets settled I feign boredom and begin seeking out New adventures.  My resume is fifteen pages, front and back!!  I am always starting up new friendships but when things get to touchy feely for me I back off for a couple years and reconnect when things will be fresh and new again.  I have long term friends but not incredibly deep friendships... just super patient friends.  lol

 And of course the way I love to get out of my feelings the most is through romance.  The excitement of finding a new guy to explore is over the top good feelings for me.  I love jumping from guy to guy giving each one six months to a year depending on how entertained they keep me.  Some last mere moments, others allow me to keep doing the break up and get back together exciting thing, which I love even more.  Lastly is the party time feel good.  Although I am not sure if its my age or the fact I have ruined every drug under then sun for myself, but there is never anymore feel good in that, I always fall into the new budding awareness of using to actually afford me an out for my feelings.

And this is the new dawning for me.  Each of these ways, maybe not work so much, but definitely using and romance and not so much friendships either.....  brings me to a flip side of the excitement which is pain.  I am beginning to see that I need these romances to turn ugly so that I can feel the pain that is bubbling under my surface needing an outlet.  I can see how I use in order to be able to find my whale song.   I can only express my pain in what I identify as a healthy outlet through broken romances and getting loaded.

 As I write this I am thinking.... Duh, your just realizing this now.... it does seem kinda logical and maybe normal people can identify this without having to do a Step four fifteen times.  I am far from normal.

So now that I have identified the issue how do I solve it.  I get not getting into another romantic relationship.  Its just hiding my feelings by focusing on the other person and the feel good stuff.  That has been a harsh reality for me and I am getting that lesson loud and clear.  However I am feeling a down feeling at work these days.  The excitement of working this job is wearing off and I am getting antsy.  Although now I see it a bit clearer and I am not truly getting bored, I am just beginning to open up to my boss and co-workers and letting people get to know me. All of me, the great makes no mistake employee and the one that fucks up coworker.... Yuck.  I am starting to have to walk through some feelings other then the feel good excited ones that a new job brings.   I am also feeling this same thing in a couple friendships of mine.  Moving past the bolting part, sitting in the never been here what are these feelings about??

I see that I am also feeling that in my fellowship of recovery as well.  Having thoughts of moving on and starting something new because I have learned all I need to and it's time to stir up my emotional excitement.  When in reality it's truly time for me to push through these not so 'high' feelings and get on to the more grounded and balanced feelings.  In step ten its asks if we have felt any extreme happiness or pain today and I am beginning to understand why they ask that.  I am always on the high cloud of recovery, new job, new romance, new friendship.... new something.  I really never get past that high into the more mundane feelings in a healthy fashion without over eating, getting loaded or sexing my way through it.

I think the key to solving this is to know when to push through the feelings that are uncomfortable for me and when I am truly being prompted by my higher power to seek out a new adventure.  I know I am not in for a life of humdrum, I just need to find a bit more of a calmer balance and not strive for those extreme feelings any more.  Those are the feelings that swing the pendulum to balance themselves out.  Maybe its time to learn to live in the grey and find contentment with happy and sad, instead of excitement and pain.  I think to get to this place I need to roll through my feelings as they come up instead of self forcing them by getting into romances that are not for me, or quitting jobs that are for me.  Maybe this is part of the trust in the universe that I need to step into.

When I force a situation in order to feel, maybe I am doing so because that way I can identify my feeling and have some form of control over it.  I know right now when something comes up out of the blue with no seeming cause I get pretty messed up about it.  I can't analyze it or try to figure it out and that scares me and causes me to want to shut it down instantly.  Aka... eat a pound cake or smoke a joint.  See I got suppression here that I control and then when that suppression gets out of control I jump into a romance to release it!!!  Ah fucking dirty patterns!!

Okay I need to stop writing.  I don't want to learn anything more about myself today.  Back to blissful ignorance.... I'm out.