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.

A Tale of Living Dirty

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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