You Live in a YES Universe!!

Signs, Signs.... everywhere are signs.

We live in a Yes universe.  Our thoughts and feelings create our outer reality.  

Man my wrists hurt so bad from sodding yesterday that I can barely type.  Add in a new keyboard my daughter brought with her and I am having some serious difficulties writing this post.  I have a lot to say and don't work till later this afternoon so I gots to write when I can... like bee's making honey when it's sunny.  Just saying.....

I have been privy to this ancient knowledge of creating my own reality for many years now.  When I first began to experience my own outer creations from the focus of my thoughts I was amazed and awestruck.  I moved my station in life from poverty stricken to middle class.  Moved my body from over weight and sick to healthy and thriving.  However my mind and emotions got left out of the new reality I was creating and soon my world crashed.  I can only understand this now as I begin to rebuild my world again for a second chance.

The beauty of aging is experience.  With experience comes wisdom.  One thing I do not fear in this world is experience, some might say I choose to experience too much and could take a much easier softer route to wisdom.  lol  I say.... what fun is there in that??

This mornings mediation with Oprah and Deepak was about releasing feelings that hold us in the past or from moving forward in life.  It struck a deep cord with me as now I see why I have been spinning my wheels for so long.  Residual traumatic feelings have kept me bound to a past that I have so forcefully evicted from my inner sanctuary.  I truly refuse to acknowledge or deal with any feelings remotely attached to my past.  I had no idea that these feelings having no voice are making themselves heard in each and everyone of my current male relationships.  Romantic, Family and platonic.

We create our own reality.  Our thoughts are powerful in themselves, but when you add deep feelings to the mix they become the reality you live.  Thats the Secret behind the 'Secret'.  When I learned that a few years ago I desperately tried to shut off my mind and feelings at the same time because the reality I was living was so so dark in nature.  I knew that I had created that and that paralyzed me.

I just about slipped back into that dark reality recently.  Praying for trouble, desperately wanting to follow my feelings backwards.  Feelings of residual trauma manifesting in current relationships.  So badly needing to release them I really believed chasing them was the solution.  I am learning that is not the solution, it's more of the problem.  That is keeping me in my feelings and slipping backwards.

The problem for me is always the signs I get from my little world.  Little things that only I would understand.  A string of incidents that trigger my mind into thinking that I am on the right path.  I love my life signs they make my life fun and interesting.  I have learned something new about my signs.

We live in a yes universe.  My signs always support what my thoughts and feelings are creating.  When I am affirming I want to get into trouble because that's the most direct point of releasing my feelings my universe sends the signs posts for me to follow towards that trouble.   What I once believed was God telling me it was okay to go that way, I now recognize as my own mind creation.

We are always in control of where we are going.  I still struggle with my will and Gods will and thats a larger discussion for another post so I will leave it alone right now.  My mind is always directing my path, the sign posts are the quickest way to hit my goals.

Where in the past I have mastered how to reach my financial goals and my body goals, I must now learn to master my emotional goals.  It's my emotions that get me into trouble, its my unexpressed feelings that keep me spinning circles.  It's my over active feelings that command the direction of my life.  I see now thats why I change directions so often and quickly.  My mind truly is a slave to my feelings.  And here I thought I was the intellectual type and always lived in my head.  I just choose to be there instead of my feelings because those little bastards scare the fuck outta me.

At this point the signs are equally positive and negative. I am at a turning point a fork in the road if you will.   I see all the places I can still get into the trouble and chase those stupid feelings.  However current affirmations and a recent scare have turned around my heart and I am now beginning to see new exciting sign posts before me that will lead me back into the light and the life I truly love.  Learning to manage my feelings is the path of light, and drowning in them is the path of the darkness.  Damn I just about sank to the bottom of my ocean!

The power of our minds still scares the crap out of me, the power of our feelings is so foreign to me but life is completely and utterly exciting, I am moving further and further away from ever wanting to extinguish that myself.  I am truly beginning to choose life.

Feelings are like Pea's

Feelings.

...........................


What a stupid concept.   Feelings.

I am an analytical Virgo who is much more comfortable with intellectual concepts and pursuits.  The affairs of the heart are for the emotional people of this planet and I stay far away from that shit.

Of course that is until that 'shit' comes sneaking up behind me and threatens to drown me in my own ocean of unacknowledged emotions.  Such an annoying thing to have a heart, life would be much better for me if I could just cut that thing out.  I would function just fine on logic and reason, thank you very much.  Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory does just fine.

Ya, tell yourself.   I can hear my tittat bad boy number 2 say.  Which I have now discovered there have actually been three bad boys in my recovery so I am shifting all the numbers.  Just a side note.  Much rather talk about the side notes then the stupid feelings that are raging inside me.

I can't stuff them with food anymore.(said with a grating 13 year olds whine)  Which in my denial I was doing.  I should know my pattern by now.  When I start over eating the way I have been lately, there is always a feeling lingering that I am ignoring.  I really truly believed I was just struggling to get over a hurt inflicted recently upon me.  However it never made sense because the action was not matching the sheer volume of pain surfacing on my heart.  So I stuffed it down with food because my Virgo mind could not spin logic on it.  There is no logic to stupid feelings.  (i just gotta keep saying it... ignore if it you already figured this shit out)

Knowing that I cannot over eat like that anymore brought me to a cagey animal in heat mentality.  Trolling for something more physical to cure my ill heart was coming more and more to the forefront of my over active mind.  The more I tried to take that route the more my guts inside turned.  I can not even step foot in that arena anymore, no matter how hard I try and force it.  It's just not in my nature to act out that way as I grow and change.  Super frustrating when it was such an instant release for me, for many years.

Learning new ways of letting my feelings out is where this lesson is going.

The other night I found myself sitting on my eldest daughters bed with her stash in my hands.   Reality rocked my world loud and clear.  I sat vibrating, heart pounding, mind racing, hands sweating, mouth watering, and soon sobbing uncontrollably.   I dropped the numbing out medicine and booked it to a meeting where I shared about my shock over being 'here' again.

......Ahh... tittat badboy #2 would understand the 'here' cry escaping my lips.  How I miss him some days... hmmm....  digression, avoidance, distraction.

With every relapse I have I always wonder how the fuck  I got back to 'here'.   I realize now, how.  I don't deal with my feelings when they come up.  I am unable to just let a feeling wash over me without knowing exactly what,when, why and how of every little facet of that emotion.  I need logic to reason it out.  I am learning that logic and emotions are in completely different rooms, not even in the same wing of my huge inner mansion.  Connected by a maze of hallways.

Rest assured.  I am clean today.  I didn't end up 'here' again.  I recognized the fall before it hit.... mere moments mind you, but I stayed on solid ground nonetheless.  I am working a solid program today and I really don't want to get loaded.  I love my life.   I just truly struggle with my feelings.  This experience has made it very clear just how deep the pain of my past goes and how much needs to be cleared in  order for me to move forward on my journey.

You see I never allow myself to feel the pain of my childhood.  I rationalized and moved on.  I have skipped all the work and have just jumped into forgiveness.  I can't do that, it doesn't work that way.  I have to allow myself to feel.  I cannot always be in my head about these things.  I was so afraid of becoming a victim that I thought a survivor just forgave and moved on.  Really i was brushing everything under the carpet under the disguise of forgiveness.  I really don't harbor any ill will towards the people of my past, but I have to get real about my own personal hurts.

This past incident with bright blues Bad boy number three triggered a way deeper issue of betrayal and abandonment from my past and my childhood.  The waves of emotion were to intense and after a couple of days I had to shut 'er down.  That is where I started to slide down the relapse slope.  Thats where I need to learn a new way to handle the fear of being overwhelmed by my feelings.  I have to figure out an off switch for them so that I feel a little more in control when they get to intense.  I understand I have to roll through the waves but its terrifying to me.

Feelings are a disconnected aspect of my personality.  I have never allowed myself to express them let alone feel them.  It just wasn't safe as a kid to do so.  Now as an adult I must learn how to effectively handle these feelings that are erupting within me and threatening to drown me if I don't acknowledge them.  That's scary shit to me.  I am much more comfortable sleeping with the devil.  How fucked is that?

Feelings?   What a stupid issue.   It's like my youngest daughter said to a psychiatrist once when asked what she thought about feelings  ...' feelings are like pea's, you know they are good for you, but you just don't like them'.  

And with that witty wise comment from the mouth of my babe I bid you ado.  I hope this week finds you walking through your own feelings and sending me waves of strength to walk through mine.

Planting my Self Worth Like buried Spider Babies in your Ear

I sure do love the rain days off when they are far between and much needed.  It's one of those days.

Some realizations have been dawning on me lately and they haven't been pleasant ones.  True to my Virgo nature of analyzing everything I have uncovered a uncomfortable truth about myself.  I am not sure what to do with it or how to move forward because of it.

I am now aware of the belief that I need a man to lift me up.  I need a male energy to motivate me forward in life.  I need the constant reassurance from a male.  As I write that I realize its actually not just from a man I need these things, although from a man it holds ten times more weight,  from anyone close to me.  I need positive re enforcement in all I do.

I am sure on some level we all do.  The awareness is settling in my Psyche that for me without this outside encouragement I lack motivation to take care of myself.  With my daughters gone, I couldn't be bothered with cooking or cleaning.  When I don't have a romantic interest I barely shave my legs.  If I am not being rewarded at work I quit.   Constant assurance is something that I need to function.

As this dawning is occurring I find myself backsliding like crazy.  It has shown me how dependant I really am on others.  I am always spouting how independent I am, and physically, financially and maybe even mentally I am but definitely not emotionally.   My worth is completely tied into other people.

The brutal fact is that when someone rejects me it rips me straight to the core of my being.  My core being that of other people because that's where I place my energy center.  When a person walks away from me they take a piece of me with them and I am found chasing them to get it back. Reminds me of the horcruxes of Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies, pieces I place in others to keep myself alive.  I am only alive when another being is deeply into me.

Thats the backsliding I am feeling these days.  A rushing back to collect the pieces of me I have gave away so unwittingly to people who had no idea they were taking me with them.   How else am I to collect my lost self worth, but to win these people back into my life?  If they destroy themselves they are killing that part of me to and it is always the self destructive people that I lay my spider babies with.

Even as I write that I can see the absurdity of the cycles I have been caught in.  Constantly chasing my own self worth, running after people to gain it back.  To get my self worth back is to earn it for myself.  To move forward and collect  it on my spiritual path.  To pick the beautiful flowers as the universe rewards me for my own inner beauty.  Rushing backwards is an option but a tougher, longer path to collect it back and usually involves a bit more humiliation then walking forward into the unknown.  I say this with all the wisdom in the world because it's what I have done enough times now to know the outcome of chasing a backslide.

I just don't know how to walk forward knowing that up until now all my worth has come from others.  I look at my friends differently now.  I look at my family differently.  As my boss is picking up a large gift certificate for me from a bike shop for a new ride, I question the motives behind the actions.  How do I stop deriving my worth from what others think of me?

I have received some negative complaints at work lately,  I have been rejected on a soul level recently and have lost some people in my life... how do I learn to not take that personally?  All of it is attached to my self worth.  When the negative comes in I have to strive double hard for some other form of positive reinforcement.  How draining I see this has been.  I put so much energy into this avenue of self worth.

I have been told before that I do this and struggle with it, but I couldn't see it clearly until now.  Its one of those layered lessons.  I feel yuck all over the place because of this understanding.  How much power I have given away to others?  I give my power over constantly... and I have a lot of power to give.  No wonder I attract the broken boys (as my bff corrected me today, I don't like the 'badboys' I like the broken ones).  I give them my power to heal themselves instead of healing myself.  Plus I think I like them because what would a healthy guy want with me.... truly.  But I digress.

How do I walk forward finding a new place to derive my self worth?  How do I tap that from within instead of seeking it outside of myself?  Is it such a bad thing to feel good when I am rewarded for hard work?  where do I find the balance?  Ah... back to the balance again.

Well that's my food for thought today. 

Odd Feelings, Moon's Blooming, First Steps :)

Such an odd feeling but its like my heart is opening like a moon flower.  Blooming only once a year in the dark of the night.  Yet it goes even deeper then that, for me the first time in my life and out of the darkness it blooms into the light.

Such an odd feeling to have so many tears watering my heart flower, shedding tears..... letting go tears.

The process of letting go is what I want to focus on today and for the last time... hopefully. I feel like it is a topic I  have been beating a dead horse with.  I am always trying to let go of something.  Dope.  Food.  The sexy bad boy that chews at my heart.  Always struggling with giving up something that used to make me happy, yet quickly back spins and turn toxic.  That has been the story of my entire adult years, I am so tired of that story.

When the pain of remaining the same becomes greater then the pain of change.... the seed will break out of its shell and shoot through the soil into the light.  I am ready to shoot.

When I was at Aventa, A woman's treatment center, we were  asked to write a letter to our addicts.  I love to write and welcomed the assignment.  I wrote with vigor to my beloved Lady Vixen.  I let the images of her flow to my mind and I let my higher self speak to her directly.  I wrote about her beginnings, her journey and her ending. I could see the process so clearly nestled safely in an all women's facility for six weeks.  The work to walk the process began when I left that safe haven.

That process is finally coming to a close now, two years later.  Time, Time, Time.  Patience is not for the weak of heart because everything happens in its own time not ours.  Walking through is the only thing we have control over.  I lost control of that several times over the past couple of years. Each  time I gave in to my addict I held on.

I held on with each drug relapse.  I held on with each food binge.  I held on with each new bad boy conquest.   My arms are sore from holding on so damn tight.   I can't hold on anymore.  I am too tired. I have no more strength.  Such an odd concept to say it takes strength to let go, yet I am to tired to do anything but let go. One of those paradox's.

What I have recently begun to fully understand is that to let go is not to let go of just the focus of my addicts attention, but to release the addict herself.  I have been so busy working like a bee on the minor details of drugs, food and boys that I always over look the mane problem.  A case of spending my energy on the symptoms and not the cause.  Which coming from a person who teaches others to look beyond the illness to the emotional cause, is odd. don't you think?

The problem is not the drug, the food or the boy.  The problem is my addict, it's Lady Vixen. When I was in treatment I wrote so passionately about my gratitude towards Vixen for keeping me safe during my childhood.  IT was my emerging addict that kept the feelings off fear, betrayal, hurt and anger from consuming me when I was that lost little girl.  It was Lady vixen who taught me how to respond emotionally to my situations that kept me not only safe but growing.  As I got  older it was Vixen who taught me how to numb out the pain that was always on the surface wanting an outlet.  It was my addict that brought joy to my life where only despair resided.  My addict kept me alive for the first half of my life.  In my letter to her I cried tears of deep thanks, without her I don't know how I would have gotten through it.

As my letter progressed I became aware of how toxic and controlling Lady Vixen had become in my life.  Where my own inner joy was beginning to flourish she would kill it.  Where my own growth was occurring she would jump in an stunt it.  I was  learning how much she needed to keep me in the place of childness.  She only survived as my scared child thrived.  Without that fearful little girl lady Vixen was nothing.  In my letter I confidently put my adult foot down and said 'No More'.  I showed all the places that Vixen was killing me as an adult.  Where once she kept me protected now she threatened to destroy me.  I bid farewell to  Lady Vixen in that Letter.  I sealed it with my tears and I never looked back.

That was two years ago.

Last night as I sat with tears over the pain that flows from me.  Pain from my childhood.  Pain for my lost youth.  Pain for my misused time as an adult.  Pain from all the hurt I played out through others because of my inability to walk through it on my own.  The smell of weed wafted so seductively through my open balcony window.  I inhaled deeply and knew that I could hold on if I wanted to.  I thought of a bad boy I could call to distract me from my pain.

Instead my best friend and Sponsor texted me in that creepy way that friends know when something is really up.  They kept me tethered as I had an out, a healthy out if I needed it.   I stayed on  my couch and let the waves of hurt wash over me...... and then I went to bed raw but clean.

I fell asleep knowing that Lady Vixen has finally left the building.

When I woke up I found a Moon flower in full bloom within my chest,  with a note attached to it.   'You don't need me anymore, your Strong enough now.  Love Lady V.'  My heart aches with each new breath of expansion.  My mind unsteady with each new step without my trusted other half.

Its finally a new day for me.   Metaphors aside, I am done acting out, I am done using to numb out.  I am done hurting people to avoid my own  pain.  I am just done with the old ways of my life.  I am walking through the grief phase of letting go and oddly enough the tears feel wonderful.  Such a strange thing these things called feelings.

Welcome to The City of Illusions

Erupting like hot lava from a volcano my emotions threaten to destroy the perfect little illusion I have built at the bottom of the mountain.

My little world of glass.  Totally see through, everything there like an open book.  Don't dig too much further because there is nothing there to see.  Everything I am is open for all to see.  Or so I would like to believe in my magic house of mirrors.  Satisfied with the reflection I choose to see through the distorted mirrors.

I am lost in my own city.  The mountain is over flowing and the Lava is pouring fourth into the suburbs and there is no where to run from it.  The mirrors trick me.  Running in directions unknown.  Slamming into clean glass stopping me in full run.  My city is melting all around me.  Everything is screaming inside the walls.  Trapped.

Never having been one that could express her emotions in a healthy way.  As a kid you don't want to hear the way I expressed them.  As I got older and understood how horrible that situation was it was through food that I hid my feelings.  As the food was stripped from my bones, it was dope.  My city is melting all around me.  My mirrors no longer reflecting what I choose to see.  The glass blocking my path now melts into the heat of the angry red liquid.

Standing on a rock I watch as everything I have known until now disappears.  I have known for a long time this day would come.  The day I would have to face the mountains inner turmoil.  No one chooses to build her city at the bottom of a volcanoe without having some wit her city could be destroyed at some time.  That time is here.

The mirrors of secrecy have melted.  The wall of despair has fallen.  The illusions of all is okay have shattered.  The borders of Fear have all but disappeared.  Halls of guilt and shame are somewhere deep below the fiery substance of change.  My little house of illusions no longer exists.

Sitting on my rock watching through my tears I feel a small stirring of..... relief?.  My home and all I have known is vanishing before my eyes.  All I have worked so hard to build to protect myself is slipping into the eruption of Powerful Mother Earth.  Smoke from the mirrors is all that is left.

Sitting in the smoke I cry.  Shedding years of held back pain, fear and disillusion.   Emptied out I fall asleep on my rock.  I have nothing left. 

As I sleep...... God opens up the sky's and sheds his own tears unto my destroyed city.  He cry's for my pain.  He cry's for my journey's past.  He cry's for my strength.  He cry's for my inner beauty.    He cry's for all I am to become.

When I open my eye's the smoke is gone and the sky is clear.  My eye's slowly adjust.   Budding young hopeful tree's that have replaced my mirrors of defeat.  Flowers of Love bloom where my walls of fear once resided.     Birds fly down my old halls of shame.     A rainbow touches down in the place secrecy used to hide.

I don't move off my rock.  I don't know how to feel.  I don't trust this new illusion.  Maybe I will stay here until the landscapes true reality comes forth.  I am done being hurt by pretty little illusions of the all powerful mind.  This could be only an illusion.  It is only an illusion.

I close my eye's and go back to sleep.  Knowing that when I wake up i will be back in the destruction of my life and the comfort of my sorrow.

AFGE!! Another F@$*ing Growth Expereince!!

"With the power of God that I AM, today I choose peace. 

With the power of God that I Am, today I choose love 

With the power of God that I AM, today I choose to be happy and to be be united with all life,

May all beings be happy.  May all beings be peace.   AMEN" 

 

Yesterday during my morning ritual of prayer and meditation I asked Spirit to help me learn the process of letting go.  I am tired of getting caught in the spinning cycle of holding on to my hurts and letting them fester, creating wounds beyond mending.  My prayers were answered.

One of the things I have learned through this program and through trying many other spiritual paths before coming to NA is that connection to spirit is not enough to gain complete inner healing.  Even walking through spirits lessons is not a full process.  We need to do our part in the healing, we need to do the 'work'.

In the past programs I was involved in the 'work' was learning how to pray.  Learning how to meditate.  Learning ritual, learning about props to aid in spiritual connection.  Learning through meditation how to clear problems.  All of the tools I was given were of a mental capacity.  For the mentally healthy person these are all great as that person has a foundation for which to already stand.  For an addict with a mentally unstable foundation I had to go back a bit further.

The twelve steps have taught me a very very basic fundamental tool that so easily gets overlooked by me when I get stuck in a process.   Pen to Paper.   Three simple words to release me from the bondage of suffering when I cannot let go.  I will write it again,  Pen to Paper.   How strange is it for me who loves to write and understands deeply the therapeutic value of it, to miss the simple act of picking up a blue ball point pen and a piece of loose leaf paper??

Blogging is a wonderfully creative tool for me to discover things about myself in a meeting like public fashion.  However there are layers of myself that I cannot share in this fashion as they are not meant to be exposed to the world.  The wounds to sensitive for that much air, the risk of infection to great.   Good ol' fashion pen to paper and cauldron to burn it after sharing with my sponsor.  That is how I let go.  It's how I have always learned to let go.  Why does it escape my memory when I am knee deep in my own shit again?

I have the thickest skull with the slowest rate of learning on the face of this planet I am sure.  Constant repetition and at least three major go rounds before I learn a lesson.   Well this is go round number three so this is it for hashing this shit up.  

So today on my agenda after a pretty emotionally intense day yesterday for me, is a quiet day at home working my steps and writing out a few full length hurt process's.   A good release will come from that and tonight I will reward myself with a girly sleep over with my best friend of ten years.  No matter how much I cycle, no matter how far in the pits of hell I fall or how bright my light gets, she loves me.... that will comfort me after a day of open rawness.

Learning how to book end my 'work', is what keeps me sane and enjoying the journey of recovery.  Whenever I plan to do some deep painful inner work, I always do something fun and self care like before I start and then again when I am done.  My last sponsor taught me this and it has become a valuable tool for me.  I have let my current sponsor know that I am doing some scab pulling today and she is on stand by.  

 It's not an easy path we choose to recover our true worth, but it is a rewarding one...... when you work it.

Work it cause your Worth it!!

This is where we part my Friend.

I want to be bad.  I want to get into trouble, stir up some shit.

I have been in a constant turn it over mentality for the past few days.  I have had thoughts of using but have given them up to my higher self in the moment.  I have overcome tremendous urges to contact the bad boy to dive head deep into some kinky sexscapades.  I have unfortunately been succumbing to food binges leaving me with the yuck hangover the next day.

Whats going on with me?  Why all the self sabotaging actions?  I firmly believe if we are not moving ahead we get stuck in our shit.  Thats where I feel I am spinning my wheels right now, in my own manure pile.  But why?

A few friends I have spoken to lately have been experiencing the same thing.  Feeling stuck, feeling that they need something more.  I also believe in universal shifts and I think that is something we are facing right now.  Fear is what keeps me wanting to rush backwards into what I already know.  Fear of the unknown, blinded by the light of my future I always fall back into the comforting dimness of my past.  I am seeing this all around me lately.

So many friends, coworkers and acquaintances are indulging in there energy sucking addictions and hangups.  Many of them aware and struggling, many more however completely ignorant to their patterns.  I relate to the ones struggling and feel angry at the ones still blissful.  I wish I too was able to just sit here and not make the uncomfortable move outside my little bubble.

Growth in life not just recovery is about always moving forward. When we are not working on recovery we are working on relapse.  Recovery is about walking into the unknown ever single day of your life.  It is so easy to get comfortable in the safety of what we know which was recently something new, that we stop moving ahead.  Before we know it years have passed, complacency has snuck in and we are buried in our own shit again.

Thats where I am at now.  I know I have to take another step forward but I don't know where it will take me and that fear is paralyzing me.  Overeating pulls me back into depression.  Depression is my way to hide from life.  I can see the patterns even though my mind is not trapped there yet.  I need to make the small choices today to steer myself away from depression before I am buried again.  Hard to make those choices now though when I am still enjoying my sugar indulgences.  Ignorance is not bliss, but I am still getting something out of this form of using.  Playing the tape till then end shows me that this enjoyment is running its course and soon I will be hiding from the world in my room as my existence diminishes.

Bringing it back to the larger picture.  If I am seeing this reflected all around me as well, this is a universal shift we are all making at this  moment.  As my world grows in recovery and I move away from my self absorbed perceptions I can begin to see the connection between all things.  The planet changes and grows, ebbs and flows right along side of our little human lives.  There is a shift occurring that is effecting us all right now.  This shift is moving us forward and for those of us ready to move forward we will and for those of us not, we will relapse.

I don't believe that if you relapse however that you have chosen to not move forward entirely, but that you needed to clear away some old patterns before shifting.  That was my escapade with bad boy number two recently.  A clearing away of old behaviours that no longer serve me.... thank goddess!   Food is obviously still serving a numbing out that I need in order to make the shift forward in my life.  However I need to work on this because depression is all consuming for me.

 I think the energy mother earth is providing us right now is  giving us a boost in the right direction or a shove backwards.  Maybe my recent annoyance with those people that are choosing to go back out is that I am now being separated from them.  We travel along our paths alone and meet up with people along the way that we like so much we wish they would travel along with us for a time.  When they choose a different path I think it hurts me.  I have experienced several people leaving my path recently and my heart hurts.

Ahhhhhh.......... and it only took how many paragraphs to get to the core of my wanting to be the bad girl.

  The bad boy chose a different path, so did a few friends that I miss dearly but was not willing to admit.

  Its hard for me to let go of people I like and have much in common with.  Its hard for me to open up to someone like a flower to the sun only to have the rain come and wash away that brilliance.  Realizing that when the sun comes out again my friend has walked a new path away from me.

I speak in metaphors because its easier for me to express my feelings that way, people understand or just think I am crazy, but they get something out of it.  This universal energy shift has once again moved people out of my life that no longer serve my highest good, which is a good thing, yet has left me feeling lonely and afraid of the other people that might be moved out of my life as well.  Nobody stays in your life forever.... nobody.

How does one learn to let go?  How does one learn to keep their hearts open when they know sooner or later a friend will be removed from them?  That my friends is my true struggle here and the one I have been beaten by my whole life.  How do I let go?  Is it better to have loved and lost then to never have loved at all?  And please understand I am not speaking of boy/girl love here, I am speaking of friendships, family and lovers.

I am sad that I am walking away from some people that I have loved and some of those people are walking away from me.  Nature insists upon this as we all walk our own paths so no hard feelings in me, just sadness.  Damn it takes me a long fucking time to figure out a simple feeling!!  I am sad and dont want to move forward without these people so I am gonna go back and pull them kicking a screaming along with me like a cave man drags his wife!!  Tarzan was hot, I would be his wife.

Okay Okay I am done.  Till next time.

..........Dont walk away from me!

A Journey through the 12 Steps

When a newcomer walks into a meeting there are a set of guidelines we collectively give them that will aid them in their success.  This is my rendition of that advice......

Meetings are the most important element of a twelve step support program.  Salvation Army put out years ago the 90 meetings in 90 days concept for which they have now rescinded.  The idea was the more meetings you attend the easier it is for you to integrate into the fellowship and build a strong support group.  The downfall to the 90/90 rule was that it fed an addicts all or nothing mentality.  When the addict failed at attending that many meetings they allowed that to be a reservation to their entire recovery and they gave up, thinking if they couldn't even do the first suggestion then they would never stay clean.

Building a support group then for me is the first suggestion I give the newcomer.  Move outside your comfort zone and begin building friendships with people in the rooms.  Get a sponsor as soon as possible because this person will help introduce you to people within the fellowship.  A sponsor clears a path for you .  Reaching out to people is a scary thing, I don't advise waiting until your destitute to do it.  Reach out when you are feeling good and confident.  Build relationships when your mind is clear.  Then when you feel shitty and want to use you already have a support group that has gotten to know you and can see that your starting a cycle of defeat and can help you out of it before it consumes you.

When I look around at my friends that are healthy I see that they all have strong family relationships or spiritual fellowships or a close network of friends that know them inside and out.  This is imperative to a healthy mind, having people see things we cannot.  Having friends that love us enough to tell us when we are walking into a trap and when we are being bitches.  I used to side step this by sharing only small parts of myself with each set of friends I had.  My coworkers seen one side of me, my family a different side and my girlfriends yet another side of me.  No one person actually got the full view of me, until I came into NA.  Now I see the importance of self honesty and full honesty with those people that I love and trust.

Having several fellowships is that same concept of only showing parts of yourself.  To move entirely from one fellowship  to the next after one outgrows a fellowship is okay.  As long as that person leaves in a comfortable fashion for all involved and takes the time to tie up loose ends and leaves on a happy note.  I am all for growth and moving along on ones path as I will do one day as well.  However to attend three separate churches but not fully integrate into any of them is still living in the half truths of yourself, your still hiding pieces of yourself.  Secrets keep us sick.  That is probably the largest lesson I have learned coming through the 12 steps and connecting deeply with a fellowship. Becoming Vulnerable.

After establishing a support group.  The steps begin.  Meetings promise the obsession to use will be lifted if you attend regularly.  In my words it means that if you attend meetings and integrate into the fellowship you will stay clean.  You wont recover however until you begin the work of the steps.  The steps are like  taking the doctors orders and following them.  Most of us ignore the doctor.  Most of us are comfortable in our sickness.

I am not.

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

This step is the hardest and  most rewarding.  It is the step that teaches us to let go.  When something doesn't work out for a healthy person they let go and try something new, change directions.  To an obsessive/compulsive mind we keep on pushing and kicking the door until we break it down and barge in.  Most time life greets us on the other side of that door negatively.  Our lives have become unmanageable.  To admit we are bulls in china shops is the hardest thing for us know-it-alls to do.

Step Two:  We came to believe a power greater then  ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I have two takes on this step.  The first one was taught to me in a Re-hab.  We Came.    Just keep coming back, is something we tell newcomers.  Keep coming back.  We Came.  Then We Come To.  Slowly we begin to wake up.  90/90 meetings helped this awakening process.  When we use we numb out not only our feelings, but our minds fall asleep to the truths of who we are and what we are capable of achieving in this lifetime.  Coming to, is to awaken to life's beauty.  For some people this takes years of coming to meetings, for others mere days.   After awakening then we begin to  believe.  In what you believe is irrelevant.  My Ex husband during a guided meditation I was testing out on him seen his higher power as Silent Bob, a movie actor. I didn't care I was just excited that he seen someone to guide him through it.

Working the steps will help awaken our beliefs.  Its not normally until the tenth step that we begin to truly believe in something.  I feel sad for the people that stop halfway through thinking that its not working for them.

Step Three:  We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of god as we understand him.

This step also has two meanings for me.  The first one being the simple act of making a decision.   In my active addiction I was either avoiding or running, those were the only decisions I was making.  To make a decision now in my life takes on a whole new process that I never practiced before.  Weighing out the pro's and cons, looking ahead at the consequences of the decisions are new for this impulsive addict.  Step three teaches us how to play the tape entirely to the end.

It also teaches me to pray before I make any decisions.  To seek my inner knowing and to open to my own intuition in situations.  To not always listen to what others are saying or follow what others are doing.  It took me many trials and errors to finally hear my intuition and still I make mistakes, but that is the process of step 1,2,3.  I will always be cycling through those steps with every dark turn I take in life, and I am not ignorant enough to think I wont take a few more wrong turns in my life.  The first three steps are my life long tools to get me back on track

Step Four:  We made a searching a  Fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

As a society we are so focused on other people that we are unable and unwilling to look deep into our own eyes.  We are unable to love ourselves for the incredible beauty that we are.  We will hide behind Internet addictions, food addiction, drug and sex addictions, alcohol and sugar addictions, work addictions.... you name it there is a distraction from ourselves.  Step four begins to slowly peel away those outward focus's and begins to redirect your gaze at yourself.  For some people this is so painful that they relapse or get nothing out of the fourth step.  I had to work this step three times before I got entirely through it and got something out of it.  Now its my most favorite step to work.  I can see now that I am not the devil incarnate as I once really believed.  Okay maybe not the devil himself, but surely his sexy ass wife!!

Step Five:   We admitted to God, to Ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I think this is the most miss read step of all of them and being the unstable energy of a five I can see why.  The key word there is 'Nature'.  We are not setting ourselves up to air every piece of dirty laundry to our sponsors, we are looking at the common threads of our misdoings and revealing the nature of those wrongs.  When we voice anything out loud it either gives power or removes power.  In step five we remove the power of our own self deflating thoughts by putting them on the table for another to look at.  Once we understand the nature of why we did those things we can forgive ourselves.  Forgive ourselves is the whole key to step five... To have a sponsor that digs for the nature is to have a really good sponsor.

Step Six:  We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character

This step starts to  peel away all the shitty behaviours we have cultivated in ourselves from years of unguidance.  I am grateful I had someone walk through this step with me that countered my shitty defects of character with the positive character traits I already embodied.  To look deeply at how these behaviours hurt or helped ourselves and others is the first step in changing who we were then into who we are now.  This step for me was truly the hardest of them all.  When your defects becoming glaringly obvious its hard not to want to crawl out of your own skin.

Step Seven:  We humbly asked God to Remove our shortcomings.

Moving into this step quickly after six was the only thing that saved my ass because I learned how to cultivate patience with myself and to seek out hope from something greater then me.  This is where my faith in a power greater then myself began to grow.  It wasn't three of five, it was now.  At the end of the day when I was left alone with me and didnt like who I was... that pain of staying the same became greater then the pain of change.... I was surely willing to change.  I began to pray.  Really Pray.

Step Eight:  We made a list of all the people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to all of them.

Ah relief.  This is where my must do personality trait could finally begin to work on fixing all the shitty things that the steps dug up for me.  This is where I could begin to take an active part in cleaning up my side of the street.  By this step I was so eager to rush out into the world and explain to everyone why I did what I did back then.  Making this list began that process of doing it right.  I felt tremendous relief and a release of the pain that had been building from step four till now.

Step Nine:  We made direct amends to such people whenever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others

Slow down little pony, was the message my sponsor had to repeat to me numerously.  I began to learn that making amends to certain people would actually make the situation they were in worse for them as they were in a place of beating themselves up already.  To say sorry for something you did to them, was in their mind to rub salt in their wounds.  This is where my prayers began to manifest.  As I began to project the amends I wanted to make old friends would call me out of the blue, family would approach me with an amends of their own out of nowhere.  And I am talking amends from people like my father for childhood hurts.... out of no where.  It was actually eerie to me.. even to me who believes in the power of that.

Step Ten:  We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

By far my favorite step for recovery.  I think as soon as you start step one your sponsor should teach you step ten.  Every night before falling asleep think of ten things your grateful for.  Then run through your day to see what else transpired.  This will keep the cycle of obsession from ever getting to relapse point and your mind in a place of humility.

Step Eleven:  We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood her, praying only for her will for us and the power to carry that out.

This step is one I have been working for well over ten years and will still be learning and growing from for the rest of my life.  The layers here are truly deep and can be peeled back for a lifetime.  It was at this step that I was so amazed at my higher powers workings in my life that I was eager for a deeper connection.  Even all my meditation from years before had never connected me on the level these steps have.  To me our higher power is our inner power.  If we are unwilling to do a fourth step and look into ourselves and then a six step to peel away the darkness that covers our inner power, we will never connect to that higher power.  This is where all other spiritual programs in my life have lacked true authenticity.  The steps guided me through falling in love with myself..... the exact image of the Goddess.  The God in all her glory and dark nature.

Step Twelve:  Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts and to practice these principals in all our affairs.

Today I see a much broader picture of this step then the one limited to the rooms.  If an addict has already found her way to the rooms she is walking in the right direction.  I am more interested in the addicts in the world that are still lost and trying to find their way.  My work place has connected me with three separate addicts two whom I have had the privilege of being the light for.  That is what carrying the message means to me and practicing this in all of our affairs.  Once your light is turned on, you will want to share that with the world.  There are many many paths to igniting your inner light, the twelve steps is but one way as is religion but another way and there are a thousand more ways out there.  We all have the choice to embrace our lights.... we ALL have inner light.

Working the Steps, attending meetings regularly and setting up a strong honest support group are the three things that I did without fail this time around.  I know without a doubt that I am still clean and clean the longest I have ever been only because of the marriage of these three aspects of the program.  The twelve steps have given me what I have been seeking for well over ten years.  I am beyond gratitude.

Step 1, 2,3,11... Repeat!

Bide the Law ye must

In perfect Love and Perfect Trust

Eight words this Rede fulfill

'An ye harm none, do as ye will'

Ever mind the rule of three

What ye send out comes back to thee

Follow this with mind and heart

And merry meet and merry part.

I have known  of this rede for many years.  I have claimed to live by it for most of those years.  Just recently however I became aware I lacked true understanding of the meaning behind the words.

My lesson to learn recently has been about the impact of my decisions on the people and thus the world around me.  Coming from that place of my selfish inner six year old, I was unable to see beyond my nose.  I acted in a way always that suited my needs of the moment and didn't even consider that there may be people outside my realm that would be effected by meeting my needs, wants... needs.

Dont get me wrong I am not a fool, my momma taught me to be concerned for others.  It's not like I didnt know I could hurt others... duh, I understood that.  What I couldnt see is how a selfish choice that seemingly only effected me and another person actually started a domino effect in my little realm.

Always weighing the consequence of my decisions I tend to make sure the people directly involved with my choices are brought into the realm of my understanding.  What I am learning today is that my realm is very small.  In the selfish nature of my addict I tend to want what I want right now and will tunnel vision to get it. 

The part of the above Rede that I claim to live by that has me sitting in some of my shit is...'An ye harm none, do as ye will'.   In the past this fed my selfish nature as I was unable to see how I hurt people with my actions.  Today it is becoming blaringly clear how my actions have far reaching ripple effects and that harm none has a wider span now.   This is where humility enters.  To know that each action I take will directly and indirectly create a ripple in the pond of my reality and those realities of the people in the pond with me.

Where I once seen only those directly infront of me, I can now see those to each side, and behind me.  I never seen her coming at me but now I can feel every movement behind me because of that missed awareness before.  I am highly attuned to all actions of those around me now and this brings me out of my tunnel vision back into the realm of community.  Obsession creates the tunnel, choices made in obsession bring harm.

'What ye send out comes back to thee'  claims the law of three.  I do not have the option any more to  send out negative energy.  It is like a boom-a-rang, super fast and fucking painful when it smacks me in the face.  So why would I even want to go to these harmful negative places in the first place?  That is the question that mildly haunts me.  I say mildly because I am begining to understand that I won't always receive all the answers to my life questions.  Cunning, baffling and powerful is  the disease of obsession and compulsion. 

I am  back in the light today and walking with the Goddess energy of Quan Yin and feel tremendous gratitude for my life and my higher powers.  I can see clearly now where I went off course recently and all the warnings begining with whispers escalating to screams from my gaurdian spirits.  The next time my intuition will be recognized quicker and I will hopefully steer clear of the impending danger.

All this criptic talk and spiritual energy comes from the place of inner sactuary that I am sitting in right now.  Letting go of  this past hurt has been a peeling of the layers, physical... followed by mental and today in the spiritual.   I think for me I always stop or get stuck in the mental and stay repeating the cycles.  As I sit in deep meditation as the 11 step teaches us I am gifted with deeper understandings to let go entirely my hurts and hang ups of the now passing process in my life.

Merry meet and merry part, all beings and situations that bring me to higher levels of awareness and consiousness.  This is what the program of the twelve steps has gifted me... simple steps to walk up to become a better person.  A less selfish and more community minded person. 

An odd ramble for today....  I blame it on a 60 hour work week and way way too much sugar in my system.

Love to you all, until next week stay clean.

The Moon is Ripe for YOU.

Full Moon in Aquarius today, Moon of reasoning for the medicine people.   The ascension or spiritual awakening process for me includes my hearts passions, and that is for everything metaphysical.  So days like today are very important to me and my little ritualistic, cosmically connected soul.  Aqaurius says its time to step into your creative personality and let  go of the fear of being weird.  Moon of Breaking Masks which we just came out of on the medicine wheel speaks of shattering the illusions of the mask you hide behind.  Combined both are yelling at us to step into our true passions of who we really are.

So who am I?

My story goes way deeper then addiction, much further back.  As does all peoples that struggle with an addiction of any kind, drugs, smoking ciggerettes, sugar, sex, internet...... the list is as large as the population that is inflicted by addiction.  To me addiction is the way we create illusion or masks to hide behind.  To say I am an addict is to hide the true individualistic me, its to morph into a group of support and safety and be able to cocoon away from the world.   Truly a wonderful expereince to an infantile being that needs nurturing to be able to grow into the soul potential its destined for. 

This is the gratitude I share for the rooms of NA and the twelve step program.  As I released all my addictions one by one, food first then smoking shedded away I was only left with sex and drug addiction.  For food and smoking I had a weightloss team supporting me, Only seems fitting now that I also need a team supporting me for the sex and drugs.  This teaches me how interconnected we all are and how we cannot do any growth process alone.  It takes a village to raise one child, and we are all children of this galaxy. 

The reason why I point this out first when trying to discover who I am is because I tend to get trapped in the phases of my growth.  Identifying myself as an addict limits who I am and sticks me in a place  that I could potentially sit forever.  I never stood up and said I was a fat girl as I was losing wieght.  I was actually taught to not see myself as fat at all, only to imagine who I was inspiring to be.   In drug and sex addiction it seems only fitting to do the same thing.  I have been seeing myself as a lowlife drug addict instead of seeing myself as the flowering human spirit that I am.

So what does that flowering human spirit look like?

Before the weight loss and the shedding of my addictions I began to embark on a spiritual journey that ignited a passion within me that I never knew exsisted.  I fell in love with the Goddess.  I began  to study astrology.  I played with the energies of spirits to create charms and talismens.  I studied religions and began to see a much larger picture of life then just the one created in my own closed mind.  I dived deeper into my study of tarot cards and increased my ability to read accurately.  I became a reiki practitioner.  I embraced mediation as a part of my daily life and created a solid relationship with my higher powers.

For 6 years my life went along bumpless and blissful in this state of passionate discovery.   During those years I worked at creating internally the life I wanted externally.  Soon my manifestations would come to pass and I would land in detox broken and completely shocked.  How did I get there??

Looking back now and through watching people go through the  same expereinces as me I can see what happens when we ascend.   As you move into greater consciousness or become more awake, things of lower energy must be stripped away from your life.  Addiction of any kind is of a lower energy, its what keeps you asleep or numb the the realities of who you are... or more positively put, the passions of your heart.  Soon I was losing  weight because food was keeping me sick.  Starches keep me in a slumber of depression.   Once they were removed my life got even more passionate.  It was easy to throw away the pack of smokes after that.  I was fit and feeling fabulous smokes brought me down.

It was at this part of my life that the question of, how good can it get was presented to me.  I was on top  of the world.  The body I had always dreamed for, the job beyond my wildest expectaions and the perfect nuclear family. Life was soo good..  I kept up my meditation and all my spiritual practices until things started to feel off.   The energy shifted and I began a sideways slide.

Soon I found myself drinking one to many glasses of wine each night.  Which quickly lead to a joint here and there, which progressed scary rapidly into cheating on my husband.  Before I even knew what happened I was wired to crystal meth and my family and job nowhere to be seen.  Sitting in detox new years eve I had plenty of time to reflect on my life and how I had gotten there.  One of my gifts is that I am able to see the larger picture of a situation in the moment and accept the lesson presented.   This situation was no different.

I got to big for my ego and lost my humility.  Complacency is another word for it. That was part of it.  This phase of my life the lessons were layered.  I lost my job because of ego.  The drug addiction showed up at that time to be shed away as it had been hiding from my teen years.  This is where the larger picture and examining ones past to understand the present and change the future resided for me.   My family break up was a tougher pill to swallow but the truth of that matter is my husband and I had just grown apart and were no longer energetically compatible.  17 years is hard to peel away from so explosions tend to hurt.  My whole life was stripped away in one clean swoop over a period of three months.

The one beautiful thing about losing everything all at once is that you can start from scratch to recreate yourself into whomever you choose.

Today looking at where I have been gives me clues to who I am now and who I am aspiring to be.  Moon in aquaruis is all about embracing those secrets goals and bringing them into the light.  Medicine moon of reasoning is about figuring out the hows and why's.  So with this cosmic energy readily available to me.  I beg to question.... who am I?

I am not an addict.  It was a  phase of my life that brought me to my knee's.  I am not stupid enough to think that it wont again if I dont actively work a program of recovery.  Recovery for me is a spiritual program of connection to my higher power.  Which I now know i have been working daily for well over ten years.  So through the weight loss phase of addiction removal and now through the drug addiction phase of removal I will continue a spiritual program always.

So if I am not an addict then where do I go from here?   I keep getting tugged back to my passions for the metaphysical.  I am a Witch.   I love working with energy, I like creating magic, I love the study of the stars.  I connect easily with my spirit guides and ancestors.    I am an Earth Mother.  I love being  outside with nature.  I can communicate with the animals and understand their wisdom.  I am grounded and can see the paths through the forest. I guide and teach the children.  I am a Lover.  I love people, all people, even the ones that hurt me.  I want to experience all there is to with each person I meet.  I want to fall in love with every man and woman I know.  I put most of my attention into relationships as this is the only thing we take to the other side with us. 

Tonight I will fall back into the behavior of moon rituals to invoke the power of my being.  To embrace the beauty of who I am at the core and will send that energy out to everyone I know.  Encouraging each of you to dig inside yourself and find out who you truly aspire to be, who you already are and all the beauty you have been in your past.  The moon is ripe for your expression to shine and hold!! 

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.

Avoiding to Self Protection

Its been awhile, since I have been here.  There are a couple of reasons....

...... the last time I posted my computer crashed at the very end of what I thought was a fabulous post.  I lost everything! Which normally doesn't happen because this program saves as I go.  But for whatever reason all was lost and I just didn't have it in me to rewrite it all.   That is reason number one.

Reason number two is Avoidance.  As I was just opening the blogger window I was contemplating what to write about today, my first thought was tolerance as it is something I am learning on a daily basis lately.  However the real reason I have not been here is because I have been avoiding.

What I should process through here is if I am indeed avoiding and if I am, what exactly it is that I am avoiding.   So lets start there......

I have always known that I am a runner.  When things get tough  I hit the pavement at mach10, never looking back.  I have walked away from great jobs because I couldn't handle the situation.  I have lost friendships because of unresolved conflict.   Many Many broken hearts have ensued from my lack of facing issues within romantic relationships.  Ultimate avoidance at any cost has always been my coping strategy.

So why do I do this?  What am I so afraid of?    Am I just a big fat coward??

I live under the assumption that I am a lover not a fighter and choose peace over chaos.  Which to  some  extent I do stand by.  I will not  engage in a physical battle with anyone, it's not in my nature.  I will not let someone push me around or  talk down to me, I have a growing  respect for myself.  Do I always run from upholding that respect?  No, just recently I had a  sit down with my bosses for this exact reason.   So maybe I am learning to not run away all the time.

I can see now  from that last paragraph that I am in the process of learning not to avoid. That was a scary situation to sit down with my bosses and not just quit my job and run away like normal.  So growth is occurring.    Maybe what I am processing through right now then is learning what needs to settle on its own and what I need to take care of for myself, for myself.   Avoidance or stepping back till the air clears and calmer minds prevail?  Avoidance or silence and inner connection to understand my part in the situation?

I am learning that I cannot clean up other peoples shit.  I cannot hold the hand of another through their shit, I cannot lead another out of their shit either.   Assuming responsibility for other people has been my problem in the past and contributed to my need to bolt and avoid when things don't work out the way I want them too.

I can only be responsible for my part in things.  To avoid is  to ignore that.  I make amends when I have hurt someone or did something that goes against my own morals.  In this particular current situation in my life of a love triangulation strangulation, I made amends to the person I hurt.  Its not  my responsibility to force them to accept the amends.  And sadly in this case the amends were not accepted and the emotional energy on their part has escalated to physical attacks directed towards  me.  Where does avoiding end and self protection begin?

Cleaning up  ones side of the street is sometimes painful business.  Making amends for me goes deeper then  just words, its in my actions and continued path.  I have matched my actions to my words which has pushed me into a place of heart break and loss.  Not a bad thing as I brought it on myself from the beginning but to ignore the heartbreak is to ignore my real feelings and that is the bottling avoidance I have lived under my whole life.  So really am I avoiding the situation if I am taking action by not contacting and staying involved?  Outwardly it looks like no action is happening but inwardly I am fighting an incredible battle between my will and morals.

So if I am doing my part in this situation to correct my inner demons, how do I deal with the little physical demons that yank my hair out from the back of my head when I am not looking?  Jesus says to turn  the other cheek and let her slap both of them... you can say I did that.   However now I find myself not wanting to face that conflict again so choosing to stay insulated in the safety of my home and circle of friends.  It reminds  me of isolating and I  wonder if the fear will cause my world to shrink again until  I am back at the using game.   Rounding the finish line of my one year cake, I am too close to a major milestone to allow that to happen.   So a new level of unavoidance must be conquered I think.  I will attend my own beloved home group, feeling the fear of confrontation and doing it any ways.  I will continue on my own path of recovery and know that between me and my higher power I am walking in the light and doing the right thing.

Coming up against people that actively live and love their character defects is something I am going to have to learn to accept and tolerate along my journey... learning to have love and compassion for these people is the ultimate lesson I will learn...... once I get through avoidance.

Nine Months Clean!!

Nine Months Clean.   Wow.  Honestly I never believed I would get here.  I took my first clean 6 month tag this time around and I remember how great it felt to be clean for six months.  How do I feel now?

Surreal.

The excitement is not there like it was 3 months ago, it has been replaced with a more subtle sense of rounding the finish line.  I feel more serious and focussed on my recovery now.  I truly did not ever believe I would make it to a year clean.  With all my relapses and my need to learn things the long, hard, painful way, I just didn't see a medallion in my future.

Today I am allowing my self to explore the possibility that I may see a birthday cake at my home group after all.  I get a momentary jolt of excitement at the thought before I am made very aware of the work that still needs to go into my recovery before getting there.

I am still allowing my past to haunt my present and threaten my future.  Working through a second set of steps more focussed this time on the codependency side of my addiction, I am made painfully aware of how I still cycle the pattern of abuse in my world.  We are but Victims once and then become willing volunteers.... that is where I am at now.

To make it to my one year I need to stop volunteering my self for others peoples growth or sickness.  Momma was wrong when she taught us little girls to be there for everyone else and put yourself last.  In order for me to fully recover I truly have to put myself first and take care of me.  It is only through being strong in myself that I can help others.  The help I can offer is by leading the way, thats it.  I can no longer jump into the snake pit and pull the suffering friend out.  I cannot afford another bite.

There comes a point in ones life when that pain just becomes to great and the option of a simple quiet existence becomes more enticing.  To get to my one year I need to release the drama and chaos my addict so loves to be in the dead middle of.  My addict is dying and truly thats a good thing if I want a new life.

Letting go of my addict has been the true process here. Lady Vixen, the one I have lived under for the better part of my life.  The persona that has kept me safe from the light, kept me guarded and shielded from any hurts, the lovely vixen that got everything she wanted and more.  It has been a hard battle in my little brain to let that energy go, to let that ego go.  However I fully understand now that she must be put to the grave if I want to see and maintain long term sobriety.

Nine months clean has definitely brought a whole new feeling of understanding and acceptance that I was not anticipating.  My work is cut out for me, the next three months I will go within and leave the outside drama's to those still living in their chaos.  Trudging the Happy, but sometimes Lonely path to Recovery.....