Making Room for the Good Stuff

When you let go of the story you tell, a lot of times it creates
a whole world of expansion for other things to come in.
~Sheryl Crow~

I want what I want, when I want it - oh yeah, and have I mentioned that I am somewhat of a control freak?

"Surrender" is a difficult word for me on my very best days. To surrender, in most contexts, means to lose...to give up...to stop fighting...to let it go. I am not one to feel all that comfortable with any of those things, and that can be both good and bad.

Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to travel more than usual, flying here and there to visit family and friends. Ever the meticulous planner, anytime I have a trip, I spend hours checking out the various options on Expedia and Orbitz and all of those other services that promise to make things quick, easy, and painless. I pick my flights, check the times, make certain that I have plenty of time from one flight to the next on layovers...I ALWAYS plan out what seems to me to be an easy, no hassle, stress free trip. I arrive at the airport with plenty of time to go through security, get something to eat, and chill out with a book for a while before boarding the plane. I am in my happy place because I am in control :)

Then it starts to rain...in Pheonix, where my plane is coming from to pick me up on the way to Atlanta...where I have planned for an hour and a half between flights. So, cool. I planned for this. It's all good. Twenty minutes late, no problem. Boarding the plane, finding my seat, realizing that there will be a 2 year old behind me for the next 2 and a half hours. Ugh, no planning for that...but it's ok. Headphones rule. Thirty five minutes later, we are still on the ground. The wind is blowing weird so the pilot has decided that we need more gas. I reassure myself that gassing up is a good thing, I am blessed to be on a flight with a pilot who is as careful of a planner as me and wants to make sure all of the bases are covered. All gassed up, approved for departure....only 6 planes ahead of us on the runway. Touching down in Atlanta, I have a meager 30 minutes to make my connection...tight, but it will be ok. There is another plane at the gate - we must wait for it to move. 20 minutes later, in Terminal B, I ask the desk attendant what gate my new plane is departing from. Terminal T - have you ever seen the Atlanta airport???

My zen has completely disappeared, and I want to scream, fight, and blame every airline employee in Phoenix, Dallas, and Atlanta for the fact that I am not where I need to be...but, since I have no desire to be on the wrong end of airport security or give the airline any reason whatsoever to make my day even more difficult, I suck it up and graciously say thank you when I am informed that I will be able to be on the very next flight in 2 hours. Defeated, I sulk over to the food court to find something with lots of endorphin releasing fat and sugar (translation: a triple shot Espresso Truffle from Starbucks) to ease my wait and bring me back to center...

While drinking my coffee (ok, it is a triple caffeinated hot milkshake...just to be clear) in the crowded terminal, an elderly woman approaches me and asks if the seat next to me is taken. I am a little annoyed, as I am trying to pout by myself, but the annoyance disappears as she talks to me. She is 86 years old and on her way to see, for the first time, her great great grandchild. She is traveling by herself and has experienced many of the same kinds of obstacles and delays in her day as I have. She has photos, and stories, and a MUCH better attitude than me. By the time I reach the plane for the last leg of my trip, my heart is lighter, my zen has returned, and I am actually grateful for this delay.

Sometimes, giving up on something is the only way find the place where your energy is really meant to be. Typically, fighting only serves to make everyone involved just a little more miserable. And letting go of _________ (the blank is totally yours to fill in) is the surest way to free our arms to reach out and embrace the blessings that the universe has for us today.

For control freaks like me, that means planning for the story to change...

No Time Like the Present

Having spent the better part of my life trying either to relive the past or experience the future before it arrives, I have come to believe that in between these two extremes is peace. ~Author Unknown

Nothing is worth more than this day. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I have a ton of regrets. When I get still, and think about the various ways in which my addiction has affected me and the people that were around me when I was using, I fear the grief will just swallow me up. The understanding that my behavior caused other people great pain in their lives...so much so that it became unforgivable...is, perhaps, the most excruciating thing in my own. There is nothing in my past that I wish to relive, but there are plenty of things that I wish I could do over, do differently, do better.

To avoid the pain that past regrets bring forth, I spend a great deal of time trying to occupy my thoughts with other things. For the past couple of years, I have been trying to make plans for a different future. I have dreamed of drastic changes, far away places, and a life far removed from reminders of such painful times. My plans are beginning to fall into place, and it is both exciting and scary at the same time. My emotions range from being barely able to stand the waiting and being paralyzed by the terror of failing...and failing alone. The former creates a deep seated discontent in my soul, and the latter...well, I have been talking myself out of a lot of panic attacks lately.

The problem with placing myself too far, or too often, into the past or the future is that it causes me to lose sight of today and miss out on the joys of the present. Even on bad days, there are priceless moments that make me smile, make me think, and allow me to fully immerse myself in the gratitude I feel just for waking up on the top side of the dirt on that day. I can't change anything that has happened in the past, and the future is uncertain for everyone - no one absolutely knows that tomorrow will actually happen. But in this day, and this moment...one day, hour, moment, second at a time...I can make a right choice, and then another - with the understanding that if I put enough of those together, the future can't help but work out...and just maybe, eventually, the right choices I make right now will become greater than the wrong choices I made when I was using...and that will somehow make its way to the people that I need too see it. Stranger things have happened...

There really is no time like the present...

Just a Tiny Speck...

“True humility is intelligent self respect which keeps us from thinking too highly or too meanly of ourselves.
It makes us modest by reminding us how far we have come short of what we can be.”
~Ralph W. Sockman~

Humility and Gratitude comprise the foundation on which my recovery stands. While they are separate concepts, you really can't have one without the other if you truly understand the meaning of each.

It took some time for me to fully grasp the concept of humility and to be able to apply that to my own life. I have always struggled with low self esteem and a negative self image. When I first started out in recovery, I often mistook those attitudes for humility, thinking that the less I thought of myself, the more I was humbling myself. Consequently, I ended up beating up on myself and harshly judging myself for every mistake that I made and every flaw that I perceived in myself. As a result, I often found myself swallowed up in feelings of regret, guilt, and depression. These feelings would often render me completely hopeless - and send me back to the desire to escape from my own "badness" - a desire that was one of the driving forces of my addiction to begin with.

Humility is NOT the same as self degradation. It is not about feeling like we are not as good as other people, but about realizing that we are not profoundly different from them either. On our best days, we are still flawed, and on our worst days we are not nearly as bad as we often believe. Humility is about finding the place where we can acknowledge our genuine selves with all of our scars, bruises, and other imperfections and also find an understanding of the roles we play each one of them. It is about truly "getting" that the profound list of blessings in our lives are truly the manifestation of a higher power at work and cannot be accounted for by anything that we have done or not done on our own. I can still remember the exact moment in which I TRULY felt a sense of humility in my recovery. I was at a meeting when I really understood for the first time that the ONLY difference between me, as I walked to the front of the room to receive my 3 year chip, and the newcomer walking to the front of the room to receive his desire chip was that I had simply been doing it longer. To this day, while I am proud of the years of sobriety that I have achieved, I never allow myself to get too far from that understanding.

Today I find that the more I understand that I do not have all of the answers, the easier it becomes to find them. When I acknowledge that I did not get to where I am by myself, I become more compassionate with myself and with other people that I encounter. The more I reach out from a heart that is open to feedback, the more I find myself surrounded by people that help me to move to the next level, and the next, and the next. The more I subscribe to the idea that I am just a tiny speck in a vast and infinite world, the more meaningful I feel within my own little part of it.

The more I humble myself, the deeper my gratitude becomes.

And that is my strength...

Feeling It

"What's baffling when you are on the ground makes sense when you can begin to rise above it."
-Wally Lamb

I used to refer to hydrocodone as "the love of my life" because it was the only thing I felt like I could count on to get me through the night...and the day...and everything in between. I didn't realize the abuses that I was suffering at the hands of this lover until it was almost too late. When I was in treatment and the fog started to lift, all emotion seemed very sensitive and painful - much like when the blood starts flowing again through a limb that has fallen asleep and the sensation is almost unbearable for a brief time. I had to learn to breath through it, cry through it, write through it, talk through it - whatever was necessary to move me through it without taking a pill. It is always temporary, and there is peace on the other side of it. I have also learned, over time, that the way I talk to myself is key. "I can't take this" has turned into "this is going to be ok, I just have to wait it out." "I can't do this" has turned into "This is nothing, I have done WAY harder than this."

I have been clean now for 6 years - I have bad days...but they are the exception rather than the rule. Once, I believed that "feeling good" meant feeling nothing. Today I know a very different kind of feeling good. You may not feel pain when you are numb - but by definition, you will not feel joy either. Frankly, I would rather have both than neither.

Great Friends

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not
the same river and he's not the same man.
-Heraclitus

I came to the realization fairly early in my process that recovery is not just about reading a book or going to a meeting. It is a way of life that keeps evolving - and sometimes it's a little hard for me to keep up. 10 years ago, I was so clinically depressed that I was on disability, going to therapy every day, taking a cabinet full of medication, and just sort of wandering my way from place to place with no real direction. My personality was completely trapped by my emotions and my self esteem was completely non-existent. I always felt like I was not as smart, talented, funny, or cool as my friends. I always felt like they were doing me a huge favor just to remember my name. Seriously, I know that seems extreme...but it is absolutely true. It set me up to really be emotionally abused by a lot of people - because I just felt so desperate to be liked, accepted, and valued that I was willing to do absolutely anything for it. Many years and life changing events later, my life is SO different now. Looking back at that time in my life feels so weird - because it is like I am just looking at a completely different human being. It's just that, sometimes, I feel like have not quite grown into this new life and the new person that I am.

For a long time after I got clean, I really limited the people that I interacted with to a very few longtime friends. I didn't really see myself as ready to relate with the world and knew I had a lot of work to do on myself before I could really allow others to be a part of my journey. I'm really a very shy person anyway, so the idea of meeting new people and integrating them into a life that I was trying to keep numbingly simple, was kind of overwhelming. But the universe always seems to know best, and in the last couple of years, I have begun to meet so many new and surprising people that bring so much joy into my life - even the old relationships that have been built over years seem to feel new and different. For the first time, I don't feel like I have to change myself according to who I am talking to today, or this hour, or this moment. I haven't quite gotten used to the feeling of not having to bribe, coerce, or guilt someone into being my friend. It still feels weird to me when someone says, "I think you are smart" or "You are funny"...and I sometimes still find myself thinking the old "they don't mean that" kind of thoughts and I hate that. I try really hard to just take what they are saying at face value as the truth, without trying to force it through the filters of my own self doubt. Somehow, in spite of myself and my own internal craziness, I have managed to draw into my life the most amazing, honest, genuine, and totally cool circle of friends. They make my sometimes complicated life more peaceful, more interesting, and more joyful.

I don't really know that I deserve them, but I am awfully glad that I have them...and my gratitude just keeps growing...

Thanks for letting me share :)

Right,Wrong, and The Places In Between

We continued to take personal inventory and
when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

If someone were to ask me which of the 12 steps has the most meaning in my recovery, I would have to say step 10 - for it is the one that helps me to know and understand myself better, stay on a right path, and maintain an awareness of my own motives and how my actions affect both myself and the world around me. Step 10 requires me to ask more of myself in terms of my recovery and the way I live my life. I work step 10 in a number of ways - but I think the most effective way for me is to talk with people I trust and hold myself accountable to about the things that bother me, or situations in which I find myself having trouble making good decisions. I have an amazing support system made up of people that I consider to be examples of the way I want to live my life - and that is extremely important and helpful to me.

I think we all like to believe that in every situation we try to do the right things for the right reasons. Unfortunately, at least for me, that is more of a goal than a reality. The best thing I can say is that I try - and my success rate has definitely increased with my clean time. But it certainly is nowhere near perfect. The daily practice of step 10 is an opportunity for me to think about moments and situations in which I fell short, and to think about action plans for the next time that I face the same challenges.

Recently, I have spent a great deal of time with my personal inventory, trying to understand how situations spin out of control so quickly, and how my own insecurities and low self esteem contribute to the way I interact with myself and the world - and ultimately influence the choices I make in my own personal behavior. Looking back at a time when I was making wrong decisions every single day has not been easy, but living with the resentment that developed in the wake of all of those bad choices has been much harder. During this time, I failed miserably at being a person of character and I failed miserably at setting appropriate boundaries for my own behavior and the behavior towards me that I would allow of someone else in my life. I allowed my feelings of loneliness to overwhelm my sense of morality - which resulted in confusion, shame, and anger when the real needs that I was trying to satisfy only ended up frustrated and unmet...and I still felt alone, I still felt unloved, and I still felt untouchable. Not only did the choices I made NOT solve those problems for me, they made them worse. I thought I had all of the answers when it was happening, and I did - all the wrong ones. I wouldn't listen, I made excuses, and I stubbornly continued for several months on a path that was risking my sobriety and tearing me apart. I am left now with the pieces...looking for the lessons, learning from the pain, and figuring out what this was meant to contribute to my journey.

And here is what I have learned :

1. shut your mouth and open your ears - sometimes people outside of the situation know better
2. choose what you know over how you feel - often, feelings lie
3. be proactive in finding healthy ways to address loneliness and low self esteem - people will value you if you value yourself...and if you don't, they won't either.
4. there is a reason for the practice of rigorous honesty, and for the saying "Secrets keep you sick"
   

Here is the biggest thing - today - and every day for the last 5 years and 9 months - I am clean, sober, and clear headed.

That makes it a good day :)

Thanks for letting me share...

Demons of My Own Making

Early in my recovery, I once said "I'd rather feel it than not feel it - whatever it is." Sometimes I can be so dumb.

It's a bad day today, and by bad I mean sitting in a dark room hugging my dog listening to the same song over and over staring into space ruminating about my horribleness oh my god I just want a pill kind of bad day.

On days like today, I reconnect with an uncanny ability to look inside myself and find a way to remember every mistake I have ever made, every sideways comment that I have ever said, every disappointment that I have ever caused and put them all together as the best evidence ever of my own stupidity and badness. Everything people say (or don't say for that matter) goes through my "I hate me" filter and straight into my heart.

Today, I am struggling with a demon of my own making. More than a year ago, I had a brief affair with someone that I knew was otherwise attached. To make it ok inside my own heart, I told myself that their relationship must not be what it should be, or the affair wouldn't be happening at all. I told myself that I was in love with her before the two of them ever even met. I told myself that it was only a matter of time before she would understand that I was actually the one she needed. I lied to myself over and over again.

What it took me a while to really understand was that, to her, I was nothing more than a conquest, and ego stroke, a toy. She had the life she wanted barring a little forbidden excitement - which was where I came in. When the forbidden excitement threatened to affect her stability at home, she decided we should just be friends - unless, of course, I could find a way to reconcile my position in her life in a way that would NOT affect her loving committed PRIMARY relationship - and then it would be great to continue on exactly as things were going. Her argument was that if I couldn't be happy being her friend with benefits, I must not have ever cared about her to begin with. After many attempts at the friendship thing, I eventually began to pull away...the truth was just too hard.

This weekend, they are getting married.

And I can't watch.

And she doesn't get why.

My emotions are cycling all over the place, I hate it. Sad, angry, hurt, guilty, ashamed, grieving, self loathing, resentful. impulsive, crazy, overwhelmed... and I remember saying that thing about how I would rather feel it than not.

Dumb....really dumb.

A demon of my own making...

All I have to do is not take a pill...this will pass

This will pass...