tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43025353621890929552024-03-07T20:58:47.761-08:00The Voices WithinMe, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.comBlogger34125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-22774080752113878622017-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:002017-04-30T11:14:34.035-07:00Willing<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A sober friend said recently
that he tried to quit drinking for years, but if he was being
honest, he wasn't trying that hard. This struck me as significant. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A lot of us tried for years, or
are still trying, and think we were/are trying hard. Were we? Are we? It sure
<i>feels</i> like it when you're struggling to stay sober and keep backsliding and
drinking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Another friend, who has been
struggling to quit for years, and is still struggling, told me that a
woman at AA told her she didn't really want to be sober or she would be. At the
time, that comment struck me as incredibly, horribly, unforgivably mean. I
still think it's mean. But underneath the meanness, something significant
lurks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A few people in my online group
recently have commented with impressive honesty about how they are not really
sure they want to stop drinking. I've been thinking about that for the past few
days, and my friend's comment about in truth not trying all that hard made
all the thoughts come together. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Between the time I first had
the thought "I drink too much" and the time I quit for good, I didn't
really want to stop. What I wanted was to be a social drinker. I wanted to be
able to moderate. I wanted to be able to go out and have drinks with everyone
else and feel like an ordinary person and not someone who had this label. I
wanted to come home after a hard days work and pour a glass of wine or three
and numb my feelings. I wanted to run a hot bath and soak in it while drinking
a glass of wine and chilling out. I did not want to go to 12 step meetings and
be preached at. I did not want to drink club soda when everyone else was
drinking wine and either make up some bullshit excuse about why I wasn't or
tell people I had a problem. I did not want to be The Other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I wanted to stop having hangovers
and making an ass of myself, but I did not want to stop drinking. I wanted –
and this is one of the three things that Buddhists say cause pain – things to
be other than as they were. I wanted to be the kind of person who had two
glasses of wine and no consequences. I didn't want to stop drinking. I wanted
to be that person again. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At some point, something
shifted. I turned a corner. I wanted the madness to end more than I wanted to
be able to have a long hot soak in the bath with a ginormous glass of Pinot in
my hand.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Wanting to do the work of
recovery came later. And it was only after I did the work, and received the
gift of having done it, that I started really wanting to be sober instead of
wanting to be able to drink moderately. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So no. At the beginning. I
didn't really want stop drinking. I was angry that I had to stop drinking.
Resentful that I didn't get to drink anymore. It was doing the work of recovery
that allowed me to transcend that resentment, to be grateful for sobriety and
recovery.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At some point, I stopped
fighting against the resentment that I couldn't be a moderate drinker. At some
point I became willing to try something new and see what happened. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Became willing. That's Step 2.
Almost everyone here has done Step 1, admitting that their lives have become
unmanageable. But Step 2? That's a hard one. Becoming WILLING to believe that a
power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For me, that power wasn't God.
I've had issues with the higher power thing. For me, that power was the program
itself. I saw my father and all these other people living happy, fulfilling
lives in sobriety after following the program, and I became willing to try and
see if it would work for me, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That was the key for me. Not
willpower, but willingness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-13782591029345528822017-04-24T04:16:00.000-07:002017-04-24T06:28:10.371-07:00Flyover country of the soul<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Today
I am three years sober.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
wrote a post not long ago that referred to my first year of sobriety as feeling
as though I was crawling out of my skin. The more I think about it, the more
apt that phrase seems. I really did feel as though I could not just sit with
all my chaotic feelings about the awful things that were happening.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In
retrospect, a lot of the awful things that happened were precisely because I
couldn’t sit still with my feelings, because I couldn’t just realize that
sometimes bad things happen, and sometimes people are assholes, and sometimes I
make costly and embarrassing mistakes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bad
things still happen. People are still sometimes assholes. And, unfortunately, I
still make costly and embarrassing mistakes. But the <i>feelings</i> around all that
are different. I no longer feel as though the whole world is against me, that
I’m standing in the face of a storm that won’t stop buffeting me long enough
for me to catch my breath. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When
I make an expensive mistake or a social faux pas or lose my shit with my kids,
I remind myself that everybody does stuff like this. I’m not the worst, most
pathetic person who ever lived. I am just a person in the world, like everybody
else.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">When
I was drinking and newly sober, I cycled between feeling intense shame because
I was The World Person in the World, and righteous indignation because other
people didn’t treat me like I was as perfect as I wanted to be and in moments
of grandiosity convinced myself I was.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Shame
and grandiosity. Self-hatred and narcissism. These are the poles between which
we swing when we’re drinking. When we stop drinking and take those first shaky
steps on the road to recovery, those poles are all we know. We know nothing of
the bland flyover country of the soul, where we are just as valuable – and just
as flawed – as every other person. We don’t know how to acknowledge our
mistakes without self-flagellation, clean up the mess as best we can, and move
on. We don’t know how to forgive other people because they’re only human and
doing the best they can, even when they hurt us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Life
is so much better now than when I was drinking. I still have problems. I still
get angry. I still get embarrassed. But the problems are not catastrophes, the
anger isn’t rage, and the embarrassment isn’t soul-killing shame.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment-->
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">None of this would have happened
if I hadn’t developed a drinking problem and then got sober. When I was new in
AA and people would introduce themselves as “a grateful alcoholic” I was like,
WTF? Now, I get it. I’m grateful that drinking too much broke me open, and
sobriety put me back together, better than before.</span><!--EndFragment-->
Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-89214463496914532562017-04-19T04:50:00.001-07:002017-04-19T04:50:21.743-07:00Counting Days
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><a href="https://totalfatty.com/">A friend</a> recently celebrated a year sober.
In her "I have a year!" post in our online community, she credited
something I wrote there during her first dark days, when she was struggling to
string more than a few sober days together, with helping her turn the corner.
It was my "I have have two years!" post, where I wrote this:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Today I am 2 years sober. Life
is still hard, but it is immeasurably better than it was when I was drinking. I
was high functioning, had a job, kept up appearances, but my off switch was
unreliable. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't, and when it didn't, I
would wake up hung over, ashamed, hating myself. I love not waking up feeling
that way now, not ever. Not once in two years.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">There are a lot of people in
this group who are struggling in early sobriety, or not even in sobriety yet,
still drinking but wanting to be sober, or thinking they want it in the
mornings but not wanting it by the time 5 o'clock rolls around. I've been
there. The first time I wrote in my journal, "I think I drink too
much," was not my Day 1. It was quite a few months before that, maybe more
than a year. I can't remember now. But from the time I first wrote those words,
the pleasure of drinking was eclipsed by the shame of drinking too much.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">More than 2,000 years ago,
Aristotle wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not
an act, but a habit." What I do repeatedly now is get up, don't drink, go
to bed, repeat. The more sober time you have, the easier that gets.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Modern research confirms that
willpower can be exhausted, that it's hard to decide to do something and force
yourself to stick with your decision, but if doing something becomes habitual,
it becomes easier. You don't have to decide, each and every time, that you will
do it. Brushing your teeth every morning and night isn't burdensome because
it's a habit you've had for decades. You don't think about it, say,
"Should I do it today?" You just do it, without thought, without
exerting willpower and feeling the consequent depletion of willpower.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">That's why <i>continuous</i> sobriety
is the key to sobriety. When people get annoyed about having to reset their
sobriety date when they only drank once, and think, I shouldn't lose my 50 days
or whatever, it's not about slapping you down and saying your 50 days don't
count. It's not about counting or keeping track at all. It's about habit
formation -- the habit of not drinking, not because you have to <i>decide</i> not to
drink, but because you don't drink, just like you do brush your teeth. When you
have a few weeks of sobriety then drink, then stop for a few weeks then drink,
then stop, then drink, you're <i>deciding</i> every single day whether you will or
won't, and deciding is the exhausting part. Every day that you don't drink, the
habit of not drinking gets stronger. That's why people count days. Not to brag,
"I have such and such many days/months/years" but because the longer
you go without drinking, the stronger the habit of not drinking becomes, until
you <i>don't</i> have to decide every day, will I drink or won't I? Because you just
don't drink, and you don't have to decide and deplete your willpower by
deciding.</span> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">There is no magic number when you stop having to decide and not drinking
becomes a habit. I have no idea when it happened for me. I just know that it
did, and I'm so grateful.</span></blockquote>
<br />
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">A few days after my friend's one year post, <a href="https://abeastwithin.wordpress.com/">another member</a> of our online
community wrote this:</span><!--EndFragment--> <br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Sorry for the bad news, but I
still say that if you are treating this as a battle of willpower then you are
eventually going to lose. If you really want this, then winning 1000 battles of
will and then losing only 1 is not going to meet your goal. If you believe me,
then the challenge isn't for us to avoid having a drink, it's to work on our
brain so we don't want to drink. This is going to involve doing a lot of shit
you don't want to do, and maybe don't believe in, not giving a shit about what
your spouse or significant other thinks, rolling with some serious fears about
what the future holds for your relationship and your life, ignoring a bunch of
shit other people do or say, and ignoring a bunch of shit that your brain and
ego is going to tell you along the way - the same brain and ego that got us
here in the first place.</span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">He's right. Absolutely, 100%
right. While texting with a sober friend yesterday, it hit me that the reason
so many in our little community are struggling so much is that they haven't
done what this guy (who has been sober five years, and is a different person
from the raw, newly sober guy who wrote <a href="https://abeastwithin.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/the-easter-troll/">this
post</a> was) and I have done: work on our brains, doing a lot of shit we
didn't want to do, and maybe didn't believe in.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">A lot of members of our online
community are pretty anti-AA, but for me, AA was a life saver. Not because I
couldn't string together sober days (I was 5 months sober before I got
sponsor and started working the Steps) but because doing those Steps
totally flipped the the script on my victim narrative, see my own part in
things, take responsibility, and stop being resentful and wallowing in
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I had problems with the higher
power thing, so for me, my higher power was the program itself, all these people sitting there sober 20, 30, 50 years,
living proof that the 12 steps can keep you sober. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">Step 2, coming to believe that
a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, was believing that if I
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that willingness to believe, is missing in so many people in our online community. They see
all of us with two or three or five years of sobriety saying, it gets better,
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possibly be true for them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I have posted in that community before about one of my favorite books, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stumbling-Happiness-Daniel-Gilbert-ebook/dp/B000GCFW0A/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492602089&sr=8-1&keywords=Stumbling+on+Happiness" target="_blank">Stumbling on Happiness</a></i>, by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. The title makes it sound like one of those self-help books, but it's actual science. What Gilbert's research shows is that human beings are incredibly shitty about predicting what the future is going to be like, and that asking someone <i>currently having the experience you are imagining</i> (like being sober a long time) gives a more accurate view of it than imagining it yourself. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">I have read so many posts in that community from people </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">who aren't sure if they want to be sober. Do I
really want to give it up forever? Am I being too hard on myself? Can I face a
life without it? </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Many of us – perhaps most of us, certainly I –
have danced that dance in our heads before. What strikes me now as I look back
on that time in my life is that I was speculating about something – long-term
sobriety – that I had no personal knowledge of. I imagined a life without
drinking, when drinking was all I knew.</span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">What I was capable of imagining was only what I
knew already of not drinking – the white-knuckling early days, when it felt
like deprivation. Of course it did. Giving it up was brand-new. What I was
incapable of imagining was a life where I didn't think about it much at all. A
life that was good and full and satisfying without wine in it.</span><!--EndFragment--><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">That's exactly Dan Gilbert's point in </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px;">Stumbling on Happiness</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"> – we can't imagine it. </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">We. Can. Not. Imagine. It.</span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Instead of continuing to debate
should-I-shouldn't-I?, I suggest a data-driven investigation into drinking and
sobriety. Try <a href="https://www.ivyleagueinsecurities.com/aidan-donnelley-rowley-2/2013/01/a-year-without-wine-i-did-it?rq=year%20without%20wine">a
year without wine</a>. You don't have to think about a life without alcohol
forever and ever and scary ever. Just a year. Try it. After a year, if you
think sobriety is grim and awful and sucks beyond imagining and we are all full
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<!--EndFragment--> Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-11959468771491586972017-04-12T06:22:00.001-07:002017-04-12T06:22:27.922-07:00How absent-minded do you have to be to forget about an entire blog?Holy shitbirds, y'all - I actually <i>forgot</i> about this blog! Someone in my online sobriety community wrote, "I wish you had a blog," and I said I did, but I don't write about sobriety on it because it's under my own name and I'm not "out" yet to the entire world. To my close friends and family, yes, but not to the general public.<br />
<br />
So anyway, I said I had this old anonymous blog, and to be honest I couldn't even remember whether I'd written about drinking and not drinking here, couldn't remember when I'd stopped writing here. Two and a half years ago, as it turns out, long enough for me to have forgotten the password to log in.<br />
<br />
So I'm going to start writing here again. I have to leave for work two minutes ago, so it won't be this morning, but I just wanted to say hello and glad to be back.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-74474464255478396422014-11-02T15:16:00.001-08:002014-11-02T15:16:05.396-08:00AdriftI haven't been writing here lately because it feels lonely and pointless. I interact with people on Facebook and in real life, and my non-blog writing has more structure and momentum. I started my novel in a month yesterday, and have been writing like gangbusters. Here I have just been feeling...adrift. So I'm taking a break for a while. I'll come back to it when and if I feel like it. All the best to you, if you're reading.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-72415027369028799222014-10-19T08:11:00.002-07:002014-10-19T08:11:56.777-07:00Step 2: Part 2Step 2: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">One night last week, when I fell asleep, the idea of telling my mother and my ex about AA filled me with cold terror. This morning when I woke up, it was gone. There was still nervousness, but a normal kind of nervousness, not the crippling, heart-pounding dread I felt when my sponsor first mentioned the idea.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">I was texting </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; line-height: 18px;">the other day </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">with a friend who is four years sober, and he said, "You can't be anonymous with your family." I suppose not.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">I came to terms with the idea that I needed to tell my kids, which I didn't mind -- or didn't <i>think</i> I minded -- but which meant telling adult family members who tend to be judgmental and not very empathetic. I was afraid they would judge me, criticize me, even if not to my face, then behind my back or in their own minds. And that bothers me <i>why</i>??? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Because I am a </span></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">craven, pathetic creature who cares too much what other people think, and is ashamed of caring so much. I hate that I do. I hate myself for doing it. I know self-hatred is bad and I want to stop hating myself, but I can't seem to manage it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="line-height: 18px;">Instead of spiraling down into the darkness of overthinking and obsession and self-criticism, I forced myself to do it. I told my kids, emailed my ex and another relative, and will give my mother her letter when I see her today. I thought telling the kids would be easy, but it was hard. My eldest insists on clinging to the certainty that I am not an alcoholic, that I stopped before I got as bad as <i>those people</i>, so I wasn't <i>really</i> an alcoholic, just concerned about my health and being a good mother and not spending money on wine. If that's what she needs to believe about me, then I guess it is. She will probably come to accept it eventually, once the shock and the newness wears off.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="line-height: 18px;">It was kind of reassuring that my kids were totally surprised. People often say (rather smugly, it seems to me sometimes) to alcoholics that even though we thought we were fooling people, we really weren't, and everybody knew it all along. Well, my kids didn't. When they wouldn't believe it, I even mentioned a party where I <i>know</i> I'd had too much, and they remembered the party but said they didn't know I'd had too much to drink. Only one friend said, when I told her, "Yeah, I was starting to wonder. It seemed like you had wine just about <i>every</i> night." She had never seen me have too much, just had concerns about frequency.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><span style="line-height: 18px;">I don't know if this is the end of Step 2, if my sponsor will say, yes, you trusted your Higher Power and prayed and lost your fear and did the hard thing. You have come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can heal you. I don't know if she'll say that. Part of me thinks she will, but the paranoid nut case part of me is sure she'll come up with another goddamn Survivor-style test I need to pass before I can move on to the horrors that await me in Step 4. Yes, I know I skipped 3. She said once you do Step 2, really do it, then Step 3 follows immediately on its heels and you're on to 4.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">The speaker at the meeting I went to yesterday morning said something that helped me, something I needed to hear. That happens a lot at meetings, I'm realizing. He said that when he was newly sober, his sponsor told him to pray every day for his mother, for whom he had a lot of resentment and with whom he had a bad relationship. Even though he wasn't even sure he believed in God, he prayed for his mother (who really was a bitch, he assured us) morning and night for three months, and at the end of that time, something had changed. Not everything, but something, for sure. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">So yesterday I started praying for my mom and for my ex. It's only the second day of it, but you know what? It feels right. It feels like what Jesus tells us to do, and we usually don't. It's easy to pray for my children, since my heart positively overflows with love for them, and when they irritate me it's just the ordinary bullshit that kids do and the irritation is just a drop (okay, sometimes several buckets, or even a small swimming pool) in the sea of my love. But praying for people who have been so judgmental and cold, people with whom I have such difficult relationships, that isn't easy. Only it is, strangely enough. And it feels good. What do you know?</span></span>Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-70066728595159652022014-10-18T05:45:00.003-07:002014-10-18T10:32:09.541-07:00Pettiness and Self-Hatred<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">Some days finding something to be grateful for seems like just another job on my to do list, and I feel resentful, then guilty for feeling that way because how dare I, and so forth with the self-criticism that borders on -- and often crosses the line into -- self-hatred. </span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica;">
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">My problems are so petty and First World, and yet I can't seem to force myself to stop letting them get me down. I know this isn't just me. This is what people do. A quote from Adam Smith that I've seen several times before but just ran across again in the audiobook I'm currently listening to reminded me that this is true:</span></div>
<div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its
myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us
consider how a man of humanity in Europe,who had no sort of connexion with that
part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this
dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his
sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy
reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the
labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too,
perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning
the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and
the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine
philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly
expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his
diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had
happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion
a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he
would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with
the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren,
and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less
interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.</span></blockquote>
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><div style="font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">This </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">is what people do. We care more about our little fingers than millions of people we don't know. That's why Stalin said, aptly, that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic. It's human nature to feel that way, so why do I feel so guilty about it? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">The book where I heard the quote anew this week was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blank-Slate-Modern-Denial-Nature-ebook/dp/B000QCTNIM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413635934&sr=8-1&keywords=blank+slate">Steven Pinker's <i>The Blank Slate</i></a>, a wonderful book that contains much that I could have written myself (and some that I actually did write in a book I wrote but never published). The Adam Smith quote reminds me, on an intellectual level, that it's not just me, that everyone does this, which is one of the fundamental ideas in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Self-Compassion-Beating-Yourself-Insecurity-Behind-ebook/dp/B004JN1DBO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413636139&sr=1-1&keywords=neff+self+compassion">Kristin Neff's <i>Self-Compassion</i></a>, a wonderful book but one whose principles I seem to be able to accept on an intellectual but not an emotional level. </span><br />
<span style="font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 12pt;">I know everyone does this, so why do I hate myself for doing it? I know it is hard to feel truly and profoundly grateful for not having Ebola or living in Afghanistan or being blind or deaf or paralyzed or dead and let just being whole and alive and healthy and American be <i>enough</i> already so STFU about your stupid, petty problems. I know it isn't just me. So why do I hate myself for it?</span><br />
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Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-90636440015452906132014-10-14T06:22:00.000-07:002014-10-14T06:22:48.006-07:00BusyI wrote in my last post about the difficulty I have fitting all my commitments into the hours in my days. I didn't write "how crazy busy my life is" because I am hyperaware of how people use "busyness" to get status. I don't want to be one of those people, so when people ask how I am and the urge to reply, "Busy!" arises, I bite it back and say, "Fine, thanks."<br />
<br />
Aware of this "Look at me, I'm so busy!" status-seeking, I'm often a little hesitant to tell people I'm busy. People close to me to whom I've sort of half-apologized for mentioning being busy have assured me that, compared to the commitments of a childless lady with a dog and a lot of book clubs and church committees and homeowners' association board meetings and lunches with friends, my commitments are mostly of the kind I can't just politely say no to. Yes, it's true I could give my kids more fast food and frozen food than I do, also true that I could let my house be dirtier than it is, but I already feel like there's too much pizza and clutter in my house for anyone to confuse me with Martha Stewart.<br />
<br />
What's that you say? I could give up this blog? Why, yes, I could. Don't think I haven't thought about it. Back when I was writing my public blog, I frequently contemplated giving that up, too, because the voice within me that whispers words of Bad Mother Shame into my ear said I should, that I owed it to my kids not to give anymore of myself to pursuits that didn't involve them.<br />
<br />
That voice is what my friend Eleanor calls a demon, and I know that if I ever let it start running my life completely, I will become a bitter, angry woman who does more damage to her children than I do leaving them to amuse themselves while I write.<br />
<br />
Why do I write? I may as well ask why I breathe. I cannot remember a time when I have not written. My eldest daughter writes, and my heart sings that she doesn't hide her scribblings the way I used to her at age, that she talks to me about her stories once in a while as I never talked to anyone about mine. It tells me that my writing has caused, at worst, benign neglect.<br />
<br />
So where am I going with this? I suppose I am trying to talk myself into or out of taking on another writing project:<a href="http://nanowrimo.org/"> NaNoWriMo</a>. I've wanted to do this before but never did. It's next month, so I have only 17 days to decide. I tell myself it's crazy because I'm already overcommitted and can hardly find time for all the things I have to do now. On the other hand, it's only a month, and then the craziness ends. If I try and it's too much, I can quit. If I don't try, I'll go on wondering what would have happened if I had.<br />
<br />
I guess that means I've found the answer.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-92151599651028513602014-10-13T10:33:00.001-07:002014-10-14T06:23:22.344-07:00Step 2: Part 1Step 2: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Came
to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><br />
I was prepared for Step 1 to take a long time, as my sponsor said it would, prepared to be patient, but then I did the writing assignment she gave me: write how my life is unmanageable and how I feel powerless. But first, ask God to put on the page what He wants there, then write and don't edit.<br />
<br />
I prayed, wrote, closed the file and didn't read it until the end of the day. Wow. It was ugly. Really ugly, and scary. I was going to share some of it here, but what's the point? It's all self-hatred and fear and...ugliness.<br />
<br />
My sponsor read it (actually, I read it to her over the phone because I have kids and seeing her is a logistics issue, on which see below) and said, "Well, you've done Step 1. That is powerlessness all right." I said I thought I was going to be on it awhile, and she said, "You continue to surprise me."<br />
<br />
My ego lit up, of course: I was the good sponsee, the <i>best</i> sponsee, the good girl A student I have always been. And of course my ego told me that I'd sail through Steps 2 and 3, too, and get to the meat of it, Step 4. The big one. The scary one. Well, the first of several scary ones anyway.<br />
<br />
So in the week that followed I had been praying, really praying for the first time in a long time. I felt like there really was a power higher than me that could save me, or at least there could be. So I meet with my sponsor and she says I'm going to be on Step 2 for a while yet. WTF? It says in The Big Book that you just have to be <i>willing</i> to believe that, and I was willing, god damn it, but she said I wasn't there yet.<br />
<br />
She said -- and here's the thing that really pissed me off -- that this week, she wanted me to pray to my Higher Power about what it would look like if I wasn't doing this exhausting logistical dance trying to get to meetings and see her without telling my kids where I was going, which has been hard, since I am a single mom with a demanding job and I was juggling enough before I started trying to fit three AA meetings and a meeting with my sponsor into an already insane schedule.<br />
<br />
Of course she's right that it would be easier if I told my kids, and my mom who could watch my kids, but I don't want to because telling them would mean telling my ex as well, and I can face being honest with my kids, but not with my ex or my mother, because both of them are very judgmental people who think therapy is Lola Granola bullshit and <strike>they'd think</strike> I'd be thinking that they'd be thinking, <i>Why does she need to leave her kids and go to all those stupid meetings? Why doesn't she just not drink?</i><br />
<br />
Because my ex has already said, "What kind of mother are you anyway? You're never home. You're always at work." I can just see what he'd say about this. And of course I can't ask my kids to keep something like this from their father.<br />
<br />
Because my mother has already called me selfish, said I thought more about myself than I did about my kids. And even though she's not the model of motherhood I want to emulate, and even though I keep telling myself her criticism shouldn't affect me, it does.<br />
<br />
Because I am afraid of being vulnerable to these people, who have knocked me down in the past when I dropped my armor and made a conscious decision to trust them and be vulnerable, expose myself to things that trigger my Bad Mother Shame.<br />
<br />
Later that day, I got really angry. Angry at my sponsor, because AA is Alcoholics <i>Anonymous</i>. I was supposed to be <i>safe</i> here. I was supposed to be allowed to be anonymous and safe. And here she's telling me to tell the most judgmental people in my life my most painful secret.<br />
<br />
Normally I would stuff that anger down and get resentful, but I called her instead, and was honest. Instead of getting defensive, she pointed out that she wasn't telling me to tell them. She was telling me to ask my Higher Power about it. And I said, "Oh, and God's going to tell me to go on being a chickenshit coward and do what I want instead of doing the hard work I need to? We both know there's only one answer to that question."<br />
<br />
"And that's why you're not done with Step 2," she said gently. "You were so sure you knew the answer already, you didn't even <i>ask</i> God."<br />
<br />
She's right, of course. I didn't. I didn't ask God. I didn't trust God enough to ask Him and hear whatever answer I got, in part because I didn't think I'd be able to tell what was God and what wasn't, but in part because -- oh, God, she so <i>totally</i> nailed it -- I think I know what's in the mind of God already.<br />
<br />
So here I am, mired in Step 2. Trying to figure out how to let go of my fear and arrogance and ego enough to really, truly, humbly ask.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-75191410267154981492014-10-08T10:15:00.001-07:002017-04-12T08:50:57.923-07:00Step 1: Part 3Step 1: <span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">We
admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become
unmanageable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the months that followed, I talked myself out of the God
shot and into the coincidence. I talked myself out of the fear that had brought
me to that meeting, telling myself I wasn’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i>
bad. Because I didn’t get a DUI or get fired or end up in strange men’s beds I
didn’t really have that bad a problem. Yes, I got to work on time, and with
make-up on. Yes, I put on a good show for the world, but I should have known
better than to believe my own masquerade. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The fact was, when I poured “a glass” of wine and swore to
myself it would be just <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">a</i> glass, it
wasn’t. I worried about destroying my liver, because drinking an entire bottle
of wine at least three nights a week had to be overtaxing its capacity to
cleanse my blood of all the Malbec I was pouring into my system.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After I stopped drinking, I went to a meeting here and
there, but didn’t do it consistently, didn’t get a sponsor. I told myself that
I had stopped drinking because I wanted to, because I chose to, because I was
strong enough to. I joined an online group where women like me – women who had good
haircuts and drank good wine, who didn’t have bad teeth or bad grammar –
supported each other in their sobriety. Some of them were in AA, working the
steps, sponsoring and being sponsored, but others weren’t, having decided that
online groups, podcasts and blogs were all the support they needed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I thought so for a while, too. One of the blogs I read was
by a woman who said <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">enough</i> and got
sober, all on her own, with only her blog comments and Twitter feed for
support. After three years of sobriety, she got a book contract to tell the
story she’d been telling on her blog. It was a story of determination and
accomplishment: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> chose sobriety; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> did it. It was the antithesis of AA,
and I loved it, because I wanted to be the antithesis of AA. Yes, AA helped my
dad get sober, saved his life, even, but I could save my own life, thanks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Less than two months after that scary, awful, wonderful
early morning meeting, I decided I wasn’t that bad, and was going to try
moderation again. Aristotle said that every virtue is the mean between two
extremes. “Moderation in all things – including moderation,” said with a sly
wink, had been my motto, and I was going to prove myself a good Aristotelian
who could moderate if it killed me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I had “a” glass of wine, which turned into three or five or
whatever it was that left me hung over, sick with shame and determined to go
cold turkey again. I did it without meetings or the
steps and so I didn’t do it for more than another couple of months, when I
decided to “moderate” again. This time I was successful. I did have just one
glass, and not every day, just now and then, one or two, being very
Aristotelian and proud of myself. But having to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">think</i> about it, <a href="http://ainsobriety.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/so-you-want-one-glass/">which was exhausting and demoralizing</a>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The morning after the first time I had an entire bottle, I
quit for good again. I can’t remember if I went to a meeting that morning, but I
started going again, in a half-assed kind of way, not getting a sponsor, not
doing anything that would require commitment or accountability, which being the
daughter of a 12-stepper I knew was a bullshit way to do AA.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Bullshit notwithstanding, I stayed sober five months. Sober,
but miserable, what they call a dry drunk in AA. As the one year anniversary of
that first meeting, which sadly was no longer my sobriety date, approached, I
was reading another sobriety blog, this one by a guy who had twenty years of
sobriety and for all that time had been working the steps, both with a sponsor
and as a sponsor. The things he wrote about service and sponsorship reminded me
of the things my dad used to say when he was in his first decade of sobriety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back then, I would think, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oh, Lord, there he goes again with the
12-stepping</i>, and try to look interested in “being of service” and all the
rest of the recovery-speak. Two decades and countless gallons of ruby-hued
poison with notes of ripe blackberry, warm spice and oak later, that
recovery-speak sounded very different. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
looked at my reasonably affluent, reasonably successful middle-class self and
thought, what the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">fuck</i> is
the matter with you? I knew what was the matter. Self-pity and ego and bullshit
was the matter. I needed to work the steps was the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I went to a meeting early Saturday morning. I wanted to
share, wanted to say I needed a sponsor, but there were a lot of talkers and I
couldn’t get a word in edgewise. I went again the next morning. It was a huge
meeting, the biggest I’d ever been to. One of my neighbors was there, and a
lady from my Zumba class. No sharing that day either, but someone who did share
was a woman, who had been a speaker at an earlier meeting I had attended. I’d
gone to hear her because someone I met at my very first ever meeting texted to
tell me I should go because she was an amazing speaker. She was. The things she
said that day had stayed with me, and when she shared at that Sunday morning
meeting, I worked up the nerve to ask her to sponsor me, and she said yes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was like that first meeting, almost exactly a year
earlier. I got scared enough, desperate enough, to step outside my comfort zone
and do something I felt as though I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">needed</i>
to do, because I couldn’t do it on my own anymore. That is admitting
powerlessness. That is Step One. I thought I had taken it a year ago, then stepped
back and spent a year in self-pity and ego and bullshit. I thought I had taken
it again last week, but my sponsor said I might be on it a while. I said, as
long as it takes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment-->Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-63763455902507913642014-10-07T05:02:00.001-07:002014-10-07T05:02:32.431-07:00Step 1: Part 2Step 1. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;">We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I admitted that a year ago when I woke up hung over at 4:30
AM and Googled “AA [my city]” instead of going back to bed in hopes another
couple hours of sleep would help. They wouldn’t. For the first time, I knew,
really and truly knew, that the only thing that would help was not drinking
anymore, ever. Not exercising moderation better. I had tried and failed at
that. My only hope was sobriety. It had saved my father, and it could save me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I had just had a cancer scare. The day I got the wonderful
news that the biopsy was negative, I learned a man I knew was dying of liver
cancer. He was around my age, a good-looking, smart, successful professional
whom no one would have guessed was <i>that</i>
bad. I felt a cold lump of fear: <i>that
could be me</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So I went to a crack of dawn meeting, walked into that room
with so many more men than women, some of them kind of rough looking, and
forced myself to share. I was afraid that if I didn’t share, I would walk out
of there without having talked to anyone, made any kind of connection, and
might never come back. Might go home determined not to drink but by
mid-afternoon would be heading to the grocery story to replace the wine I had
poured down the sink that morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Sharing that morning was one of the hardest things I ever
did. I am not afraid to speak in front of crowds. On the contrary; I love
public speaking. But this was different. This wasn’t me in a smart suit and high
heels clicking away at a PowerPoint. This was me hung over, clutching my coffee
cup as though it was some kind of security blanket and being totally honest and
vulnerable in front of these strangers, many of whom looked so different from
me, and told stories of hitting a much lower and scarier bottom than I had with
alcohol, but whom I could sense were kindred spirits.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I said those words: “I’m [my name], and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, [my name],” they all chorused warmly, because that’s what people do at AA.
And I told them how scared I was, scared enough to come here and ask for help –
their help, God’s help, whoever’s help – because I didn’t know what else to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After the meeting, several kind women came up to talk to me.
One of them had written her phone number on an AA flyer, with a note that
addressed me by name. When I looked at my name in her neat printing, spelled
correctly, my breathing slowed. I couldn’t speak for a moment, kept looking at
it, not quite able to fathom what I saw. I know it doesn’t sound like a big
deal. So she spelled my name right. So what? This is what: in some-odd decades
on this earth, no one – not a single human being – has <i>ever</i> spelled my name correctly without my spelling it for them. And
sometimes, even when I do spell it for them, they don’t write what I say. I’ve
sat there and watched them spell it wrong, even as I’m spelling it aloud for
them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">But that woman at the AA meeting spelled it right. On her
own. I asked her why she had spelled it that way, and she said, “It’s funny.
When I was starting to write it, I lifted up the pen and paused, not sure how
to spell it. So I asked God.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That may sound corny and ridiculous, but it didn’t feel that
way to me at the time. It felt like the sign we always ask God for but never
get, a sign that I was doing the right thing and I was going to be okay. That
is what people in AA call a “God shot” and I would normally call a coincidence.
But that wasn’t a normal day. That was the day I admitted my drinking was out
of control and I needed help. That day, a ray of hope penetrated the spiritual
darkness that had engulfed me since my divorce, and I called it a God shot,
too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-4796085263684172742014-10-05T14:21:00.000-07:002014-10-05T15:09:31.105-07:00Step 1: Part 1Step 1. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">We admitted we were powerless over alcohol –
that our lives had become unmanageable.</span><br />
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><br />
1a. I have a sponsor.<br />
<br />
I was sober for more than 5 consecutive months before I got one, because, being a perfectionist, I thought I needed the perfect sponsor. Last weekend, I decided that I needed a sponsor now more than I needed The Perfect Sponsor someday. And as soon as I decided that, my Higher Power (can't get used to that term, which still sounds so AA Lola Granola to these old school Catholic ears) gave me the sponsor I needed. She is just about as close to perfect <i>for me</i> as a sponsor can get. We have a lot in common, and we have a lot that's different. We will no doubt get on each other's nerves from time to time, but it's still new enough that we're both on our best behavior. I know she isn't Perfect (and she wouldn't be the perfect sponsor for me if she was) but I think maybe I'm going to love her.<br />
<br />
1b. I am working the Steps.<br />
<br />
Well, I am working the first one, anyway. I titled this post the way I did because I think I may be on Step 1 for a while. Just as well, since Steps 4-9 scare the shit out of me, and even though I'm usually the type who wants to rush through everything at warp speed, there is something (Higher Power?) telling me to s...l...o...w d...o...w...n on this one.<br />
<br />
I took Step 1 exactly a year ago today, and then backtracked. So here I am, a year later, still in Remedial Step 1. Me! I was always a straight A student. I should have rocked this step stuff. I should have left Step 12 in the dust months ago and have 4 or 5 sponsees sitting at my feet in awe of my awesomeness by now, right?<br />
<br />
I'm not sure whether AA is the first thing I've ever done that you can't ace and skip a grade in, or whether I'm just finally realizing that trying to ace everything and skip grades is kind of a half-assed way to do just about anything. And if I try to do Step 1 that way, I will fail, just as I failed last year.<br />
<br />
Admitting I am powerless is hard for me. It's probably hard for most people. My very religious friends are able to do it. The Evangelicals do it best. They seem positively to <i>revel</i> in their powerless, positively <i>luxuriate</i> in their submission to the Lord. I see it, but I don't get it. You know what they say about Catholic girls. We're trouble. But my sponsor is one of those Catholic bad girls, too, so she knows what she's in for.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-32635511353889274432014-10-04T14:40:00.002-07:002014-10-04T14:40:48.327-07:00Am I an Alcoholic?The other day, in an online sobriety group I will call XXX because it is
anonymous, I posted a photograph along with the following commentary after
several members of the group had posted things like, “I’m not sure I’m an
alcoholic because I wasn’t really that bad…” Because I had had those thoughts
myself more than a few (million) times, here is what I wrote:<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
For those of you who think you aren't that bad, who are trying to talk
yourself into "moderating" and out of AA, this [the picture, which I
will not share here, as this blog is anonymous] is me with a crippling hangover
and waves of shame and self-hatred making me sicker than the waves of nausea
and pounding headache. This is me last year hung over after I drank one night
after nearly 2 months of sobriety. I don't look like a mess, do I? I look
happy, physically fit and if I do say so myself, pretty damn fabulous for [my
age, which is, let’s just say, <i>way</i> over 21]. I am with my awesome dad (sober
20+ years) and my adorable daughter. You would never know from the picture that
I was a complete mess inside. But I was. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
The longer I am sober, the more certain I am that alcohol was destroying my
life, and that if I had gone on that way, the ugliness inside would eventually
have been ugliness outside as well. I told myself I wasn't <i>that</i> bad, but let's
be honest -- if you are questioning how much you drink, if you have to try hard
to moderate (normal drinkers don't), if you are feeling shame and self-hatred,
then you have a dysfunctional relationship with alcohol. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
I don't know what made me finally ready to admit that when I did. I know I
couldn't have gotten sober if I hadn't admitted it. Other people telling me I
had a problem (they didn't, because I hid it so well) would have just made me
angry. But if you are in this group, it's because you <i>have</i> told yourself you
have a problem.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
XXX is different from AA, and both are valuable in different ways.
There, no one will tell you what to do. They will let you explore your feelings without
judgment, realizing that you need to do that until you're ready. If you go to
AA and get a sponsor, he or she will call bullshit on stuff that people in XXX won't. AA and XXX are different, like friends and family are different, and
both are valuable. They serve different purposes, though, and one isn't a
substitute for the other.<br />
<br />
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">I thought I could be sober
without AA, but I've changed my mind. I'm not telling you what's right for you,
only what was right for me. I hope and pray that those of you who are
struggling and suffering with the am-I-aren't-I? should-I-shouldn't-I? will
find your way out of the forest of questions soon. It's a dark place to be, but
for many of us, it was while wandering in that dark wood that we hit bottom,
high or low, and decided to start walking the long, slow but suddenly and
inexplicably clear path out</span>. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-72973011134109485392014-10-03T10:00:00.000-07:002014-10-04T14:21:21.878-07:00What Other People ThinkJust read <a href="http://ainsobriety.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/just-smile-and-shut-my-mouth/">this post on A in Sobriety</a> about external validation. That is one of the biggest things I struggle with. When I feel self-hatred, it is often because I care so much about what other people think, and can't make myself stop caring even though I know I should. I know it shouldn't matter what anyone thinks. I know I shouldn't take things personally, because what people say is as much (or more) about them than it is about me. I know all that, and yet...I still care.<br />
<br />
My ex-husband used to tell me all the time that I cared too much about what other people thought. He hated that about me. I hate that about me, too.<br />
<br />
I know it isn't just me. I know other people do it. Most people do. Does everyone? Did my ex-husband only put on a big act that he didn't care what other people thought, but really he did, and in criticizing me for it, he was doing that thing we all do with the speck in our neighbor's eye and the plank in our own? Was he projecting his own self-hatred onto me, because he hated the fact that he cared what people thought, too? Or am I overthinking it, and he really was free of that problem but the fact that I had it just bugged the shit out of him?<br />
<br />
If it wasn't a problem for a lot of people, there wouldn't be articles like <a href="http://inoveryourhead.net/the-complete-guide-to-not-giving-a-fuck/">this</a> or <a href="http://waitbutwhy.com/2014/06/taming-mammoth-let-peoples-opinions-run-life.html">this</a> or <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fighting-fear/201306/caring-what-other-people-think">this</a> or <a href="http://lifehacker.com/stop-caring-about-what-others-think-and-get-back-your-1493922746">this</a>. It's not just me. But it still sucks that it <i>is</i> me.<br />
<br />
Update: ....or t<a href="http://messageinabottleblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/worthy/">his, on being worthy</a>.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-67960206356796223772014-09-28T12:32:00.001-07:002014-09-28T12:32:07.601-07:00Sobriety BlogsI've been reading a lot of these lately, some in bits and pieces, some start to finish like a book, beginning with the earliest posts and moving forward. Some bloggers like <a href="http://livingwithoutalcohol.blogspot.com/">Mrs D</a> make this easy by posting her early posts all together on one page by month. It's to blog reading what Netflix binge-watching is to watching the episodes as they come out.<br />
<br />
Other blogs I have to do it the old fashioned way. I'm doing that with <a href="http://lifeafteralcohol.com/">And Everything Afterward</a>,<br />
<br />
I finished UnPickled long ago, and now have to wait for new episodes the way I had to do with <i>Dallas</i> when I was a teenager. (I thought I might <i>die</i> waiting to find out who shot J.R.)<br />
<br />
On some blogs I don't have to read the old posts at all, because the authors have written books and saved me the trouble, like <a href="http://mrsponsorpants.typepad.com/mr_sponsorpants/">Mr. SponsorPants</a>. I bought his Kindle book in part out of laziness (not having to go back and read the early posts) and in part because writers need to support each other's efforts financially. Not that I have a book for anyone to buy at the moment, but I'm banking karma just in case I actually do get my act together enough to have one published. Rather than working on my own writing, I have been reading his stories of <a href="http://mrsponsorpants.typepad.com/mr_sponsorpants/2014/09/lunch-with-an-old-sober-friend.html">conversations like this one</a> between him and his sponsors and sponsees in AA. I've done a lot of thinking about my overactive ego as a result of these.<br />
<br />
I wrote all of the above yesterday as a draft. This morning I went to a meeting. And got brave enough to ask someone to be my sponsor.<br />
<br />
Oh. My. God.<br />
<br />
This shit is <i>real</i> now.<br />
<br />
<br />Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-64932601133168551982014-09-22T18:26:00.002-07:002014-10-04T14:46:02.767-07:00The Dysfunctional Debate Team in My HeadThat's what a fellow denizen of an online sobriety group called that exhausting, maddening mental dialogue that goes something like this:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I think I drink too much.<br />
But you don't get falling down drunk and end up in bed with strange men.<br />
Yeah, but I don't stop at one glass when I say I'm going to.<br />
Yeah, but you don't drink the whole bottle. Not every time, anyway.<br />
Often enough.<br />
But sometimes you just have two and it's cool.<br />
But sometimes not.<br />
Alcoholics can NEVER stop at two. They drink till they pass out or run out.<br />
Aren't there gradations of alcoholic?<br />
You're not that bad. Really.<br />
Really?<br />
Really. You're a gainfully employed professional who gets to work on time, with make-up on, gets the kids to school on time, pays her bills and her taxes on time.<br />
Maybe I'm what they call a "high functioning" alcoholic?<br />
But you don't always finish the bottle. Alcoholics always finish the bottle.<br />
But I'm tired of <i>thinking</i> about whether to finish the bottle...</blockquote>
<br />
And on and on it goes. There are some in that online group who never take the first drink without finishing every drop of alcohol within reach. There are others like me who had a "high bottom" and stopped because they found trying to moderate too exhausting, and worried about the problem getting worse.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lifeafteralcohol.com/2014/07/22/making-it-look-easy-a-brief-history-of-dysfunctional-drinking/">Allie writes of this</a> on her blog, <a href="http://lifeafteralcohol.com/">And Everything Afterwards</a>, which I just discovered, happily. She quotes an email she sent to a friend nine years ago:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
And when there’s wine in the fridge I have a glass or two of
an evening just generally…<br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">And
sometimes it’s not a glass or two. It’s the best part of a bottle. Every now
and then, it’s a bottle….I have a problem, don’t I?...[but] I’m functional. I
don’t miss work, I don’t damage relationships, I don’t spend money I don’t
have, I don’t do any of the things that scream ‘alcoholic’.</span></blockquote>
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<br />
That was me, all right. I can relate to so much of what she writes, like <a href="http://lifeafteralcohol.com/2014/09/16/basically-im-having-a-tantrum/">this piece on AA</a>, about how people make these dire predictions about how no one can get and stay sober on their own. I am also with her on <a href="http://lifeafteralcohol.com/2014/03/19/one-day-at-a-time-vs-never-drinking-again/">this one, about the one day at a time vs never drinking</a> thing: I want to make the decision once, never to drink again, rather than every day. But, as she writes, maybe that is because it isn't hard for me to get through each day without drinking. Most days I don't think about it, except when I'm reading sobriety stuff, which only makes me grateful not to be drinking. Fancy restaurants and Fridays right after work are the only times I think a little wistfully about having a drink, but it's not a big struggle not to.<br />
<br />
Mrs D has written often, <a href="http://livingwithoutalcohol.blogspot.com/2013/05/i-am-never-drinking-ever-again.html">as here, about being resolved never ever to drink again</a>. In addition to the "one day at a time" rule, she hits another AA hot button in this post: surrender. She writes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I choose sober over drunk.<br />
<o:p> </o:p>I choose it. I do. Me. This is my life and if I choose not
to touch alcohol ever again then I won't touch alcohol ever again. I have
no-one to fear but myself. I don't fear myself. I trust myself.<br />
<o:p> </o:p>Call this determination. Call it grim reality. Call it sad
and boring, call it brave and amazing. Call it what you like. I don't mind.
I'll just be over here staying sober for the rest of the days of my life.</blockquote>
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Throughout her blog, she emphasizes her determination, her resolve, her choice not to drink. She, like Allie and me, was a high functioning alcoholic with a "high bottom" who stopped herself before things got really scary. AA says alcoholics can only get sober by admitting their powerlessness and surrendering, and devotees of AA call people who try to "white knuckle" it to sobriety "dry drunks".</div>
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<br /></div>
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There is something to this. I think if you "white knuckle" it, force yourself to keep away from alcohol by sheer willpower without doing any of the serious emotional work that AA promotes, then you probably will exhaust your willpower or, if you stay sober, you'll stay miserable as well. But I think it's possible to do the emotional work outside the context of AA. Blogging is how Mrs D (and presumably Allie, whose blog I am just beginning to explore) did it.</div>
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I am not opposed to AA. I go to AA meetings when I can, but a busy schedule makes this irregular. I don't have a sponsor (which horrifies people at meetings when they find out) and have not systematically worked the steps, in part because I'm having so much trouble with the early ones. But more about that in a future post.</div>
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For now, I will just say a heartfelt thank you to Allie for <a href="http://lifeafteralcohol.com/">her blog</a>, and head back there to explore a bit more. </div>
<br />Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-80614300528652471422014-09-14T17:07:00.001-07:002014-09-14T18:10:36.128-07:00Do these jeans make my...?I bought my first pair of skinny jeans today. Well, the first this century. I wore them in the 80s when everyone else did, of course. But I when I was taking my teenage daughter shopping for clothes for her, she mentioned (once again) the appalling fashion horror of my boot cut jeans, which she insists on calling "bell bottoms" which they're not.<br />
<br />
So I tried on a pair while she was trying things on. They got her stamp of approval. "Except..." she began. "They make your butt look big. Not to be mean or anything," she added hastily. "I'm just being honest."<br />
<br />
The really neat thing that struck me about that conversation is that it didn't make me feel fat or unattractive or old old or upset or offended, or even too self-conscious to buy the jeans. I just made a joke referencing a lyric about the female anatomy in one of the godawful pop songs she likes and bought them.<br />
<br />
In a world where women feel so much shame about their bodies, I felt happy that I don't. Happy that I don't ask, "Does this dress make me look fat?" or "Do these jeans make my butt look big?" whenever I get dressed. It helps that the jeans are a size 4, of course. How big could it be, really?<br />
<br />
But reality isn't enough to silence the chorus of shame so many women hear inside their heads. The thin girl who looks in the mirror, sees a fat girl and abuses herself with anorexia or bulimia isn't saved by having a slender body. Her shame overrides reality, and she starves herself until she looks like a concentration camp survivor or purges until her esophageal sphincter stops working.<br />
<br />
I am not immune to shame. It's just that my self-abuse of choice is wallowing in Bad Mother Shame. No matter how caring and loving and patient I am with my kids, day to day, all I have to do is lose my cool and snap at them, and the chorus of <i>Bad Mother, Mommy Dearest, Selfish Bitch, Worst Mother in the World...</i> starts playing in my head. I know it's unreasonable to think I can be a perfect mother, know it's lunatic perfectionism, just plain batshit crazy, but I can't seem to talk the irrational, emotional part of me out of it.<br />
<br />
The fact that I genuinely like my middle-aged body and am not self-conscious about it makes me really, really happy. If I could get to the same place about my imperfect parenting, that would be an even bigger achievement than being able to squeeze my middle-aged butt into size 4 skinny jeans.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-21778026699487094372014-09-03T04:49:00.000-07:002014-09-03T04:49:40.984-07:00Procrastination Is FearIt is. I know it is. And yet, knowing it, I still do it.<br />
<br />
I'm writing a memoir. I tell myself -- and the few other people I get brave enough to tell, except one -- that it's only for myself, a form of self-therapy, that I have no intention of ever trying to get it published. Why would I? Why would anyone want to read my story?<br />
<br />
I know the answer. It's the same reason I read other people's memoirs and blogs. I enjoy it, and it helps me, helps me see that it's not just me, that other people go through the same things I do, have the same problems, the same self-destructive, self-sabotaging thoughts and fears. My story might help others and others' stories have helped me.<br />
<br />
Then why am I afraid to say that to people? And why am I afraid to <i>write</i> it?Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-29235636533828071602014-09-01T06:01:00.001-07:002014-09-01T06:01:56.984-07:00The Sugar WitchThat's the name <a href="http://livingwithoutalcohol.blogspot.com/">Mrs. D</a> used for it. I like it. I did a double-take this morning when I read <a href="http://livingwithoutalcohol.blogspot.com/2014/09/almost-3-years-sober.html">this post on her blog</a>, where she opened by saying she gave herself a B- in something. So funny, since I wrote a post saying the exact same thing yesterday.<br />
<br />
The Sugar Witch is something one of my daughters and one of my closest friends struggle with in a very painful way. The way I deal with her is similar to how I deal with wine: as close to total abstinence as possible. It's easier that way, if I just say, "I don't eat crap" like I say, "I don't drink." I made the mistake of saying that to someone who's been sober in AA for some time, and he went off on me, lecturing me about how you won't kill someone after eating a bowl of ice cream and driving. Sigh...<br />
<br />
So I keep quiet about the similarities between food addiction and alcohol addiction now, but I think they're considerable. I remember years ago, long before I started drinking alcoholically, my dad was telling me about a study where they showed alcoholics and non-alcoholics the same short film clip, in which two people were having dinner, finished and got up and left. The alcoholics who watched all noticed -- and were bothered by -- the fact that they people left their wine glasses half full, while the non-alcoholics didn't notice.<br />
<br />
At the time, I never noticed unfinished drinks in movies or TV, but I <i>did</i> notice uneaten food that looked appetizing. I understood that dialogue needs required people to talk rather than chew, so they couldn't eat it, but it used to bother me anyway. When my dad told me about that study, I realized that I had addictive tendencies toward food. Well, realized is the wrong word. I'd known that all my life. I never had anorexia or bulimia, but food was always on my radar screen -- how much I ate, how much other people ate, how much I wanted to eat, what other people would think if they saw how much I ate, and so on.<br />
<br />
I'm not sure why, but somewhere along the line, I stopped being obsessed with food. After a lifetime of struggling to keep my weight down, it is now stable without struggle. Effort, yes, but struggle, no. Just when women stereotypically put on weight -- over 40 and after kids -- I suddenly became a thin person <i>inside</i> as well as out.<br />
<br />
I sometimes wonder if I just switched addictions, trading food for alcohol. It wasn't too long after my weight maintenance became easy that I started to drink too much. I suppose food is a safer addiction, but alcohol is an easier addiction to overcome, for me at least, because total abstinence is possible, whereas it isn't with food. You can give up alcohol entirely, but you still have to eat.<br />
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<!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment-->Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-22822485299001937772014-08-30T13:48:00.005-07:002014-08-30T13:48:47.021-07:00Patient Acceptance Pop QuizSo here I am being all patiently accepting and feeling smug, until I get a pop quiz to see how I'm <i>really</i> doing in <a href="http://thevoiceswithin.blogspot.com/2014/08/buddhism-101.html">Buddhism 101</a>. I drive out to the house I just moved out of to do one last once-over before the walk-through with the new owner. I think I'm just going to have to do a few things, since I paid my former cleaning woman (I haven't had one regularly for years now, am much less posh than I used to be) $150 to clean the empty house and garage and another out-building on the property. I get there today and realize she only did the house, and didn't do that well enough to keep me from being mortified to have the new owner see it like that. So I have to get all my cleaning stuff and go out there first thing tomorrow morning and do the job I paid her to do. Just what everyone wants to do on the Sunday of a three-day weekend.<br />
<br />
I am trying to be totally cool with this, trying to be patiently accepting and not feel put-upon and bitch about it, not put a poor-me post on Facebook. I am getting a B- so far, I think. No Facebook post (someone might see it and then stumble on this and OMG my cover would be blown because I know everyone just lives to learn my real identity and I am not in the least paranoid) but had some feelings of being put-upon and engaged in a smidge of bitching via text before I forced myself to cut it out and <i>be patiently accepting, goddamn it!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I am down with the B- because that means I get an A in Battling Perfectionism but oh shit, that means I <i>don't</i> get an A because I was so smug about being satisfied with the B-. Oh, Lord, my craziness never ends, does it?Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-11327870612772792952014-08-30T06:39:00.000-07:002014-08-30T06:42:03.229-07:00Buddhism 101I have been listening in the car to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/How-Solve-Our-Human-Problems/dp/0978906713/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=Kelsang+Gyatso+How+to+solve+our+human+problems">a CD by Tibetan Buddhist monk Kelsang Gyatso</a>. I picked it up on the New Books on CD shelf at the library. I knew very little about Buddhism until the past few years, and I still don't know much. The Sanskrit words are all Greek to me (well, not really, because I studied Greek a million years ago so I should probably say all Urdu to me or something like that) and the concepts are ones I only semi-understand, but listening to it calms me down.<br />
<br />
He talks about patience, and patient acceptance. That I understand. Understand, and most of the time don't practice. But I've been trying to practice it this week, and it feels good.<br />
<br />
It reminds me of the time when my eldest was a toddler and my second a baby, and I was having lunch with my dad and the two kids in that big-ass double stroller that was building me some biceps pushing it all over town. My dad, who is many years sober and has his emotional shit far more together than most people, because decades of 12-stepping will do that to a person, remarked about how calm I was, how I took all the little kid messes and hassles in stride, and was so calm and patient with them.<br />
<br />
I was, then. I took things in stride. I was joyful and grateful to be a mother at all, after fearing I'd waited too long and blown it and would never have kids, just an endless series of miscarriages. I was so grateful to be a mother, and really trying to do it right. In retrospect, I see that there was a lot of perfectionism in my attempt, but that's another post.<br />
<br />
After that I had more kids and moved out of state, away from my awesomely sober dad and my friends and my support network, my marriage fell apart and I started swearing again (I had totally given it up during my Perfect New Mom phase), got divorced, tried to navigate my way through the working single mom thing, stopped writing and started drinking too much.<br />
<br />
Now I have stopped drinking and started writing again, which is much better. And reading things I didn't use to read, like Buddhist stuff. I read something else, I think it was <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Brain-Practical-Neuroscience-Happiness/dp/1572246952/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1409405246&sr=8-1&keywords=buddha%27s+brain">Buddha's Brain</a> (it was the neuroscience rather than the Buddhism that I was after; I love reading about how the brain works),that said all suffering is caused by three things: craving pleasure, trying to avoid pain, and fooling ourselves that things are other than as they are. That made sense, but I am still trying to work out some of the bugs in my head about the pleasure part. More on that in a future post.<br />
<br />
Kelsang Gyatso says on the CD that all of our problems stem from what he calls self-grasping ignorance, a concept I am still trying to wrap my very Western and non-Buddhist brain around. What he says about anger I totally get. Anger sucks. I get angry at myself for getting angry, which is both ironic and idiotic, but there you go. Paradox, I guess. But that's Jung, not Buddha, so we'll save that for another post. That's the cool thing about my anonymous blog: I can write stream of consciousness and who gives a shit (I am holding off on that not swearing thing, and calling it battling perfectionism) whereas on my public blog I would feel as though I have to stick to the subject at hand.<br />
<br />
So anyway, about the anger. Gyatso is totally dead on about that. Anger is deadly, and the way to combat it is through practicing patient acceptance. I have been practicing the <i>shit</i> out of patient acceptance all week, and it feels great. It's also getting easier. Even without the double stroller.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-82092458089547168992014-08-28T05:21:00.000-07:002014-08-28T05:23:08.640-07:00A Glass of Wine<a href="http://sobermomologue.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/how-i-finally-got-with-the-program-part-3/">Donna at Sober Mom(ologue) writes</a>:<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The whole point of drinking is to get drunk.
Acting “silly,” blacking out, and hangovers are all just part of it. I have
never understood the concept of just having one or two – seriously, isn’t that
kind of a waste of the one or two? That is how alcoholics think.</span></blockquote>
I had heard that for years, and it was part of why I thought I wasn't an alcoholic. I never wanted to get drunk. I wanted to have a glass of wine or two, which for years I did and could, but eventually a glass or two became three or five more often than I wanted. Five meant I'd finished the whole bottle, which meant the next morning I was a mess, filled with shame and self-loathing. I never wanted to finish the bottle, never wanted to get drunk, but somehow I ended up doing it anyway. Not every time, but often enough to convince me I had a problem.<br />
<br />
Reading <a href="http://unpickled.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/it-girl-with-a-secret/">Jean's story at UnPickled</a> confirms my assurance that not all alcoholics think the same way, because she was so much like me, and not like all the "alcoholics do/think ______" stereotypes. I had been sober four months when I found her blog, and had met enough women like me that I knew that people who drink too much come in all kinds of packages.<br />
<br />
I haven't read much of Sober Mom(ologue) yet, am just beginning to explore the sobriety blog scene. I've written here before about <a href="http://www.cryingoutnow.com/">Crying Out Now</a>, one of the first I found, and which helped lead me to sobriety. I have read some of <a href="http://mishiam.wordpress.com/">Mished-up</a>, whose author I knew from an online community before I found her blog, and some of <a href="http://soberboots.com/">Sober Boots</a>, whose author Heather Kopp, like <a href="http://stefaniewildertaylor.com/">Stefanie Wilder-Taylor</a> is brave enough to be "out there" publicly, writing about her sobriety under her own name. Someday maybe I will be, too, but not just yet.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-51506972582306237932014-08-27T08:14:00.000-07:002014-08-27T08:16:18.415-07:00UnPickledI have discovered a wonderful new blog, UnPickled, the story of a woman very much like me on her journey to sobriety. Like me, she didn't "hit bottom" in in ugly, scary way and people weren't telling her she drank too much. Like me, she'd have a glass or two in public and stay charming, then come home and nurse another glass an hour until bedtime. This is ugly in its own way, but ugly on the inside, a putrefying interior covered by a mask of poise and beauty.<br />
<br />
So many posts on this blog resonated with me. <a href="http://unpickled.wordpress.com/2013/04/03/the-trouble-with-shame/">The Trouble with Shame </a>hit a nerve, because all my life I have struggled with shame, too concerned with what others thought of me, knowing I shouldn't be, but couldn't force myself to stop caring. The shame fuels my perfectionism, which I know is destructive and try to combat, but with limited success.<br />
<br />
This one on <a href="http://unpickled.wordpress.com/2011/08/30/coincidence-i-think-not/">Coincidence</a> reminded me of the Serenity Prayer on a plaque on the wall at my neighbor's house when I was a little girl. I used to read it, and think about it when I was in her kitchen. Her mother was kind of tightly wound, and once in a while she would be on a terrible tirade of anger. I hadn't thought of that girl in her mother in a long time, but I wonder now if the mother was an alcoholic, one struggling to stay sober with the Serenity Prayer on the wall, and those rare flashes of frightening rage I witnessed were the fruits of her relapses.<br />
<br />
I look forward to reading more of UnPickled and other sobriety blogs, and to sharing parts of my story here, on my anonymous blog where it feels safe. I don't intend this to be a sobriety blog, per se, but my sobriety is part of who I am now, part of my story, and because I have only shared it with a few people close to me, I'm not ready to go public and write about it on the blog I write under my own name. I'm not willing to write about a lot of things there. I suppose I'm afraid people will think I'm over-sharing, and because I care what people think (as much as I may wish I didn't) I keep quiet.<br />
<br />Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-33405909463249776532013-11-29T10:32:00.001-08:002014-09-01T06:03:29.482-07:00Drama<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<!--StartFragment--><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Thanksgiving
dinner yesterday was really nice. There was quite a bit of drama earlier in the day, but I won’t relate it here, because I’m beginning to see that
Eleanor is right about the way I feed on drama.
It isn’t a pattern that I like, or one that helps me in any way. As she has said repeatedly, I am getting
something out of it, or the spoiled teenager inside is getting something out of
it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span>
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">I think maybe if I figure out what
it is that inner teenager needs, and find a way to give it to her in another
way, one that doesn’t involve that kind of drama, it would be a good thing. I am not sure how to do that, but I am going to start trying to work through it in my head. </span></span><br />
<!--EndFragment-->Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4302535362189092955.post-5291901072107663132013-11-28T08:23:00.002-08:002013-11-28T08:23:40.725-08:00GratitudeGratitude is a good thing. We all ought to be grateful, especially today, on Thanksgiving, when gratitude is positively a patriotic obligation.<br />
<br />
Gratitude is wonderful when it is spontaneous and comes from within. Gratitude is difficult when people tell you, "You ought to be grateful because you have X," or "You ought to be grateful because you don't have Y," or, more bluntly, "How dare you complain when you have so much, you ungrateful narcissist?"<br />
<br />
We can cultivate gratitude, just as we can cultivate mindfulness and empathy and all the other positive qualities and emotions and states of mind that will make us happier, kinder, better people. We can, but all too often, we don't.<br />
<br />
I have a relative who is refusing to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. She says she doesn't have much to be grateful for this year. I don't know what to say to her, because from where she sits, I have more to be grateful for than she does. From where I sit, too. So how do I say to someone who has more problems than I do, yes, you do have things to be grateful for. I can't. It would sound preachy. She has preached to me in the past about how ungrateful I am because I complained about this or that, and I didn't like it, so I am not going to do it to her.<br />
<br />
I don't know how you inspire someone else to be grateful. It isn't by telling them, "You ought to be grateful." When people say that to me, I want to say fuck off, but instead smile tightly and try to say something that isn't too passive aggressive. I want to be grateful. I try to be grateful. Most days, I am grateful, including, thankfully, today. But when I am not feeling grateful, being preached at doesn't help. It generally makes my state of mind much worse. So I am leaving my sad, resentful kinswoman alone, because I don't want to make her feel worse, but don't know how to make her feel better.<br />
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<i>Make</i> her feel better. That's the thing. Not only can you not <i>make</i> someone else feel better or worse or any way, but other people can't <i>make</i> you feel a certain way. People do things, or things just happen, and then we react with one emotion or another. We can choose how to react. Often, the initial reaction is involuntary, a flash of annoyance or fear or pleasure, but once that flash passes, we can choose whether we want to give in to that emotion, or do something to try to counteract it. From Buddhism to Positive Psychology, there are a variety of tools and behaviors we can use to help us control negative emotions, but the motivation has to come from within. It can be inspired from without, but whatever the external stimulus is, it needs to touch a nerve inside the person, and inspire him or her to want to make a change. Same thing with losing weight, or exercising, or getting sober. If the person in question doesn't want to do it, you can't bully or cajole or guilt them into wanting to. <br />
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So today, what I am grateful for is the desire to be grateful, to be healthy, to be sober, to be empathetic and kind rather than angry and resentful. That is really a gift worthy of gratitude.Me, Myself and Ihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15748708208091225286noreply@blogger.com0