You need to understand said the snake – day 364 into 365

Days of high tension here, it is like something is cooking in my subconscious and I’m not understanding it. Last night I dreamed, I lay down on a bed an a big snake somehow circled my chest, I could not breathe, my heart almost stopped beating. I did not want to die but the snake kept on smiling at me saying it would not be a problem, I just had to learn to let go and the pain would be over; ‘Life is just a stage, stop resisting and understand all this, the fear and suffering will stop.’ Well, NOT READY YET! So…. obviously I resisted (the candle on my table just broke when I wrote that) and called for help. (NEW!) And now I wonder what would have happened if I had not resisted. I think the snake himself was Wisdom. And he was going to speak to me about how this world and Life and Death work. So I guess I missed out.

The bookstore man gave me a book on reincarnation but I have not been reading that since last week. I am guessing the dream is part of that and possibly, well very likely, it is related to my fear of death which is spurred by my hypochondria in combination with the pains I experience (still not taking painkillers) from falling of my bike. Part of me thinks that I had a heart attack and that it was masked with a dream. I’m starting to wonder more and more: how does one heal from hypochondria? Sigh….

Well, I guess this dream is also part of the changes going on in me in the last months. Sobriety has me working out and thinking about ‘good and bad’, how I used to mix them up. How we (I!) live in a society which is not sustainable and very much destructive towards itself and the environment. Destructive in all fields of life; bringing up children, politics, living together, media, health and medicine, education, relations, food, agriculture, environment, business, spirituality, well, anything. I find it difficult to deal with.

I am trying not to let my own (financial) desperation seep into my view of the world but, well, somehow I feel I stand here, at the edge of society and looking and thinking: I do not want to join you, I do not want to be like that anymore, I do not want to live like that, I do not want a part in this destruction. I also know that I am a part of it and that the destruction in me is big – specifically towards myself but that well, that has to force its way to the outside too I’m guessing. And… did I, the addict, not ‘just’ design another way to ‘not fit in’ and keep my status of ‘not normal’? Or is it fear of failure which keeps me pointing fingers? Sheer laziness?

I feel the falling of my bike and the snake they are related and trying to tell me what it is I am and where I need to go. I feel I can’t deal with the truth that comes out of that. I fear that one of the conclusions is that I really need to leave the city because it is not good for me. I don’t want to move, I like my place, I have moved 25 times in my life. I do not want to move again. But I also know this environment, the neighbourhood, the flat building, it is unhealthy. It is not a ‘good’ neighbourhood but there are worse. However…. all the people circling my house have a problem with addiction. I sometimes wonder if it runs in the building or, dunno, in the ground if that is possible? Alcoholism, cocaine, pot, it’s all there and it keeps on being there because the people may move but the next one moving in has the same issues – it is unbelievable. I grew up in a green place where the next door neighbours lived 200m away. Now I am surrounded by either addicts or families who live with 5 kids on 55m2. I tried to bring the village to the city by introducing myself to my neighbours, being neighbourly, lending people stuff that I have, using my machines to repair goods for them, I organise a yearly BBQ for the street, I clean the communal garden – but it is not the same.

I am guessing if I had a job or daily responsibility for anything else next to well, myself, the house and the cat, I would not have all these worries and things would not run so deep. But I don’t. And I do think this is my path, this waking up from the craziness of our society. It feels like when the blinds about the alcohol fell away I realised what a crap I’ve been buying into. And now everything shifts. I find that difficult. My past is changing because memories come back which I, not so much relive, but I (finally) become aware of their destructive impact. My current life is changing every day because every day I get more insight in the strangeness, the addiction and destruction that run through our society. There is good too, yes, I see that, and I do realise that we are at a sort of seesaw currently so times are unstable but, well, I find it difficult.

I find it difficult and very hard to find my place in it. I don’t see an entry, anywhere. I have the idea all the doors are closed to me, only the door that says: you need to understand more, walk the spiritual path, that door is open. But what the heck do I need to do there? I don’t even know what spirituality actually means?! Again I feel I need to grow up and there is this baseball bat in my neck driving me on. I didn’t ask for f@cking snakes killing me in my dreams? I want to be normal. I want to find a place where my boat can rest, a haven, not always being out there on the sea in heavy weather doing it on my own in offline life. And I f#cking can’t even cry normally because all my chest muscles are blue and hurt from falling of my bike. I don’t want to walk this road, it is too difficult. I don’t want to feel this much and not know where to go. Next time the snake comes along he can have me.

And just when it all felt like too much to bear, the universe send me a double rainbow today. 🙂 So, well, that was nice and it, I don’t know, changed stuff. Made things less desperate and more bearable. There is always a promise in a rainbow. 🙂

After waking up from the snake dream I put my hand on the cat who was sleeping restlessly. I fell half asleep and suddenly had this belly full of kittens experience. It really felt like I was pregnant with 6 kittens and a bit restless with the upcoming birth. I guess I got into her dream. That was strange. Hope she did not experience my snake dream. Or maybe she was the snake because he kept on banging his head against mine like she does. 🙂

Well, well, a year ago I wished to become clear, to learn to see things for what they are and to become visible for who I am – without the structures that addiction, I and society build around me. I think I am getting what I wished for but might have bitten of a little more than I can chew.

I just Facebook chatted with the 19 bags of empty beer bottles friend. I said ‘Sad here because of my mothers dying day tomorrow.’ He send a :-(. I said: ‘But you can congratulate me on not drinking for a year.’ And he replied ‘I’ll drink to that.’ I am guessing I am to blame for that too, I did not fully explain the trouble I was in, just told him I had to quit drinking.

So… what did I do to cheer me up? Yes, this is the cheered up version of me today :-D. I went to see the bookstore man, spoke for an hour. I am no match for him, my god. It is so strange how this transfer of addiction into falling in love has worked. I am learning every time that I see him that I do not know shit about him. It is so strange. I think I am mostly over my acute falling in love thing but there is still this wish to impress which irritates me and, also killing: a wish to take care of him when he’s not feeling well. Funny that it is accepted when given freely, but when I notice in myself this hmmm, shifting, this, manipulation then he picks up on it immediately and gets very cross. Oooh Life. Still, thankful I am able to work this out while he is pretty much aware of it and we speak of it sometimes. I knew when I got the time to work it out I would learn a whole lot. One of the things I learned is that I immediately make some sort of bubble in which I place the other and I and then I think I know him. Set and done. I knew that if I had the time to hang around I would most obviously come to a point where the bubble would burst. It did. Well, had to several times. 😀

Ooh, continuation on the post before this one on me walking a certain old path or thinking in a certain pattern and then falling of my bike or running into pain in the tram. Well, there is an episode 3: a friend and I were on the beach and I was well, noticing, these 3 gorgeous guys in their fit and brown beach bodies playing some soccer. The ball rolled my way and I thought ‘I might as well smoothly kick it back to them’. That would have been a good idea had my toe not been broken and had I not forgotten about that. The smooth kicking was there….. and so was the pain. There I was smiling through my teeth while swearing inside and my eyes getting all watery. Yes, yes, laugh, that’s ok, my friend and I did too. 😀 I felt so ‘caught’. Ghegheghe 😀

Back home I got so frustrated that I tarot-ed (?) on ‘what about a relations for me?’ and the universe (or I?) came up with the Priestess. Not really a hopeful sign is it? Not really the partying type I would say. 😀 And the funny thing is: I would not even know how to deal with a guy and I KNOW that. The thing is: I find what I am going through so difficult that I think ‘Man’ is The Solution. Loneliness is getting to me, I am guessing also because don’t speak with my friends about addiction. The bookstore man knows, and we speak about it but I don’t regularly speak about it with anyone and I am starting to notice that this hiding is coming between me and my friends. So…  I guess it is time to come out of the closet.

Loneliness is taboo in my life. There is this voice telling me ‘you failed’, ‘nobody loves you’, ‘loneliness is just hanging over from your centre towards another person, it has nothing to do with real contact.’ And the universe provides and just brings this blog on my blog wall: http://www.ishafoundation.org/blog/lifestyle/relationships/should-you-love-yourself/  – food for thought.

It has been a year, now, Dutch clock. Last year today I went to the supermarket at around 3 in the afternoon, bought I believe 6 pints of beer and a bottle of white wine and healthy food and snacks for 3 days. I was allowed anything I would like. That day I read the last parts of the Jason Vale book and emptied all the beers and all but the last bits of the wine bottle. I was done. I looked at the last bits in the glass and thought: I don’t want you anymore. I did leave the glass standing about and I have not washed it since. It turned into fungi after a few days. I guess that is proper. I kept the glass as you can see.

I was shit scared for having a delirium, not sure if that would have been rational but ha, I’m a hypochondriac so of course I was scared shitless. I also felt I had no option: it felt like a do or die situation. Yes, yes, not without drama, I know. I did have tiny lightning things in my brain, things that felt like there was an electric shock going on in my head in the first 3-4 days. Whenever that happened I took water with Celtic salt. (Don’t try this at home) I was guessing it was caused by an electrolyte imbalance.

So I’ve made it to a year. Did I think I would get there? I knew I had to, that’s about it. I found it 1000 times easier not to drink. I am guessing that is due to

– the extensive preparation I did before getting sober, I really studied the subject
– the Bach remedies, Schuessler salts, minerals and vitamins I took to repair and quench urges.
– blogging about anything and everything to get it out of my system
– online help! Yeah! 🙂 I never thought, dared to hope, that the online community would bring about such beauty in people. Thank you with all my heart. I don’t think I could have done this without you.
– Offline help: nutritionist friend, therapist, GP(s) and of course both the book store man 1 and 2.
– books on addiction and sobriety
– the firmness of my decision to quit
– my ability (and need!) to find my own path
– being happy that I quit
– my willingness to open up and stir where it stinks (Dutch saying)
– and last but not least the free online alcohol desensitization training I did. (Yes, still promoting it, and no, still not getting commission for it ;-). If you are interested, check out the blog I did on the subject. It just brings my mind to rest when there are well, urges, tiny ones. I feel it reroutes the neurological path that would normally lead to ‘drink’ to ‘hmmm, why again?’ For me it thus prevents urges.

Ok, it is way past bedtime so here it is, in short:

I AM HAPPY THAT I QUIT. 🙂

I need; to sleep
I want: to sleep and life to be easy but then there is the bookstore man who says; ‘Do you really?’ And I know he’s right, because than I would have chosen another way. I did not.
And what I would also like is to work with an addiction specialist, or several from different fields and look at my posts from last year and have their imput. That would be cool.
I take: Today! Party!!! Lazy sushi: eco salmon and shrimps, seaweed salad, avocado and cucumber all on a plate, no fancy rolling or so. I had no place left for a choice of the 3 cheeses I bought said the Dutchy. 🙂
On discipline: no clue, hoping to work on that with my therapist when he’s back from holiday
3 Things:
– 1 year sober. Crying now. Wow!
– my cat
– I, I did it. MOM!!! I DID IT!!!!!! DID YOU SEE?

Eight years ago this date my mother asked the GP to end her life. That is legal in the Netherlands, under strict rules including evidence of needless suffering and checks from several doctors. My mothers cancer had spread through her body fully. She would have lived possibly another week if she had not asked for euthanasia. I am glad for her she did. She asked me on her deathbed to go easy on the beer.

Bye mom. I still miss you every day. I find it so difficult.