Life is getting serious

So… I finally woke up from my whatever induced coma in which I have been swiming the last year – I am thinking it was denial induced. So now I am panick strikken? Is that word? I can’t breathe, my heart is pounding, I can’t think. My left arm hurts so badly that I woke up 10 times at night minimum for the last week. I’m so tired. Going to my homeland and attending the funeral of my SIL’s mother did take its toll too. A card with her photo is here on my table. This woman has such a bad start with losing her mom in early childhood, an alcoholic father, neglect and poverty, later in life she lost 2 children and a grandson who lived with her and she still continued. She was a very strong and gentle woman. I feel such a loser in comparison to the rest of the world. And still I hear her word in my head ‘No, that is not true.’ She just continued. I want what she could.

Right at this moment my next door neighbour leaves her house, coughing with a bad smokers cough. She drinks like crazy, crazy, like worse than I ever did but still holds down a job in the restaurant business and is able to pay her bills. Sometimes I wonder if she’s better of than I am. 😦

So yes, I have not ‘moved on’ after quitting drinking. I have done a LOT of things, but not moved on. And when you stand still while time is moving…. one day you (I!) find that you (I!!) are (am) way behind. Bills are piling up, some are overdue, rent for several months is overdue. Money is running short.

Facebook reads: Remember; ‘You can’t reach what is in front of you if you do not let go of what is behind you.’

So where does that leave me? Not sure. I have some ideas on work and income but first I need to deal with my arm because the pain does not allow me to think straight – and the tension of not thinking straight and my situation put the stress and pain there in the first place. I do not dare to take painkillers often – I know me, they spoke to me. Which is funny because I can take Bach remedies with alcohol and they do not call me but the painkillers do. However, I’m currently making a sweater out of a woolen blanket with extra layers of wool where the pain is so I walk around like a Michelin man all day. That is step 1. Self care. Eventhough I feel I do not deserve it. No, not true, I am perfectly fine on myself – it is in relation to others that I feel ashamed and feel I need to answer their questions and be what I think they want me to be. I so wish I could isolate just a little longer. And then again: alcoholism is a disease of isolation.

On that topic: I have now told a few people around me that I had to quit drinking but I’m guessing I still do this ‘speaking just exactly next to the real issue’ where I emphasise that I quit, rather than ‘I had difficulty’ with it. And that it worked, rather than that I had known all my life that I would become addicted. So…. eventhough some people know…. they do not react as if they realise what it means. Last weekend my SIL offered me a glass of wine…. I mean? How strange is that? I do realise that she had just lost her mother and might have been in her polite mode but for me it was rather strange. Saying ‘no thank you’ and thinking ‘da fack did I tell you for?!!?!?!’. Again I feel that because I am not being 100% honest about this I am not getting the support I sometimes hope for. Or people are just stupid. That’s another option. Or they don’t care.

Or, as my GP says: you have no entry for anybody to give you support, you do not look like you need support and you do not accept it.   I can’t, I do not have a face for asking for help – litterally. Because I find that I do not have the right to do so I can not ask for it honestly and my face shows that I think I am fooling the other with asking for it. As if I am faking it. So I go back to my control mode and ask something businesswise and I get businesswise support. I am guessing this is a subject ‘taking off the mask’ would know lots about. You there?

So… life is getting serious. Life started to get serious with the bookstore man happening of the last post. And that left me lost and lonely, which, eventhough it does not feel good, is a place I guess had to find to experience what I had projected onto him. I now know that this disconnect from the world and people around me is a major thing in my addiction and it is difficult to accept – since I think to know I am actually weird for real. As in ‘I wonder if aliens know they are alien’ weird. Maybe it is good enough for now to realise that this assumption/fact determines my life. I do not trust that people will like me. Ever. When they do I assume they will turn against me sooner or later. There is another thing I discovered over the bookstore man happenings: I tend to choose guys who exactly do not like me enough to accept me or love me. I feel with that I re-enact the relation to my parents. I would say mother but my father was no different, only he came to be like that later – in my experience.

My photo book from baby-todler time has all these comments to them ‘she is very nice about this and this BUT…..’, ‘she learned this and this quickly BUT….’, ‘she is very sociable then and then but when……’, ‘she is very good in this BUT her brother is even….’ All these comparisons and all these moments where I was exactly not good enough. Not failing all over but exactly missing something that could be pointed at. There is always this ‘hand on the wallet’ which is a Dutch saying for, well it possibly explains itself. It might sound funny but to me it feels like in no situation energy may flow. And it is exactly how I treat myself and others. I find it very indicative that it shows up here because I am guessing that when my father wanted to get away from my mother he would spend money, shitloads of it on things which he would like. Oooh, these fights used to be so ugly. I am starting to understand that this was indeed revenge. It is like when I worked this 60 hours a week for this one company I would specifically use products of the competitor in the weekend just to prove that I was having time off.

So, went to see my therapist (hi!) twice in the last weeks. It was good to see him. It is good to be able to speak openly and from the heart about things that I find ugly in me and not have them being met by judgement. It is also funny that I notice now how I have changed. I used to go along with a lot of things because I felt ashamed and guilty over drinking. Now I tend to say no to things that feel like saying no. It is easier to be honest about things, so he knows what page I’m on. I want to develop that for the rest of my social life as well. I think. Might not have a social life left when/if I do so :-D. Then again, I find that things in relations go wrong because most people do not say no at the moment things go wrong in the first place. It is only afterwards find out that they actually did not go along and then realise how much they disliked stuff that they react and overdo stuff.

Once I had an ‘epiphany’ that the bookstore man and I had something to sort out there. I had this ‘clear’ view that we needed to work out 4 things between us – as in the reasons why we have met: addiction, speaking our minds and hearts, man-woman thing in a different way – not the usual like->sex route, and this fascination subject of communication and telepathy. We used to go to this place where people speak and the words are just the carriers for the energy and meaning of them easily and quickly. That place where a state of mind or being can be expressed by a subtle moving of the body or a gesture. Or maybe I was stoned too. 😀 No, actually, this is exactly what I like about the bookstore man – this specific trait / ability which made me decide: ‘I do not want to have to ly to this man’ when I met him. The therapist also said: when you lose somebody you need to be on your own what you were together. Or as my hairdresser said about countless pre-decessors: What does he have that you want? Why do you not have that in you?…. Because I think you do.

When I say ‘I do not want to ly’ it might asume that I go about the world lying to people. I don’t, this was about drinking and having to stop but also about daring to show the darkest side of me. Which I did. Which…. indeed I do know is not the best way to ‘hit’ on somebody but there obviously is a difference between wish and execution. Suspecting that this whole episode is ‘just’ ‘another’ transfer of addictions made me decide to do things differently. And ghegheghe, I was not past my 1 year, and he was/is in a relation and I am too fat anyhow so… NO GO, so I might as well experiment with honesty. And I did. And he thought it made me a coaching project. How quaint? Not! Ghegheghe…. Le sigh….

Aaah, the therapist advised me not to ditch the bookstore man. Now THAT is new. The reasoning being: you learn a lot from contact with him. Which is true. And bwahahahahahaaaaaa, I just love the lack of PCness in that. ‘Go meet the addict, it is teaches you.’ Which is true. I just need to let the dust settle and see if and how. And the dust is not settling easily. The air has not been cleared so; no entry. Which is ok, I need to do life stuff. Not addiction transfer stuff. And I actually think it is time for him to say sorry, and if he does not, will not or can not, there is little reason to continue anything because I may be a lot of things – but if somebody looks at me only as a (failed?) coaching project while I was there thinking we were giving friendship a try (while knowing I was in love and not making an issue out of that, more a learning experience) then… well…. Or maybe that is in itself totally not possible. He says he has been honest. I think that is not true. It does not matter a lot because the effect is the same (he’s not interested and I would not be buying when offered) but it is not true.

That is what hurts me most I guess, that he does not go to the trouble of really speaking the truth which in my idea is: ‘I used to be interested sometimes, but not anymore and my perspectives have changed which make me see you differently and less interesting which suddenly means that dealing with you takes energy where it used to give me energy. And yes I have used your interest in me to ask you to do stuff for me and I had doubts about that but I am at wits end so I could not afford to not accept these.’ All of which is ok. I have done things for him not as a true gift but to be off the streets and also to just to see how far he would go with asking while knowing what he did was corrupt. Is either of that correct? No, but it is very human. And I wish we could have been honest about that too. One day I’ll tell him if I get the chance, if there is a one day, if on that one day I still find it important.

So what have I learned? That I am corrupt. I was not so corrupt that I claimed the dinner he promised because I knew I would not be able to handle that. I learned that ‘being in love’ for me is about missing what the other brings to the table. So when I was with the bookstore man I was, say 98% of the time not in love. It would only be when I would leave when I would be reminded of the emptiness of my house that I thought he would be an answer to that. I have never been very proud of that ‘man as solution’ but have not found another answer to that. Apart from learning to stand on my own two feet. All this hanging over, being out of my centre, it is so tiring. I mean, I assume you get tired over reading this. I LIVE it daily! Blegh!

What else did I learn: that indeed for me falling in love is a transfer of addiction. But I believe I said that before. Most of the projections onto The Other are only partially based on anything excisting in the other and therefor not all too personal.

I also learned that, no matter the hours I put in doing work for the bookstore, I still feel that ‘love’ is about me. Yes, sorry. :-(. Very, very, very few times I really, really wonder what he would think, feel, know about me. There’s where projections come in handy. :-D. Projections just fix that hole in reality. I actually think that this is a very important discovery. Yeah, well obviously…. 😉 But in general, how much do we (I!!) fill in for the other: I think that you think… without even checking or being aware of the filling in.

Enough of this. Time to go to bed.

On addiction: life sucks currently but hey, I am happy that I quit because no way do I want to go through all of this ever again. Finding out this stuff which is so, well, would pathetic be a good word? It is painful and I NEED to learn, NOT drink it away or get into another addiction to make it go away.

On discipline: little, planning stuff but not doing it yet, I am doing other stuff like self care stuff and cleaning and walking.

I need: to get a move on but DAMN!!! there are all these different worlds and I can not deal with them all at the same time. I have fallen out of the structure of the normal world and it is so difficult to go back and actually from where I stand, I am not sure if I want to go back because I feel I do not belong there anymore. 😦 With the non sensing, non feeling, non addicted, hard working normies.

Aah, I need to learn to feel, get info out of that and handle or deal with that. What I have been doing in the last year is letting my feelings determine everything. That has long ago gotten out of hand and now I need to get a grip on that again. I can not ‘just do’ that. But I can….. do it by learning how to separate me from what I am feeling. Look at feelings as looking at ships pass by on the ocean, clouds in the sky. Whatever it is, see it as information, not a world to get lost in. Which… now I realise how I do that, feels like just another addiction. The feeling is ok. The wanting to get lost is the addiction. Ghegheghe… this is eh…. going to be difficult. Or easy. Well, it is on the path so it is The Path. Maybe use my egg timer to make me aware of needing to differentiate between what I (think I) am and what I feel. Egg timers rock.

I want: to win the lottery / escape / for all of this not to be real and true and life to be simple. I want to be mailed tomorrow for a nice 3 days research/teaching/writing job.

I take: Schuessler salts for the tendon infections and knotted muscles in my arm. Chocolate – which I guess is not helping with the infections. Somewhere parts of me are getting bored with it. Still not eating meat, that somehow fell out of my diet without me really noticing it.

What do I need to get to work and money: I still feel I need to answer this with ‘time’. Not ready. But I could be ready when the structure is offered. I do however not feel I can create the structure. And I have of course as a self employed bossy person, always created the structure myself. Which, I guess, is one of the reasons why I drank so much. Making structure binds me to this world where I prefer not to be. Drinking cut me loose. This not wanting to be here in this world keeps on returning. I still have not incarnated. Not sure how to ‘tackle’ that. It is another one of those basic ‘assumptions’ or feelings which shape my life. ‘I don’t want to be here’, ‘I am strange’, ‘People do exactly not really want me.’ (they might not know it yet but they will chuck me out). I actually believe that and tend to act upon it allthough lately I have discovered that there are parts of me which want to really be there for other people. Hmmm, NEW!!! But to those like my family; all I feel about it is guilt towards them. That I keep on continuing this charade. Hmmm…. time for bed. This is getting too dark. Sleep = good.

Hope you have a nice sober (?) evening, day. If you are not sober: you might give it a try because ghegheghe…. it is pretty informative. Fun sometimes, difficult most of the time but informative. Information, said the therapist, opens. Which I think, is why learning is so important otherwise I keep on getting stuck and I truely want to free myself. No I don’t; I would not know what to do with me if I were free. Hmmm. That is information too. That would be a good motor for loooooong looooooong moaning posts. 😦

Bedtime. No spell check.

xx, Feeling