My fight with sugar has brought me to what I feel is the main issue of my addictive personality; self-hatred. I feel so awful that I have difficulty leaving the house because I feel everybody has the right to hurt me. This is comparable to the mode I walked around when experiencing what I call my rock-bottom before quitting drinking.
A lot of my behaviour is comparable too. Not opening my mail, not taking care of stuff, not taking care of myself. Hiding for other people. Cancelling appointments with friends over a ‘headache’. The headache is real all right… I just wonder why it leaves immediately after I cancel the appointment. 
No actually, I do not wonder.
I think that I, even though I have 3 years plus of sobriety, have not made certain steps. Haha, no pun intended but actually, this is what it comes down to: I have not worked through issues which would have been addressed if I had done some sort of program. I think to know by now that I would not have succeeded in staying sober if I would have had to deal with others including mentoring. So in a way that is good. But now I feel I need to do more. It is time to do more.
On the interwebs I read somebody protesting against the idea of being powerless towards alcohol. I have always very much disliked this notion and in a rather slippery way transformed this thought to ‘I am powerless when alcohol is in my body, I am not powerless over it getting into my body’. Which is very much true. It also is a way for me to exactly NOT realise that I have experienced powerlessness in my life and I do not want to be reminded of that again. People who push the issue of powerlessness therefore are immediately archenemies. Because that is what any person did who violated my boundaries; make me feel powerless on purpose. So 12 steps was never considered.
Not sure how to bridge to the following paragraph but I have written illogical stories before so here I go. 😉 Today I FINALLY tried an excercise called ‘feeding your demons‘. The title might be a little misleading, it is about feeding and, well, hugging lost parts of the self which have turned against what we consider to be our daily self. Aah, here is the link: I felt so powerless that I stood with the back to the wall and could not do anything else but face the facts.
It is difficult. I do not want to accept I hate myself. I prefer to deny it so I can experience it less. But the shadow walking next to me has become too strong. Even now my heart is pounding like crazy and tears are streaming. Thinking of you reading this. Feeling like you would all be saying: “I knew she was not worth it. Being all stuck up and know it all, ha! Now look at how miserable she really is.”
No, I do not expect you to really say that. Or if you do, you do. These are ‘just’ projections of mine. It tells me how I think and feel about myself. I had a short talk with that part today. Here is how it went.
“I hate you! I HATE YOU!!! YOU RUINED EVERYTHING FOR ME!!! My whole life! Ever since you were born I hate you. You are exactly what makes my life unbearable. You are so unfinished, so incomplete, so utterly boundaryless, so disgustingly physical that NOBODY LOVES YOU! And because of you they do not like me either!!! I HATE YOU!! You are one big open wound, everybody sees that you are strange and everything can touch you and hurt you and I have to live with that! It is all your fault!”
“I am listening.” (and crying, can’t breathe, throwing up)
“You think everybody has hurt you but it is because you are so stupid!!! You do not listen to yourself!!! You always knew when the trouble came and you never listened. It is your own fault!!! You hurt me!!!”
“I had no clue….”
“That is NOT TRUE!!!”
“I, I don’t know what to say, I always knew. But I did not know how to act. I was scared. I thought that if I stood up for myself they would hurt me more. I knew that if I would run they would like that.”
“But you knew up front. And you were curious.”
“I was in love.”
“You mixed up love with power. You fancied the darkness of them, that is what attracted you.”
“Yes. And then I got caught up in a destructive game which I did not know how to end or escape.”
“I warned you over and over again.”
“I heard you. I did not believe it. I did not want to believe it was this dark.”
“You are stupid. You just emit sex because that is who you are and everybody knows that. They see it, they feel it. That is why you got harassed 5 times on an evening. That is why the women at your workplaces were after you. They pick up on that. And because you do not recognise it they will make you.”
“What can I do to change this?”
“Close yourself off for fuck’s sake and shut up!!”
And then the ‘other me’ let me feel my lack of energetic boundaries to the outside world and it is painful. Somehow my control issue popped up, the part where I intervene in other people’s life no matter if something is my issue, no matter if it is relevant. Tried to feel through that. It is difficult. I realise that I do so to control my surroundings. Again experiencing that I put myself out of my core, continuously scanning my borders for dangers. While if I were to stay ‘inside’ myself, I would feel way more grounded and most likely would not have to be so aggressive and intervening towards others.
I did not get further than this. The idea behind feeding your demons is that you get to talk with them and then come to integrate them. Obviously that did not happen but I now know better what parts of me dislike about parts of me. 😦 I am still fighting the idea that I myself am responsible for what happened to me. Not sure if I should go along with this thought; if it were somebody else saying this I would answer that it is blaming the victim. On the other hand, I should not deny the fact that I often knew upfront things would go wrong. I ‘just’ got so sucked into it and did not know how to refers it. It is like a black hole. Aaah, like being born; nowhere to go but into that painful tunnel of life and death.
Like the time my brother and I got threatened to be killed by a guy with a knife. I was 4 or 5 I believe. I knew from a distance which felt like 500m (550 yard) that these older kids were trouble. I just did not know how to stop it. Sucked into a black hole. And my brother would not believe me anyhow. Looking back the distance must have been no more than 200 m (220 yards) because the park was not that big, but still. These vibes. I was like a rabbit looking in the headlights of the oncoming car. Does anybody with situations of abuse/aggression in their past recognise this?
I wonder why the word ‘just’ pops up so often… there is something about this, I have written something about it somewhere, it is important. It might be because it is dismissive, or in speech I try to jump over something by using the word ‘just’. I can not understand it now.
Things are sore at this end of the wire. My whole body feels like an open wound. But somehow some of the weight is off my shoulders. Funny. I would not have thought that. Parts of the first paragraph of my conversation with the demon are gathered from things my mother expressed to me. She did so publicly. My father then dragged him away and she scratched his face open. All my fault. She blamed me for developing cancer. I must have been 13 or 14, possibly 15. My heart hurts. Years later, when I threw that back at here in the same company as earlier she denied everything fiercely while my brother and father backed me up. She totally panicked. I remember we had all been drinking, not sure if that is true. It has been true for a lot of bad family gatherings though.
And now, here I am, partially feeling sorry for myself, partially happy because I faced this part of me, let some air in even though I realise things are still festering. Not knowing how to continue. Well, ha, I do know how to close myself off actually. Or I know I can learn because I know I can get to the feeling where I prefer to live in this openness. I ‘just’ don’t want to. I feel locked up. Trapped. It makes me realise I am alive. I don’t want to be alive. When I am alive I need to be responsible and I can get hurt and criticised. Shit I’m lazy…. This eternal heaven of being in the womb calls to me.
Ok next thought: I try to perfect my work mode so I do not have to work on me internally. I ‘just’ (?) forced myself to live with the idea of working on this difficult part of closing myself energetically and guess what: “If you want to do that, that is ok, but then we move to a place where this is possible.” Meaning a natural place in a natural society with… nature, not a crowded city which only develops neuroses and unhealthy coping mechanisms in people. Interesting. Funny what comes up when I listen. Not sure how to change this in my life though.
Well, that was quite an experience.
The business plan contest people do not pick up the phone (called about 8 times) and do not answer my e-mails. According to the online program the first group of possible winners has already started a boot camp so I guess… I’m not in. Shame. Possibly. I have not been working on my project or anything these days. I have been crushed by self-hatred. The issue of issues. 😦
I am happy that I quit drinking in a very dark way. I would not have lived anymore. Not sure if that is such a loss but imagine if I had been drinking and felt so bad there would be no way out at all. Currently I also think there is not much difference between being death and alive. I fear that dying just (?) means I have to do the same stuff somewhere else, but without the body. Aah, bother. And now, no matter how hard it is, I could possibly find a ‘way out’. 🙂 Said the addict. Always, always looking for the way out. 🙂
It is time for progress because this trampling in the dark is making my heart wear out.
I hope you are happy that you quit. 🙂 A woman who loves herself would possibly show compassion. I also think she would help the little kid to learn boundaries and self-preservation. My mother did not allow me boundaries when it came to self preservation. Literally not. That time where she said she would protect me from the friends of my brother and then forced me to undress in front of them. And later, when I asked her for help when they attacked me again, with the special words we had worked out between the two of us, she brushed me off, telling me not to bother her. How do I live with that? I feel very destructive currently. No wonder I think people ridicule me when I ask for help. That has been the real experience. And it has all settled as patterns in my behaviour. And, like my mom, I learned to take the only way left out: becoming ill, becoming soft, weak, depressed, overworked and alcoholic. Patterns.
Ha, this is a very uplifting post, not? Ghegheghe…. sigh…. so….. who am I without my story? Without all the patterns I looked for, accepted or got put on me? This immense need for drama, the eternal continuation of fight-flight-freeze patterns in my life. Can I do without? I’m guessing they give me an idea of boundaries. The fog around the black hole. Which, in practise is not possible but, well, as an image it suffices.
Ok: I actually do think that patterns and the related e-motions (that what sets me in motion) have been uncovered. And no matter how dark this post, actually, within that darkness I feel more free and more safe because I do not need to live in denial about my self hate anymore. I do not have to use all this force to ‘not know’. Not sure how to continue but I guess thing will enfold. Let go and let god. 🙂 And work on what I can do. Like meditating. I have been doing so for 20 plus minutes every morning for 1,5 months now. Guess all this darkness turning to light stems from that.
There ar loads of things I can do. Trying to empower myself here, never works somehow 😀 Aah ja, again, I can only do stuff with my back to the wall. Well, rock-bottom is a solid ground to build on and I guess I will choose this way of learning untill the pain of doing it so gets greater than the assumed advantages. I still can not force me to do stuff. Will power = zilch. Aaah yeah, I can try the ‘what would a woman who loves herself do?’ track more often. Things went well for me when I did that.
Ok! If you got this far: thanks for reading and being with me in my dark hours. If you skipped to the last paragraph: I understand. :-D.
A woman who loves herself would allow herself to love herself.
“I am sorry I hate you.”
“I am sorry I did not take better care of you.”
xx, Feeling & shadow
feelingmywaybackintolife 