Today I continued reading the book and re-read the part which upset me earlier. I found that I was ‘on track’ with feeling into the matter and ‘becoming one with the message’ when the book said something about ‘I could not make a decision if I wanted A or B.’ and that is where I stepped of the track. Not sure how other people experience book reading but I like to, as I said, become one with the message; breathe in the meaning, the feeling of the text. And then when there is something that blocks inside I can feel it in my body, it is like the cloud of energy which is normally a stream, then suddenly does not want to pass through my stomach, or into my right leg. Or my throat gets all tense. That’s when I know something is up and I have to slow down and pay attention. How DO other people do that?
This one I missed because ‘I was in the right’; not being able to make a decision is stupid. Yup, sorry to the world. It is so again, funny in a not funny way, how we (i) think that having opinions on something is important, of essential to living, while actually it keeps me away from exploring and perceiving what actually is out there.
It is like quitting drinking. I was all anxious about ‘will I miss it?’ and ‘I am going to fail sooooooo badly’ that I could not continue. Then I realised that when I think I will fail, I will automatically diminish all the options in which I do not. I will not believe those. My energy will be focussed on fearing that I will fail so I will be watching out extra for signs that prove I will fail. And while doing so I am already one foot into the trap of alcohol because I am not focussing on being happy that I quit, I am focussing on that failing. And as you know with driving a car through a narrow street: don’t look at the parked cars or you will steer into them, look at the road and the open space. Or:
I am not one of those positivity persons (ooh, gosh, you noticed?!) but yes, it can be wise to pay attention to what you fear, expect and hope. Those 3 are fundamental and sometimes detrimental in how things play out.
Ooh, the hug-buddy has decided he misses me so badly and he physically deteriorates so quickly that he needs to be hugged. By me that is. My inner floozy said yes. To tea. Not sure about the hugging and not at all sure about the sexy hugging. This is new territory for me and I find that I am not dealing well. I feel this is a new addiction. Maybe I should get a book…. 😀
Ooh, on that topic: yesterday I deleted a sentence in my writing which I did not want to have true. Yup. Sorry :-(. I was upset and my reaction was to think that I should read something about a specific topic, something on addiction of the society by A. Schaef. Most interesting. I had a title in mind and went looking for it on Amazon, and then on Dutch shops. But I deleted the literal sentence ‘I need to buy a book’ from my post. Low and behold: here comes Wendy and she comments: “I need to buy a book.”. The truth is out there and it will smack you in the face, shit on your porch or be way nicer and drop by with the Wendy express service. 🙂 <3. I deleted the sentence because lately I literally go buy books when I am upset. Splitting up with the hug-buddy cost me 53 Euro on books. I do have the money but it is not a good idea to spend that kind of money if I do not know where next months’ money will be coming from. I did not want to have that true. I deleted the sentence and told myself that it ‘would confuse you to have so many subjects in one post’. Same shit, different day. THANK GOD it is books and not booze.
Ok, where did I trail off? Aah, yeah, opinions blocking experiences. So I found that I ridiculed the indecisiveness of the woman in the book and that put me on the trail of hate and self-hate. I am not able to be indecisive. In my mind indecisiveness is for sissies who will not survive this life. “Make up your mind! I haven’t got all day! If you don’t make up your mind right now you are not getting anything at all! And no! No whining! Ok! You don’t want anything?! Then we go. Nope, you did not decide from which I conclude that you do not want anything.” WHOAH! And the connection to survival is amazing too ‘they will not survive this life’. Well, we all leave here in a coffin. Guessing this is strongly related to the biblical story of the 6 stupid maiden and the 6 wise maiden. Guess it is called differently, and maybe they were 12 and 12. 🙂 Our noses were rubbed in this story, combined with ‘guilty ignorance’. “There is no such thing as ‘I did not know!’ YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!!” And that people, is how you make kids who struggle with perfection.
All this darkness stored in one body. I don’t want that anymore. Everything I do not uncover, bring into the light, will live in the darkness in me and it will fester and I will spread it unconsciously. That is how projecting, transference works. 😦
I picked up the ‘There is nothing wrong with you.’ book again and got to read another 1,5 page untill I got stuck in me again. Not sure what that was about. I was fed up with getting stuck so I Netflixed it all away.
I am grateful that I have given myself the opportunity to see life from a not drinking standpoint. Lately I am confronted with so much of my addictive behaviour like chocolating, Netflixing and self-hating behaviour that I do not feel ‘sober’. I have a problem with calling myself sober. Feels like I am lying. This one is difficult to bear because the addict within pops up saying: “Well, if you do not call yourself sober, you might as well drink.” I have a persistent, astute, sharp-eyed addict within who is too smart for my own good. But then again, if he were any less cunning and in my face, I would have underestimated him. Hmm… funny, creating my own matching demon and then wrestling it. Wonder what a psychiatrist would say about that. 😀
I am however grateful that I quit drinking. And also that the Dutch government gives me the possibility on being at home on sick-leave. I have not heard from them. That is ok for me because I am not ready to get out there again. I have the feeling I need to undo myself of some more onionrings or I will walk into the same shit again.
I think I have come to the point where I can say that for me, with my addictive personality and the way my body reacts to things I can not be emotionally sober without quitting sugar. As far as I know myself I can not do the in-between, I always do ‘yes’ or ‘no’. typical addict trait, typical trait of a person with vanishing twin syndrome.
I do not have it in me to stop right now I think. But I will continue this because I need 100% of me for my project. So I will continue to deal as I started when quitting drinking: Keep on writing down the questions that come up. Try to find answers to what is most pressing. Breaking things up into small bite size pieces. ‘How to stop drinking / quit eating sugar?’ becomes:
How can I stop drinking? I don’t know.
How would I learn? -> I would ask somebody who has stopped drinking. Or people who tell others how to stop drinking.
I don’t know where to find these people? -> Google Is Your Friend.
But then my computer history is going to be about drinking and I don’t want that to be so obvious. -> How do I delete / turn of the internet surf history -> Ask your teenage boy/girl…. 😉 or the help page of your browser.
Ooh my, there are so many organisations. Where do I go? -> write down what you like, go with your gut feeling or sort on price or Google for ‘compare detox centres’ or something like that.
Hey, there are several way to deal with quitting drinking. How do I choose? -> Inform yourself well and given time you will come up with what suits you best.
And in the whole process things like this pop up: There are organisations which help people. Do I need help? NO!!! At which moment I think to notice self-sabotage. So: ok, is that true? If I look at it from the outside it is probably not true. But I don’t want to get help because it will make me feel addicted and I do no want that? Am I addicted? How much do other people drink? (Google is your friend) What is a safe maximum of drinks. Oooh, 14, that is ok, I only do X. Ooh! 14 Is per week. Aaah…. Hmmm Ok. I need some time to adjust here. Let’s take a …. oh no… Gosh! I might actually have a problem?!
Googling stuff works, but sometimes also brings one further from home than is functional. And specifically being open to examine the internal sabotage helps immensely. Then at some point things fall into place. And with that; keep on starting over and over and over again till you are where you need to be.
Or as they say 😉
But hey!
And at some point the shit that weighs you down will not allow you to feel like there is a future. It is important to deal with shit in your life. Also, it is important to ever when you are ready, realise that you ARE not the shit in your life. You are NOT what happened to you.
Nobody ever woke up saying: “I want to be an addict.”. Ever.
I realise that if I ‘just’ quit sugar I would safe myself a whole lot of time. 😀 Not sure if I can. Not pushing. I am pushing the no chocolate to a certain extend but not the no sugar. Yet.
I am very happy that I quit. Specifically now I feel progress within me again. 🙂
A woman who loves herself would go do what she planned to do. 🙂
Wanting to say thank you to you all who have supported me in that dark period last week. I have learned a lot:
What other people say and do belongs to them. I do not have to take it in. I can listen and then decide wether or not to do something with it.
My boss is manipulative, mean and destructive. That is what she is. I need to take that seriously and not ‘hope’ that it may be different. Next to that she is also very nice, when it suits her. I do not have to change her. I do not have to take care of others. I only have to take care of myself.
Asking for help when in trouble is a good thing.
I need to remember my tools when I’m in a shitty situation. That is when I feel I don’t have a right to take care of me.
I have a pattern of beating myself up when I do something not to my liking. Beating myself up is not useful. I NEED to learn to also ask WWAWWLHD when in trouble.
There is a difference between pampering and taking care of myself. Chocolate does not equal care.
I have, in the last months, I guess ever since I quit seeing the bookstore man, stopped with ‘being aware’. I have been eating chocolate and dates, Facebooking, WordPressing and Netflixing. All to be ‘not aware’ of what I feel, of what is going on. I fear that being aware will kill me. But like alcohol, I realise now it is the not being aware that will get to me in the end. I obviously do not lack a sense of drama so to me thinking about changing this attitude feels as big as quitting alcohol. But my goal with quitting beer was to become clear. That includes quitting the other addictive behaviours.
Sometimes it feels like I am so close and other times I drown myself in stupidity. Today I was SO fed up with the dirty state of my house that I cleaned. Wow, that took a long, long time and I am not totally done yet. Every time I wanted to quit and eat chocolate I asked myself WWAWWLHD? And she would clean because she felt bad about an unclean house. 🙂 The whole ‘WWAWWLHD’ is such an eye opener! And ooh yeah, off topic: Teal Swan, the woman who introduced me to the question and who used it for herself for a year, is getting married today. 🙂
I think it has to do with allowing myself to choose for myself. Allowing myself to close off the rest of the world and take care of me. Allowing myself to take care of me. Period. Because I used to think that I was not worth taking care of. I still do, sometimes. But I am starting to realise that taking care of me is the ‘only way out’. 🙂 (Once an addict, always an addict, always wanting ‘out’.) But I guess this is the good way out, because it goes in.
I need to remember: pampering and selfsedating with chocolate and Netflix does not equal caring. I find it hard to step out of (old) patterns. It seems to me that only setting the egg-timer to check up on me works and hanging these ’tiles’ – post-its with questions on my screen and in the toilet helps. How do you do that?
I am HAPPY that I quit in a tired way but realising I would probably not be alive if I had kept drinking. So I guess that is good because I was/am not ready to die yet. 🙂
WWAWWLHD? She would go to bed. Again, no spell check. And yes that might mean that there are strange sentences too, but if I go reading back I will spend another half an hour explaining, thinking, writing. Don’t want that.
Thank you all for reading 🙂 Love to hear how you deal with changing (old) patterns.
Wow! I/We did something wonderful! The friend (hi!) I did not spend Christmas with and I spoke about what had happened. That was a very intense but clarifying (phone) conversation. Works out that both of us were playing out our patterns simultaneously. As a result we both spend a miserable lonely Christmas because we did not speak our minds, stepped into a ‘You see, they don’t love me’ pattern and it went downhill from there.
The conversation left me at peace and partially shattered from realising how strong these destructive patterns are. But it was good. I’m thinking the dust still needs to settle a little inside me because the concept of showing the dark parts of my heart after feeling hurt is still new. BUT I DID IT!!!! Yeah!
Whenever I feel mistreated by somebody I either tell them straight away or… when things really touch the soft places I go into hiding and disconnect immediately. I am pretty good at disconnecting. From one second to the other I decided never to see my father again and I (almost) never looked back. I am…. starting to see that this is a little bit strange. I guess this ‘skill’ of disconnecting did help me with alcohol. So it is not all bad, but still, it needs looking into.
The book ‘Puer Aeternus’ which covers the depth psychological aspects of people with the ‘Forever Young’ or ‘Peter Pan’ complex says exactly this about the PA; cutting off relations with the easy of turning of a tab. They add that the PA does not fully address issues in a relation and then ‘just’ cuts it off in an overdose of decision-making hormones. Well, I am glad this has worked for me with alcohol. I think start to understand that it is not how I want to deal with people. I want to be clear while dealing with people, no hidden agenda’s or corrupt intentions, so I do not want to leave people in the dark on how I am. (Might need to work out how this does not work at the workspace yet.)
I do realise this disconnecting thing might sound very autistic to some (most?) (ALL?!) of you. When I read it back it reads so lonely to me, so, like I do not only remove that which hurts from my environment but also cut off me. And I had never realised that. Yes, yes, and again that is a very self-centred argumentation. So, food for thought and feel.
Work is getting serious. I’ve visited the dentist and he stuffed me with this painkiller and blegh, even after 4 days my jaw is still stiff and painful from the treatment. I start to dislike dentists for a whole different reason; being disrespectful. I knew I was walking in the ‘wrong’ ‘stream’ but lying in that chair informed me of that very well. The dentist started off with saying: “I will start now, if you experience anything or want to stop for whatever reason, does not have to be big, just raise your left hand and I will stop immediately, no questions asked.”
So he started and at some point I raised my hand because something he did hurt unnecessarily in a place where I was not anaesthetised and he growled; “Not now, I’m busy.” I felt 4, 8, 12 years old all over again. Patterns, patterns, patters. 😦
Just another reason extra to deal with my chocolate addiction. Well, back to work: my head is vague because of the things I was thinking of and because of the painkiller. So I made some mistakes that were, well, pretty stupid. One of the guys, he’s the youngest and ‘lowest in rank’ in his henhouse version of the company tried taking it out on me. That was uncomfortable.
I had this awful feeling like he thought he could throw me about because I am the newest and I’m guessing me being female has something to do with it. He’s one of the guys with 1 wife and a girlfriend. Luckily I knew very well what to say to him and did not get skitterish even though he kept on trying to push me about. The other day he pushed me away from a new job somebody was teaching me and he send me on a stupid cleaning job because I ‘was too slow and he would fix it all in no time’. Works out the next day that he only did half of the to do list leaving his colleagues’ to have to fetch things in a hurry to catch up. Yes, well, that is how I can do stuff quickly too. 😦
It seems that things are entering a new phase and politics are becoming important. It is funny to notice how the atmosphere of the work floor changes with people being present or absent. Every team combination has its own feel and work speed and issues. Unbalance or even the tiniest discord in the team, which is present, spoken or silent, causes mistakes and slows down the process. A workload of say a 1000 pieces can be done easily and in no time by the one team and takes 1 extra hour and a lot of effort in the other team. So no, I’m not bored yet. 🙂 And I will be working 4 days a week from now on with one series of 3 days in a row. See how that turns out.
Yesterday I went to see the bookstore man. He’s very much in love with this ideal women and I got uncomfortable listening to it. Not so much because he was confiding in me (making things clear?) but because I notice that me being in love with him corrupts me. The other week I noticed that I backed away from speaking my heart and mind because I did not want to inform him that I was still in love with him. Yesterday I did not want to have that in the way anymore so I told him that I was, at times, still very much in love with him. He was sort of surprised, or polite enough to act surprised, not sure. He asked “But is it not very difficult for you to listen to me speaking about X?” I replied that being happy for him and sad for me are different things. This, at that moment was true. Looking back I’m thinking ‘I should get a medal for that martyr dom.’ (insert derisive swearword) 😦 And…. because I don’t want to sound (or be?) jealous, I do not speak my mind and tell him about transfer addiction and how falling in love with him worked as another ‘go to’ place when booze was absent. I realise now that if we would have been friends I would have informed him of that. I would also inform him of the signs I see in her behaviour that makes me think he has, again, found himself another abusive, men-eating witch.
So yes, I am corrupted and I do not like it. I’m thinking of writing it all out. See where it ends up. I want to get on with my life, get that part back that is trying to deal with this while not actually dealing with it. I also told him that being in love for me did not feel like ‘voluntary’ and that I knew very well that, apart from him not being interested, I ‘can not afford him.’ We also spoke about friendship, he mentioned friendship. I blurted “I do not experience friendship from you, what we have has been very one-sided from the start.” At which he replied that he felt he could not open up because he knew I was in love with him. Fair enough.
So what do I want? I want this being in love, this desire to be elsewhere with somebody else, to not be me in my own miserable life… Ha, I wanted to write that I want this being in love to go away but if that means dealing with my own misery… Not sure if I can. Thinking finances immediately.
The other day the bookstore man said that I was the only one who had not deserted him. Yes, yes, he has some connection to pitying himself. But well, everybody is allowed to feel sorry for themselves, it’s just not very attractive to live there but for the rest it is all ok to me. For those who do not understand this, because feeling sorry for yourself is a BIG taboo: it is about projection. If I can not stand the other to feel sorry for themselves it means that I have issues with my own moaning underdog and project the fear and anger that it builds onto the other. However, I got a medal for martyrdom but it was only a bronze one so ha, he should not overdo it. 😉
And I was not sure how I felt about it. I felt corrupt because being in love is not about him, it is about me and in that I am just another so many-est person in the list of people who want a piece of him. He is surrounded by energetic vultures, no wonder he is so tired. And no wonder he smokes. And no wonder he can not set any boundaries. 😦 All this I would explain him, confirm his thoughts and feelings of being sucked dry by some people but I have become corrupt and would need to say that I feel I should be in that list too because I too want a part of him. And please don’t take that the wrong way.
And next, well, I don’t want to think into the future because that is not there but if I were to: I would want him to quit smoking. So actually I say: I like you, but not as you are dealing with your life right now. But I’m thinking I would have received that differently at those times.
I’m on the verge of needing to make a choice for myself. Let go of the one and step into the new. Let go of the non constructive, evasive addiction called being in love and step into the next level of reality. Oooh shit I so don’t want to go there. Next level reality is getting my finances in order. Again. And I feel I can’t. Shit it scares me. For me finances symbolise the incarnation in the world, the realisation I can die, the really being a grown up, the ‘party time is over’ feeling. Wild horses could not drag me there.
It must be very unsatisfying to be a psychiatrist, or to even read this post as a reader. Hoping I would FINALLY get the point, stop with boring you with bsm posts. 😦 Thing is, I don’t dare to do my finances, it builds so much anxiety in me that I go look for the release valve and this is called bsm. Not DMT, MDMA, C2H6O, C12H22O11 or LSD, just the bsm. 😦
And then there is this thought ‘I can’t do my finances. I can’t do my finances. I am an utter failure. I am an utter failure because I can’t do my finances.’ But NOWHERE in this destructive self talk there is even a hint of an option that could whisper ‘Why not ask your SIL to help you again?’
Well, obviously there was because otherwise I could not think of it now but yes, I keep on thinking that I need to do things alone, partially because I feel so ashamed about not being able to deal that I don’t dare to ask for help. And partially because the other day I hinted at my SIL that I was not looking forward to dealing with stuff and she answered ‘But we drew up that Excel sheet, did we not?’ As if that was the most logical thing to do; be scared of finances for 40 years and learn to deal with this overwhelming, killing fear in one afternoon drawing up a sheet?
And… back to feeling stupid. ‘We drew up the sheet and I still can not deal. :-(‘. What’s keeping me from just telling her that I can not? I feel ashamed and there is something else. I do not want to step down. I would feel humiliated. So that would be pride, not? Dutch swear with diseases. The most appropriate reply to this attitude would be ‘well, you choke on it.’ and leave people be. Let them sink until they need to call for help.
The weather is beautiful here. Which really worries me because nature starts to think it is spring and it is not. Winter still needs to come. 😦 But I think I should set aside my confusion over the weather and go outside, catch some sunlight.
I am happy that I quit. I’m not at all there where I think I should be but (insert swear word) I would be sooooo lost, well, not alive if I had kept on drinking. The other day I was wondering: I keep on walking around in this ‘ooh difficult this, ooh, hard that, oooh, can’t do such and the bsm still does not see the light shine out of my ass, aah, bothersome…’ But when I do my awareness practice, like go to that inside place where emotions are ‘things flying’ and ‘information’ instead of overwhelming then nothing is particularly wrong and I wonder why I do not focus more on happy things. I mean, sooooo typical that Kali would be the first of the gods to drop by. Why not Eros, Kamadeva or Ganesha ? And no, I don’t just list these out of the top of my head. Looking for a god? Use Wikipedia.
Maybe, maybe I should go back to being really happy that I quit instead of I-am-sort-of-getting-used-to-having-quit-right-now-type-of-happy.
Ooh, I did not celebrate NY eve, did not feel like going to parties. Guess this is the one party I do not like sober. Not so much because I want to drink, more because I would like others to drink less and take better care. Also, I had invited the bookstore man, who had left it pending but both he and I did not feel like continuing that invite after I had spoken about being in love. It just did not feel good; I would not know how to deal. My home has become a sanctuary where I can go and leave the world behind. Restore from difficult work/bsm days. I am happy that I quit because had I not I would have sobbed and moaned and drunk like crazy and feel real bad today. 🙂 And now I am just a tiny little bit further into discovering how to let go of love addiction.
There is nothing wrong with love. There is a whole lot wrong with seeing the other as a solution, as a ‘fix me’ thing. I don’t want that for myself, I don’t want the other to have to have that function. It is not clean and it corrupts me and makes communication unclear. I don’t want that.
I have learned one thing from addiction, gheghe, I was thinking of a big statement but if I were to say one thing about addiction here it is: Addiction is not good.
Wwawwlhd? She would take a shower, get dressed, stop pushing herself to be something she can not be, ask for help, go catch some sun, write the bsm a letter in order to find out if there is more information about what keeps me hooked in an imagined contact with him. Start meditating and read instead of Netflix. Ooh (insert swear word), just discovered Dr Who. Haha, don’t even want to finish this post now with being reminded of that.
3 Things: first, the bookstore man, for teach me all these things and being mild. He actually said he was honoured that I was in love with him. And without using a comma or a point continued to say that he was not in love with me. That is ok. I would be in all kinds of trouble if he was. Second: I dreamt of meeting two women, a mother and daughter. NEW! No asshole twenty something guy despising me but two wise women! 🙂 They were sitting at a ‘wall’, a sort of heightened area between two meadows with trees. They were meditating in the shades of trees and having a good time. I joined (NEW!) and we spoke, they were very much at peace and I enquired after their practice. They informed me that becoming aware had changed their life and hahah, that if I had difficulty with that, I could set my egg-timer to remind me. 🙂 ❤
Ok, had a shower, cried my eyes out. My heart hurts but I don’t know how to stop it. There is something I don’t understand but I don’t know what. Called upon Kali to destruct all the addictive ties to the bsm but I guess that is not how it works. Or maybe it is and I just have to sit with it a little longer. ‘I can only show you what is. You have to do the work yourself.’
I realised that my idea of relation includes ‘being safe’, ‘feeling that I belong’, ‘feeling valued’ and ‘being loved’. And I wondered why I can not experience that in the life I have now? Why does it have to be exclusive? Why does it have to come from the outside? Why does it have to be a man who I can ‘have for myself’? The more I discover about myself, the less satisfied, for lack of another word, I am with a lot of the friendship relations I am in. Specifically when I am in a mode as I am today, trying to sort things out. There are only a few people I can speak with heart to heart on the strange, difficult aspects of life and development in sobriety. The bookstore man is one of them. So sorting this out and not ruining what could be a good friendship with infatuation is important but I think I don’t want to learn what I have to learn. I don’t want to experience the NO. I want to have unlimited access to what I think I need.
Hmmm, I wonder what Melanie Klein has to say about that :-D. Babies, children, feel unsafe when the mother is not around; they want and expect unlimited access. When the mother is unable to provide or refuses that the child needs to deal with that as being denied that what keeps him/her alive. I’m walking the same path so somehow he is what makes me feel alive. No wonder I don’t want to give up. I used to feel that alcohol was what made it possible for me to ‘do life’.
Thinking about this, if I were somebody else reading this post I would be fascinated with how these concepts or, possibly the ‘I am not the only one person in the world’ realisation and hearing ‘NO’ and addiction combine together. And how trying to fix things from the outside continues to be a go to place even when alcohol is not present anymore. How this addictive personality just sidesteps the development of the soul and haha, takes on another addiction. You! Save! Me! Imagine the place I would be in if he had said yes. Ghegheghe…. oooh, so not good. Which is another, well, rather selfish reason, to appreciate his company. I learn how I deal with Man. Not very constructive. Rather ego centric. Very much one sided. Not taking the other into account. Reactionary. Well. Sorry. Again. 😦 I should meditate on it. Writing does not do the trick anymore. Or maybe you have a tip on where I am stuck in this and how to deal?
On discipline: good, still developing, workspace is a good learning place, specifically because I don’t have a position of any importance so I can’t really ‘go’ any other place or make up stuff that makes me not do what I need to do.
Something NEW I did notice; I do not have imaginary conversations in my head anymore with people. Not the ‘I should have said this and then he would have said that and next time I see them I will say … blablabla’ I’m guessing it has been gone for a long long time now. I can remember thinking about it in early, early sobriety where practicing not to jump into the future and be scared that I could not drink there and then was important. So I also stopped jumping into the future with conversations too. I only realised that when I overheard 2 teenagers standing in line at a bus stop.
And for something even more totally different: I realise more and more that my awareness takes my inner world as serious as the outer world. So when I am in a paddock while dreaming, my awareness takes that seriously. While I ‘know’ that I am or was just (?) dreaming. That switch at waking up where from one second I’m in a paddock and the other I’m in bed. I find it very fascinating. It feels like there is some learning to be done in that process of that shift of perception. Let’s see.
I want: to sort things out. To have a lot of time between now and dying to learn to deal with life.
I take: Ayurvedic pills very irregularly. Some Schuessler salts to deal with the tooth ache I have since the dentist ‘fixed’ it. It’s not helping, or maybe it is and maybe the pain would be worse otherwise. My boss laughed at me for taking some stuff during lunchtime. But another colleague has been absent for 3 days because he went to the dentist and got a real bad cold out of the blue directly afterwards.
Wishing you all a beautiful and sober 2016, may the cravings be gone, may brutal honesty save you from deception, may continuous self-care help you through the dark patches, may love of self develop, may you learn how to recognise transferred addictions, may you learn to ask for help and trust people, may the addictive personality be dissolved nicely, may there be people on your path to help you, may you continue to learn how Life works and may the Universe smile at you. ❤
Yeah, today is my sober 16 monthiversary. 🙂 Trying not to remember the angry posts I wrote last year around this time. Ouch. Glad I did write it though because it shows how much can change over a sober year. By now I am starting to see how the detailed honesty of my post not only help me in the moment but also can help me in the future in seeing where I came from. And yes I know I should be happy about the things which have changed in my character but shit, today hurts. It hurts to look back into the tightness and stress of the holidays at home in my family, by now I have done a lot of crying over that. And writing this post, well now, it hurts to look forward, or well, anywhere.
Don’t know how to proceed other than barching right in with saying that the people around me start saying things like I should ‘not be so self absorbed’, ‘learn to listen before I start speaking’ (bookstore man on me not checking the ‘shopmood’ before starting to speak) and that ‘how can you make this about you?’ a nice but stern reaction from a colleague when I said that if people had an issue like the one they were talking about I would like to hear about it from them straight. Guess becoming less self absorbed and listening before I speak should be on my list. Haha! 😦
Brrrrrrrrr, not looking forward to learning about this because I fear it is not going to go naturally and pain free. Being self absorbed has given me the possibility to focus on every detail of sobriety that has popped up over the last 16 months. I think that has been good. I still can not imagine how I could have had a job and go through those first months. On the other hand, haha, maybe…. I would have been less self-absorbed if I had. 🙂 Well, thinking it goes hand in hand.
These last two days have been eventful so to say. I was invited for Christmas and then got disinvited for reasons I totally understand – and that part is OK. And I am not big on Christmas anyway, still fear the stress in other people which surrounds the holiday season. The other day I read a blog on a parent lashing out at her kids over unmanaged holiday stress and it send me reeling.
Christmas for now just reminds me of all the dysfunction we as a family have put each other through. However, guessing in sobriety things change and I got to feel real sad about missing my mother and feeling deeply through the memories of the dysfunctional family gatherings at which we used to drink our self into oblivion. Happy for me it was not the moaning kind of sadness but the letting go kind of sadness. And I’m happy with my job because I had to work yesterday and I can just literally cry while doing it and nobody even notices me. 😀 Yes it is strange, and yes that is how it is.
So, well, I guess I tumbled in the ‘shit, I don’t have my own family.’ My brother and SIL have their 20 headed family over and I have been invited but this gathering is way too busy for me, too much noise, too much speaking of nothing.
After work I visited my favourite chocolate shop in Amsterdam. Spend an hour’s work of money on chocolate. Life is so strange. I used to spend like 100 Euro’s per Christmas in this shop getting presents for all the caring and cooking woman I would be meeting during the holidays. Spending the same amount now would mean I would not eat for 2 weeks. Well, that is in the past, together with my depressions and suicide thoughts. Guess what I like better? 🙂
Next I visited the bookstore man. We matched moods since he was crying behind the counter when I came in and that mode did not really change during the afternoon and late evening. Both of us cried our eyes out over hurt that came up. Again, not the moaning type but the feeling and realising type of crying. He had had a flue so he had not smoked pot for 5 days. It is my thought that the horrifying youth experiences he worded came up as a result of that. I had a lot of those in the first days, weeks and months of becoming sober. I guess my drinking had the function of keeping the lid on a can of worms. I hope he really quits one of these days, he’s at his wits end but somehow he does not connect the one thing to the other.
A lot has changed from last Christmas to this Christmas. I have found more peace. I have learned to take care of myself better. I like myself better. I think I have learned to deal with stuff better although there are still big holes in my functioning. I think the tiny job I have has brought some instability but more stability. There is a need of developing my socials skills now more too. Aaah, it is difficult to list what has changed and what I am happy about without going into a wish list immediately. Let’s say I have learned a lot about myself, a lot about how addiction works for me. I also think I have gotten an inkling of how to disconnect from addictive behaviour but I’m not totally sure about that. Specifically because I still tend to take ‘the easy road’ and address those things which I feel I can while not addressing the things I feel I can not. Ha, and there I go again, turning it into a wish list.
Physical changes of late: I have developed quite some muscle in my whole body and specifically my arms. My skin and muscles are easier to distinguish, sort of sharper defined. Makes me happy. I build up muscle pretty easy because the farmhouse living as a child and the physical labour we got to do made me an extremely strong child. I still don’t lift comfortably above my shoulders because of the shoulder pain but that is slowly getting better. Practising more and I sometimes speak with my shoulder. It says it stays stuck because it does not want to move on. Things are changing too quickly and she (I!) can not catch up, it is putting its ‘heels in the sand’. Guess I need to pay attention to me more. Not sure why I don’t. Self care, I guess I am taking it for granted or only skipping through the big parts because there are so much things to deal with. How do other people do that? I do not have a clue.
My eye bulbs have changed too, due to less screen time they have drawn back into my head. This must have happened over a month time or so after starting to work. It feels good so I guess it is ok.
I have lost an extra 2 kilo’s in the last 2-3 weeks, so down to 76 now, liking that too. I wonder how much I would lose if I were not eating 100 grams of chocolate and about the same amount of dates every day. Yes yes, sugar addiction has kicked in fully. Letting it go for now. I obviously need another entry / to understand something I do not / it does not feel like I can deal with thinking about it now.
On the body: last summer, in a desperate attempt not to jump the bookstore man (haha, that is, if there would be a chance) I reigned myself in by letting my body hair grow. Let self imposed body shame reign in my combustible heart (loins?). Yeah, yeah, I know it sounds funny, but if I learned anything in sobriety it is: Whatever it takes is what it takes. Well, on not shaving armpits and bikini lines, upper and lower legs. I must say: I feel way better about my body with the hair than without it. And I feel healthier; like my body likes the hair better that it likes the shaving of it. Also, the fine ‘nest hairs’ I had on my cheeks are slowly disappearing so it looks like the longer my pubic hair is, the shorter my facial hair. But it might also have something to do with the Ayurveda pills. Not sure.
Might be a funny subject to speak about but with my professional background the phenomena of pubic hair has always interested me; how people think and feel about it, what this says about the position of women in society. The Dutch word for pubic hair is ‘schaamhaar’ which translates in to ‘shame hair’ in English. And as we all know there is a lot of energetic power in shame. :-D. I’ve just been using that not to blow up a friendship I find important. As I said, whatever it takes is what it takes.
Psychological changes going on concern different subjects. Even though my ‘clear head’ is slowly developing in my work I still do not take action concerning my admin and finances at home. I have no clue how much money I have, how much on rent I am behind and what I need to do to fix things. I am growing into a position where I do think and feel that it is OK to ask for help in this. Feeling the physical / energetical reactions in my body while thinking about this, feeling it through if you will is the very informative. A lot of fear there.
Speaking of fear… I’ve had a visit from Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction. I had heard of her but somehow she managed to step into my life while I was just of the brink of falling asleep. It was horrifying. I do not think I have ever been that afraid. Her presence made me feel like my body was dying / transforming. It felt like all the energy that keeps the atoms together was stripped. I want to say ‘stripped from me’ but with the stripping I realised that my body was not me. However, I can’t even describe how horrifying it was and all during this experience I saw the figure of Kali in front of my mind eye. She was blue which was somehow very important (she is also pictured in black) and had many arms, not ‘only’ the 4 – which is how I was able to check on who had visited me. Around her, through her, around me, within me destructive fire was burning and burning and burning. Like on the picture, but also with flames in front of her. It was devouring and destroying, utter destruction and darkness but funny to realise and say it was not personal. It just was.
In the experience I tried to ‘keep myself together’ and realised that I am not my body. Within and without the boundaries of my body there is an awareness which I call ‘I’. I hung on to that, trying to solidify it like I have learned in dealing with addiction and in the detox center dream.
I spoke about it with my therapist and the bookstore man. Can’t remember what the therapist said, yeah, he did give me the name of the visitor. Which is handy. :-). The bookstore man congratulated me, saying that ‘If you had Kali you’ve had the worst of them’ and something like ‘What a beautiful experience to teach you the difference between Self and body.’ Which haha, I guess is another way of looking at it. I did remember too ‘If I get scared now I lose it. You can be scared but you NEED to keep your head together.’ Learning to be brave while laying in my bed. 🙂
There was something on how the Self, still not sure whether to call it Soul or Spirit, is connected to the body. And in how ‘we’ (I!) think that bond is important because otherwise ‘we die’. And yes we do, and severing that bond is horrifying, but it feels like there is also something like ‘awareness’ or ‘Self’ staying, continuing. I have no clue what the next phase would be, for all I know all the Selves get canned and put on a shelf somewhere but… well, food for feel.
How am I connected to Indian gods? Not. I have only seen a few of the statues in the bookstore so not sure why she dropped by. Hmmm, should mention something else too, a thing which is connected but not sure how. I was thinking of the bookstore man just a few seconds before she showed up. And obviously there is a message in her appearance just there and then but hahahaha, I can’t read it. My thoughts don’t want to go down the obvious road of ‘well, that is a sign you should give up on being in love with him’. Guess time will tell.
On the bookstore man: he is in love, obviously not with me. It’s really cute to see how he behaves. I sometimes get the feeling he puts it out there between me and him as to make a fence and sometimes it is just genuinely in love. I am happy for him. And sad for me obviously although going through the process I have been going through in unaddicting from ‘love’ addiction makes it very clear that it takes a LOT of work to deal with this. It must be like food addiction, one of the most difficult things to unlearn because a person needs food.
I sat at the table yesterday and well, funny thing is, I’m used to be not in love with him when we are meeting. Maybe that is like not drinking a lot while being with friends? Well, since the last visit this has changed a little and it cost me more effort to leave those thoughts and feelings out of the conversation. At some point I sort of had to stop my heart from running around because I did not want to like ‘go there’ and get into trouble over something I would not be able to uphold anyway so I stopped my heart from jumping up and down and saying things like ‘Tell him! Tell him now!! Why not tell him? Hi!!!!!!’ I got irritated and confused over that and I stopped my heart by, well, I don’t know. It literally faltered and was off beat for several moments, heart palpitations, skipped beats :-(. Might need to go look for a healthier option to deal with love addiction or maybe allow myself somebody who does reply :-(. Aaah, shit. Can anybody tell me?
We were drawing tarot cards all during our conversation that day and they were very informative. At one moment I thought, can you give me some info on the status between him and me and hahahaha, fcuk it I drew Lovers. Pffffff… Thank you, universe. So I threw it on the table and said ‘This one is for you.’ While making it sound like it was for his new love. I’ve started lying to the bsm and I do not like it. Things about honesty had popped up in the conversation yesterday and I told him again that at one point I had decided to not lie to him. We spoke about our personal definition of lying and I told him that since my last visit I had changed. Ghegheghe, at which moment a customer walked in so, well, the conversation never proceeded. Wanting to tell him that I am still not done with my infatuation. I would be very much surprised if he were ever to like me in partner way, and even if he would, I would not know how to behave but I value him as a person and would like to learn to be friends so it is all work in progress. And hmmm, truth be said, there is some calculation in my behaviour too: I need to learn to ‘moderate’ on love, might as well try that on him since I do not think for me challenges come bigger than he does. Or he must be really interested in me and filthy rich instead of flat broke, maybe then. However, I don’t want to lie to him. But I don’t want to be hurt either. And I don’t want to be the child who confesses everything either. Let’s see.
Aah, in the back of my mind: He’ll like me if I lose weight. Pffff. Not true. Guys at my work told me the other day I have a very good figure. Guess that means that I have a very good figure. Can’t believe it though.
Health anxiety: my health anxiety has shifted from whatever it was last to an upcoming treatment at the dentist. Afraid it will turn out in a root canal thing. Don’t want that. Not that my assumption it is linked to anything physical, although I do feel some tooth ache, it is just this continuous feeding of energy to not trust my body, not really daring to live that has found another way to express itself. Oh yeah, and feeling things in my breasts of course. Could be logical with the losing weight, could be all kinds of horrible cancer. Don’t want to know. And I am afraid I my hair is thinning; for safety reasons people with long hair need to wear hairnets to keep the hair away from catching in machinery etc. I have developed this thought that my hair does not like that and is growing thinner.
Aah yeah, that is a change: a year ago I would be all over the place with all kinds of illnesses, real or assumed and now I am starting to doubt my some of these thoughts and feelings. All in all feelings have become more than ever experiences which I look upon as information. The idea that they should be ruling me is something I start to doubt and experience as not true. I am thinking this must be the first days of the concept of acting instead of reacting which I am walking in now. It is a slow progress. I don’t understand how other people do this. Obviously I write in detail about what I experience and a lot of people in the sober blogosphere are gheghe, more polite. I would wish I got to understand this concept of the difference between acting and reacting quicker though. Sometimes, specifically when being open about the funny (boring, tiny) details of my path I feel childish, incomplete, unfinished, reactive and downright stupid. Still I note them down because I think, assume, have noticed (?) that for me being sober is in paying attention to the details.
It is the tiny things that build up to big things. For me it is easier to sit down and write about the tiny difficult stuff than it is to have to deal with emotions running out of control when passing a bar or being at a party. So, again, whatever it takes is what it takes and yes shit I am tired of being pushed forward in this process on the one hand and having to work and run to catch up with all the things that I have not ‘under control’ or figured out yet. Guess that comes with wanting to do it ‘all’ on my own. I do speak with one friend (hi!), the BSM and with my SIL about addiction and how I deal with it but those are not people who either went as deep in alcohol or, as the BSM, he thinks he can moderate, tomorrow. 4 Months ago I planned to visit AA and never thought of it again. Hmmm… guess I am starting to be in need of sober friends.
I don’t want things to go like they do. I guess the information there is to make me realise that I can not do without other people and that the alcohol has made me think I could. Now this hard shell around me is becoming more flexible and I feel I go through an adjustment period where I need to change, need to notice that I need to be more social, more active in the field of socialising, meeting up. And with saying that there are a lot of buts popping up in my head: I need my energy to work. I cannot energetically deal with more than 2 social appointments in a week. I cannot this and I cannot that.
I believe it is time that I start really working on my progress. Not Netflixing and chocolating. And yes, I do not have a clue how to change that without forcing myself and that lashing back at me. Let’s see what I think I can do? Hmmm. Nothing much. I can do the laundry today. Much in need of that, don’t want to sleep in the same bedding anymore. I think I can cook today. I can finish this post and spell check it. Maybe I can put my books in the book cabinet. Dunno how to deal today, guess I lost my structure and need to find it back. Very happy that I have a job because that brings structure.
About work, I assemble stuff, pack stuff and clean. I have responsibility for one specific product at which I feel I need to excell. Trying to excell teaches me a lot about me. It used to be so that I would feel my heart racing / blood pressure rise 20 points when the boss would walk in the room. That is now only 10 points. 😀 I used to fear that she would get at me for not doing it right but I guess she is starting to realise that I do well and that I am human. And that makes it possible for me to realise that she is human too. The other day I let out a growl about something which frustrated me. Aaah, yeah, being able to do that is a VERY NICE perk of non-office jobs :-D. But the boss just walked into view from around the corner so she asked ‘What’s up with you? Are you ok?’ I was astonished so I blurted out ‘I’m frustrated!’
‘Why?’
‘Dunno, just very tired.’
‘Hmmm, that does not sound like your usual self, are you ok?’
‘I guess I am? Just very tired, things not going as I like them.’
‘Ok, well, there’s only an hour left, so hang in there and let’s see what tomorrow brings.’
I mean that does not really sound like a bitch boss from hell does it? Learning, learning, learning. 🙂 I am happy I did at least one step out of this defensive she-against-me mode. Looking back it is amazing how scared I was and how I was unable to grasp all the processes that were going on around me. Not that I tried, I had difficulty enough doing the simple job which I do. Understanding the machines, understanding assembly, understanding the packaging. Again, it takes time to realise it takes time. 🙂
Now I am settled in a little and the things that go on around me do not stir me as much I am practising letting my body do the work and relaxing within. There is a thing, I noticed that my body’s capacity for doing things is much bigger once I trust it and let it do its work without me interfering with fears and doubts. So now I try to not interfere / disconnect and that works very funny. Where assembling 12 pieces an hour was the top I thought anybody could do I did 14 an hour the other day with my special ‘disconnect and let go technique’ – and the right music. It was cool. It was like my sing yourself free course: let go of the fear and let the music out.
I wonder if and how I can extend this. In this line of thinking I tried to play the recorder again the other day. I have not played anything from paper since 36 years. At looking up some music on YouTube (your best friend) I found that I could play Christmas songs without sheets, just by hearing it and copying. The ability of the body to do stuff is marvellous; I am really starting to enjoy that. (The cat was NOT amused though :-D) I used to take it all, everything, from health to, well even the ability to walk, see, touch, for granted, destroyed it on a daily base. And now it is coming back and well, I enjoy it. 🙂
One graphic thought on sobriety I would like to share:
I am happy that I quit.
3 Things: talk with the bookstore man yesterday. That I actually went there instead of not. Being able to switch of my ‘need’ for him. Maybe I should do that more, might make life easier, get over my Florence Nightingale complex.
This post on sugar and longing made me cry. Insight, love, healing. Many thanks to Karly for writing it. ❤ Have a read. 🙂
xx, Feeling
Sugar is not the enemy, but a mirror that reveals our relationship to our human neediness. It beckons us to heal the shame we carry about needing love.
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. 😦
Healing from Your Childhood is the Only Way to be Emotionally Free. Growing Up in a Home Controlled by Addiction/Mental Illness Causes Childhood Trauma. Healing from Your Childhood Takes a Lifetime.
feelingmywaybackintolife 