Restoring the density of my personality

There is a new process going on, or I am noticing just it now. When I see other people who are addicted to drinking I sort of feel / think / judge 😦 ‘they are all over the place except where they need to be.’ Feeling through the process that I feel is going on inside I feel that aspect of alcohol addiction is slowly repairing in me, around me currently.

A few days ago I was totally of the planet with sadness of reading the blog from Brad (hi!), a young man who gave up on his detox (he’s back!!) to again walk the path of self-destruction. And what I got in the replies are variations on the serenity prayer. And that made me realise that I can lend my support, try to be there for somebody – but I can not carry it. Specifically when there is the North Atlantic ocean between us. I realised that just there and then and I felt my ‘aura’ – lacking a better word – shrink in width. That would be the megalomanic aspect of the addictive personality I am guessing.

And now I am facing admin 2014 and I worry about what will be – which I notice is counter productive. And I have pain about what has been – and I notice is it counter productive. In reality I have nothing but now. Exactly the place and time where I did NOT want to be when drinking.

But it is good. Now is good. I think I can deal with that. And if I don’t, drinking will never be a solution. So my aura, still lacking a better word, has shrunk in depth as well. That would have to do with the ability to process issues from the past and not worry about the future – both traits of an addictive personality.

And the last dimension: height. I’ve been speaking with the store man Friday. We worked through some I-Tjing (oracle) text that is (said to be) applicable to my life. He mentioned that it says that I go to extremes in my thinking and feeling and that this causes me problems in life. And that he had noticed that to…. That I need to find a middle road. And God! I love biology. Because this is the FIRST TIME in my life that I have been able to feel through that concept and accept it from somebody :-D. Yes, sorry to everybody that tried and got frustrated.

Note: I have also been takin those before mentioned tissue salts that have one salt that deals with people who go to extremes. So it might have come from two places at once. Aaah, that was exactly what the ‘solution’ to my problem was: sitting with it on the middle road. I guess my therapist (hi!) would agree. As would my family, deceased mother, (ex) colleagues, most likely all my former teachers, bosses, friends, neighbours, customers.

So, that is the ‘all or nothing’ aspect of the addictive personality. 🙂 I guess it serves me well now I quit because in my quitting you might have noticed there is NO INBETWEEN either. 🙂 I think I remember 1 or 2 posts out of 200 where mentioned having tiny cravings and there was no longing to go back at all. I guess this character trait made me lose it and now I use it to come back to life.

So, I shrunk in height, depth and width. I actually feel that happening around me and in my body and I wonder if that means that I will be losing weight ‘automatically’ too. I’ld guess those things are connected. Yes, yes, I know that is a strange thought. 😉 Hey, this is my blog, ok? 🙂

I am VERY HAPPY that I quit. It might sound like you heard it before or just a slogan but every time I write that down I do so because I am VERY HAPPY that I quit and I feel that joy – it equals, I don’t know, going to Disney land, age 10 or so. I feel freed. I was living in a cold and dark and lonely place. And I am out. I have a choice to live now.

I want: hahahaa, that I have my admin 2014 finished but that should be so at the end of this day.

I need: to keep my head together and do my admin one piece at the time, not lose it. I can cry but I need to keep breathing, take responsibility and stay with it. Aaah…. and if that not works imagine the store man seeing you unable to deal with putting some pieces of paper in order. Whatever it takes is what it takes. 😀 Yes, yes, extreme. Ok, so now I should learn not to cry and not to whip myself with nasty thoughts but sit with it.

Aah, hey, it’s just paper, it is all in the past, I can not change anything anymore, I do not have to get in a state. Breathe, breathe, ok, BREATHE, BREATHE! 🙂

Have a nice day!

xx, Feeling

I just want things to be over

This is how I started of this evening: there is not way I can put this into a story and try to hide my ignorance or stupidity or whatever. So here it is: can anybody tell me why alcohol dependency is not like smoking?

I smoked, I quit, I never looked back.

I drank, I quit, and what now?

I want stuff to be over, I don’t want to be going through life every day struggling with myself. I am tired. I want things to be over. I don’t even ‘want it all’ anymore, just a little. But now. I just want to be, I don’t know? Normal! Not feel this shitload of shit.

I want to be normal. Not all over the place and difficult, oeeeeh, difficult. And I had written a whole lot of normal things but here I have done some editing on what my sad idea of normal looks like today. The nicest thing was: I just want to be able to have a meaningless relation too, bicker and fight and keep each other down and put blame on the other and think that that’s it fo the rest of the time. Blablabla – edit, edit, edit. Pfffff. I know it is not nice and it might even be hurtful. But it is what I am going through and I want this to be an honest document, including the very nasty parts of me. I feel like I can not and do not want to carry the responsibility to be nice about this and do justice to people. And I can say sorry, but there is nothing to base that on. This is where I show addict behaviour in my own eyes. 😦 Please love me while I know I am unlovable.

I thought it was impossible to stop drinking, that’s what kept me so long. With the same conviction I thought that relations are meant to be bad and hurtful. Well, Feeling, whether you think you can’t or you think you can, you are right. And…. moving from depression over to omnipotence. How convenient.

My neighbours have 3 kids, the eldest is 11, he beats his younger sisters to pulp. The parents don’t do anything about it. And here I am feeling miserable about it. Why not them? Why am I scared to start a relationship, scared to get stuck, scared to be at the receiving end of somebodies viciousness or carelessness again. Eh, well, there is your answer… But why don’t other people mind? They say that people with certain dependencies look each other up naturally. I have that with people with bad relationships. Some people say I am too critical, those that do have or had shitty relations with loads of contempt for each other and me. I don’t want to be in a relation with contempt.  I have lived in the clouds of contempt of my parents. There was no escaping it, and no way, just no way I can every go back there. And I realise now that I expect relations to be like that. Have lived in that expectation all my life.

Feeling sorry for myself for the wrong reasons I guess. I don’t know. I’m just so emotional today. I am tired of having to keep my guard up. Of, I don’t know, not of being sober, being sober is good. But I am tired of the work I am doing for it and the things I feel I need to let go.

And I don’t feel I have the right to be tired or sad. I saw this homeless man this morning, he was pushing hit empty shopping car, bewildered, he was loosing it, he had lost it. It was pouring down. He was soaking wet. Until that moment I was happily singing ‘morning has broken’ on my bike, getting all wet, not caring because I had a warm home and a cat to turn back to. I have been reading The Realm of the Hungry Ghost by Gabor Maté and he gives an insight in the world of seriously addicted, homeless people. Normally I would not look at a homeless person unless they are selling the homeless paper. Today I felt so, so spoiled and so sorry for the man. And so lost, very much lost.

What is wrong with this society that the village idiot has become a homeless addict? Homeless addicts, multiple. Where children grow up watching more television than hours they go to school? Where ketchup is considered to be a vegetable serving. Ebola vaccines contain RFID chips. Where am I supposed to live? To go, to feel safe and sane? Good that it was pouring down so no need to feel awkward about the tears.

How come I feel I have to do everything myself? Ooh, well, I know! I do! But why?! Why don’t I trust people. Why can’t I just for once lean on somebody? Somebody else than a professional that is?

So what happened? Why am I lashing out again, blaming the world? I had hoped that was behind me. Life happened. I went to the sauna yesterday. Low and behold I met up with this blond version of Tarzan, he’s about 50 so he’s not a young blond god, he is an elderly blond god, so to say, with a beautiful natural body and good posture that said ‘joy, happiness, being at ease’. And no, the sauna is NOT a pick up place, well, gay sauna’s are, but this is a normal wellness centre, nothing funny about it. And I just happen to speak with people everywhere I go, male and female. I only mention the conversations that are exceptional.

This conversation lasted a long, and because it is a sauna the godlyness of somebody is rather out in the open. But that does not change much for me because due to my profession I can see through clothing anyhow. And if you and I are ever to meet: don’t worry about that because if you can see through everything, everything becomes very boring and uninteresting. Not to insult you upfront, but just. Pffff, complicated. Can of worms.

Well, no matter the godlyness, he was a really nice guy. We spoke 1 and a half hour and he seemed very much in contact with his emotions – without the disclaimer’ for a guy’- and was relaxed and intelligent. I am not asking for more, he could have been goddamn ugly for all I care. That would have even suited me better because I am and that would feel to be more of a match.

So what happened? We spoke and we spoke. And now there’s a thing that is a bit funny in the sauna, because we were both naked, there is not really another place to look than in each others face and eyes. And in order to do that you (I, everybody) really need to turn off anything else but genuine interest in the person and the conversation. Unless I want to be impolite and stare a the grass or the shrubs, or worst….. Which is very, very NOT DONE. Making moves in the sauna is also very, very NOT DONE. Yeah, cloths are easier, but being naked does make people more vulnerable and there is a good thing in that too.  FYI: all the relationship interest that got into this story has been added later. It is only after I left I felt that we had gotten connected.

We had been in a special sauna ritual together and the second one was coming up 1,5 hours after we started talking. He was thinking I would be in there as well. But I remembered that things were not that easy in early sobriety so I parted saying that I was ‘not feeling like it’. Which is stupid! What’s wrong with ‘I need to eat.’? He was a little confused and took a second to re-adjust and I noticed what I had just broken and wanted to hold on. But I did not, I got scared. Suddenly I realised that his reaction was more than I could handle right now and we parted. He said;  ‘I’ll see you after?’ And I said yes and walked off.

I went, got something to eat in the restaurant and noticed how my centering was totally off. Not sure what but it felt like my centre was trying to get out to be with him. There was this immense force pulling at my heart that was trying to break out of its cave to fly out, be together. And I did not. Because I was all out of whack from this meeting alone. And I thought: Now there is something I can not handle. Not now, possibly not ever.

I did go back later, 1,5 hours later to do the 3rd sauna ritual but he was not there.

The movie 28 Days says: take at least 2 years of sobriety before you start getting involved or even fall in love. First have a plant, if the plant lives, have a pet, if the pet lives, you might want to try finding a partner. I now know why.

I know his first name. I know where he works. He knows the same about me. And I am confused. I think I did the right thing but it is exactly what I do not want to give up.

So I threw an I-Tjing oracle and it is exactly the same as last 2 times I considered it. Which is a chance of 1 in about 260.000. It still says that I have accomplished something big, and am on the good road. Then it continuous on the circle of life. Life starts every day again, anew. The big thing I did is good, but it is just another step. The extra tip this time, in the question ‘Should I contact him?’ is: don’t speed, show restraint because that will give you time to develop the strength you need.

And I guess that is indeed true. Don’t want to fly in head (and heart) first like I always do. Learn to stay centered in contact is a  GOOD THING. And much needed. Pfffff.

And so another day ended. I did do other stuff than moan about life. I spend 2 hours on repairing an item for my elderly neighbour that had been cat-sitting last week when I was out. And I went to see GP3.

I learned that all that is bad, just is. As all that is good, just is. That I still carry the hurt of my parents marriage around and do not believe things can be different. That I have probably relived their relation myself in order to fix it. That I do not want to go there anymore but that means that I need to change my views and expectations. Expectations are sort of a recipe for life. I need to let go of the hurt, look it in the eye and the hurt says: you needed me to be pissed at guys, to despise them, so you do not have to feel your fear and you do not have to mend your broken heart. And my heart starts crying and says ‘But I am broken, how can I heal?’ and the answer is ‘Just heal, you have it in you. You have quit.  That is amongst others just a thing that needed to be done. You saw it could be done. That is how you can heal. Just, just heal. Have faith’. And my heart wants to be healed, and function like a real heart with courage and love and happiness and in sync with the world. So it does heal, right here, right now we start to heal. And so it is written. 🙂

I am happy that I quit. I am happy that I can hear my internal voice again. I just want to tell you all that this is because I stopped drinking. Isn’t that cool? Today I have changed a view I never even knew that was a view, I thought it was the truth. Sobriety is good.

Celebrate but don’t drink wine

Yesterday I decided I would order some extra supplements. But…. I keep on wondering: don’t I replace drinking with nutrients? Everybody needs nutrients and specifically with a history of alcohol abuse adding some supplements to my life would be a smart thing. However…. I don’t like the faith I put in it. I am fine I just still don’t believe that I am fine. This whole thing of getting sober was supposed to be so hard that I did not dare to walk the sober grounds for years. It scared me to death. And now I am here and it is not scary. It is a good thing to do, or drinking is a good thing not to do. Never knew that NOT doing something could be more important than DOING something.

So I wanted to get another opinion on the nutrients and find out what is behind this continuous I-need-this-stuff-no-I-do-not-need-this-stuff thinking. Obviously I do not ask anybody else, which would be a logic thing to do. No I ask the I-Tjing oracle. And the oracle says:

You have reached your goal and feel emptiness, psycho-analytically this would compare to fearing death. Make a new start. No matter what age you have, no matter what went wrong, live always gives you new chances at living.

A new time has come, celebrate, you are free now. But don’t drink wine.

No I won’t. 🙂

Happy that I quit! Strange it is sometimes.

Slowing down

Noticing that I am slowing down in my process. Not sure why. I’m sort of getting bored with deep thinking and problems. Want to go do stuff. And then I don’t, well, I don’t do what is in The Plan. And then I turn to the oracle site and after ‘throwing’ the coins it starts rambling on nourishment…. Ghegheghe. Read it, it is amazing. It actually mentions ‘frugality’ – had to look that up but it means ‘sobriety’. :-). Guess I’m gonna need to practise on the modesty…

I / Providing Nourishment

Beneath the immobile Mountain the arousing Thunder stirs: The Superior Person preserves his freedom under oppressive conditions by watching what comes out of his mouth, as well as what goes in.

Endure and good fortune will come. Nurture others in need, as if you were feeding yourself. Take care not to provide sustenance for those who feed off others.
Stay as high as possible on the food chain.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

You are a conduit in this instance, able to provide the sustenance needed by others. Position yourself to nourish the truly needy and worthy. Avoid situations where you might be coerced into supporting the parasites and vermin who deprive your true charges.
Your own nourishment is an issue here, too.
Remember Lao Tzu’s three Great Treasures:
Only the person possessed of Compassion, Modesty and Frugality can remain fit enough to stay free of desperation and keep control of the situation.

I had 2 ‘changing lines’ and this is what they say:

Climbing to the summit to obtain nourishment for others, you are as alert as a tiger ready to spring. This is the correct path.

And:

Unspeakable delights tempt maddeningly from the far bank.
You must not cross this stream.

I can’t place the last sentence, I am guessing it is meant for a person that I have been in (written) contact with this morning. We shall see, she ‘ll know. 🙂 Message from me to you: Don’t cross, see the maddeningly for what it is.

And so much for the vagueness of a Monday morning. I’d better get back to The Plan. It is calling me and yes, I am trying not to hear it, want to do the addictive things, live in the computer, catch up on some episodes of Mastercheff. But live wants to live and there is this call of action in me. Better use it otherwise it dies in me and I want to get back into living. 🙂

Thank you for reading, hope it makes sense. 🙂

I am happy to be alive, happy that I took the time to listen to my real self, not the addict part of me. Happy that I met GP1 who kept her cool and has this very, as I call it ‘polite but determined no’ to booze and it made me think  ‘I want that too!!!!!!’  🙂 🙂 🙂 THANK YOU!!!

Pride has changed into something like ‘contentment’. I am guessing pride is an emotion in relation to others, contentment is more within. Aah, contentment AND the pull of doing things and the judging of the fact that it is 11:11 now and I am not doing what I should be doing. And that is another funny thing because look up 11:11 on the net and it says that people who are on their Path see the figures 11:11 often on the clock.

Away with the fairies. The Plan is calling.

Better get to livin’

Freed myself of the booze. Most likely there are steps ahead but I don’t have to worry because I am here and not ahead. And then I turned to the internet. Had all these plans where I would be cleaning my house and now I’ve stepped head first in the online sobriety blog world.

I just threw an I-tjing on this. I-tjing is an oracle. It gives answers to questions, or confirms hopes or fears. It’s tricky.

I-Tjing said in short: The sun is rising, this is the sign of progress, this is how the honourable man does himself credit. Yeah! That would be me, that would be me! 🙂

I-Tjing said next: ‘Stand vast, don’t exert influence in the outside world. Words will have no effect. Just be strong, don’t talk.’

And, that exactly confirms my doubts on blogging. Get away from The Machine. Read, walk, yoga, clean. Get the other parts of the addiction out of your system as well! It has done a great job already: I know that there are others out there. I am not the only one in the world quitting. I should get back to living. Let’s see if I can cut down to a few hours a day. That would be new. Add some social contacts back into my new life mix. Let’s see how it goes.