Romantic?.......No way, not me........

The man who leads the Thursday night, "We are not Saints" meeting reminds me of Frank Sinatra. I was commenting on this to my sponsor when she looked at me and smiled, "Well aren't we the romantic!" I was about to protest when I realized she's right. I am a romantic. There I said it. Not the mushy, lovey, can't live without you romantic, but the heady, smooth jazzy (Miles Davis) kind of romantic. In my 20's I went through a big "blue eyes" phase. I have lots of Sinatra. In fact I listened to it so often that our oldest son knew the words to "Fly me to the Moon" by the age of three! I do like Frankie, Chris Botti, Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett. I love smooth jazz, candles, lavendar, nice things etc.....so yep, that's me, a romantic. I would have denied this before I got sober. I didn't want to be known as someone who was sappy. I was strong, I was confident, I was full of shit. No really more "full of myself" than anything. So what was it about romance that bothered me? As I started to think this over it came to me.....vulnerability. That's it! I didn't want anyone to know I was vulnerable. I mean you open yourself up for any type of criticism, any weak spot, and every type of pain when you are vulnerable. However we are all born with the "vulnerable gene". We all have somthing we wish to not expose. For me its letting go of the fact that I'm not self reliant. I need to lean on people. I need to ask for help and it's Ok to have help. My sponsor likes to say "It's Ok to ..." because she knows this is a tough area for me. What's really funny is that I thought I had escaped being vulnerable when that's all I was thanks to alcohol. I opened that door wide open, I just couldn't feel it because I was so numb. So yes, today I can say I am a romantic, I am vulnerable, because today I am willing to change, and to change you need to be open and vulnerable to the unknown that lies ahead......

Not today....

Just feeling a bit blue. Tired, but the sun is shining and it's going to be warm, so I'm taking the afternoon off for a "mental health" fix. Trying to be patient with my husband. Trying to be patient with myself.....

Clarity, Calmness, and Love

On the drive into work this morning, I noticed the sun was playing peek-a-boo with me through the trees. When I least expected it, it would kiss my face full force, and then shyly disappear. I love morning. The hum of expectation hangs in the air. I was listening to some beautiful music and listening to it loud since there weren't three critics in the car demanding I turn my "not so cool" music down. When a thought and a feeling both struck me at once. I love my husband! I really truly love him! I know we've been married for almost 17 years but this time I felt it, and felt it entirely. You can utter those words a thousand times, but to feel it makes all the difference. Not to mention my marriage has suffered the most. There was a brief time in our dating when the two of us only existed. But like I said it was brief. You don't realize that when your self esteem is so eroded you can't give love but even worse you can't receive love. I made horrible choices before I met my husband. Dated people that took and did very little giving back, so by the time I got married I had no clue of who I was. What I stood for. I just felt angry. I have kept the best part of myself very far away from my husband. Alcohol was my partner because it didn't demand anything of me. I didn't have to give a damn and neither did the bottle. How sad when you put a higher price on the bottle than a loved one. Sometimes looking at my husband, I see a battlefield and we are the only two standing in the smoke and destruction. How do you fix this? where do you begin to close the gaping abyss that is your marriage. I never felt I was worthy of love. It's starting to sink in that I am. People at meetings extend themselves out and say,"let us take care of you". Better them than me since look at the bang up job I've done. I hear my HP saying,"let's do this one day at a time. Let the trust build, let your husband see the change.....let it set its own course". In the book "Moments of Clarity" Jamie Lee Curtis shares her story. She was first addicted to alcohol then she gave up alcohol and started Vicodin. In the end she was back to both. She says finally she was,"sick and tired of being sick and tired", but it took her another 6 weeks to get help. I was "sick and tired" last August and it took me another 6 months before I walked into AA. She also pointed out that hoplessness is without change, because to change brings hope. I love that. Change, something we resist so hard! The very word conjures up fear, but change is a necessity. It's hitting me left and right everyday. Normally I would be going crazy with all these emotions popping up every few seconds but I have a surpising calm. When you are in the moment, in just that 24 hours you are buffered from the past and the future. Carl Jung says it best :"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order". Thank God for God, and AA, and a program that can help me find me. I deserve to love, and love deeply, and even more I deserve to be loved deeply.......

Bling, Bling moments, Chris Botti, and no sleep......

My sponsor refers to moments of clarity as "bling, bling moments". The light goes on and "bling, bling" it all makes sense. I had a few of those yesterday. I saw a nutritionist two days after entering AA. I have gained a lot of weight the past few years and I wanted to do something about it. I didn't share with this person that I was a recovering alcoholic, because I wasn't ready to drop that little tid bit at our first meeting. Well as per my usual weight loss cycle I did really well for two weeks and then once my emotions hit so did my sweet tooth and I blew it out of the water. She was looking over my journal when I burst into tears and blurted everything out. She was very sweet and then shared with me: she has upclose experience by growing up in a household with an alcoholic. She has attended many Al-Anon meetings as well as AA. Plus she had to take numerous psychology courses for her profession. She leaned across the table and said, "Normally I would tell you to just focus on your recovery but you have no self esteem so we are going to merge this with your 12 step program. You only have to eat healthy for 24 hours at a time. We will do this together". We talked about how I don't feel I'm worthy of loosing weight, how I sabatage myself within a week or two of starting any weight loss program. She also said, "It is so important that you start taking care of you and one of the ways you can do this is by making healthy choices." No pressure just 24 hours at a time. We finished our session and I felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders. I will meet with her again in two weeks to see what progress we have made. It's amazing how God puts people in your life that will help you. It was a definate "bling, bling" moment. When I got home, videos needed to be returned to the video store, so I gathered up the children and let the oldest drive. He did pretty good. Followed all the rules and that's not easy when you are driving at night for only the second time. I noticed how large his hands are, and what long fingers he has. It seems just like yesterday that those fingers were interlaced with mine as we crossed the street when he was a toddler. Now he's 6ft. tall and wears a 13 shoe. Where does the time go? After the two youngest went to bed, I headed upstairs to do some journaling. I was listening to Chris Botti "Live in Boston" when the most beautiful song began to play. I grabbed the CD cover and discovered it was "Emmanuel" with Chris Botti on the trumpet, Lucia Micarelli on violin, and backed by the Boston Pops. The music was so beautiful and moving that I closed my eyes and let it wash over me like a wave hitting the shore. The sound of a clear concise trumpet sends shivers up my spine, and the violin (which is my favorite instrument) just reaches into the deep dark caverns of your soul, the places only you and God know about. I let the tears flow down my face, and I just lived in the moment of that wonderful music. I felt it. I used to avoid music, movies, or books that might tap emotions. My famous line used to be ," Is it sad? I can't watch it, or read it. Heaven forbid I get in tune to my feelings. I don't know why they scared me so, but they are here now. In every fiber of my being. I think I might be starting to just let them lap against my body. They are part of me. I need to live through them each and every day. So a little while later I crawled into bed exhausted, and then reality set in. I had had a diet coke earlier in the evening and now the caffeine was whipping through my brain. No sleep until the wee hours of the morn., so now I'm emotional and tired. But being tired isn't such a bad thing, it makes me more calm, and also more accepting, accepting to my feelings.......to listening to the will of God.....to looking for the bling, bling moments as they come....to being soley in this 24 hours....to finding me...

Adjusting the Sails

I haven't been myself for the last few days. I'm edgy and crabby. I feel sorry for my family who gets the worst of it. I want to yell, "I'm trying, really I am but change does not come quickly to me!!" Saturday afternoon I was just plain bitchy. My oldest had invited two extra teenagers to spend the night. Oh, and he forgot one little detail,"TO OK IT WITH ME"! However this is not entirely his fault. I need to set boundaries, so we discussed that this would not happen again unless he checked with me first. I also had a splitting headache and had invited my parents to dinner, so yes I could have better controlled the situation. As I was hauling the laundry basket upstairs, and feeling totally sorry for myself I remembered something that was said at the Saturday morning meeting, "You can't control the wind, but you can adjust your sails". Ahhh yes, I have problems with control. I want total control. I like to "microliz" everyone around me, because on days I feel really vulnerable with no control, I try to squeeze it out of everyone around me. I went upstairs and laid on the bed and took a "time out" for myself. What was really bugging me? The extra people coming over? No, I like a full house. The gloomy weather? No, at least all the snow had melted. What was it?! Perhaps the pain I felt that morning when a young woman poured her heart out, or the fact that I feel like I need to be doing something to promote change faster in my life, or the fact that my world has been turned upside down the last few weeks and it's finally starting to sink in. I got up, grabbed my workbook and started to look back on the exercises I had done with my sponsor. There it was. I need to take care of me. I need to focus on the things I can control and stop wasting energy on the things I can't. Nice and easy. I prayed and then adjusted my sails. I walked downstairs with a whole new attitude. And as you can guess, dinner was great (so was dessert, a Snickers torte) our oldest went driving and my husband said he did great! The two smaller kids went to bed early and my husband and the teenagers went off to see "Shutter Island". I was able to have some quiet time. A nice long soak in Lavendar, a cup of Peppermint tea, and an hour of reading. Adjusting my sail never would have occured to me before AA. I would have milked that crabby mood all day long. I am trying. I need to be content with that. 41 years of behavior isn't going to change overnight. Why are we alcoholics so damn hard on ourselves?! My sponsor always says, "If I could give you one thing right now it would be the gift of self love", and then she adds, "but it will come one 24 hours at a time". So for today I will be aware of the wind, and adjust my sails, and hopefully have smoother sailing than in the past.....