A Brave New World and...Stuff

      So, my first inclination was to start this post with an apology or a self-deprecating statement because I haven't posted in almost a week. But, really, who am I accountable to? Just me. I am grateful for any who read this, and I hope that my words help you in some way, but I cannot and will not add any unnecessary pressure to my life.And if I think about this blogging adventure I have embarked upon, I'm the only one who ever set any expectations around it. No more. I will post when I need to work something out. I will document my journey so, that one day, my children may read it and understand their mama a little better. I will continue to use this outlet to read, read, read (so many new and wonderful posts from many of my favorite blogs) and write when I might have something to really say. Or not, I might just ramble and process, and that's okay too. Phew, setting some self-boundaries, this shit is hard! But kinda cool, ya know?!

       I'm working hard to bring in day 30. Six teeny tiny days to go. I'm focusing less and less on the facts that I'm an alcoholic and can't drink. I'm starting to focus more on the things I want to change and the way I want to live my life going forward. In spite of myself, AA is part of that forward motion. Maybe that's why I haven't written as much. I've hit a meeting a day, on a couple of days, I hit two. I am checking out the Big Book and the Steps and haven't decided yet if I want to work those things into my sobriety path. I do know, though, that I need to be around the people in those rooms. They are like me. They get me. They accept me. I learn from them. I laugh with them. I need to learn and laugh.

      I am still struggling to find my routine. My sober-life ritual. My sober self. Hell, the ridiculousness of that thought- of course I am still struggling. It's. Been. 24. Days. Patience. Kindness. Acceptance. Serenity. Relationship with self. These are my goals.

       I have a client, with whom I have been working with for several months. I really like her. She is so self-aware and really quite emotionally healthy. She has some blockages that we are working through. Blockages that are not the same as mine ( that would be unethical), but the solutions are the same. As she is growing and realizing and identifying, I can't help but wonder why I can't just therapize myself and be just as okay. I can over-analyze myself right out of my own answers, but yet help clients walk straight into theirs. The solution is so stinkin simple. The solution to finding my best me is already somewhere inside of me. Change is a choice. Change is a journey. Change is scary and challenging and rewarding and exciting all at once.

        It's confusing, getting to know oneself at 35. I still have years and years of old tapes are often on "autoplay". I know how to press "pause" today, even if just for a moment. I am working everyday to record new tapes. I will hopefully learn how to press "stop". I am on emotion and thinking overload and even in meetings, it is difficult to pull all of my million sober thoughts into some intelligible form. I think this is encouraging. I could get upset and full of shame that processing newer, healthier thoughts is so difficult right now, because I spent so much active drinking time under toxic thought. Instead, I choose to feel encouraged. The fact that I am a disjointed mess means I am really starting to dig. I am starting to feel. I am starting to allow myself to open up to the possibility that I am going to be okay and rock this sobriety thing, even when it sucks (and I have had some sucky days). That, to me, is courage. That is a bravery I don't think I've experienced my entire adult life. It's a brave new world, indeed, and I am happy to ramble and stumble my way around.

Thanks for stickin through and getting to the end of this one. I hope there was at least one nugget that you took away.
xxoo
       

1....2....3....Shuffle

      Sighhhhhhhh. It feels so peaceful sitting here with my green tea and laptop. It's a quiet house with all three littles asleep and hubby at work. I have missed this, the last few nights. There is something about the stillness of the house that I really have learned to embrace in this short, but long, 17 days. It's strange, this new love of still and serene; quiet and still was typically when my head grew loud and the wine got poured. I am beginning to see that the vino and vodka just made everything louder.

I would drink more in a miserable attempt to mute the deafening cluster of thoughts that would keep coming. Finally, I would pass out.

    If I'm being honest, I haven't really embraced pure silence. I still must have the sound of my thoughts spilling onto the pages of this blog. The flow of feelings written into my journal is just audible enough to keep me company. Other nights, I need the murmurings of mindless TV or the steady voices of a podcast to make an otherwise soundless house feel safe enough to sleep in. Safe from my own thought patterns and tendencies. Safe from  liquid aid to drown out all of my fears, regrets, and worries. I will learn how to be still with my own thoughts amidst silence. I am inching towards that place each sober day, every abstinent hour, every courageous minute.

    My what dances we dance with ourselves, eh? As an active drinker, I would dance what I thought was a sexy mambo. A game of hard-to-get; a catch-me-if-you-can. Since deciding to change my life by being sober, I have been trying to waltz. Slowly, gracefully, intentfully. I glided beautifully along for the better part of two weeks. It is in the last few days that I have begun to do a shuffle.

   As you (may or may not) know, I started checking out AA last week. I am still doing so. I am taking what I want and leaving what I don't. I am building a network of support. I am sketching out what my path to recovery looks like and designing how I want to construct my own sobriety. Blogs, podcasts, books, and AA are aiding in these endeavors. I continue to learn the more receptive I am to listening (or reading).

     As I have been sitting in the rooms of AA, I am beginning to consider the steps and what they mean to me; how I might work them in my own way, in my own time, in a manner which makes sense to me. I thought I had steps 1-3 down. You know, the steps about admitting we were powerless over alcohol, finding and believing in a higher power (HP), and handing our will to drink over to that  HP? Easy shit, right? I thought I'd master this sobriety thing much like I excel at most things I attempt (humble much, Jill?!). It dawned on me today, I haven't even really accepted I am an alcoholic. Let the 1,2,3 Shuffle commence!

        Wow, I'm realizing how long this post may be. That's what happens after three solid days of not getting it all out. I'm gonna keep going, even if you don't keep reading :)

    Rationally, logistically, intellectually, I know I am incapable of drinking like a normal person. I know that it has been but a few rare occasions that I have been able to have just one drink, regardless of how long in between drinking episodes I can manage to go. This is hard and cold fact as evidenced by countless examples of being much drunker than I intended to be. I know my life, at times, has been unmanageable. This is evidenced by arguments with my husband, hangover days which were taken as vacation or sick days, car accidents, DUI, children seeing their mother passed out on the couch in the morning from the night before, missed bill deadlines, avoidance of social obligations....need I go on? You get the picture.
  
       It seems reasonable, then, that if I were to commit myself to working the steps of AA, that it would be easy to race past the first one with ease. Powerless and unmanageable. But I'm not powerless, I cry. My life is not unmanageable, I declare. If i were powerless, I would be drinking right now. If my life were unmanageable then how do I have such a great family, career, friends, material things? If I can go a whole 17 days without a drink, surely one glass of wine, or one shooter of vodka, will be just enough to calm the nerves. NO. NO. NO. "Been there, done that," I rebut. I am powerless over alcohol once I take the first sip. My life is unmanageable when I am drunk or hungover, regardless of whether I was still looking good on the outside and maintaining "high functionality". Repeat after me as many times as I need to believe what I say: I am an alcoholic. I am an alcoholic. I cannot drink normally. I do not want alcohol to be a part of my life. I am an ........... On to Step Two, and the dance continues.

         Do I believe in God? In the universe? In a higher power? In the Big Bang? Evolution? Self-actualization? Psychology and Biology? Astrology and Spirituality? Monotheism? Polytheism? Willpower? Self-determination? AA and Blogging? Cognitive-behavioral, emotionally focused, and solutions focused therapy? Yes. I believe in all of it. Do I believe just one of them has to be my higher power? No. Then why do I get stuck at this point? Why do I revert back to questioning the severity of my problem? 1, 2.....shuffle.  Maybe, this is enough; believing in all of these things is enough. Maybe understanding a higher power, as I understand it, is accepting that I CANNOT DO THIS ALL BY MYSELF. Even if all I did was write, I am using a tool and therefore, I am not acting on willpower alone. Maybe, my higher power is a desire to be the best version of me.

        So who then, do I turn my will over to? At what point do I say my life is in the hands of ___________ ( insert a higher power here)? Maybe I am turning it over to a new way of doing things. Maybe, washing my face, taking off my bra, spending quiet time with me before bed every night instead of drinking and passing out is turning over my will and life. I am changing. I am growing. I am regressing. I am coping. I am baffled. I have no answers except that I. Am. Still. Sober. In so many ways, my life has changed incredibly in less than 3 weeks. It is not perfect. I hope it never is. It is my life and I am me. I am clumsy, so there will always be flaws and mistakes and surprises. But, if every day, I strive to face myself and my life willing to learn new steps, new moves, and learn from a variety of instructors, then I know I will become a much better dancer.

Thanks for listening. This felt disjointed. I am grateful, though for the opportunity to get it out, process it, and slowly feel more pieced together. I am also grateful to continue reading many of your writings and to hopefully help you as you read mine.

Empathy for Mr. Hyde

        Poor Mr.Hyde. He and Dr. Jekyll do not have my sympathy. I do not feel badly for them in a way I cannot relate. Rather, they have my empathy. I know exactly how maddening being a walking, talking, living dichotomy can be. I would venture to say all of us alcoholics do. This contrast of self has consumed my thoughts today. Okay, maybe not consumed, per se. More like, "taken up a lot of thinking space". (see what I did there? Corrected my tendency to dramatize and speak in hyperbole- 2 pts for Jill). Either way, I am beginning to see the dichotomy that is my inner self. Perhaps this inner struggle has been what I have been trying to quiet with years of vodka and wine. Perhaps those were the only two constants I had; the only two tools that could, briefly, combine my inner selves into one.

         Clear mind. With an alcohol-free brain, I am beginning to pick away at all of my misconceptions of self. I am beginning to recognize all of my puzzling contradictions. I'm not sure I know how to reconcile them yet to become a peaceful and congruent self, but I think the first step is identification, anyway. For example, how is it that I can feel so incredibly happy with my career choice, so excited to make a difference in the lives of others and yet be such a bloody mess myself?  How can I often praise myself for a job well-done and in the very next moment downplay recognition and compliments offered by others? It's maddening to teach parents how to parent, look at my own children and feel proud of how beautifully they are turning out, and yet wallow in a deep and murky pool of mommy guilt and the blasted shoulda/woulda/couldas? Or, here is a new one: feel cathartic and calm after writing a new post, proud of myself for facing and documenting my journey and then feeling like a complete failure or an outcast because I have no followers or have yet to build any blogging/online sobriety relationships yet. Sigh, absolutely maddening.

        I think this all has much to do with acceptance, patience, forgiveness, and love. Acceptance of self. The conscious effort of taking myself as I am. Accepting what is inherent and part of who I am, and resolving to change and improve those pieces of me I simply cannot tolerate any longer. Patience to understand that this is a process. It will not happen because 8 days (Yay, EIGHT!) ago I decided to make perhaps the biggest change of my life. Patience with the path to Forgiveness is key here, too. I find myself dwelling on all of the mistakes, all of the poor decisions, especially all of the missed memories that were a result of my drinking. Although I cannot stay in that place of pity, I certainly can't expect myself, nor those around me, to forgive them all so quickly. I will get there, to that place of forgiveness, eventually. I hope I never forget- I think we need those regrets to keep us hungry for more sobriety, but I know, with patience, I will forgive.

           Love. Ah, perhaps the most elusive. Because, how can one truly love oneself without first accepting and forgiving? I know what it feels like to love my children. I thank God everyday that even through my endless acts of selfish alcohol indulging, my love for my children always remained strong and unfaltering. I can say, also, that I love Hubby, and friends, and coworkers, and clients. The dichotomous part of me would also venture to say that I love myself. If love were a noun, then I have this shit covered. I feel love all the time. I am good at feeling warm regard for others and, even, sometimes, myself. Its the verb that I have yet to master. Master? Hell, I have yet to even truly, honestly, and bravely attempt. And I know that I cannot truly engage in the act of loving another until I first enter an active state of loving myself. If that's not a daunting task, I don't know what the hell is.

            Even as I typed that last bit out, one of my inner selves ( I wonder how many there really are), cried out, "Stop! Erase that! That makes you sound so incredibly selfish. How can you be so selfish?!"  I KNOW better though. I KNOW that the act of loving myself will strengthen, enrich, and nurture my love for others. I know that I can give my Oldest, especially as a woman, no greater gift than a model of how to accept and love oneself. I know that loving myself, truly and raw-ly, will allow me to stop projecting my own fears and resentments and irritations onto Hubby. Being at peace with me means I can truly be available and present and whole for Middle and Little. It will make me a better daughter, sister, friend, therapist, person.

           How do I get there? I have no fucking idea. But I know I am on the right track. I know I am being kind and gentle with me for awhile. I know I will need to tough love myself at times. I know I am setting daily goals, in addition to not drinking, and am celebrating when I reach them. I know that I am loving myself right at this moment, as I sit out on my sunny deck, in a process of catharsis, while Oldest showers, Middle plays outside with his mates, and Little naps. I know that a week ago, I would be out here with a glass of wine, wasting time on Facebook while half-invested in the goings-on around me. So, just as I am vowing to not drink, one day at a time, I am also vowing to recommit to myself and those in my world, by learning how to accept with patience, forgive, and love myself. Dichotomy be damned. I wonder if Mr.Hyde would have had more success had he learned to do the same?