Tag Archives: recovery

It’s Been Too Long

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“One day you will wake up and know yourself more than you ever have. You will see all the magic that everyone else has been seeing in you all along.”

~K from the Hill Country

I have not written in so long, even though I think about sharing and writing about my journey into sobriety quite often. As it is for many of you, life gets busy and sometimes, if you are like me, your words don’t flow as easy even though they are there, bursting at the seams.

I am 6 months sober as of yesterday! Yay me! Only I can’t find the joy or excitement for this HUGE milestone. Even more exciting is that I have pushed myself to make new connections IRL! Finding women in sobriety that I can learn from and seek help. I have not asked for help or made the effort I should to foster these friendships yet. This is very common problem of mine, not making the effort, and if I dare say anxious about making friends, and sharing about myself in general is a major problem for me.

Why am I so afraid? I don’t know and it is making me extremely sad and pissed off! I am sure it is rooted in shame, anxiety and fears of not being good enough.

So where do I go from here and all these realizations I have in sobriety? I need to get VERY uncomfortable and put myself out there. I need to tell someone how I am feeling. I need to share my fears and I need to find professional help for my anxiety and lack of confidence.

These all sound like simple things every adult should know and understand right? And intellectually I do understand I need to break through these concerns in order to progress and stay sober. Doing them is another story. So what is the plan you ask?

The plan is simple, share in the meetings I attend. Just say it out loud. Reach out – put the words out there in my virtual and real life connection points. Be vulnerable, even when I can’t get the words out just say anything to begin taking the fear out of sharing. Keep connections, put it in my calendar to reach out to one person everyday to share one hard thing I am dealing with or have dealt with. Share the wins, it is ok to be proud of myself and celebrate my victories, big or small.

Such a simple plan, nothing fancy, the power is in executing the plan. Doing the hard things like saying my fears out loud or sharing something about myself that may not be perfect or messy, sends me into a swirl of panic, that need to break through. Admit I need help and I can’t do this by myself.

6 months of continuous sobriety is an amazing accomplishment and I very proud of myself. I am stronger, clearer and more compassionate. I can tell you feeling everything is not always fun and it can hurt like hell but I am not running away or numbing everything out. I am sober and working to find the light inside of me that is just bursting to get out.

It has been too long, yet just long enough for me to begin to emerge from the dark life I was living and begin sharing the real me with everyone.

~K from the Hill Country

Take Only What You Need But No Matter What Keep Going

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Dear ~K,

It has been quite a year! Too many days stuck inside and a life without our normal everyday movements. So much hatred and sadness, so many people hurting, struggling and suffering. It is a lot to take in everyday, often with no escape, and no place to go, like so many of us stuck at home with everyday pressures feeling more like a pressure cooker. On top of all the crazy outside I am dealing with a marriage that is failing, my world feels extremely small, smothering and so overwhelming and vast with loneliness all at the same time.

If I could summarize my days for the vast majority of the past year has felt stuck on repeat.  Things go smoothly for a while then they explode in front of me, like bombs going off in every direction and no place to run or hide.  My husband and I argue all the time, in front of our kids, which I hate but even if I try to hide or end the argument he persists and it escalates until one of us leaves the house or finally just stops answering.  The depth of the cracks in our marriage are deep, I am not sure they can be mended and I don’t believe my husband has the maturity, emotional or other wise, to make counseling work.  I also know I have work of my own to do to be more caring and show empathy and understanding. 

Although, it may appear this summary of the state of our relationship is cold or unfeeling it is not.  There is no need to say more here about that topic. I will have to make decisions in the new year that may be difficult but also owe it to myself, my husband and my kids to work on myself and my sobriety before I go making huge changes that have consequences on others I care about deeply. 

Looking back on 2020 the “major” events that happened, many have to do with my boys and the outside world. To start, I am proud of my kids they have done a very good job, during this pandemic, trying to manage their studies, grades and sports all while being quite isolated from their friends and normal life. I had an awesome review at work and proud of my accomplishments, I also applied for a new role which I will be in throws of interviewing for as we return in the new year. My younger son made a great lacrosse team and my older son was on fire for basketball over the summer and made his high school freshmen team as well.  My dad made it through two surgeries and is healthy! My father-in-law also made it through a minor surgery and still doing well in light of the onset of some memory issues.  Both my children got awesome grades even during a pandemic. I feel fortunate that our boys could go back to school with masks and have some normal days and be around other kids and learn in a classroom setting. My husband has been interviewing and will hopefully find a job in 2021.

I feel disproportionately lucky about the state we live in and the fact our boat club stayed open this summer.  We have been lucky in the sense that we are not locked down like others are but at the same time it is scary as you watch the numbers rise and the people around really not caring about others when they refuse to wear a mask.  My family and I were so lucky that we could go out on the boat, be on the lake and away from it all for hours. It was a wonderful escape for the kids and our family. Although not free of the fighting still a good escape for all of us from the boredom of the everyday of COVID life.

As I think back on 2020, I have learned many lessons, a few I would like to share include 1) I have matured a great deal over the past two years alone and I am proud of myself. I react differently in so many situations, I have the clarity to not tell myself stories, I am not drunk or hungover all the time and I don’t wake up not know what the hell I might have said or done the night before 3) I have grown in my sobriety, realizing that my journey may not always be a straight line and when my sobriety was meant to stick and I was ready for it to stick it would and has 4) I know everything is not my fault and recognize I need therapy and that I has many things I need to work through to support my personal and emotional growth, not to mention my sobriety 5) I am leaving space and time to let my emotions and understanding of situations unfold, not running from one fire to the next, that usually set myself to divert from the real things I need to sit with and give time to 6) I don’t need to be codependent and others can figure it out for themselves (this one is a work in progress) 7) Other peoples’ reactions and choices really don’t have much to do with me and I can just them go 8) I am a strong woman who is smart and learning more about myself everyday 9) Being sober is not just a label for me it is the pursuit of my best life 10) It is real life to feel all your feelings and have real authentic relationships 11) Sometimes things fall apart so you can rise again from the rubble even stronger. 

To move forward we often have to move through the unknown or dark places.  I feel like I have discovered quite a few things about myself this year and I know there is much I want to leave behind.  Though somehow I struggle to put my thoughts together in a cohesive manner about what to leave behind in 2020.  Not because I don’t have baggage or instances that I want to leave there – maybe I just have too much that I don’t want to take forward and that is the scarier part of what to leave behind, without leaving everything.  I am going to take a crack at the major things I can think I want to leave here in this year and not take with me in 2021 or any year moving forward for that matter.

I will leave my guilt and shame over things I did or did not do while drinking over the years.  I also want to leave my anger and resentments towards those people who have made choices to harm or send ill will toward my family.  I want to move through co-dependency and leave my resentments behind against my husband. No longer will I give so much weight to what others think.  Leaving all self-doubt and guilt behind about taking time to sit with myself and discover more about myself in order to grow. I am leaving the need to disappear for the benefit of others and giving others so much power over me and my life.

There are things I also need to start doing in 2021 like looking at my own shit, getting help from a therapist to understand why I am the way I am and why I choose to drink so much.  I want to explore more about myself, learn how to write, do more outside, not be held down by others and to know how and what to fight for in order to be the best me.  I need to start recognize when I am behaving badly, even when it is for a good purpose or point and change my behavior. I need to believe more in myself and find my strength without making others feel stupid. I need to reach out and put myself out there to make friends and more connections regardless of what I believe others think.  I will stop being everyone’s keeper and start encouraging and empowering my family to do things for themselves so I don’t get resentful.

Minutes, hours, days, months and years continue to click by we can make use of them, embrace them as they come or sit on the sideline and curse them out but they will keep coming – the choose is mine what I do with my time, my days, and my life.  Starting today I choose me and all the mess, brilliance and wonder that comes with my life.  I get to take back the wheel, steer my direction but still let things unfold before me. My wish for myself and my life as I move into 2021 is to love myself more, be true to myself and be open to path that begins to show itself in this new year.

I love you and always will. You are not a lost soul, you are bright burning star that brings light to many.  Keep searching for your spark, it belongs to you and you alone!

Love you always and forever,

~K from the Hill Country 

The Ever Changing Tides Inside of Me

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My emotions have always been all over the place, often too big and sometimes way too small.  I am often surprised how quickly they shift, as they go from really high to really low, in what at times, can feel like seconds and other times from day to day, without warning or cause.  I have been trying to pay more attention to my emotions in sobriety and how they have remained the same and/or shifted from when I was drinking, and may I add heavily. 

At first I had to identify that what I was feeling were in fact emotions. I had stuffed everything down for so long that the only emotions that ever surfaced were rage and hatred.  When and if these emotions came out they were alcohol fueled and over exaggerated so anything that was truly underneath (the true emotions) had no space or place to reveal themselves.  

I liken these past displays of alcohol fueled emotions as high tide, turbulent, unrelenting and with a strong undertow that would pull me and everyone else around me deep under the water, throwing them around, swirling in my rage with no way to escape for air.  Have you ever been in the ocean during high tide, when the sets of waves just keep coming? You quickly gasp for a breathe of air, haaa!, then dive deep under water again only to get tossed around like crazy as the wave rolls over you. Then you rise up, gasp for air again, only to be smacked in the face by the next large wave in the set. The salt water in your nose and mouth and you are yet again tossed about only to rise again, hacking and coughing, gasping for air yet again, before the next huge wave comes bounding down on you all over again. 

Why not get out of the water you ask? Well, in this space of relentless waves that pull you under and drag you back out again and again, it is hard, very hard to make your way out of the water and get back to shore. You have to drag yourself out, planting your feet with each step to pull yourself forward and ensure you don’t get pummeled by the next set of waves in the tide’s fury.  When you finally reach the shore you are exhausted and sometimes to be honest, terrified because the fury of the sea is much bigger than you and you realize how small and weak you really are compared to this ever changing vastness of water. Remind you of anything?

I compare my raging alcoholic self to high tide, as I can only imagine what it has been like for my family, through the years, as my drinking increased and my episodes of high tide raging, over dramatic pity parties would ensue.  I would always rage and wallow in how no one cared about me or how I did everything and no one helped.  You name it I raged about it.  My boys and husband must have felt dragged under with no way to rise and take a breath from my yelling and screaming.  I can only imagine how scary that must have been for my kids.

There were and definitely are times now of low tides of my emotions, these are mixtures of feeling alone, lost, or sad but also grateful, that I am now more calm and can handle these emotions more gracefully.  When I was drinking however, these low tides were the swirling, gradual stewing of emotions that I did not know how to deal with. These emotions would come in and out, never staying long enough for me to examine them.  They were just out of grasp, as they rolled in and out, just like low tide on the shore. I could wade in the water of my emotions but would never go too deep, as the water was too calm and I never really knew what was underneath.  I would try to wade in these low tides of shallow water of my emotions, but I could not because it hurt too much.  Shame, guilt, sadness and fear rolled in and out just like the tide, slow and steady never rising too much but just enough to make me wallow and feel unsafe, floating in the vastness of some very dark water, all around me like at the beach. As we wade out into the sea during low tide, small little waves and unclear water lapping all around me.  The low tide is enjoyable for awhile until the fear settles back over me, that I need to stop drinking and change, stop this insanity, all of this is just too scary for me so I drudge myself back to the shore for my perceived place of safety – drunkenness would prevail to “save me”.

“Just like moons and suns, With certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise.” ~

Maya Angelou

Now, in my days of sobriety I am trying to identity my emotions more and understand why I still dive into the high tide of a raging sea inside of me.  But now I find the surface more quickly and take breathes between each wave that thrashes over me.  Yes, high tide still comes my way emotionally, but I am learning how to dive deep and rise again, bursting upward to breach the deep emotions that often try to drowned me. Instead of allowing the raging and screaming tides to devour me I stop and examine what is happening for me.  I am working hard to look at myself and stop blaming everybody else and drag them deep underwater with me.

The low tides are still there as well, and although now days, I venture further into the water to find out more about my emotions, I still enjoy the peaceful lapping small waves on the shore of my life, keeping me more grounded than I ever thought I would be.  Now, I can wade into my emotions, when I want to and walk out for quite a while with my emotions only stay about knee deep.  The further I wade and walk out gives me confidence that I can just be with my emotions, all of them versus just the previous few, knowing I can return to shore whenever I need to and never drag anyone else under with me.

I will forever love and fear the sea, just like I do my myself and my family.

~K from the Hill Country 

You were dying and I still could not get over myself

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As your were fighting for your life I was drinking mine away.  I am still ashamed I did not see you enough or visit you more. I left you alone when I should have been there the most.  You were the person I could have told, should have told about my struggles but the timing was not right.  How selfish would it have been to sit and talk about myself and my problems when you were fighting for your life?  You were the person who would not judge, you would have told no one.  You would have reached out and supported me, this I know as a fact.  I was in a selfish place, embarrassed of what I was doing to myself and my family, drinking and smoking while you were going through chemo, surgeries, and radiation, fighting everyday to stay, stay with us, with your family. 

My guilt and shame overwhelms me even to this day.  I need to put this out into the world to free you and free me.  Addiction makes us so selfish, afraid and ashamed.  We can’t see or feel past our own guilt and greedy desire for the next drink.  We are so numb there is no room for other feelings and compassion for others.  

You were dying, fighting and pushing forward regardless of how awful you felt, while I could not handle the reality of losing you. You were the true friend, who told others the truth about themselves, who was supportive no matter what, who did not judge others, that person who helped everyone.  You knew the value of service to others, you were also flitting from thing to thing to help others, serve the community.  

You were strong when I was not, I watched from the sideline never really telling you how much you meant to me, never having the space or guts to have an honest conversation about how much I hated what was happening to you. Why you? Never going too far into conversations that would be honest and painful because I was not able to.

I showered you with flowers, surprise visits that were of course planned around my drinking for that day.  I visited you in the hospital and watched your kids for you, brought food and fruit baskets.  I did nice things but never got too deep or sat with you for too long as I was too immature for what was happening. Too selfish and worried about myself and my needs about losing you, my dear friend. 

The day we had the conversation, where you told me how angry and sad you were that your boys would grow up without a mother, I finally stopped being a coward for just a tiny moment of time, holding your hand, listening and crying with you as I knew how very much your boys meant to you and how different their life would be without you. No applause please, that this was me actually was making progress, I went home that night and drank a bottle or more of wine, pushing every feeling I had so far down it would never see the light of day again.

I am not a total monster, I did think often about why you? Why did God want you but I already knew the answer.  You were angel here on earth for so many, and your husband needed to rise up and bring up your boys.  But it still did not make sense and it was so damn hard.  So I drank, I drank more, I withdrew from friends, my family and sometimes life in general.  Never able to just sit with these very difficult feelings, drowning them was so much easier.

The confusion and sadness of your loss also stirred questions about my own mortality. My place and space on this earth. I began to think I needed to do better, I still think that and try to do better but it is hard as I am not you. You had a drive, a mission of sorts to be better and do more, trying to make my tiny impression, trying to wear your huge shoes and fill in the void your imprint had made. I know that your drive in life was somewhat fueled by the distance and loss of your father due to drinking. Yet another reason I know I could have told you what I was going through and that I had a drinking problem. You would have understood and been supportive because that is what you did always.  But at the same time, I did not want to tell you , thinking you would be mad or it would bring up feelings for you about your Dad.  Honestly, there is always an excuse, I was full of them.  The fact of the matter is I should have told you, even in your own despair you would have prayed for me and you would have known the deep value of our friendship. 

Read the above paragraph again, it is not about her, my dying friend, it is about me.  My drinking made everything about me, always. I am not sure I can ever forgive myself for the lack of depth and emotional maturity as my friend was dying.  What I can do is take what I have learned from her about her strength, honesty, and belief in others and God to help me be and do better.  Whether you believe in God or angels, is not relevant here. What is real are the traits and love that others show us while they are here, and how we carry that with us always and how those actions and love shows up in so many wonderful small ways if we accept them.  All you have to do is watch for the signs and receive them as they come. Take those small moments, signs and reflect, remember and just feel however you feel.  Don’t shy away, don’t disappear behind a drink, just let those feelings in and teach us how to grow.

I lost my friend and it still hurts, even now after all the years gone by. So many things I should have said and done differently, but I need to realize I did not have emotional maturity back then to be fully present for her.  I am learning to open up more to close friends, just a few, maybe not about my drinking but about how I feel and what hurts me deeply in life these days.  I am recognizing and learning to be more present for my children as well, which I am proud of and I know she would be too.

If I leave you with anything from this post it is that life is short, we make mistakes and drinking keeps us stuck.  Don’t be stuck, push through, be uncomfortable and say the things that make your squirm, you may never know how much those words mean to someone else and how it can break down barriers for both of you.  

As for our drinking, be vulnerable – say something, tell someone so they realize what is really going on below the surface, don’t wait – just do it.  Once you say it out loud, you can breathe again. Then you give the power of the drink less space and you can open space to be there for someone else who may really need you to be present and do nothing but be a good friend and listener. You can make the space to sit with feelings versus drinking at them, this I promise you.

~K from the Hill Country 

1, 2, 3, 4…My Resentment Grows No More

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When you start this journey of sobriety you begin with a day 1.  Anyone who is on this journey has one, a day 1.  Some people may have many day 1’s, I know I have. As the initial days begin to tick by you start to zone in on the number of days.  Particularly in the beginning as the first days are so important and help you get the strength and excitement to keep going.  You find strength and celebration in each day. 

As the time ticks by, it can feel like a contest of sorts, but it is not.  Each journey is different and each path is our own. But still as people around you share their days you worry what if I mess up? I will fall behind, I will lose my days and the gap between us will grow.  I repeat there is no competition, only the one you create in your own mind.

Then when you trip up, relapse as some say, the clock starts again for you but not the others.  They keep going and soon I found I was far behind, wishing I was where they were. But I had no one to blame but myself.  I drank, they did not, they kept going.  

It is a very lonely feeling, one of shame, pain and angst. Questions like why can’t I do this? Why am I such a loser? When will I get this right? But you see these are the wrong questions and the wrong approach.  My brain would jump to resentment as I heard the days and months of others, knowing I could have been right there with them.  I would beat myself up, still do at times. I felt weak, lost and forgotten. 

But I have come to realize everybody did not leave you.  They are paving the way for you.  They are clearing the path so you can follow them, making it easier for you to keep going.  No matter how many times you fall down, they will come back for you, pick you up and help you keep going.  This is not a race, or a destination, this is your life and for me, my sanity. 

Flip the script as you listen to others share their days, see them as personal triumphs for your fellow sober trail blazers.  I have come to realize this journey is mine and mine alone, but that does not mean I have to do it alone.  I need help, I need others to show me the way, to help me not get lost. I want the numbers, need the days to be honest, to keep ticking along.  I know now, the counting of days from others is my inspiration, the light that leads me on my way.  I need not compare or resent, I need to embrace and applaud others, as I know those before me are my guides to my long term sobriety. I am grateful for those before me, always.

~K from the Hill Country

The Roots, The Branches and The Leaves

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Every tree has roots that hold them to a place in the dirt.  Ever tree has branches or off shoots that showcase buds that turn into leaves.

We often refer to our families of origin as our family tree with branches of members and leaves that off shoot and come and go, change shape and color, and re-budding time and time again.  As we grow up and begin to grow our own family, we begin to plant our own set of roots and those roots begin to burrow onto our fiber and our being.  They hold us to the place, time and people that make up our family.  Throughout my life my family has grown and morphed, by this I mean, my family was sometimes made up more of close friends and their families, other times my extend family of origin and then changing again to my family nucleus made up of my husband, two sons and two dogs.

The nucleus has also included close friends as they have come in and out of our lives over the many years we have been together but nonetheless our party of four plus two fur babies has been the constant for a very long time now making up our immediate family tree trunk and branches.  

Our roots run deep and our trunk although slightly crooked stands tall nonetheless.  Time and awareness can make us either starve the tree of water, prune it too far or neglect it in other ways.  Or you can water, fertilizer and prune the tree so that it flourishes.  

In my case I have waffled on feeding and watering our family tree and at other times starving it causing the trunk to slant and roots to shrivel and loss grip on the earth and place that holds the tree in place.

As the years have gone by and so many things has changed one thing has remained and progressed that has caused the neglect to the tree. The drinking and havoc it has caused.  Although the drinking ramped up there were other things under the soil that kept starving the roots.  The resentment, the depression and the growing belief that the love was gone.  

I can’t say the exact point in time the love seemed to slip away or exactly why.  Perhaps we were never meant to be in the first place but just never took the space and time to examine that.  I know I play a big part in that ambivalence as I have for the vast majority of my adult life.  Always looking for the person who would sweep me up and be the one.  Always moving too fast and never really knowing who I was or what I wanted.  

But in this family tree there really was not an option I felt for walking away or moving away like I had done so many times before.  This time there were other people involved, my boys who so badly needed a sturdy tree that could help them change, evolve and grow so they could be the strong branches and the allow their leaves to continue to bud, grow, change and repeat.

When we make choices to hide or dissolve into our bad habits we leave very little space for those we love or who love us and need us.  I think about my actions, distance and numbness everyday.  I am defiant as a mother due to my own choices and the circumstances I have put myself in.  When the roots don’t hold you or your family to the ground you can falter, making your responses or lack there of worse creating even more distance between you and the ones you love. 

So this where I have the choice to open up for my children and keep the other parts of my sorrow and loveless marriage out of the picture.  Rise up and be present for my family or at least part of it.  There is no real choice to uproot the tree right now as it would devastate the branches and leaves forever.  Instead I need to look inside and be stronger, bring more clarity and peace to my home and not drink.  Remove the fog, the fuzzy head and shame just be real and be there for my boys.  I can take care of the rest later when it is safe to uproot the tree without damaging the branches and the leaves.

I share this here because I don’t want to falter, I will come back when it is tough and read these words so I know to stay the course and remember the to feed, fertilize and water my family tree.  After all it is a family tree, and my family deserves more and better from me.

~K from the Hill Country

So Small

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I am so small
My world is so small
I live life rolled up in a tight ball 
The space I possession just becomes less and less
My life is a fucking mess


My world is so small because I shut out all
Leaving no space or time for anyone to pay a visit at all
Shutting everyone out except for one who will definitely lead me to fall


I am small because I choose to be 
I was not always this small but my addiction restricted me 
Too small to raise my voice for help
Ego to big to really look at myself


My life is a mess because I gave up
Reigning chaos and letting everything go amuck
Never caring about anyone else, only me and how numb I could get


I am so small because I ignore it all 
Living among the lies that strangle me 
Minimizing my space so there is no way to get free 
Smaller and smaller my existence gets like anvil I can’t get off my chest


My world is so small as I have left room for only drink
I hide away so they won’t see my world is made up of only one thing
All else falls away or gets pushed out, there is no more room in my one room house


My life is small
I am small 
The mess of if all is so big it has devoured me
Small will just have to fit since I am too afraid to set myself free or ask for the key

Clean

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Reflections of Striving for Sobriety During A Pandemic

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In these current days and times I have been cleaning more than I ever have out of necessity really, to keep my family safe and healthy.  As I wipe every handle and countertop, I think about the word clean and what it means to me when it comes to my drinking.  I am not clean or sober, but striving for that now more than ever so I can keep my sanity and wits about me.  I am heading into a time where my kids will need to be home schooled and cared for emotionally and spiritually.  I need to be clean or clear minded to do that in an effective way for them.  

I am trying to keep my house in order, putting away dishes, cleaning bathrooms, washing sheets and towels way too often.  Washing clothes and dishes everyday to provide an appearance of a clean and less chaotic environment.  As I do these chores I continue to ask myself, how will you strive to keep your mind and body clean during and after this time?  Well, if I am going to put this much effort and sweat into keeping my house clean, I most definitely need to keep myself sober.  There really is no difference, as I write this entry I am cleaning my thoughts and changing my outlook about myself and my drinking. Learning how to clean up the thoughts, actions that keep me stuck in that mess.  It is truly time to roll up my sleeves and get down on my hands and knees and clean up me and my approach to living a much better life.

How will you rise up and be the best mom you can right now, and be able to hold up over this long stretch of time to enable your family and yourself to thrive? Well, let’s start by not isolating or numbing to the point I can’t remember things.  Breathe through the news everyday, or maybe just turn it off entirely.  Engage with my kids, talk to them about everything that is going on, answer their questions and more importantly comfort them, now more than ever.  Be present for them, help them with their new normal of school work from home, help them adjust to very little interaction with friends, and teach them to be good to each other and others in this very strange time.

I can’t say I have all the answers but little things are shifting for me now more than ever.  Not only caring more about making sure the house is clean and organized, but thinking about the reasons I would drink and deriving a plan for not drinking as things seem to cave in on me.  I am making mental plans for myself, physical plans as well, about how I will move my body more, making choices to spend time with my family versus numbing out to the point of black out and forgetting everything from the night before.  That will not make it better, only worse, as the anxiety and guilty takes over with no where for it or me to go.  I won’t lie my anxiety is very high right now and I have tremendous trouble sleeping but I working the plan to help me sleep like less screen time before bed, eating dinner earlier, mediation before bed as well.  I know these things work because when I have used them in the past and stuck with them for long periods of time I sleep much better and I feel much better.  

Cleaning everyday, is the new normal for me, just as working more solidly on my sobriety is my new normal. They go hand in hand, as a two prong plan.  The more I clean up the outside, I am cleaning up the inside. 

Stuck vs. Stubborn

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I keep asking myself am I stubborn or just stuck? Why can’t I keep going, even when it is going so good? I will get so very far and start diving into “the work” and then it is like a switch clicks and I am back on the crazy train again.

I know better! However, I am trying to assess if this cycle is because I am stuck or just stubborn? If I were stuck this would mean I am trapped and had no way out but I do have a way out.

I know I am not stuck or trapped because I hold the key. I am am the only who can set myself free. Yet even when I do set myself free, I end up locking myself back up in this hell.

So am I just stubborn? Am I determined to not change or refuse to admit this shit is not doing a damn thing for me? Yet I keep drinking. Am I too stubborn to stop because I can’t admit to myself I need to stop. No, I know on every level and fiber of my being I need to stop. I am so stubborn that can’t admit to myself that I can live without this poison? Or is it that I can’t admit I will have to live without it for the rest of my life.

I keep coming back to this question, am I stuck or just too stubborn? But I believe this is just another addicted mind game because I know I am not stuck. I am letting my ego get in the way of my sobriety. There I said it, wrote out right here. I am my own problem. I am letting my ego get in the way. I am too proud to admit I need to give it up for good.

Even when I know how great things are when I am sober, I know I will have to start to examining the things in my life that are causing me to go back to drinking. I don’t use the tools I have acquired, I stack them up, but don’t use them when I really need them.

If I stop and reflect I know my ego is in the way. I know I am being stubborn but not because I refuse to change, it is that I don’t want examine the things in my life that need work or need to change because they are big, scary things that shake me to my core. So instead of using my tools I drink and start the cycle all over again.

I have a choice to make and I know it. With each relapse I become more self aware that I need to use my tools and make progress toward long-term sobriety. I need to stop coasting and start living, hard or not I know I am not stuck and I am somewhat stubborn but my motivations are strong and I will push through this time to get to the other side. I know what is waiting for me there and it so worth it!

One thing won’t fix it all

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We are always looking for the quick fix, the instant gratification, but we know it really does n’t really exist.  Most things, almost everything takes work, most of the time hard work.  Fixing things is not always easy and can be messy, frustrating and challenging.  If you are like me you avoid those things by looking for the quick fix or just sweeping it under the rug.  I am speaking to emotional things here not the overflowing toilet or the broken toy for my son.  The stuff we try to fix about ourselves or within ourselves. 

For me that is drinking, to start anyway.  I kept telling myself if I fix that everything, else will fix it’s self.  Really? How could I be so naive to believe that if I stopped drinking my marriage would magically get better or my relationship with my children would just instantly be perfect like Leave it to Beaver?

The things I drank over were vast, motherhood, relationships, shame, inability to be perfect, worrying about how other people would treat me or my family, sports, childhood disagreements for my kids, the list goes on and on. But these things to drink at and my feelings were so much deeper I just never took the time to look at them, I would just observe them and then drink them away.  Well, at these that is what I thought. These feelings and worries never went away in fact they began to amplify, and over time become overwhelming to the point I would have so much anxiety It was hard to breathe and I shifted to a shell of myself and a dark place that just kept getting smaller and smaller with what felt like no escape. 

I never really realized that I was drinking to avoid, numb or just live in denial about how things were transpiring in my life and how things were becoming messier and messier due to my drinking and checking out.  I did not really fix things.  I denied they existed, got defensive about them and when asked or confronted I would fly into a rage. I often cried in secret when it all became too much and about what a failure and fuck up I was as a professional, wife, mother and friend. I would drive home from work in the dark and scream at the top of my lungs because I had no outlet accept to drink. Those primal screams were terrifying, crazy and I seriously believed I was starting to loose my mind.  My reality was slipping away and I knew the curtain was coming down on my reality, soon I would truly be found out or I was going to go some place very dark that I was not sure I would be able to come back from.  

When I finally realized that drinking too much was going ruin me and that I was using drinking as way to not really address anything I was terrified of. By that time it was getting out of control and manifesting in very bad ways. Resentment, shame, anger, fear, and failure, worry and most important I think a lack of love or caring about myself or some of those close to me.  The resentment and shame made me more anger, which in turn meant many outbursts, lashing out, blaming others, being mean and hateful. 

My ability to love my boys and husband was getting further and further away from me and I was both terrified and ambivalent at the same time.  Who had I become or should I say who have I always been, this scared little girl who hid from everyone and everything, never letting anyone in so they could not hurt me.  There were moments in time I would have been happy to walk away, free myself from all of their shit and lack of respect for me.  But there was the other side that I knew if I turned my back, I would lose myself forever and devastate the people I loved.  

I stopped drinking twice now for good stretches of time, not years but 3 and 4 months chunks of time and many things changed for the better but new things emerged or became more clear which also terrified me.  

In these periods of time, I became more engaged with my boys and talked with them vs. yelling at them and being impatient.  I could rationalize with them and discuss things to work through them versus huge blowouts and long stretches of hatred and shame.  I would listen to them, most importantly vs. talking at them.  I spent more time with them and was more available. 

Those were the good things.  The other things that emerged were how much I was resentful of my husband and how much I very much hated the way he talked to me and treated me at times.  The verbal noise and disrespect was blurred and far away when I was drinking or caused reactions that were not healthy but when I was not drinking I was able to see things clearly and my responses were not combative or childish.  They were mature, thoughtful and came from a place of clarity and strength.  I would shut down arguments and call him out when he was creating stories or future tripping where before I would spiraled with him and been overly anxious and always worried about why people did not like me, why I was the problem, why I was weak etc.

When I stopped drinking I would be able to shut down unproductive conversations.  I would simply walk away after it had started calling out the fact my husband was telling himself stories or calling him out on his behavior, including a rationale explanation for why it was not right and I wouldn’t stand for it anymore.

I started questioning what I was doing with my life.  What I really wanted to do, who I wanted to be with and how or if I should make different decisions for the future.  I was starting to dive into how I go to this place, how I was not the mother or in the relationship I wanted to be.  You see it all stems back to the things we don’t want to fix or take the time to learn how to fix.  We just look for the quick fix which in my case became drinking. When I was younger I would just pick up and move so I did not have deal with the mess I made in my currently world. I would run away from everything and everyone.  I would blame everyone else and never examine myself.  In all honesty, I did not even know how to look at myself or my behaviors or that learning to love yourself was a thing.  I was what everyone else wanted me to be.  I would move, I would switch jobs, friend groups, anything I could to escape myself but you know the old saying “no matter where you go, there your are looking back at yourself in the mirror.”

I would try to change myself, want I liked, who I liked so that I could move forward.  Never stopping to do the work to fix what was really going within me.  I kept jumping into new relationships and looking for those relationships to take everything away, the fantasy of finding “the one”.  

I would go back to drinking during these two stretches only to realize very quickly things would go right back to the same place, no progress to the me I wanted to become. I would go right back to isolation, just not engaging, checking out completely.  Disappearing quite honestly. And that shook me to my core!

Now that I have sober AGAIN for a good stretch of time, I am trying to do the right work with the right tools.  Even if it leads to hard discussions, choices I am facing them.  I will not rush, or move fast but make very solid and investigated decisions.  I will take the time and re-engage, work my way back to who I want to become and how I want relationships to be, healthy, mature, nurturing, loving and open/honest. 

There are no quick fixes, there are no magic spells, there is only the work that makes us stronger, smarter and more alive.  I am in this for long haul and time is important but this is not a race and I am not looking for instant gratification.  Only love and admiration.