Can't Sleep.

I'm so tired but I can't sleep.  I read for awhile but nope.  Rested, did my breathing exercises, tried a body scan meditation and nothing.  What are you gonna do?  I finally just got up and decided to write.  I had rehearsal today and jogged in the park.  The guy & I had dinner together and it was a nice day.  This play is sooooooo much lighter to work on - God Lord thank you!  We are laughing at rehearsals and it's been a really nice experience.  I am working hard on my programs and yeah - at all my stuff.  I am uncomfortable and I am so happy to have therapy tomorrow - God so happy.  I just have these resentments floating around in my head but I have been writing letters to people because that's what my sponsor has suggested so that's what I am doing.  I have been very honest with her and she is being very kind and helpful.  I am so grateful.  I am growing away from a drink - at least today and that is the important piece.  I drank coffee a little bit late in the afternoon today so that's why I am up still I think.  I have to say the brain is so crazy because right now my brain wants to tell me it is all these other things that are keeping me up but in general I haven't felt well today....just tired after jogging and maybe a little too thirsty and run down all day.  So I don't feel great but it isn't really anything or anyone that did it.  But my brain wants to attach things to it. 

I feel better from treatment and I think I am definitely healing and detoxing from it.  I wish my nails would grow back - they are just like paper.  My toenails just peel off like little sheets of paper - it's so weird.  They were always so strong - literally like nails.  I don't know - that part is depressing I think but it's okay.  Ego check.  I feel a little lonely....things are changing but I know it's for the best.....it's just right now I am in that time where I have to not have anything while I wait for what is better and healthier to come.  It's a time of patience and trust.  Yeah.  God - so hard.  Well this helped.  I think I am going to just stay here on the couch and meditate again out here.  It's nice and quiet and the cicadas are chirping - I love that sound so much.  Summertime sounds.  Everything seems so surreal this year because I am alive still.  It's such an inside job now...now that I am older and that I just know so deeply that that is what was missing before.  Serenity.  I want serenity.  Not relief although I do want that but serenity.  Happiness.  Gnight sweet Bluebers.

New Jobs.

I'm working at a new job.  I miss the other kids so much but the new kids are so cool and I booked an acting job that I'm at right now.  It was a long trip but I memorized my lines for the play I'm in so I used my travel time well.  I had to wake up at 5:00 so I am sooooo tired but I went to bed early last night so it's okay.  I feel like I should go to the gym but I also literally want to go to bed and it's still light out.  Okay it's really early.  I wish I could walk outside - I wonder if I could?  I can't figure out how the phone works in my room!  It's cordless and yeah - don't get it.  Anyway I am here and it's so fucking awesome!  In general I am feeling so much better and I can do so much more without getting overwhelmingly exhausted.  I really took my time packing and getting ready and I still forgot to bring some tea with me.  Darn.  It's okay - I will get better at this part.  Also I will be able to bring more food with me like - meals not just snacks.  The food here looks SO GOOD but it's all brie wheels and double cheeseburgers - whoa.  Like fancy double cheese burgers but still.  So anyway.....I had an impossible burger or it's called a beyond burger and it was GOOD.  Which means it's probably totally unhealthy but at least it was vegan.  OKAY.  So.  So that's what I got going on - just new jobs and moving on into my life......so weird.....10 years ago at this time I was still drinking...I was trying so hard to stop...going to meetings and I had cut back sooooooo much and I had cut back sooo much on pot.  It was still a problem and I was a mess.  God I am so fucking grateful right now that I am sober.  I mean all the time I am but to be able to do what I love again is mind-blowing to me.  If you told me 10 years ago I would be able to do this again I don't think I would have believed it.  I mean if you told me I would get cancer, get so sick, go bald and then everything would get even better I really would NOT HAVE BELIEVED THAT SHIT.  Okay well it did and YAY.  Today is a good day and I am going to make it better by exercising.  I'm reading Liver Rescue by the medical medium and it's so crazy.  Good crazy.  OH - it's all about the fat?  Did you know that?  Yup - fats not good.  WHO KNEW.  I guess all the people who don't eat a lot of fat.  I did just have potato chips but OH WELL.  Haha ugh I am laughing but I really don't eat them like EVER anymore.  I used to eat them - everyday.  So.  So don't do that whoever you are.  Eat them once every 6 months or do whatever you want but take it from me - my diet of potato chips and peanut m&m's was not successful.  Okay getting in my workout clothes and going to the gym.  xoxo!

My Throat.

What I was trying to say yesterday that I never fully expressed was that I have issues from both sides of my family and from both of my Grandmothers.  Today is a new day and today after much discomfort this morning I have realized that I am an emotional cutter.  I use to chew my lip - a LOT - just chew and chew.  One time a friend asked me while watching me chew my lip if I was ever a cutter and I said no and then thought to myself "How fucking rude."  HA.  Well so this morning I once again got my feelings hurt and I called my guy and said "Blah blah blah" it doesn't matter and he said - let's see if I can say it..."You aren't eating donuts so you are just self-harming by thinking about these 2 people who have hurt you" and UGH I can't remember how he said it.  It doesn't matter.  What matters is that I just sit and EXAMINE this stuff and make myself SICK.  So after he said that I got on the treadmill and then I JOGGED and SWEATED and my thinking shifted in my BRAIN and then I felt like I was going to barf so I finished up and I rested and now I don't feel as awful.  I'm upset that it is taking so much work for me to operate in the world but also - I'm one of the lucky ones - I'm not drinking or doing drugs anymore and now I do feel better physically so I can exercise and burn that crazy off of me.  It's okay.  It's really okay.  I am learning all the time.  I am learning all the time and the part of the world that I motor through will be better for it.

So why my throat?  I don't know.  It feels weird but I think it's my thyroid healing.  Coming alive?  Who the fuck knows.  I can feel it.  I can feel my throat.  Yeah I don't know I just spent a minute touching it with my eyes closed and I have no clue.  Expression.  Yeah.  Love you Bluebie bye.

Ps It's hard not to feel selfish writing so much about myself but I really do feel this is the work many, many of us have to do...and this is a sort of journal for anyone interested in this way of life.  These types of writings have helped me immensely - truly.  It's helps me also...to get clarity and to get it out of me.  Byeeee.

My Grandmother.

I had 2 grandmothers - one was Grandma or Grandmama and the other was Grandmother.  So formal right?  She was my Mom's mom and she lived far away and I didn't really know her very well.  We saw her in the Summer sometimes and occasionally other times.  I don't remember her very well....I liked their house and she always struck me as - formal.  My grandmama was my Dad's mom and she lived near us and we saw her tons.  We would go there on Sunday night's and watch TV - the Lawrence Welk show mostly and that's when I realized I wanted to be an entertainer.  Anyway she was super loving and great but also difficult.  It always confused me.  Anyway so Grandmother was married to Grandfather and he was an artist and he painted different family members and he did a painting of her that's in my mom's house now.  She's older and sitting at the table with her hand on her throat - because she always had her hand on her throat....and do you know I always remember looking at that and thinking how odd and compelling it was.  I do it now - I put my hand on my throat as if I am protecting it or I don't know - healing it somehow?  Grandmama was angry.  I'm angry.  I am going to say I think Grandmother felt stifled and do you know - I feel and have felt stifled my entire life.  Vocally.  Emotionally.  I'm emotional and it makes people very very uncomfortable......

Cut to this morning...I am having a hard time in the mornings....the menopause is magnifying my alcoholism that I wake up with.  I'm very uncomfortable and sad.  It burns off eventually in the afternoon but it' painful.  Then I think about different people that have hurt me for some reason and this morning I thought about someone who I am not friends with anymore and how hard it was to be friends with her because I could never truly express myself and I couldn't resolve anything.  You know I was just going to write some examples but it doesn't matter.  This is what matters....she wasn't being like that because of me.  She wasn't actively trying to hurt me.  She has got shit to work out just like we all do and she is doing her best.  It wasn't a good fit friendship-wise and I took many steps back which was much kinder ultimately than being in a friendship and being resentful ALL THE TIME.  Which is what was happening.  So when I was walking I was thinking about how I couldn't express myself around her - she out a hand up to whatever I wanted and tried to work out with her.  Then I thought "SEE THIS IS WHY MY GRANDMOTHER HAD HER HAND AT HER THROAT - SHE WAS ALONONIC AND COULDNT EXPRESS HERSELF."  Then I realized that I can do whatever I want.  I can say whatever I want.  I can be whatever I want.  I get the FEELING I can't express myself but it isn't true.  If I continue to live from that place it's okay but I don't have to.  I made a healthy choice to no longer be friends with her but now I can also be kind about it.  This what my sponsor said last week and it blew my mind..."I am kind to people who are kind to me and if someone is not kind to me - I am still kind to them - but from a distance."  WOW.  What's the point of moving away from that friendship if I am going to carry around the resentment still?  I mean I think part of my issue is that I think I can't feel my anger I have around her and the people like her that I attract.  But I can - I can feel whatever I want but good GOD girl - let it the fuck GO.  I went through CANCER and cancer TREATMENT and it was HARD and it put me into early menopause - suddenly and my life is forever changed.  I am BETTER for it so seriously - let it go.  I can let it go.  I can let it go and now I have a sober reference for when someone like that comes into my life.  I have a choice and I can also be kind.  Starting with myself.  Starting with today.  Which I have done so far and this helped.  Love you Bluebie bye.

Olive Kitterage & Boar's Head Meats

I'm reading Olive Kitterage and I am obsessed with Boar's Head's meats.  GOD.  They are so fucking GOOD.  I put them on little square rice cake cracker thins.  With thinly sliced red onion and little greens.  I forgot what they are called - micro-greens?  They are thin whispy mixtures of different greens and I LOVE them.  They have fun names like - I don't know I can't remember that either?  French something?  Mexican something?  Who the fuck knows but I am too tired to get up and go look at the name of the one I have right now.  I'm so tired.  I am exercising more and outside so I am TI.  TI-TI.  It's warm and sunny and it feels GOOD but yeah - TI.  So.  So well  Idon't know - oh right - Olive Kitterage.  WELL.  I was walking to therapy and I walked by this famous book store in the city and they had racks of cheap books outside - I had a few minutes so I perused a few racks.  One of them was cookbooks and I love cookbooks.  Well they were all weird but then Olive Kitterage was there and it was one dollar.  It was brand new and I got a really great feeling from it.  So I bought it.  Then I started to read it and I couldn't put it down.  I t won a Pulitzer and it is truly so well written.  I mean if I can be so bold as to know really what that means but there has been at least 3-4 words that I have never even SEEN in the book so - yeah - amazing.  I am kidding - I know that doesn't mean it's well written but just trust me - it's lovely.  What isn't lovely is that some of the people - most of the people in this book are MISerablllle.  Miserable.  Dark.  Sad.  Unwilling to do anything about it.  Angry.  What I find so fascinating is that Olive is this woman who doesn't drink - right?  She doesn't drink because she knows "If she drank she would be a guzzler."  But she is angry and all caught up in herself like an alcoholic without recovery.  This author has created a character who so clearly needs help but like all fucking alcoholics - refuses to get any help and doesn't think anyone knows better than her anyway.  I mean I know - why the fuck would anyone go to AA who isn't drinking and never did.  But GOD - it's so uncomfortable to read.  I'm nearing the end and it's looking like maybe she's softening a little.  Maybe?  Good grief - this book has made me appreciate these programs even more than I already did.  Oh that's the other thing - everyone (almost) is getting old in the book and they are DESTROYED by it.  So in conclusion I am SO GRATEFUL to be getting old in programs.  I mean at least today I am.  I just don't want to be miserable on the inside anymore and certainly not as I age and as I ease on down the road.  So many of them are in relationships that cause resentments - like continuous resentments, and I don't fucking want that either.  I just did 2 4th steps.  2 mini 4th steps.  A mini 4th step is when you work through why someone is a douche bag but at the end you figure out why you are a douche bag but ultimately that - what?  You aren't a douche bag.  Maybe they aren't either but that you have a choice next time.  You sort of clean up your spirit and soul and get rid of that resentment inside of yourself so you can lead a useful life.  Love you Bluebie bye.