My Office

Here I am in my office and it is all on the floor.  I took a bunch of stuff out of my bookshelf to clean it and realized I should actually store many of these things.  Photo albums, journals, notebooks and well - that's it.  I opened a couple of them and it was painful.  This is once again why people don't do this - it's so fucking uncomfortable and painful.  I was writing in journals the WHOLE time I was drinking and drugging and what a shitshow.  I was so sad!  But also I wrote a lot of gratitude lists.  Also a had a ton of ideas and I made a lot and I mean A LOT of collages.  Um - who knew.  Anyway.  It's okay - I can store them away and make room for wonderful new things.  I am just going to say it once more though - it's painful.  But I just wrote in my journal about it and as soon as I wrote that it was painful - I was able to feel like I could move on and continue cleaning this stuff out.  So once again I am reminded how truly therapeutic writing is!  Get it the fuck out onto the page!  That's it!  It's so strange that I have had such a hard time doing it during this quarantine.  However today that has shifted.  I woke up super early and got to it...took care of myself and refused to let myself do anything else until I sat down to write.  Yes.  That's it.  I also and oh my GOD - this deserves it's own paragraph....

I ate a sensible lunch even though I was STARVING.  I mean STARVING.  I have been working out more so I am extra hungry and I didn't eat that much yesterday so today by lunch time I was so fucking hungry.....but I just can't do it....I can't hurt myself by over-eating....feeling bloated....feeling upset...then doing it all over again.  But more than that - cancer.  I do not want to get cancer again.  If I have to eat lightly for the rest of my life - OH WELL.  It doesn't feel good to panic eat.  It has to be so much harder for my body to try and digest food that way.  It feels like I am not trusting that there will be another meal in a few hours.  I guess I am indeed, not trusting that.  AND - guess what?  I could even skip a meal (I'm not going to) and I would be okay.  So yeah - look at me - I am a miracle - I ate a sensible lunch.  HA.

I think the rest of the world forgot about the Virus but I did not so I am still being very cautious.  I am going to go ahead and continue to do that.  I have to say I think one of the biggest challenges I have noticed for myself besides the panic-based relationship I have with food is - my breathing.  I hold my breath.  I HOOOOOOOOLD it.  Then I clench my jaw.  It's like I am trying to clench life in my teeth.  I am going to guess that is also not good for my body.  I wonder if that has something to do with the ear ringing?  God - how many years am I going to have to listen to this ringing? I mean my eye twitched for literally 5 years.  Is it something in my body?  Is it trying to tell me something?  Is the ringing trying to tell me to hear something?  Maybe.  Hello?  Still ringing.  I just re-read those sentences and thought "Maybe it's trying to tell me I'm neurotic."  HAHA.  Gotta go LIVE THIS DAY!!!  Byeeeeee. 

Exhausted in the Time of Corona

Good lord - I am so so tired.  Sometimes the menopause just smacks me in the face and today is that day.  It's warm and I am VERY warm.  Also I want to eat an entire turkey, cow, chicken and 5 vats of cheese.  I chose not to do that because - well it's gross and I want to feel better so.....I drank celery juice (which is super refreshing) & had a nice bowl of cereal with fresh fruit, ground flax and almond milk.  And I am coming around to feeling better.  I didn't sleep well last night but I will either tonight or tomorrow night and I am going to take loving, wonderful care of myself all day and things will shift and I will feel better.  It's such a crazy time.....I am actually getting stir crazy which says a lot because I LOVE being home!  I miss the library and I miss doing shows.  Everyone does.  I miss writing...I wrote more when I was doing shows.  Anyway let's move on to the positive things...

I have been meditating an additional time each day and it has really been amazing.  I am able to see how stressed I get during the day even being home.  My heart is racing so quickly by the time I go to meditate the second time that it's almost excruciating to meditate - I just want to leap up and go do something!  But it also feels so disgustingly unhealthy to have my heart racing like that and I just force myself to sit there till I calm down.  But I almost have to PANT with my breathing.  God it's crazy.  That being said - I wrote that and realized it will get easier.  I suppose I will begin to notice during the day as I even START to get all racing inside myself and calm it down.  So that's one great thing in the time of corona!

I have learned to bake regular potatoes and sweet potatoes!  Wait let me rephrase that - I have learned to LOVE simply baking regular potatoes and sweet potatoes.  Good, old-fashioned skin on baking them.  They are so easy to bake and they make the house smell so delicious!  And it feels so comforting.  And best part!?  They taste amazing!  My guy and I have been like "Why the fuck don't we always do this?"  I'm saying this because I just literally baked some sweet potatoes just now.  It smells so sweet and good in here and it really made me feel better to scrub those sweet potatoes and bake them.  What am I trying to sell this to you?  I just said potatoes like 400 times.  Anyway that's a nice thing too - baking potatoes in the time of Corona.

Guess what?  I am way less tired.  Hmmm I'm also drinking coffee so I don't know - but I feel better.  Love you Bluebie!

Uncomfortable Monday.

Well hello.  I have had trouble writing on here or anywhere for that matter since this whole quarantine started.  Yesterday I realized something and that really just drop-kicked me into reality.  A reality I haven't wanted to face and I suppose I couldn't for a long, long time.  Maybe I never could have - I don't know.  Doesn't matter because I did.  I watched something that triggered me to such a disturbing degree that I was sickened by it, on Friday.  It took until yesterday for me to fully realize why it made me so disturbed.  And although the details are sensational & I suppose intriguing (on some level) they don't matter.  What matters is that because this information is fully coming into my consciousness I now have the knowledge I need in order to heal.  I am aware and I can choose what to do with that awareness and I choose to heal.  I am however still smarting form the whole thing and it feels pretty horrible.  But it's okay.  Because I have so many tools now I will be able to take care of myself (and I have been taking care of myself anyway) and move through this more quickly than I have moved through other things.  I can soothe myself in a healthy way.  In a loving, healthy way.  I have taken good care of myself over the years and I have been true to myself - and for today, just today - I will continue to do that.  AGH!  It sucks to be in pain - any kind of pain...but it's okay.  It's okay!  I am saying that even though I also am upset. 

I had to take a moment.  Now I can love, enjoy and take care of myself on a whole different level...because now I understand there is more to the picture.  There is more to take care of!  And that truly is okay.  Thank fucking God I am in alanon - a program that teaches me how to focus on myself (in a healthy way) and take care of me.  So.  So I can dust myself off and know that in a lot of ways I have done a great job.  Also I can just pick myself up and let myself enjoy me and my life and get my mother-fucking power back!  Kind power.  Kind, loving power that is of service.  Of service without hurting myself.  Without giving away more than I have to give and not from a place of guilt.  I feel like I am being hard on myself while I am writing this and that is not my aim either.  This is about freedom.  This is about being happy, joyous and free.  Yes.  So the good news - the GREAT news - is that today I wrote.  I got on here and even though I was so uncomfortable it was almost excruciating I let myself write.  Hopefully now these parts of my past that have still been "enflamed" can start to heal and I can operate differently in the world in a more manageable, effective way.  Really give myself permission to take care of myself.  Yeah.  Work on my calling - whatever that is.  I'm sure I am doing it on some level.....or I would be experiencing a whole different kind of dis-ease.  Sigh.  Isn't life so odd?  My mind just didn't let me fully accept some truths about myself until I was able to have enough support systems in place to accept them.  And deal with them.  And acknowledge them.  And let them go.  EW RIGHT? 

LOVE YOU BLUEBIE.

Stiil Fighting....

Everyone, everything and myself.  Difference is?  Now I do things even when I feel badly to make myself feel better.  And ugh well at least I do things that are healthy for myself and even if I don't feel better - I don't feel WORSE & I am not hurting myself.  Which is really - such a graceful thing to have in my life.  It is!  I can also be shaking & nervous and do things for myself and in the past I couldn't!  I thought I was supposed to wait till I felt better.  WHAEN WAS THAT GOING TO BE?  Don't know.  Wait - don't know if that's completely true but as far as alanon stuff goes it's much more true.  What?  That level of self-care had to be "divinely led" it seemed.  You know what?  I don't know.  I am so fucking ANXIOUS today and my brain is just like "HEY YOU FEEL LIKE SHIT BECAUSE YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT AND HERE IS A LIST OF EXAMPLES AND ALSO WHILE YOU ARE AT IT HERE IS ANOTHER LIST OF THINGS YOU DID WELL BUT THE LIST - is a lie."  Yikes!  My mind hates me! I wish I could weed my brain like a garden.  I guess I am.  That's what all this work is - weeding the garden.  Cleaning out the closets.  Organizing the shelves.  Then once we are done?  Do it again!  Or at least - continue to do it so it doesn't have to be such a huge, crazy thing next time.  God - it's exhausting.  I feel better though as I am writing this.  Yeah.  Okay.  OYE.  Um - okay well I actually have a ton of stuff to do and so I am going to run along now.  Haha that sounds funny.  Well I guess I am moving towards emotional sobriety now and good LORD - it's uncomfortable.  But also - there's freedom.  So - so one step closer to being happy, joyous and free.  And thin!  That's one of the promises right?  To be in great shape and slender. HA.  Love you Buebie byeeeeee.

We Ceased Fighting Anyone Or Anything

THE MUSICAL!  Haha nooooooo.  That's another AA thing - saying - it's in the Big Book - I think?  I don't know - I am reading this book called "You Can't Make Me Angry" and it's by an elderly doctor in his 80's who had been sober and in Alanon for a long, long time.  In the book he mentions that quote several times and honestly - THATS ALL I DO.  I fight everyone and everything all the time - and mostly myself in my own fucking head!  Okay but I get it.  Whats endlessly confusing to me is that my therapist - my wonderful, beautiful therapist who I have been working with for almost 19 mother-fucking years - always says "What's wrong with being angry?  People are awful!  People are enraging!" But she's not an alcoholic so....so yeah.  Well my fighting comes from the resentment part.  I re-think things (the past) over & over again - trying to understand it and figure it out.  I can assure you that I have never gotten anywhere doing this.  Never feels better and it also never changes.  The past never changes.  One more time.  THE PAST NEVER CHANGES - it always stays the same.  So then you might be asking yourself - why does she keep looking at it?  Juuuust picking at a scab or a scar even!  Also maybe that's just some ingrained, weird thing that addicts do - I don't know.  Regardless - I don't have to do it anymore.  He suggests in the book that we give it to God.  That's it!  Easy peasy.  Give it to God.  I have been obsessing for months about this one relationship that unraveled and I just can't get anywhere about it.  Her fault?  My fault?  Life's fault?  Doesn't matter - it unraveled and it's not healthy for me anymore - I don't know about her.  Well I know on one level it doesn't work for her because she told me to back off - soooooo - yeah.  But it's painful and I love her and miss her.  Wait - do I?  Now I am confused OMG I AM DOING IT!! 

Gave it to God.  Nothing to figure out.  Take care of myself.  That's it!  The asset is self-care.  The opposite of this self-destructive thought pattern is taking care of myself.  Which I am doing.  God this is such a terrifying time isn't it?  I mean when is it going to shift?  All the people that are dying?  Losing jobs?  Agh - it's awful and it's so sad.  I am tired.  I have been cooking, cleaning and working on myself like crazy.  But not in a frenzy - just at a good, strong, steady pace.  I don't have to fight myself.  I can be on my side!  I can also just accept - accept that I just can't be super close to all the people forever.  I can love from afar though!  That is taking care of myself.  I can accept, forgive, move away and love from afar.  HE wrote the acceptance prayer this doctor.  Well I don't think when he wrote it he meant it to be a prayer but it is one I have used many times and one that people say in the program.  It's in his story in the Big Book - here's how it goes - it's wonderful and it made me cry when I got to it in his story the first time I read it...

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.  When I am disturbed it is because I find some person, place, thing or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing or situation as being exactly the way it's meant to be at this moment.  Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.  Until I could accept my alcoholism I could not stay sober; unless I accept life completely on life's terms I cannot be happy.  I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the  world as in what needs to be change in me and my attitudes.

So that's the thing about us alcoholics - we have no clue how to live life!  Normal people probably see that prayer and think "Yeah - duh - accept and move on."  Alcoholics are like "WHAT?  ACCEPTANCE IS A THING??  FOCUS ON MY OWN SHITTY ATTITUDES??  WHAT?  OKAY GREAT IDEA!!!"  Then 2 days later we forget and have to be reminded 5000 times to practice acceptance.  Anyway.  I made these cookies yesterday - sugar-free with all healthy stuff in them and when I tell you they were fucking disgusting I mean good fucking LORD. Baaaaaaaarf.  I mean at best they tasted like a dinner roll of some sort?  Like a weird dinner roll that comes in a bread basket and you're like that's weird - what is that?  Hmmmm.  And you spread butter all over it and you're like okay yeah not bad.  They were like that only worse. Hahaha!  Ew! 

Bye Bluebie!

Deep & Light?

I just read a post from this blog from 2010 - December.  So I had a just a little over a year sober.  I was trying to figure out a catch phrase for this blog.  At the end I joked about having it be "keeping it deep & light."  Which ironically today - is exactly what I want to do.  I want to keep it deep but also - light!  Lighten up!  Life is too short and I have had it with the suffering.  We get sober to be happy, joyous and free and that is what I am aiming for now.  So.  So now I am sitting here with all my feelings, all my stuff - both physical and emotional...and I have the time to clean everything out.  It feels like a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I have peeled back so many layers of my "onion" but now - now I can peel back and clean up more.  and file!  I can file my layers.  Who new I liked to file!?  I like order!  I do!  It might now look like other people's order but it's order.  I am a structured person.  I think the most interesting thing about this blog is that I basically - never told anyone about it.  A few people?  It is as real an account of my sobriety and recovery as I could possibly express.  I feel like maybe back then there was a touch more kindness in me.  I feel I have - OH MY GOD WHATEVER.  I have been naïve in my life - oh well.  Ha!  I am a wonderful person and I have worked so very hard to be kind and I will continue to do that - hopefully.  After I left that thing I left yesterday my sponsor said to me "Well that must have been very hard for you - knowing how you are."  And I laughed because it made me feel like - I don't know - like a person with a "nervous condition" who can't stick up for themselves.  Which to be honest I kind of am that.  SO THAT'S FUN.  Anyway.  Now I have another big thing to take care of....big for me.....UGH I DON'T WANT TO.  Okay well I don't have to today.  I'm not exactly sure what I am saying anyway.  Okay I am going to lay down for a minute - love you Bluebie bye.

Everything Is Cancelled

Yeah.  On hold till middle of May but I really don't see how anything can happen very quickly after that.  This is nuts.  That being said I am really taking this opportunity to reset - big time.  And it has been extremely uncomfortable and almost painful but I am doing it.  I had therapy today and after I spoke to her I did something that I really did not think I could do.  I removed myself from something that really wasn't good for me.  It made me feel badly and I just could not do it anymore.  She said that I needed to limit the exposure so I removed myself and I am SO FUCKING PROUD OF MYSELF.  Mostly because I was kind and I just said I could not really handle it anymore.  I didn't say it like that - I just was polite and as straight-forward as I can be at this moment of my life.  Who knew I was so fucking CODEPENDENT?  It has been so challenging for me to learn how to say "No" and if I say "Yes" and I "am not comfortable" say "I changed my mind" or "Thank you anyway but I am going to go do anything else but this bye."  Haha I am just kidding.  I really am aiming to be kind but man when I am in something too long I get so fucking ANGRY.  Which sucks.  And then I am not kind.  Life and relationships are so mother-fucking challenging.  Well - so that is where I am right now.  It's the Springtime of 2020.  There is a World Pandemic that has caused many of us to be ordered to stay in our homes till this virus is under control.  I am here facing myself and sitting with my own discomfort - something I have learned to do more & more with the different programs and therapy I am in.  This feels like that opportunity to dig through and organize my emotional closet on a whole different level.  God - it is so weird I like to do this stuff but also it is so weird I NEED to do this stuff.  But doesn't everyone?  At some point in their lives?  I mean seriously.  Anyway so today was one little step towards some emotional sobriety and emotional independence.  There is another big giant step I need to take but I am still trying to figure out exactly what it is I want.  Yeah - so now I can work on that and take care of myself in that situation.  Love you Bluebie!