Where I Find Me

There's no lead in to this blog. Just the nightmares and flashbacks that are currently wreaking havoc on me. So, I'm just starting.

What makes recovery harder is that to get past the events that set my "needing" to use in motion I have to find something else to hold onto. We're supposed to stay in the moment. My moments are slow and tedious and brutal right now. One day at a time, we say. So, don't plan ahead? Don't look to your future? Don't set yourself up for something that may not be there when you get to the predetermined point at which you think it'll work. No future predictions, fear of feeling the 'now', leaves me digging into my past to hold on to something good. And there is plenty of that. But I'm really good at seeing the bad in the good I dug for. Mainly, that that past I'm clinging to is one that's been let go of by everyone else. Summers at the lake, nights laying awake discussing the absolute absurdities of the world with my brother, sitting in the tunnel below the train tracks because nothing breaks through the deafening racket, picturing a future that had none of the dark shit mine would end up having. One day at a time is daunting. I don't want one more day of this feeling, let alone a string of them. And, I set the arm of my favorite hoodie on fire trying to take the butter I was melting out of the oven because my microwave is a joke. Ugh. I know people have it worse than me. I get that. But this is MY reality and I'm struggling in it right now. All that said, I'm clean still. And I plan to stay that way for the next few.

For my Brother, and My Cousins. ❤️

The mixed scent of sweat and metal on my hands from the swings.
The sound of the witches hat clanging in the wind. Left alone.
Pieces of white styrofoam drifting onto the beach after having supported kids for hours. H2Odeo.
Waves that still hit the beach piling up bigger and bigger only now in a pleading lonely way.
Lukewarm baths taken in heavily iron laden water.
The hard wet cold bathroom floor.
Someone yelling "wear shoes!" As you burst through the door headed a couple cabins away.
Chinese checkers, broomstick microphones and "Leader of the Pack" as loud as we can.
Shasta. The Groundplay. Watermelon and pepper.
Ghost in the graveyard and someone always running into a tree.
Fireflies in our hands, bats in our hair.
Bonfires, s'mores, hot chocolate.
Hot and humid and deathly silent.
Quiet milling parents, staticky radio channels, ONE TV channel.
Enough to know.
Kids and dogs and blankets and neighbors and calm but stern parents down to the garage.
The smell of gasoline.
Excitement that vibrates.
Quiet.
An angry train bring black space with it.
Small flying debris.
Large flying debris.
Fiberglass garage doors.
Moving to the back of the garage past the old cars and popped floaties. Scoria under foot.
Wind howls more quietly. Then stops.
Garage doors open slowly.
Storm is over. The air is purple and orange and blue. The water is calm.
The kids are asleep.
This perfect day happily, gratefully enjoyed for years.

Progress. Definitely not perfection.

I survived a flight that almost went down in the Pacific Ocean. I've had babies without pain meds. I passed a kidney stone 6 months pregnant without pain meds. I had my last rites read to me when I was 7. I tried to kill myself and survived. I was raped. Violently. I sunk into an addiction that consumed all but a very small fraction of me. Those things were hard. Those things taught me to grin and bear it. To fake it. To keep people around me comfortable. To shrink inside and get loud outside. To smother what was left of me. Getting clean, staying clean, relearning almost everything I thought I knew, rebuilding myself from ground zero is the hardest thing I've done. I feel my art again though. I'm bleeding on my canvas. I'm trying to move forward. Ask for help. Listen to the healthy voices wherever they come from. To quiet the noise in my head. I'm trying. I'm making mistakes. I'm still hurting people. I don't think I want to be who people think I am but I'm pretty certain I don't want to be who I am. I wish you could tell me who I am. I wish I could say we're having tacos for dinner and go to the store without crying in the parking lot. I wish I could remember how it feels to be happy for no reason. I wish I could know I'll be clean and happy in the future. I wish I knew which direction to go, what the right decision is, I wish I knew the right amount of selfish in my recovery. I just want.

Who I Am, Who I'm Becoming

I've never been good at saying "I was wrong". I've also never been good at recognizing my own fault in a situation immediately. I lead with my heart, not my head. For a long time I lived by the quote "never take hope away from anyone. It may be the only thing they have left". And here I sit so much of the time feeling hopeless. I leave therapy feeling deeper in the hole than I did when I got there.  I struggle in my confidence as a mom. But I see how amazing my girls are. I get hurt when the people I think should care don't and I miss it when the ones who do care are there. And, THAT is a big problem. The rest? Maybe they're character defects; I'll work on them over time. In this metamorphic time for me there's so much I'm learning and quitting and doing and trying and trying and trying. I'm a different person. I think that's hard for some of the people around me. And to be honest, that hurt a lot. When people would say things about me true or false, fair or not, it hurt. But I'm beginning to be bothered less as I understand that this new me is stronger and braver and not as fragile as she used to be. I don't want to follow anyone. I will take the steps I need to be well. The people who love me will support that and the rest will fall away but this time I won't fall with them. 

All I've Got

I've spent the last several days at rock bottom. Clean, but still rock fucking bottom. My heart feels broken. My spirit feels broken. I paint but it is not enjoyment or passion or freedom I feel. I feel panic and regret and nothing all at the same time. I only dream in nightmares. The lighter, easier to recover from are about birds trapped inside house or me living somewhere where feces come through the cracks in the ceiling and the floor. The hard ones, the ones that keep knocking me backward in my recovery are about rape. During the day my mind allows me more and more memories of my own rape, as if it's doing me a favor. I snap at my girls. Get angry at the people who actually support me for no reason. I feel past the point of gratitude lists and working the steps and getting rest. I feel like I've crossed that line that is so hard to step back over. It isn't impossible but I don't feel like I have in me what it takes. I've disappointed countless people because I can't be the person they need me to be even though I have tried. I am human. I have finite resources and I've used too many on the wrong people so that I feel like if I just survive at this point, I'll have won somehow. I don't want my past demons to be part of making me who I am. And I don't want to try to explain to my perfect little girls why something that happened so long ago owns me still today. I want to smile and laugh and actually feel it, but I'm exhausted and I'm broken and I'm sorry instead.

Thinkin' it through.

My therapist and psychiatrist both have urged me to use a list of pros and cons in an effort to feel my way through otherwise confusing situations. I used to approach life via that method regularly. In trying to clear up some of the confusion on my end, I've decided to try it again. That said, here is my pros and cons list for the zombie apocalypse.

Pros:

-we all find ourselves on equal footing. I don't care how beautiful you are or how much you make a year, you still taste like 'more' to a zombie.

-theft becomes AOK!

-I might get a new car. OR driving a 42 ton suburban becomes even more economical. (sarcasm...)

-I can finally stop mixing and matching the pieces of my wardrobe to find that perfect post apocalyptic outfit that will define me and my soon to be released action figure.

-get to ransack other people's houses for food, as opposed to morbid curiosity.

-pretty great weight loss program.

-GUNS

Cons:

-my house has a shit ton of windows. Great for viewing the apocalypse, not great for keeping out those pesky zombies able to maneuver their opposable thumbs around a large rock.

-cold showers, except at the sheriff's station where the pilot light is miraculously still lit.

-gonna be tough to find a good, rare prime rib with au jus. Unless I become a zombie.

-my dogs don't listen for shit. They will run straight toward a pack of zombies. Unless I'm one of them. Then they'll run away from the zombies. Away. Always away.

-TJ Maxx deliveries will probably be late.

-WholeFoods will meet their demise. I guess we were wrong about all those preservatives after all.

This is not an all inclusive list by any means, but something to kickstart your apocalypse prep all the same.

You're welcome.

New year, new me.

How cliché is it that I'm writing a New Years blog? It would probably be worse if I kept up with my blog regularly and this was just another one of the annoying reminders that people get wistful and nostalgic and begin full on prognosticating the many and varied changes they will greet head on in the new year. But, I don't keep up and I'm mostly unconcerned about the bars other people are setting for themselves this year. I have one bar. One resolution. One promise to myself and by extension, the people around me. I will be selfish. I will wake up in the morning and pray first for myself. I will live by the decisions I need to make for me. I will close my day with gratitude and more prayers to keep me on the straight and narrow. Because the only thing I really desperately want for this next year and those that follow is my sobriety. I want to stay clean. I know it's possible because I'm surrounded by support. I have my NA family now and, really, you couldn't ask for better people to lean on, to support, and to be supported by. This is a hard journey and sort of terrifying, but so worth it. Thank you to ALL of my family for encouraging and forgiving me, for loving me and calling me on my shit, for continuing to force on me my own worth. I love you all with all of my heart.