love

love

I caught the last 5 minutes of the update "Unsolved Mysteries today. There was a jewish man who was 14 when the concentration camp was liberated. He ran into a young soldier who gave him food. Overcome the kid dropped to his Knees and held onto the young soldiers leg. The soldier stroked his shaved head and kept telling him over and over that it would be ok.

The grown up man recalls the story and broke down in tears when the soldier touched him, hugged him. He smelled, he was covered in lice but the soldier didn't care. He just had this moment with this kid. He got rations for the boy and the others and he was never seen again.

I want to be the soldier. I want to touch, to hug and to love people that think they are too dirty for such human touch. It is like a magnetic pull in the core of my chest to love like this. I don't know how it's going to happen but I feel like it is. Not only was I born this way, my life of not feeling love is my greatest teacher on what people need and how to give love to them in a way they can feel.

In '82 when I went to the dentist, it was the first time Universal Health Precautions had started and I remember feeling like I was to dirty for the dentist to touch. The rubber gloves freaked me out. I knew exactly what he meant when he was taken by surprised someone was willing to touch him. It's a struggle for me to feel worthy of touch, but I have no problem at all giving love. My problem is receiving it without becoming nauseous.

I've been thinking of two different , I guess you would called them metaphors for my recovery program. When people have heart surgery they put them on a heart and lung bypass machine that actually does the "living" for you while the repairs are being made.
 The second one is in certain businesses they have manual over-ride on certain machines in case they fail to function properly. My life failed to function and I practice a recovery program as my own version of manual over ride.

Don't really no why these to ideas have been rolling around in my head for a couple of days but they have. Between the life support the recovery program provides me while I do the work of , well, stepwork and I have a way to over ride the disease mode I seem to want to live in. 

Both metaphors are hopeful as is my life today.

Easement

I've been sort of hung up in the middle of an upgrade and I've had to stay present and work program to keep my head above water.. I had a friend keep me company for 3 hours on the phone the other night and I talked about about my longstanding issue with my dad. The next day I listened to a lady I feel like is the real deal talk for two hours about true forgiveness. When it comes to parents she said, even if they treated you horribly growing up it is important to at least honor the fact that they are responsible for the act of our creation. I've known for  a long time that I needed to get to a place of real forgiveness with my  parents and stepmother. Not saying I have to engage them in relationships now, because it wouldn't be healthy but in about 24 hours of hearing Iyanla I had a major shift in consciousness and I became lighter in spirit. That is what forgiveness feels like to me, lightness and focus. It's not safe for me to engage in any interactions with my dad and stepmom but I am choosing to forgive me dad. I had a dream 2 nights ago where my stepmom went to hug me one of her fake hugs and I backed up and said NO. I'm not going to play nice, not play like she didn't sand bag my mother in her grab for my dad. To do that fake shit DiShonors my spirit.  I actually feel like I haven't felt in months, where I can be so moved by a story or a song I feel emotion well up. That's a good feeling. I hope my upgrade, (this upgrade) is either complete or far enough along that I can start using some of the new functions and capabilities. I'm free, clean and dare I say happy. I look forward to more of the same or support if it gets ugly from my friends with similar journeys. I haven't used drugs, including alcohol and pot in 19 months and one week, give or take a day and I'm set up to live the life I want not the one I think I deserve.

Religion SUCKS

I"m whooped.

I'm tired and I have such a headache and it's probably caused by holiday stress. I have spent a little too much time being nice lately, nice when I was actually giving parts of my self away when I didn't have it to give. It's mental illness and addiction that tell me I need to be alone in order to get a break from everyone but the fact is I just need to set some boundaries and not let my desire to help someone else hinders my growth. I've been eating like a person who was never going to have access to food again. Trying to fill some void up.

Indulgence

I've been hearing that little prompt from deep inside my brain urging me to indulge, "treat myself". When I took the drugs out of the equation, food and buying things stepped up to the batters box. I get some sort of chemical boost in my brain when I act out on something and the fact that there may be consequences is totally ignored. Spend now, PAY later, literally. I am going to the doctor's this morning for my three month blood work to make sure my Lithium isn't cooking my kidneys, and that means I have to step on the scale. After a two week food plan hiatus, the weight gain will be luck a punch in the stomach but  possibly even a worse outcome would be I consumed like a starving person and it didn't add up that badly. That would give me a reservation that I had wiggle room which I would be tempted to take advantage of like a crazy person.  The very fact that my inner disease of addiction could tell me anything and I would believe it in a weak moment makes me very frustrated with myself. I know, I can't use anything to make me feel or not feel and get away with it long. So the theory of Indulgence is just that, an unprovable idea. Give me an inch and the disease takes a mile. So maybe today I will just be and feel whatever is happening in the moment and not believe the voice of disease when it tells me "Go ahead, just this once, spend some money, eat a pizza, you deserve it". 

Just not going to shoot myself in the foot regarding recovering from this illness of thoughts and feelings.

17 Best Self Help quotes of all time.

1. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Peter F. Drucker
2. “Believe in Yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.”
Cynthia Kersey
3. “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Gandhi
4. “Out of clutter, find simplicity; from discord, find harmony; in the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.”
Albert Einstein
5. “If you think you can or you think you can’t either way you are right.”
Henry Ford
6. “In the long run, we only hit what we aim at.”
Henry David Thoreau
7. “Success is something you attract by the person you become.”
Jim Rohn
8. “We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.”
Mother Teresa
9. “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Nelson Mandela
10. “The miracle is this; the more we share, the more we have.”
Leonard Nimoy
11. “All our dreams can come true – if we have the courage to pursue them.”
Walt Disney
12. “It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich.”
Henry Ward Beecher
13. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle
14. “The greatest achievement was at first, and for a time, but a dream.”
Napoleon Hill
15. “To get something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.”
Author Unknown
16. “Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.”
Josh Billings
17. “Don’t spend your precious time asking ‘Why isn’t the world a better place?’ It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is ‘How can I make it better?’ To that there is an answer.”
Leo F. Buscaglia

Picking my ass back up and back onto the Healthy Eating wagon

I started back on my eating program yesterday. It's an important step for me because in the past, I lose weight and then lose my way. The fact that i made it thru yesterday after taking 13 days off is great. I'm proud of myself because the voice that tells me "You can't stick to this" didn't win. Just a day by day approach but anytime I can fall apart, get up and try again is a big ass victory to me. Interestingly, without having food to buffer my thoughts and feelings, I have noticed the "chatter" has been a little more fierce and I don't really feel psychically that great. Cutting out the sugar is part of it, it has a  nasty detox. It isn't about getting thin. "Thin" most times makes people look older or sick. I am tired of feeling powerless over what I put in my mouth and the sneak/secret eating makes me feel like I have a layer of grime on me. When you are out of balance and out of control and your drug is something you do in hiding, is different that food being your drug, because when you are fat, you have no choice in showing the world there is something out of balance. My powerlessness over food shows every time I move and my man boobs jiggle underneath the unforgiving fabric of my shirt. With drugs, you can simply not be around them, with food, we still have to eat. I'm inviting the program of NA into my food thing.  Thankfully I don't have to know how to stay on an eating plan long term. I only have to care for myself with my food choices in this moment and then in this day. I remember an episode of Designing Women where Suzanne talks about the irony of her spending a day hurt and sad because she had too much to eat, when there was a boy representing a foreign country there trying to educate the world on the starvation of his family and others in  his crippled home land.

I have to much to eat, that is an American problem. I just want some balance and peace with it. I want some freedom from this. I have dieted since I was in the 9th grade. I had brought a blouse to my 90 year old grandma and after she tried it on she said she needed to lose weight. My earliest memories of grandma were linked with her crazy dieting, the cantaloupe diet, the pineapple diet, the tuna diet (which actually took away her sense of smell for weeks after quitting it) the liquid shake diet, the cabbage soup diet.Aktins, Scarsdale, High carb , low care and Weight Watchers.  I asked her when she first tried to restrict her food and she said at 11 years old. That meant for 80 years she had fought with food and weight. What a waste of energy.

Aday in thelife

I have been thinking about a couple of people that are in my recovery hall. They are smart, very quick and full of book knowledge from all the literature of NA. When they share, if a new person came in they would think, wow, those two know a lot. What they don't know is how to hook all that knowledge up to their spirits and actually get recovery. Instead of spouting off book shit for over five minutes, a simple "I'm scare or I'm confused, or I need help" would get them much further along. I had to ask a friend if I shared like that when I came in because I wasn't sure. She said I didn't and that I was sincerely asking for help and admitting I didn't know what I was doing. I don't like anyone to open two books when they share and point out sentences and passages like they were doing us a favor and have prepared lessons or sermons for us.  I feel like if they don't learn how to shut up and simply state their feelings they are going to have a few more years of floundering and being disconnected. I personally like being the newcomer. I don't have to pull amazing and wise shit out of a hat. I'd like to share my experience with you but I don't want to say anything that I have not  gotten some sort of organic, living, breathing comprehension of the topic of discussion in recovery. You are smart, and quick, we get it. What the fuck is that good for if you can't use it to have a day without using or obsessing to use. Stop worrying about what you look like on the outside, what you drive, what you work at. I don't know if anyone is going to speak up or not.  We love you regardless and as good at recovery as you get, you never get to graduate.

The lesson I learn from these members is to feel more, live more and give my mouth a rest. There is no glamor or celebrity in being crowned king of NA or Queen of the nuthouse so just let go and be the one who needs to be loved on the most. It is well within my personality to try to impress with my wit and brilliance, but I had nearly 20 years in the other fellowship where I "knew" to much for my own good and it never really did for me what it did for others, even when i was sober for a few years. If you have less than 30 days, I request that you do not quote entire passages out of the book. You clearly haven't internalized them and we start small and build on top of that. Is this my experience or is this my ego? Turning the words in print into imprints on my spirit is more important than delivering the keynote speech at every meeting I go to. Also, as a group, we are pretty fucking hard to impress. lol