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

I haven't forgot you little blog

I haven't forgot you just been experiencing life and haven't sat down to process in words.  I'm watching the first show of  "Dancing with The Stars" and it makes me happy that I can root so hard for people to do well and really want them to get a special experience out of it like many others. I love David Arquette. He's in recovery and he is such a lovable person. I don't care who wins, I just want my favorites to have one of those transformative experiences , because I want transformative experiences. It feels good to have general kindness in my heart and to root for strangers in my life. I'm trying hard to really participate and make things happen in my life. I've picked up and filled out a couple of job applications for part time work. Partly because I am not sure I wouldn't crash and burn if I jumped into a full time job after no work for 11 years and the other is I need some sort of recent work for better employers to verify. I know without a doubt that the universe rewards action. It will more than meet me halfway when I do my part. I have been successfully back on Weight Watchers for a week after taking a week off to medicate my feelings. The key I always miss is after i jump off the program, I fail to get back on. My continued lesson in intredpidness continues. I'm in a place I never thought I would be again. I'm really happy and in tune with the spirit and my hope levels have never been higher. I am so full of compassion and love it is a little scary but I'm rolling with it. 

UP late, arm wound feels icky

This is my armpit, where the surgeons glue failed me miserably. Now he is out of town and I have what looks like an exit wound from a bullet.

I know, I know, there before the grace of 'God"? go I

My sister was off the smoke coke for a couple weeks. She did her pills but none of that in and out of the house ever 5 minutes and frantic attempts to redecorate or frenzied half all yard and tree work. She refiiled her smoke coke prescription with her lovely dealer in Longview. It's like watching a hampster on well,,,,crack. Excitedly hurrying between strange projects that only make since in her head.  I'm disappointed. She is 50 and never had a single consequence other than losing her storage locker in Houston. I just hate the fate that everything and everyone in the house feels so out of control when she smokes the rocks. I'm grateful it isn't me but I want to scream at her, only I couldn't scream loud enough to get through the addiction and speak to her. Been there done that. Wish the universe would help us all out here and do for her what she can't do for herself. We all have to get there on our own, that is, that ones of us that make it out.

pictures from LR14