Tag Archives: alcohol

Reflection and Hope

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I hope that 2012 has been kind to some.  For me, it was a difficult year.  2012 was also a year of tremendous learning, but as one of my best friends says… “Education isn’t cheap, you get it one way or the other”.

So, goodbye 2012, I don’t think I’m going to miss you.  It’s been a year of: reconnection with family, new friends, the sweetest love and saddest loss, many births and deaths and broken hearts.

I feel like I have a clear path of intent for 2013, not that I expect it to go according to plan.  But, if I get my way…  I will get a chance to work on a lot of the issues that I have been accepting and that I would really love to grow up around.

It makes sense that I would have a lot of the issues that I have especially since I grew up as I did.  I have this sneaky side to me and it comes from not being able to have privacy and living in a cult(ure) of exposure, public humiliation and forced confession.  Sometimes I feel that to have something of my own, I need to hide it.

This sneaky behavior shows up for me in food, drink, money, sex, in just about every aspect of my life.  It has affected every relationship that I have been in.  I don’t want to have this anymore.  I want to be as trustworthy as I tell myself that I am.  These ghosts that I carry in my heart and memory still harm my life, since I was programmed to give everything away.

I need to able to have boundaries and be able to move past these habits and the really destructive consequences of them.  That is my hope.  By going really deep inside, I hope that I will find the balance and healing, so that these issues can be resolved.

balance

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So a recent comment from one of my dear friends got me thinking.  I post a lot of negatives and bad memories.  I felt like this gives the impression that my life is mostly darkness and sadness.

This is not the case and I will try to post more positive things too.  Because if this blog is about my recovery from spiritual abuse and ptsd, I should talk about some of the amazing strides in my recovery that have happened.

This requires a shift in my mindset and being able to talk about good things in itself is a huge recovery.  And now, thanks to my friend, I feel like this mental shift is another good step for me.

I am now able to relax on my own.  Before it required cocktails to make me capable of turning down my hyper vigilance and paranoia.  I haven’t done any binge drinking since I was in Sacramento last January and now only have maybe two alcoholic drinks a month.  The change that this has created in my mental health is huge.  For one thing, it’s really helped with my impulse control issues.  I am able to work on keeping my boundaries and relax socially without chemical aid.  It’s a process and I am working on it, but I feel really proud of my growth here.

I am now able to differentiate negative feelings.  My default feelings were guilt and shame and that is very deep coding from the church.  “If something is wrong it’s probably my fault and I should feel terrible and confess.”  This was a truth whether or not the situation was real.

My capacity for emotional and sexual intimacy is so much greater because my heart and mind are learning to be calm.  This has been a huge joy in my life and something that I’ve always wanted.

I can see a future.  People with ptsd usually can’t see a future because all they see is doom or assume an early death.  I no longer want an early death and a lot of the darkness has cleared away so that I can see a future.  That future includes pursuing college and having kids.  I want to create a family with E.  Our love is so big that I now trust that a child would have a good life.  This is something that I had denied myself before because I felt like I was a toxic poison.

My move across the country has been a great decision.   Not only am I near my brother and his family which is amazing, but I’ve left many triggers and expectations behind.  A lot of the expectations were mine and I would behave according to a script of who I felt I had to be.  Now, I am completely out of context and I can be a much more authentic me.  Part of me really regrets that I couldn’t do that where I was.  But I couldn’t, I know that part of my coding and brain washing is to try to give people what they want.  But, in a lot of ways I couldn’t see who I was anymore.  I needed to see me in a new way to test out the waters.  It’s been a wonderful and totally bittersweet decision.

There are a lot of struggles but I am really tackling them and looking them in the face.  I am not as haunted as I was.  I purge a lot of that here and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.  But my life is so much better.

Thank you for putting that comment on my blog, honey.  It’s opened up my mind in more ways I can express myself and that is something you’ve always done for me.  You have been a sister to me for so long and I am grateful that you are in my life and in my blood.

everybody limbo

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I’ve been enjoying contracting.  I’ve picked up clients and done a lot of work.  Since prioritizing recovery from my PTSD and trying to knit my brain back together from the nervous breakdown it’s been a hard path.  What do you share with a client?  I am much more fragile than I used to be.  But also stronger now that I am sober.  Sobriety is stupid because I feel a lot more feelings, but apparently that’s part of the point of it.

 

My contracts have been on average four months.  And that seems to be the lifespan for what I can handle right now.  I have told some clients about the PTSD and it has backfired horribly, others I didn’t and it wasn’t an issue.  With one boss, who had anger issues (probably because of his cocaine issue) I left the contract because I was horribly triggered when he flew into a rage and slammed his hand on the desk.  The sound of his hand on the wood desk was exactly the sound that it would make when a oak rod would hit someone.  I winced and started to have a panic attack and never came back.  Horribly unprofessional: on both of our parts.  But you know what…  I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe and I felt like I was going to die.  I went home with every intention of coming back the next day.  But I couldn’t get out of bed for three days.  My body would not let me go back.

 

Another client and I worked together really well.  He spoke so conceptually, and I am so literal.  He told me that he thought I was autistic.  I told him I wasn’t.  “He said, well there’s something wrong with you.  English can’t be your first language.”  And I realized that I was so sheltered by my cult growing up and we definitely had our own culture.  After that, I was with my friends and it was such an eclectic group that I was just accepted.  From there I went into IT, and well, weird just happens there.  In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m in the world for the first time without a massive support system and there are all of these people commenting on me and it’s vulnerable out here.  I am so grateful for E and my scaled down support system.

The gig I have now is hard and very much in limbo.  It’s not in limbo because of me there are just changes going on and a lot of stress.  I kind of wish it was about me.  But it’s not.  I am dealing with some politics and some people’s fear.  It seems like we’re waiting.  And I hate limbo.  Because limbo is the part where you wait and you fear.  It’s an uneasy, wait till dad gets home, kinda feeling.  And there is tension.

It’s hard being a cog in the wheel, after you’ve been the driver.  Because I used to have the map and make decisions.  I think that feeling of control really helped manage my PTSD.  But since I’m not prioritizing my career now and I’m prioritizing my recovery and my love life, I am sitting back and dealing with the other side of those issues.  And it’s really really uncomfortable.

I hate waiting.

 

 

ouch

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Life is better for me sober.  I have to say I miss some of the social situations in which there was a lot of drinking, but it’s still better for me to stay away for now.  My last real binge was in Sacramento, where apparently I do most of my drinking, on January 29.  So, it’s been a long time.  I don’t think I’ve had as much as a glass of wine in about three months.

But there’s this part now, where other people are getting used to my sobriety now.  And they are telling me how my drinking affected them.  How things I thought were hilarious, were in fact-horrible.  I feel really humbled and grateful because I get to heal a lot of relationships.  It’s the hardest when it’s from E, BFF or M and they are telling me about pain that my drinking has caused.  They keep sticking with me and I love them so much.

It’s overwhelming and I try not to get self-loathing.  In a lot of ways, I was coping the best I could then and now I can cope better.  I trust the people who are supposed to stay in my life will do so.  But I’m sure that, same as with the divorce – I may lose some more in the process.

This triggers something in me, because I need to keep solid on my emotional boundaries.  The church forced us to confess every thought, every feeling.  And I don’t have to do that anymore, but that is really hard.  I think that feeling like I owed everyone everything that was in me, was one of the reasons that I needed to be numb – or have an excuse when I drank.  Or maybe alcohol is delicious and I’m a drunk.

Obviously still working on it.  I don’t know if I need a why.  What happened to me was big, and I needed to slow down my brain – stop the hyper-vigilance and coast for a while.  Most sufferers of PTSD self medicate in some way, and I think that I’ve been working really hard and caring for myself in a lot of ways, and now having a really caring, understanding partner, these parts are coming together to take these shaky steps of trust towards dropping this crutch.

possession is 9 points of the problem

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I haven’t actually talked about spiritual stuff here in a while.  So, let’s get weird.  I don’t remember how old I was when I was baptized with the holy spirit.  The bible says that some are gifted with tongues, but everyone in our church got that gift.

I remember, everyone praying and anointing me and the gift being given.  I remember trying to speak in tongues.  Being told that it’s ok if it comes out slow, if I only get one word in the beginning.  I felt immense fear and pressure, because I wanted to get it right.  What if the devil was going to speak through me?  I was scared, because I’d already had several exorcisms deliverances by the time I was baptized by the holy spirit.

I uttered a mumbled jumble of a word, and to my relief people around me rejoiced.  I was told to repeat it and repeat it.  Then I got another word and then another word.  On our winter retreats when we fasted for three days, it got easier because we were more trance-like.   Eventually I would get the feeling of being taken over, and I really loved it.

About three years ago, I saw a spiritual leader because I was feeling very confused about my life and she looked at/in/through me and said that I had no spiritual boundaries.  And that was probably one of the reasons that when I drank I drank too much because I love the feeling of being taken over.

Which of course leads me to Greek mythology.  You see the maenads, were worshipers of Dionysus.  And the maenads embody the wild, dancing intoxication.  The fully giving over of one’s self to the trance like power.  The spiritual leader told me that I needed to start learning how to basically stop leaving myself wide open to  possessing wild women who have no regard for me and leave me scratched, bruised, remorseful and sad the next day.

Dionysus, being the Greek god of wine, is also the god of madness.  The greater and the lesser madness.  He created wine for the greeks enjoyment but if they over indulge and have too much, they will be taken over by the greater madness and the maenads will get all flesh rippy and cannibalistic and generally gross.

He is not the obese overindulgent Bacchus of the Romans.  Dionysus wants balance, he wants you to find your joy and your lesser madness, so that you don’t get lost into the greater madness.

So, right now in my journey of sobriety I am weatherproofing this thing.  I was opened up for channeling as a child and it still happens sometimes.  It’s like having a cat door in your soul and a raccoon gets in, kinda.

I just want to make sure that I’m the only one in here making decisions.  I’m sure, this post makes me sound insane.  But, well, my life has been fricking weird.

problems with authority 3 or 4

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I have been in a lot of leadership positions, because I just thought it would make it easier.  If I am an (or the) authority then I know how to behave.  Also, I can be caring about other people rather than looking at myself.

My grandfather told me I was rebellious.  I told him that I wasn’t, because I didn’t recognize any authority in my life.

Being sober has been a revelation, I’ve seen a lot of the veneers I had put up in the past and how some of that is coming due now.   I’ve seen how in so many ways I’ve put myself in dangerous situations and tempted fate, just to shake my tiny fists at the skies.

Owning a business was an amazing experience, and I’m so glad I had that.  But I don’t know if I will want that again.  And it’s been an interesting experience to feel that and now be able to say it out loud.  I don’t want to own a business, I want to make a living.  I want a family and I want balance.

I want to put my focus on my health and happiness, my relationship.  I want to have kids and I want to relocate across the country to be near my brother and his family.  I hope it all works out.

working out

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So speaking of physical and emotional healing…

I was in dance therapy.

And I was moving, talking and expressing feelings about my divorce.  The motion I did with my hands was a scooping in.  Scoop in.  Heaping in.  Filling me up.  It is was really interesting and my therapist said that I always do that.

When I’m talking – I’m always taking the pain.  Seeing what I can give up to make it easier for you.  As I was dancing, I was practically pulling handfuls of pain out of the air and stuffing them into me.

She challenged me to change my movement.  Can you release?  Can you let go?  Can you take the pain from inside of you and let it out?  Can you not store other people’s pain?  Let’s just start with your arms before you feel it with your heart.

I try just to change an arm movement.  I can’t.  I stand there, literally flopping my arms.  Dance therapy is no joke, it’s hard.  Eventually in slow motion, I work my arms up against my chest and slowly push out.  It doesn’t look good.  One arm slides down the other, like I’m brushing something off.  Then the movement slowly becomes more natural as my shoulders relax and I can remove some of the sad behind my sternum and release it.

Off my legs like old stockings and out of my hair like a man in South Pacific.  I work it out.  I dance it out.

Recently I saw my ex and I didn’t remain sober, didn’t even try.  I was scared to try.  So I didn’t and I don’t know how I feel about that.   I saw so much when I was there.  So much has changed.  So much support is there for here.  I’m so glad, it’s all support she swore wasn’t there for her that I promised was.  So much has changed in the house and I’m glad it needed to.  And there’s a huge part of me that was just mourning.  I could see how so much had happened that I had missed.  And I could see even more how much I had no idea about, and that has to be ok.  I cried a lot.  I passed out.  I told a few people a big secret that I’ve been holding and that was cathartic, I don’t even care if they keep it.  It’s not mine anymore.

I went home early on the train.  Back to E.  Showered and slept.  Had a panic attack.  And then breathed and moved in bed.

Inhaling and using my hands exhaling with hands out of my heart.

Inhaling and exhaling with my hands off my chest.

Inhaling and using my hands exhaling with hands off my arms and legs and feet and hair and back and breathing and breathing until I let go what I had picked up this weekend.  All I have left is this cold.  I’m still sad.

Because I wanted to give her so much.  I never wanted to give her pain.  She never wanted to give me pain either.  Our divorce is final in two months.  Our crazy prop 8 adventure.  We were together for 12 years and legally married for 7 months.   I think it’s going to be a pretty triggery two months as I let go of this part of it.

breathe and move.

fairy tale of the ogre

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Did I ever tell you about the time I loaded all of my possessions in a boat and slowly paddled toward the south. I was taken in by my brother and his wife. And I would go out and seek a livelihood. I was just learning how to row this new boat and everything took so long. I paddled down freeways and boulevards.

Sometimes I sat in my boat and watched people look so together, then I would push my boat away from the side walk and try to get unlost again. I laughed at people with compasses, took another drink and wished I was brave enough to ask for directions. But I think that happens a lot in that LAnd.

My boat washed up to a beautiful promenade, and I was seduced by the music and the beautiful people. I thought that I could find my livelihood here. There had to be something. But my boat knocked against the rocks and a beautiful girl came out of seemingly nowhere. She said there was work there; it would be hard but rewarding.  She would introduce me to him.

I love a challenge and like any hero in a story I can’t step down from a challenge. I followed her into the cave. I was looking for a teacher, a mentor and maybe this was my mentor. We met. The lighting in the cave was bad: my stomach told me not to do it, but I didn’t trust myself. I had made so many bad decisions. He was so successful, he must know the secret. Once the girl introduced us, she left us alone and kept eye contact with me until he rolled a stone between us.

He interrogated me… Why should I trust you? Where do you come from? How old are you? Where do you live? His manner was terrifying. He told me about how harsh he would be to me and this fired a competitive flame in my belly. “I’ll show him! I can take it!” He explained how his family was very rich and he had grown their fortune.

He showed me a mountain of gold in a separate room. And in the shimmer of the gold the man’s figure lit up. He was no man, he was an Ogre. I had already promised servitude. He heaped work on me. It was impossible. He fed off of my anxiety. I had some really good ideas and he hadn’t had anyone in my position who had really good ideas before.

During the day the beautiful girl would emerge, some days she was radiant. Some days she was trembling. We would sneak off to a part of the cave when the Ogre wasn’t looking and smoke cigarettes. She would tell me I was doing a great job, the best of “any of the others”. “What happened to the others?” “They didn’t make it.” We were constantly checking our phones in case the Ogre should wake and need one or both of us. My gut told me to run, but I figured he would tell me how to get my own pile of gold. I never felt safe in this world, so I was convinced that my own cave and my own pile of gold was the only thing that would make me feel safe.

Sometimes even when you did something amazing, the Ogre would scream at you just for fun. And I used to be able to sorta pretend that I’m tough and I just can’t anymore. The last two years have taken that mask away. I am strong, but if I gotta cry I cry. Maybe I am just tough and moist. I don’t know anymore. The Ogre was impressed with my work. I had spun some straw into sunshine and he loved it. I felt good with him sometimes when he was happy. Turns out we had a lot in common, which alternately excited and terrified me. He showed me another room in his cave. This one was where he kept a smaller mountain of something: a white powder. I looked at him. “What is that?” He called me a goody-two-shoes.

The beautiful girl got shakier. She would bring me presents and random things. She said I made her feel guilty. I didn’t know what she was talking about. When the Ogre was out getting drunk she told me about how he would chain her up and do anything he wanted to to her. She also said that sometimes the other Ogre that I hadn’t met yet would do the same thing. “Leave! Go! Disappear! Never come back! Do you know that he is assaulting you!” I flipped out. “I shouldn’t have told you.” She said. “It just feels wrong and I don’t know what to do. It’s worse now that you are here. The ogre’s done it to almost everyone but you.” I couldn’t talk to her about it anymore because she shut down.

The ogre came back. That fire that was in my belly that had been yelling at me the whole time turned into illness. I stuck around for a while, trying to figure out how to save the maiden. Seeing her go into the chamber and the ogre follow. Or the Ogre order her into the chamber and see her just get up and walk in.

Something really big in our cave broke and the Ogre called the Wizard. But he made a fatal mistake. Never be a dick to a wizard. The wizard refused to speak to the Ogre and I had to act as a liaison. The wizard read me like an audiobook (cause we were on the phone). He took a chisel of truth and wedged it into my forehead and cracked it open. The wizard gave me clarity, some hope and fixed the thing that the Ogre broke because I say things like please and thank you and sorry I work for an Ogre, he breaks stuff.

Armed with clarity, I could no longer be in the Ogres presence in good conscience. The beautiful lady still needed to stay.

The trigger was so simple. One of the Ogre’s many tantrums. PTSD is crazy. The trigger can be a scent, a smell, a sound, a word. He broke more of his stuff and then screamed and slammed his hand on his wood desk. The slap of a hand on a wood desk. The slap of flesh on wood. Wood on flesh. That sound triggers memories of hundreds of times I was struck. Pulling the oak rod out of the drawer. The oak rod would always hit that one spot on the dresser on its way out. Wood on wood… Then wood on flesh, over and over again. Our hero (me?) couldn’t hear the Ogre’s screaming anymore.

The hero walked out of the cave. Past the gold. The pretty lady wasn’t in that day and our hero felt guilty, like she was abandoning the girl. But, the hero couldn’t stomach someone taking the abuse. It scared me that someone could take more than I could. I left. This Ogre is truly brilliant and carries the burden of madness that goes with it. But, there are ways to balance madness and brilliance. I was so depressed.

Is this the real world? I don’t think so. I rowed my boat north to find the real world. Just like the wizard said I would.  Later, I realized that the Ogre was a gruffer version of the Pastor.  Why did I have to dance that dance again?

Recently, I got a message from the pretty lady, she saved herself.

Other Side of Safe

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The cult I was born in always had a perimeter around me.  When there are 80 adults “looking after you”  you can’t get very far or stray for long.  I didn’t get the chance to explore on a smaller scale how far my far is.  In my second marriage, one of the things she always did, was more than keep me safe.  She held a perimeter around me.  Especially when I was drinking.  I also noticed that many friends also held this perimeter, and I would bounce softly off of it.  I was fully in my group of friends the day I was excommunicated and disowned.  And I feel like I came to them as a busted up baby animal that they took such great care of.  But I still never had the experience of “on my own”.

I may have gotten bruised or embarrassed, but never really hurt.  Once I separated from this perimeter.  I found that I had no boundaries of my own.  Seriously, none.  Growing up where your heart, mind, body and soul are all in service to some external person and/or power isn’t a good thing.  Everything you have belongs to someone else.

So once there wasn’t a church or family or a husband or a wife or chosen tribe or social circle around, I saw in a lot of ways who I was when not sheltered.  I saw so many of my ex-partner’s fears for me realized.

I never thought I would go that far.  Growing up in a circle, and always being circled I felt invincible.  Like I could jump off of anything and a safety net would appear.  The last eighteen months have been a serious wake up call, and in many ways a wake up fall.

Rebuilding has been painful.  Because I have had to see exactly how far far really is.  (I know there is a much farther, because I said a lot of no.  And stopped a lot of situations. I just want to make it clear that I’m not tempting fate by saying that I know how bad-bad can be.)  I had to know.  Now in a lot of ways I know and that is how I am starting to enforce some boundaries.  I feel like I walk through this world blinded-folded and shin-first sometimes.  I feel like I am learning a lot of these lessons late, but I am learning them how and when I learn them.

To quote the immortal loud and loving words of my brother, “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GET IT THROUGH YOUR THICK FU***NG SKULL THAT PEOPLE LOVE YOU, BUT YOU GOTTA FIGURE YOUR SHIT OUT!”

It’s getting through, and yup it’s thick and stubborn.  But I’ve done so much work to learn how to see where the ends of my perimeter are and to hold them on my own.

I’ve had some expectations that E would do this for me, since boundary work has been something I’ve always outsourced in the past.  But no.  He won’t.  He’ll love me and hold me in unconditional, positive regard while I flop around.  He’ll express the emotional effect my decisions have on him, but he won’t create rules or boundaries for me.  He and I are wired very similarly, once you tell us no, we’ve got a problem.

Thankfully, he’s got an ice pack for after I smash into something.

I don’t know this story

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This happened over a year ago and I want this story out of my body.

What is it when I’ve had sex with him before?  There’s attraction, sure…  What is it when I was flirting and drinking?  What is it when I’ve had so much that I’ve blacked out?  What is it when I didn’t say stop when he started, but I can’t remember when he started?

But as soon as I realize what’s going on I say, “STOP, NO!  WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?”  And then I realize that he’s not wearing a condom.  Something that I would have never agreed to even when I had said yes to him in the past.  I don’t know all of this story.  Did I say yes?  Did I say no?  Did I say nothing?  If it was so obvious that I was so drunk, why did he start?

It was terrible; it broke my heart and my trust.  I still cry about it sometimes.  Sometimes I feel cold shudders of it through my body.  I was too drunk to know what was going on and never want to be in that position again.  It broke so many things.

Then you find out that you’re not the only friend to have a situation like this happen with this same friend.  He was such a great friend and confidant of mine.  He and I used to have so much fun together.  I feel betrayed.  I feel like I put myself in a position to be betrayable.

It’s on my mind and in my body again because I’ve had my first “lady bits” exam since then.  For the first time in my life, it came back abnormal.  And now, next week I have to go through a (very painful, I hear) cervical biopsy.  Odds are everything is fine.  Early detection is good.

But this painful night, keeps coming up.  There keep being emotional and now (hopefully not) physical consequences.  And my darling E, has been so supportive.  I know this has hurt him immensely.

I’ve had lots of therapy and quit drinking since then.