Bogged and Boggier

 I have been so wiped out by my self lately. It's all ho hum, and meh, and blah around here. I was having a conversation with someone today about how why life just keeps on dishing it out when it's totally clear that right now you just cannot take it? How can I call "Uncle" or put up a "T" for time out and then I get a break from my head and my heart and I just be while laying out in the grass watching the clouds roll by?

I get so bogged down by things I'm not doing, or the things that aren't going right that I completely forget about the good stuff. And then I'm impatient with myself for feeling that way, and then I need an all day run to straighten myself out- or to at least slog out of the bog and maybe into the tall grass.

There's this thing I do. It's called: TOO MUCH. I am very good at too much. Perhaps a pro even. I eat too much cookies. Too much wallowing. Too much negativity? I've got it. I'm a gold medalist in too much self criticism. Numero uno at wanting to hide and hibernate, and also great at too much blaming other people when I'm not feeling good with myself. Too much afraid of life, of always being in this position I'm in and never getting on with it.

This part of early sobriety is not fun at all. It's not too much fun, it's the opposite of that. So I don't have the market cornered as far as the too much there.

So I guess I'm running up the boggy hill, bogging it up. I'm still going, but not very happy about it. I want my clouds back- pink or whatever. I liked that better. I feel better for a bit and then back to *sigh*.

And then I read about people dying in Boston and I feel like an asshole. So I guess what to do is this: keep slogging, keep bogging. And most important keep blogging. And really most important: remember to be grateful even when you feel like a grumpy black cloud. Because I'm sober and alive, and I can never get too much of that.

Booze - Me = Still Me

I was sick again for the past few days. Strep throat this time. My dearest pen pal extraordinaire Belle reminded me to be extra patient with my sad sick ol' self. And I wasn't. I was mad. World? Do you see that pissed off person? It's me. And I'm mad at you.

In one of life's little "the joke's on me" ever since I quit drinking I have been sick pretty much the entire time. Very funny universe. I mean WTF? Dear, sweet, noble me has decided to get it together and now I feel like shit all the time? Ahem. How DARE you?

Here's the thing: wasn't I sick and feeling cruddy all the time before? This should feel like normal, not like a slap in the face. I realized I'm carrying around all these secret resentments I thought would magically go away because I got sober. Could you move please? My unicorn can't get through.

I thought I was going to lose weight since I quit drinking. I thought my face would be glowing and blemish-less. I thought all my money problems would melt away. My marriage would be the stuff of songs. Life would be...better. Easier. I wouldn't have to deal with so much emotional junk. I would be a better mom. I would be able to concentrate. I would take up sewing and the guitar. I would have so much extra time since I wasn't dedicating it all to either being hungover or getting drunk. There would be space in my brain for new stuff since the broken record finally actually broke. 

Part of the reason I drank was to get away from me and my "hard" life. Because I didn't like who I was, my life would never mold into what I thought it should be. I was never good enough just because I was me. 

Take away the booze and guess what's left? Still me. 

Me and my crazycakes belief that life is supposed to be easy. I really thought that at some point you get there. Sometimes I still do. Like you're on a rafting trip. Just around this next bend and over this waterfall and then I'm thinner, richer, and more beautiful than ever. Just around this next one I guess. Or this next one. OK, maybe one more.

When you are never satisfied there is always another bend. You never ever feel content. There, finished, and easy are when you're dead.

Oh.

One of the great things about sobriety is that you're aware of it all. One of the suckiest things about sobriety is that you're aware of it all.  

There's a way to find the balance of seeking and satisfied. To let the old stories in your head go, for good. For real. To stop wishing for not impossible things, just the wrong things. To put all that wasted energy into things that actually work. To change not only that inner voice that shamed you daily for drinking, but to change the chorus behind it.

Lead singer: "You suck because you drink..." 

Chorus: "And you're an unsuccessful fat ass too!" 

Change to:

Lead singer: "You rock because you're sober..."

Chorus: "And you made fresh lemonade too!"

Change the stories in your head that just aren't true. Change the lies you've been telling yourself. Be brave enough to see the truth. The real truth. Even if it makes you out to be a pretty decent sort. It's OK to be you, and be proud too. Right now. 

I thought getting sober was going to 'fix' it all. Since that didn't work I'm pretty sure having a number six in the waistband of my jeans and more zeros at the end of my bank balance won't do it either. Looks like I'm just going to have to keep going around the bend. Again. And again. And again. 

p.s. Life IS better. Tons. Boatloads!

Under...Where?

This is kind of the way blogging and living has felt for me this week. My brain is in stuck mode again. I know what it is. I don't know how to remedy it, but I know what it is.

I'm too busy. I don't have time to think, or sit, or be. Or if I do I spend it worrying that I don't have anything to write, or it isn't mindful enough, or that I want to watch junk TV instead of read the book I got from the library about living a better life or whatever. I found myself gulping my seltzer ginger drink last night while I was making dinner. A sure sign I need some love and care. And a little more sleep.

There has been a lot of other people's lives big stuff going on. A friend I worked with years ago lost her partner to cancer two weeks ago. Randomly this friend and I went to the one and only AA meeting I've ever been to together. I wonder if she's drinking still, if she is drinking more. Then a woman I work closely with lost her partner to cancer just a few days ago. Both were diagnosed at the end of last summer, and now. Gone.

I have two friends who are early pregnant. Hopeful and worried something may happen.

It's hard not to take on other people's shit. I can be such a fixer sometimes that I even try to figure out what the dog is thinking and then try to make it better. This is kind to no one. I know, I know. It doesn't even really make sense. I'm white knuckling it again, trying to control it all. Not playing God exactly, but maybe a low ranking assistant.

All those years I spent being numb. Drinking. Not thinking. Now I feel like a hamster in a wheel. Churning out thoughts on the assembly line. Analyzing. Not analyzing. Amazing! Nonsense! I can. I can't! All these deep thoughts are hard on a woman.

I have big-ish job decisions to make. We're looking for a new place to live already even though our lease isn't up until July. Is it ever time to relax and let life just roll gently along?

Maybe it's that I don't feel very safe. Secure. Consistent.

One reason why I love to write this blog is the way things get clear while I'm sitting here.

Open ended futures scare me. I'm in trouble then hmmm? But I don't mean I need to know the end, I mean more like I want a place to live where we'll stay for years. I want a job I can cultivate and grow into something that allows me to make a living and feel proud. And I want the patience to allow these things to happen as they happen.

Back underwater. But not to hide. To listen to the silence for a while.

Freeing the Birds

Once again my job has me thinking. My job is not fancy, or very important. It supplies good health insurance, and until now has allowed me the schedule I need to take care of my kiddos without having to pay for any child care. (I work 7-2, husband works 4-11ish)

Look at me, putting the cart before the horse. I don't know that my schedule will change. I just have that sinking feeling. You know the one where you've got a good new routine going and then for some reason wha-powie! the universe needs you to move. You aren't in the right place.

Oh. Maybe I'm not in the right place. Maybe I need to be really willing to move. To change jobs. To give up health insurance as some sort of justification for staying in a low paying job that I'm not really happy in. Maybe if I think about it objectively instead of emotionally I can come up with a better solution. I'm not trapped after all.

That one word- trapped- got me really thinking this morning. All my thinking from a meeting yesterday at work until this morning was trapped thinking. No options thinking. I'm stuck. No solutions. Nothing I can do. Helpless.I can't. Can't have a different schedule. Can't go to part time and lose my health insurance. Can't understand why things just won't roll along smoothly the way I want them to. Can't you just let me be for a bit? Get steady? Get it together? Keep it together?

When I was drinking I always had the "if only's":

"If only I wasn't so worried about money I could quit drinking."

"If only being a mother wasn't so stressful I could quit drinking."

"If only these jeans fit better I could quit drinking."

Now I think I have a case of the "can'ts":

"Can't you just let my job be less problematic so I can stay sober?"

"Can't life be easy so I can be sober?"

"Can't these jeans fit better so I can be stay sober?" ;)

Y'all! Then I had this great thought. I have been looking at it all wrong. All wrong! Because I have always felt trapped instead of free to make choices. Choices that may be right or wrong, but choices! Here I spend all this time whining to the universe and God about "If only" and "can't" and I've been talking about the wrong things the whole time. No wonder no one is listening, even I'm not paying attention!

So look at me, up there swinging from that ladder. Hanging from it, you could say. It looks hopeless. Helpless.

But then. Ho ho. I think I'll swing my feet up and then grab a rung. I think I'll climb up to that big strong branch holding the ladder and look around. I'll shimmy down that tree and check out all those roots at the bottom. I'll decide to look at it differently. I'll decide to be un-trapped.

Perspective and perception can change the way I think about things. I'm so glad to be sober so these thoughts can get through my mind soup. Instead of worrying and fighting my own head fight and resisting change I can embrace it. (carefully though, maybe we'll just go to "second base" today...) Looking at things rationally instead of wailing away about things being unfair. Seeing the options. Weighing them. Not taking it so personally.

When I first stopped drinking every day felt like a gift. A beautiful glowing healthy anything's possible gift. And then days turned to weeks, and now it's been almost two months (which is so short, but so long!) and I have to remind myself that every day still is a gift. And then I have these mind blowing conversations with myself and I'm freeing the birds.

No Joke

I've been sort of stuck lately. I was chalking it up to having the flu and the cold medicine. Today is the first day in over a week that I've been up at my "regular" time. I am bad a interrupted routines. I'm worse at getting squirreled away into my own head and starting the call to war. "Time to worry...you suck...time to worry...you suck...you're not doing it right...not doing it right..."

It's weird, but now that I'm all in with my sobriety, to me too far to go back now, I think my brain needs something to obsess about. And since I'm going to be finished with this fucking Whole30 (thank you sweet baby Jesus made from a biscuit) on Thursday I feel like my poor self is a little lost. What will I worry over? What makes me working on myself? What makes me special?

I am always starting some new restrictive "diet" or plan. (husband can tell you that) For example: no gluten, or no dairy. Or vegan, or paleo. Macrobiotics. The lists are endless, and the information is too. Today: eat grains. Tomorrow: grains are horrible for you. I have no food allergies. I am often jealous of people who can just eat and not wonder where the meat was raised, or who go to the grocery and pick up a pepper and not check the sticker to make sure it's organic, or look around for local produce. Who just use the creamer that is right there in their coffee instead of always asking for something other than dairy or soy, and then being a little annoyed since it's the regular almond milk not unsweetened. Is it being conscious or crazy? I get a little sick of myself.

People have always thought I ate weird stuff. It's my "thing". You know how we all have one. Like: He only wears flip flops. Even in the winter. Or: She only writes with blue ink. Or: He only wears black t-shirts and jeans. Something that's your "signature move". I have one neighbor that gets it. Everyone else stuffs their children full of Goldfish and candy and looks at me like I have three heads. What will I do when I have no food stuff to fret over? Start wearing black turtlenecks every day?

Because I've decided (gasp!) to give it a rest for a while after this is over. Quitting drinking and starting the Whole30 (two weeks later, what was I thinking? Oh, yeah. I ate fourteen thousand Christmas cookies) taught me something very important. I really don't want to shift my bad relationship with alcohol over to the way I eat. And I want to be aware of my food choices, but not every moment of every day.

But even deeper than that, I don't want to get into attaching myself to another "cause" that prevents me from seeing life day to day. I don't want to hide behind the curtain of another better-me scenario. I think that keeps me from dealing or not dealing with the minutiae. That whole seeing the forest for the trees.

Getting sober and staying sober has been such a gigantic release of distress. I picture myself opening my mouth wide and thousands of birds flying out- an avian worry spew breaking away from me. Every bird a voice that gave me permission to keep lying. But then I get afraid to live inside out and so I flutter my hands around trying to stop them, trying to keep them in. Trying to put myself back in the cage I've always been living in. Back where it's safe.

It's a scary prospect for me: to just live. To take each day as it comes, with no death grip hands on the wheel  muscling it this way and that. Instead to sit back, and enjoy the ride. Giving up control is no joke. But missing out on the nuances of life because I'm too busy trying to make it what I *think* it needs to be isn't so funny either.


p.s. I found the picture after I had the thought about the birds. I love the internet.

Feeling Stuck

I'm having the "I'm about to have a revelation" feeling. Like my soul has it's head stuck in the porch railing bars, but oh look! the fire department is on the way with butter and a ladder. This little girls' name is Tong Tong, and she was trying to sneak off to play when she got stuck. The metaphor here is suitable. 

But look, you can see the fireman in the background. She fucked up, but here's someone to rescue her. 

I am my own fireman. 

Twenty-one days sober today.