triggers

when i get news i don't like. To wit, the third cancellation on my dinner party on Saturday night. Suddenly pretty perfect situation of nine people has now been whittled down to six. For me, whole tenor of evening changes. NO WAY can it be as good. I hang up the phone and want a drink. I pray that E will arrive with cocaine. Anything that will... wipe out the feeling.

And oh yeah, en route to a meeting that morning, anticipating cooking, seeing myself with a glass of wine. Fa la la la la - look at me, i'm sophisticated. I sip wine while i cook for nine. well, more fool I as it turned out to be only six, so thanks god i didn't drink, right?

there was one more that day... can't recall what now. So how did i stay off the sauce? Partly just noticing how much I wanted it, especially after cancellation #3.

Fave saying from saturday morning meeting, re: hanging out with your family: "They know how to press my buttons; hell, they installed them."

no protection

shrink-lady today.

i used to make this joke about George W and his "I'm the decider" schtick, that I was going to write a self-help book about using that phrase to improve your life. Or more accurately, it was a diet - that's it. Am I gonna eat that ice cream? I'M the decider! No way! I'm the DECIDEr. Although I think in my routine i extrapolated to dating, jobs, etc.

What's sort of horrible is that W might have been on to something. I can only trust that we're using the same word in different ways. Because somehow i found the exact right phrasing today... I made the decision that I don't need to protect myself anymore. Shrink-lady said, You choose to trust. And I said yes, but for me to really understand it right now, i have to phrase it in terms of protecting myself. I am ALWAYS on the defensive. I am continually engaged in the struggle that I anticipate. I don't even need it to show up - i'm struggling anyhow. i anticipate the need to protect myself. I'm struggling before anything happens.

I can feel the tension go out of my body - my shoulders actually drop down from that position up near my ears. I have made the decision not to struggle anymore. Life is gonna come through for me. Abundance.

Wow, that sounds really sappy. But it's where I've been trying to get for a long time.

power/less

24 hours later... couldn't sleep last night, so surfed for sites on a-ism and atheism. tell you what, the folks who are writing those "AA is a cult" sites are speaking my language, insofar as zeroing in on AA's insistence that you have to believe in a higher power, and that you are powerless, etc. Funny, I can easily accept that I am not in control (the one that really nailed it for me, my shrink saying, "I don't know what's going to come out of my mouth in 30 seconds."); but powerlessness FEEL different.

Oh bugger it all. I'm going to go to a meeting tonight and my poor temporary sponsor who really does have faith will get another night of struggling to reconcile with my happy atheism. But hoping to hit an SOS meeting (only one night a week, alas) some day, to see what the difference is.

In other news, I'm drawing out the death of this relationship i've been in by simply not seeing him, i keep eating chocolate, and i'm slowly, slowly working on my project. No great speed, definitely tortoise progress, but I'll take it.

insomnia

I'm too tired to fight. I give up. Not "surrender," notice, but I give up. I realize that I'm always in a defensive mode, I am always prepared for a fight, I frame what's happening in my life as a "me versus just-about-anyone" scenario. And today, just feeling sooooooo tired, and walking two happy girls down the street before I hit the gym, I decided to give up. "Made a decision." I thought about it and went, OK, I'm making the decision. I'm tired of fighting. I'll believe all this shit instead of rummaging around in my box of problems and challenges.

So here it is: I can tick off the "Uh-hunh" box for Powerless over alcohol. Life unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than me, which includes the TTC, pickle jars, wind, and my cat, could restore me to sanity. (I will note here that the power i'm holding out hope for is a practising and practical faith in buddhism, which has no deity, yo). AND made a decision, to turn my will and life over to... Hey Siddharta, you there? Didn't think so. But that still works.

that certain recovery program

Two and a half months back in.

My heart is not in it but my head tells me to keep going. I asked someone to be my temporary sponsor two weeks ago, and she told me to start writing about this. About my "recovery." I told her I don't write unless I'm getting paid. I resisted. One of the few things I can resist, I suppose - being told what to do, even if it might be good for me. The fact is, I'm fucking lazy, and I just want Recovery to come to me nice and easy like it did the first time i came in some fifteen, sixteen years ago.

But Recovery is not cooperating.

I am staying sober one day at a time (argh! a slogan!) and if I wasn't on anti-depressants I don't think that particular rubric would work, but the memory of that last horrible horrible hangover, courtesy of Celexa, keeps me out of trouble for now. I think about having a drink nearly every day. I think about calling the dealer a couple times a week. I don't do these things. I go to meetings and bitch about how hard it is and I actually call my temporary sponsor almost daily, which is something I never did in the past when I was a shining example of sobriety, and I am aware that I am aware of the need to work at this because it is not just coming to me this time. If I don't want to fuck up my life completely, I'm actually going to have to work at this.

And powerlift a shitload of disbelief.