The "Keeping my head down" Campaign

Have you ever felt like you're on a roller coaster ride in life? Sometimes you're at the top and sometimes you're at the bottom? I would like to feel that way once in a while. At least that way I could experience what it feels like to be on top.

Nope, not me, not at work. I am perpetually on the bottom. I work for this woman who has an amazing business sense and really knows the line of business we are in. She; however, has the social skills and diplomacy of Hitler! She is the type of person who has no problem with putting others down or making you feel stupid. She is intolerant, critical and judgemental.

I am usually at trouble at work and I tend to not fit into the office any better than I fit into society as a whole. I am louder and less polished than my coworkers. Generally, I am accepted and liked anyway. My boss can't stand me and no matter what I do, it's not good enough.

I used to feel like I was working for someone with a severe mood disorder. One day I'm on top and can do no wrong and then next day I am on the bottom and can do nothing right. Lately, I just hang out at the bottom. Look on the bright side...It's a lot less farther to fall. My newest transgression? I fainted at work.

I passed out at work and it affected our workers comp ranking. I filed private insurance for the medical bills and the ambulance ride, but it still had to be filed as workers comp. Therefore we won't receive our safety bonus for this month and for this I am being punished. I understand being disappointed but to be angry? Come on!

Today was the first day she didn't have an attitude with me. I am not falling for it. It's a trap!!! Everytime I think I am rising back up, she pushes me down. Now to many this may sound like self-pity and an exaggeration, but I can assure you it is my reality. I can't afford to quit and I love my job and my co-workers. I feel like the abused child and I am the one whose siblings feel sorry for me because they aren't abused but they can't be nice to me or they will get in trouble and they are secretly glad it's not them. Not, that my co-workers are happy when I am miserable.

Anyway, I am keeping my head down and minding my own business and doing my work to the best of my ability. I have no control over a neurotic boss or anyone else, only how I respond to her.

Random Thought

   I truly believe God puts people in my life at specific times for a reason. I; however, will confuse the hell out of everything and misread cues. God can put someone in my life to teach me spiritual principles and if he is in the form of a good looking man I  have been known to believe God has sent me my "soulmate". Even though I believe people are put in my life for a reason, I get confused as to their purpose.

    I am learning to stop trying to force things and to allow things to flow. Nothing is permanent and today I am grateful for that.

Who Am I

Who Am I?

A victim of rage
A survivor of Abuse
A result of promiscuity
A volunteer of self-loathing, self-pity and self-obsession.
Blessed numbness in the bottom of a bottle
Emotional regulation in a pill.
Hopelessness, helplessness, desperation
My bottom had a trapdoor
Disillusion, degradation and near death
Sitting on the edge of the bed praying to God to get the knife a little bit deeper

Sex Lets Me Know We're Okay

   I came home late Saturday night after skinny dipping with s group of addicts. I thought the boyfriend would be upset about the late night arrival, but he wanted to have sex. That let me know that everything was okay between us. I am seeing a pattern here.

   When I'm feeling guilty about something or I've made my husband/boyfriend mad or there seems to be tension between us I will initiate sex. If I can get the guy to have sex with me, things must not be so bad. It lets me know we're okay. If a man I am dating is angry with me, it gives me a sense of power to bring him to orgasm.

   If I come across a man who shows no interest or is openly hostile I will begin to flirt and become provocative. Even if it is only sex they are interested in, at least they are itnerested in something.

I behave in a way to draw attention and interest from a man and then am resentful when they respond. If I can get them to respond, if reinforces the lie in my head that sex is all I am worth and it's all I have to offer.

   As I use sex to attempt to create intimacy I am actually blocking intimacy. Instead of developing mental, emotional and spiritual intimacy I focus the relaionship on the physical aspect. I have always judged how good a relationship was on how good the sex was. I describe myself as a highly sexual person when the truth is that I am insecure, needy and have low self-esteem and sense of worth. I have always based my self-worth on how many guys I could get to want to sleep with me. The better looking they were or the more socially acceptable or the more money they had...the more I thought I was worth.

   What I didn't realize until recovery was that the more men wanted to sleep with me the more resentful I became and I reinforced the lie that sex was all I was good for. The more I fed my ego, the more it tore down my self-esteem. The lower my self-esteem dropped, the more I acted out. I stayed locked in a vicious cycle.

Letting Go of Attachments

   I hope no one thought I was going to tell you how to let go of attachments. I am struggling with this right now. My big question this weekend is "Why can't enough be enough"? Why can't I be okay with what I have instead of always wanting more or something different or I think it would be perfect if I just tweeked it a bit. The problem is that nothing is as it seems so when I get what I think I want, my perception of it changes and I don't want it any more. What I need to do it accept what is and not just accept it, but be okay with it. I wanted a man who was available and now I have one and find that I want more.

Unmanagability at it's peak

    I came home from a rough day at work. I listened to my boss to see what kind of mood she's in and I didn't need to listen long to rethink my taking a vacation this week. I am scheduled to take off Thursday and Friday. One one hand, it's great to have a job to take a vacation from. Afterall, a grateful addict will never use. On the other hand, I swear her spidey senses kick in whenever I'm not there and she will find everything I have ever done wrong since the last time I took a day off. Which by the way, two weeks ago I was out and I came back to a write up for three different things. To be fair, I deserved two of them.

   Anyway, I came home and made a smart remark to my 14 year old. I told her to get her shoes on because I was getting ready to go to a meeting. She asked why she had to go and I told her she has to go with me because I can't trust her. Afterall, I am still paying off an $800.00 cable bill. She rented $671.00 worth of pay-per-view. So we have instant attitude, please add fuel. As we are pulling off from home, I noticed her blinds are no longer in her window and have been replaced by two brightly colored blankets. I went on a tirade. "How many times have I told you to stop touching the blinds?" "Why are there blankets hanging in your window?" The louder I get, the more of an attitude and smart mouth she gets. The smarter she gets, the more upset I become. We are now locked in a power struggle and there will be no winner. My boyfriend is listening to all of this and tells us that we need to learn how to get along. He says we don't get along because we are just alike. I see that, but of course it pissed my daughter off. Who wants to be just like their mother? Boyfriend tells daughter to be quiet and he is isck of her mouth. She smarts off. He replies that he is going to slap her and then she said the magic words...."Do it then!" OMG, why did she just invite the insanity? This is a man with 90 days clean and has no children of his own and has no coping skills or idea of how to handle life on life's terms. He slapped her. She lost her damn mind. I am trying to figure out how to get pulled over. She is trying to get out of the moving car and my son and my boyfriend are trying to hold her down. She starts screaming at me for "letting" him hit her. She says "Fuckk this shit" and before I know it, I have pulled over, boyfriend is jumping out of thr car to walk home and I run to the other side of the car and I slapped her too for her mouth. All of this happened in about three minutes. In three minutes I gave up my serenity, forgot all about spiritual principles, put my hand on my child and let my shortcomings take over.

    I made amends to my daughter and she and my boyfriend talked and apologized to each other. He is, of course, beating himself up and I am someone how caught in the middle as the bad guy and feel like it is all my fault. I will call my sponsor and pray. My daughter, being as manipulative as her mom, is going to try to use this to get a shopping trip. By now, she has put up with me for 10  years of active addiction and four years in recovery and she probably deserves a pony, but she can't have one until I pay off the damn cable bill!

Crazy Thinking

   So I'm laying in bed and my guy snuggles up to me and my foot touched his. All of a sudden this thought pops into my head....I wonder if he would leave me if I cut his toe off? I mean come on, that's not weird right? Doesn't everyone think like this?

  Okay, so I don't think I would actually get to cut his toe off because he would probably wake up before I finished so I would have to shoot him in the toe. Would I be able to hit something as small as a toe? Maybe I should aim for his foot. Should I use my .38 or his .45?  I would have to take the hollow points out so I don't blow his foot up.

   Somewhere after 15 minutes of this type of thinking and playing this scene out in my head and wondering if he would move out (Really?) I realized the insanity that is me. It just proves that drug use is truly only a symptom of the disease. Once we take the dope out we are just more efficient maniacs. I think I'll keep coming back!!

Welcome To Narcotics Anonymous

I was chairing a meeting in my home group tonight and there was a newcomer. In listening to her talk, I mentally went back to my struggles with coming to the program. I couldn't focus on anything that was said and was terrified and anxious. I also felt some hope. I was able to identify and finally started to realize that I was not unique. I wasn't as bad as I thought I was, I wasn't as good as I thought I was. I was "one of".

    The things that I heard that saved my life were to make 90 meetings in 90 days. I thought I was too busy to make a meeting every day and I was told to ask myself if I made time to get high everyday. Score one for NA. I was told to get a sponsor to guide me through the steps, traditions and concepts. I was told to get a home group and get involved. I was told to pray twice a day. If I didn't know how to pray or what to pray to I was told to say "please" in the morning and "thank you" at night. The biggest thing I was told was "Don't use no matter what!"

    I needed that identification when I got to the rooms. I needed to know I wasn't alone and I needed the hope that their was a solution. I didn't want to stop getting high, but I wanted the pain to stop. What I learned was that I couldn't get unmanageability out of my life and gain serenity as long as I was getting high. It took more and more to get me high. In the end I had to use so much it made me sick, not high. But I couldn't stop even when I promised myself I wouldn't get high again. I was sick when using and dope sick when I didn't get more. Sometimes knowing more was on the way was a much better feeling than actually getting high.

Today there is hope and if no one ever told you...You never have to use again.

The Twelth Step

Today's meditation was about the Twelth Step and one of the things I shared about is the example we set for the new comers. If I use the rooms as a dumping ground without seeking a solution what do we tell the newcomer. Are we carrying a clear and concise message of NarcoticsAnonymous or are we talking to hear ourselves talk? If all we share in negtivity, how is that a message of hope. If I had walked into my first meeting and heard a mess instead of a message I never would have come back. If you are showing me, as a newcomer, how miserable you are in recovery...how is that supposed to attract me to recovery? I can be miserable back our on the street.

While I'm on the subject of a meeting...it never fails that the people who walk in late want to share their asses off and have no idea what the topic is. There are those that need to make a grand entrance because with multiple years clean they are attention seeking. I also can't stand when someone sets a topic and asks for experience, strength and hope and when they're done sharing their mess, they get up and leave!!!

Why can't everyone just shut the hell up?

   My boss returned from a two week vacation and was so very excited to be back her first day. By the second day back, her head spun around twice. I am a people-pleaser and as an addict, I tend to be overly sensitive so I am in fear of being fired on a daily basis. This is not a groundless fear, I mess up a lot!
  I went home and my kids breathed wrong and set me off. I decided I needed some spiritual nourishment and went to a meeting. My live-in had been up for 36 hours without sleep and we were both a little cranky. He left the meeting early to go out to the car so as not to embarrass himself by snoring in the meeting. On the way home we were both grouchy and I had enough of his negativity about everything. I try to be a very positive person, and being around negative people really affects my spirit. I finally told him to shut the hell up. Of course I then felt like a piece of shit and had to go outside and make amends.
   I am not sure what has me feeling so negative and tired lately. I am working on making time to talk to the Universe and God and finding my peace within myself. This would be so much easier if I didn't see my loved ones as an extension of myself and didn't try to control everyone and everything around me.

  Sometimes I just want to yell "Why can't everyone just shut the hell up?" It seems like everyone has something to bitch about. when I was busy getting high no one expected anything of me. I miss those days. The kids didn't ask for clothes, food, shoes, allowance, cell phones, cable.....when I was getting high. They knew the answer was no and they were happy if the got Oodles Of Noodles once a day. Not proud, just sayin'