More About My Childhood, Marriage, Divorce, and Sobriety

I'm feeling rebellious today. Rebellious in the sense that I don't care that this is a sentence fragment. Rebellious in that I want to just be totally honest. True to myself.

I've always been an "A" student. What that means for me, is, I want everyone to like me, especially those in power. You teach me, I absorb what you teach and spit it back to you just the way you want it, you give me an "A", and we're both happy...except that I just had to bust my ass to please you and your bosses, and that's no fun. And guess what: I didn't actually learn anything. I absorbed what you were saying just long enough to release it back to you the way you wanted it (yes, like a sponge...clichés exist for a reason), and I went along my merry way very grateful that you like me now.

I give you all the power in the world. You are God. You must like me, or I die.



Things have changed for me in that regard. With the help of a spiritual awakening, I've realized that you are not God. You are imperfect. Your word isn't Gospel. You have no power over me. All power comes from something greater than both of us. And yet we are all One, One with everything. My molecules and atoms, my keyboards' molecules and atoms...the hairs on my arm, the leaves on a tree, you - it's all the same.

And the only time there is is Now. When you talk about the past, you are denying the present, unless the past has some direct usefulness to Now. When you talk about the future, you are illusioning (I turned "illusion" into a verb), unless you are actually taking a step Now toward a future goal (and the "end" is not real, only the "means", right Now). (Eckhart Tolle)

I've been running around to various groups of people trying to get "help". "I'm not good enough." "I don't have the answers -- you must have them." "I can't do this on my own." Thank you, every one; you have helped me. Thank you for showing me just how fallible humans are. Thank you for showing me that the only real answer lies beyond us all. And yet, it's not beyond us. It's within us each. I can look within, instead of only looking to you. My own Being is worth something. The "something greater" doesn't necessarily mean something "beyond" or "without". The something within is connected to something greater. And the "something greater" isn't the words that come out of your mouth (I know, awkward noun-verb agreement), unless you connect yourself to it first before you speak. I know not to "listen" to you, now, if what you are saying isn't...True. If you know what Truth is, then I might "listen" to you, if I know what's good for me. But if not, I won't...if I know what's good for me. And I'm starting to know what's good for me = not "listening" to everything everybody says all the time. (The term "listen" I use to mean, "take what people say as True".)



I grew up with a neglectful, alcoholic mother and her abusive, alcoholic boyfriend. Then, I lived with my neglectful, insane dad and his abusive, meth-addicted girlfriend. In both households, I was a "stupid little bitch" who needed to "shut her goddamn mouth."

Teachers in school were the only ones who showed me kindness. They transmitted "knowledge," and if I was able to re-transmit that "knowledge" back to them just the way they transmitted it to me, I earned a mark of excellence that signified success, approval. Knowledge gave me the power to earn what I really wanted: Love.

I had few friends; kids who don't get good grades don't like kids who do. You have to make a choice - don't get good grades, and be "loved" by the masses, or get good grades, and be "loved" by the teachers. Teachers were the ones in power; their "love" was worth more. And their "love" more closely resembled the kind of Love I wished I could have gotten from either of my parents, the adults in my life who were supposed to Love me.



So I did my homework in the classrooms at lunch instead of socialize. Then, when I was 17, my younger sister, also desperately in need of Love (but who chose "love" from friends over "love" from teachers), came to live with me at our grandma's house. Because she was "loved" by friends, she was invited to parties. I had a job and a car, so I took her to these parties. There was alcohol available. I drank and I socialized, and for the first time in my life, people my age "loved" me, and it felt wonderful. My senior year of high school marked the beginning of my double-life. I still strove for good grades so I could be "loved" by teachers, but I still went to parties and drank so I could be "loved" by peers. I was accepted to UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UCLA, USC...and drove me, my sister, and my cousin home drunk nearly every weekend.

Then I met the alcoholic, heroin-addicted boy who would become my new best friend and later my boyfriend and later my husband. He Loved me very, very much, and I him. After I went off to (what in this blog I call SDSU, or UCLA; not sure which one I've chosen to falsely represent the real) college, my boyfriend got kicked out of his mom's house when she found some heroin in his drawer, and he came to live with me in my dorm room. I couldn't keep my grades up; I chose his Love over my teachers' "love" (it felt better, real), and dropped out, moved in with him at his grandma's house, went to a community college, and worked part-time. Later, he started to get his "Indian money" (his dad, who abandoned him and his mother after his birth, was from a tribe whose casino earned their members a good few grand a month; his dad enrolled him as a member before his dad took off), and we moved into a house together. My double-life continued, as I earned straight A's in school, tutored English, Algebra and Geometry for AVID at my high school alma mater...and was sometimes up til 3 am wandering the town as we waited for our heroin hook-up to bring us dope.



My boyfriend had been raised by a single, alcoholic, abusive mother and (because his dad was gone) her alcoholic, abusive father (although, his grandfather showed him Love and not the abuse he'd shown his children). When we were together, I became the alcoholic, drug-addicted abusive girlfriend/wife and he became the alcoholic, drug-addicted, abusive boyfriend/husband.

Then we had a child.

I couldn't let our child grow up in an alcoholic, drug-addled, abusive home. Absolutely 100% NO FUCKING WAY was I going to repeat the cycle for my son. It took a couple of years though, for things to finally change. We tried counseling, 12-step programs - but the one thing that we were trying to change - the fighting - was a result of the one thing we refused to change - the drinking (we had quit the heroin years before our son was conceived...and I managed to not drink while I was pregnant, but boy was I pissed).

I wasn't getting my husband's Love anymore, so - I needed to drink.  And I was determined that I could control my drinking, if only I just [insert anything imaginable]. Besides, my drinking wasn't as bad as his, so mine must not be that bad, right? It never occurred to us that the only way to control our drinking was not to drink in the first place. "To control and enjoy his drinking is the greatest obsession of every alcoholic." (Big Book, ch. 3). As alcoholics, we have an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. Once we take one drink, we develop what's known as the "phenomenon of craving". And that phenomenon is more powerful than we are.



I'm glad that I can report that we're both sober today. Unfortunately, we didn't get sober until after I left him and filed for divorce, two years and two-and-a-half months ago (on October 10, 2011). He's 5 months sober now, and I'm 22 months sober; he's had a harder go of it than I, but he also got started much younger: his mom offered him his first drink at age 8. He got into her marijuana by 10 and was using heroin, thanks to the local gang, by 12. But after 4 rehabs and a stint in jail, he's doing quite marvelously. We share custody of our son, who's now 4...and if we're lucky, won't end up nearly as fucked up as we.

I'm grateful to recovery groups, especially the one that shall not be named (per its traditions). My ex-husband is more involved in an outpatient rehabilitation program that focuses on chemical dependency and depression, and that's what's working for him. But for me, the 12 steps, meetings and sponsorship have been making possible for me to not drink or use, one day at a time. What I'll simply call "The Program" (in honor of the 11th tradition, which states, Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films) has also taught me how to simply "live life" (which is good, since I didn't have anyone else to teach me that while growing up...I was only taught to regurgitate facts or to do "bad" things).



After I was in The Program for awhile, I thought I'd try to solve other "problem areas" of my life by going to other programs. For example, I tended to spend way too much money and am in a lot of debt, so I joined a program for that. And after I left my husband, I had a lot of boyfriends and haven't stayed with any of them, so I joined a program for that. They don't have a "Mom's Anonymous", or I'd have joined that one, too; I really need a lot of help there.

But in all truth, I still spend too much money, and I still have boyfriends/dates/sexual encounters. But I work on a budget every month, and it gets better. And I do try to be honest with any man I get involved with at any given time, so I'm really not being a "bad person" there, either. The mom thing - well, I'm doing better than my mom did, perhaps, bless her heart...I just keep trying to do my best, every day. And my ex-husband and I keep Child Welfare Services (formally CPS) close by (i.e., we call them on each other at least once a month, lol); they're a big help.

I stopped going to the debt program, and am considering discontinuing to go to sex program, too. The program for alcoholics is the mother of all 12-step programs, after all, so why look any further for my development (in terms of 12-step programs)? Yeah, it's nice to go be around people with the same "problems" I have. But many of them aren't using the solution - the 12 steps -in the way that people do in The Program. The latter is a well-oiled machine. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?



The Program also has a set of 12 Traditions that keeps it together. In these other 12-step programs, even if people work the steps (and many of them don't), people have no idea that there are also set of traditions that helps the 12-step program work for everyone (unless they are also members The Program, the only requirement for which is a desire to stop drinking: tradition 3). I am glad non-alcoholics do have access to a 12-step program for whatever ails them. But The Program was the first and the basis for all of them. That's why in The Program we say we're "grateful" alcoholics.

When it comes down to it, though, all one really needs to do for a successful, happy life, I'm told, is be honest, kind, tolerant, and loving, and free oneself of fear, resentment, dishonesty and selfishness (but not to the extent that one hurts his/her self: "to thine own self be true"). Self-preservation is really a by-product of helping others and yourself, apparently. It seems paradoxical, but it isn't: You only "keep it" if you "give it away", a saying goes. That's why the truly enlightened are always teachers (although there are many "teachers", in the most basic sense of the word, who aren't enlightened, which is the reason for this post in the first place, if you scroll back up).



Just for kicks, if you're curious, I'll share here the 12 steps which are suggested as a program of recovery from that state of complete powerlessness:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

So, it's really pretty simple. Admit you have a problem, clean house, make amends, and help others. If 12 steps seems lofty, check out the documentary that explains their evolution: Bill W. - Where do we aim what we thirst for? For more information, or if you think you may have a problem controlling your drinking, you can search online for a meeting (here is the website I used to find my first meeting: http://www.simeetings.com/LA/CalCountiesMtgIndex.html). The meeting is where it all begins.

If you aren't an alcoholic, Don Miguel Ruiz, in his book The Four Agreements (summarized here very well), also teaches us "how to live," with four simple commands: (1) "Be impeccable with your word." (2) "Don't take anything personally." (3) "Don't make assumptions." And (4) "Always do your best."



Then there's Eckhart Tolle, with The Power of Now. Here's a paragraph from his book that summarizes his philosophy for living quite well:

Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life -- and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you. (Tolle, 35)

 

And "The Cave Allegory" in Plato's Republic is highly illluminating.

So anyway...this post may have turned into proselytizing. I've used the term "you" loosely. But I'm just grateful to be learning new ways to live and to be happy other than needing people to love me, and I thought I'd share it all. I've realized how much power I've been giving people all my life, and how little power I've allowed my own self. I've also now subscribed to Psychology Today and have begun reading The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul. I'm trying not to assign God-like power to any of these works of words by people...but they are helping (along with, my favorite, the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous) to liberate me from assigning most people God-like power.

This is my Awakening. I'm 30 years old. Better late than never. I am so very grateful for those teachers who, however imperfect themselves, have taught me how to live as opposed to simply regurgitate information for their "love": Gautama Buddha, Plato, Jesus of Nazareth, Carl Jung, America's "Founding Fathers", The Oxford Groups, William G. Wilson, Ron Paul, Eckhart Tolle, Don Miguel Ruiz, Wayne Dyer, Rocco Versaci, Martha Margo Flores, Rich W, Christal Q....and last but always first, God.

And for the record: I'm still fucked up, and what I say isn't Gospel, either. I'm just like you. Hell...I am you. And I do Love you...because, for the first time in my life...I Love me.

Ramblings on the Writing Process

It has been hard for me to get back into writing after I wrote my last post. I feel like my writing was sub-par. All over the place. Incoherent. Timeline unclear, jagged, going backward and forward with awkwardly long, frantic sentences. And the content itself was a bit...jarring. Overwhelming. Sickening. I couldn't find the wherewithal to keep going.

I've noticed that my writing wavers like a stick on an old-fashioned metronome, ticking back and forth between writing for catharsis and change -- and writing just to write. On the former side, my writing suffers with my own suffering: I'm charged with emotional recall; I don't care how the words fall off my fingertips and slap themselves onto the screen, just as long as they get out of me and onto it. On the other side, however, I couldn't "care" less "about" "what" I'm writing, so long as I'm writing -- but, even more importantly, writing well. Once in a long while, the ticker slows to stop for a moment, and I, suddenly aware, am suspended, poised in the middle between "meaning" and its signposts, between "content" and the characters that I'm using to represent it. Here is where I hope to find my writing identity.

The purpose of my blog is two-fold, and I find it difficult to stay in balance. One, I'm blogging things (or facts, events) that have "happened" in my life - focusing most intently on the past two years - as a means to prevent things similar from occurring. These things are ones that make me go "Ugh". But I'd much rather the things make me go "Ugh" than the writing itself (writing itself being the second half of the purpose of this blog, of course). My last post stopped my writing process in its tracks, because, that time, both the content and its form offended me terribly. I didn't like what I wrote or how I wrote it.

Here is a brief summary of my blog's "content", or the "what" of it: After watching my relationship with my husband crumble to the ground after ten years of steady erosion and a final heave-ho, I sifted through boyfriends, one-night stands...and before I knew it, was buried under a heaping, stinking pile of men. I enlisted myself in a program for "sex and 'love' addicts", thinking that my problem may be my "powerlessness" (i.e., my seeming inability to say "no" to any man who expresses any interest in me whatsoever). The founder of this program suggests, in his book written for one who identifies as a "sex and 'love' addict", to write a "relationship inventory". This inventory's purpose is to help one identify specific actions in order to discern patterns of behavior with the goal of unearthing motives (or seeing what one "gets" from people s/he has "used"...seeing what the "pay-off" is). Then, one should be able to see how selfish, dishonest, and afraid one has been and acknowledge how one has hurt others with his/her self-seeking motives and actions/patterns. This awareness, along with a surrender to a "power greater than oneself" and a willingness to "let" the behaviors and their propelling motives "go", is supposed to get one to make restitution/amends for harm done and aid other "suffering" "sex and 'love' addicts" which will, inherently, cause one to cease acting out in the patterns of behavior that created the events that made him/her go "Ugh" in the first place. And the inventory's purpose is fulfilled. Boom. Done.

When I found out I should write about all my relationships in order to "recover", I was pretty excited. I love writing! And a former writing professor of mine is writing a blog about his experience with cancer and its treatment (he also writes about bicycling across the U.S.). He also blogs about the writing process itself. It's very inspiring. So, I decided to turn my inventory into a blog so that I could use it both as my motivation to "change" as well as, perhaps one day, material for an actual memoir that I'll publish and have people maybe even read someday!

But...my very influential professor has helped me to see that how one writes is just as important as what one is writing about (along with the books I read in his autobiography-themed lit class in college). His writing appears to be in balance between its content and its characters of representation. It's not just a bunch of emotional rambling that pays no mind to the words being used...nor is it composed of meticulously placed words on a screen without any "real" content behind them.

In contrast, my metronomablog keeps ticking between the two. Here are a few insights I had gleaned about myself last night, before I started to care about how I was writing. I'm not going to do any editing, so you can see a true example of what my content is really like when I pay no mind to characters (as opposed to the above writing, which I've spent seven full hours editing!):



1. I get "high" from a man's attention. My heart beats fast. My body gets hot. My breathing is labored. It's a surge of adrenaline. I like it.

2. I get bored after the "high" is gone. I'm not actually interested in the hard "relationship" stuff. I tried that all ready, and it didn't work. Plus, I start to miss myself when I spend too much time with a guy. I never really got to find myself in the first place, I don't think. So I run to extremes and break it off instead of just try to slow things down.

3. I don't actually like the sex with the men all that much. Sex is just the thing I put up with after I get my "attention high". I do my best to pretend I enjoy it, so he still likes me and I can get "high" again the next time I see him, but then I don't get "high" again, or sometimes I do a couple more times, but soon enough, it goes away - and when that happens, so do I.

4. I still love the guy I ended up with after I left my husband over two years ago. I actually do enjoy sex with him, and, I still get "high" when I see him (or maybe it's not a "high" and is "real love"...who knows?). But it's hard as hell for me to accept him: he lives with his mom and stepdad and doesn't have a job and is about to have his car repossessed and his phone turned off and is more full of self-pity and devoid of motivation than anyone I know.

5. I want a guy to take care of me financially. But, when I find ones who are willing and able to do so, I don't want to be with them, after all. I fucked up by not getting my degree or starting a full-time career; I was being taken care of by my husband who received monthly money from his Indian tribe. Now I have to put my big girl pants on and go to night school and get a full-time job so I don't need a man to build a house on my grandparents' 20 acres (that's what James, the last guy, wanted to do, after knowing me for a week). No thanks, dude -- I can build my own damn house.

6. I'm so goddamn focused on the past and future that I don't actually do anything now to change my life situation. "Someday this will happen, and I'll be happy." "I can't believe all the shit I've done; I'm so disappointed in myself." You know what? Fuck that. I'll just be happy right now. 

Okay, this blog is taking a weird turn. But let's roll with it. Who fucking cares about the men I've been involved with over the past couple years? I don't even care any more. All I care about is what I'm doing right now. And right now I'm sitting merrily at my laptop, typing words - it's something I very much enjoy doing. But it's not making me any money, at the moment, which makes me revert back to insight number 5. Actually, I happen to be on a two-week unpaid forced vacation from my 20-hour-a-week 10-dollar-an-hour job.

So....it's time to get back into reading Mary Karr -- I need to finish her memoir, damnit...but every time I read it, I read like two pages and can't even keep going because I get all inspired and my fingers get itchy...which is cool, I guess. But it doesn't help me write any better if I don't keep reading actually good writing.

And as far as writing for change goes, well, guess what -- writing about the men I've been with over the past two years still hasn't stopped me from being with men. After the Propane Truck Driver, whom I considered to be my "rock bottom", there was the Satellite Communications Engineer, and now...well, you know that guy I talked about in insight number 4? The guy I wrote about me cheating on and leaving, over, and over, and over? Yep - the Pizza Delivery Boyfriend and I are back together, again.

But it's all good. At least I still have writing for the sake for writing. :)

Ugh.