I Am Enough

I can't be in a relationship with someone who gets angry with me - other than my kids. I allow their anger, of course. I want them to know that they are safe to get and be angry, even with me. I recognize their "kid-ness," after all. I recognize that I've passed anger onto them from my own abused child-hood. 

I'm working to change the patterns of abuse - taking a 52-week course called "Changing Abusive Patterns" at the Center for Violence-Free Relationships. It's been a few months and I'm already seeing the progress within myself. This course, which is a group therapy setting, along with counseling sessions with my son as well as the 12-step program and (new) sponsor, are having such a positive impact on my life and steering me into the direction of the woman I want to be. 

I'm 46 days clean and sober after my July 9th relapse with #40. I had taken a hydroxyzine as prescribed for my anxiety before going over to cook for him again. While I was there he offered me a gabapentin, and I took a second hydroxyzine instead of a gabapentin. It was almost automatic. A "strange mental blank spot" our big book calls it. No defense whatsoever against the "first drink" - or 2nd drug. Or 40th man in eight years after my husband.

If you've been reading about me for long, you know my disease manifests in a trifecta of drink - drug - man. I haven't had a drink since my first AA meeting on January 19, 2012, then relapsed on weed on March 1st and got clean and sober again March 2, 2012...then relapsed on weed again in October 2015. Got clean and sober again before the year was over, relapsed again on weed in December 2015, got clean and sober January 17, 2016, and can't remember exactly when the next two relapses and clean-and-sober-ness occurred, but I would get about a year+ clean and sober and then relapse, repeat. Got clean and sober from weed for (I hope) the last time on April 6, 2019. Then July 9, took that second anxiety pill. July 10, 2020 is my new (and I pray to God, my last) clean and sober date. 

Alcohol, check. Drugs, check. Men? Well...

My highlighted post on the desktop version of this blog, on the right hand side, is my sex & relationship inventory. It also includes crushes, molests and rapes - really, any "intimate" interaction with a man, whether real or imagined.

I've known for years now - a total of 7+ - that I've needed to drop this last rock. Knowing that this last manifestation of my addiction hurts me (and others) doesn't stop me from responding affirmatively to any man who is even possibly the slightest bit interested in me. And knowing that any man who would be interested in me must also be sick doesn't enter into my consciousness with sufficient enough force to stop me from engaging. Something deep within the deep hole carved by the lack of love from my parents constantly cries out for attention and affection, even if that means I also have to deal with the anger that comes when I say or do something the man I've found to "fill it" doesn't like. 

Anger was a normal part of growing up, coming from my stepparents, so I confuse that with love, certainly. But, I'm sick and tired of it. As aforementioned, I'm trying to heal my own anger. I, really, no longer want to compound it with the anger of another adult human any more.

I've said "I'm done" countless times. As we alcoholic / addicts know, it takes what it takes. Last night, it took me saying, "I don't like it when you say [insert here]," and him (#41) reacting lividly. And it wasn't the first time he's gotten so angry with me that it ends with us "being done" with each other. It's happened every day or two in the past few weeks that we've been seeing each other (every day, addictively).

But this is just another repeat. The common denominator is me. I can't blame any of these men any more than I can blame any of the 18 sponsors I've had. Sick people are attracted to each other, I think.

I'm not healed yet, and I want nothing more than to be restored. Once I'm healed, I know won't be entering into a "committed partnership" after just a few weeks of getting to know someone. I won't be painting the red flags green - my red flags, or his.

The bottom line for me today - the deal-breaker that ended this relationship with #41 - is that I'm done with anger. It's going to be a long healing process (the 52-week class and 12 steps - again!). Gotta keep on trudging the road to Happy Destiny. I know I can do this.

I love my kids unconditionally, and I'm starting to finally love myself, unconditionally, too - enough to change the patterns of abuse. 

Because I am enough.

Popcorn, Anyone?

I sometimes forget that, about a couple of years ago or so, I sent a link to my blog to all my female friends on Facebook and asked them to read it. I was so desperate to share my story, but then I was so immediately embarrassed when I did that I stopped posting for awhile, shut down my Facebook account, and made my blog private so no one could read it. Once I had bridged the gap between Adora Fallbrook and the real me, it was scary. People knew the truth. But then...is it the Truth?

I'm constantly trying to figure out how to tell my story. I've wanted to be a writer since I was five. I mean, I have been a writer since I was five. But I didn't begin to write about the morbidity of my own life until about age 9, when I was watching my mom get pummeled and bloodied by her dick psycho boyfriend (that's the official psychological diagnosis). He was pretty shitty to my brother and sister and me, too, and writing about it was my way of surviving it. But a lot of people don't want you to think about your shitty childhood. They think, "You're grown up now; it's time to move on. Think positive thoughts." Me - I think of all the women and children out there who are still getting beaten and who can relate to a story like mine.

Catharsis.

But even my sponsor in sobriety wants me to be careful when writing about my past. Our program involves taking an inventory of ourselves, and she told me to pretend like I'm in a grocery store throwing away moldy broccoli and putting new broccoli on display. Don't rub the moldy broccoli all over your face and smell it and throw up over and over, just notice it, toss it out, and replace it (and God is in charge of the new broccoli, by the way).

So, I get it. I'm shoving the moldy broccoli in your faces and not even showing you the beautiful, fresh, new broccoli that God has made out of me and continues to grow. Sure, I could tell my story in ways that would show you that I am a triumphant, intelligent, loving, strong woman overcoming all obstacles - but instead I tend to go with the victim-ish, woe-is-me, can't-do-anything-right, guess-I'll-go-eat-worms-in-a-cave-somewhere loathsome-human-being-type voice.

And so, with so many people expressing their concern over the years, I now realize, "Oh. I see. My character is completely one-dimensional."

Before I left my husband on October 10, 2011, I had sought the help of a therapist. I've seen a few more since, but I had hand-picked that first one very carefully about a month prior to that night. I googled "therapists near [zip-code] specializing in love addiction," and found Dr. Blaine Carman (http://blainecarman.com). I wanted to save my marriage even though I felt like I hated my husband and was obsessed with the delivery driver at the pizza restaurant where I was assistant manager. 

I only managed to see Dr. Carman twice before I gave up and left Ronnie. But he did give me some advice that I'll never forget (which means a lot; I have something called "dissociative amnesia" as a symptom of my borderline personality disorder). He told me that, in the beginning of a relationship, we tend to wear metaphorical rose-colored glasses that only pick up on the good things about the person with whom we're in love. Near the end of a relationship, it's the opposite; we have melancholy-blue-colored glasses (I made that color up; he didn't give those ones a color) that make us see only the bad things about the person. So, one of the keys to a successful relationship, all the way through, Blaine said, is for us to notice both the "good" and the "bad" in balance, not blinding ourselves to either one dimension.

On this blog, I certainly dramatize and stick to the blue dimension instead of giving you the full, 3D picture, when in real life, after four years of therapy and recovery, I'm much more balanced. 

At least, more than I used to be. But I tend to write when I'm feeling either extreme, especially the down-side. That's how I heal it. I always feel immense relief after I write that stuff, even if it's only true in my head for ten minutes.

But I don't know - maybe we should all wear the 3D glasses for awhile instead.