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.

The Berklee School of Music Singer/Songwriter, part 5

I'm watching Californication right now and thinking about my own "status" as a fictional character. I know I'd have a wider readership if I posted as myself. But tear the covers off? I'm just not ready.

I'm also reading Writing the Memoir by Judith Barrington. Why do I think my stories are worth telling? Well, they're shocking - at least to me. I find myself telling them to people one at a time. One person at a time, that is. Which stories I tell depend on the person and the amount of time I have, and where and why I'm telling them (the stories) in the first place.

I met some chick the other night who was brought to my fiancé's by her boyfriend Noah. Noah was supposed to record a song - my fiancé is an audio engineer and has a recording/mixing studio in his room. Noah brought his guitar, his girlfriend Megan, and a bunch of beer. I don't drink, and I was trying to work, myself, but because he brought her, I ended up having to entertain her while the two of them smoked weed outside.

Megan offered me a beer and I found myself telling her why I don't drink, or smoke, for that matter. Sometimes I just say, "No, I'm not drinking tonight" - but for some reason, this time, I took it upon myself to describe my entire downward spiral, post-separation/intra-bedlam. Those two phases are mutually inclusive, but, I don't know if I would cite either as the cause of the other. That's...more complicated, and to be saved for another post.

Which brings me back to Californication: this guy who has one successful novel can afford a house in L.A., and, women throw themselves at him, every episode, including women who don't even recognize him as the writer of said novel. Hank Moody "exudes" sexuality. I wish I could relate to the former of those descriptors, but alas, it's the latter that's apropos. Even now, as secure in my relationship as I am, hardly a day goes by that I don't get that second-take out there - that, you know, "I'm just turning back to look for an extra second here to see if you're at all interested, because you kinda look like you could be," and I, carefully, have to not smile too blatantly, for too long. Mine is, "Shit, I see you looking at me, again, so I better look away now before you get the wrong idea...even though I like it."

Unfortunately, though, no amount of blatant "exuding" on my part has been able, tonight, to get my fiancé to detach himself from his hours-long stretching routine to come "do" me. He's OC with plenty of other D's; he spent two days cleaning his room, putting every little thing in their perfect little places, and now it's been a full day of stretching. Stretching. I wish I was stretching in writing this.

I hope getting married isn't so close to suicide as being a "permanent solution" to a "temporary problem." The solution is the part that sounds good, of course, which is why people kill themselves, or, get married. I guess it isn't funny, but those were seeming to be the two alternatives back in January when I set out to try and nab this one last guy, or, maybe just be shit out of luck and, maybe just not "do this" any more.

Well, Californication's over. I'm turning in. He's still stretching, and I'm pretty damn annoyed, but there's a bit of karmic comedy in it all. I guess I want feel wanted all the time in every way that I want. I'm a little selfish that way. What I should be is grateful. This is better than the alternatives. Either one - being dead or being alone. He does love me more than anyone I've ever been with, besides my son - and that's a pretty nice feeling.