Abbie and Callie

Someone asked me the other day how Callie and Abbie were getting along.

They are doing well, although Abbie still isn't interested in anything Callie wants to do, like jump on Abbie or chase her through the house. I can't figure out why :-).

Obviously, I have been steadfast in my opinion that I would have no more dogs on the bed after Ozzie died.

Fall is coming

Fall is on it's way. Finally we have had a break from 90 degree weather day in and day out. I think it has been two solid months of that kind of heat. It makes me as cranky as months of cold without respite. We got the Halloween candy at the store three days ago :-). Not even Labor Day and we were stocking the shelves for the end of October. Which means we'll be getting ready for Christmas right before Veteran's Day! Merchandising is an interesting concept.

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year, except 2006, all Christmas' have been very special for me with my family. I think my favorite Christmas was when Eric (my ex-husband) and I were in College. My aunt was married to her second husband and living in Grass Valley in Northern California. We were all invited out for the holiday. Eric and I took the trip out with my grandparents. It was a full two day trip (Grandpa was never in a hurry to get anywhere). The first night we stopped in Elko, Nevada and Grandma's money angel was hanging around. She won $500 that night not even really trying to gamble. She had a quarter and stuck it in a slot machine at the grocery store, won $15 and then at the hotel we played the nickel slots and she kept winning!

We drove to California on I-70, catching highway 15 in Utah and North to I-80. In Northern California we crossed Donner Pass. The world changes there. The trees are larger, the snow is heavier and deeper and the pine cones bigger than anything I've ever seen in my life. One of Callie's favorite things to do on our walks is collect pine cones. These cones would be way too big for my rapidly growing dog. The picture is Colorado Pine Cones look about like a Kiwi fruit or even as big as a naval orange. In California, picture a large Honeydew melon or a small Watermelon. Pretty, so pretty and white and welcoming. When we got to Grass Valley we spent a great week exploring and most mornings were spent out early watching the Wild Turkey's that wandered through my aunts yard. My aunt has since moved Chico, California and is with a great man. We haven't been out there for Christmas, but did spend Thanksgiving there and in San Francisco for my Mom's 50th birthday. I can see why my aunt likes it there so much. If I didn't love where I live so much, I would consider Northern California. Most likely because it is so much like Colorado.

I think we'll spend Christmas here this year, and I look forward to seeing my family and having a great meal and great games of Shang-Hi.

Sense of Safety

In reading "Floor Sample" I was drawn once again to begin working with "The Artist's Way", naturally. In the past, I pick it up work with it, start on a project and stop working on the exercises. I have a few projects I have started but have not completed, and I'm okay with that. They will come in their own time. An interesting thing happened this morning as I was working with affirmations. My censor didn't have much to say. I started to think that maybe it's because of the continued work on my writing, even though projects are not complete, I am happy with the progress I'm making. I carry one lesson of many that I learned in AA. We strive for "progress, not perfection". When I quit drinking, that feeling didn't leave me immediately. If I couldn't do it perfectly, I wasn't doing it. As I listened to others in my meetings and shared my experience, strength and hope, I came to believe that any progress I made was better than doing absolutely nothing. And I think my censor agrees; it has now become a quietly encouraging ally. Any progress is better than what used to happen. I'm physically sober, working on my emotional sobriety and continuing to be ever so patient with myself. I can remember years ago discounting advise of writing coaches and even myself to take it easy. Now "easy does it" is the mantra that I live by in all areas of my life; work, exercise, food, relationships, friendships and, amazingly enough, it works much better. I still am somewhat tired mentally. It has been a whirlwind year, but a journey worth traveling, and one I will continue. I am in a safe place, with the right people around me who care about me and who I care about. I am in a beautiful place in Colorado that nurtures me and protects me. I am in a safe job that is pretty easy to do on a daily basis and gives me positive interaction with others and doesn't task my mind enough to interfere with my writing. My home group is the best I could have ever hoped for, so my sense of safety to explore my creativity more thoroughly is absolutely solid.

The Whirlwind

I started reading "Floor Sample" by Julia Cameron last night. She discusses in depth and great horrifyingly familiar detail her descent into addiction and her climb out. There is such commonality, familiarity, hopelessness, grandiose thinking that is the common thread of every addict I know, and is grippingly detailed through her great gift of writing. For example, the blackouts: out for an hour, a day, a week, a month...who knows. I never knew how long or what happened. It was terrifying, and then trying to go on as if it were normal behavior. Ashamed, guilt-ridden, and drinking again to feel better. Waking up and not having a clue what I did the night before, who I called, the fight I created, why I had been handcuffed in the back of a police car. All the distant past yet so close, familiar and disturbing. And the thought even after a year of sobriety that "I couldn't have done that." The thought of having physical sobriety and still fighting for emotional sobriety today and learning to live without the great release that alcohol briefly brought. The illusion that I could have just one and I would feel better, the shaking would stop, I could be functional if I just had one. I never did have just one, one became a hundred and the whirlwind took me. Deals I made with myself to stop. Believing I could do it myself, that I didn't need help. Rejecting help that was handed to me.

I have been accused of loving alcohol more than my ex or myself. I have argued that I didn't love it. I truly didn't love it at all. I didn't love destroying myself, losing myself and knowing it was happening and not being able to stop even when help was offered. I didn't love the drama it created, the damage it did, the slow killing of myself. But I couldn't stop, and I've given up trying to explain it. There is no logical, rational explanation for pure insanity. I drank because I was a drunk. Cameron explains with such clarity what she thought it did for her. Drinking made her write better. She was in a rush to get the writing out before the fog set in. I remember that clearly for myself. The first drink killed the editor, and I had about a minute to get the writing out, then it was all over. Drinking was killing the writer in me, taking my creativity. It killed my relationship with my lover and my family and I had no friends, alcohol was my pity pot. Oh poor me...so I'd pour me another drink. And the loneliness, emptiness, and anger would surround me further. I drank because it made me functional for about a minute, I could get to work, I could get upright, I could get dressed. Pretty soon, I couldn't do any of that. Then I just drank and kept drinking. She said the same thing, but with more effect. I never want to feel that feeling again...ever. Something bigger than herself reached in and pulled her back from the brink to total destruction. It took something bigger than me to do the same thing for me.


I remember waking up one morning after a month of doing nothing but drinking after I got out of Rehab and my ex had moved out. I had been calling and verbally abusing him for abandoning me (I can't blame him...I'd have left me too); I crawled out of bed at 5:30 in the morning and got myself to an AA meeting, I have no idea how. I poured out my sob story, still the victim, went home and drank again. Someone from that meeting got my number, I must have given it to him and he tracked me down. He helped me sell my things so I had money to get home; I had one person who would take me in, my Grandmother. My Mother tried to talk her out of it. She tried so hard to convince Grandma it wasn't the right thing to do. Grandma wouldn't cave, now I know why. My friend helped me store what I couldn't part with. He helped me get to meetings and get sober. He tells me that it kept him sober helping me. I don't know. I bet that's true, but I also think he was sent by my guardian angel to save me.

I learned months later from my Mother that she had gone to my Grandfather's grave and talked to him shortly before I pulled myself up and went to a meeting. It still makes me cry to think about it. She went to the one safe place we always knew. The quiet gentle hand that calmed me in the storm. I don't know what she said to him, it doesn't matter. What I know is that shortly after she talked to him, she says I started to get well. Something guided me in the direction of a safe harbor like nothing else could. I've said it in meetings a thousand times, it wasn't me that got myself to the meeting; it was something greater than myself, I was too far gone to have done it on my own. Grandma told me later that she was going to sleep one night after Mom went to the grave and she heard Grandpa distinctly say, "Go get her." He's been dead for over five years now.

It has been over a year since my last drink. The physical sobriety came pretty easy compared to the emotional sobriety. The obsession to drink was lifted pretty quickly, thank God. I know I wouldn't be sober today if I still obsessed about that "one drink". The emotional sobriety has been much harder. Still blaming others, still living in a state of disbelief over what I did, still trying to piece together my life as it should be, not what I think I deserve. I think emotional sobriety is something I will work on for the rest of my life. That's why when I go to a meeting I am grateful to have people in that group with 20, 30, 40, 50 years of sobriety sitting next to me. Sobriety is a great gift, but I have to nurture it, honor it and work on it, it is not free. It has come at a dear price.

The Death of Hope

I think we've all felt it. A seeming innocuous event that pivots us in ways we never thought possible. Or an event so huge and predicted we will never be the same. We look at the world from a jaded perspective from that one point forward. Everything becomes related to that one event; those words spoken that can never be taken back; that action that seems unreal; and forgiveness is not possible, our life's path changed forever. How can I say a seeming innocuous event? Because we are cruising along through our lives and observing something and putting some hope on it that we may not recognize we are, and then something changes, right before our eyes, and that event changes us, sometimes to our core. I can remember the one event that changed things for me; defined my entire life. It made me determined to be financially successful, to never have to depend on anyone. And it happened. I was financially successful for a while, and then another event happened that changed me again, and I wasn't financially sound. I was dependent on the kindness of others while I self-destructed, and they weren't kind to me. What a big surprise. But in all of that I found a new hope. One inside of myself that is not dependent on the world around me, financial success or failure, or events that I used to let shape me. It is my hope and belief in myself and my abilities and capabilities. So I don't know that hope actually dies, I believe events we hoped for die, but hope itself is fluid, it takes a different shape and a different aura, and we can look to it and grasp on with the peace of knowing that it will never abandon us. It may look different, it may feel different, it may be different than what we had, but it is there to guide and support us in all that we endeavor to do and be.

Replay

I was surfing the NPR web site the other day and came across a book called "Replay", so I ordered it. It's "Groundhog Day" on steroids...I don't mean to sound flippant, but it is the big "what if" question. What if you got to live your life over again, knowing the mistakes you made before? It is provocative, absolutely. In reading it, and I am not very far along, I can see how it will go for me as the reader. The first time he dies, I feel sorry for him he seems like a nice guy. The second time he is living, I don't like him very much, he is taking full advantage of his knowledge of history, profiting greatly, and likely ending up empty emotionally is my guess. Each time he lives, the time he has to redo his life is shorter, so he has to do it better...the perfecting.

So...what if? I think what if I had my life to live over, and I knew the mistakes I made, what I would do? I can tell you I wouldn't be an alcoholic. I would take the incredibly valuable lessons I have learned, and the principles I now live by, through the help of AA, with me into the next life and make better choices. I would cherish the friendships I have, the relationships I said I valued but took for granted...and love more. I would skip the selfish, self-centered, self-destructive part of who I was; the having to rebuild from absolutely nothing, while trying to physically and emotionally get well. I would never hurt the people I hurt the way I did and create the wreckage and do things that I have to live with that cannot be repaired. I wouldn't live my life in fear of so many things, only to have to face them, walk through them, learn the lessons and assuage the fears through substance abuse. I would live more, love more, experience more, travel more and be more, be better, be thoughtful...be all of the things I haven't been.

This book is a great read for me. The truth is I still have a chance. Because I am sober now, I have the opportunity to live the life I have always wanted, but didn't give myself the chance to live. Sadly, it will not include some of the people I would like it to include...but because I am who I am in my physical and emotional sobriety, I know that my heart has room enough for everyone that enters my life for a short time or forever.

The Stick Collector

A couple of months ago I picked up a book someone left in the breakroom at work called "The Bone Collector". It's an older book...published in 1999, I think...by Jeffrey Deaver, a well-known Houston author. It was well written, psychologically thrilling, and I had to sleep with the lights on for a couple of nights :-). I enjoyed the book and as I wander through my days, I try to observe life through the writer's eye. I'm trying to come up with new ideas all the time, and mostly they throw themselves at my feet, I trip over them and then forget all about them. The other day I was sitting at my computer working away on the latest Great American Novel (even though I am not, and likely will never be published) and I heard a noise behind me. It chilled me a bit and sent me back to one of the scenes in "The Bone Collector". Keep your eyes open for this in your house, it tends to feed on itself and works hard to grow it's "collection".