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Dreams I’ll Never See Again….

nmrecoveryhope

[Vanessa opened her eyes through the fog as if she’d been chasing the dragon.  She noticed instantly that she was completely naked and was on her knees in a submissive position in a circular room, with padded walls and a thinly carpeted red floor.  She looked around and became aware that she was also surrounded en masse by every man she had ever had sex with or made love to.  It was strange how each one stood against the wall and was totally silent, just staring at her.  She wanted to stand up but couldn’t muster the strength.  Beside her on the floor was a large bottle of pills; the strongest dope she could imagine.  Fear ran through her veins with adrenaline like ice.  She struggled to breath in slowly.  A voice from this crowd spoke solemnly “we’ve been waiting for you.”]

I woke up from this using dream -more like a nightmare and believe me that room was crowded.  Some were married men, some single; some alive, some long gone.  Some I had been with willingly…some not. I remember the feeling of being high, and woke aroused and scared shitless.  What the f**k is the point to a using dream anyway??? And why am I being forced to remember at least half a centuplicate of lovers???  There is a woman inside me, who seems fairly aching to get out.  I don’t think I can handle letting her come out.  It might result in a dissociative fugue!  On the other hand, I am stronger and clean.

Trust me, this is difficult to discuss.  I repressed a great many memories and details to survive the feelings associated with them.  I cannot truly recall all of the details now, although for sanity’s sake, I guess I am supposed to wish I could.  I am writing a journal, but it has taken on a fictional, third-person-singular form.

I described this dream exactly as I remember it –in third person; persona Vanessa who handles all the shitty stuff.  I don’t mean to sound crass, but sometimes I am an island; alone with myself and hating every moment, until the dissociation kicks in and I am spelled; relieved of my watch for a while.  That feels good to me.  What I described above is not my worst nightmare, because it lives in the past.  My worst nightmare would be to lose someone else I love and am close to.

I guess I need to face this one at some point.  Next time I have this nightmare, I will try to let it play out, as I am sure there is a learning and healing experience at the end of it.  Right now, let’s just say that a journey into my past is too frightening and too lurid to explore with my readers and followers.  But I can promise to keep you posted as to what happens if I don’t wake up right away and explore this using dream/nightmare further.

I apologize if I don’t write this blog post well, but I don’t want it to sound like a f**king screenplay!  These are sensitive issues I have to fight through daily now.  Some people understand it (like my therapist); others don’t.  They become judgmental of me instead.  I don’t frankly care.  I want to get through the tangled mess that is my disease.  I have bi-polar disorder and BPD, but that’s not who I am; it doesn’t define me, it’s just a label.

It’s like the suboxone issue.  I found out that the NA organization considers you are NOT clean if you are on suboxone or methadone as a prophylactic measure.  There are those in the program that have really reamed me for admitting I was in a suboxone therapy program.  I say, screw that!!!  Whatever keeps me from shooting it, smoking it, snorting it, chewing it, or licking it off the fu*king floor, works for me!!!  I consider myself 140 days clean TODAY!  The rest doesn’t matter much unless I give it credence.  I am working a program and it is working for me!  I need this program to stay clean so I can TRY to figure out nightmares like this.

Are you facing anything similar?  Talk to me.  Share a comment or a testimonial.

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Every Single Day is….

nmrecoveryhope

Every single day is one more than we deserve.  I miss my mother today.  I miss my late husband today.  Oh hello grief, what are you doing here today?  Well nice to see you but I really don’t want to hang out for long.  This program of recovery that I am working seems to be changing me for the better and I am grateful every single day that I am clean.

I am trying not to dwell in the past plus have taken myself off of some psycho drugs as well.  My sponsor says that if you are taking suboxone you really aren’t clean; just trading one drug to stay off another.  Well I say that if that’s what it takes to stay off of heroin, morphine, Fentanyl, pot, crack, crystal meth, acid or cocaine or whatever the f**k else you may be battling, then so be it!

Yeah maybe at some point in time I will not take the suboxone either.  Maybe as I get old, my body will have fewer problems….Right?  Maybe I will not take anything for my blood pressure or heart medicine or thyroid pills or nothing.  Yeah I can totally see that happening…not.  All I know is I will “take” (USE) whatever I have to in order to survive, because if I am not here anymore then what the fu*k was I doing all this for to begin with???

Isn’t it funny how my emotions just ran from okay to sad to angry and back to sad all at once???  Maybe being off the antidepressant or whatever it was is making my bi-polar mood swings ramp up.  Let’s see if I can make it to a manic HIGH rather than a depressive LOW today.  I plan to finish my laundry, take a LONG, HOT, STEAMY, SCENTED BUBBLE BATH, then maybe if the snow dies down I will go have dinner with my boy -friend.  A friend that is male and 28 years older than I.  Yes, as a matter of fact I am trying to figure out this relationship.  It is not sexual in that he cannot have conventional sex due to his past prostate cancer (I may have blogged about him before), so it is just about affection with us.  And companionship.  So he is old enough to be my father (and my father hates this relationship), but we are close friends and have been since the late 1980s.  I was a bartender and cocktail waitress who served he and his (late) wife drinks.  She was a bad alcoholic.  A lush and a slut in that she came on to every guy in the bar and sat on their laps and kissed them.  I don’t know if she f**ked any of them, but he won’t tell me the details other than her drinking and smoking killed her a few years ago.

I liked her as a person in the way that she interacted with me.  I shouldn’t be judging her because I acted the same exact way in my life.  Maybe that’s why I am connected to him.  To help him understand what an addiction and UNDERLYING CAUSES OF IT can do to you!  Oh hello Guilt…nice of you to join us…and you brought Shame along?  Great.

Excuse me while I take my bath and have a long discussion with my guilt, shame and sadness and try to process this all to the point where I can get back to my peaceful and calm and uplifted place.

Blessings to all on this snowy, windy Sunday –and Happy St. Patty’s to those who celebrate it.  Happy birthday to my niece in Vienna and peace, love, blessings to all who read this.  Please comment or share on Testimonials.  I don’t know how to Facebook or Twitter yet.

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Surge Of Energy or Just Anxiety?

nmrecoveryhope

This is a great day.  I feel good and am so motivated to do stuff.  I started working on my third step now that my sponsor and I have gone over my Step 2 and come to an understanding about roles and expectations or responsibilities, I am ready and willing.  But this is only a part of my story today.  Checking in with myself, I feel a strange sense of freedom and peace of mind.  I have given myself over –surrendered to my believe in a higher power and this action of surrender (which will be a daily process for me in meditation), has led me to this state of calm.

I want to do so many positive things.  I am anxious about doing my 4th step, I mean a really thorough and detailed account of all my actions and relationships will be scary and painful, but I will take my time and process through it.

The other half of me feels anxious in a not-so-positive way; I feel an itch to get into some kind of trouble.  Vanessa made big 80s hair with hot rollers, then a curling iron and finally a buttload of hair spray.  She wants to play with the false eyelashes to see what look she can create…then she wants to go …out and play.  My acting out behavior is craving attention.  What disaster befalls me if I follow this craving and go out in public and seek trouble?  Will I end up at the dope man’s place?  Will I relapse for real?  Will I end up in bed with someone I don’t even know or like?  Will I once again allow my body to be used inappropriately to satisfy a craving I could take steps to avoid now?

I am going to watch movie in 3-D mode (using the DBT 3-Ds skills; I’ll delay by watching a good movie, distract myself cooking something and decide later whether I still feel like going out.

More later…

Thankfully the urge has calmed down and i can make plans to do something safe like shopping so I plan to do that instead.

Right now I am enjoying a new movie while eating the Salmon I just made on my Foreman grill.  It is delicious!  Saved to stay clean another day.

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You Can’t Go Home Again

nmrecoveryhope

I have been very emotional the past few days, and have attributed it to the fact that I stopped taking the anti-psychotic medicine that the Psychiatrist insisted I needed.  I think I will amend that statement to say that I have been emotional.  Period.  It’s totally within the normal range of human feeling and interaction.  Let me give you an example.  I get emotional over movies –I always have.  I decided to watch Click with Adam Sandler.  I LOVE that movie.  You know why?  Because he can go home again.  I love movies where the main character gets a second chance at life.  I guess I especially love them now because I have gotten a second chance at life and I am hoping it all works out with a happy ending.  I don’t think it’s unrealistic to hope or to pray for a positive outcome.  I LOVE the ending.  [No spoilers here; if you haven’t seen it – watch it!].  The happy endings that are bittersweet always make me cry.  Since we are on the topic of movies that make us cry, well…where would I begin?  I think it’s normal to do that as long as you don’t get addicted to the feeling and get sucked into a depression.

That movie makes me stop and think about what I would do if I could go home again. What would I do if I could go back in time and make things right?  I would smother my husband and my children with love and affection and all my attention.  I would talk my spouse out having the surgery which killed him.  I would make my house a home. I would snuggle our doggy more (he was a great pyrenees/chow mix named Buddy).  I would spend more time with my mom resolving any differences and loving her for who she was.  I would put my job second to my family, and my friends would only be people who my husband and I both liked.  I would encourage my son to make better choices.

But would it change anything? Or would it all go down just the way it did in the string of time we’re in now?

That makes me very sad and tearful.  I cannot change the past; I can only live in the present praying that I am guided to be a better human being than I was, and that I appreciate all those I love and encounter, for today is just a blink in time.  And this brings me back to mindfulness.  I must stay on track with my DBT skills and not allow myself to dissociate from painful memories.  This leads me back to the same track of thinking…do I really need to be on psychiatric medicine as a labeled Bi-Polar and Depression girl, or am I just a woman who needs to learn to process her emotions differently so that she doesn’t end up on Thorazine or Lithium for the rest of her life?  I have been giving this a lot of thought and am ready to have a rather frank discussion with my Psychiatrist.  I am ready to change therapists too to start into a DBT class I heard about.

But I still like that movie Click…watch it tonight on Amazon. Rent it on DVD from Redbox or Netflix -whoever has it.  I also like The Shack, the Martian (uplifting), and for a great laugh I watch The Other Woman.  I am not advertising here, just sharing how I sometimes process my emotions or receive emotions from entertainment.  I am giving my sadness a moment (sitting with the feeling), then giving it over to my higher power.

What are your favorites? I would love to hear what touches your different emotions.

Peace, love and my blessings to you all…

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“At Least I Didn’t….”

nmrecoveryhope

At a very evocative meeting tonight, I had a discussion with another woman about the “children caught in the crossfire” that we refer to at the opening or closing prayers of each of our meetings.  This led to me remembering what my children told me directly about what they recall of my active addiction.

Perhaps I can say thankfully that I did not have to give my children up due to my addiction, however, what my kids witnessed about me was no better.  Did they watch or see me use?  Definitely.  Was I a changed personality? Absolutely.  Was I a worse mother?  Unquestionably.  So I am no better than those who shoot up in front of their kids or are too stoned to care or notice that their child is being molested by their mother’s boyfriend.  But I was blessed.  I had a spouse who cared for my children and who tried to compensate for my acting out behaviors.

In other words, even though they all knew (my kids and spouse) that I was painfully addicted to narcotics -and my mask wasn’t hiding it from anyone, my spouse tried to do things with my kids when I was either too high or too dopesick to function or care.

How f**king selfish was I?  I can never make this up to them, and because he is dead, I can certainly never make it up to HIM –OR MY MOM.  So what can I do?  I can only try to be the best mother I possibly can now, and to set an example of being the best human being I can be in recovery.  I don’t like to lie.  I never did like to, but I did do it.  Now, I find that honesty and openmindedness and willingness are easier in my every day life which tells me that my program is WORKING.

I can never eliminate the shame and guilt I feel over the hurt and pain I caused THEM ALL.  What I am doing, is learning to live with it and to let it propel me to change, as I also learn to let it go.  I was a chameleon who could adapt to any environment just to protect my addiction.  Now I am a caterpillar who is blossoming out of my cocoon into a butterfly; maybe even a dragonfly (because I think those are so cool and much more symbolic).

My dear children, I am truly full of regret and remorse for those many years when you wanted me to participate in your lives and I simply could not.  Mine was a self-centered addiction, and all I could think of was how to get my next drugs, or about how trapped I was in my addiction and so full of despair over it that the only way out to me seemed to be death.  I put you through a terrible ordeal and made the excruciating experiences you had to face such as the deaths of your father and grandmother, unbearable.  I am so grateful to God that you survived it all in spite of me.  It was like a razor blade to my heart when you had to remind me that you were forced to administer my drugs at the funeral of your father, and that I was wasted all through my mother’s funeral.  I don’t remember much and know I blocked out even more to protect myself.

Now I am alive and free and full of excitement and hope over the future we WILL share together.  It would be ludicrous to say that I will try to make it up to you; there are some things for which you can never atone.  I promise to try to be the best person I can be for myself, and for you, by learning to be a better person each day…one day better than the last.  I am grateful that I never had to worry about you physically, or give you up like some other mothers have had to.

I am blessed with two unique and special children who grew up while I was busy using; in spite of my addiction, you both turned out to be the best kids any mother could possibly deign to hope for –the best people.  I am truly proud to be your mother, as I always will be, only now I can do a laudable job of it by experiencing everything you allow me to share with you with joy, honor, integrity, laughter and love.

THANK YOU for choosing me as your mom and letting me keep my job, even though I failed miserably at it for many years.  I have extraordinarily fond and sentimental memories of your youth, that I would not trade for anything.  Let us hold onto the best of our remembrances and be mindful of reminiscing over what left us in laughter, rather than in tears.

I love you both more than life itself.  All the painful things I endured in my life -which I am now learning to recall, were worth experiencing to lead me to you today and the relationships we have now.

Peace, love and blessing to all…all children -in or out of the crossfire–and all mothers surviving their addictions.