Choosing Recovery Over Performance

I'm still so tired from the let-downs and work overload from this past week...
Now I face the fears of potential failure for the week that follows...
So much work, and definitely not enough time...
I figured, "I don't have time to go to my Al-Anon Adult Children meeting tonight; that's two hours out of my evening that I could be trying to finish my project due tomorrow..."

But right now I am making the decision to choose taking care of myself by taking advantage of an opportunity for even a small increase in sanity...

...and choosing to leave my work for later, resolving that what I do not complete by 10:30pm will become the responsibility of the other 4 members in my group to scramble around and finish sometime tomorrow...

*deep breathe*

I don't like this...

"How Important is it?"

One of Al-Anon's slogans is, "How Important is it?" While I realize it's a tool, like the other slogans, to help aid in detachment from the troubles an alcoholic may cause in one's life, I'm having trouble finding out how to implement this (as well as the other tools) as there is no active alcoholic in my living environment.

The idea of this slogan is particularly perplexing to me when used in connection with the First Step of realizing my life is unmanageable. Well, it's easy for me to consider my life unmanageable (as described in my recent posts where I've talked about how I still can't seem to improve my situation no matter how many things I change about it, and how things not going my way finally led me to my first Al-Anon meeting). So, especially when I'm down about everything seeming so out of control, then how helpful is "how important is it"?

As I continue hearing it, I wonder how I'm supposed to use the tool in a healthy way. I keep seeing myself using it to detach from the things that are getting me down: "how important is it that... ...the sink is full of dishes...boxes are all over the floor ...food is rotting in the fridge ...I don't have enough time to eat before I go to work ...I didn't finish studying ...? etc...." I feel like my implication is not healthy. Yet, I feel like the whole concept of 'detachment' is just a glorified form of 'denial' that at least might give me some peace in the meantime. I don't like that...

I'm still learning how this is supposed to work, but I can't help but feel that 'detaching' is becoming more 'alcoholic.' I feel like my parents only ever said, "how important is it," which resulted in a living situation that looked like this:


This is the view from the front door of my father's living room. My mother's house looked pretty similar, even when my parents were still married.

Not caring about the things that make me anxious makes me feel like I'm clinging to a 'bottle' called 'slogan' that simply helps me to ignore the elements that make my life unmanageable to begin with.

I guess I just don't understand the difference between detachment and apathy....

Where is the happy medium where I can care about things, but not be consumed by them? Everything just seems so intertwined that everything is "important"!

?~?~?~?~?~?~?~?

"I'm Scared"

I'm sobbing in my apartment right now and I couldn't have even seen this coming. I was absolutely fine not minutes ago--then all of a sudden I felt like I had to "make" something of the time I finally had to have a conversation with my boyfriend, so of course I tried to talk about what's on my mind--bring him into my world so that maybe he could offer a different vantage point--and of course, my expectations let me down.

Then, I feel like I frustrated him, even though he told me I didn't. Then I keep wondering why he never says anything when I try to share these things with him and can sit in total silence on the phone and then sound annoyed that I then "quiz him on his thoughts and feelings." Why am I so upset? I feel like the most important thing to him right now is that he doesn't miss the beginning of the movie he's about to watch. Why can't we just have a deep conversation for once--or at least one that doesn't leave me feeling so alone!?

It was that quote from my Al-Anon meeting tonight: "love cannot flow through a heart of fear and resentment." Especially right now, though, I can see how true it is. I'm obviously full of resentment as I sit here balling and angrily questioning my entire relationship just because my boyfriend doesn't communicate the same way I do. Seeing how I immediately started apologizing for upsetting him--even though he did nothing to show that was the case and became confused with my apologies--it's easy to see that I'm fearful. Finally, with how absolutely alone I feel right now, it's clear to see how I'm not accepting the love I know my boyfriend has for me, or else I wouldn't be feeling so hopeless.

But the truth is: I am scared. I'm scared about my relationship. Especially after tonight's speaker talking about Love, peaking my OCD nature to remind me of something I've noticed ever since I first walked into a meeting: very few people are married, and if they are, they go to meetings together because their child is an alcoholic.

This only flares up my old absolutely stubborn thoughts about refusing to become another ACOA statistic who either becomes an alcoholic, or marries one. Where are all the success stories of people who came from chaos, but managed to make a happy life for themselves? Why aren't they speaking at these meetings? Why must all the positive still carry so much NEGATIVE?!?

I am scared. I'm scared I'll be another woman in the room who came from an alcoholic upbringing and unknowingly married an alcoholic. I"m scared I'll run away from an opportunity to have a great life just because I'm afraid of the risk. I'm scared my boyfriend will finally get sick of my whining and break up with me. I'm scared we'll get married and he'll get tired of me someday. I'm scared to have children. I'm scared that a child of mine may become an alcoholic. I'm scared to have to deal with these issues MY WHOLE LIFE. I'm scared my boyfriend won't ever go to these meetings with me so that we actually can talk about this stuff...

...and now I'm scared I won't be able to get all of this off my mind to successfully study and fall asleep tonight...

"Just for today I will try to live this day only and not try to tackle all my problems at once." Al-Anon's Just for Today

My First Al-Anon Meeting

The Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

I heard this prayer a lot growing up. While I thought it was another piece of poetry to simply help me ignore anything in my 'reality' and distract myself with thoughts of 'heaven,' I was always intrigued by it...basically from the standpoint of not understanding the last line.
With the realization from home that no one else would take care of me except me and the teachings from school that one person could change the world, I thought the last line was sort of a trick. "haha," I would think, "I get it--the difference is that there is no difference! Anything I can't directly change I can affect by changing other things..." Painfully, I’m now realizing this isn’t the case…

What I’m learning now is that even in all my ACOA self-centeredness, I haven’t spent enough time changing the only thing I do have power over—myself. Yet, I guess that’s the point of being self-centered—everything else revolves around you and changes according to your will and choices, as opposed to you, the person, doing any changing and letting ‘everything else’ fall into its own place. I had a hunch that I was missing something regarding only myself over this past summer.

This summer was supposed to be easy. I was supposed to have an easy internship that raked in some cash to make for an easier transition into my first apartment. This nice arrangement was supposed to give me plenty of time and peace to set everything up in my apartment exactly as I wanted and in plenty of time before the school year started so that I could have no excuses as to why I wasn’t able to perform to the level I knew I could. If you read my recent post, you know this didn’t turn out as it was “supposed to.”

I disdainfully noticed exactly what was happening—things weren’t going my way! I grumped around (and still do…) complaining that "no matter what I try to change, still nothing goes how it’s meant to!" These feelings were particularly noticeable in my relationship as between my boyfriend and me, we attended six summer weddings. When we weren’t at one together, I couldn’t function the entire time he was gone. I found myself paralyzed in my wonderings of his every thought, word, and action—was he excited to be there without me? Was he excited that he could get away with having a few beers without me knowing? Did he think of me with every sip of alcohol? Did he care about how every sip my parents took worsened my life? Even though I know he’s not getting drunk, does he care that others are? Does he wish he could get drunk too? Etc, etc, etc… Suddenly, my morning, afternoon, and/or evening was gone; I was exhausted, and just plain sad. This made it particularly difficult when he would call after the celebrations and ask, “How are you?” What was I supposed to say? It was even more difficult when I would ask, “So, how was everything?” and only hear, “it was good!” As you can imagine, I felt like I was left completely hanging, even though my boyfriend had no concept of anything that went through my mind the entire time he was supporting a happy occasion.

Of course, when I would share such feelings and distresses with him, it left both of us feeling frustrated, guilty, and confused.

Because of all this stress I felt my personal issues brought to our relationship, when my boyfriend’s birthday came along, buying any kind of ‘present’ for him seemed meaningless. Even though I got so frustrated and worked up about his personal actions and choices, I still recognized that he did make a lot of effort to help and support me---not to mention love me without condition. I wanted to show him I appreciated him and that I didn’t want to bring any more stress to our relationship. As I searched through my ‘barrel,’ I realized I already read a ton of ACOA books, had him read books on ACOAs and relationships, talked to counselors, and performed my own research, but nothing seemed to better the situation. Then, at the bottom of my barrel, I found ‘Al-Anon Adult Child meeting.’ As I considered the option in light of my situation, I accepted it as an undesirable and inconvenient. Yet, when I thought about how much I loved my boyfriend—and how much he loved me—I realized it would be very selfish of me not to do something that could help our relationship (and ultimately, me) just because I didn’t feel like it, or because it might actually take some effort on my part. So, I bit the bullet and went, bringing him some literature from the meeting as a symbol of my gift. I described the experience to a reader of my blog in a recent email response:

“After a long summer of a countless number of weddings, I was feeling particularly exhausted from the emotional turmoil I was experiencing regarding my boyfriend's participation in such weddings. I know he was feeling exhausted from the turmoil as well, and I recognized the strain it placed on our relationship. So, for the sake of his birthday, I thought I'd take a HUUUUUUUUUUUGE personal step and attend an Al-Anon Adult Child meeting. These are few and far between, but I made the drive to learn how my upbringing has affected me as an adult, and how I should still consider the alcoholics in my life. Well, I have continued to attend these meetings and have even started attending another general Al-Anon meeting during the week. While the program is not the ‘educational’ venue I wish it could be (there is nothing to ‘teach’ in terms of recovery), it has helped me learn more than any ACOA book I've read. It's almost like I'm finally being held to all of the things I realized through those other books. It has also helped me cope with struggles within my relationship and find out that certain ways I was POSITIVE were great ways in thinking (or absolutely never questioned) were some of the most destructive behaviors in my life…I was reading books for over a year and only growing more frustrated, along with my boyfriend. These Al-Anon meetings have been the first thing that has caused me to think in terms of ways I can take action to improve my behavior. It wasn't until my 5th meeting that I stopped thinking, ‘When am I actually going to get anything out of this?’ but after that meeting, I've taken something away from EVERY meeting. Check out http://www.al-anonfamilygroups.org/meetings/meeting.html to find a meeting in your area. Ones marked "AAC" are specifically tailored to Adult Children of Alcoholics, but if you can't get to any of those in your area, any general Al-Anon meeting would suffice.”

Now I have much to say from my Al-Anon experiences (positive and negative), but I think I will keep some of the thoughts for future posts, instead of bombarding you with anything and everything I’ve thought thus far… But, I would like to share with you the reflections I wrote in my notebook after my first meeting (below). I hope they’re helpful to you, or at least thought-provoking.

More ramblings to come!

7/20/08 – First AAC Meeting

Memorable quote from the meeting: “If you planted a seed, stop pulling it out by the roots to see if it’s growing…”

~The meeting wasn’t as weird as I thought it would be. It was clear that everyone there had a general understanding of what to do and what everything was about—an understanding that might take me awhile to achieve.

~I felt awkward when everyone clapped for me when I had to announce that it was my first meeting. Thank God I’ll only have to go through it once more for the second meeting.

~S— said [my boyfriend] should come with me to the meetings because he, too, has obviously been affected by my parents’ drinking (through me). I know this kind of thing would make him SO uncomfortable, but I really hope he’s willing to do this with me.

~Of course, what sucks is that there is no general “learning structure”—no “lessons” to be taught or learned. That means healing could take a long time.

~I couldn’t help but giggle when various speakers would introduce themselves and everyone would respond, “Hi,_____” I wanted to break out into that song from Rent… “there’s only us, there’s only this…”

~It was slightly uncomfortable for everyone to stand in a circle and hold hands while saying a prayer at the end, but it was comforting to hear something familiar…

~The weirdest part was when everyone chanted something while still holding hands—something about 'keep coming back it works if you do, it don’t if you don’t'… but I can probably get over it…

Recovery

From Dictionary.com (one of my favorite sites):

Recover: to cover again or anew

Simple enough. The word that peaks my interest most is "anew." I realized this is the aspect that relates most to myself as an ACOA.

When I hear the word, "recovery," I immediately think of those trying to cope with some sort of addiction. This always frustrated me when learning about ACOAs. I found that, as the statistics show, most of the ACOAs quoted in my resources were alcoholics themselves. This made me angry, because I felt like I couldn't relate, or that the information was somehow skewed, because I was not actively coping or struggling with a personal substance abuse issue.

However, in this past week I've come to accept that I too am in "recovery." You are in recovery, too. We are recovering from others' problems that have caused a multitude of our own. Dammit...

The problem with many ACOAs, especially those who grew up with alcoholism in their families from the start (such as myself), is that we have no sense of "normality" to regain. We have to discover this state of affairs on our own--to cover something anew, so to speak. This is harder than I thought, and I'm sure you're finding out the same, too.

Based on recent occurrences in my relationships, I realized that reading one book on ACOA wasn't going to cut it. Of course, being financially strained does not help the situation when you need to buy books on the subject. But then I remembered that great source: the library. One book that I found particularly interesting was Lifeskills for Adult Children by Janet G. Woititz and Alan Garner. When I looked at the table of contents, I realized just how seriously growing up without an example could hinder our lives. While I don't feel I relate to all of these struggles, I wonder if some of you do:

1. Making Contact With Others
2. Expressing Feelings
3. Active Listening
4. Asking For What You Want
5. Giving Others What They Want
6. Solving Problems
7. Asking Others To Change Their Behavior
8. Handling Criticism
9. Establishing And Defending Boundaries
10. Fighting Fair
11. Ending Conversations, Ending Visits
12. Ending Relationships

Each chapter appears to have specific examples of how to handle "normal" situations in life. When I skimmed through the first chapter and saw a list of common conversation starters, I thought, "Jeez, this is really pathetic, I don't need this." But then I realized, wow...but some people do. It's like we're a bunch of 4-year-olds walking around in adult bodies trying to figure out how the world works...but with no one to show us.

Recently, it seems that my largest struggle is expressing my feelings. More of a struggle than that, though, is actually identifying them. My famous response to the question, "How are you?" was always, "I'm okay." Even when people would comment, "You don't look okay," I'd come back with, "Well, I'm alive, so I'm okay. It's when I'd be unable to breathe, move, or speak to you that I'd consider myself 'not okay.'" This was always the case, whether I was truly angry, sad, frustrated, happy, etc...I was just "okay."

I've been practicing the act of being honest with my feelings over the past few years when it comes to these sorts of greetings--usually because when the question is posed is the only time I consciously think about it: "How are you?" or "How're you doing?"I think this is a great start, because these are greetings that we so easily brush off. Try it: next time someone greets you in this way, say how you honestly feel, it's good practice for us ACOAs who have traces of being pathological liars. "Eh, I'm kinda bummed out about something right now," is a perfectly fine answer.

Of course, the trick is carrying this act through our entire life. I realized recently that I was not being honest in my relationships about a lot of my feelings. For instance, when I was discussing the idea of dating my now-boyfriend (non-ACOA, religious, faithful, hard-working, smart, loving...just an amazing guy) I was able to voice that "I have unknown struggles with alcohol, and I don't know how I'll really feel or react to your use of it. I recognize that alcohol is not evil, that people who use alcohol are not bad, and that I have been shaped by having examples of its abuse rule my life, but I still feel uncomfortable around it. It's something I've realized is going to take me a long time to get over..." Yay for me and my honesty! Of course, whenever he went out with his friends, or if I was with him and his family, I never said that his drinking of one or two beers was still bothersome to me. I also didn't tell him that I cried myself to sleep the handful of times he called me or visited me in a happy, drunken state. Why? Because I didn't feel like I had the right to feel like the way I did, considering he was doing nothing "wrong." He is a responsible (mostly), occasional, social drinker, and yet it KILLED/S ME!

Of course, I'm starting to ramble (take note of the title of this blog) and I'm trying to take on too much in this single post, but the point is that I exploded after two years of just pretending like I was okay, and it has made things even more difficult. Moral: START PRACTICING BEING HONEST WITH YOUR FEELINGS.

Of course, like I said, a whole other aspect of this is being able to identify those feelings. This is where I'm currently stuck. For instance, last night my boyfriend met up with some of his old friends from college at a local bar (I was not present). I talked to him afterwards and asked him some questions about the evening. At one point I asked, "Did you have anything to drink?" "I had one beer," he said. Then he asked, "Does that bother you?" My answer was, "Yes and no. In my head it doesn't bother me--there's nothing wrong about what you did. But, emotionally, I feel like you having that beer is a punch in my face." "Why do you feel like it's a punch in your face?" he asked. "...*sigh*...I...don't....know...." I guess I need to read through chapter 2 very slowly...

Recovery: "The act of obtaining usable substances from unusable sources"

Our parent(s) may have been an unusable source. Our recovery is to find something useful to take away from the situation in order to build upon it and create anew the "normal" we never had. Basically, we are left to create something from nothing, which would mean literally breaking the laws of science. Well, we have feelings...I guess that's a place to start. Let's work to find out what they are, and how to use them to our advantage...even if that advantage is just to learn more about ourselves.
__________________________

Random(I'll do this from time to time): I feel like I made a large step in my "recovery" today. I finally looked up support groups and finally found my first ACOA meetings. I realized I had been looking in the wrong place all along. Here is the link to find ACOA meetings. Search for Al-Anon and look for titles with "AAC" for ACOA-specific groups. I found two potential locations. I sent two emails asking for more information. As someone who has had awful experiences with counseling over the years, and has completely discarded the idea of recovery support groups, I wonder if I'll be able to bring myself to go...