Anxiety and Joy and Tight Shoulders

I'm feeling at loose ends tonight. My kids are out of school for the summer, and they're scattered in different directions, and I am left with a stomach of uncertainty and apprehension. There is nothing particularly wrong, but this end of school year/beginning of summer is a transition time, and I feel disoriented in the transition times of life.

This brings me to a realization that, even in non-transition times, I generally feel uneasy and I expect bad things to happen. I battle these feelings and thoughts, because I know there is much happiness and beauty to be had. However, the bad stuff seems to be the default and the last few years have rewired my brain to expect life to be one difficulty after another, with sunshine breaks in between, sometimes.

Roll with the punches, Wildflower. 

I do. I wake up and live my life every day, but I do it with a lot of tension in my shoulders, and I feel acutely vulnerable to frustration and despair. I'm not a natural when it comes to joy. I have to practice joy like a dedicated musician practices.

Now that I've confessed my internal struggle with finding joy and accepting life as it comes, I feel down on myself (shame). Is there something terribly amiss in me that I have to work so hard to diffuse the anxiety that life brings? Am I inferior to those laid-back women who read magazines and hardly glance up while their snot-nose babies sit in the dirt and get filthy at the playground?

Would I be like this if I had married a different man? Would I be like this if I had different children?
Did the addiction and lies contribute to this foreboding feeling and fear of joy?

I don't have the answers, and it doesn't matter anyway. I will wake up tomorrow and I will do the best I can for that day. I will do the same for the day after that.

I realize that I haven't allowed God to help me today. I haven't read His words of any kind, nor have I called any of the friends He has blessed me with. Instead, I escaped into a Lindt chocolate bar (dark chocolate with intense orange) and a fantastic novel. Both were effective, but unfortunately short-lived distractions.

I can practice life and joy tomorrow, and with God's help, I can do it. Good night, gentle readers.

Rubble of Relapse

I felt a tremor in the universe yesterday as I learned from a recovery friend what she had just learned. Her allegedly years-sober husband has been lying and acting out......again.  I have such empathy for the kind of searing emotional pain she is in, that I swear I can physically feel it. It feels something like I imagine phantom-limb pain may feel for amputees.

I know she has tools and knowledge and faith and friends and a sponsor and a level head, but first, she has to climb out from the devastation left by his disclosure, and this will take a good long while.

I caught a headline about the earthquake in Nepal a few days ago. After seven days of being trapped in the rubble of a collapsed building, a 101-yr old man was found alive. After eight days two women were found under a destroyed mud house and one man under a mudslide. Hope surged that others may still be found. I have never known this kind of destruction, and my heart goes out to these people.

It may take my friend more than a few days to surface, but she will. It may not be pretty. She may be tear-stained and caked with trauma and resentment and self-doubt, but she will come through. I know this, because I have seen other women emerge from the ruin of broken promises and demolished marriages and because I am one of them.

Day after day we wake up and we breathe in and out and we live that day. We stumble trying to take care of our kids and ourselves, and we do the work that it requires to combat the real fear of abandonment in our marriages. With the help of other women who have gone before us, we adjust to a new life where God, not the guy we married, is at the center.

This process of rebuilding goes far slower and takes far longer, than I ever imagined. I need breaks and timeouts along the way, so I take them. Sometimes I feel like the marriage I am building is more beautiful than anything I had before and sometimes I want to throw it in the trash and start over with someone new. The aftershocks of sexual addiction can continue for a long time, I've discovered.

Why does news of someone's relapse shake me so?
Can an addict sustain recovery long term?
Is "addiction recovery" just another lie?

Since yesterday I have been beating back a snake-like voice in my brain telling me that addicts, especially my husband and son, don't stand a long-term chance against addiction. That addiction is so powerful that no one in its grasp can truly be free--ever. The evidence seems heavily weighted to support these fears.

I hope this is a lie, but my hope is on shaky ground right now.

Slowing Down When Foggy Brain Rolls In

Confessions of a conscientious woman not acting so conscientiously:

* A few days ago my son pointed out that the fourteen thank you notes I had written and was about to post had the stamp on the left side and the return address on the right.   (Should you ever wonder, the USPS will send letters like that, as long as the addressee is legible and clear.  Who knew?)

*Later that day I called another carpool mom to work out a plan for the next day, only to remember mid-conversation that she had called me the day before and we had figured it out.

* I blew off my son's orthodontist appointment, even though I had answered the reminder call the day before.

 Mr. W disregarded a boundary of mine by going somewhere that put him in contact with persons of questionable influence from the past. He was jerky and proud about it. "I have to live. I can't live in fear of you. I'm fine. I knew you would freak out over this."

I felt the established trauma pathways taking over. My brain was foggy and my body felt shaky and tense and hopeless and hollow and teary. I felt like an observer looking at myself and noting my reaction as it happened.

I went to auto-pilot with an old pain relief strategy of mine.  When things were tough, I would put on my metaphorical hard had, find a huge job in the house or yard, dive in and stay busy.  This was my coping mechanism for so many years.

I tried to unpack from a weekend trip, catch up on laundry and bills and go running, which made everything worse.

Years ago I took a ferry around the San Juan Islands and we got into some thick fog. I was disappointed that I was in such a beautiful place and gray mist was all I could see out the window. The captain blew the fog horn every few minutes, and he slowed the boat way down. He didn't increase the speed so he could get through the fog as quickly as possible; he took his time. The trauma fog slows my brain down, too. And I need time.

I sat down and forced myself to do practically nothing.  I made myself a sandwich. I tried to take it easy and to give my thinking brain the rest of the day off.

But, there was a battle in my head, and I had to tell the invisible people to shut up a dozen times. They wouldn't let me be still. It's like I don't love me enough to give myself compassion and a little loving treatment.

I like this quote by Melodie Beattie:


"The idea of giving ourselves what we want and need can be confusing, especially if we have spent many years not knowing that it's okay to take care of ourselves.  Taking our energy and focus off others and their responsibilities and placing that energy on to ourselves and our responsibilities is a recovery behavior that can be acquired.  We learn it by daily practice."  - Melodie Beattie