SMART Observations...

I went to my first SMART Recovery meeting last night.

I'm going to reserve judgement until I've attended a few more (I try to never make decisions based solely on first impressions), but here are a few observations I had last night.

I was sad that they didn't have coffee.  Not that I would've had any that late at night, anyways.  It's just that, I started drinking coffee at AA meetings when I was a kid, and I've never had coffee I enjoyed quite as much as those first styrofoam cups full of burned, generic-brand, tooth-achingly sweet non-dairy creamer off-white java.  And I guess part of me was looking forward to revisiting that experience, without even realizing it.

They also didn't have any donuts, which was an equivalent bummer.

The people I saw there reminded me very much of the people I remember from AA meetings:  old, sad, tired-looking people, complaining about how difficult their lives are.  And I believe them.  Every one of them looked rode-hard-and-put-away-wet.  You could almost read the toll their addiction has taken on them on their faces, and in their posture.

It surprised me, though, how little discussion of addiction or recovery there actually was!  No horror stories of rock-bottom moments, no woeful tales of lives and fortunes lost to the demon Addiction.  Mainly, everyone just bitched about what was going wrong in their life that week; their work, their friends, their families (in-laws and children were a repeated theme).  A couple of them actually had some positive developments to report, but they were still about work/school/kids.  People would mention once in a while how the issue they were discussing was related to their addiction in some manner - such as saying, in the middle of a long rant about in-laws, that they used to drink in order to deal with being around them, and that now that they're not drinking, they don't want to be around them at all - but the other 99% of the discussion would be about the in-laws, not about how the in-laws make them want to drink, or how they are dealing with the not-drinking.  One person's story was exclusively about their struggle to avoid online gaming, but that was the one and only addiction-and-recovery themed discussion of the evening.

It also surprised me how few of them there were.  Only a handful, compared to the dozens of people I used to see at a typical AA meeting.  A typical AA meeting wouldn't have even fit in the tiny little room we met in.

The back wall of the room was covered, oddly, with all these pro-drinking bumper stickers, that said things like "Some people call it a six-pack; I call it a support group" and "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" and "BEER: helping ugly people have sex since 1800" and so on.  There were others that were worse that I can't remember right now.  They struck me as really out of place in this context, and I couldn't tell if they were meant to be funny, or ironic, or what?

"I hope you're still as pretty when I'm sober."

"God made pot; Man made beer.  Who do you trust more?"

Towards the end they passed a hat to collect donations.  And I couldn't help but wonder, What's that for?  They obviously aren't spending it on coffee and donuts.

They asked me to introduce myself at the very end, with about two minutes left before the end of the meeting.  I wasn't really comfortable with it at that point, but I also didn't feel right refusing, after having just sat there and listened to all of their stories for the past ninety minutes.  But with the meeting almost over, I felt a lot of pressure to hurry up and get it out ASAP so that I didn't keep these people late.  So, I stumbled and fumbled, trying to quickly deliver as condensed a version as possible of what I believe my problem is, and why I had come to SMART.  I got a couple of encouraging comments at the end, but I honestly wasn't even listening.  I just wanted to get out of there and go home.

I didn't feel comfortable there at all.  These people obviously know each other well, and I'm a stranger suddenly plunked down right in the middle of their intimate and familiar conversation.  And the reverse was true, as well - it didn't make me feel very good to be revealing intimate details about myself and my own life to a room full of complete strangers.  What if one or more of them are complete assholes, whom I would never spend a minute trying to converse with in any other situation?  Do I have to pretend that I like these people?  Or worse, that I care about them?  And I didn't even share anything really personal, either.  Just some basic details of how I ended up there, and not AA.  So, how much worse will it be next week, when I have to start telling them my story?  I feel like it's going to make my skin crawl to have to open up and get deeply personal with these poor, sad strangers.

But, maybe that's part of the point.  I'm already doing all the expressing of a group therapy session here, with this blog, but let's face it - there's a comfortable safety in being hidden behind a computer screen.  Fuck, this isn't even my real name.  (Though, to be fair, that has more to do with feeling a need to protect other people in my life that I care about - mainly my family - than any desire I may have to be anonymous.)  So maybe there's a lesson to be learned from being able to say these things out-loud, face-to-face, to a group of people.  Or, maybe not.  Or maybe I'm entirely wrong, and it won't even feel uncomfortable after a couple of meetings, because we won't feel like such strangers anymore.  I don't know.

And I don't know what to expect.  But I've committed to going to at least a few meetings before I make any decisions.  So, I guess I'm gonna find out.

So far, I'm neither encouraged nor discouraged.  I don't see this becoming something I'll suddenly feel like I absolutely need in order to continue with my recovery, but who knows?  Stranger things have happened, I guess.  Right now, my only hope is simply that I won't hate it.  I would be happy if it was just a place that I felt I could go in those rare moments when I feel like I need help.  Ninety-nine percent of the time, I feel perfectly comfortable doing this on my own.  In fact, I'd prefer it that way, quite honestly.  But every once in a while, there's a situation where I do need help.  Where I suddenly, out of nowhere, feel an overwhelming desire to use, that I cannot talk myself out of.  Where I don't know what the proper response is, or how to react.  Where I don't know what's going on or what to do about it.  Times like my relapse a couple of weeks ago, and the depression and uncertainty that followed.  Because, in those moments, right now, I don't have anyone I can turn to and ask for help.  So, it'd be nice if this group could fill that role for me.  But I don't know if it can, yet.  We'll just have to wait and see.


At the end, when everyone was filing out of the tiny little room into the parking lot, the other new guy who was also there for the first time (I wasn't the only one!) yelled out, to no one in particular, "Where's Happy Hour?!"

Really, new guy?!

Really?

Obstacles...

I cannot tell you how long this road shall be, but fear not the obstacles in your path, for fate has vouchsafed your reward. Though the road may wind, yea, your hearts grow weary, still shall ye follow them, even unto your salvation.   -Blind Seer, O Brother, Where Art Thou?

It seems as if the Universe has decided to test me.

I was pulled over for speeding last night on my ride home.  I was in the middle of a long line of cars, just following the car in front of me for miles and miles.  At one point, the car in front of me stopped to make a left-hand turn.  Afterwards, I sped up to rejoin the line of cars that had moved off down the road away from me as I waited for the car in front of me to turn.  I have no idea how fast I was going, or what the speed limit on that part of the winding road was, but that must've been where they caught me, because as I came up the next hill and around a bend, a Sheriff's deputy stepped out into the road ahead of me and signaled me to pull over.  There were two deputies parked in someone's driveway, both pulling people over in the same way.  It was clear this wasn't the actual speed trap; this was the net.  I never saw the trap, but I assume that it must've been somewhere on that part of the road just after that left-hand turn, because that 100 yards where I sped up to rejoin the line of cars was the only time on the entire commute up to that point that I hadn't been in the middle of a line of cars.  At every other point we'd been moving along like a line of ants, and I'd been going the same speed as the car in front of me, and the same speed as the car behind me. When I asked the deputy where I'd been speeding, all he would say was "Back there," pointing down the road in the direction I had just come.  Well, duh, officer.  Vague, much?

He said I was doing 67 in a 40.  I don't think that's true, but I have to take his word for it.  Normally, when you see a speed trap, it's reflexive to hit your brakes and check your speedometer.  But since I never saw a trap, and since I was just trying to catch up to the car in front of me, I have no idea what speed I was actually going.  And since he won't tell me where I was actually caught, I can't even verify that the speed limit was actually 40.  But, whatever, no big deal.  An $80 fine and 1 point on my license.  Even though I just finally cleared all the points off my license this year, still, whatever, it's not the end of the world.  And it could've been a lot worse - the deputy was giving me a big break by only charging me with 49 in a 40, rather than the full 67.

But I found that I had a really hard time getting over it.  I felt like this completely ruined my new commute for me, this new route to work that I've fallen in love with and come to rely on.  Because part of the reason this commute was so good for me was that it was relaxing - stress-free compared to 270.  But now that I know that around every bend there could be a speed trap that I will never even be able to see, I'm feeling paranoid.  My worry-free drive is now worry-ful.  So, in order to deal with that I have to obey the speed limit, but that doesn't really help, either.  Because now I'm constantly checking my speedometer and always worried about whether I'm speeding or not, where before I never even had to think about that.  Also, a lot of the enjoyment of this road was that it was just a fun road to drive - a winding backroad through farm country.  Having to obey a completely ridiculous 40mph speed limit on a twisting road in the middle of nowhere just sucks all of the fun out it.  So now it's no fun, and stressful.  Fuck, I might as well go back to taking I-270.

I was still really tense and upset when I got home, so I decided to try and meditate to see if I could relax a little.  But it was really late by that point (I'd got caught at work and left later than I'd planned, then I had to stop by the grocery store, not to mention spending fifteen minutes sitting by the side of the road with the cops), and I still had a bunch more work I needed to do, so I didn't have much time available.  Trying to meditate under pressure to hurry up and finish so you can get back to work is pretty self-defeating, to say the least, so as you can probably imagine, it didn't go very well.  But the biggest obstacle was that I had a song stuck in my head.  This is something that has come up consistently throughout my entire meditative history, and I have never found a successful method of dealing with it.  Basically, every once in a while, I will try to meditate, and I'll find there's a snatch of a song repeating in my head, and there's simply nothing I can do about it.  I never get any meditation accomplished during these sessions, because the song continually breaks my concentration, and there's no way to get rid of it.  And every time it breaks my concentration or breaks me out of my meditation I get a little more upset about it.

So when I sat down this time, and heard the song in my head, I knew that I was completely fucked right from the start.  Still, I tried anyways, doing a full 108 breath cycle, but it did no good.  When I stood up from my mat, I was even more stressed out and upset than I was when I sat down.

Our internet was still down, so that made a whole bunch of things more difficult and/or impossible, adding further frustration, complication, and aggravation to an already stressful evening.  When I finally got to bed, it was no surprise that I didn't sleep very well.

This morning, my beautiful, relaxing new commute was, as predicted, stressful and unpleasant.  But at least I didn't get pulled over.

I got to the gym bright and early at 7:30, only to find the place packed.  Every treadmill taken, every elliptical taken.  Part of the reason I enjoy working out in the early morning is because it is never packed.  But there were at least twice as many people in there this morning as I have ever seen in there before!  I have never had to wait to use a machine before, either.  I didn't know what to do.  So I ended up just standing around for fifteen minutes, until a machine opened up.  Which, of course, threw off my schedule for the rest of my morning by fifteen minutes.

But here's the kicker:  about an hour after I get up to my office from the gym, She calls me to tell me that she's just been fired.  From the job she's had for eight years.  By her new boss (about the tenth she's had in the last two years), who's been there only a couple of months.

Wow.

Ok.

Gotta say, didn't see that one coming.

Up to this point, it had just been a series of annoying complications.  But this is different.  This is a sudden 90-degree turn in the course of our life from here on.

It's kind of difficult to take it all in, honestly.  Suddenly, the foundation of our lives has become slightly unstable.  We know a lot of things are about to change, drastically.  But, we don't really know which things, or how, or in what way.  It could be anything from Really Bad (e.g., we can't pay our mortgage and end up losing our home, etc.) all the way to Totally Amazing (e.g., she could end up with a new job that she loves, that pays better, that finally gives us more time together, etc.).  Everything is up in the air, which is scary, but also full of potential, which is exhilarating.

This time will be what we make of it.

So, are we up to the challenge?

I have to say, I'm looking forward to finding out.

The Beginning is a delicate time.  -Princess Irulan, Dune

A Big, Fat Case of the Mondays...

Today was one of those mornings where everything seems to go wrong.

I got up at 5:30 to try to get back to the gym before work.  (Finally!  I need it!)  As I was getting ready, I was hit with a sudden attack of a severely upset stomach, and so by the time I managed to take care of that I was very late.  Still, I wasn't down about it.

On my new, beauteous back road commute, I almost immediately found myself about 15th in line behind a very, very slow-moving dump truck.  We're talking an average of 20 mph below the speed-limit here.  The guy in the Subaru Imprezza behind him was riding his tail viciously, but for some reason, he wouldn't pass the truck.  There were plenty of opportunities.  And I know an Imprezza can outrun me, so I know it can pass a freaking dump truck.  And the guy was obviously pissed off at going so slow, judging by his tailgating.  So why wouldn't he pass the truck??  And, of course, being 15th in line, several people up front were going to need to pass before I was going to have any chance of making it myself.  So, if they didn't pass, I couldn't pass.  The truck didn't turn off the road until about two miles from my work.  It was frustrating, but still, I didn't let it get to me.

Got to the office/gym late, but still with enough time to get in a workout.  Got down to the gym, grabbed a locker, suited up, put everything else in the locker, clicked the lock closed... and realized that I no longer remembered the combination.  I tried several combos that I thought might be it, but no dice.  Ok, no problem - I've got the combo recorded on my computer upstairs in my office.  ...But my office is locked, and the key is now locked in my gym locker.  Damn.  I spent the next fifteen minutes trying various combos I thought might be the one, but I couldn't find it.  So, ok, that's pretty damn frustrating, and I feel like an idiot now, but still, nothing to get upset about really; just a minor glitch.  Might as well get a workout in anyways.  I'm all suited up for it, and I've got nothing else to do right now.

I haven't worked out in several months.  In fact, I've gained back all of the weight I lost last Summer, plus a few pounds.  And I haven't exactly been what you'd call "active" in the meantime.  So, just fifteen minutes into my workout, I start to feel a tightening in my chest, and my left arm and shoulder start to hurt.  Doesn't take a cardiologist to figure out what that means.  So, ok, that's pretty scary, and a little daunting, but what's the sense in getting upset about it?  I just stopped what I was doing and went into my cool-down a little early.  No point in over-doing it.  Gotta crawl before you can walk.  Tomorrow, or someday soon, I'll be able to do twenty minutes, and then thirty, and that's how you get stronger.

So then my workout was over, and it was time to try and figure out what to do about my locker situation.  By this point in the morning, our secretary is supposed to be in, and she has a skeleton key.  So, I figured that I could just get her to let me into my office, get my combo, and then head back down to the gym to open up my locker and proceed with my post-workout clean-up.  So I exit the gym and head up the stairs towards my office... until I get to the first locked door.  My key card for opening our electronic security doors is on the same key ring as my office key, which previously mentioned is now locked in my gym locker.  And I can't get back into the gym, because that door is electronically locked, as well.  So, now I'm locked in a stairwell.  Ok, so, clearly, this is not my day.  But, it's early in the morning, someone is sure to be by soon.  I'll just have to wait here for a little bit, that's all.  I decided to take the opportunity to rest against a wall and have a morning meditation.

A note about my appearance:  I honestly don't care what I look like while I work out.  I don't bother to do my hair before my workout, because I'm just going to shower afterwards and have to do it again.  So, I had wet, sweaty bedhead.  And my workout clothes serve exactly one purpose:  to keep me as cool and comfortable as possible while I'm working out.  They are not meant to look attractive.  My running shirt is thin and sleeveless, and you can clearly see my man-tits outlined against the... whatever the hell fabric that shirt is made of.  And my shorts are, well, shorts; they do an excellent job of showing off my pasty-white, nearly hairless, and overly large legs.

Now, this is all fine, when I'm down in the gym and everyone else around me is also all sweaty and not-looking-their-best, but now I had to leave that specialized attire area, and venture out into the rest of the office.  I felt a bit conspicuous, to say the least.  After a few minutes, someone came along and let me in, and in short order I managed to get the skeleton key from our secretary, unlock my office, and retrieve the combo from my computer.  (My earlier guesses hadn't even been close, by the way.)  But now I had to get that knowledge back through all the electronically-locked security doors, and into the gym locker room.

I made my way down the back stairway and out into the parking garage, and around to the front door of the gym.  I took this route specifically to avoid the more direct route, which would lead me straight through the crowded cafeteria where so many of my co-workers would be having breakfast right about now.  But unbeknownst to me (because I always enter the gym through the back way), the main entrance into the gym lobby is also sealed with an electronic lock.  And unlike the stairwell I was trapped in earlier, I can't expect someone to be coming by this way very soon.  Almost everyone uses the back entrance, because it's attached to the office, the parking deck and the cafeteria; the front entrance is attached to the visitor parking lot.  So, I'm going to need a new way in.

At this point, standing in my gym clothes on the front lawn, facing yet another locked door, the absurdity of the situation is beginning to sink in.  I decide to see if the receptionist in the office building's main lobby (the one and only area of the our building that one can enter without a key card) would be able to let me into the gym.  When she tells me she can't do that, I actually start to laugh.  And not in a if-you-don't-laugh-you'll-cry kind of way, either.  I was genuinely amused.  I mean, how is this not funny at this point?

What the receptionist can do, she tells me, is to let me into the building so that I can go up through the cafeteria and down into the gym lobby that I was locked out of; then I should be able to knock on the door of the gym's workout area and get someone's attention to let me back in.  She lets me into the building and I bypass the elevators and head up the stairwell, just like I normally do, thinking about the fact that I will now have to go through the cafeteria in my sweaty workout clothes, just as I'd been trying to avoid.  Unfortunately, because I was thinking about that little unpleasantness, I failed to realize that I would, of course, need a key card in order to exit the stairwell and therefore enter the cafeteria.  I did realize this as soon as I walked the three flights of stairs to the locked door, however.

So, I had to find my way out of the stairwell and into the parking garage, again, walk down the parking garage and out to the front of the building, again, and get the receptionist to let me into the lobby, again.  I was actually enjoying myself by this point!  As soon as I walked into the main lobby, the receptionist reminded me that I would need to take the elevators in order to reach the cafeteria without a key card, and I thanked her for delivering that information that would have been so useful five minutes earlier.  But, after passing through the cafeteria, and enduring some disgusted stares, I finally made it back into the gym, and managed to open my locker.  I almost danced the Dance of Joy on the spot.

But after my shower, as I was getting dressed, I realized something important.  After that whole ridiculous comedy of errors that was my Monday morning, I felt great.  I was happy.  I wasn't frustrated or upset or irritated or anxious or any of the things I would've predicted I'd have felt after going through all of this.  Throughout the entire ordeal, I naturally responded in a completely different way than I normally would have, without trying to.  I had Brightsided my way through a rather hellish Monday morning and into a fabulous mood, without having to think about it once.

And here I thought this day couldn't get any better.

Hurt...

I faced a big test today.  And I failed it.

I started a fight with Her.  I had a pretty good idea how she'd respond, and I had a pretty good idea that I wouldn't like it, but I set her up, anyways.  I served her the line, and she hit it back to me in the exact way I knew she would, and then I got mad at her for it.  Her response was hurtful, true, but I shouldn't have gotten angry with her for it.  And I definitely shouldn't have yelled at her for it.  Especially since I saw it coming from a mile away.  I knew it was coming, so I had every opportunity to prepare myself to respond appropriately.  But I didn't.

Instead, I yelled at her, and hurt her back.  I failed.  I failed Her, and I failed myself.

When someone I care about hurts me (which is redundant - I can't be hurt by someone I don't already care about first), I don't actually feel hurt.  Because feeling hurt is a vulnerable feeling; a weak feeling.  Instead, I skip straight over "hurt" and go right to "angry."  Because "angry" is a strong feeling - a powerful feeling.  When someone hurts me, I feel attacked by them.  And so I respond by attacking them right back.  I stand up for myself.  I defend myself.  The last thing I'm going to do in that situation is roll over and expose my belly and take it, suck it up, allow them to continue hurting me.  This behavior was ingrained in me by years of childhood abuse, at the hands of people I cared about - my mother, especially, but also the childhood bullies, who were invariably the "cool kids" that I wanted so much to like me.  But that's an explanation, not an excuse.  Knowing why I do it doesn't make it okay.

Because this behavior hurts the people I care about.  And there's just no reason for it.  I'm hurt and I'm scared.  I'm hurt by what you did, and I'm scared that you can hurt me.  What's wrong with that?  Why can't I just say that?  Why can't I just feel that?  Why do I have to jump straight to this macho "You can't hurt me!" place, like you're some asshole bully trying to make me feel like I'm nothing - like I'm completely powerless - as though you weren't, in reality, someone I care very deeply for, who means a great deal to me, and who simply made a mistake?

I'm trying.  That's all I can do.  I'm trying.  I really am.

I didn't recognize what I was doing in the moment, and in that I failed.  I allowed myself to fall back into old, destructive habits, and in that I failed.  I hurt Her, and in that I failed.  But as soon as it was over - as soon as we walked away - I looked back at everything I had said and done, and it all became clear to me.  And I immediately apologized for it.  Before now, I would've held onto that anger, allowed it to fuel my sense of self-righteousness.  But today, almost the instant it began to wane, I let it all go.  And I allowed myself to feel, simply, hurt.  It's far from perfect, but it's still an undeniable improvement.

I'm not giving myself any credit for this here.  I still failed, and I still have a lot of work to do.  I'm just trying to take an honest assessment of myself.  Nothing is entirely good, and nothing is entirely bad.  Everything is both good and bad.  I failed, but I learned.  I hurt her, but I quickly realized my mistake and stopped doing it.  And next time, I will try to do better.

That's all I can do.

The Flow (first post, test)...

I just opened this blog to try and record some of the monumental changes that have occurred in my life recently. I need to familiarize myself with the system and figure out some of the why's and wherefore's, and then the serious (and not-so-serious) blogging can begin. Until then, remember, Go With The Flow.