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Post by blueclouds on Feb 23, 2007 11:47:04 GMT -5
Thank you Nick and ej for your priceless support.
Nick -- Yes, I tend to get harsh and severe about these things. I have never fully learned (I understand but have not internalized) the value of just smiling, just humming a happy tune. And in all honesty, I do feel happy, I do congratulate myself for my 30-some days. I guess I'm overzealously trying to avoid certain pitfalls -- in this case, euphoria. I fell into that one last summer. I was walking on air, then I looked down and saw there was nothing under me. I hit the ground 6 months later.
ej -- I feel for you because of your long relapse into hell. Please stay on this side of the divide. Even if you slip, try to bounce back rather than just say "(expletive) it" and slide into misery. I have not seen you around much, but I recommend starting a journal. As you can see, it's a great record to have around, and reminds us of how far we've come and how much further we have to go.
I am procrastinating today. I hope no one is surprised. I got let off the hook for an afternoon shift, so I've had alone time all day. No urges to report; my mind has been clean. But conversely, I haven't made use of all this time. I have just been whiling it away. Like stomping on a big shiny birthday present and throwing it into a ditch, unopened. Madness, my friends.
I am getting a lot out of structured recovery steps: the beginning of my fourth step inventory (above), and also my lessons at recoverynation.com, where I've just completed the fourth lesson. This last lesson included three parts (as do most): listing events you feel contributed to your compulsion or addiction, whether sex-related or not; describing the difference between a controllable and an uncontrollable urge; giving a thorough inventory of consequences you've had as a result of your addiction/acting out. It is very helpful for lazy people like many of us because it asks pointed questions at every step.
I had a sexual dream last night and this morning, dangerously, I only woke up half way at first. The dream was still with me and I wanted to follow the images, the scene. I did this for maybe a minute before I was able to shake it off. This took place in my conscious mind, but with still too many cobwebs to make clear decisions. But I got up and hurried to my new ritual: coffee and toast with my SO every morning as she gets ready to go to work, even when I don't really have to be up for several hours. It is a good thing, waking up at the same time every day. It is a wonderful thing to see her off each morning, instead of waking up to an empty house.
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Post by rockwell on Feb 23, 2007 20:58:30 GMT -5
blueclouds,
I have been reading your journals and I am very impressed with your writing skills. You have a great talent for expressing your thoughts and you write like a poet. I can relate to many things you have written.
Thanks for sharing your struggle with everyone. I wish I could write like you. do
rockwell
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 24, 2007 6:27:51 GMT -5
Thanks rockwell -- especially for reading my journal, but also for the compliment. Writing is something I have studied and practiced. I used to write a lot more -- stories, poems and flash fiction -- but about two years ago I lost the thread. I'm sure it's not hard to guess why. I still had (and have) plenty of free time, but I didn't have a free mind. I hope that recovering my writing becomes part of my recovery in the near future.
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Post by choselife on Feb 24, 2007 7:43:11 GMT -5
That is so awesome. I am so impressed that you do that, that you took action, and such a giving action at that (presuming you value sleep as much as I do). Nothing else to add now, just want to let you know that I am following along in your journal.
CL
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 24, 2007 15:00:43 GMT -5
Nothing else to add now, just want to let you know that I am following along in your journal. And this means a lot to me. Thanks, CL. About my getting up with my GF: The funny thing is, I never planned to. It was not a conscious recovery step. I just started doing it, telling myself it was to catch the morning news, or to get a headstart on work (I do a lot of work at home online). But after the first week of this new habit, it clicked in how rewarding it was to get that time with her, to start our day together. Such a small thing! Who would have thought... Life calls. Feeling good today. Over and out.
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 25, 2007 13:41:01 GMT -5
I need to report some urges lately... but I think they're going in the right direction. I'll explain.
I had the same experience this morning as a few days ago, when in the interim between sleep and wakefulness a fantasy got hold of me and caused a physical reaction down below. Later, I had to look away from the TV several times, and during a nap I had more fuzzy images of sex. However, it feels like these urges have been physical more than anything else -- chemical desire. It feels like the type of thing that makes non-addicts MB once in a while. The reason I feel like this is an improvement is that it's been wholly absent of the dark and icky stuff. I have not felt myself go zombie, or wish to. I have not developed -- even momentarily -- any fetished-out fantasies.
I'm not kidding myself; this in no indication that the other stuff is gone. All I have to do is look at a single page of P, or even just MB once, and I will find out how deeply and securely the compulsion is rooted in me. What I liked about these urges is that they have been a glimpse of what sexuality felt like before I'd ever seen P on the Internet. To me, this means a layer of filth is being lifted, scraped off. Of course, I still have a lifetime's supply of filth stored in me, so the layer can be spread back on in a flash, and thickly.
Saw "The Pursuit of Happyness" last night. Apart from it's implicit conclusion that money = happiness, and it's total disregard for the race issue, which would definitely be a part of any such situation, I found it to be good medicine for my addict soul. It's about not giving up. It's about being surrounded by darkness and realizing the greatest source of light comes from within. It's about standing up every time you get knocked down (or in our case, every time we knock ourselves down). And the best part -- no triggers! Recommended viewing.
On the recovery front, I am still waiting for feedback for my 4th lesson over at recoverynation.com. But I have no such excuse for why I haven't begun my 4th-step "fear" inventory in the 12 steps. I got so much out of doing the resentment inventory, but now I am coasting a little. Here's how my procrastination goes: "Hey, I'm not exactly gonna' slip today, so I'm still in safe waters." And I go around pretending I'm normal, because, really, I would so love to believe I am.
Well, here's to firm steps, and no looking back.
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 26, 2007 3:59:43 GMT -5
So, it's early morning here, and I have to log the events of last night in order to keep perspective, and to avoid what happened to me last summer.
My SO and I had successful physical relations probably for the first time since I've been sober this time around (about 35 days?). We have begun things several times in this period, but it has always fizzled out -- a few times because of tiredness on her part or mine, and a few times because I couldn't do it without fantasies from P or from female acquaintances overtaking my mind. Last night went well, at least in that regard. Not a single outside image entered my head. However, it was tense for me at the beginning: I'm still paranoid that I won't be able to keep my head clean, and this fear preoccupies me, and distracts me from the business at hand. But in the end, things were fine. I had a lot of momentum built up from our long abstinence, I think, and I was able to stay present, enjoying only her.
At the same time, it was not the pure emotional high I have heard some long-time sober people describe here. It was closer to physical enjoyment. Of course, I have been with her for nearly 8 years, and I love her, and she is carrying our child, so there is trust and affection, but despite all this, I cannot say it was an emotional experience for me. Does this mean it was just a fix? I don't know. It did not feel rotten or dirty. Questions... I guess I need time.
Now, however pure or not our sex was, the fact is, I got a rush of certain chemicals from the experience, and these are chemicals my brain has depended on for a long time. And it was precisely the day after sex with my SO that I started caving in on the MB front last summer. So I need vigilance this week. I need to beware of -- even expect and prepare for -- sudden physical surges. I need to be hyper-aware of the fact that such a surge will be nothing more than my brain asking for more chemicals, like a strung-out junkie begging his pusher for a free sample. And I need to keep fantasy at bay -- more like out to sea.
I will report here how I'm doing later this morning.
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 26, 2007 6:31:58 GMT -5
Ok, I lasted through my alone time this morning with no urges to report. Now I enter the sweep of work and errands, SO time, and sleep, so nothing to worry about for the rest of the day. That said, I'll continue my stepped up security measures (I sound like Bush) during my interactions with women today.
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 27, 2007 3:55:35 GMT -5
Well, I did not have that post-intimacy wave I was expecting, although I don't want to count my chickens just yet. In thinking of how last year's slip differs from my current situation, perhaps there is a good explanation for why I'm not getting hit. First, I'm doing much more work than I was last summer when I slipped after sex with my SO, which isn't hard because I'm not sure if I was doing anything you could call work back then. This time around I have the phone support of a fellow addict twice a week, and I'm taking concrete steps to work through my (many, many...) issues (although my daily efforts are not always up to par). Second -- and here there's maybe a chance that I'm fooling myself -- it seems to me that the intimacy from last Sunday was a lot less addict-driven than the episode from last summer.
Actually, those relations last summer just prior to my slip marked the first and only time I have ever felt genuine shame afterwards. I have had reason to feel shame on other occasions: I have thought of other women countless times, whether from P or from real life. But in all honesty, that fantasizing has been so integrated in my mind that it has hardly felt out of place. What caused my shame last summer was the way I felt during sex that day. The addict was too present. Actually, I don't believe I did think about any other women, but I did sort of go blank inside -- the same way I imagine P actors must -- and there was just a body there with me. That scared and repulsed me. I had never experienced myself as so utterly COLD before. It was something I had been slowly but damn surely learning through my growing P use: sex is cold, sex is about pleasure for the man, women are to be used in sex and must cooperate with every whim that occurs to the man... and so on into hell. It wasn't that I actively behaved this way with my SO; it was more like these ideas were behind the way I was perceiving our act, like I could not in that moment separate the act of sex from the images I had seen so many thousands of times. And here's the kicker, here's the significant part of it all: I had been 40 days clean of P and MB at the time.
What do I get out of this? Well, while you should never feed your addict, starving him is not enough. He doesn't die when he's starved; he just goes dormant, and yet is still ready to spring. You cannot lock your addict in a room with no provisions and expect that to be the end of it, because wherever you store him, there he is still, INSIDE YOU somewhere. A much more active battle is needed. A slow chipping away. And the healthy you growing stronger and larger, and standing up with authority every time the addict squeals.
This is how I'm seeing things today, but even if anything I say is true, the wisdom is just a straw I'm grabbing, something I can observe and believe but not internalize all the way through. There's still too much active magma inside; I can feel it boiling now, and the smallest gesture can trigger an eruption. But not today.
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 28, 2007 12:54:55 GMT -5
Ups and downs. That's life. It's just that we can't take it. Every up and every down is like an earthquake in us. And the addict thinks he is the stabilizer. He thinks it's his job to calm the lake, and to demand that not a single pebble break its surface. He's an idiot, a bull in a china shop, and we have given him full reign over us; in that respect, addiction is just history repeating itself.
Last night was my SO's birthday. We went out for dinner (Italian), and things were good. She got lots of phone calls from family and friends, and during some of them she talked about several things that are problems for her right now. I remember sitting across from her and thinking, "Look at how masterfully she deals. She gets the problem out on the table with a clear, simple statement. She turns it over, shares it with others, allows her feelings to go through their process, and ends, not by solving the problem -- News Flash! We don't always have to -- but by putting it into perspective, seeing truly, because she was not afraid to look, how small the problem really is in the whole scheme of things." And I also thought to myself, watching her in admiration, "I wish I could do that."
But this morning was a different kettle of fish. We bickered several times today. Don't know why. Here are the life-ending issues we couldn't see eye-to-eye on: how to phrase a sentence in a letter of complaint to the phone company; whether to mop upstairs or downstairs first; which of our bank contacts to approach about a mortgage deal; how to clean the door. And these questions wreaked havoc in me. We did not even get to the level of a spat. We just got a little short with each other. But it was enough: when she went out for a while, I caught myself staring at the Spanish Vanna White on TV -- yes, we have the Wheel of Fortune over here. I looked at a certain region of her body, and it crossed my mind that her attributes in that region would edge out those of my SO in a contest.
This was my little revenge. I RESENTED HER FOR TROUBLING MY WATERS, however slightly. And about a month and a half ago, this same process would have ended with me MBing to P upstairs on the computer, stopping only when I heard the front door downstairs.
Instead, I changed the channel, pressed mute, and picked up the guitar. This was not enough to knock me off my recovery track, but I ask myself, will there come an event that is? I have to relieve my addict of duty. Impeach him. His decisions led me to disaster, over and over, and if he's allowed to continue what he believes is his mandate, they always will.
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Post by blueclouds on Feb 28, 2007 15:40:10 GMT -5
Forgot to report a dream. In the dream, I had an adult black son. He was scolding me for having adopted him, for having deprived him of an upbringing by "his" people. I remember feeling rejected, like his disgust for me was so great that he didn't even love me any more. He looked at me the way a stranger would look at you for cutting them off on the road. I had lost a son.
I am going to be a father for the first time soon, so I guess that's where this is coming from (along with some obvious influence from having seen "The Pursuit of Happyness" the other night). I need to face parenthood squarely, and not let any resulting stress or anxiety fester within undealt-with; we all know where that leads....
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Post by fighting on Feb 28, 2007 16:18:26 GMT -5
Blueclouds, I just caught up on your journal and it is really inspiring. It shows me how little I know about this addiction and dealing with it. It also helps me to understand some of the things I need to do.
Thanks for pouring your heart out, it really does help other people. -fighting
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Post by blueclouds on Mar 2, 2007 5:08:33 GMT -5
Thank you for the kind words, fighting, and for reading my journal.
Lately I have been busy with work, so I have not really had time to notice any urges, but neither have I worked on recovery. I feel like I am waiting for something, and that, to me, is not a good sign. I know from experience that waiting for recovery to happen, letting days go by, will eventually lead to weakened defenses against triggers.
I ask myself how I got into this waiting mode over the past few days. Perhaps it is a result of a few different stress sources weighing down on me -- and my failure to deal with them. My SO is having work problems. She terribly wants to change jobs, but at 5 months pregnant, that's unlikely. This is a daily source of stress for me, as she comes home and tells me about how bad it all is. I admit that I sometimes have selfish feelings regarding this, wishing it would all just blow over, or that she would put on a happy face for me and stop laying all these yellowed, brittle, ominous cards on the table. Juts like in our fantasies, eh? Where others, especially women, wear the faces we want them to wear, and limit themselves to reading the script. My strategy with my SO has often been to try and give her an answer: "Just do such and such, just talk to so and so, just try to think this, just wait for that..." This is the only way I know to help her. I hardly ever give her any "There, there now" or other comforting words that come from the heart, not from the mind. The shameful truth is, when she comes home in a bad mood and starts relating her day to me, one of the first things I feel is annoyance. I do not want any rocking of the boat. How dare she disturb my dead calm?
I am not dealing EMOTIONALLY with this issue, yet it certainly affects me. I will find myself walking along and realize my stomach is in knots because I am thinking about my SO's future (not as good as it sounds, probably a lot of selfishness in that worrying). So these undealt-with emotions are in me somewhere, stored, and my addict is busy looking for them. He will use them to barge down the door of my command center and try to effect a 180º turn back to the lollipop land of P, where he'll eat all the lollipops till his teeth and my soul are rotten with decay.
This morning the news started covering a story I wasn't interested in, so I (ever so mindlessly) changed the channel. I got an infomercial for a wacky exercise machine. It was one of those really bad ones where the message isn't as much "Buy and use this machine and you'll get the athletic build of our sportswear-clad models" as it is "Buy and use this machine because we have made you drool by showing you provocative close-ups of barely dressed, surgically modified women." And guess what -- I did drool. And I could see myself relapsing. It dawned on me with a heavy sadness how present and current the addiction still is, how easy it would be to fall, how quickly the addict would get the better of the young recoverer within me, conjuring up blissful enjoyment, then zombification for hours, then the certitude that I had been whipped silly, that I was a beaten thing, and that 40 days were slushing down the drain.
This will not happen today. That's as far as I can assert anything. And it's enough. Recovery requires patience and honesty. I'm happy about my 40 days, but I am not recovered. People have slipped after 6 months, even after 2 years. It's important to keep that perspective so as not to sing victory when you've barely left the gateposts. The road is agonizingly long, but today isn't -- hence the wisdom of one day at a time. It's a shame that phrase has become so clichéd that it just washes over us; its truth does not take hold until it is lived.
And here I thought, when I first opened my journal, that I had nothing to write. I could have written (I was close to it) something like, "Well, nothing much to report. I'm going strong. Day 40. We can do it, guys." On the surface this morning, I really believed and felt that. But on the contrary, there is so much to report, a whole world inside me. It was coasting along the surface that got me into this mess in the first place. And there is so much built-up resistence to digging, doing the work. I don't want to find what I half know is there. It's like digging through the rubble of a school after an earthquake: I am going to find the corpses of parts of me I used to value so much. But it must be done, or the ghosts will rise to haunt me.
Ok, my melodrama detector just burst into flames. Gotta go.
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Post by blueclouds on Mar 2, 2007 14:11:16 GMT -5
I've just started the flipside of my 4th step resentment inventory. This is where you take that same list of people you hold resentment towards (plus or minus a person or two) and write down the harm you have done to them. Wow. Powerful stuff.
My first reaction: I owe worlds to my mother and my SO. I cried when I was doing the list of harm I had done to my mom, and when I got to my SO, I ended up scrawling this in caps across the page in my notebook: HOW IN HELL IS SHE STILL WITH ME?!
I will post the results of this work when I finish. I will also say for anyone who reads this that I highly recommend doing this step.
I am going for a walk with my SO and my dog, and later we're going to the movies. I will avoid all the bad habits I have in my behavior towards her, at least for tonight.
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Post by blueclouds on Mar 4, 2007 7:28:42 GMT -5
Habit doesn't only have force, it has momentum. It's crazy how many behaviors I catch myself in that don't actually correspond to my current psychological state. There are small things like this every day, but last night I found myself engaging in a behavior that left me feeling a little stale afterwards -- and I think even that stale feeling came from habit.
I had to finish some online work by 3:00am (the company's international, so the deadlines are sometimes a little wacky), so I was typing away around 1-something, and my SO had long been asleep. I was nowhere near any possibility of acting out: the bedroom door was wide open, providing a direct line of sight from my SO's head across the hallway to most of my body in the computer chair, and there were absolutely no urges. I was reading some pretty boring (and atrociously written) text, fighting off sleep, and doing my best to doctor that dying English.
Then I finished the work. I was tired as hell, but I stayed up on the computer for another hour.
I think that sounds worse than it was. See, I didn't wander around the net at all. I went to two or three specific sites I go to everyday -- mostly here and work-related listservs, etc. The part of it I ascribe to past habit is that I could barely keep my eyes open, yet I hung on. It was that old feeling of being plugged into the PC late at night, consuming (which in this case was just reading). And the telling thing is, when I was brushing my teeth and so on, I felt that old staleness, that old fog of guilt. I was repeating the cycle of stuffing my face with candy, then throwing up -- but without the candy. I do not know how I feel about this. It certainly interests me. And I'm thankful for the awareness I have about it, and the fact that I could sit through what used to be the perfect time and place for maximum titillation without a single urge.
In another example of habit still spinning its wheels, we went to a mall yesterday, a place that used to make me dizzy with addict fantasy. My head occasionally swiveled, and my eyes occasionally got stuck for a second, but I got the strange impression that these reactions were automatic, not caused by any current desire to objectify and fantasize. In fact, I did not store any images, nor did any buds of fantasy arise. I did not feel out of control, or "high" because of the near presence of women in tight clothes; however, I certainly still feel too sharp an awareness of them, and I do have to "hold" my head still and avert my eyes. In general, though, these are mechanics, and I experienced some degree of peace inside. I did not feel overly self-conscious as I often do, nor did I start getting uncomfortable, paranoid about people looking at me and thinking I was strange, etc. My SO turned to me towards the end and said, "You're in a good mood today." She hadn't said that in such a long time. And even this was partially the result of me controlling the forward action of past habit. In the car, for example (it's about an hour to the nearest mall), I used to get annoyed when she would talk to me, because she was interrupting some non-sexual fantasy of mine (grinding resentments in people's faces, winning arguments, finding my same job with double the salary, etc.). This would cause me to be short with her, impatient, eager to terminate whatever subject she brought up. This time around, I avoided that pattern, but only by making a prolonged conscious effort. THE ADDICT IS PRESENT THROUGHOUT MY PERSONA, not only in that dark, lustful, latenight zombie.
I still get little jolts from TV and women in public, but I am happy to report that the old P images, my fantasies of choice, are hardly attacking me at all, and when they do, it's a vague and short-lasting blur. At the same time, I must continue to be aware that, though the voices of the sirens at the bottom of the canyon are growing distant, I am still standing on the edge.
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