Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay ​

So, I am feeling a bit better than I was when I posted my last entry. Writing has proven to be an effective way for me to process complex issues. Most of the time, I don't really have an ending in mind when I start. I know I have a topic that I have been thinking about and start from there. This entry, however, I am not exactly sure where I am going. I kept hearing and seeing the message that today or this moment is all that we have. The past is the past. The future is unknown. I learned a lot about mindfulness and staying present. Both AA and DBT spend a great deal of time on these topics. The purpose of this topic for me was simplicity. 

Dragging the negative past with me complicates my current moment. Worrying about the future I can't know anything about distracts me from what is happening in front of me. I had to learn to leave the past in the past and stay out of the future. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. The past is full of valuable lessons and experiences. There is no harm in reminiscing about that. Thinking about the future is important. I could develop any goals or plans if I didn't think about what needs to be done to get there. I think what becomes the challenge for me is not staying in the past or the future. I am much more likely to stay in the past than the future; however, I can easily be found in both depending on what I am thinking about.

When I think about my job and career, I am always forward thinking. What is the next goal? What is the next step? What's the next thing? The answer for the past 10 years has been education. I had a goal of getting my masters before 40, done. I decided to go back and finish my RN, done. I want to teach. so, back in school again with another master's degree to get where I feel like I want to go. I look forward to school which is so strange. My high school and undergrad educational experiences were much more about the social aspect. I did what I needed to do to keep a decent grad point average, but  really didn't have academia as my central focus. Starting with my LPN and forward, I figured out I was pretty good at school. I have been collecting degrees ever since then. I am not sure how long this next degree will take. I am pretty excited to get started in a few weeks and see where things go. 

In other areas of my life, things aren't always so clear. I have many positive aspects of my life - family and friends being a true highlight. I am often told that I don't always have the best balance in my life. Basically, I am too career heavy with working a little more than full-time and school. Honestly, school and work make me pretty happy. I enjoy being a nurse in the various roles I current hold. I don't foresee making any significant changes in the near future. While my ultimate goal is teaching, I need to get a few years of "RN" experience under my belt. The 18 years of "LPN" experience don't always count for much in certain cases. While this is all fine and good, I know that I am in need of something more than just a professional/educational life.

I think back to when I first got into recovery and people would ask me what I did for fun. Man, that was a hard question. The easiest (and true) answer was spending time with my nephew. I was a first time aunt and found great joy in that experience. Beyond that, though, I struggled to figure out what I did for fun. I can answer that question a little bit easier now (14 years later). I like crafting and doing projects. I like writing and reading. I like being with friends and family. What I think is so different between today and 12-14 years ago is that I was learning in my personal life. Everything was new and exciting. Whoa, values - cool, I have some, let's dive deeper. Did you know that I can take charge of my thoughts? So cool. I now get why my brain does some of the things that it does. WOW! 

To a certain degree, I have come to understand who I am as a person and as a person in recovery. I could argue that I have changed over time, therefore, my learning is never over on a personal front. That is true and I would hope for anyone reading that we constantly strive to learn more about ourselves over time. The learning I experience on a personal front these days isn't quite as stimulating as it once was. I am working to maintain and understand my present life. Back then, it was learning about what I was (an active alcoholic with significant mental health concerns) and what I could be (learning to live sober and figure out who I am). I have some to understand a lot about myself; yet I have this desire, almost yearning to be something different. Not better, just different. 

I felt this feeling/emptiness when I started in the counseling field. I felt like there was something bigger out there for me. I was really going to find it working in the field of recovery. Recovery was a huge thing and I truly felt that recovery as a career would take me to places I never could have imagined. I started out strong with doing a lot of public speaking, doing radio and even local cable access TV in WI. That slowly faded away and the path of counseling nearly drowned me. That was an incredible let down and I struggled with that disappointment for quite some time. Fortunately, I had school to keep me afloat knowing that my RN career would likely revitalize that feeling again.  It has for the most part as I hope to bring my RN and recovery careers together again via teaching, that feeling of "something bigger" is residing in my personal life now. 

I have no idea what this "thing" is. I guess I will have to continue to search internally to see what it is that I feel I want/need to do. As I write this entry, I feel like writing has something to do with it. I have toyed around with a book for a long time. I even started a book at one point. I get lost in which direction I want to go. I am good at talking, maybe I should do a podcast. Then I think that committing to either of these while I am in school yet again is more than I could do. Or, am I getting the message all wrong and I should just go out and do super fun things all the time. That is not is not a bad life to live either. I am uncertain. I hope by implementing mindfulness, maybe I can calm this busy mind enough to hear the calling or direction I should be heading. 

Thanks all for the support after my last entry. Know that I am OK and will be OK. 
Love,
​J

Image by Tumisu from Pixabay ​​​

If I remember correctly, I have touched on the subject of regrets here and there especially when it has come to making some big decisions about changing my life's direction. As I mentioned in my last blog, I try not to get stuck in regret because there is nothing I can really do to change what has happened. On some level, regret is healthy for me. If I feeling regretful about something, I find it important to know why. Was it something against my value system? Was it something impulsive? Did I spend enough time thinking about? Most importantly, did I not listen to myself when I had major doubts about that decision? Exploring regret can be important so I can learn what I need to learn from that situation.

Some situations, though, leave me feeling regretful about actions I did not take or parts of my life that I let pass by. These are the times I want to be careful about regret. Yes, learn something from it, but don't get stuck here. Well, for the past few weeks, I got "stuck there." "There" isn't super easy for me to define at the moment other than I know that I was hit upside the head with grief. In that grief, I started down the rabbit hole of regrets about words left unsaid, actions not taken, and honestly, just wondering why things happen. 

I met with my therapist because I knew I was getting stuck. If I stayed there much longer, I would probably be looking into a relapse of my depression. The depression I feel today is situational and at the same time a long-term thing. I lost my Dad at 14. I lost an amazing friend in 2004. I lost my marriage. I lost a major relationship. I lost another friend in 2021. And now one of my best friends in 2022. When a new loss comes down the pike, I feel like the loss and pain from all of these other situations comes flying back leaving me wonder if I hadn't dealt with previously. Is that why the compounding grief has returned? Or is this just the deal?

So my therapist asked me a month ago, "what is your goal with grief?" I spun on that question for a few weeks. Is there a goal to be had? After weeks so stewing on it, he tells me that there really isn't a "goal" to strive for because loss changes life. If there is goal, it might be to learn to live with grief and not fight it every time it surfaces. Maybe I just don't know how to live with grief. I've said it before and I will say it again, I don't understand grief. I don't get these feelings and what I am supposed to do with them. I cry. I don't feel better. I think of the happier times; I end up getting kind of mad. When I think of those times, that it what I want right now. I want that person with me. Here. Now. Then these feelings would go away. That, sadly, is not the reality, so I am in place to figure out how to "accept" all of this.

Acceptance was likely the most powerful thing that happened to me when I was getting sober. I had to accept that life was going to be different now. I had to accept that some things I destroyed were no longer fixable. I had to accept that a different life was needed. I needed to accept change. Although it was hard and scary, acceptance became less scary and even helpful when I saw the number of positive changes that were occurring in my life because I finally accepted that I can't drink normally. I will never drink normally. If I want to live, I need to stop. In retrospect, acceptance changed the game and helped me to put everything in its place. I even had a 12 step plan to work through all the regrets of my past actions!  

Acceptance is part of this grief process too. I need to accept that KG is gone. I can't help but think about all the times she was such a rock for me when I was finding my way through a divorce and sobriety. I feel regret that I was not as good of a friend back to her. I feel regret for all those things we were going to get on the schedule in the next few months. Now it's too late. I am sad that my friend is gone and there is nothing I can do about it. At this time, I feel like if I weren't sad and grieving every moment I wouldn't be doing justice to just how important she was in my life. How do you just go on? I feel if I don't hold on tight to this grief I will lose her and all the others whom I have lost. I am not in a space to feel like living a happy life honors them in any way. Me feeling some level of pain feels more appropriate. 

My therapist, of course, had many suggestions of way to honor her memory and the memories of the others that I have lost. I know he is right, that's why I pay the man. But, I am not ready for that. I am not ready to be 100% OK with all of this and have life move forward as if nothing happened. By just moving on, I, again, feel like I am saying "I am OK without you." I'm not. Currently, I am not able to reconcile these things in a way that makes sense for me. It's a process, I get it. The process is incredibly frustrating though.

On the healthier side of all of this, I know I can't stop my life. I will continue to pile things onto the "regret pile" if I let other relationships weaken or stop pursuing goals. The people whom I have lost would be annoyed if I did that. I believe all of their souls are at peace now with each of them struggling with different battles while here. If they are at peace, shouldn't my grieving heart appreciate that....even just a little? Personally, when I go, I want people to tell goofy stories and laugh their asses off about fun adventures, my ridiculous stories, or obsessive love of cats. I don't want anybody's life to stop because mine did. After 30+ years, I am sure my Dad would feel that. "Onward, Googs!" (That was my nickname). RC has come to me and let me know that we were cool. I had major regrets with him. 

These more recent losses, though, are very fresh. It took me probably 10 years to come to a good place with my Dad. About 12 years to be at peace with RC. The pain of those losses does come flying back with new losses. 2020-2022 have been crappy years for losses. I know so many people who have experienced devastating and crippling losses. I have talked with some folks about this whole grief process and how they appear to have adjusted so amazingly. Well, come to find out (I am inserting a little sarcasm here), what I see on social media isn't a 100% reflection of anyone's life. Even my own page reflects that. What appears like effortless transitions are really people still working through their grief and searching for the same thing I am. Peace. Understanding. Acceptance. 

So, part of my process of not getting stuck in regret is writing. So I am doing my best to muster some energy and courage to speak my truth. I am OK. I will be OK. I am just very, very sad and wish my friend was here to give me a hug. She would tell me I was going to make it. I've been through tough times before. I can do it again. Today, though, I don't want to be strong. I want to know why she is gone. I want one last conversation. I want one last hug. One last laugh together. I can't have that and it makes my heart hurt.

Love to everyone out there <3
Julie

I noticed pretty quickly yesterday that my post got cut off. I am not sure what happened there. Alas, I will try to pick up where I left off in my last post! I believe I was "circling the drain". 

The hardest thing to explain about addiction is how I made my decisions. I was unhappy, miserable, and more depressed than ever had been. Yet, I fought the idea of going to treatment or stopping. I would start justifying things. "I can stop if I want to, but I don't want to." I would NEVER agree that I couldn't stop anymore. I would wake up in the morning - it's over, I am done. Yet 12 hours later, I am back doing the same thing, getting the same result, and wondering what I ended up screwing up this time around. Did I lose a friend? Did I screw up at work? Did I mess with my family? The answer was never good. It was like having a moment of clarity every morning and forgetting that clarity within minutes. I honestly couldn't explain why I kept making the same horrible decisions every day. The obsession was overpowering and I had little skill in mounting a response. 

I required a lot of external motivation and accountability in those first few years. After the first year, I started to let go of using alcohol. I was mad about it, trust me. I wanted to drink. I came close a few times. Because of the external accountability factors, I did not use. But feeling like I want to use all the time was pretty crappy too. Finally, I came to the conclusion that if I could give up just this one thing, I could have many more things. With the cat out of the bag with my family, they were going to hold me accountable and distance themselves if I was using. There was a large change in my group of friends. I had to leave many behind, yet I could make new friends that were more in line with the life that I wanted to lead. The thoughts of needing to change almost every aspect of my life was overwhelming. I needed that external structure and accountability to be there while I made those changes to my life. Like most alcoholics, I don't do change all that well. It was a lot at once. Obviously, I got there.

A few years in, I really was happy with this whole recovery thing. Physically I felt better than I ever had. I was working a good job. My finances were starting to come back into order. I had new friends that were supportive. I wanted to be able to do for others what the recovery community had done for me. So, like many people I went to grad school with, I decided that I was going to go back to be a counselor. Two weeks after my 2nd anniversary, I was back in school. In hindsight, I wish I would have waited until I hit the 5 year marker to make that decision. After being drunk for 18 years, two years of recovery is not a great deal of time. I was still in that "pink cloud" of recovery. Everything was great! Everything was wonderful! Let me be the support for the world!

Well, it was a hard lesson. I find myself battling back and forth with regret about that path. Regret is supremely unhelpful. I can't do anything about it. I can't change it. So why get stuck there? Because the experience was intense and likely changed me in both good and bad ways. I learned that working with people like me is exhausting, intense, and worthwhile. I found part of my job that fed my soul. I met incredible people with whom I remain in contact. What I regret is what happened to my confidence and the outlook on life. I became cynical and mean at times (never toward clients, but I found places to vent that frustration). I could barely get out of bed. I called in all the time. My anxiety and depression were at the highest I had experienced in sobriety. Ever. It scared me more than anything. I was well over 5 years of recovery at that point and everything got shaken to the core.

For those of you that followed by blog from 2018-2020, I discussed a lot about whether it was the work environment or it was the field I was in. I think the answer really is, both. I wasn't emotionally ready to do what I was doing. The environment was extremely intense with an administration structure that was unhelpful for me. For my recovery and mental health, it was time to move on. 

I am back in nursing now. I like it here. I feel confident here. I know what I am doing and if I don't, I know where to find help. I am working with individual clients in their home. I love it. I started homecare because it was flexible when I was in school. I didn't leave when I graduated. I also started in the education department in the hospital system I have been with for 13 years. I know that I could earn more money doing travelling nursing or whatever. However, I have never been this stress-free as far as my employment goes. I work a lot of hours and that is my choice to do so. Since I like what I do, it doesn't seem like "too much". I have chased money before and not once has it ever brought me happiness. In fact, at the end of my time in counseling, I felt like I had "golden handcuffs". I had such good benefits and pay that I couldn't take any sort of pay cut to afford how I was living. Well, I have been in this situation before, I can shave my budget down. And I did.

I have not given up working in recovery all together. Now that I have returned to nursing, I feel like I can see a vision a little clearer. As I start my 5th degree (I know.....it's a lot), I can see the end game now. I want to work in a college or university and teach behavioral health nursing. It is an area of nursing that I understand very well and, added bonus, I know how to teach people to talk with people. Whoop! Whoop! 

So, Happy Recovery Month 2022!
Thanks for reading!
​Julie 

September is National Recovery Month. Twelve years ago I was still working toward pulling together 30 days. I had done that twice before, once in 2007 and once in 2010 before my current recovery date. The longest I had made it was 65 days after my first inpatient treatment in 2010. It seems so weird to think I am sitting on 12 years now. I really wasn't convinced that sobriety was for me. I did know, however, that being a raging addict wasn't doing much for me either. From the outside, the decision was so clear. In the fogginess of my mind, the decision wasn't so clear. It's a hard concept to describe. I say I want it. I think I want it. Then I go do the exact opposite and get mad about the decision I made. And the added "bonus" of seeing what else I wrecked with that decision. Was it a friend this time? Was it a job? Was it the trust of a family? And the cycle continues. 

It was a long process to find recovery for myself. I was sober for about a year before I finally started to let go of the idea of drinking every day. That is a pretty miserable existence. I am hyper focused on the one thing I need to give up. The one thing that keeps me trapped and unhappy. The one thing that increases my mental health symptoms. The one thing that I was convinced was my best friend. Meanwhile, life is going on while I am sitting being mad at the accountability factors that were at least helping me to make the right decision even if I didn't feel like making that specific decision. I was just mad. All the time. That is being abstinent from alcohol. Recovery was something else entirely.

Recovery for me was a combination of stopping the alcohol consumption and getting my thinking and mental health in order. I know that in retrospect now. During those first few years of early recovery I wasn't sure what I needed. I was in a really good treatment program for me at the time which really did make a huge difference. My treatment program was a dual diagnosis program. My inpatient had a small mental health component but probably not quite enough for me. For many years, I struggled with anxiety and depression. Those symptoms were there long before I started drinking. When I started drinking, I felt my first instant symptom relief along with a freeness I hadn't experienced anymore. I didn't care! It was SO nice! What a relief. 

I spent the next 18 years struggling to find that peace again. Little did I know that as I drank more in an attempt to find it, I was making all of those symptoms worse. At the very end, when I was start to go through withdrawal, my anxiety would go through the roof and the drink was the only thing that started to make be feel "normal". I use the term normal loosely here. My normal at that point was not puking first thing in the morning and having the shakes stop. Compared to my current normal, that normal was more of a circling the drain time. I hadn't quite hit rock bottom but I was working on it!

​

Image by Pexels from Pixabay ​

Grief is messy. And to be quite frank, I just don't like it. I know for me that writing is part of my therapeutic process and some of my best writing comes from a spot of emotional vulnerability. Yet, I sit here, almost forcing myself to say something because I need to in order to process where life is right now. In general, I am OK. I am functioning reasonably well. I am sitting in a weird place trying to figure out how to grieve. In short, I don't understand grief. 

When my dad died 30+ years ago, I was certainly sad and upset which is totally reasonable. Yet, most of the actions and decisions I made after he was gone wouldn't indicate that much had happened in my life. I didn't talk about him. I would squirm away if someone brought him up because I would feel emotional about it. I went to school the day after he died because I had some homework due. I don't know that I was trying to avoid the funeral planning that was going on, I truly felt like I needed to get that done, not understanding that my teachers would probably cut me some slack for this one. I had an experience shortly before that in which the principal of the school threatened my transfer to the high school I wanted to go to for missing to much class. I was in 8th grade and I was 14 years old. That threat cut deep and I believed it. (Trust me, my mom intervened on this one.....)

It would be years before I felt like I could talk about him without having a huge emotional response. I still feel sad that he is gone; however, talking about him now brings up fun memories and offers my niece and nephew to know what he was like. In way, I waited for years for that gut-wrenching response to go away when anyone talked about him. If there is a "proper" way to grieve, my method probably was not it. Counseling would not have benefited me because I would have been 100% unwilling to speak about much of anything. I wanted to run and stay away. That's what I did.

In the subsequent 30 years, I started to understand that changes in my life and not just death caused me to grieve. I wasn't aware of that. When I forged close relationships with people and we moved on to the next phase in life, I was devastated. When my friends in the classes ahead of me graduated and I didn't see them anymore, I was so lost. Things were so happy before that. What happened? Why did it have to change? I started, then, to distance myself from people because the change was coming. High school isn't forever. College isn't forever. There are still several relationships that faded that I still think about. 

A family friend spent lots of time talking to me as my divorce was processing. She alerted me to the fact that I was grieving. Initially, I didn't think she was right. I had asked for the divorce. I wanted things to end. I wanted to move on. "You are grieving that relationship and the future you thought you would have." Oh man, that one hit me right in the gut. The problem, though, is that I didn't grieve. I drank. I avoided a lot. I didn't deal with much. 

In these past two years, the losses have been sudden, tragic, and completely out of my realm to associate any good reason for these things to happen. When I have written about grief in the past, I said and still say, one loss brings up every loss. It's overwhelming and upsetting. Gratefully, I don't have the urge to drink it away or feel that anything related to my sobriety has changed. I simply don't like it. I don't want life to be different in this way now. I don't want other around me to be in pain. I don't want to be in pain. 

Of course, I am well familiarized with the stages of grief. When I look at that path, the only thing I think I grieved "correctly" (if that even exists) was my relationship with alcohol. Life had to change drastically to support sobriety for me. One of my blog entries is a good-bye note I had written to alcohol and it was helpful. I don't know if I could write a good-bye letter to anyone else without a near breakdown. I go between denial and acceptance somewhere between 20-30 times a day it feels like. At times, I feel like I am truly crazy. Denial is certainly seems like a happier place to be. Just block everything out and act like nothing has happened. Well, I kinda tried that method already and it lead to 18 years of hardcore drinking. I honestly don't know what to do.

Grief is so hard to talk about. Again, I don't really understand it and I experience it a lot in various avenues of my life. I am sad and upset that people are gone out of my life either by distance or death.  If I don't feel sad or upset about it, I feel like I am abandoning that person or situation. If I am happy or OK, does that mean I stopped caring about you? If I accept that you are gone, what happens? Do I forget about you? Of course not. At the same time, being OK or even happy feels like I am not paying proper respect. I know this take on this is not correct. And it is exactly how I feel. I know that my dad would not want me to feel horrible and depressed. Yet, the lack of an excessive emotional response when I talk about him seems like I am dishonoring him. I feel very similar about other losses as well. 

One of the stages of grief is anger. Anger is a danger emotion for me. Anger is a great way to keep people at a distance. If someone has wronged me, I can hold on to that for a REALLY long time. A good 90% of the time, I am not even willing to think about forgiving and/or forgetting. Let me tell you, that can make life pretty lonely. Holding every relationship up to perfection and never making a mistake is a pretty quick way to never have any quality people around. I have made some improvements in that arena. I can accept an apology now. I can be more forgiving because geeeezzzzz.....look at all the people who forgave me for egregious behavior that I spewed out into the world. Sober or not, I am no where NEAR perfect. I have hurt people without intending to. I made mistakes. The very least I can do is be the same in return. 

So, when it comes to anger in terms of grieving, I think I kinda park there. I am mad about the change. I am mad at my God for making that decision to take that person. I remain upset about relationships changing. I turn into a three year old having a meltdown. "But I don't want to!" I don't want to change. I don't want to have to figure out life now. I don't want things to be sad and upsetting. I don't want these people I loved to be gone. I don't always have a great direction to release that anger. Things should be the way that I want them. One steadfast trait of alcoholics - we don't like the way things are and we don't like change. Especially the latter part. I don't want change that I didn't specifically agree to. 

I received a book about grief and when I am a little more ready to face this issue, I will be interested in reading it. I know that loss is a part of life and nothing is forever. I know I can get to places of acceptance since my sobriety depends on it. Right now, I don't really want to accept much with regards to loss. I want to stay angry. Anger makes me feel like I have some power and motivation. Anger is like a drug though. It works until it stops working. Then is starts to take everything. I have been in that place with anger. I certainly would like to avoid slipping back into that emotional place. At the same time, I don't feel overly willing to think about acceptance. I want to honor people I have lost. Part of me hopes that maybe some of those relationships will return. And to accept either one feels final. Sort of like - "Well, I have accept that you/this relationship is gone. Now I move on. See ya later!" For whatever reason, that feels disrespectful. As of right now, that is what I need to reconcile so that I don't forever sit in denial and anger. That only leads to me hurting myself in the short-term, and everyone around me in the long-term. 

Take good care of each other and tell those you love....that you love them.
​J

Image by John Hain from Pixabay ​

I've been interested in a notion called "toxic positivity" lately. It's a rather simply concept -- attempting to demand another person to think more positively about any myriad of negative situations or attempting, at all costs, to only see the positive in any situation that results in ignoring true feelings/underlying issues. I absolutely know that I have been guilty of doing this to people. I certainly know what it is like to receive this kind of feedback as well. Toxic positivity makes me feel judged, invalidated, or that I am overreacting. When someone tries to tell me to just be more positive, my mind envisions me throwing a temper tantrum ala three-year old, stomping up and down saying, "you aren't listening to me!"

Part of my interest in this topic is because some of my own coping skills in tough situations is to insert some positive thoughts. There is a skill in the DBT world called "Comparison". When I would share information about this skill, I would start with a disclaimer that this skill should be used carefully. The idea is to look at your life circumstances in context of someone who is not as fortunate. Also, I could use comparison to look at my current feelings/circumstance to another time when I was experiencing something similar and had reacted in a way that was not as effective. Lastly, I could compare myself to others who are reacting  the same as me or less effectively than me. OK, what's all this mean. Here are some examples:

1. I stopped to get gas the other day. It was after work, I was tired and a bit cranky. I started to go through the 100 screens to start pumping gas and my rewards number failed. This started all the screens over again. I tried to enter it again, same thing. Fine, I didn't have a lot of points anyway so I make it through all the screens and my card gets declined. I know I have money in there. What the *(O&CD*(S?? So, I am now extremely annoyed. I reminded myself, at least I have another form of payment I can provide instead of having to go get cash or go home to find an alternative. So, this scenario is by no means a disaster. I used comparison to settle myself done a bit and not to let it effect my day. 

2. I was feeling some grief about a lost friend over the past two weeks. Whenever I think about this person, I have significant regrets about how I treated this person and often wonder what our friendship would have been like today if he were still here. I compared how I was coping with these feelings versus ten years ago when I just tried to push these feelings aside. I am coping better now because I can talk myself through the process of what I am feeling and what I can do when these feeling arise. I have compared the situations and I am doing better now.

3. A friend had reached out to be about a classmate/friend of hers who lost a child at age 13. We were discussing what it is like to lose people from our younger years and neither of us could image the devastating pain of losing a child. In this moment, I was comparing how we were both feeling and I felt validated that I was feeling similarly to her. 

As with positivity in general, there are times when this intervention works well. I do like to remind people of their positive nature when they are being hard on themselves. I like to remind myself that I have made it through difficult things before and I will again. I have suggested both professionally and personally to make a gratitude list every day even if the day is bad. In my mind, I figure even if this day is the worse day in a long time, there are still things that I can remind myself that are good -- my family rocks, my cat is my buddy, I have a roof over my head, etc. The question for me is when does positivity or other interventions become toxic?

With the comparison skills, it is really easy to fall over into toxic territory. When I lost Daisy (my girl kitty of 13 years), I could have compared some things: Well, at least I am not starving on the streets. Or other people don't see cats as much more than a pet, so get over it already. That skill would be absolutely wrong for that moment. Also, requiring myself to find something positive out of this situation. Well, at least it wasn't your CHILD, "just" a pet. I can always get another cat. There are worse things going on in the world, ya know. Examples of toxic positivity that could come my way in that situation - at least you have another cat. It could be worse. You'll be fine. Everything happens for a reason. Ouch. I know I have done this to other people and for that, I am truly sorry because I am now seeing how dismissive and minimizing those catch phrases tend to be. 

I think I have used toxic positivity as a way to avoid my personal discomfort with being around grief. I am certainly understanding grief more and I am not as afraid of it as I used to be. One of the hardest things about being a counselor for me was not being able to fix things. In nursing, we fix things. In therapy-land, it is a process completely driven by the client to get through life and not necessarily to a destination. Toxic positivity is something easy to fall back upon to make me think I made the situation better. In reality, I made that situation a lot worse. I have invalided that person's emotional state. I have given directives/advice that I couldn't do in a similar situation. I am trying to gloss over a huge change in their lives and missed an opportunity to offer acceptance and support to them. 

Most people, I believe, don't mean to be toxic. It's easy to fall back on cliché sayings when we don't know what to say or how to express ourselves in the midst of intense emotion. Life is about learning and changing. I will always say one of my favorite exercises in early recovery was exploring my values. Since I had lost touch with them during my active years, it was nice to see I hadn't lost them entirely. Since then, I have wanted and worked to change my behaviors that reflect who I would like to be. Having come across toxic positivity, I realized offering this "support" is not in alignment with how I want to be a friend. Since I was made aware of this concept, I have been attempting to observe what I am saying and when with the idea of raising my awareness to at least avoid saying something invalidating. Silence would be infinitely preferable to that. 

So, all, thanks for reading! I am on a bit of kick these days and hope to stay writing for a while!
​Julie 

Let me preface this entry with a few things:
      1. I do not disagree with inspirational memes.
      2. Little inspirational quips can be great.
      3. You do you. 

I despise this meme with 100% of my being. I have seen this floating around for quite a few years and have found it on some of my recovery pages. My emotional response to this particular meme is starting to mirror some of my responses to "positivity" memes floating around the internet. Now, if you are friends with me on Facebook, you know that I post at least one meme a day, so the irony of this entry does not escape me. I have, however, specifically avoided "life memes" as I call them - inspirational one liners that should change your outlook on today and forever! Those 10 word memes that will remind you that you just need to change you outlook to change your life! I post nonsense memes because I like to laugh and I hope people enjoy it. 

I wrote an entry a few years ago about my annoyance with some memes. When this one started rolling around to me, my annoyance started to turn into anger. It is 100% too simple. This meme casts aside several factors that contribute to these situations. Yes, marriage is hard. My ex-husband got married to an out of control alcoholic that was pretty stealthy about hiding the extent of it. Divorce was hard for me because I had to admit that I chose alcohol over a person and that us together was a total disaster. So, did we both "choose" our misery? Did I choose to be an alcoholic? Sobriety is hard and so is alcoholism. Is there a way that I could have NOT chosen to be an alcoholic and then select a relationship that wouldn't fail? Please tell me, oh wise-meme writer, because being addicted sucked. 

Debt is a choice? Well maybe, but what about my friends who have been taken advantage of in relationships and had no control over finances? What about the people who struggled to make ends meet to feed their children and were offered cheap credit as a way to survive? What about the 18 year old kid that wants to have a chance at college, takes out a loan to realize this dream and hits a horrible? This meme to me tends to suggest that I am stupid. I cannot manage money appropriately and poverty simply shouldn't exist because people "choose" to be poor. This statement just reminds me of the old adage "Pick yourself by your boot straps, you lazy bum." I was in debt coming out of my marriage because we didn't understand credit. I was living in a home that I owed 96,000 on and was worth less than 40,000. Did I choose the latter? Did I choose an economic meltdown that resulted in job loss, foreclosure, and using a credit card to simply be able to eat? 

Obesity and diet are hard. Yet, this statement is an oversimplification of what contributes to obesity and how to maintain a healthy diet. Does who ever wrote this have access to fresh food? Does this person live in a food desert where the only store that sells food in a reasonable distance carries shelf foods that are highly processed? Poverty contributes to obesity. Did that child "choose" that? Unrelenting marketing and advertising has people convinced that one thing is better over another, only to find out later that this was incorrect. (Think about the war against fat and how sugar intake dramatically increased with a correlated rise in obesity.) According to this meme, I guess people are just generally stupid and make bad choices. 

Communication - ok. So, I didn't communicate in some relationships because I didn't know how. So, I learned more about what I needed to contribute to be a successful communicator. Yet, I landed in a job that no matter how much I communicated, I was berated, belittled, and often left feeling less than worthwhile. Yes, I chose that job, but I was choosing to communicate and it didn't work. So, did I actively seek out a position where my communication skills would be rejected? How in the hell would have I have known that going in? As a response to trauma I experienced there, I choose to limit my communication with others regarding some aspects of my life. Right or wrong, I am following my heart and my instincts to protect myself from further harm. Are you judging the way I have chosen to protect myself from those who don't have my best interested at heart? 

Basically, this meme makes me feel judged. One of the areas that I have worked on in therapy is my defense reaction. I am epically defensive. It does not take a whole lot of me feeling threatened on some level to start shooting off my mouth. I can be mean. I can be outright vicious depending on the topic. While I have great empathy and sympathy for my fellow human beings, if you make a comment about how I have constructed my life over time, I will have some very choice words for you. Have you lived my life? Do you understand the root of why I do things the way I do? Do you have any understanding for me that there are things I need and have to do to protect myself, including my sobriety? When I see others reacting to situations in a way that is different from how I would, I take a second to think about what they have been through or learned in their lives about communication, relationships, and money. Maybe their form of coping works for them or they simply don't know any different. 

In the world of social media, memes like this float around all the time and I have certainly seen a number of responses to them both positive and negative. I don't tend to spend much time commenting on memes I find annoying or inaccurate. It is not worth the effort or the argument which is never resolved on social media anyway. I have tried to increase my awareness, however, of the number of these memes that are simply dismissive of the broader human experience. 

I learned very quickly in recovery that there are different way to get to recovery. Heck, the definition of "recovery" is still under debate these days. It used to be that being abstinent from drugs/alcohol was sufficient to be "in recovery". Then, people realized that not using didn't always equate into a happy life so maybe there were more steps to be taken to be in recovery. The discussion started to shift towards allowing the individual to decide what recovery is for them. At first, I wasn't 100% on board with this idea. I remembered very quickly, however, that my way is not the "right" way. My recovery is not your recovery. My mental health recovery ebbs and flows regularly, though, I would not say I have had a full relapse into mental health crisis. I had to think to myself: "What's the point of hammering down one black and white definition of recovery? Isn't that what got us into trouble in the first place? Trying to make things concrete when they are not?" 

I keep in mind that when people are sharing inspirational memes, generally they are not out to save the world. They have found something that worked for them and they want to share it in the event that someone else can be spared the pain they experienced. Heck, that was the reason I went into counseling in the beginning. To me, recovery is a gift and if I could help anyone start their journey in a different direction, I would be so honored and humbled. I become more frustrated when an message becomes over simplified and judgmental. If you have ever experienced depression and someone tells you "just think more positively", the instinct is to roll the eyes. What if my brain doesn't allow me to do that right now? Mental illness, including addiction, are far more complex than a 10 word solution. Now, I have benefited from some positive thinking measures, however, I have had to work to find when that is a solution for me and when I need something more. It's a process and it's a long one to find the combination of things that work (therapy, medications, DBT skills, AA meetings, talking with friends/family, taking a shower, letting myself sleep, etc.) 

I had this blog post on my heart for a while. I felt like I needed to be able to say my peace about it. I hope to get back to writing a bit more. I've always got something to talk about :) 

​Julie

Image by Evgeni Tcherkasski from Pixabay ​​

sI had hoped since finishing school, I would have gotten my home under better control than it is right now. I am living in a bit more chaos than I need to, yet I lack serious motivation to do anything about it. I have made some little steps toward progress. Not enough, though, to make it feel like I have made the impact that I desire. Not surprisingly, social media has picked up on all of this and has masterfully interjected ads and information about minimalism. In fact, even Netflix recommends a few documentaries and TV shows about the topic. Algorithms are scarily accurate some times. 

I have been interested for years to live a more simple life. I would think an environment where I have less space to fill and less things to managed would do well for me. The last two years, I really reigned in spending since I was in school and didn't take on an excessive amount of things. I do, however, have a lot of stuff. There are some things that I can easily part with and other things I feel very sentimental about. I think it was my Mom that called me a "sentimental hoarder" at one point. I found this descriptions to be 150% on point for me. Interestingly, those items are not the issue for me right now. Organization is the issue. 

My lack of organization and living chaos is nothing new. Ask anyone I have lived with for an extended period of time and they will tell you stories of me sitting in the middle of chaos and reading a book with a smile on my face. At one point or another, I get sick of it and do a massive sweep of everything. I clean every inch of my place, I throw out bags of stuff, donate a car full of no longer needed items to Goodwill or wherever. Since moving to this place, I haven't had that big push. Most of my being wants to do it and I know that I would feel better if I did. Yet, I sit with this weird avoidance and lack of drive to start. I do give myself a little grace, in that I work a lot and I work a physical job. So, I am tired. Like super tired when I get home. I don't feel like doing anything. 

I can't decide what I need to do next to get my home under better control. It was easier to live in chaos when I was using. It was just that much easier to ignore. I fear that I have become a little too comfortable in my current situation. Because of work, school, and quarantine stuff over the past few years, it has been easy to slip into this state. I have often struggled with needing external motivation to act. I felt like for a few years, at least, I had some internal motivation. It was nice. I felt like I was doing things for myself and not to impress someone else. I was reminded that external motivation is not necessarily a bad thing. I had come to believe it was based on feedback from a few relationships. Even today, sitting in my mid-40s, I often question if having external motivation as a primary source of action is a bad thing. 

In recovery, it took external motivation. Internally, I wanted it really bad. Having a sick brain, though, is pretty tough when seeking such a major change in life. I went voluntarily to treatment and detox. My brain was telling me to keep all of this a secret so I could keep doing it. I pushed through it one night and that probably saved my life. I don't know what it was. AA calls it "a moment of clarity". I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. Treatment didn't "fix me". I had hoped that I would be able to quit without having to do a whole bunch of work to keep it. Well, I have the wrong disease then!! Everyone I encountered in treatment and beyond frequently told me to simplify my life. I had to create a life with less stress. I needed to clear out my environment to reduce temptation. I had to "unclutter" my life. In the first couple attempts at sobriety, I did a pretty half-assed job of simplifying things. I like a certain level of chaos in my life so really committing to a minimal lifestyle was impossible for me to wrap my head around. 

When I look back over the past 11 years of recovery, doing the whole "minimalist" thing has not been my gig. Maybe it is age speaking now that I desire for things to be quieter. My work world has gone from 300mph of a spiraling shitstorm to highly manageable, dare I say, minimal level of stress. That has allowed the chaos situation in my home to feel more uncomfortable and noticeable. I am really wishing, hoping, and maybe even praying, that I can find that spark to get this started. Part of my 6 months of not doing anything was going to be getting the rest of the painting projects done in this place and give it a good clean. Well, I am 4 months in and I have pretty much managed to get my dishes done and the occasional load of laundry. Both of those chores are usually done more out of need than a desire to change my environment. 

Living a simple, uncluttered life sounds really appealing. The little I have read on it and seen my various social media threads lead me to think I would feel more content at home if I were to adopt a more minimalist approach. As I explore this concept, the more overwhelmed I feel of what it would take to get to that point. In a way, I sort of just shutdown. I think I would need days or weeks to accomplish a task as large as that. I get 24-36 hours off at any given time. When would I ever find the time to do all of this organizing and cleaning!!???!?! I know better. Although I hate the word "should".....I should break this project down into smaller pieces so I don't get overwhelmed. Want to hear something weird? The thought of breaking it down is now overwhelming. I see disorganization and chaos everywhere. If I start in place X, I will make place Y worse. There is not enough room in place Z. I am not sure I am ready to dive into more emotionally charged items and make decisions about what needs to go. These thoughts and excuses are interesting to me since I am in a very strong, healthy, good emotional space right now. Low stress, bills are paid, I like what I am doing for work. I have seemingly lost my internal motivation. 

I required external motivation to get sober because I couldn't figure out how to do it for myself. I had some accountability which helped. My addiction brain, though, made it very easy for me to find ways around my own systems. I can be rather crafting in that arena. It took having my nursing license threatened to pull it together. It was having a high structure with very concrete consequences that got me to where I am today. I would hope that I could have found my way without having to commit three years of my life to monitoring. But, I honestly don't think so. It is not that I don't love my family. It's not that I was happy with the life I had. I was certainly sick of losing things and I would have lost my family at some point with something didn't change. I credit that program with giving me enough sober time to get my brained cleared and start working on the habits and traits that I developed during my active use years. Honestly, then recovery became internally motivated. I liked what life was looking like in recovery. I made the choice back then and every day to stay sober. So, I know I have that internal motivation some where and it is still stronger than ever related to sobriety.

I am not really looking for advice or referrals to help me move past this weird home chaos thing going on. I am more trying to figure out the best way to spark my internal motivator. The fact that I am even writing about it make me feel like maybe that break through is in the near future. I am not 100% sure, but I remain optimist that it is there. The external motivators in this scenario might work in terms of creating short term changes. "Oh my God, I have guests, let me at least shove everything into rooms that I can close the door." That works for a minute until I see what I was able to pile up in the rooms I closed off. I want a bit more than that. I know I am capable of it. 

Anyway......I want to be a little more committed to my writing as well. I have started about 5 different entries about pretty deep stuff - guilt (especially survivor's guilt), finding meaning in chaos, value systems, and an entry contemplating "why". These entries were more on the heavy side. These are not topics that are easily wrapped up in a page or two. Like I tell my therapist, "it's more existential in nature". Nothing wrong with existential exploration, in fact a bulk of my recovery time has been dedicated to search for meaning and making the world a better place. These topics, on the other hand, are complex and I don't know how to answer my own questions. Makes for a hard blog entry!!! That being said, I hope to continue to work on some of those pieces and get them published. What I have learned from my readers since I started this blog in 2012 is that I am rarely alone in thinking and believing what I do. 

Peace to you all!
​Julie

Of all the lessons of recovery, I think the hardest one for me to continuously practice is "living in the moment". Part of it is the society that we live in. What's the next great thing? What more can I do? What do I need? What do I want? How do I get there? Some of it is just me. I don't know where or when I picked up the habit of either being stuck in the past or living so far in the future that I have almost no idea what's going on right now. During my drinking years, I was often tormented by the past and thinking there was no way to overcome that. In my years of sobriety, I have been oriented to the future. I need something to "look forward" to. I need some goal to be in progress to work towards. 

I have successfully finished my most recent degree. To go from an LPN to RN had been a goal since I enrolled in nursing school in 2002. I thought I would have done it by now, but life took some rather dramatic turns. Initially, upon graduating from school, I was newly married and we didn't have the money to have me not working and going to school full time. RN programs are generally not designed to do on a part-time basis. Everything tends to build from quarter/semester to quarter/semester. Not to mention, the clinical component (in more 'normal' times as it were) require at least a few days a week and we are at the mercy of those times and dates. Additionally, my drinking took off on a whole new level after I got married. Some of it was related to the marriage, but my drinking issues were well in place before that happened. In my alcoholic, young mind.....I got him. We are married. Now I can do whatever I want. When that didn't make me happy (marriage or the drinking), it just kept spirally downward. From my point of view, a failed marriage, failed relationship, and divorce was all validation that I was an unlovable person. No one would ever fight for me. I have to do this all on my own because no one will ever understand me. I am destine to be alone. Let me drink in peace, people. 

The first couple of years in sobriety was spent between my therapist and I tweezing through all of this core belief systems that promoted further self-destruction. Was I truly unlovable? Or had I shut myself off from that love because I was scared of it? Am I really alone? Or do I isolate myself to prevent myself from being vulnerable with others? Is my past, my future? Only if I don't desire any change in my life. Core belief systems are especially hard to change. These beliefs are often etched in concrete in the soul whether they are true or not. I feel like a lot of my beliefs were created internally by my understanding of the world around me. I believed that there was a certain way to do life and if I was not doing life that way, it meant I was a failure. I can't think of a time where I was really pressured to do much that wasn't for benefit of me or my family. I created this internal pressure to be and do something that wasn't me. When I didn't fit into that mold I had created, I lost my sense of purpose and drive. 

As I worked through understanding what core beliefs weren't supporting me as a person, it was time to look at the value system and figure out who I am. I understand that the "Who am I?" question is never really answered in a life time. Life changes as we age and experience life. We obviously can't plan every detail of our lives. In order to have some sense of sanity in this world, I think we all have to be adaptable to a certain degree. As a huge benefit, we can learn and understand more about the world and the people in our lives. When I was initially doing all of the work of connecting with myself in early recovery, I accidently took the new understanding of my value system and plugged that into my core belief system. The biggest issue with that is core beliefs don't tend to be flexible or adaptable. They are a hard and fast set of rules and understanding that guide my life and behavior. The later years of recovery have been focused on integrating what is of value and importance to me, along with allowing different ideas and understandings of life and the world into my life to help enhance what I experience daily. 

A core tenant for most recovery programs is learning to be present and live in the moment. As I mentioned earlier, it is so easy to be wrapped up in the past or the future. When I was leaving the county in 2020, I was very future oriented. I am now making a huge shift in my life. Working part-time, going back to school. I am going back to school to do the "next thing", although I had no idea what the next thing was. When I went back to school for my LPN, I was going to work as an LPN. I knew that. I was going to be a bedside nurse. Well, I think I had somewhere around 18 jobs in my first 5 years because I had no idea what I wanted. Did I want M-F, 8-5? Did I want to work nights? What was I capable of working given how sick I was? I floated from place to place until I go to transplant. I finally had a job that I was willing to get sober for because there was so much that I was struggling to do being as sick as I was (both mentally and physically). I got into treatment and into the HPSP program that was going to provide me with the external accountability I needed to stay on the right track. 

I was so excited in early recovery after the first year. The world was such a better place and my thinking was clearing up to value myself as a person. I was understanding how and why I was so sick. I was feeling empowered to take on recovery and succeed at it. Yet, I remained very future focused. What was I going to do next? I want a master's degree? I pushed and pushed and pushed myself to find a program. I thought I had found the most logical and most applicable master's program in the world when I went for addiction's counseling. While it is part of my journey and such now, I think had I not been so future oriented, I would have been able to figure out that I wasn't quite ready for that. I learned very quickly during the program that my recovery was not yet strong enough to be a clinical guidance for others. I made it work; however, my personal recovery suffered for several years because of it. I was no ill-intentioned or weak. I wanted to help others get into recovery because the last 2 years of my life were amazing! Everyone should have this opportunity!

It's has taken a little while since I left counseling to offer myself some forgiveness. I feel like I had pushed myself too fast into something that I didn't have as much passion for as I thought. I have a great deal of passion for recovery. In hindsight, I wanted to work in the area of advocacy and policy change. Being on the frontlines of addiction and recovery wore my soul thin and threatened my recovery. Honestly, as I was leaving the field, I felt like a fool. Here I had spent all this money to get a degree I don't even want to use anymore. I have this license I was so excited to get, but now can't stand working with it. What happened to me? I believe this whole situation was as a result of me being too future focused at a vulnerable time in my life. Once I realized that I might not have made the wisest choice, I was too far in and felt like I had to make it work because I made the decision to do it. 

When I decided to go back to school this time, I was pursuing a degree with a lot more options. I had a lot of experience in a lot of areas. I found it interesting when we would start a new class and the question would be, "what do you want to do with your degree?" I really didn't know. I had some ideas. What I think I learned from my last rotation in school, don't push it. Don't do something just "because". I may be good at behavioral health counseling, but that doesn't mean I have to be a behavioral health nurse. I have a lot of technical skills, that doesn't mean I have to work at a hospital. I gotta tell you all, I didn't like not being able to answer that question! For some reason, not having a clear path felt "wrong". Why am I doing this if I don't know what I want to do? I felt that drive to start pushing myself in some sort of direction. I even started to do it. 

I was so grateful that my Mom kept telling me not to do anything after I was done. I had a stable job. I liked what I was doing. I didn't need to apply for 198 jobs and take the first one that came along. I don't like turning down job offers. I found this when I was applying around in 2018 for a new job. I got a total of 8 offers and I hated turning them down. I felt "bad" for them doing all the work of making the offer and then not accepting. That is a me-thing. So I knew that I didn't want to go around applying because I would accept something that I probably wasn't 100% on board with right now. And again, there is nothing wrong with where I am working. My concern is that the job is quite physical in nature and I am getting older. 

So, I let it be. I have been continuing to work in homecare, which I like. My clients are great and we have fun together. I found myself being able to be present more. I don't worry about my work at all when I get home. I am busy planning time with friends and family which has been nothing but a joy. I think, for the first time in many years, I am living in the now. I am a person that becomes easily consumed by work - good or bad. I don't tend to have that issue where I am at right now. My shift ends when it ends. What a relief that has been! 

I had announced the starting of a very promising position next month. I am very excited about the opportunity and very grateful for being able to start out on an "on-call"/casual basis. It allows me to select my hours and retain the flexibility I have in homecare. I knew one of the areas that I was interested in was teaching. I figured that since I am technically a new grad RN right now that I would not able to work in that part of nursing just yet. Yet, here it is. I didn't force anything. I remained present and focused on living a life that recharges me. It's the best I have felt in years, honestly. So, when I scroll through social media and see postings about living in the moment, it is a nice reminder for me. I have experienced, in-depth and more than once, what life is like living for something that doesn't yet exist. The more I focus on what I think I "should" be doing or what I think life should look like, the more I am likely to miss out on what is right in front of me. I can't be busying chasing the future all the time. It's a life lesson I know, but need to be reminded of frequently!

Peace,
​J

Most people I hang around with are very familiar with having a busy mind. The busy mind has a tendency to appear about 15 minutes before I am trying to fall asleep. Depending on the topic of the day, I can usually shut down and drift off to sleep. Other days, I get locked onto something and start thinking....and thinking....and thinking..... Most of what I am thinking about, especially if it is keeping me awake since I love sleep, is not all that helpful. Usually, it is about something I can change or fix. Or something I don't understand but want to. 

I started watching The Good Place on Netflix about 6 months ago. It's only 4 seasons and the episodes are 22 minutes long. One of the main characters on the show is a professor of moral and ethical philosophy. He spends much of the show identifying the decisions of others, pointing out the ethical flaws of their thought processes. He is an enjoyable character. What I have appreciated about the show is that it has reminded me that I have always enjoyed philosophy. The academic advisor of this character states at one point that philosophy is an emotional discussion and argument about how the world ought to be. I remember so many of this types of conversations when I was in college. I loved that part of my college life. Having intense debates about approaches to life that made the most things "right" and it challenged my viewpoint a lot. I did take a few classes. I remember getting a paper back "A- I wish you would show up to class. I think you would be very fruitful in class discussions." I didn't like getting out of bed then, either.

When I think about the emotional argument with regard to how I think the world should be, so many things come to mind. I would love to see suffering end (think BIG, right?). I think about the factors that have led people astray in life: trauma, poverty, abuse, generational conflict, mental illness, substance use, racism, sexism, extremism, etc. This list could go on forever and ever. If I were handed everything I needed to make my vision come true for how the world ought to be, what would I change? Would it take education? Enough jobs? Destruction of the internet? More compassion and  less anger? In reality, all of these things are just thought experiments. I think that is why it is easy for me to get lost when I think about what kind of legacy I want to leave behind or how I want to engage the world today. Small gestures and tokens I have made don't ever seem like enough. I am inspired by people who were able to shrug off criticism, make bold choices, and run with a dream for the world to be a different place. 

This topic of grief really has me captured right now. The news is heart wrenching to watch - fires, environmental destruction, shootings, car-jackings, car accidents, serious illness, a pandemic running wild, severely divided politics, etc. Again, another list that can go on and on. When philosophy and grief intersect in my mind, I think about what grief can motivate people to do - good or not-so-good. Some people are called to activism, others to teach, others to raise awareness. Some people are motivated to engage in vigilantism, move hundreds of miles away from anyone and anything, become self-destructive and dive into the world of addiction, severe depression, and develop a will to die. If the world were the way I would want it to be, I would love for people to cruise right past all the negative stuff and channel the emotions into the greater good. I don't know that many people would argue you against that. That thought experiment aside, grief is everywhere and every day. One of the lines from The Good Place from the central character: “Every human is a little bit sad all the time, because you know you're gonna die, but that knowledge is what gives life meaning.” 

I have argued in at least a few of my blog postings that I am, in some ways, grateful to be an alcoholic. Don't get me wrong, being an active, using alcoholic was minimal fun. Constant physical and mental sickness, despair, self-inflicted loneliness, isolation, mood swings, on and on.....My sponsor, along with some others from AA groups, have told me that they have learned to accept what happened by understanding that it is a part of who we are. I lived that life. I know how miserable I was. I also had to work A LOT to find recovery and THAT is where I found me. I also found out what I was capable of. I know I grieved a lot when I first got sober. The number of "friends" (I use that term very loosely now) who bailed on me was staggering. It was one of my worst fears of mine getting sober and it drove one of my first relapses after treatment. I also grieved for the life I could have had if I hadn't wasted 18 years drinking. I wonder if I would be smarter? People don't drink like me and not realize some brain damage has likely occurred. Would I have found a life partner and had kids? Would I have gone to nursing school right away and not avoided it to go off and party? Thought experiments. I don't know. And I won't.

I am often reminded of the importance of being present. I try not to linger on the choices of the past, other than to know what I don't want to do going forward. I try not to get stuck in the future. The future isn't here yet, I tend to be more future-oriented these days - always thinking about the next big adventure. For the past 10 or so years, it is has been school. Nearly half of my time sober has been spend in school! It's an expensive hobby. However, the process of learning and being about to assimilate new information into my life makes me happy. It offers be more clarity and hope to figure out how I want to contribute to the world to make it a better place. I still remain on that path of figuring that out. Heck, I may never find it completely. That being said, I will never regret having tried. There will be no time to grieve a life I didn't try to lead when I wanted to. 

So, I still have a lot to say about this topic. Thank you to all of you who sent me messages about my last post. It was one of the most highly read entries I have had in the 10 years of writing. I post this blog to some recovery sites as well and responses were touching. I guess my 2022 will be to reconcile the grief I experience of the world being the way it is and celebrating that parts of the world that do exemplify how I think the world ought to be.

Hope everyone is having a good New Year so far!

J