Hi, My Name is LisaPie

And all you 12-steppers just said "Hi Lisa Pie" in your heads, didn't you?  I am a self-professed recovering codependent person.  If you had told me 10 years ago that I was codependent I would have laughed at you and shown you the door.  If you had suggested to me that my way of handling things wasn't working and I need to learn a new way, I would have told you that my way was just right and it was all those OTHER jack wagons who were impeding the progress I had so carefully laid out.

Fear and a need to try and control things in your life and around you and in your loved ones' lives is a full-time job.  A full-time job with no benefits and lots of heart ache and resentment.  And it will suck the life right out of you and leave you with sadness and sometimes bad health due to focusing so much on fixing others and ignoring your own self.  That is after you damn near kill your alcoholic/addict with kindness trying to handle everything for them.

If I were to list here all the completely crazy things I have done that made perfect sense to me at the time your own head might explode.  You might start to wonder how I am able to get up every day and walk around like I have good sense.  And this was all back when I thought I only had one addict in my life.

You know how they say that you are given a lesson over and over again until you get it right?  Just recently I was listening to what is called a "speaker tape" even though it is now on CD rather than tape.  And it was a man speaking to a gathering of AA and Al-Anon members.  What he said was so perfectly in tune with my life he could have been speaking directly to me and about me.  And it was as if a light had been turned on in a dark corner of my brain where I was keeping all the files that would show me how codependent I really am.  Now in order for that particular analogy to make any sense you should know that I picture my brain much like an old, old library with nothing but card catalog file drawers.  And all my thoughts, memories, etc are all in there.  So of course, as I have gotten older and older I get more and more file drawers for all of these things.  That's why it sometimes takes me a while to find the right drawer and rifle through it for the exact thought I am looking for.  This is my story and I am sticking with it.

So what happened when that light was turned on was this:  I was suddenly aware of all the times I had chosen the addicted person, the alcoholic, the person with the most stuff to work on to be attracted to. I can pick out a person with an addictive personality at 20 paces.  Now to be fair, they tend to be funny, inviting, smart, interesting people.  But there is something in me that is drawn to them like a moth to a flame, or you could say like an alcoholic to a bottle of vodka.  And I mean friends, boyfriends, lovers, all people. There before me was this long list of people that I had to look at and take stock of.  What is the deal that I never saw this before?  The speaker on the tape/CD said this "if you are ever questioning whether you think you might be an alcoholic and want an answer here is a surefire way to find out:  just come up to me and ask "do you find me attractive?" and  that is exactly what I do!

How did I get to be 55 years of age before I was aware of this about myself?  I can't answer that. And here's a better question:  how is it that my chemical makeup is such that I am drawn to the addictive person rather than to the drugs or the alcohol?  I mean, I have used alcohol and cigarettes and some drugs in my life, but I could always quit.  And I have.  I quit smoking cigarettes 35 years ago.  I quit taking drugs/smoking pot not long after that.  And I have gradually cut back on my alcohol consumption to the point where I might have 6 or 8 drinks a year.  That has come about due to having arthritis and other health issues that require medication and I don't want to overload my liver with the meds and the alcohol.  It's just not a big deal for me.  Not like eggplant parmigiana.  Now, that is a big deal to give up.  I am certainly not trying to make light of people who have an addiction that they are struggling with. I am only pointing out that this is one way I can see that I am not a member of that tribe.  Anyhoo, I don't know how I could NOT see this as a pattern in my life except to say that it sure is easy to walk around with blinders on and not notice the big obvious elephant in the room.

I am now a loud and proud member of the struggling to improve codependent crew.  This will be a life-long endeavor for me.  Reading books, doing some step work, going to meetings are a part of my life.  I want to be better.  I want to be a healthy example of what you can be if you are willing to take the hard looks at yourself and face up to what you have done and what you can do differently.  And I will most likely be a glaring example of how to fuck things up occasionally.  But I am trying and learning and growing.  And I am here if you ever need to talk or need something because that is part of who I am; I am a nurturer and a care-giver.  As one of my friends from the meetings said "I never thought I was controlling, I always thought I was just being helpful!"

And just to be a little bit more helpful here is a list of some books that are outstanding:

 

Actually, if you go to Melody Beattie's website you can read all about her and all her great books.  These are just 2 of hers that have been really helpful to me.  The one by Sarah Hepola is new and very good.  I was surprised at how many things she wrote about that applied to me.  And the Daily Meditation one by Misti B I just got and am just starting it.  She is taking a humorous approach to the daily meditations that are usually quite serious.  I am loving what I am reading so far.

Hope you have a great day out there!

What's going on over here

Okay, so you may have noticed a serious lack of blogging going on over here.  I have noticed it as well.  There is a reason for this.  Actually, there are several reasons for this.  And I initially didn't want to come here and say "Oh poor me, here's this thing happening in my life.  Let's all feel bad for me".  But then the second thing happended.  And then the third.  And it has been like walking around waiting for the other shoe to drop around here.  I have seriously had the thought "wtf??  Why is all this happening at the same fucking time??"

But I have bucked up and chosen to see the good in each issue rather than focusing on the oh poor pitiful me, why does this have to happen to meeeeeeee?

Because truthfully, why NOT me?  Why not?  I am just as random and deserving of a few pieces of bad luck and timing as anyone else.

You know the saying about if you were given the opportunity to put all your troubles in a pile with everyone else's and then choose which ones you were taking, you would most likely take the ones you came with?  Well, that particular bit of wisdom has been running through my head a lot lately.

I don't want to give you the wrong idea about all this.  Nobody in my family has been diagnosed with leprosy, none of us have moved to the Poor Farm, nothing like that.

And yet I just kept thinking that if I came here and talked (typed) about these things they would be more real, more of a pain in the ass to deal with.  So I am just going to share with you a few things that have happened lately.

First up, we had soooo much stuff plannned for the summer, it was unbelievable!  Seriously, one of us (and by that I mostly mean me) had a trip planned at least every other week from April through July.  It was kind of scary to look at the calendar and realize how many trips were on the books.  Then while I was traveling on the 3rd of many trips I noticed one of my teeth felt odd.  Kind of sensitive to pressure.  So I got home and made an appointment with my dentist.  The Readers Digest condensed version of this many part saga is that I have to cancel a bunch of the summer trips and spend lots of quality time and quality money with my dentist this summer.  Nice.

I hate to be a big fat wussie about things, but you know the whole laying back in the chair with your head really lower than your ass thing? I hate it.  It's a very vulnerable position.  And you know the horrible metal pokey pointy things that make the horrible sounds on your teeth?  O.M.G. That is one of the things I hate worse than anything.  Worse than nails on a chalkboard.  Worse than clowns.  And even worse than balloons.

But let me tell you what I did.  I went to my aromatherapy textbooks and looked up essential oils for mouth infections, anxiety and calming.  Then I made a blend of them and applied this mixture of oils to my pulse points, my third eye and temples and went to my first appointment.  And it was not too bad.  I have been using the oils each day since to help with the dull achey feeling in my mouth and jaws.  I will be going back for many visits so I may need to just mix up a quantity of this and bottle it to take with me.

My husband, Mr. Big Ed, has a boss whose son is terribly ill.  He has a cancer that has been extremely aggressive and it has been a year from hell for this poor family.  This precious boy was 9 when diagnosed last July and he has now turned 10 but the prognosis is not good.  So his mama is taking a leave of absence to be with him and Mr. Big Ed is taking some of her work responsibilities.  This is a tragic situation and my heart breaks for their family.  It also means that Mr. Big Ed will be doing some of his own business travel and also making a few trips on her behalf.  So he will not be attending many of the scheduled family things this summer either.  If you are the praying sort, please add little Nicolas to your list.  His family has had more than they should have to bear this past year.

Last week I was on my 4th trip (by myself since Mr. Big Ed has new work commitments) heading to a nephew's wedding.  It was a great trip and I made good time.  (I have this thing where I like to see if I can beat my best time to each destination.  And it's much easier to do when I don't have anyone with me who wants to stop and pee in every fucking Dairy Queen we come to.)  So as I was pulling into town and off the highway, I turned off my cruise control and all the sudden my car wasn't shifting from first gear up to second.  It was scary as hell as I was trying to take off from a stop at a traffic light and nothing was happening.  I kept thinking I was going to be rear-ended.

I limped on over to my aunt's house and called AAA.  (Another long story that need to be Readers Digest condensed here.)  I ended up having my car towed to the Honda dealership and waiting for hours to find out that my transmission was shot.  At 6 p.m. on a Friday.  On a Friday of Memorial Day weekend.  A 3-day holiday weekend.  Which meant nothing was going to happen to fix my car till after TUESDAY!

I was devastated for a few minutes and then decided that if this had to happen at least it was the best way possible it could have happened.  No one was hurt or killed.  Praise the Lord for that!  I am headed back down that way next week for another graduation trip, so I would have been going back there anyway.  Only now I am driving a rental car and taking it back home again and picking up my car (which I love) with a brand new transmission which should last it another 100,000 miles.

None of the issues that have happened around here are tragic, they are inconvenient and expensive.  But that is a small hiccup in the grand scheme of things, now isn't it?

I need to get my camera over here and show you some pictures of some of the fun things I have been able to attend.  And I need to quit whining about the trips I won't be able to make.

I hope all is well with you and yours.  Any great summer plans at your end?

Let's celebrate life

Could we celebrate life and those who love it for a change?

I don't mean to be unkind or unfeeling, but seriously?  Whitney Houston is dead.  She is yet another in a long line of celebrity/performers who can't seem to get a handle on their addictions.  And that is sad.  But it is sad in a way that is different than mourning someone who gets hit by a train or dies of cancer.

Yes, addiction is a disease.  But it has a component to it that involves free will and choice.  And as sad as all this is, there is a part of me that just wants to remind people of that.  She was a smart woman and she knew that any time she picked up a pill bottle, it could be the last time.

I would like to take this opportunity to say how much harder it is for those that I know and love who work through their addiction on a day-to-day basis and have been doing so for 30 days, for 4 years, for 20 years, for 36 years. To make the hard choice, the not-near-as-much-fun choice each and every day, THAT is what we should celebrate.

I don't want to say too much and break the anonymity of people I love, but this is what happens when you get cavalier with your sobriety, when you think you can handle life alone, without your support system and without giving all the power over to God.  You take some of that power back for yourself and you can have disastrous results.  We as mere mortal humans have to know our place in the scheme of things.

So if you are one of the many, many out there struggling on a daily or hourly basis with addiction, please know that I celebrate you.  I celebrate you every time you think of picking up the bottle/pills/needle/whatever and choose to call your sponsor, or ask for help, or pray, or go to a meeting instead.  It may not get easier but it will get to be more of a first response.

I am not at all sure that I have the kind of strength and resolve it takes to beat an addiction and keep working on sobriety, so I stand humbly in awe of those of you who do.

You inspire me.

You inspire me to be better.  To keep working on myself to be the best I can.  To keep working to be healthier, spiritually, mentally and physically.

And to the others who might be reading that are still struggling and wanting to make better, healthier choices for themselves before the next wrong decision could be the last decision, please know that it is never weak to ask for help and support.  It is the strongest thing you can do, to lift yourself up and say "I am worthy".  Please keep striving and asking and praying.  Minute by minute, if necessary.  You are worth it.