** ** H u g s t o y o u a l l ! } }
Your prayers and your light beams and your warm kind words of encouragement have made my day. I felt the light and the prayers and they were active in me and [I saw] in him yesterday.
A peace was over me yesterday as it is now. I feel so much love and warmth and I have so much gratitude for where I am today. I appreciate, Ann, the Melodie Beattie passage.
[That, truly, was a Spirit thing as the VERY first time I was glancing through a friends - before I possessed one via my sponsor - it was last month or so, THAT passage was the one I remember reading FIRST ever. You posting that reminded me of when I first read it and told my self to remember that for when things got tough. I am looking at when you posted that and a couple hours earlier I'd found the September 11 reading in the same book.]
I am going to type it our here and it's gonna take a long time but I am going to do it because it really made so much sense to me and it put things in perspective for me and helped me to realize this path has been trudged before....that I am not alone. I hope it can help anyone else who may read it...for now or for future...and can serve as a reminder for me for when I need to read it again. It's funny how I found it...I was just glancing through looking for something to speak to me.
Conflict and Detachment
In a relationship, there are those wonderful times when things go smoothly for both people, and neither person needs to focus too heavily on the concept of detachment. But there are those challenging times when one person is in crisis or changing - and we need to detach.
Then there are stressful cycles when both people in a relationship are in the midst of dealing with intense issues. Both are needy and neither has anything to give.
These are the times when detachment and taking care of ourselves are difficult.
It is helpful, in these moments, to identify the problem. Both people are in the midst of dealing and healing. Neither has much to give, at least at the moment. And both are feeling particularly needy.
That is the problem.
What is the solution?
There may not be a perfect solution. Detachment is still the key, but that can be difficult when we need support ourselves. In fact, the other person may be asking for support rather than offering it.
We can still work toward detachment. We can still work through our feelings. We can accept this as a temporary cycle in the relationship, and stop looking to the other person for something he or she cannot give at the moment
We can stop expecting ourselves to give at the moment as well.
Communication helps. Identifying the problem and talking about it without blame or shame is a start. Figuring out alternative support systems, or ways to get our needs met, helps.
We are still responsible for taking care of ourselves - even when we are in the best of relationships. We can reasonably expect conflicts of need and the clashing of issues to occur in the most loving, healthy relationships.
It is one of the cycles of love, friendship, and family.
If it is a healthy relationship, the crisis will not go on endlessly. We will regain our balance. The other person will too. We can stop making ourselves so crazy by looking for the other person to be balanced when he or she isn't.
Talk things out. Work things out. Keep our expectations of ourselves, other people, and our relationships healthy and reasonable.
A good relationship will be able to sustain and survive low points. Sometimes we need them, so we can both grow and learn separately.
Sometimes, people who are usually there for us cannot be there for us. We can find another way to take care of ourselves.
Today, I will remember that my best relationships have low points. If the low point is the norm, I may want to consider the desirability of the relationship. If the low point is a temporary cycle, I will practice understanding for myself and the other person. God, help me remember that the help and support I want and need does not come in the form of only one person. Help me be open to healthy options for taking care of myself, if my normal support system is not avaliable.
We're speaking with each other again but I'd just as soon blink my eyes like Jeannie and be moved out. He deserves the victimized drinking sick girl he got when he first met me....he deserves her in all of his glory but I am not her. I am currently seeing that I do not desire this relationship. I know that something has changed because normally I would be a WRECK when we fight or go days without speaking. Last week we went days and I enjoyed it.
[I feel less lonely when we don't speak if that makes sense.] This past fight, I was about as emotionally unperturbed as I could be. I did raise my voice expressing the very importance of him getting away from me. I remember that I didn't enjoy looking at him.
I wonder if I have detached so much I just don't care? No...But he's not the man I thought he was. Do you know there was a time in my life I thought he was the most well-adjusted human being I'd ever known? That's how sick I was....still judging the outsides/the words as the truth; ignoring the history and actions and free clues I'd gotten in the beginning that only today I have recognized as clues.
The veil to mine eyes has been lifted and until I gain my footing I am sure I will still be wrestling to some degree. My sponsor said last night, "What are you going to do?' I told her I didn't know and that it wasn't important. Before I would have gotten drunk and stayed there until I felt "okay" enough to *do something* but the time never came because I couldn't get sober long enough to actuate anything. THIS time I will not concentrate on *what I am going to do* because I am doing it. On a day by day basis I am present, in the hear and now. I will not jeapordize my sobriety or my serenity in freaking out and trying to control the minutiae in trying to decide what it is I need to do. I am doing what I need to do right now, as my heart beats.
In half an hour I'll be getting ready to go to the doctor. I haven't been feeling well, a lymph node is swollen, I was in bed with fever yesterday - all day mostly and Thursday night I managed to get punctured by the spiny column of a shellacked [sp?] fish in my arm and want to make sure I don't need a tetanus or whatever. It was dusty -means dust mites - ewwWW!- and the puncturing to my bone is not in compliance with my fear of germs. I have a vision of the mites gnawing on my arm bone.
Thank you all for your encouragement and support. It means the world.
Love, Digits