Thanks for input. I really find that by concentrating on the steps and trying to work them into my life, life seems to get better--I seem to get happier and I am finding even more so now that those steps are there to benefit me just as much now when I no longer worry so much about 'the alcoholic' as when I was living, or trying to live, with him.
It is supportive to read that for others this is the same. For now, I have tried each morning and night this week to give myself some time and have been thinking more along the lines of the steps during different points in the day and I am noticing a huge improvement in the way I am thinking even with just these few days.
I was the person who came into the doors of Alanon, much like alot of people, when crisis had hit....I was in a relationship with an alcoholic and wondering if this was all that life had to offer. Then after I gained enough courage through the program to send him packing, I slowly went to less meetings and eventually stopped for a while. Untill I found myself back at the beginning of the cycle, dating yet another alcoholic. This was to become sort of a cycle....and each time things within the cycle got that little bit worse.
So I took a break from relationships, kept trying to go to meetings but found that the job I had taken on didn't really allow that to happen. So here I am again, and this time there is no alcoholic I am dating, no huge danger signs that I can see headed down on that score and yet....still I was reverting back to old behaviors. Kids couldn't seem to do anything right, I couldn't seem to do anything right, feeling like 'everyones against me' at work and just general stuff like that.
I am dating again. This time he's not an alcoholic in or out of recovery, but he is a person who has worked miracles with a weight-loss program, losing something like 165lbs' in the last year I have known him. And you know what? Yup....I find myself getting all tied up in knots....worrying not so much about alcohol....now its turned to food.
He is on this strict program and thing is....I am one of those people who forget to eat, eat gigantic amounts of food when I do eat....and if anything I have to worry about not eating enough, not the opposite. And yet, I find myself afraid to mention food in general to this guy in case I 'set him off' and he stops his program because of something I said. And its ridiculous. One of my biggest enjoyments in life is cooking and baking and here I am scared to tell him when something I made is a success (you know, the kind of dinner the kids say mmmmmm and want more off--and its NOT Kd and hotdogs)..... He doesn't drink, but goes out on Fridays to a gaming thing.....and on those nights I revert strangely back to thoughts and feelings based on....'there see? HE's off out...I'm stuck in here.......yada yada....." and I caught
myself doing this last week and just shook my head.
Time for a meeting......time to go back. I am happy that I came to Alanon.....that there is a program out there for people like me who without constant reassurance and reminders can get so wrapped up in worry and old mind sets that life can get pretty hard very quickly.