David,
That's from The Once and Future King, right? One of my favorite books! Haven't read it in decades, but loved it at the time. Can't say I've read any Deepak Chopra, though...I'm a little bit shallow, not verbally-oriented, and very scientific. I enjoy reading your posts because it challenges me mentally (and makes me laugh sometimes, too). Keep coming back!
Love, peace, and hugs,
Eddie

grey day today
 

:smurf:



actually eddie its from the way of the wizard. Mrs Jester got me some of his books on tape i listened to them each twice while i was driving to and from washington this last week ... to anyone reading these posts of mine ... i reccomend that you get at least 2 of depocks books and study them daily... though the words are the same in every book of the same title the way we all interpit what we read will be different .. and if we share our perspectives here it will become quite a resource of described feelings here... i dont dissagree that the 12 step program work books are our first line of defense against relapse and getting an understanding of ourselves as addicts at the same time we need to be looking into all the sources we can to gain awareness of ourselves.. breaking the supply chain of our drug of choice is only the begining .. all that emotional **** you were in denile of is coming for you like a freight train at full speed... lemmmeee tell you something else, all those people in our lives that we fffffckeed over while we were useing. well they are not the doctors we now need to help us cope with the real world as it has become from the way we trashed it .... thats right ... you might be able to quit your drug of choice but you cant quit on the life of lack of judgement you chose.. now theres a sobering thought..

i fight my real world closeing in on me with optimisim.. i am greatfull every day for the pain i endure ... i take comfort in that i have the chance to work through the hardship i once created so easily .. i greet each problem in my new sober day with the conviction to completely get it worked out to a good conclusion and if things dont look like their going my way or that the situation will at least break even for me i say in a clear voice ill get back to this in a bit .. i need to get my thoughts together just now ... and i go to the next situation not having given up on anything and looking foreward to having another chance to come out on top for me and my family.

also in the begining of identifying your addict ... you see the similarities in other people around you that you begin to dislike about yourself.its subtle at first thats when you are hoping that youre the only one in your clique that realizes that you are slowly begining to dislike little things about everyone youre around....................fast foreward to a later time in your recovery... for instance in my recovery in my relationship with my wife... the humoring that we use to do in awkward situations where we diddnt really give a **** about who or what was happening ...you know what i mean .. faking interest in someone elses drama..... meanwhile were stressed about our own ****... just trying to get to our safe area so we can get loaded and forget our ****...[life].. well guess what... when you do not have your mind in reality for a bunch of years and you are with someone who does .... guess what there humoring your addiction when they seem interested in you.. or whats going on around you.... secretly there just hoping you dont have a clue as to what there up to while youre getting loaded ... knowing youlll top out on your drug and sleep will eventually put you right where they need you to be so that they can start living their sober life... then one sunny fking day you all of a sudden just quit useing .... well guess what .. they now have to contend with the fact that you will now become needy as a frikin baby and thats gonna cut into their realiity... and brother if you think youre the only one thats gonna go through culture shock at the arrival of your sobriety youve got another thing coming..

the trick is to allow yourself the understanding that you created the rules by which the sober significant other has been playing by .. only you were all ficked up at the time so you dont remember all the dumb **** you did that cused all these rules to be in place that you no longer remember .... get angry and you loose......


theres a little more to it all than that however that should give you the gist of it it is an new version of the same old thing for all of us i am not alone in the awakening i kid myself not ... actually i kid myself 6 times .... heheh 5 boys 1 girl.


now i feel like whineing about how i work so frikin hard to do so much for so many that i deserve something for me .... welll it aint like that just found that out today... smart bump #69... for me its related to seeing those around me with personal freedoms i have not earned for myself yet.. and being jelous. side affect relationship wise is like this ... the expectations for being so efficient as to not waste a single grain of resources that it seems like im the only one gathering because i will do for those important to me first and i will take care of the things daily that need tending however when the time is open for me to do for myself ... i intend to do something close to a big deal... mabe even a big deal... so remember when putting things right after not having done enough for so long. dont rush through the first steps take your time but in a concienscious manner as to strengthen new habbits developing and to prevent you from having to come back to do a step a little better than it is allready done cause you now see the dirrection you going more clearly and the first few steps you took you skimpted on..





it is a grey day today for me ... but i feel love in my heart ... i am aware that there is pain there too ... i respect pain as an ingriedient in balance yet i refrain from making my life sour by ignoreing it.



yours daily

[JDG]Jester160

:Lmao

The Way of the Wizard, huh? Is that Chopra also? Who is the he whose books on tape you were mentioning? Have you ever read The Once and Future King? By T. H. White. It informed a lot of my beliefs with regards to society and power. :hail:

Thanks for sharing with us, :jester: !
Peace, love, and hugs,
Eddie

Jester,

Gosh - thank you for your insight. Seems to me you are really just explaining the coping mechanisms that are employed by those close to us to cope with us when using.

So when we stop!!!! These are no longer of use to the sober us! We forget sometimes the incredibly bad effects our addictions have on those that love(d) us. I dont have a problem with facing the realities of my past - but I dont like them.

I do believe that my past experience will eventually enrich me as I will in time truely learn from it. At Day 17 that is just not possible for Now but is a wish for the future.

I think the 12 Steps when properly done - do address these issues. I have seen those who have done them rigorously and use these as proof. The converse is also true - those who have not done the completely and honestly and with Step 1 firmly in place either go back to addiction or become dry drunks. Sober must come first......then the work on recovery can start. It is a voyage of true self exploration and many texts can help us with this and we must use that which opens our hearts and our minds and our eyes to the realities that I for one closed off for so very very long.......

I hope the grey day improved and that little pockets of blue emerged for you....

Luvs and Recovery Ama

2 days gone
 

:smurf:

i put alot into what i write here ... most of the time im just in the progress of discovering that which i write about ... in all fairness to you i did not read much of your thread before i started babbeling... im sory if it came across as condescending in any way.. as i said the 23rd of this month will be 60 days for me ... i am not in a position to tell people where they are in there recovery .. i dont even have a clue how to act yet as a sober person myself....i have so many emotions running wild right now its all i can do to remember how to react to getting a cup of coffee in the morning ... youre doing great on your own quitting... and youre asking for help when you need it as well ... i think thats gods will of us at this stage as we are new at sobriety.. i should just read what youre saying and try to be supportive in responding to you..i have a strong selfish side of me sober ..the years of abuse have made it comprehensive throught my life.. its the most foreward issue i keep focoused on every day.. because being selfish in many ways causes me to be hurtfull to other people in ways i dont see clearly yet...soo ..... i am genuinely hoping the best for you and am greatfull you share the tough time youre going through as well as your successes .. it is clear that you have deep rooted connections to your children and want the best for them... stay close to them and keep an open and warm heart be well ..

yours daily

[JDG]Jester

curses foiled again...
 

:jester:

why is denile soooo bad....... because we do and dont do important things because of it......looking at the path of my denile has let me see some of what my future is gonna be like...i am dissbelievung myself out of things i will need in the near future too help me connect the steps im taking now together in order to be successfull at what im trying to get done. and now the feelings i have created as well are overshadowing the things ive done i should be feeling good for... so yeah denile is bad...

:yup:
Denial denied me Sobriety for such a long, long time! Denial Anonymous could become its own 12 Step organization, but I'll stick with AA cuz it covers most my other issues when I honestly put efforts into the solution.

How are you doing today MightyJester :jester: ? Need someone to talk with livetime?

3 Legacy
:tri

Hey, David! Thanks for pointing out that we can be in denial not just about our problems, but about our positives as well. People don't think about that alot. So many deny themselves credit for their assets and accomplishments. I guess we all need to work on seeing ourselves clearly, the bad AND the good.

Merry Christmas,
Eddie

Good luck Jester! I'm not much further ahead than you in numbers of days-clean - not even double figures yet, but taking each day at a time. This is a great place for support IMHO.

things that make you go hmmmmm.
 

:smurf:


its christmas eve 2004. i have so many transformations to re-consider as this year closes... dont we all ... i am here to become many things most of them will be new to me i have been as you know an addict or lived in the environment of adicts ,alcoholics,abusive parents,youth group homes and even an oxford house,for the past 37 years.... i am one of the lucky ones in that i have not broken the law as a result of my years of abuse. i also have not taken out my aggressions on any one close to me physically.. ever..
as far as my kids go they have seen some level of the lifestyle of an alcoholic... and now like me they are seeing a family that makes mistakes together and then heals through them together... we are not perfect... i am only just sober completely since 10 23 04.. I, as Mrs Jester points out have all the necessary outlets around me from which i can make a very happy life for all of us. it is from that perspective that i try to maintain focous. i am full of fears and doubts as i begin my journey...

as a alcoholic i have said and behavied in some very negative ways .. i must make amends for those actions.. along the way of the path of recovery for myself and our family... i could birdwalk all ovet the different areas of my life that my addict has used or damaged to continue its survival.. i would prefer to just stay in the moments of today for now. at the end of the day i call them events ... in trying to look into my past and see the events there as simple matter of fact, this new term "event", helps.

from this age i percieve my past events sometimes not as they were then but how they would have felt to me if they had happened today. in some cases this is ok, i can dissmiss events rather quickly for nothing more than just being an event that catches my attention.
in other cases i get glimpses of the very first reccolections i have of abuse,manipulation,and seeing when i was taught things that were wrong in place of having been taught what was right...

i have times in my days when i am confronted by the people around me over things that dont make sense to them about me .. the people at work see different things than do the Mrs J and the kids... yet they question me about them just the same. sometimes for the life of me i say i dont know why i ddnt just take a few mins and think before i acted/re-acted. when later thinking over it i wonder why myself i ddnt do better or respond better. for the last 5 weeks i have tried to take time to think of what i might know that will help in the current event, i am taking steps only this past week to try to be aware of my feelings in the event and not respond based on what i percieve the event to be . for me letting some things develop on their own is better than helping them along. i guess some things just take the time they take.. others require some input and hands on effort in order to finish.


I accept that i am powerless over my addiction and that my life has become unmanageable.
and along with that the way i would try to fix my life without the support of recovering alcoholics and addicts like me will lead to failure and possibly a relapse that will end in my own death.

as i look to my past i remind myself of that... i have come to be what i am today as a result of the events i revisit that are my infancy to adult memories. it is so difficult for me to keep myself stationary in one aspect of recovery.. the first part is choosing not to use.. everything that happens after that i am trying not to tell myself that i am able to do all alone. reaching out for someone like me is tough though.. coming here allows me to express without judgment what im feeling, right or wrong, i get to have an individual voice of my own.. it is still a very chaotic time for me now. im on a rollercoaster emotionally and i have serious trust issues where the people around me are concerened.
i believe they want the best for me and my family ,, yet i have some events to own up to that are going to be hard to relive yet necessary to be known, the perspective that may come from sharing , to the people that want to help could be an asset for my recovery. also in order for me to get further along with my growing family i have to unblock myself to be a husband and father that is in touch with his family where they are in their lives. so this whole isolation thing ive lived by for so long has to end...

well im rambling again and wandering all over in my thoughts... yet 2005 is 5 days away and i will be trying this week to gain some pragmattic perspective of the change i have come to affect on my life... i hope to get back here often this week and allow myself some freedom to share some of the things i fear about myself and how i was as a useing addict.

if you that read this can say nothing in response to what i post, please just encourage me to keep trying to get it right one day at a time sober...ok.

yours daily
[JDG]Jester

Keep coming back Jester. I'll be looking forward to your posts. I've been following your recovery since you joined. Together we are strong through sharing our ES&H. Keep living one day at a time and continue to walk through your fears. If you continue to do so you will make it. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year...

Yes, that helps! Those "events" over which I feel such shame and guilt are things I DID, not things I still do or who I AM today. They weren't even who I WAS. They were behaviors brought about by my disease. Thanks for the fresh perspective, yet again, Jester!

Hang in there, honey, keep posting, and have a Merry Christmas!
Peace, love, hugs, and joy,
Eddie

Jester - long time no see!

Love you dude. Hang in there!

Love,

Ang

the MightyJester afraid ???
 

:jester:


yeah its true.... they say the cheater is the acuser... well i got a news flash for you.


some other things that lead to cheating might also be ... a jelous guy freind of yours telling lies to your girl to get her to cheat...or you might be an ******* that deserves to have your girl cheat on you .... or you might be seperated from your girl for say 11 mos one year in the middle of your ten year relationship, she might seek out other guys that show interest in her and ..... ya see the thing is im all three of those .

The Mrs says she never cheated on me... ok pragmattically we can look at this two ways. she either told me in double meaning words what she was doing at the time ... or she has a different value of the time we were seperated than i do... of the latter of the two though i was talking to her daily and she was reassureing me that there was no other people in her life but me... her love for me was not broken and our bond is as it was at the end of our first year. in spite of her reassurances that she has been faithfull . all of the parts of a disfunctional relationship were there accept for and get this the one part that all the others lead up to?????. so im to believe that she is one of the .00000000001 % of people in the situation we were in that stays faithfull....... ok then

its on me . right . for that to be true she becomes a bystander to my trying to cope with my feelings of lack of trust with her... and and i have to now internalize my focous to determine why it is that im accusitory twards her when by her word she is clearly innocent.


i am not ready to accept that as of yet. to do so may close a door for her in the future to say .. ok .. heres what happened ... now what.

you might say jester why stay if you dont trust her.. ok ...

if you lived 10 years of your life with someone and there was a possibility that they were dissloyal would you want to know when it began.. how many years of my life do i have to go back to and ....validate hunches i ignored.. or re-evaluate situations that looked one way yet we talked about them till i took her word that it was just a missunderstanding.... i have to be in a state of re-evaluation as of now where my recovery is concerned... if the only place the answers exist for me where my addiction is concerned is my life ive lived. then wont the same be true if today i am jelous controlling accusitory....ect... when it comes to her... and since those traits are conscidered traits of another desiese that i have as well ... in order for me to confront that wont i need to apply the same stepwork in tracing down the begining of it..... you tell me or dont tell me what i am missing here... this delimna is a current event that has an open timeline backwards for 10 years of my life, today i am unable to give fully of myself to someone that i think is seeing someone else.

because im not sure i look after my family, that she is a part of, as best as i can....minus the uninterrupted feelings of endurement that build over time for the one you love and trust. the traits present in my thoughts that shape my behaviour are damaging both of us and our kids daily. it is my first priority the very next business day to call for counciling. to set the soonest app with that dr and start hashing this out in his/her office. it would seem that dec 27th will be the first day...though with xmas and new years as they are i may end up starting my search the 2nd of jan...

we cant live with this issue anymore.. that has become a fact. i have to daily tell myself to leave the topic alone.. that every day of these next 3 days we are allready at the conclusion that therapy or seperation is where we are at..... to complicate matters i just found out tonite that as soon as Jan 1st i could be in another state working... the work weeks before we come home are 4 weeks on 4 days off. at that point i will be in therapy in another state.....and at the conclusion of the job there i will have to complete my therapy here in my home state.


there are too sides to this event... what will not be changed by hearing the whole event from both of us i believe are these and more....
1] who we were before we connected..
2]what we did that was unhealthy while we were together.
3]our reasons individually today for the positions from which we defend ourselves.
4] our individual perspectives today whatever they may be of our future as we see ourselves remaining a couple and parents to our children.
5] our innability to seperate.....mutually we choose to stay together in the belief that we were ment to be a part of something great, that as far back as we can remember we have allways known that there was something significant we were going to do together.
6] our children are our #1 priority, as we can see from the behaviours they display, they are gifted children.. they opperate on an advanced level mentally in all areas of life.. and the Mrs and I feel like seperating from eachother will not open any new doors for them. rather it may put them at risk of having setbacks due to their own interpetation and reaction to what they percieve is happening. true though staying together could do the same damage or worse. and so on and so on.....

the Mrs says that im one of the people out there that confuse love with obsession. i agree with her to a point.... that being i was as most men, feeling inferior. which caused me to be jelous which lead to me being controlling which accomidated boundry crossing and eventually led to me just accuseing her outright.

now their is broken trust, hurt feelings and insecurity, where there should only be love....... i treat her as someone i need to be suspicious of all the time. i hold back on many levels throughout our relationship denying her the uncompramised committment i seek from her. and attacking her for not being there for me the way i think she would be if she were not cheating on me or trying to keep from me that she has cheated in the past.

to everyones suprise..... she stands by my side to this day. convinced that my recovery and professional help will over time break these convictions i hold of her...
she has a clear line of sight on who i am. she can tell when i say something negative in meaning twards her, and she quickly replies knock that **** off. and like i said earlyer we are at a fork in the road help myself and get well and not attack her ...or leave..

in many ways this is an attack on her yet again, i am selfish thinking that im the victom here....alot has happened that i want answers to.
a 3 year period of my life was damaged severely. the extent to which the damage went because of the events particulars can eliminate 50% of the entire responsibility for its having happened.

i can tell my part in it as clearly and as complete as possible. i can say i own that, noone else. what i want from her is her best attempt at telling her part. not the same explination in response to my asking her what she was doing "it was not me in your delusions".


very few people would suggest that were someone to have cheated telling of it will do anyone any good, i would like to offer this post as proof to the contrary......had i been told every detail as it happened back then i would have gotten the hell away from there. not held onto beliefs that were in fact based on lies.

there is some measure of my illness as this post is conclusive to at least the fact that i obbsess over her actions and life rather than focous on living mine.

this is truely a fuckkkked up place to be spiritually for me.

this is a part of me i have kept inside tooo long... so im putting it out here tonite, i wont be able to deny the need for getting professional help now. and mabe the Mrs will feel better not being the only one that knows this about me.

Yours daily
[JDG]Jester

I don't know what to say to this, David, except that I wouldn't stick around to be accused and controlled anymore. I went through the jealousy thing with my first husband and I look back and consider that a mistake. Then again, there were no children involved. I think counseling is an excellent idea, though. I wish you and your family the best!

Love and hugs,
Eddie

P.S. You might want to look at the "I'm killing my relationship with jealousy" thread on the Mental Health forum, too.

thinking that saying youll do it means you will..
 

:jester:


i have been in crisis for 5 days now....i have triggers that i knw and some of them were getting tweaked on last week....now this is no new thing for anyone taking their recovery serious....for me though i have a lethal combination mental process hypersensetivity and perception...

i do not only recall what you said i recall how you felt when you said it your intentions at the time and what you actually did when you thought noone was looking. then i calculate the difference between them and predict how you will lie too me in the future ... when i focous on the importance of the information in the conversations that pertain to how i make descisions i am 100% paying attention.... i have re told conversations that people have had with me when i repeat it so clearly they dont remember when im vauge and leave it open to loosely be manipulated they play along... not all people are like that... i pay attention to the ones that are...

so imagine me in a state of depression talking on the phone with the Mrs, and im listening to her every word grasping for every shredd of info that will tell me that she does not think im still too sick to live with or spend time with. and i hear so intently what she is saying.. that later on when i repeat it she tells me we probbaly did not even talk at all or about that at all since she would never have said anything like that at all...so where the fuilck did my fkkkking memories of the phonecall come from...


i only get suspicious when im at risk of being hurt in a few ways out of the millions that are possible... rejection,humiliation,vengefull wrongdoing...

those aspects of psycology are the most fearfull to me... my survivor is accute tuned to whats going on around me because im hypersensetive to these types of emotions in people ..... following me soo far??? durring the seperation from the mrs, i was deeply distressed and useing meth... i was holding a job down, trying to do the basics i needed to do for physical survival on limited creature comforts. my only source of those three aspects were raidiating from every form of contact with the mrs. no other source in my life had any of these aspects in play.....


i begged her for mercy... i mean begged her...... pleaded to her to tell me i was not the only one and i will be silent in her life less for the kids needs and only that....she chose to reassure me that we were fine... i was sick ... and the path we were on was that of me getting help and her getting MORE healthy than she was. seeing as how she was in a live in program for wemen...she never used drugs and still dsnt so it was not from a standpoint of recovery for jen as an addict...rather recovery from living with an addict me.... i was holding onto this shredd of hope like it was the last lit piece of wood on the planet earth......so i would practice self-denile to prevent my contact with the kids and the mrs from stopping...

ok now lets apply her theroy of what i was doing to what ive said so far..

youre having delusions ...its all in your head.... i had beensober from meth for 5 months when this was her primary response to every attempt i took to talk to her about what had happened in my perception over a specific period of time...of which a person that uses no substances should be able to recall even more details of memories past than...an addict like me...

i am not vying for your support here ...the events are what they are for me .... i am alone with them till my therapy starts and i will be told to live and let live those days are gone...

what im carefull about is this.. leting out too much about what i percieve around me ... at any given time people are placing their own sets of values on what the truth is to the manipulation it ppertains to at the time....or as most people like to say, conversation theyre having with so n so. me i just keep my mouth shut... most of the time anyway.....

and here today i am posting over the same issues i carry with me moment to moment...i have one returned call from a psychotherapist...and im expecting 3 more to call me back too...like i said though the holidays at the end of the year are poorly timed for my needs....which are crisis status i say...

anyway im gonna go for now ...sober ... hurting and wondering what to do till the medicine the internal Dr. in me has given me this day will kick in.

yours daily
[JDG]Jester

Five Minutes At A Time......
 

STILL HERE...STILL SOBER.....FIVE MINUTES AT A TIME...

HANG IN THERE.....LIFE IS OKAY WITHOUT THE HAZY STUPOR....

I DO NOT LIKE "FEELING" ALL THE EMOTIONS, BUT I HAVE TO WALK THROUGH IT TO GET OVER IT!!!

:slomo:

HAPPY "SOBER" NEW YEAR!

Wow, I'm here today...
 

Been interesting looking at the various postings much of this afternoon, I especially appreciate those in various locations by Pernell Johnson...

I am an alcoholic and need God's hand to lay a miracle on me today. I have been dry since Chirstmas went to hell about 10pm Dec 25th and my family (unknowingly to them) performed a virtual intervention on me.

I have been very happily married for 28 years, have two great successful adult sons. Notwithstanding that, I have so many excuses for drinking, so many "valid" reasons, that no "sane" person would ever objact...Unless they know the definition of "alcoholic". I've long known it. Concerned about what impression I was making on my boys, I went to AA 13 years ago for about 6 months and stayed dry without any counseling for 4 years. It was a miracle from God, He took away my desire to drink as I had prayed He would.

Then 9 years ago I started having one "Good" beer now & then. Well, you know the story...Lately I've waited for my wife to leave the room to sneak another double of Crown, so she wouldn't know.

So, it came down to having the family Christmas ruined by my drinking. Oh, there were other contributing factors, one of them my best excuse the past few years to drink - the new daughter in law who wants to have me killed. But it still wouldn't have gone so bad if I had been sober.

So here I am, thank God my loving wife stands beside me as I begin again a sober life. I need to stay sober to maintain a relationship with my sons...Please God, help me daily to do so. You have worked miracles in my life before, I need one again here. Please forgive me for identifying my higher power if God is not yours...

I'll be back, thank you for being here...

together4ever,

Welcome to SR, and
Congrats on getting sober!

Are you going back to AA?
Peace, love, and hugs,
Eddie

elvisbabygirl,
Happy Sober New Year to you, too!

So, David, you saw a doctor yesterday? What'd he put you on, if I may ask? Hope you are feeling some better today!

Love and stuff,
Eddie