Taking Up Knitting

Relationships....what a tricky area that is!
Yesterday, I had to read my "life story" for my treatment group and then get some feedback from everyone.
It reads like a horror story-or a daytime soap opera. Drugs, alcohol, insanity, broken relationships-years of it!
The best piece of feedback I got was this: Quit living in the past and get out of your "comfort zone".
You see, my comfort zone is chaos. It is what I know-I know what it looks like and feels like and it does not scare me. It tires me, discourages me, but never scares me. Peace scares me.
What the hell do people do with peace? Sit around and knit??
I realize that any time I have gotten close to peace, I found a way to sabotage it. It is completely foreign and uncomfortable to me.
Maybe that is why the thought of going some place like Gaza does not scare me. I have had people question my sanity in wanting to go there. But why would a war torn area be scary? I've been battling on the inside for many, many years.
It is not that I wouldn't be nervous-but certainly not terrified to go there. I would do it in a heartbeat.
My husband also seems to be someone who takes comfort in chaos. He creates it just as much as I do. Put the two of us together and it is constant war, with only brief ceasefires.
The very sad thing is that our six year old seems to find this normal. Dear God....will he take this in to his relationships some day? Quite possibly, he will.
The time to change this for him is now. I am ready. I am just not sure his father is.
Recovery is not an easy road, by any means, and some relationships do not survive it. I know this. I am afraid of that, in a way. Maybe I am afraid there would finally be peace.
Maybe I need to take up knitting....

Trusting in Something Good

I have been clean and sober nearly four weeks now. This has been no easy task but it is well worth it.
I am still in outpatient treatment and I am going to Twelve Step meetings, as well.
For those not familiar with AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) or NA (Narcotics Anonymous), I will explain a bit about the Twelve Steps.
Let's just take the first three for now.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol(or mood altering substances) and that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him.

These are from the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous. All Twelve Step self-help programs are based on this set of steps.
However, the steps are suggested, never mandated. Well, the fact is that if you really want a solid recovery, you better do the steps! Any drunk or addict in recovery will tell you that!

I've never really had a problem with the first two steps. All I needed to do was look at the insanity in my using life. Maybe one day, I will tell you more of that. I already have a little bit(see my last post).
No, it has always been that third step that hangs me up. I have difficulty trusting that Power. Will it turn out to be a good thing if I let go of my own will? Am I sure I should let someone else run the show?
AA is not a religious program, by any means. No atheist could use it if that were true. Plenty of atheists work these steps just fine. One can rely on the power of the program itself-that alone can be your "Higher Power". AA also does not affiliate itself with any one religion or denomination, so it is all inclusive, for those who do believe in a god or gods.
As for me, I do believe in a god of some sort. I consider myself closer to Muslim than anything else, if you want to talk religion. But, I was raised a Christian. I do not discount all New Age spiritualism. I guess I am an odd bird!
The one thing I am growing to trust is that this Being wants my higher good. I believe God/Allah is positive and loving in nature. I believe "He" wants what is best for me, and to me, that starts with a clear mind, a sober and clean mind.
As for the difficulties, they are varied. I have chronic pain and fatigue, due to fibromyalgia. I have chronic depression that requires medication. I have a personality disorder that complicates my thoughts and emotions. I am fucked up! To keep everything in balance, to sort it all out, seems an overwhelming task at times. There are times-daily-that I want to throw in the towel and say "Screw this!" and just use or drink.
But, for me, this is simply no longer an option if I want to live. I will die if I go back down that road. Scarier still, I will rip like a tornado through the lives of those I love before I ever reach the grave!
No, this thing called recovery is my path now. This god, Allah, is who I must rely on. I have done it my way, by my own will. I mess it up every single time.
So, here I am, Lord. Take me as I am. Relieve me of the bondage of my own self-will. Help me, just for this one day, to trust that You are good, that You want your goodness for me. Help me to be honest with myself and others. Help me to do the "next right thing". Just for today.
Tomorrow, if it be Thy will for me to see it, I'll be back on my knees asking all this again. I'll be trusting in something good.

Not An Angel

Sometimes, I am not sure how much of myself to "put out there". It is always a risk, to let others see us as we really are. Yet, there is something therapeutic about about letting the light in, letting it illuminate those dark recesses within us...letting go of secret things. They say our secrets keep us sick. That may well be true.

I sat today with a man and began to let the sun in. Sitting across a desk from him, he typed the beginnings of this story in to his computer as I told him, "I am an addict. I need help."
Thus begins a journey, one I have been on before.
I first got sober was when I was nineteen years old.I had been drinking for a couple of years and it had steadily become more out of control. Finally, I knew-I just knew this was not normal. Social drinkers did not do the things I was doing. Social drinkers did not intend to have one beer and then drink a six-pack alone. Social drinkers did not think all day of getting off work so they could get hammered. Social drinkers could remember what they did the night before. I was not a social drinker!
I asked a counselor, "Do you think I'm an alcoholic?"
He replied, "If you think that you are, that's good enough for me."
I stayed sober for a while, then relapsed with pills. I was twenty when I had my first full blown blackout. I woke up with no recollection whatsoever how I got to bed the night before. It scared me, and I made the decision to go to AA.
A year later, without having taken a drink or drug, I was suicidal. What I did not realize was that I also had clinical depression. I was lying in bed one night, planning my own death. The next night I asked some friends for the help I needed and they drove me to a treatment center, after I had taken some pills. I woke up, barely able to remember signing myself in. I spent the next 30 days there and left, feeling I had everything under control.
That has been my worst problem for years-the illusion of control.
I "controlled" alcohol until it nearly killed me, "controlled" depression, narcotics, and now, amphetamines, to the very brink of complete insanity.
No-social drinkers and sane people do not overdose and awaken in the ICU on a ventilator, wishing they could still drink. Casual drug users do not lie in bed and pull their own hair out by the roots. But even more than that, those people can stop. I have not been able to stop for a very long time.

As they say, "this ain't my first rodeo". But, the ride gets more difficult every time I come out of the chute. I am truly afraid. I have a little boy who needs me. I have to survive this-how will anyone be able to explain it to him if I don't? Giving up is not an option. Suicide is not a thing I can do and complete insanity is not a place I can go.

So there it is, my friends- my soul and its struggle today. It may be a little while before I have the energy or ability to write again. I know what withdrawal is going to do to me. I know it may be weeks before I come out of the fog. Bear with me, please. With any luck, I will soon let more light in and feel less pain. Inshallah (God willing), I will be back.

She Talks To Angels-Counting Crowes

Stop the Blank Check to Israel

Stop the Blank Check to Israel

My dear friends,
I am going to speak very plainly here.Please hear me out! I have nothing against any religion or race of people. I have everything against the violation of human rights, by any government, anywhere in the world.
I speak out against my own government when it is doing something wrong. Why would I not hold the government of Israel accountable for their abuse of the Palestinians? To me, this is just basic.
Unfortunately, the American people have been sold a bill of goods, by our government, by the media and quite frankly, by many Christian churches, for decades. We have been told that Palestinians are violent, militant, Muslim extremists. That is the picture that has been painted for us and shoved down our throats.
We are told that Israel is victimized daily by rocket attacks and suicide bombers, bent on killing Jews at every opportunity. They only strike back in self-defense, right?
There was a time when I believed all that. Why wouldn't I? I'm told how America is a champion of human rights around the world. I hear that we have a free press that accurately reports world events. I saw what "Muslim extremists" did to us on September 11th. I have seen the video footage of the carnage brought on Israel by terrorists.
Well folks, let's remember that, in the words of Paul Harvey, there is "the rest of the story".
We are taught from grade school on about the Holocaust. We are never told about al-Nakba (the Catastrophe). We are not told about the 750,000 Palestinians who were forced from their land in the late 1940's. We are not shown what their refugee camps look like. We are not told that our F-16's and drones are killing children in Gaza. We are not shown settlers attacking Palestinians in their olive groves and farm fields, even attacking Palestinian children as they try to walk to segregated schools. We are not shown accurate maps of Palestinian land loss. We are not given accurate casualty counts. We are not told that Palestinian women are forced to give birth at military checkpoints and that some of them(and their babies) die there.
No-we are told to never forget the Holocaust. We are told about an Israeli child who has to sleep in a bomb shelter. We are told that in Operation Cast Lead(Dec. 2008-Jan. 2009), 13 Israelis were killed. The truth is that 2 of those people were civilians. On the Gaza end? Oh! Sorry-they forgot to mention that 1,400 people died there, 1,200 of whom were civilians. You see, they have no bomb shelters.
We are not told that a Palestinian cemetery was bulldozed over to make way for Israel's "Museum of Tolerance". The American media will not tell you about the Gaza fishermen who are routinely fired upon(some of them killed) by Israeli naval forces. No, you will hear only about Israel's navy intercepting aid ships that are going about helping people "unlawfully". You will not hear that the Gaza blockade itself violates international law. The media will not tell you that something as basic in America(and Israel) as a chemotherapy drug is not even available in Gaza.
No, what you will hear is how the Palestinians don't want peace. We are told they avoid negotiations. We are not told about the many thousands of Palestinian Christians, who suffer the same persecution that their Muslim brothers and sisters do. No, the greater church will not tell you that from their pulpit. We are, in short, fed one lie after another.
Frankly, I am tired of it.
I am weary of stupidity. I am fed up with people too lazy or hard headed(or hardhearted) to do a little research. I have grown very impatient(maybe it's my age) with people who have time to watch sixty minutes of media spin in the evening but tell me they have no time to look at a web link that will put them out of their comfort zone. You know what? Screw your comfort zone! Growth is not a comfortable thing, and sometimes the truth is not either.
I challenge you in the coming year to make the following resolution: Resolve to learn the truth about Palestine and Israel. Set aside your preconceptions and learn the facts. Start with the Blank Check campaign. Then, I would encourage you to Google the Amnesty International reports on the OPT(Occupied Palestinian Territories) and check out the reports on Gaza by the International Committee of the Red Cross. These are organizations with no "agenda" other than to report the truth and to improve the lives of all human beings.
Start there. Start today.