What Winners Do

Separated from my husband and without my kid on the weekends can leave me with a lot of down time. I try and fill that time with something constructive like working. But this weekend I find myself with nothing but time.

Throw in the fact that yesterday was Valentine’s Day and that everyone I usually hang with has someone that they wanted to spend that Valentine’s Day with… I was feeling a little lonely.

Well if you’re feeling lonely you reach out to people right? Try to make connections? Well, I still have that little voice inside of me that tells me to do exactly the opposite. Hide, don’t let anyone know how you’re feeling, suck it up. Why do I do that? Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time we all struggle right? So what am I struggling with at the moment? Patience. Actually a lack of patience better describes it.

There are times when I go along feeling pretty centered. Unshakable even. Right now? Not so much. I’m flying off the handle more often than I would like.

So how do you deal with a lack of patience? No really, I’m asking. So far… I’m not dealing so well. I find myself shaking my head a lot and saying “I can’t, I just fucking can’t”. Well that’s no way to deal right.

But then you know, you think of some of the things that you’ve learned in recovery. Usually about this time a nice recovery catch phrase fits nicely. Something like… “this too shall pass”. You just kind of hang on and ride it out.

So that’s where I am at right now… just trying to hang on and ride it out. I’ll let you know how that works out for me

There was a time when my way of making myself feel better involved numbing myself… usually into oblivion. That was pretty much my go to answer for every situation that I encountered that made me feel… well just feel.

It’s been a long time since I have used drugs to change the way I was feeling, 2 years this coming Monday as a matter of fact. In this time, I have still had all the same things that life throws at you, I’ve just avoided using to change the way I feel. But when you are having feels of doubt, feelings of pain, anger, sadness… what do you do to make yourself feel better? Read the rest of this entry »

Not much today. I feel like today is one of those days where I just need to keep myself busy. I’ve allowed myself to spend a lot of time over the past few days thinking about my life and my problems. Today… I’m going to just try to smile today. I think that’s a pretty good goal to sneak in every once in a while don’t you?

Sometimes in life we don’t handle situations in the best way possible. Sure, we may work on handling things as they come but that doesn’t ensure that how we handle things is always going to be the right way.

I have made a particularly big mess of things in my life lately. While I think it’s important for people to practice taking responsibility for their choices, as difficult as that may be, I think it is also very important to remember that none of us are perfect and if in hind site you see that you haven’t handled a situation in the best possible way… you need to be forgiving with yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

Early in recovery I learned that is very important to handle things as they come up. What does this mean? It means not putting off any problem just because I feel like I can’t deal with it at the moment. It means facing problems head on. It means not saying, I’ll do it tomorrow… cause we all know that aint happening :).

Somehow I let this practice slip to the wayside for a while. The result? I felt overwhelmed with problems and situations that I had left unaddressed. What does this overwhelmed feeling lead to? It leads to a sense of dread over the future. Things left unaddressed don’t just go away. Small problems get bigger and bigger until they explode. Then you’re left to pick up the pieces. Not a great way to live. Read the rest of this entry »

Our choices in life, good or bad, are just that… ours. Because of that, we need to take responsibility for our choices. What may seem like a poor choice to one person may make complete sense to another. None of us know exactly how life is going to play out so all we can do is make choices in life that are based on self honesty.

I talked recently about staying honest with myself and how for a long time I had been just going with the flow to avoid hurting anyone close to me. Thankfully I realized that no one can go on like that forever. It was a tough and painful lesson to learn but I’m so fortunate to have learned it. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a tendency to want tell people what they want to hear. Not only will I just tell someone what they want to hear but I’ll go so far as to cover up my true feelings in order to feel the way someone else wants me to feel. What the hell is that?

I don’t know when I started doing this or why I started doing this but I do know that I’m going to STOP doing this. It’s making me pretty miserable. And for what? Why would I choose to do this to myself? I have no answer to that.

I think a lot of people try to keep things on an even keel in their life. That could be where this whole thing originated in myself. I felt like I had fucked up so many things for so many people for so long that I just try to make everyone happy now. It’s sounds pretty ridiculous when I see it written down. Read the rest of this entry »

Overwhelmed? How does one get overwhelmed when they are living life Twenty-four hours at a time? Oh right… I haven’t been too good at that lately.

What I have been good at is dreading what I’m going to have to go through in the very near future. This is pretty asinine when you think about it because all of this dread is over what I think my near future is going to be like. I have no idea for sure what these next few weeks or month will bring and yet here I am letting myself dwell on “what ifs”.

I guess I gotta get back to basics right? I have spent a lot of time learning to hang in there and I need to start applying what I have learned to my current situation. As in right now, right this moment.

So, no more dreading tomorrow. I need to stay in the day, or the moment really. I need to remember the quote that used to get me by:

“Today, well lived, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope”.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Read the rest of this entry »

For anyone who has kept up with this site you are familiar with the fact that I have a younger brother who struggles with an Oxycontin addiction just like his big sis. I have told you about how it’s torture for a recovering addict to watch an active addict.

The helplessness you feel when you are on the sidelines of someone else’s addiction can be staggering. I only know how to deal with my own addiction… not anyone else’s. But as it turns out, you have no choice. It is what it is.

It seems that my brother, who went back into a Suboxone program in November, has not been very successful in his recovery. How do I know, you ask? Well it became pretty clear when he called my father this afternoon from a police station after being arrested. At this very moment in time I can’t tell you exactly what he is being charged with but… I think I can make an educated guess. Read the rest of this entry »