hey, that's my bad mood, give it back

i was recently in a bad mood. just your average, run of the mill, not every day is great, bad mood. and my husband was trying to take it over.

this is one of the great new lessons i have learned since i started going to al-anon and recognizing my codependence: i don't own your emotions and you don't own mine. now, healthy people may think that's nuts. but i was tangled. i had no idea where my emotions ended and my alcoholic husband's emotions began. after years of taking on his problems, moods, issues, and making them mine, and trying to fix them, or enable them, or avoid them, or all the other crazy controlling things i was doing, i lost me. i didn't see it. but i was all tangled up. my emotions were his. my moods were his. everything was a mess.

like a unsolved rubik's cube.

all messed up.

no clarity. no consistency.

just one big mess.

so i have this vision. this idea as i am thinking about the steps and my Higher Power and boundaries and emotions and all this and i get it.

this analogy. our emotions are like rubik's cubes.

bear with me here. it makes sense in a bit. this is sort of like a stream of consciousness thing, and i am getting it out as best i can.

so we all start with one. a nice, clear, cube. all the colors to their own sides. maybe white is for peace and serenity. maybe red is love. and green is gratitude. and blue is happiness and joy and yellow is energy and enthusiasm and orange is free thought and forgiveness. and we keep our cube on a little shelf. and it is ours. and we know just where it is. and sometimes, life gets crazy, and we take it off the shelf and we start playing with these emotions, and just a few turns of the cube and we don't have solid colors anymore, and we see sides that represent anger or frustration, guilt and pity, or depression or loss of control. and healthy people see this, see what they are doing, and STOP. they look at their cube. sometimes they see the solution right away and fix it, and place it back on the shelf. other times they may set it down, still a bit messy, and come back to it later with a clear head and solve it. other times, they see that the solution isn't clear, and they need help. they call on their Higher Power, and ask for guidance. sometimes all that is need is a suggestion from HP. "turn it twice on that side, and now once on the other. there you go. you got it now. and remember i'm here anytime you need." or sometimes, they just say "hey HP, seems i've gotten this a bit messy, i am just going to hand it over to you, okay?" and HP takes it and turns and twists, and then it's all fixed. sometimes it takes awhile, but the healthy person has faith and knows that in time, HP will restore it.

okay, you with me so far? now, here is where things get crazy.

the unhealthy person. the codependent person. we have our cube. and maybe, just maybe, there was a time in our life we handled it with the same love and respect that the healthy person does. maybe not. maybe we can't remember.

and where the insanity starts is hard to identify. but it starts somewhere. maybe we see someone, an alcoholic perhaps, our loved one, fiddling and twisting and making a big mess out of their cube. and we just know that they are only going to make it worse. "geez. would you give me that please. i can FIX it." and maybe they hand it over willingly, or maybe we tug a bit, and convince them that we CAN fix it. or maybe, they were drunk and left their cube outside, or threw it away, or whatever. so we feel we need to step in and take the cube.

so now we have their cube. and we are turning and twisting and maybe, just maybe, we get one clear side, or a few lines look good, or whatever, and we hand it back, a bit better, and then that is just the beginning.

now we, little by little, become obsessed with their cube. we see them messing it up again, and we grab it and start working on it. and we may think we ask our HP to help with this cube, that isn't ours, and we don't hear it when HP says, " i can only help YOU with YOUR cube" because we are so distracted and tangled and caught up in fixing this cube, that isn't ours. and so what is happening to our cube? the one we have been neglecting? maybe the alcoholic saw it sitting on our shelf. ignored. and we were so busy with theirs, they said, hey, what the heck, i'll mess with this one a bit. or maybe we were getting frustrated with them asking for their cube back, and we were soooooo close to fixing it, we turned and said "here, have mine for a bit. i've almost got yours figured out." woah! what is going on here? this is getting really messy.

have you ever had two rubik's cubes at the same time. a mess. and being passed around? after a few minutes you don't know which one is which. they are both a mess. so you start tossing them back and forth, convinced you can solve them, fix them. sometimes you have both. sometimes the alcoholic has both. imagine if he has both at the same time and he's drunk. crap. then you have to go get them. take over. start trying to solve them and fix them and .............

never gonna work. never gonna get better like this.

stop.

"i need MY cube back please." if you sit with them for a bit, and start listening to your HP, you begin to FEEL which one is yours again. you may have lost that for a long time, but the heart always knows. so you get your cube back. and now they have theirs.

hmmmm. okay. so once everyone has their own cube again, we have to relearn how to handle it. how to show it love and respect. and that in order to get it solved, we can't do it on our own. we need our HP. and we should only be handling our own cube. no one else's. this can be hard to remember. and just because we may start to get this doesn't mean the alcoholic will. maybe they are going to get mad because they want our cube back, or don't like the responsibility of taking care of their own cube. they don't know how to as much as we don't. but we can't do it for them. and we can't let them mess with our cube either. to each his own. and his own HP.

so now i get this. i recently got my cube back. and it's still a mess. i've been playing with it. it was gone for so long, i am becoming familiar with it again. it has a few scratches and nicks that i don't remember being there. it has been out of my care for far too long. and the other day, i was getting frustrated with my cube, and my husband saw this. and reached out to take it from me. and i almost let him. then i stopped. just like a healthy person (yeah!!!) and said, "no. this is mine. you don't own it. you don't own my emotions. i'm working on this. you tend to yours, okay?"

wow. and just like that, he let go. a revelation for him too.

we all OWN our OWN emotions.

now that i get this. now that i have my emotions back. my cube. where do i go from here?

i know, step 3. call in HP. this is where i am stuck. i got step 1. way unmanageable cube, and i am recognizing i am so powerless over everyone else's cube, and now i see i am powerless over mine as well. and step 2, i am coming to believe that i can't fix mine on my own and that i want it restored. that my HP will restore it, and me to sanity. to nice solid sides. (even as i am typing this is sinking in so much more) i need my HP.

that's it though. my being stuck. it has been so long. i don't even know what my HP is anymore. what this means to me. so many ideas about God and spirit and faith. old and new. and now, i don't quite know what i believe or where to place my faith or how to do this.

do i just set it on the shelf and say, "listen HP, i'm turning this over to you. i can't fix it. i know i have been gone for a long time. and i know i am not even sure how to believe in you, but here. it's all i have right now. it's a step. i am letting go. i am letting God."

can that really be it?

step out in faith, child.
just let go.

we are all human beings

resentments. and forgiveness. the universe keeps dropping this in my lap this week. meetings. blogs. talking with friends.

my regular tuesday meeting was really good this week. we read aloud from "how al-anon works" on detachment and forgiveness. i haven't read this book yet, so it was a great passage to hear. chapter 11 i think. there was a lot of good food for thought in that passage.

i heard a story this week. an analogy. someone was taking time for themselves, relaxing of sorts, and then HP comes and gives this image to think about. a petri dish. really huge petri dish. with nasty green colored ink in it. and they are standing in this, the alcoholic and in laws and family are all miniature people in this huge petri dish, standing in this green ink (which was described as old anger). and they look around, at the people they are most upset with, in laws in particular, and then a revelation. that we are all human beings, all together, standing in this disease of alcoholism. we all deal with it as best we can. we need to forgive each other.

i am really mad at my mother in law. i had been ignoring how mad i was at my mother in law. until i sat and listened to someone else talk about this. this analogy of this big petri dish allowed me to see my mother in law as human. a person in pain too. she is dealing with alcoholism too. her husband. her children. and i am mad at her for not being there for me. i feel she let me down, and i resent that. but she is suffering too. i was failing to see that before. i was so caught up in my anger at her, that i failed to see that she is affected by the disease as well.

i went to her, after my husband kicked me out of our room, before my leg broke. i was at my wits end. asking her for help. i had never done this. i cried and told her how bad things were and how bad the drinking was and how worried i was about her son, my husband. and she said, "if i knew how to help him i would have done it a long time ago." and then a few days later when blood work came back from the doc letting us know that my husband's liver was doing bad and triglycerides were through the roof, and he was uncaring and saying "what do i have to live for anyway" and i'm thinking "your kid, your kid, your kid you big dummy" and i call her and she says she can't do anything and i say, "well he's your son and he's dying, thought you would want to know" and i hang up and feel so alone and i am so mad that the only time in 13 years i have ever gone to her for help she wasn't there for me and i haven't talked to her since. that was september.

man, i gotta let this go! she is a person too, in this disease. she has her own pain and sense of loss and powerlessness and i am mad at her? jeez, my views have been so skewed. resentment and anger really cloud your vision. she has been dealing with my husband's alcoholism for 20 years. i have only been dealing with it for 13. and she has her husband and her other kids too that are all alchoholics. the disease is everywhere. and she hasn't faced it yet. she doesn't see how affected she is. she is lost and hurting and i was mad at her? now i am realizing that i wasn't mad at HER, i was mad that trying to talk to her was showing me that i was powerless, and i did not want to hear that. i wanted to fix all this. that was the beginning of my realizing my life was unmanageable.

so i have to let this anger go. this resentment go. it is time to forgive. it isn't doing me any good. shoot. i am realizing that i have a lot of people to do this with. man oh man. i have spent so much of my life running around frantic trying to fix things and avoid confrontation that i just kept pushing my anger and resentments down. i am mad at me, my husband, my parents, his parents, his friends. wow, i have a lot of work to do now. this is good though. face this stuff. dig through it. look at it. then let it go. forgive and be free.

let go and let god. looks like i'm beginning grasping step 2. "came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." i am believing that i really can't do all this on my own. i am powerless. i get that. and we are all in this together. so i believe i need a power greater than me to get to sanity. but how? how do i do that?

step 3, here i come.

toothpick fences

this is from storypeople, the brilliant world of stories from Brian Andreas. i get a "story of the day" email. his books and art are awesome. thought provoking. little bits of soul. i love it. this one, "toothpick fences" really spoke to me.

He built fences with whole boxes of toothpicks because he didn't have enough money for redwood. I know it's small, he said, but I don't want everybody just thinking they can walk right in & some day, it'll be bigger. Fences take practice for everyone.


wow. little boundaries. starting somewhere. even if it is with toothpicks. huge for me, to realize this.

boundaries are new to me. setting them, knowing i have the right to, remembering i have the right to, allowing myself to, and realizing that boundaries aren't walls. i don't have to fear setting boundaries, and they are little fences. with gates. you can come in, when i open the gate. don't trample my fence. you might not have seen it, but i will let you know now that it is there. it may seem small to you, but i worked hard to build this fence. and it stands for something. it stands for me. and my soul. and my life. i will defend my toothpick fence, and like the story, my fence will get bigger someday. and i will be better at this. it takes practice.

we gotta start somewhere.

defining unmanagable

so i am reflecting on my post from earlier today, filling in the blanks on how i got here and my big unmanageable moments, and i am running through the 1st step in my head and thinking about this whole "unmanageable" thing and i have a revelation. a moment. an "i think i am starting to get this" kind of thing.

and my mind is trying to "define" unmanageable. i do this a lot. define things. classify things. i like thoughts and ideas to line up nicely and orderly. they never do, but i like them that way. so i begin to define unmanageable as any time i am trying to control something i can't. or anytime i let something else control me. these things are unmanageable, because you cannot manage something you cannot control.

so if i decide to let the fact that i forgot to put the filter in my coffee maker and the automatic grinder spits coffee all over the pot and the counter and the floor and begins brewing because i have walked away and now i have no coffee and a huge mess ruin my day, then my life is unmanageable. i can't do a darn thing about it once it has happened but clean up the mess and remember to be more mindful and put the darn filter in next time and start the process over with a more conscience approach. if i let it upset me or i get flustered and frustrated and angry about it, not only do i still have a mess and no coffee, now i have let the coffee pot control my emotions, i have relinquished control of the only thing i can control, and i fail to see that this is the universe speaking to me again, saying, "for goodness sake, child. SLOW DOWN." my life is manageable when i can have this happen and i can say, oops. did it again. slow down. breathe. just clean it up. it will be okay. just for today, breathe and you can get through this. manage what you can. you. your soul. your spirit. treat yourself with kindness. let the feeling of frustration be seen, then let it go. move into peace that this is a teachable moment.

be more mindful.
be here.
slow down. slow down. slow down.
now that is manageable.