The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
As you all know I am plainly in survival mode right now. I am moving out of being totally nail bitingly barely scraping by but I am still isolated and still not taking care of my immediate needs. I am trying to brain storm how to do that. One thing I have come up with is to try simply to reduce my level of fatigue. So right now I am going to stop the job hunt for 3 weeks and concentrate just on feeling better. I have an interim job which I can do for a while. I need to just concentrate on feeling less totally wiped out.
I find it incredibly hard to get support and care. There is no question my old way of relating was to merge. Now if I am with someone like a new neighbor who I was with on the weekend for more than an hour I feel wiped out. I used to love to totally merge with someone and be with them 24/7 now I find it hard to be around people for an hour let alone all day. I am conscious this is progress but it feels so foreign and of course my fantasy is still to merge, be rescued, be taken care of and I have to let go of that one. I know that belongs in my childhood.
What a strange journey this is to learn to take care of myself despite all the odds to do it with grace and to have boundaries. I used to think the A had all the problems but now I see I chose the A for a reason because I simply did not know how to take care of myself. What an irony to pick someone who is and was so patently self destructive to take care of me.
I think the same thing. We seek out these sick people to rescue us and then we are the ones who do all the supporting and rescuing. Hmmmm curious isn't it. Seems so ironic that the very thing we seek to fill us is the very thing we end up expending all of and then some. Can't you get unemployment? Relax for a minute? Go to the free clinic and get all your stuff done?
Rescue is definitely a huge motif for me and I am reluctant to explore it. I held onto the notion of rescue as a child as a way to believe I was going to get away from my family of origin. Of course I have always found people like my family to replace them on many many levels. The issue for me is of course now I am aware that my relationship skills are not there, I have always gone about getting into relationship very quickly and then not known how to get out.
One of my core issues and fears is getting out of where I am now, moving out of living in a marginal shared situation to a apartment. I am frankly afraid to be unemployed in this economy after a while it gets hard to get work. So it is better for me to be employed even if it isn't in a job with benefits. I think I have to take a breather from looking for a while and just concentrate on trying to feel better, less exhausted for one.
I did go to the doctor in my 2 1/2 weeks unemployed. I did a lot. I really want to try to put some traction into planning my exit from my current situation no matter how long it takes me. I can live like this for a year at best before it gets to me and it has already got to me. The two psychopaths I lived with int he house are gone and that is a huge relief and I have to just keep boundaried and clear about my relationships with others. I am pretty clear on the prince isn't coming to get me out of this one. The A was a "prince" when I met him and he turned out to be almost the death of me. At the same time I do need ftf support and I am willing to take risks on looking for it. I do get clearer on who can give it and who can't and being diplomatic about how I have limits - I had none before clearly. I do not want to admit to that but my merging with others and throwing my entire life into the A's was one of the markers on the way to my almost total demise.
I relate to that condition as I have been there...done that. What got me out of it was face to face meetings as often as I could and to stop pushing mentally, emotionally and spiritually for the answers...Letting it all go no matter how compulse I was to doing it or figuring it out. I crashed and merged at meetings.
Face to face is pretty difficult for me. I live with two dogs who have been traumatized by the As actions. To be frank they get frantic if I dont' come home after a certain amount of time. I come home and they are crying and barking and desperate. I have no back up as of yet of someone to take care of them, I have "promises" but no back up. I do not know what the A did with them when he had them alone but he certainly neglected and abused them. He left them for days without food. They will be a long time in recovery. So I rush home every night to take care of them. My weekends are such that I am often exausted but I am going to try to make an effort to get to one meeting ont he weekend. I used to come to meetings here and I may start doing that too. One day at a time. I am better. For me not merging is so much better....
I merged and merged and merged with the A and did not know where I ended and he began. I took on all his problems as mine and now I am overwhelmed with my own problems and see that I have no part in his.
I can really relate to what your saying about merging maresie. I've done that for many years myself and thought I had got better at not doing it and found myself down and out with a farm to run and a 85 year old mother to take care of, not to mention a 10 year old daughter. The boom fell, a horse to be exact, fell on me and broke my shoulder, in came the night in shining armor to rescue me and I was so desperate I took up with him, eventually married him and now am finding out what a controller, dry alcoholic he is. I know through my f2f, when he lets me go to them, that I can work my way athrough this and come out the other side, with or without the A. Keep working on you and I'll keep working on me and we'll get there. Keep coming back!
Not knowing how badly in shape these dogs are, it's hard for me to say, but I do know that "when I am better (from attending meetings), everyone is better because I have refreshed myself and done something good for myself. Then I can help focus on others.
Maria
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If I am not for me, who will be? If I am only for myself, then who am I? If not now, when?
