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.
It's amazing to me how much power i give my own thoughts and feelings .. As if i really believe if i think something feel something .. it is in absolutes ..
I said to someone the other night .. i feel like i'm 5 and they shot back with you never got to be 5 .. it hit me when my family moved out of the house .. brothers and sisters all at one time .. is when i stopped being 5 ..
I'm stuck in a place where i'm thinking lately if i feel something, it is .. and i have enough recovery to know feelings aren't facts .. they're just what they are and yet i still get caught up in my illusions of power .. as my illusions begin to fade .. i'm even grieving the loss of the fantasies ..
incredibly painful it is .. still i know in these most painful and difficult times is when i get the majority of my recovery and healing .. our biggest defects become our biggest assets eventually because they teach us the most ..
i really feel like i'm in a dark place tonight .. driving along this afternoon and listening to the words of a song .. love in the dark, etc.. it hit me what we bring into the light loses its power because we bring love out of the dark and into the light, etc..
it's one day at a time but for the moment i have a thousand days in the future pulled into this moment .. i'm so in the future with my thinking and when i'm not in the future, i'm in the past .. they both are gone and yet it's hard to "keep my focus in this ..
with my partner leaving, i feel the grief of the security of another physical body in the house to keep us safer .. it's so incredibly painful to lose this, etc..
This is just a suggestion however if you are feeling that uneasy in your current situation how about taking a self defense class??
Someone in the house doesn't mean safer especially if they are passed out from a night of drinking and/or drugging. Actually I see that as a liability not a safe thing for me. Did he lock the doors, did he decide in the middle of the night to start a fire and then pass out, did he leave the keys in the car? What's the point of locking the doors if you give someone an open invite. I live in isolation in the country the first few nights after I put my AH out it was hard to get used to being in the house with just the kids and the cats. There were a million things that went bump in the night. Even with him in the house I can't sleep with the windows open it's a phobia for me. It's taken me years to open doors during the day to let air through the house, I know I'm weird .. lol. It was a hard step for me.
Feeling safe is my responsibility not anyone else's. Yes an extra body in the house gives the hallucination of safety. It doesn't mean safer. I've been known to get up and turn on all the lights .. lol or put some music on to help me go to sleep. When I lived alone I kept a baseball bat under my bed and I do know how to use it. I even went to the batting cages for practice swings. The reality was it was just me and I needed to do what I needed to do to feel safe.
Personally, and my two cents on this it sounds like you are giving way to much focus to having someone in the house as a form of safety and you could make come choices to take some of that power back on your own.
Hugs P :)
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Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.- Maya Angelo
Pushka thanks so much for sharing this .. these shares truly help me to stay focused .. as i read your shares .. No he didn't lock the doors .. he slept out on the porch with the door wide open some nights .. he was irrational, irritable and yes there were times i'd wondered if i would be safe with Him .. as if he were the perpetrator .. a self defense class i've never thought of but the hallucination of safety hits home .. i'm realising how many, many illusions of grandure i had with him .. power, control, love, happiness, safety, etc.. all of these were more illusions .. even the illusion of family .. the illusion of acceptance and approval ..
I'm so grateful to you and others who help me to reason through my own confusion .. it's so absolutely painful which i've been typing all over this site but still i hear my higher power's voice thorugh you and others leading me through the darkness .. i just need to listen and follow trusting he will bring me through on the other side .. I just sit in the dark every now and then looking at the light and waiting to take another step .. trust though hits home .. how much do i really trust my higher power .. he's been showing me he's trust worthy .. yet as i typed about feeling like i'm 5 .. i now feel like i'm 10 having a major stomping fest for not getting things my way .. i just keep thinking God don't take this one away .. he's the only one who knows what he needs though but i hate being where i'm at .. well bittersweet .. hate it but i'm growing at a faster pace than i would have with him ..
hope you and others will be patient with me as i type through this period of my life .. it hurts ..
which in typing the above .. i'm recognising now .. that i think somewhere in my confusion i began to think subconsciously that if a person stays with you whether they want to or not somehow that means they approve of you .. and if they go then they don't and probably never did .. it's not at all a clear perception .. very distorted which is so why i need these shares .. my own thinking isn't working for me .. i'm too in it ..
I so apologize if I am sounding curt at all because that is soooo not where I am coming from .. I just can say I sooo understand on a level that is mind boggling. It is so easy to get stuck in the obsessive thinking. If I did this he would (fill in the blank), if I didn't do that he wouldn't have done (fill in the blank), it's all that self taught survival programing and it's such a .. well I'd say what I think it is .. LOL .. someone would come and edit me, without being to blatant , .. the best lay is all in the mind and boy do we do it to ourselves. We really sell ourselves a bill of goods that is so not the reality of what is .. it's def what we want it to be. It sure doesn't make it less painful it just makes it a little easier to understand.
Hugs P :)
__________________
Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.- Maya Angelo
This discussion of hallucinations and illusions made me think of a wonderful section in "how alanon works"and here it is in case you might get something positive out of it like I have:
"we let go of the illusion that kept us imprisoned on an endless cycle of repetitious, self-defeating behavior and inevitable disappointment.
It's as if we are list in a desert. Not far away is a freshwater stream, but until now we have failed to notice it because we have been chasing a mirage, an imaginary oasis that recedes whenever we approach. Only when we finally stop, take stock of what our efforts have produced, and admit that we have been pursuing an illusion, can we turn in a direction that will actually meet our needs."
I'm hearing a lot of your self-esteem wrapped up in this relationship. The blessing of this is that you are now free to form a relationship with yourself. The best suggestion I can give you is to take everything that you think you are missing from him and learn how to give it to yourself. Be your own best friend.
Instead of ripping yourself with negative thinking and deep philosophical thoughts that all come from an unstable place of grief and loss, do something kind for yourself right now. You aren't going to figure out anything logical right now cuz you are in a totally raw emotional spot from a relationship ending. Start working on Self-Care and not self-criticism. Love yourself cuz we already love you!
