Don't Activate the Allergy

I've been attending more than my usual number of recovery meetings lately, for a lot of reasons - I've had some time, I've felt a need to be more present in for a couple of 'newcomers' and mostly because I know that I have an upcoming surgery (yes, my GD teeth again) that will require me to take some pain killers afterward.  This is scary for me.

My drug of choice was always alcohol - though really most addicts and alcoholics will tell you that at our core, our drug of choice actually boils down to one word: more.  I stayed away from illicit substances primarily because I was a legal type of gal.  Some part of my wet brain remained logical enough to keep me protected by staying on the right side of the law, but once the booze quit working for me, I've no doubt that if I hadn't found recovery, I would have gravitated to scrips next.  It was easy for me to justify my drinking by telling myself that I wasn't actually doing anything wrong, you see?  So, before I'd have ventured out to buy smack, I'm pretty sure I would have just used my health insurance to find some doctor-endorsed legal junk.

I've written before about NM's journey into drug-addled madness and the wreckage she created, and there are two good things that came out of the climax of that nightmare from me.  First, I removed myself from the Crazymaker Clan for the first time with real commitment.  Second, seeing that drug-fueled drama play out made me have to look within and spurred me on the road to my own recovery.

I believe that alcoholism and addiction are two-fold sicknesses, diseases if you will.  The first part is the physical reaction that an addict or alkie has when a substance is introduced to our systems; give me a mouthful of beer and my brain, stomach, nervous system, skin and mind all scream... MORE!  Seriously, I was two years sober when I had an epiphany while talking to a 'normie,' that went like this:
"So, let me get this straight," I said, "you can go to a bar, order a beer, focus on a conversation and have something to eat and when you finish your beer, you're just... satisfied?  You don't need to have another beer?  Really?"  I was mystified, cause let me tell you boys and girls, that's just not how it's ever worked for me.  Toward the end of my drinking when someone asked me how much I drank, I honestly answered - playing it off like it was a joke even though it wasn't - "All of it."  Once I started, all bets were off, and to this day I believe that the only drink I truly have a choice about is the first one.

The second part of the addiction involves an obsession of the mind.  At some point my entire life became about the booze.  If I didn't have a drink in my hand, I was planning for the earliest available opportunity when I would have a drink in my hand or I was getting over the last drink I had in my hand; normies call these moments hangovers, I called them mornings.  Toward the end I woke up every day either in physical withdrawal or with the thought of, "When can I have a drink?"  (And here's a funny sidebar glance into the mind of an alcoholic; there's an AA pamphlet called "44 Questions."  The idea of this pamphlet is that you ask yourself these 44 questions and answer yes or no and if you answer yes to more than X number, you might want to consider that you have a drinking problem.  The questions are things like, "Have you ever left work early in order to start drinking?" or "Do you ever intend to have only one drink but find you can't stop yourself after one?"  When I read this on my last day of drinking, I answered yes to all but one question; "Do you ever drink in the morning?"  To this I could honestly answer no - kids to school and all that, ya know?  I seriously got to the end of the pamphlet and looked at my answers and thought, "Well, I don't know if I'm really an alcoholic, I mean, I don't drink in the morning!"  Wowsers.)

I don't want to activate the allergy by introducing something into my system that's going to trigger either my physical compulsion to drink or my mental obsession to drink.

So, to sum up; I'm fucking terrified of pills.  That way thar be monsters, matey.

But, an interesting thing about true healing and recovery has been brought to light by this necessary but scary situation.  I was out of the doctor's office for all of thirty minutes and hadn't even truly recognized that I was terrified when I had already set a plan in place.  Before I could even acknowledge the depth of my fear, I'd talked to the doctor about my addiction - being very clear that I expect to receive exactly the bare minimum of absolutely necessary drugs in my post-op prescription, and I'd called two other recovering alkies and my husband to let them know what was going to happen, when it was going to happen and to ask them to help me monitor and stay accountable to my program and my sobriety.

I have a plan in place to stay safe and to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks, that I have support and that I am keeping honest and well internally and externally.  Before fear took hold, I'd reached out and taken action to prevent it.  Right action, it seems, is the antidote to fear.

Huh.  Who'd have thunk it?
I learned all of this in recovery from alcoholism, but I think it applies to separation from NFOOs that contain Narcs and Abusers as well.  If I have a plan in place and I am willing to follow it through, if I am vigilant about my boundaries and my need for respect, if I already know how I will refuse to be mistreated and I have a course of action laid out to ensure it, I can stay safe.

Relief of pain is necessary in order to facilitate healing.  Safety is necessary in order to facilitate healing.  A plan to allow no more pain from my NFOO and to keep myself safe from them is the best thing that I can possibly do for myself.

ACoNs and grown abused children all suffer from some form of hyper-vigilance, I think.  We weren't protected, so we develop an overly enlarged need to protect ourselves (at least once we wake up.)  Hyper-vigilance can be draining and if we live in a constant state of this ultra-sensitive anticipation of events, we can get sick.  Too much planning for the worst can put us in a position where we only expect that the worst will happen.

But, for me, when it comes to the NFOO, I put them in the same category as I do those pills.  I will conscientiously work to keep them completely out of my life, and in the event that I do have to cross paths with them for some reason beyond my control, I'll be ready with an exit plan and a support group to meet me at the door.

Love,
Vanci

The Agony of Loss

I am a creature of habit.  

I have routines upon routines and lists within lists, and I largely live my life by them.  Part of this, I know, is due to the symptom/side effect of trauma that I live with to one degree or another everyday; hyper vigilance.  Most people who have been subjected to trauma, particularly the abuses that are perpetrated by omniscient and all-powerful authority figures while we are fragile and completely controlled by the tyrants, exhibit signs of hyper-awareness and a near obsessive need to control or plan for contingencies.  At least that's what my counselor tells me!

I like to think that I've found a nice balance between pre-planning and spontaneity, though, and I can say without a doubt that the longer I am away from the NFOO and the farther my thinking is from them, the more normalized and balanced I am.  I can, in other words, deal with disruptions well, most of the time.  

Lately, though, there have been a lot of minor shake-ups in routine, some of which have involved my sleep cycle.  I can say also without a doubt that all work and not enough sleep make Vanci a very scary girl.  So I've been taking it easy when I can and trying to be patient with myself; saying to my reflection in the mirror - "Hey!  It's okay that you don't have the energy to _______.  Look at the _______ you accomplished today.  Be grateful for _______.  Be proud of ________."  It's helping.  My routine is becoming re-established. 

But oh man oh me oh my the Narc legacy just loves to find a way to kick me when I'm down.  We say in alcohol recovery that alcoholism is a progressive illness; that even if we dry out, we have to remember that the disease is in the corner behind us doing push-ups and waiting for a chance to jump us.  And that the progressive nature of the disease means that it gets worse, never better, if left untreated.  I think that the family legacy of the Narcs might be like that too. 

I'm out.  Officially.  Fini.  Done.  Ties severed.  I have no desire to go back, I have no reason to go back and most importantly I couldn't be reinserted into the Matrix if I tried.  It is impossible, after all, to unknow a thing once it's known.  But they're sneaky, you know, and sometimes I discover that even behind my castle walls they've found a way in.  It happens in my head, don'tcha know, my own brain, trained so arduously from day one by the malignant, sociopathic, abusive and vile fucks that called themselves my parents to keep me down, just turns on me and spews some nasty crap.  It's insidious sometimes. 

I take 10 or 15 minutes each morning as part of my daily routine at work to read the small, poorly written and atrociously edited local "news" (read: gossip) paper.  Just a looksee to keep myself informed of the local general public, you know? 

I realized this morning that I read the obituaries every day with the expectation that I will see the death notice of NM or ENF.  Morbid much?  

Even curiouser, I realized that each day that I do not see a notice for either of them, my gut reaction is one of what I can only quantify as disappointment.  

I have loss in spades, but it's the kind of loss that drags on and on.  They are, after all, all living together in their clan compound only fifteen short minutes away from my house.  And by all, I do mean all: NM, ENF, GCYB and his wife and her son and NOSis and her husband and son.  And god knows who else lives there too.  So it's a funny kind of loss; mourning the loss of one's long lost relatives in the morning while hoping to avoid them in the grocery store that afternoon.  It feels incomplete, somehow, and like the disease that can rear its ugly head at any moment.  It's unfinished, a loose end.

I think that I've spent enough time in the drawn out agony of loss and I'm ready to move on.  I think I'm craving grief instead.  I re-read that and immediately wondered what kind of person that makes me.  But I have to say it's true; I long for the end.

Or maybe I'm just hurt and don't even know it yet because I am absolutely positive that when NM or ENF do pass away, I will certainly find out by reading the local gossip rag.  And when I do hear from NOSis or GCYB that it's happened, as I'm sure I eventually will, they'll have found a way to make it my fault.

What a lose-lose.  What a fucking waste. 

Love,

Vanci