I am so grateful to be sober. I’m grateful for a nice birthday, for time away, for being honest, for seeking help, for having tools, and for feeling hope. I am grateful for my friends and for my family. I’m grateful for change, new beginnings, having support and faith. I’m grateful for coffee, for quiet mornings, for the weather being a little cooler & for lots of outside space.

Gooood morning my friends (: As always, I hope everyone had a lovely weekend & are feeling as prepared as we all can for the fresh week!

I was off from work Wednesday – Friday last week and came back to more emails than I’d have liked to so I’m feeling just a littttlleee overwhelmed this morning. I also had a small breakdown over the weekend about how I just don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m either sad or I’m angry these days with no in between. Someone as a meeting yesterday shared about how sometimes, you can’t throw AA at all of your problems and so outside help can be and is super important.

Which made me feel much better about the therapy appointment I made on Saturday, kinda like HP was reassuring me or something (;

I’d just like to feel better, more regulated and back to what I am assuming will be a newer version of normal since lots of discomfort often leads to growth. I was thinking this morning about how I really should go back and read some of my posts from a year ago.

When we are so zoomed in it’s almost impossible to see the growth that’s already happened. I feel like my posts are always whiney and depressing with a twinge of controversial sometimes. And so maybe it would be helpful for me to go back and see the bigger picture for myself – how much has actually changed.

Would I be handling my sadness (totally unexplained sadness by the way) the same way a year ago? Probably not. I’d be throwing everything I have into AA and punishing myself for not doing it good enough because I still don’t feel better. Would I be honest about it a year ago? Probably only here because my pride would’ve gotten in the way – I didn’t want anyone to think I was failing.

So yes, the bigger picture already shows me that I am moving through this differently than ever before. The bigger picture also shows me that if I can just hang on and trust, it will get better (that hang on piece to me sounds very drastic & I’m fine I promise – I just need some extra help.).

I am hopeful that one little suggestion that – I haven’t been in therapy for almost a year & I’ve been sad for quite a while, could the two be correlated? – was HP speaking through another person & it was the push I needed to make a change. Because as they say…nothing changes if nothing changes, right?

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Xx

Jane

I’m grateful for a day of fun and and adventure. I’m grateful to get to see my son. I’m grateful for pancakes at the diner and peace in my heart. I’m grateful for sustainability. I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned. I’m grateful to have my eyes open. I’m grateful to be sober today.

LAST WEEK ON TFLMS:

song of the week:

TFLMS Weekend: Where Sobriety Isn’t Just a Consequence…

(last weekend)

I’m grateful for a Friday morning. I’m grateful for the bright sunlight streaming in. I’m grateful for knowing exactly where I am. I’m grateful for not always trying to figure out why. I’m grateful for mornings on the basketball court. I’m grateful to be sober today.

Mystery ?? Button

song of the week:

This song and I go way back, and no offence to Smokey Robinson, but this is just a better version of “Tears of a Clown.”1 However, yours truly has literally been unable to stop listening to this for the last few days:

I don’t know where I heard it, but, like I said, I literally can’t stop listening to it. It makes for excellent subway/walking music. I just kind of think it’s groovy. In fact, it was my accompaniment for a pretty epic ferry ride the other night.

I love the NYC Ferry, there is a stop very near me, at 90th Street and I am a frequent traveler. I had occasion to be at a swanky rooftop thing in Williamsburg the other night and as I was planning my getaway, fixed on the idea of a lovely ferry ride home on a summer night. I got to the ferry dock a little early and started to get alarmed as I saw the sky beginning to light up with flashes of static electricity being discharged, I began to wonder whether being on a boat during a thunderstorm was a good idea.

Having spent 40 minutes on an ultra-sweaty subway platform as part of the travel to Williamsburg, I decided to brave the elements. The rain started about 22 seconds after we left the dock and it was a pretty big storm. I usually sit up top in the open air, but that was clearly not in the cards. So, I stood in the back, under a slight overhang that provided a partial shield from the torrents of rain.

I had this song on repeat and it was pretty groovy watching the boat’s wake and the gorgeous NYC skyline being lit by distant lightning.

When I disembarked, the rain had slacked off a bit and I set off for home through my beloved Carl Schurz park. It was dark and I was admittedly kind of bopping my way along the promenade, still listening to this song, and then I found out that the promenade floods after heavy rain. I found this out by stepping in water that came up over my shin. I couldn’t see whether there was a way to avoid the deep water owing to darkness. So, I started the song over and slogged through the flooded part.

I was smiling when I got to the other side, even though I was a sodden mess from the knees down. The thing that popped into my head during the slog, the thought that provoked the smile (I might have laughed out loud, I do that) was this:

You get to be the person you want to be, lead the life you want to lead, when you accept what is.

I guess that’s a pretty big catch, the “accepting what is” part. I can’t decide today to lead the life of an orthopaedic surgeon, where I ended yesterday has something to do where I can start the next day. But what I’m trying to say is that you get to define yourself, you can be what you want to be, as long as you can do what you say.

The lie in every alcoholic heart is this:

I need to be something different than who I am in order to make my way in the world.

At first, alcohol helped me make that difficult caterpillar to butterfly transformation., from who I was to who I thought I needed to be. Later on, it helped me forget about the burgeoning distance between what I knew of myself and what I had become. Maybe thinking about that distance is why I like song #2.

I’m slowly making a new life. It began by accepting what was; That I was an alcoholic who lacked the power to control my drinking. That I needed help. That I couldn’t go on the way I had been living. I was always kind of intimidated by that “rigorous honesty” stuff in the Big Book. Was “rigorous honesty” really necessary? I realized that simply meant being myself. Showing up as who I am to the world around me. This takes practice and I’m still learning what that means in the real world. Coming to understand my own boundaries has helped set me free.

So much has happened in my life in the last four years. It’s all been so improbable, so beautiful, so hard and sad sometimes. But it’s been my life that I’ve been living—finally. That’s what made me smile as I slogged through 14 inches of water the other night.

As Ferris Buelller says, “life goes fast.” I get to decide how I want to be in the world. I get to decide what I want to do and how I want to do it. As the venerated yoga-instructor Shaggy always says, “you can’t choose your outcomes, but you can choose how you experience them.” I chose to experience walking the flooded promenade in Carl Schurz park as an exercise in freedom and it unleashed exuberant feelings. In a deserted park during a thunderstorm.

The Universe finds some sneaky ways to communicate with me. I have a lot of plants and I’m pretty good with them. bequeathed me some plants when he moved to Denver. I love having them and they are thriving. This is another bequeathed plant—and it means an awful lot to me.

Neither plant had been doing well, the cactus looked like he was a goner for sure. And then things changed, just like that. The succulent in the back began to grow again—tall and willowy and beautiful . That makes me very happy. But, improbably, the dead-looking cactus suddenly shot an arm out and is thriving, too. I’m guessing I’m more likely to be represented by the cactus.

Being me is not an exercise in blind adulation. I have a lot of flaws, make lots of mistakes, sometimes hurt people and am not always able to be true to myself. There are still things I wish for, but I know I lack the power to make them happen. What I can do is keep living my life, a day at a time, even a step at a time through a sudden-appearing lake. That’s the only way to find out what’s next for me—to wake up every morning, believing that I can be who I am and making a new life a step at a time. Maybe that’s why I like this song so much:

“We can walk into another day, into the distance.”

Happy Friday

I’m grateful for the weather being slightly cooler during my morning run. I’m grateful for podcasts that help me think critically of the world around me. I’m grateful for quick afternoon storms that lower the heat considerably and remind me of summer weather in Ahmedabad. I’m grateful my NYC zoom meeting has survived despite people moving to different places or being in very different phases of their life. I’m grateful for our beautiful, cozy home and the joy it brings us being here. I’m grateful for a meeting where people reinforced service + sponsorship as a crucial means to enlarge their spiritual experience. I’m grateful for deepening connections with fellows and how that teaches me new things about being in this Program.

I watched Inside Out 2 this past weekend. It’s a sequel to one of my favorite Pixar films, Inside Out from 2015, and the plot revolves around the emotions inside a young girl’s head as the main cast of characters. There’s Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust, and Sadness as the original 5 and then a whole bunch were introduced in the second film, the most important of which is Anxiety. I won’t spoil the film except to say that it is definitely worth checking out as the story has layers adults can deeply appreciate.

That being said I did want to reflect on Anxiety as a topic. It was a crucial component of my drinking career. Healthy doses of Anxiety nowadays do drive positive outcomes for me thanks to being able to fall back on a framework like the 12 Steps. However before any design for living was introduced into my life I operated in a very binary, black or white, fashion. If I was anxious, no matter the level I was at, I needed a swig of vodka to dull the feeling. Just a little I said to myself, not a whole lot. The problem became I was feeling anxious, or any variety of emotions, a whole lot throughout the day. Those swigs began happening in quicker succession and turned into crutches to numb everything. It was no longer about taking the edge off, it was about having no edges whatsoever, which isn’t possible for a human trying to sustainably get through a day.

My problem with alcohol is that it exacerbates whatever emotion I’m feeling so I only think and feel in extremes. Anxiety was huge for me during these dark times. I was always a naturally anxious person even pre-alcholism. I developed core, toxic beliefs about myself that were incredibly hard to dismantle: I wasn’t socially cool enough at functions to make friends, I wasn’t good looking enough to attract others, I wasn’t smart enough to provide the lightbulb idea that would blow everyone away at work, etc. I let go of any positive views of myself and the ones I sorta acknowledged I minimized their value considerably. As a result of not having a healthy sense of self, I let Anxiety take the wheel. I let that emotion future-trip on all the bad things that were going to happen because look at how many bad things exist in my life now. I solidified in my head, without putting up a fight, that there’s no way I can change the narrative. I embraced misery as my sole state of being…forever. Given this low starting point, I believed when it came to the vodka why on earth stop? Why stop drinking when that’s the only thing that could melt away those negative ruminations? Why stop drinking when, at least for a little bit, I do feel an iota of (delusional) self-esteem in an inebriated state? Why stop drinking because I’m already worthless?

That Anxiety spiral is hard to escape. It is very very hard. Just as I cannot exactly explain why I finally took to AA, I cannot explain why Anxiety is no longer a dominant player in my life. A few years ago I had a sliver of respite during one of my worst bottoms. My lucky break was being introduced to a sober home that provided a gentle on-ramp into this Program. After that positive, informative start, Time somehow managed to accumulate and  – most importantly – I remained disciplined about practicing the 12 Steps. Practicing them in whatever ways that ensured I live a balanced life. I didn’t push to get addicted to service. I didn’t push to get addicted to meetings. I didn’t push to get addicted to a certain way of doing the Program. I simply listened, read, and A/B tested various healthy sober concepts that were suggested to me. I determined which worked for me in the moment and which I should shelve for later use when my current rotation of practices became less impactful.

Luckily for me I’m one of the alcoholics whose obsession over wanting a drink has nearly disappeared. Very rarely am I thinking about alcohol except when I occasionally pass a liquor store or see an empty chaser on the ground and think, “Oh that’s there, glad it’s not a trigger”. However that doesn’t mean my alcoholic tendencies don’t regularly resurface. I’m defensive, I’m petty, I’m covetous of control, and so many other defective thoughts on a recurring basis. When I get these thoughts I know that Anxiety isn’t far off from wanting to steer my life. What’s different today is that I recognize that emotion’s desire to be unleashed and I don’t actively squash it. I observe it. I welcome its presence into my mind and ask, “Why?“. Why are you here and how can we calmly coexist? What are your roots? What can I learn from you? Let me deconstruct what is at the core here. Not being instantly petrified by a feeling, but rather giving it grace, allows me to mitigate its power to overwhelm. By having this dialogue in my mind I use the wisdom I’ve interpreted from the 12 Steps as the filter through which I couple a deflatedversion of my Anxiety with whatever healthy, sober action I need to take (or not take) in the physical world.

Of course I’d love to say I go through the above thought processes all the time. I definitely do not, but it is becoming a more innate, recurring practice with each day I’m sober and close to AA. I have the gentle, healing language of sobriety omnipresent in my head to ensure that every instance where Anxiety wants to push me into some type of subpar action, I pause and listen to all the parts of my mind – Joy, Anger, Fear, Sadness, etc. – before making the next sober move.

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I am so grateful to be sober today. I’m grateful for my family, for time out of the city, for rest and for sunshine. I’m grateful for AA, the lessons it’s taught me, the basic tools I am always using. I’m grateful for opportunities for growth, for learning, for coffee and for the birds that are always chirping.

Gooood morning my friends (: As per usual, I hope everyone had a lovely weekend and is feeling ready for the fresh week ahead!

I have been feeling super down lately, very much so not myself and that’s just about all I’d like to write today.

It’s been a super just overwhelming past few months and I keep trying to pull myself back up but I’m just sad, I guess. My birthday is on Wednesday and before anyone gives me shit – I know that 25 is not over the hill and I am plenty young, but I am five years away from 30 and that’s weird. Sometimes I feel like I’m still 16 and other times I feel like I’m 45 so 25 is just feeling weird.

I have said this probably a million times but your 20s are hard. Your 20’s and sobriety are harder. Sometimes I don’t know who I am and other’s I couldn’t be more confident. Sometimes I know that I am exactly where I’m supposed to be and others, I feel so lost.

And everyone is alwayslike ‘your 30’s everything will come together’, ‘It’ll all make sense and fall into place’ and that’s cute and fun and exciting to believe in but in this very current moment when the walls feel like they are caving in – it’s not all that helpful.

Right now, I can go to a meeting for an hour and feel so good and immediately after be sad again. There has been so much change honestly in this past year and it’s all been great but maybe it’s all catching up to me. Maybe things aren’t done changing and that scares me. It’s hard to ride the wave when the wave is a low one.

The good news is I don’t want to drink. I saw a billboard for a beer I used to drink and for a millisecond I was like oh that would be nice. My next thought was I should call my sponsor and by the time that thought passed the beer wasn’t so appealing anymore.

I am sad and confused and scared but I don’t want to drink and that’s about all I can ask for as a 25-year-old (almost) sober person.

So, I know it will get better. It has a million times before this. I’d just love if it got better sooner rather than later because I don’t want to be so sad anymore.

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Xx

Jane