The Cycle

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Ordinary Time:

In the Catholic church there are two seperate periods of time made up of several weeks, that in fact constitute the majority of the year.  These periods are called "Ordinary Time."  They are the weeks in between the celebrated parts of the year. (Easter, Christmas, Passover, Lent, etc.)  They are seasons of neither feasting or penance. 

The largest part of Pete's (and mine by association) addictive cycle is ordinary time.  It is chaotic dinners with our young brood, Friday night dates with sushi or mexican.  Our ordinary time is full of conversations about how to handle our six year old wetting the bed or if its time to buy a new minivan.  We work together on mediocre landscaping and refinishing furniture.  We laugh and watch Neftlix with bowls of popcorn.  We have sex and I talk to him late into the night until he can't keep his eyes open. 

Scott P. Richert says

"Many people think Ordinary Time refers to the parts of the Church year that are unimportant. But nothing could be further from the truth."

So goes our ordinary time.  It is the brick and mortar of our marriage. 

PRT- Pre-relapse Tension:

Another, less used, term for PMS is Premenstrual tension. We are all familiar with the atmosphere of PMS. 

"Say or do the wrong thing and I'll bite your head off." 

Ordinary time evolves into PRT time for Pete.  It's walking on egg-shells and general grumpiness.  It's during this time that Pete and I have that same bloody conversation that has become a fixture in the cycle.  Pete used to get really angry during this time.  But he's made progress, and even though the same elements are there (blame, victimization, minimizing), he rarely raises his voice at me. 

I thought this quote about PMS was appropriate.

"PMS is better thought of as an aggressive messaging service, our body’s way of trying get our attention to make changes and get rid of things that don't sustain or suit us anymore."       

(Yes. I just compared my husband's addictive behavior to PMS.)

It's during this time that I find myself thinking

"Oh just do it already.  Just get your fix so we can move on to the good phase."

Fixing:

I don't mean fixing like repairing, I mean "fix"-ing like indulging in an amount or dose of something craved.  It's a made-up verb for a slang definition of the noun "fix." (That was a waste of your time. I should have just called this phase "Relapse.")

Call it whatever you want.  Slipping, acting out, lost battles, lust-fest, binge, all of the above. 
This phase isn't pretty either.  Pete is discouraged, irritable, anxious, physically distressed.  It's ugly.

Then, like how Scabs describes eating all the crap you want the night before a diet, so the next morning you feel so sick you are motivated to start fresh, he hits bottom. 


Honeymoon:

This is the good phase.  Or at least it used to be.  Now I'm jaded, and rather than being genuinely grateful for this period, I exploit it, and turn Pete into my humble and subservient slave. 

Let me be clear that Pete is not violent toward me. But my counselor pointed out that he lives out the Honeymoon phase similarly to the way an abuser does. 

During this time Pete is extra helpful around the house, remorseful and kind, patient with the kids.  He does dishes and changes diapers with enthusiasm.  He attends group meetings, works recovery steps, visits with the bishop and reaches out. 

According to the cycle of violence, the honeymoon is an opportunity to compensate for the misbehavior.  But Pete explained it to me differently.  He says during all the other phases, he feels emotions building up, but does not cope with them appropriately.  Acting out with pornography and masturbation is his way of releasing, purging and medicating his feelings.  Totally unhealthy and inappropriate? Yes.  But it does get him to a place where there are no more bottled up resentments or festering frustrations.  It makes him emotionally capable of being compassionate and unselfish, where he isn't capable of being during the previous two (three?) phases. 

But, this story is no mystery.  Ordinary time ensues.  And then tension.  And then more medicating.  'Round and 'round.  Each phase can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.  It is totally unpredictable it its consistency.  It makes me crazy. 

Crisis of Faith: Part III

I can always count on Clive to put me back on track. 

Start from what you DO know they say. 

"Hold the ground you have already won" says Elder Holland. 

I am absolutely certain that I am more than the sum total of my parts.  I am more than flesh and bones.  I am a soul.  I am also certain that there is a divine creator of my soul.  A Heavenly Father.  The architect of my being.  My doubts lie in my connection to my creator and my understanding of his involvement in my life.  I realize that if I want to communicate with him, I have to communicate on the level of my soul.  Spiritual communication might be an appropriate term.

Despite my effort to gain an intellectual understanding by carefully gathering indisputable scientific evidence to irrefutably prove that God is real, I have missed the mark. 

 

“The idea that all important knowledge is based on scientific evidence is simply untrue.”

(Dallin H. Oaks.)

I’m going to have to acquire a knowledge of the reality of God, through spiritual means.  This is both discouraging and frightening, because I don’t trust my spiritual capabilities. 

But if God is going to speak to me, and teach me, and give me sure knowledge, it is going to be through my soul.  My brain and intellect can help me sort through and discover truth, by it will be my soul that confirms it.  This means that I can do what I want to do most, I can read and study. That is where I am good.  But it also means that I must do what I do least, where I am weak, and that is listening.  Listening with my soul. 

“God is and can be known only be revelation.  He stands revealed or he remains forever unknown.”

(Bruce R. McConkie.)

There can be only one source for the answers to my questions.  Personal revelation.  Period.  Bam.  That’s it.

Blogging late at night is not a good idea

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Nothing good happens after midnight, my dad would say. 

I would add to that, nothing good happens after midnight particularly after watching four hours of tv drama.  An overdose of TV sitcoms makes me start to think of my life in terms of plot lines with characters full of angst and turmoil. 

To top it all off, I got on Facebook and read a few "real life" blogs.  My nephew is a few months younger than my oldest, and he is thriving in gymnastics and taking piano lessons, my sister reports on the family blog. 

I've done a pretty good job of avoiding self-pity the last few months.  (It's all relative.)  It used to be one of my biggest vices but I'm working on it.  Tonight I crawled in bed and tears of self-pity rolled down my cheeks. 

"Are my kids missing out on life because I've hunkered down? Am I so totally absorbed in my recovery, or lack thereof, that I'm depriving them of extracurricular activities?

Why do I have to deal with this, and my sister doesn't? Why does she get to spend hours at meets and recitals but I'm determined to isolate myself because I'm trying to find some emotional safe ground?"

As you all know, another vice of mine is validation.  And here I sit shamelessly seeking validation. 

It's hard. 

It's hard to drop all the fun stuff in life to try to save your marriage. 

It's hard. 

Now I'm going back to bed, and hoping that things look better in the morning. 

Crisis of Faith: Part II

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I try to just tell the obnoxious voice of Cynicism to “get thee behind!” 

 

It’s Satan for sure, planting these thoughts in my brain. 

But now that the doubts have really settled in, and I am wondering if God is real, that answer is not satisfying.  If there is no God, there is no Satan. 

So how does one go about discovering if God is real?  The quandry that most haunts me is what exactly is "divine intervention?"  If God is real, does he intervene? And if he always intervenes, if he takes control of all things, what IS he point of prayer? Or does he selectively intervene? And if so, how can I know when he HAS intervened?

The idea occurred to me to write a gratitude journal, to recognize God's hand in my life.   But this is a frustrating effort.  It is easy enough to make long lists of my blessings.  I have many blessings for sure.  But where is the proof that they come from God?

One night I was talking to Pete about all this.  “Just ask” he said.  But I know I can’t.

I can’t ask because I’m terrified about what it will mean if he doesn’t answer.  It’s not that I think that if God doesn’t answer me, it means he isn’t real.  It just might mean that he isn’t really involved in my life. 

So for now I don’t ask.  Or I ask half-heartedly, hoping for some answer but being able to quickly explain it away if he doesn’t answer.  In the words of Dieter F. Uchtdorf, I sit in the dark room, waiting for someone to flip on the switch.   

What I do look for are signs that he is real.  And I see them sometimes.  I see them in faces.  I hear it in the lyrics to a Disney song. (Because people, that's the Pandora station we listen to around here.)

"I can show you the world, shining shimmering splendid.  Tell me [Jane], now when did you last let your heart decide?"

Heart? Decide? No way.  All important decisions are made with careful intellectual consideration after extensive study and adequate research.  Heart? Do you take me for a fool? I want PROOF!!!

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A guy walking down the street falls into a dark and deep hole.  The walls around him are steep and high.  He calls out for help.

A doctor walks by and hears his plea.  The doctor writes a prescription and tosses it down into the hole. 

The guy calls out for help again and a bishop walks by.  The bishop writes a scripture on a paper and tosses it down the hole.  The guy is discouraged and hopeless.  He calls out for help again.

A friend walks by and hears his cries.  The friend jumps down into the hole.

The guy says to the friend "I appreciate your kindness, but you're an idiot.  Now we are stuck in the hole." 

"No." says the friend.  "I've been in this hole, and I know how to get out."

My Crisis of Faith: Part I

Yarn Bombing in Germany

One night I went to bed a devout Christian. The next morning I woke up an agnostic.  Without inviting it, disbelief has entered my very being.  I feel like it is peering from behind every corner. 

I am being stalked by cynicism.  Cynicism is sly and stealthy.  He might run in the same crowd as The Fog and various clones of Insanity.  He's here to ruin my peace and rob me of my faith.   

I do not want it. I willfully dismiss it, and yet skepticism creeps into my every thought.  Moments that should be spiritual and inspiring have become negative and suspicious because Cynicism hovers nearby. 

“If God wants me to have a girl, He will send a girl.”  My pregnant friend and mother of two boys says to me over fro-yo. 

“That’s dumb” comes the unsolicited opinion of Cynicism in my head.  “You’ll have a girl if the sperm with two X chromosomes meets up with one of your eggs and fertilizes it.” 

I feel annoyed at the voice of my stalker.

 
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Does God really answer prayers? Suppose my friend prayers for a girl.  And she gets a girl. “ Yay!” She says.  God answered my prayer.

Suppose she gets a boy.  “That’s okay" she says, "God wanted me to have a boy. He still answered my prayer with the baby that was supposed to be in my family.”

So what was the point of the prayer?

Someone tells me that my friend has misconceptions about God, and maybe I have misconceptions about God too. 

 

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Out of nowhere Cynicism crashes my parties and disrupts my prayers.  I feel a little panicked.  Rebellion doesn't suit me.  I've always walked the straight and narrow.  The idea that God isn't real both fills me with horror and shame.  Am I foolish for doing things I've always done, believing things I've always believed, trusting people I've always trusted? 

It has me totally freaked out. Feeling disconnected from God is not just frightening but lonely. 

 

And yet.. there is a sort of pseudo-freedom that comes with apathy.  Singing songs at the top of my lungs and shouting the cuss words without guilt is all cool if God isn't real.  Right? 

 

One thing is for sure.  I'm going to find my way out of this, and I'm never going back. Glossed-over, superficial answers will not satisfy me.  I want the real deal.  I want the truth. 

 

A friend sent me a link to this blog post which contains the following words. 

"In the broken down moments, the moments of previously unfathomable distress and despair, in the moments where all our best selves can think to do is pray more earnestly, we have a choice. We can ruminate on what a well intended teacher spouted off in a thoughtless moment that now seems sickeningly saccharine. We can delve into the areas we all have of our testimonies that are yet green, perhaps dark, underdeveloped or unexplored. Or, we can reach for light, for truth, for stability and safety. This is not some desperate act of a delusional, wounded being to lie his way into a false sense of security. It is an act of clarity and incalculable courage, commendable and brave. We can reach for God and watch brilliant truth resonate it's way into our souls, one moment at a time, luminescent and satiating."

I'll be damned if I don't get there. 

(Haha. That was kinda funny.)

And I'll be damned if Cynicism survives the journey, weak and pathetic as he is.   

Breastaurant

Warning: Impulsive and explicit material.  Don't be suprised if this post is gone tomorrow when I regain my senses.

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They're building a breastaurant in a city nearby me.  I want to sit outside at the construction site and chat with the women applying for positions.  I would say

"Hey.  I know you are smart, kind or funny. I bet you are sensitve, strong or clever. You are not just a pair of boobs or a sexy body whose purpose is sexual stimulation.  Do you really want to serve beers and erections for your livelihood?

Maybe you're just like me.  Maybe you look for validation at every turn.  You feel like your beautiful body, your God-given (or surgically enhanced) breasts feel like your best quality.  But they are not.  Let's go to lunch.  Let's talk about what we really are.  Let's talk about our femininity and our insecurities.  Let's talk about what we have to offer the world, and the men in our lives, besides just a vagina.

But don't let them reduce you to an object.  Don't let them perpetuate the myth that you are only as valuable as your bra size. Don't let them use you and don't check the best parts of you at the door."

I'll Try And Get Along With You

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I was washing conditioner out of my hair the last time Pete and I had an argument.  He started to talk about his frustrations and I braced myself behind the shower curtain.  There was some blame, some minimizing, a general lack of empathy and the conversation ended with me dripping wet in my towel, tears streaming down my face as I begged him to leave me alone. 

“We’ll talk about it later” I sobbed.

“But we never will.” He said as he left.

After that last discussion there were those typical days of awkwardness and chilly silence.  I felt the impending doom of the next phase of Pete’s addictive cycle. 

“Maybe it’s time to totally let him go.” Scabs told me.  “Let him fall.” 

So I tried.  And he did.  A relapse, or slip or lost battle or whatever you want to call it.  He had one.  And then another and another, dutifully confessing them to me each time.

The first disclosure came on my way home from work.  I said nothing.  That night we sat at the kitchen table and he asked me if I wanted to talk about it. 

“No.” I said.

The first time was the hardest time.  As he got up and walked out of the room it was all I could do to keep my butt in the chair.  I wanted to chase after him, extend an olive branch, I wanted to reconcile.  I wanted to ease his pain.  I desperately wanted to feel close to him. 

He told me that he didn’t think he had ever hit rock bottom.  Part of me wonders if I have been the emotional safety net that has caught him above the depths of his stony pit.  Validating, encouraging, comforting, engaging, participating.

After each confession in the last two weeks I have tried to respond the same way.  “Okay.  Thanks for telling me.”  No more emotionally exhausting, late-night conversations analyzing the relapse.  No more questions about how it happened or how he handled it.  No more invasion of his addiction.  I’m on the sidelines this time.  I’m not in the game, and I’m not even the coach. 

Feeling a little nervous about this method of detachment I asked my counselor if it was healthy.  She pointed out that my previous methods had done nothing to help Pete’s cycle of addiction, but more importantly my previous methods were not getting me to the place I wanted to be.  After obsessively trying to detach the “RIGHT” way, she kindly pointed out that because all addicts and codependents are different, every method is going to be different.  What is effective for one, might not be effective for another.  When I told her about how I was letting it all go, almost completely, she smiled and said

“Try it.  See how it goes.”

The other night Pete asked me what I expected of him.  I told him I had no expectations.  For the first time I am not emotionally attached to any outcome.  I expect, that tomorrow morning I will wake up. And I will live my life.  I will do what makes me happy if I want to be happy.   If he is not healthy enough to be a part of that, then maybe he’ll pursue recovery.  Or maybe he won’t.  But I’m not going to mope around about it.  If I feel like being pleasant, I’m going to be pleasant. 

I’m not saying I don’t have my sad moments.  But when I have them, I own them.  They are not obligatory, and they are not a parallel of his.   They are not an inevitable, uncontrollable response to his addictive cycle. 

I don’t have to punish him by invoking the silent treatment.  I don’t feel compelled to be in a sour mood toward him as a demonstration of my hurt.  Nor do I feel responsible to make a soft place for him to land.  I am totally relinquishing any responsibility I felt for his happiness. 

The other night I watched an episode of Parenthood where Sarah says to her teenage daughter

“I’m done trying to control you.  It doesn’t work.  I just don’t want us to be like this.  I love you so much.  I think I’ll just try and get along with you.”

And that about sums it up for me.

My Validation Fixation

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"I am insatiable for validation." I wrote in my 4th step inventory. Then I doubled the font, put it in bold, and highlighted it in the word document. It could not be understated.

I don't like using the word addiction loosely. So I will say that my fixation with validation stops just short of an addiction. It is my compulsive behavior. I look for a validation fix everywhere I can. In each email I receive from a friend, I hope to be validated. In the comments on my blog I long for praise. All around me on the internet I search for opportunities to be validated by writing comments or submitting guest posts. During my sharing at group meeting I look for approval in the faces of those who listen to me. When I bear my testimony at church I anticipate complimentary responses. During an emotional crisis I reach for my phone to call a trusted friend, someone I can count on to either validate me or talk me out of my desperate need.

When these sources all fail me, I turn to social media. Instagram and Facebook are a warehouse for manufactured validation. I post a picture of myself or my kids and I find instant positive feedback. But it's never enough. There are never enough comments or "likes" to satisfy me. I am insatiable.

When validation can not be found, I default to distraction. I peruse Instagram and Facebook, or play Words With Friends. Pinterest. Amazon. Anything to distract me from the fact that I am not being acknowledged, appreciated or worshipped.

(I am not saying there is anyhing inherently wrong with these things. Just like there is nothing inherently wrong with the beach. The beach is only a place to be avoided if you're a cycling sex addict.)

*Side Note* I want to issue a formal apology here, to anyone who I emailed preachy or self-righteous advice to. There were times it was me acting out on a compulsive desire for validation, because I was insecure about my position. And I can't possibly express my gratitude sufficiently to those who have had the courage to disagree with me, to refuse to indulge my somewhat manipulative effort to be validated. Now that I'm feeling the meekness of having no answers, I am slightly embarrassed at how I behaved when I was sure I had figured it all out.

My insatiable need for validation is definitely a problem. It might be a managable problem for me but for two things. One- I look to Pete as the number one source of my validaton. Two- Pete is an addict. I loved Rhyll's words

"Even though his presence brought out a toxic reaction in me, I desperately wanted to be loved and validated by him."

Pete and I have the same blame-shifting conversation during each of his addictive cycles. The conversation where he tells me that I'm detaching too much, and I lose my confidence. I might be able to have this conversation if I wasn't so committed to pleasing him, but my need for his validation suffocates me and breaks my heart at the first sign of his disapproval. This last time, through my tears I begged him to leave the room because I could not handle the pain of his blame.

The only people who I don't look to for validation are my children. I am so thankful that they have been spared the pressure of filling my perpetual need. From them all I wish for is love. Love free of agenda or self-interest. Pure childlike love. Love that comes so naturally to them that I can be totally confident in its intentions. It is whole and it is the antidote to my disease. It is the water that quenches my insecure thirst.

new perspective

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There is something that feels so wrong to me about posting on my blog when I'm deliberately avoiding everyone else's blogs.  I think I needed to detach a bit, my own conundrum seems so overwhelming I can't find any strength to engage in anyone else's.

Call it self-pity, call it self-care.  Call it the tight rope of trying to get it right.

A few months ago I was driving in my car listenting to an interview with Clay Christensen on the radio.  The man is brilliant and incredibly talented.  The guy graduated with honors and a doctorate degree from Harvard, plus he played basketball at Oxford. 

The interview was mostly out of my leauge, all the economical mumbo-jumbo just sort of floated over my head.  But I kept listening because I was sure it was making me smarter.  Unfortunately the only phrase that my brain could actually process made me realize that I'm really not smart at all.

"There are a lot of people who have lots of answers and no questions."

At the next red light I thumbed the words quickly into my notepad app on my phone because I knew he was talking about me.  There they remained.  I continued to give answers to everyone who wanted them, and many who didn't.  This very blog served as a platform for me to just hemorrhage answers. 

And now I'm spent. 

I flipped through my notepad app, and found what I was looking for.  156 days ago, October 12th, 10:19am.  Dr. Christensen's wisdom.

Dear, dear God.  I have no more answers.  I only have questions.  So. many. questions. 

Disjointed

There are 60 unread posts in my Google reader, and that's just my WoPA account. 

http://www.living4impact.com/

I've been in a self-imposed isolation.  We're addicts, and loved ones of addicts.  We know isolation.

My isolation is two parts self-pity and three parts self-reflection, which has actually been productive and yielded some discovery.  Truth be told, I'm having a bit of a crisis of faith, and I see-saw between a total committment to getting to the bottom of it and then a sort of ignorant, blissful apathy.  I take that back, it is actually more like a half-stoned numb pseudoexistance rather than anything blissful.

In other news, it's March.  March is a hard month for Pete.  He thrives on a challenging work environment, which exists for him January-February.  Then in March there is a huge let-down.  His work goes from being super-intense to not-intense and it's easy for him to let loose, get lazy.  I'm finding that some old suspicious and anxious codependent behaviors that I thought I had overcome are resurfacing.  And I just really don't want to go there. 

I can always tell when I'm struggling because I feel like every song lyric was written for me. 

When you're at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soulYour faith walks on broken glass
(GREEN DAY - 21 GUNS)

I ran a race this morning.  It was six miles. Three uphill, then three back down.  I pushed myself hard, and got a personal best time.  It felt so good.  Brandon Flowers sang me through my last mile when my body wanted to call it quits. 

And when when the hardest part is over, we'll be here
And our dreams will break the boundaries of our fear
The boundaries of our fear

Emotionally speaking I'm running with a tire tied around my waist.  I want to go faster, I want to push harder but it's holding me back.  I breath heavier, I will myself to ignore the burning in my legs, and still I feel like I'm going in slow motion. 

I know the tire is fear. I know it. 

See ya when I see ya.