Codependency & Reservations?

My sponsor had me read through "Recovery and Relapse" again out of the Basic Text and journal on it, and I put it off until after I went over my step work with her on Tuesday. I felt like it was super important to focus on my codependency, since I constantly struggle with it.

One of my biggest downfalls has always been this underlying need to control everything around me, especially people. I want everyone to act a certain way to provide the outcomes I want, with little regard to how I am affecting the same situations. I'm self-centered; it's all about me, my needs and wants. When things don't work out, I blame myself for my inability to do or say the exact thing that might have salvaged everything, especially in relationships. I beat myself up for months when IP left me because surely he didn't see how hard I was trying, how I got clean for him, how he was mistaken in assuming my future goals because I didn't properly communicate and only complained about my parents' failed marriage. I even considered offering to have his children to keep him around when I found out how important that was to him, even though he entered into a relationship with me knowing I didn't want kids, so it was he who was being deceptive, not me. But I am powerless over him and I lost control of the situation so I considered all of the ways I could manipulate it back in my favor. I reached out for a while until I allowed ML to dominate my mind. I got lax on meeting attendance, step work, and talking to my sponsor and other recovering addicts -- outside of his halfway house. Even before I knew he was using again, I blamed his shady behavior on myself. I did something wrong. I was undesirable and pushed him away. I'd try to cook for him, give gifts, hold him, any form of affection I could think of, but it was never received. He'd stop speaking to me all together for weeks at a time. If I talked to anyone, it was about him. He became my Higher Power. Once I did accept his using, I had to fix everything for him. My own recovery meant nothing, I hated myself, became suicidal, and relapsed. I put others ahead of myself because that's how I've always expressed love, but it's really more destructive and self-deprecating than selfless like I want to convince myself I'm being. I use other people, especially men, to validate myself and maybe it stems from feeling emotionally neglected by my father growing up or these grandiose expectations of romance and wanting to be this fragile thing to be saved, but I only end up disappointed and hurt in the long run. I love the idea of love and someone's potential more than who they really are. I have fun with someone I'm lusting after and mistake it for love, but it's always conditional. They're smart enough to leave after a while, but I will be miserable trying to make things work for as long as they'll allow me to. But feelings are not fact. I know that I truly love these people, but I am obviously capable of loving again, even though I don't want to admit it because the idea of going from one man to another makes me feel like a total whore, even if sex isn't involved. I also have the tendency to go for men who need to be taken care of, as if I'm fulfilling some weird mommy complex. I know that I'm instinctively nurturing despite how much I fight it, but I need someone who is responsible and self-supporting like I strive to be, but first I have to take care of myself and support my own emotional needs, not rely on them. I'll continue to project my insecurities onto every relationship I have and be miserable and alone and make a lot of people resentful of me in the process. I'll continue my destructive patterns because they're comfortable and it's how I know to cope. I have to work on my issues with food and internalizing everything, learn to reach out to the right people, stop reacting so heavily on my emotions, and get outside of myself. I must share in meetings and be more open to newcomers; I must continue journaling, talking to women, and being consistent with my step work; I must pray daily, sometimes many times a day, if only for willingness. I have to be grateful and remember that gratitude is an action. I want to be more involved with service and help others the way people help me, but to do so, I have to be emotionally available in ways I've not been. I have to find balance in my life and apply my recovery to everything I do, because while I can't progress if I'm using, quitting drugs is the smallest part of the process. If I have to devote a certain time out of my day to pray or food-prep or do something for me on top of step work, then so be it. I have to consistently turn things over to my Higher Power until I learn to relinquish all control, and to do so, I really have to work thorough second and third steps.

Throwbacks for emphasis...

01/23/2014

It really sucks for me to have to admit that I relapsed, again, almost immediately after starting this blog the other day. That would make it my third in two months. My original sobriety date, the day I was arrested, was October 3. I didn't even make it a full three months before I talked myself into drinking over stupid shit, and attempting to OD. See, while I was in jail, my boyfriend stood by me and was so supportive. When I got out, I had to move back in with my parents as I lost my apartment, and he moved back in with his mother. The plan was to save up and use the time that I was court-ordered to live here to catch up on bills that I'd fallen so far behind on and find a better place. I moved in right before Halloween, and by the beginning of December, he broke up with me. Told me he didn't love me anymore. I was distraught as it was, until a couple of weeks later, I discovered that he had slept with his friend's girlfriend a couple of weeks before breaking up with me and had no intentions of telling me. I confronted him about it that night, it was confirmed, and the next day I stayed in bed until the late afternoon when I was determined to get as drunk as possible as quickly as possible. Two bottles of wine, a very stout vodka drink, and twenty minutes later, I was buying heroin and having it delivered to me with the works. The people who brought it to me are friends that I had to seriously con into it, and their one stipulation was that they shoot me up because they knew what I was trying to do. I had talked my now-ex into bringing me the blankets I'd forgotten in his car, and everyone knew I was drunk and I thought I was being slick hiding how high I was, but he said he could tell that I was a nod away from possibly not waking back up. I'll admit that my biggest regret is not the anxiety I caused myself over potentially getting caught, what with it being the weekend before Christmas and drug screens being so intense, but the fact that in my drunk-high fog, I managed to lose the remaining drug and didn't finish it. That's a fucked up way of going about things, but that's how my mind works.  

Flash forward to this month. I started hanging out with a friend of mine who is also in the program, and he's literally been the biggest inspiration I could ever hope to find. He was so much worse off than I've ever been, and he was resistant at first, but now seems to flourish. We have so much more in common than I could have ever imagined to find in another human being, and really I'm surprised at how much I can't seem to get enough of someone so similar to me. He's the easiest person to talk to and doesn't seem to judge me (that I can tell). I admitted to him the other day that since my first relapse, I've been drinking on and off for a straight month. His birthday was the twenty-second (the day after my first post), and I spent the night before blogging, making him cupcakes, and chugging rum. I realized after the fact that not only could I easily get into this place where I feel like I'm able to successfully sneak around and get away with things and get eventually caught, but really it was all pointless. What good did it do me to drink? I wasn't any happier during or after. I constantly crave a drink, but it's really the dope I want. Alcohol is just safer because it's out of your system faster. Thinking things like this makes me realize how badly I really do need to be in this program, and that's a huge step for me to admit. The problem is, the longer I go without using, the worse my bulimia gets. I'm so fucked in the head in more ways than one, and I don't honestly know which is worse. I can stay clean from drugs, but I'll always find some way to hurt myself.

After typing up all of this, I logged onto Facebook to see my sister's friend tagged me in a post.

She seems to think I'd be qualified to speak? I hate speaking in front of people, but it probably wouldn't be a bad idea. Does it count as service work? It's not affiliated with any twelve-step programs, obviously, so I wouldn't really incorporate any of that, and would have to watch my language while still trying to focus on strength and hope. Experience is good especially as a scare tactic, but I feel like if it's going to prevent someone from picking up, or leading someone to find help, I need only use enough to get the point across and follow it up as positively as possible. Something to think on, I suppose.

Anyway, when I'm uninspired to blog, oftentimes just a prompt or a topic helps to jump start the process, so feel free to throw in any suggestions of things you'd like to read!