Countdown

Well the first of my last 4 days are over. It feels unreal at this time. Just like the days are as normal.
With my high levels of anxiety being easily triggered I noticed when I got home that I have 2 missed calls from an "unknown" number. That in the past has been the P hospital calling. Now I am worried that there is somehting wrong with my new job. I have to wait until tomorrow. Teach me for forgetting to take my mobile phone in.
From the start I have been worried about the references showing the level of sickness I have had. Now I don't really know if it's a high amount of days off but for me the fact that I have had any sick days is too many. When I have been off it's been absolutely genuine but I still have that strong message from my childhood - only weak people are sick and similar such impressions I have taken on.
And this evening I felt a real ouch of sensitivity. This is a long winded story to get to the point of sensitivity. Try and remember that this is where this story starts.
A little while ago my friends A, M and S and I agreed that we would meet each month for a long walk followed by lunch. And each month one of us would choose the walk and the lunch location. This month, the third time we've done it, was my turn to organise. I resourced a 10 mile walk from my front door and back and then a short drive to a recommended pub just 10 mins drive away (a little expensive but good food - all local produce. Yep everything! - and a very nice atmosphere). S, one of the four is currently struggling with a bad back and therefore is not coming on the walks but joining us for the lunches. Next month, it's her turn to organise the lunch and between the rest of us, we will sort out the walk. The walk was great. Fresh air, sunshine, a little chilly. We climbed Butser Hill, the highest point in Hampshire apparently. It was so clear we could not only see the cost but could see out to sea. And furthermore, views all aroudn fo the South Downs. Beautiful! I am very, very fortunate to live in such a pretty aprt of the country.
At this point I digress - the flirty, non-adult in me is now really interested in living by rough coastlines and raging seas - why? ( I love being amidst trees - even miss them when I don't get a fair share). Well because an old friend, and I mean a friend from many years ago but the friend bit is really tenuous as I barely remembered him when my other friend mentioned him, and I have had some email contact that I instigated. In his recent mail he mentioned how he would like to live by a rugged coastline and rough seas. Thankfully I am much more self aware in recent years and know how just a smile an have me inagining marriage and where we live and the lifestyle etc etc. It takes seconds to get there. So being self-aware I am able to acknowledge that, with some embarrassment I might mention, put it aside and have correspondance with my dignity and integrity intact. It is however important for me to mention thse wild imaginings and flirty thoughts to my closest friends. And I have done despite feeling foolish and being laughed at - with affection that I can take.
Anyway back to the walk, well moving on actually to the lunch. M and I sat on one side of the table where M noticed a table of 4 men who looked reasonably attractive. Now S I think wanted to be able to see them but she had her back to them and I don't think A was really that interested in her avoidance of such things. This might sound like I am man mad. No, no, no. I like to think it's a healthy interest much different from the antics of some 8 years ago. It was very different indeed then.
Anyway M mentioned to me that the men had not paid any attnetion to us at all. Now my first thought was, well of course not I am too ugly to attract any of their attention. My second thought was they may have been gay. My third thought was that they may be decent men, out for a boys lunch with their wives at home waiting after a game of golf or something. I mentioned this onto S. She sent me a text that really triggered two levels of severe sensitivity.
In her text she said that perhaps if they had seen her they would have looked again. She did add - a cheeky comment which I guess was meant to mean a jokey text. However I read into it her arrogance, and her jealousy that M and I had a great view. There was also a setting around the table that was conjusive to S and A talkign together and M and I talking together. I had a sense that S might be jealous. Anyway that's just me reading into things and how jealous I would be if 2 people were having conversatons about something I would want to be included in. S is particuarly keen to meet someon - it's a real drive in her right now.
Anyway, blah blah blah. The next thing I thought about this text was upset. So she thinks she is pretty and I am ugly. OUCH!!! She believes what I believe you see - there's the evidence I am ugly despite people trying to tell me otherwise.
But then it turned into a self berating. She was just joking, why can't I have a sense of humour? I take everything so seriously. I can't lighten up. I have no sense of humour. I am a bad person. I am not worth knowing.
What I did next was very different from the building of resentment and hatred towards her. I said all of that without the self-berating bit in a text back. I said how sensitive I had been but then also how I am so unknowing of the fine line between being able to laugh and allowing my sensitivity to tell me something hurts.
I had a lovely text back. S said that her remark was very tongue in cheek and hadn't thought how it might sound. She was sorry it hit a sore point and wasn't what was intended at all. She said that she hadn't though about it because she doesn't see me as ugly.
I do notice though that she doesn't say I am attractive. See I can't let it go can I?
I said thank you S.
Relief and friendship in tact - then codependently worried that she thinks I am an arse and - oh shut up.

Now back to the male friend. I sent an email last night and it was on my mind that he might reply. He is so not an addict - no f g reply. I am pleased because it doesn't tap into my addictive nature and feed it. It also means that I can just get on with some studying.
Ha ha and here I am typing on my blog.
Right right right - some studying - 1 hour and then maybe even an early night.
I have eaten - had a nice pudding and as always when I have had a nice pudding I want some more.
Feeling very hormonally bloated and fat tonight. Uncomfortable. I hate the menopause. Still having it comparatively early may mean that I will be through it sooner and things will improve before I am ageing with age - if you know what I mean???
Phew. I tell you it's damned complicated being me sometimes - most of the time.

It was difficult working today with my clients, thinking of Russell and worrying about them.

Morning after

I cried a lot last night. Not just for Russell but for all the other addicts whose lives are snuffed out. It's not about the choice not to use drugs or alcohol but the lack of choice - the emotions that seem so difficult to deal with.
I felt very very bleak and black last night. Not so much this morning. This morning I am in disbelief about Russell. I remember feeling that with every single addict that has died since I've been working with addiction too. S just before Christmas. The same thing. I keep picturing them dead. It's possibly a way to make it more real. Because, of course, I won't be at Russell's funeral. I didn't know him that well really. I kne him and chatted to him if I was at a meeting or saw him in passing but I wasn't a friend of his nor he mine. So they only way to get to grips is to picture him dead. It might seem weird to others. I think it's a tactic, maybe it's just torture.
I did want to use last night though. I wanted to be dead too. That is such an easy corner to skulk off to.

I remember with my mum, when she first died, that it would suddenly hit me that she had died. It seemed like I would forget every few minutes and the pain when I remembered was just like a knife cutting through my heart. Phew emotional pain has got to be the worst for me.
I still miss Frank. He died, wow, in 1986 or 1987? Can't quite remember, oh no it was 1986 or 1987 that I finally found out and his mother told me he had died 2 years earlier. osh I still can't believe he is dead.
I find loss through death painful. I find loss of living people difficult too.

In this country it's all so tabboo to talk about it aswell. When women wail in areas like the Middle East or there is grieving like the older Europeans do with the curtains of the homes closed and wearing black and openly crying, I think it is so much healthier. We are all going to die. I prefer to talk about the peson that has died and express my feelings. I wouldn't have said this before though. So I must let go of the anger that I am arousing about this. The anger is certainly linked to something else, perhaps the futile death of someone so young having died. I am angry with Russell for dying. Bloody hell Russell!

I was about to start writing knowing that I have a little audience of one - hello if you are reading - and it would have been all intellectual nonsense. The trouble is I can let ego take over and write from my head instead of my heart. That's nothing to do with the reader/s. It's to do with my ego.
I posited the question to a few people about how they manage their ego. Only one person has responded saying let's talk. Ha! I will see her tomorrow so I will see if we can instigate a conversation about ego. It's taken a while for me to even get a little understanding about ego. I have looked up the word so many times.
I experienced it though this last week. It's quite sneaky.
Having recieved these messages via FRU from my first husbands third wife - already sounds damned complicated doesn't it? - I interpreted from what she was saying that M had really really been hurt by my leaving. What's worse and I had never been sure, he blames me for being so "moody" with the following wives/partners because I had affairs. I had never been sure that he knew I was having an affair. I was 21 he was 24/25. The marriage was such a messy nonsense. We were separated after 3 months. I am going into justification now. I am not at all proud of behaving in such a hurtful way. I have always known I hurt him. I would love to be able to remove that hurt. I have felt such shame through the years for my behaviours.
I am much much more aware these days. I can see how bloody fucked up my notion of love and sex etc is. With such low self esteem the only way I knew how to relate to men was sexually and yet if they wanted sex it meant that they were torturing me. Sex with strangers -easy! Sex with someone I want to love and cherish me - bastard! I have felt so horrid that I have felt like really hurting that person physically.Ugh I can feel that disgust and angst even now.
Well I would like the opportunity to say to M how deeply sorry I am for my behaviour. I want to tell him that it's a pity that the work I have done to date started so late and too late not to cause harm to him and others. BY this blog I put it into the Universe that I am truly truly sorry. And I hope that with my self awareness and continuing work on myself I will not intentionally cause such harm again.
Sorry.

Russell

Russell died last night!

It's just so so weird. It hurts so much. It's not that I knew him incredibly well or had a really close relationship. It's death itself that hurts.

What is it? There's a connection. The connection I think is he WAS in recovery, then he relapsed and he's dead.

The weirdest thing of all? I spoke with him on the phone on Wednesday. In the 5 years he's been in the rooms I have never ever called him. I cannot reconcile this. I spoke with him. It's the suddenness of him being snapped out of life.

I rang a bell for him tonight.

I will remember him saying I will pass the goblet instead of passing the pot.

He wore funny jumpers.

Bloody hell he shared for ages, every time and all around the houses.

He died in hospital.

My mum on Mother's Day

Usually Mother's Day has little impact on me. This year has been oddly different but not so odd really.
Working my steps I am at step 8 - Made a list of people we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them.
I have a lot of raw awareness recently from working steps 6 and 7 and it's been coincidental that a lot of people from my past both recent past and distant past too who have helped with the increasing self awareness and the realisation of amends.

I was usually late or disruptive with things like my mum's birthday and Mother's Day and Christmas - the perceived major days of the year which my mum took very seriously.
Today I am aware yet again how often I upset her. She was an incredible woman, eccentric, funny, very caring, very differing views on matters than some of my own, feisty, vivacious, well liked and so on. She was larger than life at times and I loved her very much.
I am so so sorry that I didn't value her more when she was alive and at times respect her more like the little things that were so important to her. I could have been less selfish at times but I was so bloody arrogant and stubborn (and very very ill with addiction).
I know she loved me very much and I loved her and still do.
I miss her so that it hurts in my heart. The pain sometimes is so great it feels like I could explode with it.

I managed to put my selfish aside today for an hour and drove to her grave. It means little to me - she is not there and all I remember of it is putting her coffin in that hole. Some people I know find something helpful about a grave. However, I know my mum would like to think people would tend her grave and put flowers there. And so I did despite really not wanting to - having to go out when I needed to be studying and just not wanting to make the effort as it means so little to me. I did it in her honour and to say sorry.
I cried all the way there so stopped and bought myself a cafetiere which I have avoided for years. I don't seem to live life without something addictive - my food is in order but my caffeine intake has increased so that the effect is no longer happening. Poo.

So yes my heart is aching for her. If only she could come back. It's not spirit her or anything else that I want it's alive her. I want to cuddle her, I want to smell her, I want to here her voice, I want to see her laughing which in itself used to make me laugh. She rolled with laughter. Even her annoying ways I want. She used to phone me at least 5 times a day with absolutely rubbish news. I want that too. She had so many funny tales that made up her life, I would just hurt with laughter listening to her.

I feel as if I carry so much sorrow sometimes.

Stuck stuck stuck

I am trying to say that the fact that there are a number of theories that have been devloped since Heider's initial theory of attribution, suggests that there is something in the

Gosh the mist is so low I can no longer see the hill. Is it a very very low cloud?

Ok foudn a way to say that. Now I am really wanting to distract from my essay but ....... what I want to go on and talk about next is biases and the value that this has brough to us understanding how this has helped understand how people perceive and explain their environment.
Bias seems to keep us safe in a kind of denial way - in a way that keep us from being responsible or for being in the safe group. And there are attribution theories of bias - Tajfels SIT theory of ingroup outgroup somehow seems to support what it si I am trying to say - I can't bring it all together. I can see that there is this research from another poitn of view - a more wualitative view which concludes that attributions a re taking place. So that shows that attributions theories are taking place in how we perceive and explan the world.
How the hell do I bring this all together???????


Ended up doing myself a roast vegetable feast with oven baked salmon and garlic with brussels and curly kale. Finally followed with a nearly badly burnt but only slightly blackened fruit scone with as far as I could tell no fruit! Tecsco cheap-skates (is that the term?)
And having only just finished at 21.13 - very very late for dinner.

The good news is I have done 1300 words - just 200 more to go????!!!!!

The machine-based logical models of information shortcomings -

Gosh I am tired but so nearly nearly there! Now going to be over the word count . Bloody hell
Boring boring blog writer signing out. Night

Balk at people attempting to control me

I heard this today when someone was sharing about being controlling and balking at attempts by others to control her. Wow, that's it. I react very badly when it feels as if people are trying to control. Manipulation, outward and obvious control, in whatever form I sense it and lash out.
I have sensed it - P...., parents, V......, when she shared about not knowing whether it's food type cravings or emotions. I can't think of any more examples right at this moment.
I lashed out at P when I felt as if she was labelling and boxing me into a corner, I had to respond to V's text about sweet things thinking, although I didn't believe she would, that she was criticising me eating all food types include sweet things. I feel it with H. I was talking about a recent OA reading about opinions and the fine line in having opinions and sharing them to have a voice int he world or keeping quiet because my opinions do not need to be out there. She told me it's OK to have opinions and voice them. I feel controlled by her and I really really have a huge resentment with her. She winds me up. She assumes I know nothing. She treats me like a fool. That's how I feel. Higher Power, how do I deal with that. Do I have my voice. Clearly there is a voice to be heard. If I could say anything to her without having to be loving and caring I would say "look, it's not that I don't know intellectually. It's up for discussion, how different people deal with this. I bloody well know it's OK to have opinions, I have them. I know too that I can be controlling with them and other times I can feel to worthless to think my opinions count. I was then confused by the reading and you come out with "it's OK to have opinions" I know that you stupid stupid woman. But what I would like to know is what you think the reading is referring to". The problem is I didn't have the reading to hand.
So how would I say that without being so offensive?
I was glad to speak with V and apologise for my sensitivity but glad to recognise within the meeting that I am so so sensitive to even the slightest hint of control and that's what I was reading. She said it wasn't mean that way and that was fie I think. My codependency is taking it all on that now I have offended her by saying ow I felt even though she wasn't and blah blah blah.
Bloody hell the complications of relating with people. I guess other people either aren't as sensitive or I over analyse. I am pretty anxious about a lot of things at the moment and very uncertain of myself.
I think this is based on the fact that I have been off sick this week when really I would have been well enough to work. I wish now I had returned to work instead of staying at home to do my essay and I have done barely anything. Guilt is what is causing my anxiety I believe. I hope I can learn from this lesson.
I am so so pleased for T being offered exhibits for her work and with an income from it. An agency offering to take her on is great. Although she could do it herself and have all the income it's not her area of expertise and trying to do the admin removes her from being creative. There's a fine line in there somewhere. I think I would have negotiated on the 35% fee for exhibitions that approach T direct and she hands over to the agent. And maybe even on the 50/50 for agency located exhibits. And the agent isn't even handling her paintings only her sculptures. There was definitely room for negotiation there but as I know myself it takes bloody courage and real self esteem, belief to negotiate.
I wish I had not taken last week off. Please HP don't let it ruin my chances with the P. I am afraid that I will get bad references and they will withdraw their offer.

Guess what I am stuck on my essay. I so need to finish it this evening to get it off to a few readers. I need to get on with the study calendar. I am getting so behind. It's causing more pressure and less head space to get the blinking essay done - aaaaaaaaaaaargh!

HP please can you help me find serenity to accept - people attempting to control in whatever shape or form it arrives. And please show me how to respond appropriately. And HP please help me to accept the consequences of my taking last week off and trust that the best thing will happen.
I feel as if I will be reprimanded and punished for doing something so wrong. I am finding it difficult to believe that HP will not punish me severely. My HP is all loving and nothing is done to punish. I am riddled with anxiety and guilt and that feels horrid all brought on by myself and not by HP. If the P receive bad references and withdraw their offer it is my doing not punishment from HP. It is just how things are. What I need serenity is that it is out of my hands and all I can do is wait and see.

Right back to the essay.
Oh I had lunch late and feel very full up. That's something I need to learn. When I have finished a meal I want more immediately but if I leave it a while I feel quite full. Right now I would not be ready to eat until later. As I finished my lunch at about 2.30 I propose to have dinner about 8pm. This is later than I would prefer. It is suggested to have finished eating by 7.30. Well I will see how I feel at 7pm, 1 and 1/2 hours from now. What will I have? left over fish pie, brussell sprouts, carrots and curly kale. The protein seems little and the carbs too. But I can have a toasted scone for pud which is all carb. That should be ok huh?
Phew for some reason my dinner seems a real problem. I don't know why sometimes the actual content seems to be problematic. Oh well eat it and see.

Ok Ok back to the essay. NOW!

Better mood - clearer head

Well it's lunchtime and this is the first time have blogged. What an odd term.
The tutorial last night at Winchester Uni was very helpful. I think the room was more conjusive to a gathering and the layout facilitated chat. Of course we are all a little more familiar with each other although I only know names because Jane mentioned them. Cathy and Pippa. I found Pippa an interestingly odd character. Ooops these are real names. She was quite abrasive I thought at first. There was a sort of cockiness too and yet I saw her vulnerability as well. Cathy seems very nice.
Jane spoke about Frued and it was obvious that she was enthusiastic about his theories. She is a pleasant person in a very direct way. There's no nonsense from her really.
Anyway the session helped immensely. I haven't done a proper essay plan this time and I think that's contributing to how difficult I am finding it.
I started again today as it just wasn't flowig or directed and it is now a bit more. I think there is evaluation going on. Anyway now I am breaking to cook my lunch.
I haven't shared with anyoe how worried I am about the P getting bad references for my sick leave. I am sick with worry ha ha ha. And I was just disappointed when chatting with P, new manager and previous friend. He said he is not sure how long he may stay in the field. He's a money maker and this won't be paying him enough I would have thought. He said dry cleaners look prefereable right now. If that's a joke I don't get it - do you? Who? You?
I am going bell ringing tonight. I am concerned though that I would rather not and instead would stay home continuing to get the essay written. I will have tomorrow afternoon as well. Then Sunday there is the CoDA workgroup with Amy and S... can't remember what I called her in previous blogs. Perhaps I should just use the first letter of their names instead of making names up.
I spoke with J for ages yesterday about how upset I feel and he made reference to bullying which is how I think things are but I know too it's paranoia. I feel less worried about it today.
I will meet P and just see what happens. I am glad that I haven't written everyone off as J would do. I haven't even written my dad off completely but the contact is at a level where it's OK for me and I presume OK for him too. Didn't see him at Christams or his birthday this year. So maybe it will reduce to seeing eaach other once a year. How sad that it's like that.

Well ... that's it for a little while. There's loads to write and no time to get all my thoughts down.
Oh did have a memory triggered by D writig to me by email from Wales. Her son has been given time off to study for his exams. We didn;t get that but I did spend as much time as I could at Farnham swimming baths (ope air and now closed). I had a new boyfriend who I remember as being incredibly good looking. I met him at St Josephs youth centre where HC had met P and R was his friend. So good looking but all I can remember is how clingy he was a nd feeling I couldn't breathe without him cuddling me. And so I finished it with him. Is my memory accurate? It's such a surprise that anyone would fancy me so much.

Bye for now