If you had just escaped from a lion’s den would you go back for your hat?

I heard that line last night and it made me think about my early recovery.  It’s so very important to protect the healthy environment that I have created for myself.  I surround myself with people that make me happy and that have helped me in getting well.  I have a lot of decisions to make, or work to do, if I am going to make home life healthy and happy.  But that’s not going to drag me down.  There were many occasions I was invited to parties in early recovery that I had to turn down.  I also avoided certain people that were “toxic”.  For me it’s about loving who I am, what I am becoming, and doing everything I can to protect it.

 

 

I spoke with Beth, Colin’s ex-wife, she is not doing very well with all of this.  The poor woman has taken on so much of Colin’s baggage; even after his passing.  His wreckage will never be cleared away and that is very sad.  He will never know exactly how devastated people are over this.  I do no know all of Colin’s story, or at least the majority of his past from Ireland.  But I do know that he has family there that have arranged for his body to be delivered there.  He will not be having a funeral here.  He has left behind a dog, which he absolutely adored, and a very nice apartment full of very nice things.  His poor ex is almost forced to deal with the bulk of his wreckage here in Canada.  His family in Ireland don’t seem to be offering very much assistance to her.  I keep trying to put myself in their shoes and consider how they must be feeling after losing a son or a brother.

I’m starting to piece together what his life was like at his end.  He was on the verge of losing pretty much everything.  He lost his company, which if I read it correctly was pretty much his entire self worth.  He was very much a man that portrayed an image of wealth and consequence.  He liked nice things and made a bit of show about how much money he had.  I can vividly picture the days he was spending at home alone with the dog.  He would probably be spending his entire waking hours drinking and trying to deal with the fall out.  Beth was describing his health problems leading up to his death.  He had ulcers in his stomach and his throat and he was having seizures.  She said to me that she didn’t know why this was happening but that he was in and out of the hospital a few times to deal with those.  I’m doing the math on that and it all points to chronic and unrelenting consumption of alcohol.  I know this because it’s exactly where I was heading.  They say that a person can have up to five seizures while detoxing from alcohol, but the sixth one will usually have dire consequences.  I don’t know what Colin’s number was, but it proves that there is truth to the statement that seizures are deadly.  She had begged him numerous times to go back to treatment and to try again.  I always prayed that he would reach out sometime and ask for help.  I was hoping one day for the call that he was coming back to the rooms, not that he was dead.  I didn’t see that one coming with him.

People have said to me that they’ve had X number of people die in/around the rooms and that they know what I’m feeling.  But I haven’t and if fucking sucks. All I only know is that I had a friend who was living at the gates of hell and I wish he’d reached the same conclusion that I did.  That living like that is agony and it doesn’t have to be that way.  When I was in those same shoes I quickly realized that it was time to put down the shovel and stop digging my own grave.

 

I sometimes need a refresher in the subj statement.  One of the founding principles of the program is about not letting my personality and will to run the show.  I am often reminded that in order to keep what I have, I have to give it away.  This means that I need to work with other people in recovery.  This can really be a struggle for me as some of are really “nuts”.  It’s impossible to like every single person in every single situation, but it doesn’t mean I have the right to treat them poorly.  I always try to relate instead of judge.

today felt like I made some progress in coping with this stuff.  I was very productive all day even though I really wanted to be lazy and just listen to music and build this Lego set.  I managed to get quite a lot of stuff done, like meal prep and getting ready for the week.  I find not having to worry about meals and stuff through the week makes it so much easier to stay on track with the clean eating.  When I have options and no time is when I tend to get in the mind set of eating whatever I want.  I hope to keep moving forward in my progress at the gym.
Where I struggle is with M and I, we seem to have different ideas of what to do around the house.  We have kind of a shitty kitchen and it seems like no matter how many times I sort out the cupboards and storage it just ends up a disaster.  She just doesn’t seem to care if stuff is falling out of cupboards and drawers can’t close.  I can never seem to find anything I am looking for in there and it gets so frustrating.  If I say anything about it she thinks I am an ass hole for it.  I can’t control what she says or how she thinks, I can only control how I react to things.  In that sort of situation my instinct is to say nothing so that I don’t need to react at all.  Because I have a tendency to people please I feel like I have to make everything better so that she will not get upset.  But sometimes it fucking kills me inside to keep that to myself.

Here is how I am making progress in this situation.  I now know better than to over react to this sort of thing.  “How important is it?”  I have to remind myself that the state of the kitchen is not the end of the world.  Will the world end if I can’t find a Tupperware lid?  No, it certainly will not.