Ask yourself sometime

What time is it?

(It's right now)

Where are you at?

(I'm right here)

Perfect.  What a perfect reminder of how to be present in the moment.  My good friend Wyatt Webb would appreciate that one.

Do not let your experience of the present moment in time be diminished by being lost in the future or the past.

I had the best Thanksgiving ever!

I didn't go.

To thine own self be true

This bit of advice was given to me some weeks ago at a table.  I brought my fertility issue, in a pretty open way, to a table meeting.  That's not normally something I would bring to a table, but I needed to.  It says it on one side of our coin - our AA anniversary token - to thine own self be true.  A lot of things were said at that table.  It was really intense.  But the gist of it - what everyone said to me, in different ways of course, in like 12 different ways, was that I should be true to myself.  That whatever the choice happened to be that I would make with respect to my fertility - I should own my truth, I should honor it, and I should do what is right for me. That means getting honest.  It means I have to know what that truth is.  What is the truth about me?  And I ask myself that question with respect to many things - not just this.  Getting honest, it's not always easy.  Honesty with other people, honesty with yourself, it's really not easy. Well, not for me anyway.  I've mostly made my decision in regards to my fertility.  But I'm not ready talk about it.

This is actually about something else.  It's complicated.  It's life, you know?  I live, I think, these days, very much in the grey areas.  In the ambiguity, as I've probably said my sponsor likes to say.  I exploded in anger the other day, gosh was it only yesterday, when I woke up at 4:30 in the morning.  I haven't felt anger to this intensity in a very long time, if ever, maybe.  And I carried it around with me all day, all through yesterday, and most of today.  Despite my best efforts to be free of it.  Instead of exploding on the person involved, I told him I needed to take a step back, and think very carefully about it, so that I would be able to express what I was feeling in an appropriate way.  This is not how I would have handled myself in the past - even recently sometimes I have let things come out in ways that, well, I could have expressed better lets just say.  So I did give myself time, to think this one through before saying anything.  I wanted to dig down to what was really at the heart of what I was feeling.  And when I did that I realized that what was happening was really multi-faceted and many layered.  That it was actually very complicated.  And, not easy to explain.

After the noon AA meeting today I talked with a good friend of mine for about a half hour about this anger that I was feeling.  He is probably my favorite person in AA, next to my sponsor.  He is so real and so honest when he shares at a table - I've actually never seen anything like it in another person.  He is in many ways, what I hope to be able to be.  And he's so articulate that he finds a way to put into words things that I would never in a million years be able to say.  He is the most real, the most honest and the most present person that I think I know.  And he has such an astounding ability to simply be with what is, if that makes sense.  So we talked about it.  What he said, I think, is really right.  And with his advice, I decided I was ready to talk about it.  But for me, that meant expressing it in an email.  Because I simply have to write some things down in order to have them come out right.  It's why I even had a blog in the first place, and why I started a new one.  I have to write things down, sometimes, to process them.

I of course asked him if he minded getting a, well, unpredictable, possibly emotional, and extremely long email.  Which he agreed was actually better than trying to have a conversation first.  Better to read it and talk after.  He knows me, which is good.  And he's used to my, uh, really long emails.  So I got it out, all of it.  I had a moment of panic after I hit send.  I thought - I could have fucked this up.  He might not react the way I want him to.  I mean, he could in fact react very much in a way I don't want and who knows what would happen... and then my mind starts to spin.

But I paused for a second and realized that Andy was right.  The relief was pretty instantaneous.  It wasn't about what he came back with, what he might say, how he might react.  I didn't need him to actually say or do anything.  The only thing that actually mattered is what I said.  That I was able to say it.  And I thought you know, he is right, the only thing that matters about this really, is that I told the truth.  It doesn't matter what happens after.  That's what freed me.  I was honest.

The impossible choice

I keep referring to this fertility decision that I have to make as the “impossible choice.”  Because it does feel exactly like that – like I have been placed in an impossible situation.  There isn’t a right or wrong answer here.  Not really.  Like I said before, although I can’t change the past and what happened to me, there is no way to make this right.  But either way I go, there is a loss associated with the choice.  It’s actually a loss that happened years ago – the moment I was diagnosed with breast cancer really.  But I never appreciated it at that moment as being a true loss.  I see it differently in retrospect of course.  It is a loss over which I have felt mostly anger, only slight and fleeting moments of the appropriate associated grief and pain that should go with it.

I’m just waiting now for those things to wash over me.  The grief and the pain.  I mean they have to right?  If I am ever to move on from the place I am at right now.  If I am ever to find peace with the decision that I make, I have to deal with what happened to me.  I have a talent for stuffing my feelings though.  Without drugs or alcohol, I can manage not to feel things for years and not even realize it.  I’m waiting for it to hit me like a tidal wave because when my emotions about something do finally kick in, they almost always knock me over.  So, I wait for it.  I anticipate it.  Try to imagine the intensity of it.  I wonder when it will happen.  At a meeting, when I’m praying, in the car.  When?  In general, I do not like to feel things – not the bad things I mean.  I always say that my favorite feeling is just to feel nothing.  The numbness of drinking.  It might sound strange, but this time, I am almost trying to get the pain to overtake me.  Trying to will it to get here faster.  I want to feel it – only because I know I have to.  I want it to get here, and move through me, so I can release it.  Let go of it.

I can’t tell the whole story here because I always respect the wishes of the people in my life who don’t care to have their stuff posted in this very private and very public place of mine.  So while I am involved with someone right now, that’s about all I can say.  It’s kind of irrelevant (except that it’s not entirely) because this is a decision that I have to make on my own, by myself.  It is one for which I will always bear responsibility and that I will always have to live with no matter what I do and no matter how life turns out.  I think about regret a lot and worry whether, no matter what I choose, this will ultimately turn out to be the greatest regret of my life.  And if it ultimately turns out to be just that, how the hell will I deal with it?

This is also a lot like trying to make a decision in a bubble, in a vacuum, except I don’t live in one.  I do have feelings for another person.  There are things that I want out of life still, things that are still possible, that haven’t been taken from me.  I guess the situation feels impossible to me because although I have tried to factor every possible thing out of this decision, it is still very much a choice between two things.  Even if I didn’t have feelings for a person, that are hard to set aside sometimes, I am still making a choice between two different worlds.  Two different lives.  Neither one is better or worse than the other necessarily, not from what I can tell, they are simply just different.  We are talking apples and oranges here.  We are talking about things that simply aren’t comparable.  There is no way to weigh these two things against each other.  One life or another.  Which one do I want?

Trusting the process

I’ve started writing a new post several times, but I guess I don’t know what to say next, so I just don’t finish them.  My sponsor is asking me to trust the process.  To have faith basically.  Not blind optimism, not really, not anymore, because she and I both do have strong faith in a higher power.  It isn’t without evidence that I have this thing called faith.  Although in this case I am sort of, I don’t know, relying on hers a bit.  She has more life experience than I do, and 22 years of sobriety, which is 15 more years of experience than I have to know that AA/the process works.  She always says – if this shit didn’t work, I wouldn’t be here.  And I totally believe that.  None of us would.

She has told me that the program has never failed her.  Never.  Not once in 22 years.  She isn’t just talking about not drinking, though a life and death thing, that is such a small part of what this whole AA thing/program is all about – we are really talking about where the rubber meets the road here.  Where life smacks you in the face and you have to deal with it.  Where you have to make choices and deal with the associated losses and grief and consequences.  Life on life’s terms as people always say.  Acceptance.  And it’s about living in the ambiguity of life as she calls it, in the uncertainty, in the discomfort of it all. That is where we are all at most of the time really.  In the ambiguity.  Living in the grey areas, because rarely are things as black and white as we might like them to be, or as clear cut or obvious.  For me, I see most things in the grey areas, most things to me are complicated.  Every story has at least three sides – my interpretation, your interpretation, and what actually happened.  Rarely does life line up just right.  Actually, never.

This is really about applying the principles of the program to life in a much broader sense than simply not drinking.  Like I said, when the rubber meets the road, how are you going to choose to handle it?  She and I are going through the steps as I mentioned, in a pretty accelerated way, but that makes sense because I’ve been through them before.  We are looking at them both from an AA perspective and an Alanon perspective, which some people might shudder at, but we both are members of both fellowships – me more specifically Adult Children of Alcoholics.  And we are taking the time to address my fertility issues in the context of each step.  This isn’t so much right now a question of whether I ever will or I ever won’t have children exactly.  Even if I decide to go forward with the embryos, the outcome of that isn’t even up to me.  This is about making the choice that is right for me and a choice that I can live with.  That is the most important.  I have to make a choice I can live with.

When she told me that the program has never failed her, what she was saying is that any time she is faced with anything like a decision, applying the steps to whatever it is, has always led her to the right choice.  She told me she can’t explain it, can’t really say how or why it works the way it does, but that it simply does.  That is what I have to trust.  She has never regretted the choices she has made in sobriety.  And she said that when she comes to the moment of having to choose, she always knows what is right, even if she can’t explain why it is right.  Sometimes it is a gut feeling, sometimes something else, but it is always right and she always knows that.  She said she always tries to align herself with her higher power, to make a choice in line with whatever her higher power’s will is for her, and to rely heavily on her faith and, well, her many years of experiences which tell her that it will work.

I don’t know what is going to happen - where this conversation with my sponsor is leading me.  Except to say that I do believe her when she says I will make the right choice and know it when the time comes.  I do have faith that that will be the outcome of this process.  The only part I can really know actually, because the rest is all uncertainty.

You have to give it away to keep it, and other things they told me

This is something people used to say a lot around my home recovery community when I first got sober. I didn't know what they meant, not really.  And I didn't think that I had anything to offer, at all.  Not then anyway.  I eventually came to realize the importance of the new person - whether first coming in or coming back.  I also eventually came to understand what it means to say that you have to give what you have away in order to receive the blessing of getting to keep it.

I'll be the first to admit that I have never been the one to raise my hand to do service work.  If I am asked to speak at a meeting, I always say yes.  That is the one thing that I will always say yes to, even though it is by far one of my least favorite things to do.  But I'm never the one to volunteer to chair a meeting, or to set up the chairs or to put them away.  I have lived in three different recovery communities during my sobriety, and my behavior has been different in all of them I suppose to some extent.  Except here at home, I was always the quiet one in the back who runs out the door as fast as possible, unless I am the speaker.  Here at home, things are different because the meetings are different and the community is different.  I can blame my lack of desire to do service work on a lot of things - like the job I used to have, being busy, preferring to do my hobbies, wanting some down time etc.  But those are just excuses for the fact that I don't really like doing it.

I have always though been willing to help another alcoholic in a one-on-one type situation when asked.  This is much more in my comfort zone.  But I still have to admit that I don't always feel like doing it.  The thing is, I have an obligation to.  Or maybe it is more accurate to say I have a responsibility to help anyone of us who asks me for help.  It does feel a bit like an obligation, but I really think responsibility is the right word.  People were there to help me after all.  A lot of people.  If it weren't for those people, willing to talk to me, to answer the phone, to sit with me, to drag me to a meeting, to call me out on my bullshit, I wouldn't be coming up on my 7 year anniversary.  For all those people I am grateful, and I am also responsible to pass it on so to speak.  To carry the message as people say.  To give away what I have.

This may sound odd, or maybe it won't, but helping another alcoholic is really a selfish thing.  I do it for the other person, but in the process, it helps me as much as it helps them.  We all understand that.  That's just simply how it works.  It is a "we" program as people always say.  "We stay sober, I get drunk" is another thing I hear a lot.  The reality is, I do actually get a lot out of showing up for another alcoholic who asks for my help, even on the occasions when I don't so much feel like showing up.  I am always glad that I do it.  Just like I am always glad after the fact when I speak at a meeting.

The other thing that people always said to me when I was new, that has been on my mind, and that I took really seriously, is to look for the people who have what you want - and gravitate towards them.  Listen to them, and do what they do.  That's how you eventually come to get what they have.  That's how I've always gone about picking a sponsor (and yes I did go many years without one), and I'm pretty picky when it comes to picking one.  When people say look for the person who has what you want, they don't mean material things, money, stuff, jobs, etc.  They mean the things that matter.  Gratitude, serenity, grace, balance, strength, courage, faith, spirituality and to me above all things, probably complete honesty, to the extent any of us can truly achieve that.  Those are the things I look for in someone because those are the things that I want in my life today.  Those are the things that I am striving for.  So I watch, I listen, I act as if, I do what they do.  I also look for someone I relate to and someone I feel a higher connection with, a spiritual connection with.

It has been a long time for me since I have had a sponsor.  I didn't want one for a long time.  But I have found one here - someone who has, in a short time, become very important to me.  I know it is not a coincidence that we crossed paths and that she will be one of those people who becomes a permanent fixture and not one who simply passes by.  I always say, I want to be her when I have 22 years sober.  I don't think I have ever met a person share with the level of honesty that she brings to the table.  Nothing is sugar coated, there is no bullshit with her, she calls it like it is, every single time.  She is incredibly smart, incredibly self-aware, she works a good program.  She is, in every way, what I hope I can be as a person.  I'm really excited to say that we are going to go through the steps together.  It's been many years since I actively worked the steps with someone in that way.  I'm looking forward to it.  This is an experience that I know will change me.  Wyatt Webb (one of my all time favorite people) always tells me that when people come into our lives, it's not a coincidence, it is often that we are being presented with an opportunity to heal something in each of ourselves that needs healing.  We can take the opportunity, or be presented with it many times over if we don't get it.  I think that might be what I am doing here - that I am here so that she and I can help to heal each other.

More will be revealed as they say...  

Rolling the dice

I don't know how to start this post.  I keep starting it over.  Changing the first sentence.  I know what it is supposed to be about, but I wonder if by the end, it will have morphed into something else and I'll have to change the title.  I wonder if I don't know how to start, because in dealing with what I am trying to put into words, I am very much lost and confused.  Conflicted is the way I have always described my emotions associated with this thing that I am dealing with.  In a way, I wish I was posting over at the old blog, where all of the back story is so acutely captured already.  Because here, I feel like I have to re tell the past 6 years of my life in order for anything to make sense.  And I don't really want to retell it.  Living it once, writing it once, was enough.  I thought.  Yet whatever I decide to post about here, it's like there are holes in it.

Anyway, I'm 35 and I have no children.  Which is not to say I don't want them, or didn't, or still don't - it's just that life happens, and sometimes in life, shitty things happen.  Shitty things happen that you can't control.  I had a plan (ha ha).  Like we all do I suppose.  Because I remember being told that I could have it all, and I believed that once, that life would work out that way for me.  I thought I would have a husband by now, a long time ago really, and all of the children that I would have.  I always wanted four.  And my career.  It's a little odd to find myself sitting here with none of those things exactly.  The career, sort of, but that's another post.  Of all the things I do have, the ones I got weren't the things I really wanted.  I just wonder sometimes where I went wrong.  I do ask myself that.

Believe me, I don't mean to sound ungrateful.  I have in the past, sometimes gotten nasty comments on my blog that I sound ungrateful when I post about certain things.  I used to really have a strong reaction to those comments.  Now I just think, the person obviously misinterpreted me.  That's out of my control.  This isn't a poor me, why did life do this to me kind of post.  If I am anything at all, it is grateful, every day.  Every single day I say I am grateful, outloud.   For me to just simply be alive, is a gift.  But that doesn't mean that life isn't happening to me and around me.  That doesn't mean that I'm not allowed to be angry.  Or that I can't say that I simply can't find a way to accept what is, to me, so completely unacceptable.

I'm already not at all where I intended to be.  I was afraid that would happen.  This was supposed to be a post about my fertility issues that I am experiencing because of the chemo drugs that I had to take when I had breast cancer 6 1/2 years ago.  It was supposed to be about my anger towards my doctors for misinforming me about the future.  For not doing what I believe they should have been doing over all these years.  Testing my hormone levels, regularly.  Giving me options, when I still had good options.  There was a time when I would have had good options.  When I would have had more choices.  When I would have had better odds.  When perhaps the choice would have been mine.  Sure, I do have a choice to make right now with regard to my fertility, but it is, in many respects, out of my hands.  I have always said that there is a difference, to me, emotionally, between making a choice not to have children, and having the choice stolen from you.  Not everyone understands that distinction - but to me, they are two completely different things.

I guess I would say that I have been knowingly rolling the dice with my fertility for the past 6 years.  But, I was rolling the dice with very limited information.  The thing is, I was told certain things, and not others, and you don't know what you don't know.  It was a lack of information, through no fault of my own really, coupled with fear - that part was definitely mine.  I do blame myself though.  Because perhaps I should have been asking more questions.  But again, how do you know, when you don't?  I always hear people say that you simply make the best decisions that you can with the information that you have at the time.  I don't know though.  I do know that if I had different information over the course of the past 6 years, I would have most definitely made different choices.  I know that no one has the perfect life.  I know that life doesn't ever turn out the way we plan.  I also know better than to compare my insides to other people's outsides, yet I do it anyway.

I don't know where to start with the anger.  How to untangle it.  I know that I'm supposed to deal with it, not simply manage it, but I literally don't know what to do with it.  I don't know how to make the choice that I have to make.  I mean, there really is only one option left.  It might work, it might not.  It might give me a future shot at a child, maybe one 50/50 shot.  Maybe, maybe, I would get two shots.  It's possible I wouldn't get any.  It's a 20K proposition.  What I have in front of me as an option - are pretty shitty odds.  Four years ago - my doctor might have been able to get 25 to 30 eggs out of me instead of less than 10.  We will never know though - cause no one was testing me.

The reality of this situation is, that there is no way to make it right.  The only thing I can do is find a way to accept the unacceptable and, this by far, is the most unacceptable thing that I have had to deal with.  There is a part of me that thinks I should do the IVF cycle.  There is a part of me that thinks I should turn around and walk the other way.  Like I said, conflicted is the only way I have ever been able to describe my feelings about any of this.  And I am as conflicted today as I ever was.

I've tried telling myself that it simply wasn't meant to be.  Except I don't really believe that.  I think what happened to me was wrong.  What was done to me, in some sense, was definitely wrong.  And I'm just left here to what?  With what?  I don't know either.