Finalising: The Nitty and The Gritty

Although there are many elements that we each have in common in recovery like forgiveness, self acceptance and green thoughts, the obstacles to overcome them can be different and in that way all of our recoveries are different. This used to frustrate me because I just wanted to take the hand of a careworker and get their imprint and use this as my roadmap - just replicate it.

For finalising I see that for me to live at my full potential and full happiness that I have very different obstacles to overcome than to others also finalising.

Firstly - for the last long while I have been living my life at about 80% power. The other possible 20% was not looked for. The other 20% contained all the nitty gritty obstacles that lay between me and real freedom. And the first bit of that 20% was the worst of all - a belief that I was hopeless, that it was hopeless and would never be possible to overcome what the 20% contained. So, although I never had down days, could always get out of bed in the morning and was leading a very normal life, after all the work I put in, I was just lacking that full zest, faith in life that recovered people shine with. I had resigned. Surrendered. I'll live mylife at this rate of 80% EVENTHOUGH I could feel this lack of contentment whenever I sat down for a coffee with a friend, sat down to watch a programme with my boyfriend, whenever I was just simply still enough to hear. I wasn't in denial or being lazy about it I just thought that I'd never be able to sort it out so 'I guess I'll just make do with how things are,' eventhough I was very unsatisfied with it all.

All that work, effort, dedication, time and this cloud lingers and will always linger over my life? How disappointing and disheartening and unrewarding. This feeling infiltrated, infected every pleasant event in my life like my birthday party, a trip away at Christmas, lunch date on Christmas eve.....

Sooooo..... I had a session last night and I explained this feeling - this is another thing about finalising I found - it takes me so much longer to verbalise the nitty gritty than it did all the mammoth boulders in earlier stages of recovery. A feeling of just not being able to put my finger on it. That also led to so much frustration.

THE SOLUTION

What I did was I finally spat it out - expressed how I was feeling. Then I was asked well why do you feel this way. I felt that way because after x no. of times/months/years I've not gotten to the end result therefore it's futile - concluding completely that I'll never get there.

Okay - fair enough. And then I was asked to list all of the stepping stones I had taken to get me to where I am at now, all the stones I had to get on to and jump from in order to be at the stone I'm on now. All I'd kept telling myself was that I won't get there, I won't get there all the time disregarding and ingoring all the steps I'd taken to be where I was.

Looking at and acknowledging all the steps made me realise 'that things dooooooo work out' contrary to what I was believing.

Then I wrote down the end result again and listed the obstacles that were between it and me.....there was no obstacle like a flight ticket, or a limb or a faculty but simply just thoughts - webs and webs of contradictions and mumbled-jumbled beliefs and intricately woven thoughts, big mismatches of crooked, stupid, silly, bulsh*t thoughts all made up by me from various old influences in my life.

Most importantly I realised that all those thoughts had one thing in common - they all affirmed that I was somehow, somewhere in me, inherently, fundamentally wrong.....all these thoughts and beliefs about myself that I'd picked up that all pointed to and confirmed that I was in some way wrong. It was a belief I formed about myself when I was very young because of one specific event and here I was 21 years later still backing it up, affirming it.

As I drove home last night..... I thought of all of my friends, my family, old class mates out living their lives with that zest and sense of deservability and enjoying life.....what I realised was that they had each made mistakes, weren't perfect, were human, acted seflishly at times, weren't reincarnated saints. They refused to think that they weren't good enough, had the capacity and ability for self forgiveness so they could move forward with their lives.....and here I was more or less the same, same humanity, with irritability, being selfish, making mistakes and yet I had to be tried before a grand jury, be appointed for execution by P.Pilot????

Nobody is perfect. Everyone acts against their better selves sometimes and still they continue on with their lives and forgive themselves so they deserve.

So this morning I woke up very early and got out of bed, got the place nice and started on my vision board. Finally I've been able to verbalise the complex web of crooked, distorted thoughts that locked me into this position and so I'm writing them out, exposing them, identifying them as obstacles and re-re-re-re-re-re-re affirming that I am ok just as I am, I am human, I am fundamentally good and I am equal.

Apologies if this has been a bit too long winded and detailed but it just goes to show how complex the conditon is and that you really have to get out your tweezers and magnifying glass to get rid of completely.

And mark my words.........you will be completely, utterly, irretrievably removed, bombed, exploded, assasinated from my life.

Off to finish my vision board and write out those freeloaders.

Feel so much more positive and able

J
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