A little tired tonight

Long day, but a wonderful one at that. I am 97 days sober today.It is odd but alcohol sounds disgusting to me right now. I have not been as diligent with my AA meetings lately. Very very busy. It is good though because it doesn't give my time to even think about drinking. Our babies are home now and they are doing AMAZING. Carter is 7 and so smart and so kind.Sawyer is two and is sweet and full of life and energy.They are beautiful. One very hard part, is that Carter is dealing with the aftermath of the shame that was shoved into him while he stayed with my parents.It is amazing that in such a short time they could have brainwashed him so well that he fears everything right now. He actually said to me last night "I think Jehovah is mad at us for calling him God"JW's are encouraged to say that.To only call GOD, Jehovah. That breaks my heart, I will never allow my children to think that God is a mean and cruel.He is a parent and offers unconditional love. Something I thought I had, but I understood very quickly that I could lose that in a second. I am imperfect and will make many mistakes. That's a given, there is no other options. SO unless you are perfect than stop worrying about me and my choices. Have a great night.

in a nutshell

I don't know who's shell, but in one.I am feeling a lot of anxiety and looking for a bit of relief. I have found some, but usually in my life I have several ways I would calm it. Alcohol, friends, talking, performing, laughing. I have most of the coping options left but not a lot. I feel a lot of anger and betrayal for  a lot of things but that will get me nowhere. I have been told by several amazing therapists that I am a lost sheep. I have spent my life trying to mask a million different feelings to be acceptable to everyone around me. Oddly I was never really accepted anyway. I gave up finding myself or learning who I was by doing that. That seems to be a waste of about 30 years give or take. I am on that journey now. There are a lot of emotions that go along with that. It is exciting at the same time. In one spectrum I am horrified that I am not who I thought I was. In another spectrum I am free and thrilled that I get to find myself, and who I used to be is an amazing person, but a very unhealthy version. I am healthy now, I have a lot of work to do. There is so much excitement in the feeling that if I have come this far in a short 100 days, so then where can I be in a year, or ten years?In groups or when speaking with someone I talk a million miles an hour. I crack jokes constantly, funny or not. I validate people with my eyes or my words. All the while I am normally crumbling inside with the fact that I am not comfortable. I am trying to bask in my pain now. By doing this I tend to get over it much faster. It is scary and cruel in some ways but so very freeing. It also gives me some sort of control. I sometimes feel like i am crawling out of my skin. For any normal human being that is natural. Human instinct is to make that pain stop. Why would someone want to feel a yucky feeling?Yet at the same life is good and bad and bittersweet.Without that we become stale and boring and who the hell wants that? Tonight at my AA meeting I ran into a friend from rehab. He attends meetings daily and he is sober. Several of the other people in my rehab "club" have gone back "out" and have either had comas, jail or in some cases death. Life was shocking yet calming in some ways that I am there. I decided to change my life and I worked my ass off to do it. I am happy now and so thankful for that.As a Jehovah's Witness I was never completely content like I am now. The chains have been technically broken but they still have their nails in me. I a,hoping that the chains stop grinding their ways into me.

I want to write a book

The question is, would you read it?I want to write a book composed of interviews from people who have left Jehovah's witnesses. Not a bashing book by any means. That is just not me. But a book that delves into the emotional side of why people are willing to leave everything they know,family and friends for the chance at freedom from chains. Freedom from control of man.Freedom from control of your thoughts and actions. I feel like doing this would help guide the ones who are still scared of leaving, or feel a need to go back because there is a void and they don't know how to fill . My working title is "hidden but in plain sight". If you would read it, please comment.I know I don't have the most amazing writing skills and that I write how I talk. That may be an issue, but with help from an editor I could probably do it. I would interview my own friends, and strangers who would be willing to come out of hiding to express their pain.I know I would have to hide some names to protect people. That is it for now.

Serenity

Pumpkin spice latte. Serenity. A cool breeze. Serenity.Getting my thoughts down for others to read, a little serenity.
I'm clear and clean. In more ways than I can even tell you. There is a crazy  world out there that is not only scary, but amazing and beautiful. I started to have no hope in life in general. The way I was living, vodka or not, meant that I should have no reason to live in peace. Fear and fear only. You fear everything, you will truly lead a healthy lifestyle, you will constantly live in a state of doom. When you get there, you are truly where you need to be. You are officially saved.
I am kind of like a kid in a candy store now. Truly able to see what I can accomplish in this big wide world. Anything is at my hand. I can do anything. People have always told me I had something special about me. Whether it was the way I love, or the way I am loved. I have always known there was something there too, Somehow along that road I stopped loving and living. Maybe I got to the peak of what I was capable of in my remote world, or I knew that the peak was coming up so I turned around.Now I look up the mountain though and I see that not only do I have a long way to go, but I have the power to keep going.
I am in Tempe and all the sudden I feel like I could do a million things. Go back to school, become a mentor, become a upstanding citizen.  Uh that is highly overated. I could just be me too. Right now I am lost, my identity is lost. It started going as soon as I started being the best me to everyone else, instead of being the best me to me. I guess I was praising the false idols of acceptance. I gave them a lot of praise. Too much for my liking. Life is simple but we like to make it compicated. As soon as it gets complicated we give up.

I have a fear of abandonment...

Day 35
I had a crappy dream. I have them a lot, lately. I have never completely understood the process behind our dreams. I HATE to dream. Good or bad, I have never liked it. They are not real, in any way, shape or form. If it is good then there is a huge chance it won't happen. Bad? A huge chance it will happen, or it already happened I just forgot somehow. Indifferent? A waste of my brain waves that could have spent time actually sleeping. Either way, I don't like dreams if you catch my drift. So last night was another one about my extended family. Another one about not being accepted for breathing the wrong way. A life coach once told me that I had an issue with abandonment that stemmed from my sisters moving at a critical time in my pubescent growth. Leaving me with two alcoholic parents, that soon separated, and got back together, and separated again. And got back together.Again.Writing this I realize this was also an issue. Never a security, most days my mom would threaten divorce or separation to get what she wanted. It worked for her, but left me in fragile place. That is another day though. The abandonment thing right? Well anyway, I can't blame my sisters for leaving, they were young and wanted out. I blamed them for a lot of years though and that led to a pretty turbulent relationship for us. I recognize though now, that I have felt this way my  whole life. I always wanted friendships that lasted for life. A family that was like a bunch of Italians sitting around, yelling and laughing. It was also built into me at a young age, that if we were to sin, or make mistakes, we could lose this at any time. When I say "lose", I am using it very loosely.Haha. You are literally cast out. So what did I do? Well I behaved as any human would, I stayed as close to perfection as I could, knowing at any minute it could be ripped away from me. I was shamed into doing what was right. Much like a dog who wants approval from his masters, I continually looked up to see if my path was correct. Problem is, I am not perfect. Or anywhere close to it for that matter.So what happened when I sinned?Well in my home you literally got the book thrown at you. Wait, maybe that is figuratively. I remember sneaking out and going to a haunted house when I was seventeen. It came out months later and I came home to the wrath of hours of lecture and bible reading. My mom read the bible to me and my dad sat quietly, trying to give me glimpses of love so that I would not sink into the couch any further. Every parent searches for some way to keep their child going in the right direction. Everyone is imperfect, so this usually is done in vain. I don't blame them or her for how it happened, it worked. When I was told that my heart was not right and that I had tarnished my relationship with god, I usually stopped doing what I was doing. Or I learned how to hide it better. Problem was, I went to a haunted house. The punishment never matched the crime in my house. An R-rated movie, a swear word, a shirt that was too tight? All forms of a horrid sin. And going to a haunted house meant I destroyed every inch of hope I had for my future and I was worthless.Meanwhile, my friends were drinking, doing drugs, having sex and they got grounded for a day. Does this make it right? No, not at all. But it also puts things into perspective. I think my parents didn't know what to do with me. My sisters were the prime example of the perfect children. They began parenting me from the moment I incubated the womb. They felt this need considering my parents were practicing alcoholics for half of my life and most of theirs. They were never just my sisters, they were always my co-parents. Now if I thought my parents were hard on me, I realize why. There were only urban myths of my sisters misbehaving. To this day I don't even know if there is one thing that is true. My one sister was supposedly grounded at age six for putting a cord around my other sisters neck to play horsey. Now that I think about it, my middle sister never even had an urban myth. As she got older she was never favored by my mom because she spoke out about the fact that she thought my mom was a nut. Didn't go over well. Besides that? Nada. Then came the baby girl. Me. I seemed to think I was pretty good. Talked too much. Acted silly, but behaved. Until I got a little older. I don't know what it was that made me act out more. Was it that I felt trapped, like I had not experienced what others had already done at an earlier age? Was it that I had been taken advantage of by a couple guys and my self-esteem was low? Or was it just the fact that I am human? I guess I will never know. The only thing that I do know, is that there was no way I would do something so heinous that I would be taken away from my friends and family. The pain that would stem from that would surely put me in my grave. Well, it almost did.I felt so much guilt and shame for not meeting the bar that I was required to meet, that I drank or ate to meet that numb quota. Well I usually met it, or bypassed it completely. Healthy? Nope, but it served its purpose. Until it took over completely, and I was no longer in control. Now I face severe consequences daily. I ended up abandoned anyway and choosing to continue my life without the judgement that I have always felt. I have learned that it is not a big bad scary place out there, it is actually much more scary alone in the walls that kept me where I was. A cellmate in my own personal mental prison. Til later.

Freedom. I finaly feel freedom.

There is a huge feeling that is going through my mind and body right now. Freedom and Life. Together in the same sentence, that is a huge relief. An amazing feeling. I am me, and it's crazy, but I am acceptable to God at just that. He created me with the sole purpose of being the best me I can be. He already knows my faults, my mistakes and most of all my inperfections. Gods plans for me were already set in stone from the second he created me.So he can do with me whatever he pleases.I would rather have him take the wheel than me anyway. I am a pretty bad driver. It is a freedom right now that my every step has already been planned for me. I just have to decide how I deal with the punches.I had an awesome meeting tonight. I can walk into AA and show my absolute worst character flaws and be accepted completely. These people then get to watch me grow and learn and blossom into a beautiful mother, wife and friend. And there is no judgement that is attached at the end. This makes me want to do whats right, because I am not being guilted into doing it. I don't want to have morals just because if I didn't people would look down on me.Or that I would not be acceptable and wouldnt be approved by everyone and anything that crosses my path.I want to have morals so that I am a good person. And also, so that I am able to help another person who feels this intense pain of guilt and shame daily. Tonight the air is breezy, the moon is beautiful and life is good.

30 days

Not in my belly button. Either way its a cool day. I have a wave of emotions flowing through today.  It is a crazy roller coaster that I can't seem to get off of. One minute I can breathe, the next minute I have to give up more to get where I need to go. I feel so mod, I am drinking coffee and blogging at a coffee plantation. Eh whatever works right?
We are told God will never give you more than you can handle. It is true because I am still here, but that doesn't mean that I like it. It actually sucks, a lot. At the same time nothing really pays off unless you .work for it. Sometimes I wonder why other people seem to float through life with very little in their way. I wrote before that I wondered when I stopped growing emotionally. I thought we hit eighteen and we were no longer children. I change that stance. We don't ever stop growing. It isn't possible. We may be stunted in our growth, but like a vine, we find a way to eventually slither back up the wall. I am slithering, slowly. I like instant gratification. I eat a piece of candy I want the sugar to give me a little rush. A sip of water, to cool my throat right away. To do a good deed and someone  praise me. That isn't happening how I want it to now. I want my babies back. Now. I miss holding them. I can't think about them for long because I go somewhere that I really can't get out of. It is not safe there. At all. Stinkin thinkin right? I know that when I do get them back, the pain is going to be there. More than I can even comprehend. There will be a constant feeling about the time I have missed. Right now I think of it as a horrible horrible feeling. But I also need to remember that maybe it is what will keep me sober. Not enough pain to kill me, but enough to keep me sober. I think that is fair enough for the pain I have caused them. Don't get me wrong, I will not live in the past. Anymore. I will learn from my mistakes and move on. I am and will be stronger for it. My rock bottom is now and it is as bottom as I can get. People have warned that there can always be worse. For me I am fully aware that any further down and I am of no use to anyon . Like I said, I am crawling up that wall because the bottom SUCKS. I truthfully believe in my heart that everything happens for a reason, yeah that is cliche, but it's true. Life is like a graph and over 80 some years of life this will just be a blip. Maybe I could color it in with red so I remember that this blip is my own personal hell. It is 114' outside, so technically it is close to. Well I gotta go. Off to get my first 30 day chip. Always remember, the people that truly care about you and love you are the ones that can meet you at your worst and still love you, and see you at your best and still....love you the same.
Late.

A little more time to breathe

Well court went as well as to be expected. Joe Arpaio will have a couple of days with me. Not long enough to effect me though, or to join a gang. I let some people know about this blog and in my own style I reread my previous post. Immediately I felt a huge wave of fear hit my body. This is too personal. My thoughts are wrong and bad and I should not express them. There goes that naked feeling again. I have always thought it would be amazing to be a writer. As a young child I would constantly read any bit of mystery of thriller I could find. Stephen King is a BIG NO NO, but I could easily get into his books and I enjoyed them. After marriage and children, I seem to only find interest in autobiographies or biographies. I guess I feel like I am living reality and want to read about how other people navigate through their life. (also the reason I watch every dumb reality show that exists) Anyway, back to my love of writing. I read these books and I think, wow, these people can put their thoughts down on paper! They make sense and they are amazing! I had no idea other people had the same thoughts and feelings I have had. It makes the world a little less lonely I suppose.
I used to write a lot as a child. I made up short stories all the time. Then I slowly went on to writing my own novels on the twenty year old DOS computer we had. Nothing ever got saved. As fashion in my family the computer broke down before anything was put into a baby book. I then switched to journals. Issue with this? There was a false sense of privacy in my home. A locked diary was also known as an unlocked diary that was left out "accidentally" (to the most embarrassing page coincidentally) on the kitchen counter. I heard every excuse in the book. "It was left out, I didn't mean to read it", "the cleaning lady found it and was worried that you had a crush on a boy", "I thought it was the electricity bill". All the time the bobby pin used to pry it open lay nicely in the garbage. This caused an immense issue with feeling out of control. Maybe I thought that I could take control by the only means I had "control" over. My body.

Tommorow is the big day, well one of them

I still am having trouble with this writing thing. The whole write it down and actually deal with it. The possibility that my extended family could read it and prove their point is even harder. What point that is I don't understand. People make mistakes. Lots of them.
I am having a really really difficult reaching certain feelings right now. I am dealing with the technical death of 90% of the people in my life. People I thought knew and loved me through everything. Through the good and the bad. I have learned very quickly that this is not the truth. My family has a one strike your out rule. I guess strike three hit and I was no where near a home run. My own parents have given up on me. I could never, and I mean NEVER turn my back on my children. My kids could have a gun to my head, asking for money for food, and I would ask to bake them a cake. I wouldn't praise what they were doing, but I would recognize that they are hurting. They would not be doing something to intentionally hurt someone else unless they were hurting themselves. I don't believe in tough love. Why kick someone when they are down?  Someone gets to a place of self-deterioration and it isn't usually because they didn't make it for a hair appointment and were upset.
There are some details about certain things that I can't write on here. For legal and privacy issues so early in this stage. But I can tell you that my parents are basically trying to kid nap my children from me, for life. I am a great mother, I know that. I just hit a very large speedbump.But the thing is, it is just a speed bump. After you get over it you are back into normal life. Working with AA, I know that I will make it through some of the horrific things that are about to happen.
Tommorow is my first court date for my DUI.. I pray that it goes well.
I have never realized that my higher power wants to help you and make things better, he doesn't want to punish you. That is a completely different feeling for me. That my past is my past. My future is my ability to prove that I am able to change the person from my past. They say past predicts future. The good things I have done can predict my future, my shortcomings don't have to. Crazy huh? I had a "blip" in my timeline, but that is not who I am. I made a mistake, I am not a mistake. I don't have to prove that to everyone and anything, I can just be myself and make good choices and by doing that I have proven it to myself.

I woke up with blood in my mouth

Caught your attention? Mine too. I thought maybe my heart was bleeding and I was coughing up blood but I guess that isn't reasonable. I couldn't find another source though so I am going with that. I have so many things going on in my head I don't know what to write. What is true. What matters? I haven't been eating as much which is good but I have to deal with the residual weight gain now. Which sucks. But that is the least of my problems so I will embrace my muffin top for now. Everything is bittersweet right now. It's like seeing a piece of chocolate that is good for you and tasting it to taste its yummy nature. Yet, finding out its dark chocolate or cooking chocolate. Gross. I guess I'm gonna hit my knees.

24 hours at a time

That is feasable. 24 hours. I can do that. I don't know if I can do 5 years, but I can do 24 hours. That is what really matters anyway right? Someone told me,if you need or want a drink, get it after the meeting. For those who don't understand AA, it is with the preminition that attending a meeting will encourage you not to drink. And it has worked , every time. So I tell myself that. If I really want to numb myself to cope with any horrid feelings I may have, I will do it after I attend a meeting. Something crazy happens in those four walls and I leave wishing it had lasted longer and that the next day will start so I can go to another meeting. It was not that way when I first walked in. I thought that people in A.A were in a cult. They chanted things, knew about some BIG BOOK, cried a lot, held hands and worst of all they didn't drink!Crazy freaks. Well I am proud to be a crazy freak now. To me it means that I am healthy and non-judegmental. I know that the second I pick up a drink again then that all goes out the window.
I was born a mother. As a child I played house and held other peoples children all the time. I only played with life like dolls that I could really cuddle with. People would ask what I wanted to be when I grew up and I would say, a mother. I tend to do whatever I put my mind to and the fact that I wanted a family from a very young age played a huge role in the fact that I found my soulmate at 20. I was married and pregnant by the time I was 22. This did not leave a lot of time to party with everyone else in college and "get it out of my system". At the same time I was taught from birth to stay very very close to perfection. Straying away would leave me alone and abandoned. This worked for a long time, or at least I thought it worked. I don't know for a fact if EVERYONE has to "get it out of their system", but it seems to work for some people. I kind of did it backwards.
The biggest problem with this, is that you hurt people that are not ready to be hurt. They are not ready to feel the pain that you plan on placing on them. When you are 20 and you get drunk at a frat party and end up hooking up with some random guy that cleans engines for a living, you aren't hurting anyone. Except him, maybe the guy who bought you three shots the hour before and well, yourself of course. In the end though, no one innocent is harmed. When you dive into a marriage and pro-create, you bring a whole new person into the equation. That is what I have done. My two little boys and my husband have suffered because at twenty-eight I decided that alcohol took precidance over my family. This is where is gets tricky though. It IS a disease. It is an allergy. I finally know why. I would have never done something intentionally to hurt my babies or my husband. It was almost like something took over my brain and MADE me do it. Shoot, yeah exactly, the DEVIL MADE ME DO IT! I wish I had that excuse. Honestly though, alcohol took over. I no longer had the ability to choose whether I would drink or not, it was not within my power. Yeah, I could choose whether or not I bought it or drank it. After it touched my mouth though, I was no longer in control. If I drank tonight, I would not be in control. If I drink five years from now I would not be in control. So the obvious answer is to abstain from alcohol. Something so simple is always so complicated though.
I don't know where I am going with this, but I do know that I have a series of mountains ahead of me. I can't do it drunk. I might as well trudge naked through them because that would be easier. I have to face a lot of nasty things. A DUI. Fighting against my entire family to get back my children. Earning back trust from everyone I have hurt.Possible criminal charges.Rebuilding a foundation which I crumbled with my own two hands.
One thing I know for sure though, the ONLY way I can do it is sober. The only way. And for me, the only way to stay sober is AA. I have tried on my own and I failed miserably. It is a relief because I don't have to do it on my own. I have a group of people that will support me through it all.
Well its time to turn in for the night. Another night that I go to bed without saying goodnight to my little boys. I pray each day passes a little faster so that I can be with them again. No more than sixty days, no less than thirty. I hope I always remember that alcohol had them taken away, and sobriety is what keeps them in my arms.
Pray for me.

Day one. Well actually day 17.

Wow.
Life has really changed in 17 days, I am a world away from were I used to be.I am in tune with myself and ready to meet my expectations. I am sober.
Hmmm, my expectations? It's funny, but this is actually the first time I don't feel pressured to be perfect. I can just be me, flaws and all. I don't want to drink when I am Sheridan. When I am the perfect daughter, perfect sister, perfect wife, perfect friend and mother.....well, I wish that vodka leaked from the faucets. Oh yeah, I am also ADD so I may go in different directions. I may type like I speak. I'm sorry....no I'm not...get over it. That was meant in the nicest way possible though.
I have just come from another meeting of alcoholics anonymous. I feel great and that constant feeling of anxiety has been put on the shelf for an hour or two. I don't want to drink though. I actually want to write about the new found peace I have found since walking away from alcohol (or stumbling).
It is funny how listening to the imperfections of other people actually puts you at ease. It makes the little things that seemed impossible to deal with, somewhat possible to bear. I am only at the beginning of my self discovery, but I am already changing in a million different ways. Hiding from who I should or should not be, will never take over my brain again. I hope.
I honestly did not think that there were other options out there. I didn't realize that I didn't have to fit in a little box with a bow on it for people to think I was acceptable. I don't know at what age I stopped growing emotionally. I do know that from a very young age I was told that I am imperfect, but that I am not supposed to make mistakes. That very few things were approved of in that big bad world out there. As a young child, food helped calm my anxiety and fears. My body ended up being prime target for the kids on the playground. So do what any rational human being would do, distract. If you laugh at me for being silly, you won't mock me for being fat.That worked for awhile but I assume that the real pain and feelings were never dealt with. I assume this because I am 30 years old, and fighting a horrible disease. Alcoholism.
I have trouble coming to grips with the fact that I am an alcoholic (look I said it again). Maybe it is the fact that I spent a good 28 years with a very reasonable alcohol intake. What I figured was reasonable at least. It also may be the fact that I am a wife and mother and I don't live under a bridge with a bunch of vagrants. Who knows though, I am young and have time to get there. Funny, funny I know, but I managed to go a lot of places I never thought I would end up when I had a little "truth serum" in my blood.
I suppose writing this blog will be a new way to get my thoughts out. I talk, a lot. Sometimes I don't really say what is on my mind though because there is a fear that it won't be accepted. Look there is that word again, accept. People may think I have low self-esteem, but that is actually very far from the truth. Internally I know that I am a good person, yet most of the feelings that come out are shame based. There is a bar set that I can't and don't want to live up to. What ends up happening though? Dishonesty. That fake facade that nothing is wrong and that everything is sunshine and roses.
As I sit here, I recognize that the facade I have tried to live up to is just that. A facade. One that has ruined relationships, hurt people, landed me in jail and taken my kids away. Vodka was on tap for almost all of those, but it was and is my way of thinking. Even allowing others to read this gives me anxiety because there is the chance that someone could find out that I am not "okay". Oddly enough the group of AA has brought me to a new place though. I feel like the little kid that wants to scream from the rooftop "you can't tell me what to do". This is actually a good thing for me, I don't have to be who you or your neighbor want me to be. I can just be me. Sheridan.