breakthrough!

The "Laundry List" - Tony A., 1978

1. We become isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.


2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.


3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.


4. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.


5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by the weakness in our love and friendship relationships.


6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.


7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving of giving in to others.


8. We became addicted to excitement.


9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."


10. We have "stuffed our feelings from our traumatic chilhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (denial).


11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.


12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotional for us.


13. Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and took on the chariteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.


14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

So i identify with seven of these: 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, and 11.

HALF of the list, without growing up in an alcoholic household.

My breakthrough was realizing No. 12 applied to me.

i was texting a good friend and she asked why i stay in a job that makes me so miserable (see My Profile). i have been with my current employer 12 miserable years as well. My response was:

"I do it b/c i have no self esteem. It is like staying in a relationship with an alcoholic or a wife- beater." and then it hit me.

El Jefe' got it instantly, before the words came out of my mouth.

12 years with this employer. 7 with my previous employer.
i keep trying over and over and over, and the result is the same or worse.
That is the definition of insanity by the way.

It was just a revelation, not a plan for an exit strategy, but it was truly enlightening.
i feel relief.

i'm not done yet

Five full weeks, Monday through Friday.

Three part time weeks; working two days, and program the remainder.

I had thought i was ready to return to work part time. The plan was to do it slowly, adding an additional work day each week.


That was not the case.


Last Wednesday, i realized i had only completed one of my treatment goals. i can identify my feelings. Christ, i'm 45 years old and i am just learning that skill.


When i am positively medicated (my term for day time meds ... Vistaril and now Wellbutrin), my mind races, looking for that hidden lurking feeling. It finds sad a lot. It finds anger, and sometimes at the bottom of the precipice it finds scared.


It doesn't find happy, because i've forgotten what happy is and what makes me happy.

i can describe happy as feeling the warmth of the sun on a cloudless day, when the sky is as blue as carribean waters.

i can describe happy as warm liquid caramel in the perfect ratio with milk chocolate just before it starts to melt in your mouth.

i can describe happy as a song that tickles your soul into forgetting who you are, how you feel, and cause you to drop your inhibitions and skip and dance and twirl.

i can describe happy as a bunch of perfect Pepto Bismol-colored pink tulips with their sturdy monochrome stems trimmed the same length and each leaf providing a contrasting highlight of the smoothness of the petals and stems.


But i can't find happy because i don't know what makes me happy.

i bought an ipod touch and i am working on finding some joy through music.

i savor every time punkin or peanut says, "I love you," or the moments they hold my hand.

i realized i lost myself.