weirdgirl thank you for commenting even when you feel uncertain how your input will be received. It takes courage to do that in the interest of trying to be helpful.
I do find it difficult though to follow your reasoning. sue has responded to morningstar's input that I should discuss how hypothetically I would have preferred for sue and t to have handled their interactions with the police about me last October, November, and January. sue explained that we decline to do that. We can't change what happened in any of those incidents right wrong or in between. Nor can we change whatever harm resulted or enhance any benefit that ensued either.............for any of us. We could though revisit recriminations, that we all have had months of to no end, and that we work to find a way to end. God knows I would have had those events handled differently if I had been able to control sue's or t's decisions. How could my expressing that yet one more time help us...............or do anything but further wound our family. It would achieve nothing for any of us. You feel that would have value. We disagree. We have enough real issues to live through without wallowing about in hypothetical actions we wish had occurred.
Having said that you believe it would be helpful for us to do that, you then go on to decry my reliving what happened to me (or as you put it, what I "perceived" to have happened to me...............which makes me wonder whether you question if I know what happened). Why is it that it would be helpful to replay what sue and t did in light of what I wish had happened, but it is harmful if I relive what actually happened to me? I re-experience what happened to me when I was in police custody and in jail several times each day. These were not hypothetical events. They were real. The feelings and thoughts that well up when that occurs to me are not mere unhappy memories. They are experiences that repeat in my consciousness and push other thoughts and feelings from my mind when I am awake and asleep. It would be wonderful if they would stop. Can you really believe that I am so stupid that I wouldn't stop thinking about them if there was some way I just could? Gosh why didn't I think of that! Perhaps you have the new cure for post traumatic stress. I shall have to ask my therapist next week, "Gee, why didn't you just tell me to stop thinking about it and move on."
You go on to posit that by now I should be enjoying the "quiet treasures" of sobriety. I had quiet treasures in my life. Many of them are detailed in posts here over the years but they were before my sobriety. There have been none since last October 28. You suggest that I should enjoy these quiet treasures despite the horrific way that sobriety was forced on me. That reminds me of reasoning that perhaps someone who has been violently mugged and robbed should somehow enjoy the opportunity to experience the quiet treasures of poverty. I hope I have quiet treasures in my life again. They have not existed since the end of last October.
As for whether I will drink again I am working on that by deciding I will drink again ........just not today. The decision to drink in the future quiets a huge internal debate that I have, and helps me feel not quite so humiliated and subjugated by having no choice whether or not to drink.............other than prison. The decision to not drink today assures my continued sobriety.......................and as painful as it is to acquiesce to any of the 12 step mantra......"one day at a time."
I'm glad you are so joyous in your sobriety. I want my/our life to be joyous again . If that joy is in sobriety fine, I will perhaps get past what has happened to be able to enjoy life even without freedom to decide how I live it. I find myself thinking of an interesting reversal of the mind techniques alcohol rehabilitation professionals recommend you use when you are tempted to drink. They tell you that if you are tempted to drink again because you are thinking of how we enjoyed drinking at times in the past, you should "complete the tape," that is we should remember the horrid consequences that befell you, that brought you to alcohol rehab in the first place, and remember too, that will happen to us again if we return to drinking. I am finding myself these days imagining my life going forward as it is living in sobriety, and AA meetings, and aftercare meetings, and step work and ...............................that I need to play it forward....to complete the tape. If this is the life I have left, I think my thoughts on my death bed are hardly going to be that I am grateful to have lived.
Tom
Thank you Tom, for taking the time to reply so fully to my comment.
ReplyDeleteIn no way do I question that you know what happened to you during these events, however the situation as a whole was perceived/experienced by all three of you (patently very very differently - I thought this would go without saying). When I referred to Morningstar's comment as germane, I meant as a way for you to perhaps empathise with the situation as viewed by others. It still seems to me that you view it purely as something that was done to you, which seems to deny your responsibility for your actions.
As regards the repetitive nature of the thoughts you have about your obviously harrowing experience, your sarcasm about just not thinking about it is unwarranted in my opinion. Cognitive behavioural therapy includes practice to *allow* time for such thoughts, but attempts to create boundaries and take control over how often and for how long one *sits* in such thoughts and teaches techniques for *bracketing* of destructive and negative thought processes. I'm sure you are aware of such practices; you may even have tried them already, I don't know.
You may well have lost many many aspects of control in your life, I do not doubt that this is so. However you do have the ability and the power to change the way you think of such things. We all do.
I sounds to me like you have experienced no 'quiet joy' since this event because you have refused to do so. From what I have read here over the years you are surrounded by love that the three of you have built together. Surely that alone is a source of joy? Everyone makes mistakes, and it seems to me that everyone is paying for this situation in one way or another.
Your insistence that your life is not worth living has been a persistent feature of your writings here since this tumultous event. With all due respect (and I do mean this most sincerely as a question and not as an incitement to suicide AT ALL) what is it that has kept you here, alive, around? There is obviously something in your life that has value to you (not that I ever doubted that). Whatever that something is may it grow daily in strength.
I have nothing more to add except to say that I hope that the three of you find brighter skies ahead. Thank you again for replying.
Kind regards
weirdgirl
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ReplyDeleteI am alive because I can't bring myself to die. I am too cowardly to kill myself and I still believe that t and sue would be seriously hurt were I to kill myself. They have been hurt enough already..........but mostly I am just too afraid of death to kill myself.
ReplyDeleteI don't repeat my thoughts of what happened with the police and jail at will.........they just repeat as they will. I don't decide to sit and dwell on them..........they happen, and when they do the take over my consciousness. Yes, I am aware of CBT. You might as well confront malignant cancer with aspirin.
I am not oblivious to sues and t's pain. OK I get that so.................. my identication with their hurt makes me feel worse, not better. Why is it that you feel that were I to be able to empathize with their pain throughout this would help? Do you feel that I only have pain because I don't think they were hurt? What is the connection you are trying to get to? They were afraid I was going to hurt myself, and then when I became enraged when the police came in reponse to a 9-1-1 call placed for no reason, and thye had riflemen patroling our condominium complex with orders to shoot me on sight, I became so enraged that I became violent with myself and them when I drank. And I did drink........a lot. I get that. They were afraid for me, for themselves, hurt, wishing I was different, horrified at how my medical needs were disregarded by the police and jailers, frightened whether we would ever recover together as a family, worried if we could find a way to pay the thousands and thousands of dollars in legal fees and court fees and fines and probation fees and psycholgy fees, and rehabilitation fees etc. and on and on and on.....I know that. I feel that. It makes life feel more worthless not better.
I have no problem empathizing with them. I love them. Why is it you believe that in some way knowing this has hurt them terribly provides relief? It ratchets up the pain I feel many times more than what I feel from my own trauma.
So here we are on day 271 of the "quiet treasures of sobriety." I like that "quiet treasures" line. I will adopt it. Two more days and I will be eligible for my 9 month coin in the 10,000 day sentence I have to the quiet treasures of sobriety. I woke up next to in geophysical reality. In my consciousness I was in jail. Today it was in the minimum security pod. I could see the ceiling and smell the farts of the other prisoners and feel my arthritis screaming from sleeping on a cold metal slab and feel my despair and fear and wondering if my life could ever heal and my fear of living further at all. That is my mental war.... the fear of continuing to live. I can't get my head wrapped fearing the rest of my life vs. my fear of dying. sue and I lost in the transaction. Our morning evaporated into the parallel relatedness, the platonic non-relatedness that is one of the quiet treasures of sobriety.
Tom