Angel From Montgomery

Joan

I love deadliest catch!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not the same since the Cornelia Marie captain passed on but a weekly must in my house!!

Glad to see your posting my friend.

One day at a time.

Duncs stepping forward never back.

I think we have a deadliest catch fan club going here , I love it.

Great to see you back on some even keel.

Take care

Blondie xxx

Thanks Rach and Blondie a dc fan as well -- that's awesome and, Duncs I completely agree. My favorite captain was Phil Harris. I now enjoy watching his son Josh! Next season he will be running the Cornelia Marie and I am already missing them all til next season!!

Hi Diary:

I just got home. The urges are coming on strong as tonight is the start of a long weekend. Same old same old. I have my work cut out for me that's for sure. So, tonight I say no to gambling and will take this weekend one day at a time. I have got to stay strong!! -joanxxxxx

Hello Joan,

Day at a time is key in this recovery!

I'm sure you will stay strong and positive coming weekend, because you know what gambling is not going to make you feel any better. Just enjoy your days, enjoy being yourself and take life at it's full. You deserve every good thing in your life:)

You can do it

Take care

Sandra x

Joan.

I hope you find a gamble free path this weekend.

I know it won't be for the want of trying.

And that is all we can ask.

Never give up giving up.

Duncs stepping forward never back.

Yo

Thank for your messages of support you really are a sweetie ((((((((j)))))))

So my lovely throwing that support right straight back at ya. Hope the weekend went as you planned , urges are bugg ers ,

Stay strong Hun , thinking bout ya !

Shiny xxxxxx

Thanks for all of the supportive posts folks. Much appreciated...

That being said, P and I are still struggling to stay completely abstinent. A couple of months ago I proposed that she and I start going to regular 12 step meetings. At the time we agreed that if we could manage to stay clean without them that we would revisit the idea as needed. Well, I put my foot down and meetings it is. This Friday we have our niece coming for a sleep over so, staying clean this weekend won't be a problem. Starting next Friday it's on for 12 step meetings at an area church. So far,we don't gamble during the work week at all. We thus far have not gambled with money for mortgage and monthly bills but, ANY extra cash has been once again frittered away on gambling stints in Rhode Island and I am sick of it!! Any extra money cannot even be considered savings until we have paid off the orginal 30 grand that we owe. Have we made considerable headway paying off that note? Yes. Canceling All of the cards and going the fixed consolidated route has been a lifesaver! We no longer have any access to cash advance which almost sunk the battleship. I am a firm believer in abstinence but, have found every excuse in the book why I should not or could not do it. That is pure bull shi t. Plain and simple. Everyone experiences stress. Everyone experiences idle ness. I cannot say boredom because I do not get bored but, I do get stuck on idle. Has everyone experienced a childhood like mine? Maybe not but, I am not that child anymore and I have a choice to live in the past or the present. My history of abuse will always be there and haunt me from time to time but, I cannot use it as an excuse to destroy what life I have left to live. Am I being hard on us? I don't think so. I honor the past and all the defenses that I had built up in order to survive but, if a dog won't hunt anymore then you got to cut that dog loose. This dog won't hunt period! Gambling as a reward or defense does not work for us. It hurts us. I would like to think that when I avoid my diary it is because I am feeling stressed out by what I read or interpreted. The truth is I avoid my diary because I am in a gambling mind set and there is no room for a recovery diary in that state of mind. Ed's birthday is tomorrow. He would have been 55 years old. Now, I am asking myself do I honor his life and memory by gambling? By hurting myself? He would hate that!!!! I hate the grief process. I would give anything to be happy clappy footloose and fancy free. The reality is; I lost Ed and it hurts. I live in constant fear that something might happen to P and I really don't know if I would survive that kind of loss. When I get into that fearful mindset I live each day as if the next will never come. I toss all care and cautions to the wind and say, well, if today is a good day to die then I must live it to the full -- that twisted mindset usually is what I use to justify a gambling stint in front of a machine. The problem is I do wake up the next day and have that horrible gutted feeling. ENOUGH!!!!! I thought about this post and how some others might take it -- there she goes again.. blah blah blah.. Well, hear this then. This is what a compulsive gambler, a gambling addict sounds like. Like my dad used to say; If something stinks in here it could very well be your own upper lip. lol. that made me smile. Here we are Monday, Monday.. as the Mamas and the Papas used to sing..and the gauntlet has been dropped. I am ready for a fight gambling so bring it on. Anybody still reading this; gambling is not and never will be an answer for anything. It is at the very least a stalling tactic. A genuine waste of time and money. If you want to know what it can be at worst read some diaries. Stop gambling now and as Duncs would say gift yourself and those you love a better life. I will never stop trying to stop. Never! -joanxxxxxx

Joan.

You kicked your own backside, for sometimes in life i know we need to.

A chef I once worked with who played hard at life used to say each morning

'treat each day as if its your last and one day you'll be right'

That you know would nowhere include feeding your compulsion to gamble, as i think i amn right in saying you stop enjoying it long ago.

To live life each day to the full is not for me about how financially rich we are it's today about feeling the corners of my mouth crease into a smile when i see my Sarah wake,the kids go about life and the dogs wagg there tails out of the joy of your company. It's cycling home in the rain, watching the sun set and dishing up supper made from yesterdays leftovers.

Yes I agree if I lost my Sarah tomorrow it would break me, my heart would not beat as it has for 21 years.

But I can't live thinking maybe, I cannot decide what life will throw my way regards fate tomorrow but I can through abstinence throw all I have at making the chance of carrying on the sense of fulfillment by sticking two fingers up to my addiction.My dear friend I know you have your soulmate too, I know you harbour those feelings i do, they bounce from the page, they make me smile and even have made me cry, tears of joy and at times tears of frustration.

At 38 i have learnt to be proud of my emotions, through abstinence i took them back shattered and enjoy rebuilding them.

The frustration is not at you having a punt, they are born out of the pain your heart has had to feel, and me i know however much i want to, I cannot take it away.

But together we stand my friend.

My pledge to you. I will never quit on you, my support will never waver, you may ask why??

Because my friend we are from othersides of the world but we are the same in the most important way.

Our relentless quest to better our lives through abstinence is the same. And from that I believe in you.

It is without doubt in my mind Ed did too.

It's an honour Joan and unconditional.

Enjoy those twelve steps i do, change is a good thing.

As for debt, a fellow American seasick Steve sums that up perfectly.

'I started out with nothing and i still have most of it left'

Duncs stepping forward never back.

Hey Joan,

Reading your post and feel my eyes watering...so much respect for you my dear survivor.

I don't know what you had to go through in your life, and i don't want to know, and you don't know mine....but i know what abuse is .....

You are right, there is no way out of it, you can run and hide, you can numb your pain by comphy gambling......IT'S NOT THE WAY OUT...you simply have to learn to live with it.

No more looking to the past, no more regrets or "if's" or "why's"...It is what it is, you have to look at the future, there is the World out there waiting for you to join in and take the most out of it.

You deserve to be happy,free and start dreaming again.

I really wish you will find the twelve steps enjoyable and helpful.

Never stop believing

Day at a time

Take care

Sandra x

Thanks so much Duncs and Sandra!

I am looking forward to going to meetings. I was able to get off of booze in the early 90s with the help and support of AA and I never looked back. That is my hope with getting back to the 12 steps. I know it's not everybody's thing and I am not proselytizing ffs, but, merely pointing out to myself that I found it helpful, and grounding AND, they will be on Friday nights which will work out perfectly. Is it possible that I was not yet a full blown alcoholic? That would probably be true but, again, we are talking about a progressive problem. The point is to get hold of it before total wipe out. Personally I think I might have guardian angels. I think I was appointed a few or maybe one really good one when I was little. By all rights I should have gotten killed in a car crash because I used to drive completely blind drunk. I missed a plate glass window by a hair one early morning. My car skidded across the pavement, jumped a curb sailed between two parked cars and stopped short of that window by less than an inch. A man driving a cab actually stopped to witness. I wondered if he was the angel. He said, you could never get away with that again. I was stumbling blind drunk one early morning about 1:00AM in a very seedy area along lake Michigan. I was tempting fate. I was literally egging fate on... What I got instead was a female cop talking over her loud speaker. She said, what the hell are you doing out here? I said, looking for my friends. She said you have no friends here. Get in your vehicle and go home now. Cop? Angel? So, last month I thoughtlessly balanced a shiny penny on it's side and there it sat balanced for almost an entire month -- maybe even longer. It would not fall. We have all been amazed by it thinking surely the penny should have dropped by now. It actually survived a two year old who was here with her sister for a sleep over. Today, it was finally cool enough to open up the windows. I suspect it was the cool breeze that finally blew that penny over. BUT, the fact remains that TODAY the PENNY DROPPED and that is a metephor that means finally understanding a piece of information after repeated failure OR A belated realization of something after a period of ignorance or confusion. Coincidence? Maybe... maybe not... -joanxxxxxx

Hey Joan

As you know 12 step is something I also have had great help from but as you know I also fight it despite it being entrenched in my psyche...

I'm in a no mans land as even though I'm codep , I find sometimes the meetings are too saccharin and I need tough love usually only found in the rooms of AA...problem is I'm not an alcoholic but a dry drunk but equally my life (psychological ) life depends on me getting well...

I know this sounds really ludicrous but in a way I'm jealous of you but in a good way : ) ..inside i'm thinking "i wanna go too" . Here in the UK adult child groups are scarce..and again often too soft.

I think often angels can come disguised as devils or at least peeps who may give you a hard time ..I know you will be tapping into the "feeling" that you get in meetings and knowing you've come home in a way..

GOD Good orderly Direction....I shall be reading your posts and hanging on to your coat tails on this one for some inspiration..

R and D xx

Thanks Rach. I too need very tough love. And, I too found that some leads can be for me, too soft and "granola crunchy" (new age-y) I managed to find a *** AA in Chicago mostly men, a few P*********s and a very charismatic lead that openly admitted that he was raised on fire and brimstone which was so funny because he was a flaming queen and a middle school teacher by trade. I loved him. He was brutally honest with himself and others but, would always end the meetings stating softly and sincerely, "I love alcoholics". lol.. Anyway, too much memory lane. The point is; I'm not sure what or who we will end up with but, I agree about the feeling of coming home. Sadly, I did not wish when I was five years old that one day I would grow up to be an addict sitting in a card chair in a poorly lit church basement But, the lessons I learned from the so called derelicts of "subcity" ( A Tracy Chapman song ).... All I can say is; if there is a god, and I never said I believed or that there was; this was the closest I may have ever gotten to finally seeing his or her face.. AND, the feeling I had -- nothing whatsoever to do with ANY world religion past or present. No words...

Today is Ed's birthday. A day I have been dreading the coming of for a month or so now... Now that it's here I wonder what all of the upset was about in the first place? He's gone. No more texts, no more birthday wishes. P asked if I wanted to write a card anyway and put it away in a box somewhere. Not really. The truth is there were so many years when we did not communicate. Crying about not being able to call him today is a lie because if he were alive I would be filled with dread because calling him meant I would have to expose myself to a drunken rant. Ed and I ended sometime in the middle 90s when I moved out to New England. We had only telephone conversations after that. The last time I actually saw his face was in 1996 before I moved. The way I go on about Ed you might think that we were physically closer. We were not. Spiritually, our souls were like two peas in a pod though. We went different ways when I made the decision to put the booze down. I could never break away though so, instead of peas in a pod I imagined us strapped back to back like opposite sides of the same coin. Over the years I watched him alienate himself from his children and the women in his life who tried so hard to love him. In the end, I was told that he was like an emaciated blinded lion with broken teeth. He became the thing that took his life -- If the futility of addiction took on human form it would be Ed in the end. He paced blindly in circles that became smaller and smaller until he finally died. And, there was not one single soul in that room with him besides his dog. A woman that he knew in the end told me that he wanted her to take the dog but, she refused to leave him completely alone. We did manage to rescue the poor dumb thing and Buster, that's his name, now lives with Ed's son Eddie Jr. A voice inside of me keeps telling me to stop remembering Ed on his worst day. Remember me on my best day. In spite of all of the chaos and bull shi t that we grew up in we had many good days. I followed you everywhere and you never made me feel like a meddling little sister. You always made me feel like I belonged. I often wondered if I followed you into alcoholism and if I was more a codependent than an actual addict?

My silent reverie has just been broken: My mother just came bounding down the stairs laughing and clowning with the dog. It's times like this when I honestly just want to reach out slap her in the face. Why isnt she sitting here in this heavy deafening silence writing down her thoughts about him? He was her son afterall. I have decided that my job over the years even when I was small was to be HER primary defense. HER outer skin. I hold HER memories because she is too weak to remember. I hold HER accountability because she somehow is exempt from responsibility!! Poor diary. Today, the family pus oozes right onto the page in real time. She cannot even suspend her routine for one day. On August 6 -- a day that would have been his birthday. She makes her toast and coffee and cereal and will go upstairs and read her paper as if he never existed at all. She isnt daft. No. She just does not have to feel because she knows that I will do it for her. Poor diary. Look anyone compelled to read this I apologize. It was not my intention to write this garbage but, if I do not let it out I will hurt myself with it later. I would never slap her in the face. No. I would slap myself. That is how it always went. That is how it still goes... I literally weigh twice as much as her. To the ounce. I CARRY HER. I have to go this is too much today.. -joanxxxxxxx

Too late. Genie has escaped her bottle. More comes out... I believe Ed died years ago. He intentionally wrapped his car and himself around a light pole one early morning when he was in his early 20s. The doctors in the hospital said anyone else would not have survived the impact. He walked away without a scratch on him. I believe that might have been the day he died. But, why would the first son of Bob and Dolores wish to take his own life? I think I know. I think I have always known. I used to wonder why I hated going to family parties. I used to think I had some form of debilitating social anxiety. Maybe it was the lies? Maybe it was the secrets? The same thing that is eating at me today. The way we just as Carly Simon once wrote "and yet, we drink, we laugh, close the wound and hide the scar" I could never do that. I was always the walking wounded. The whole bloody mess hanging out for all to see. Maybe that is the world's oldest survivor sitting up there? Maybe I misjudge her? I should not be judging her at all. I know that. She is my mother and I owe her my respect. For all I know she is wailing on the inside. Laughing and clowning on the outside. Maybe wishing secretly that I did not have to feel this way. Maybe wishing she could relive the past and make it all better. The anger I harbor toward her is so old. She has done nothing wrong today but, wake up in a cheerful mood. I am the one sitting in a puddle of pee again. Don't remember me on my worst day Joan; remember us on our best days. I am going to try Ed. I am going to try very hard to do just that. -joanxxxxx

Feeling better now. Reclaimed my serenity. Reclaimed my sanity. I lose it when I take the bait. When I pass the judgement down. I am not the judge. I don't know my mother's truth this morning. I have not even asked her. I believed on some level that I had the moral right to judge her because of things that happened in the past. The truth is; we cannot do anything for Ed today because he is no longer here. The best way to honor Ed's life and memory is to live my best life today. My best life cannot happen with gambling in it. So, no gambling for me today. A bit of a rough morning so far. Started out in a nose dive but, think I may have pulled it out of the clutch. -joanxxxx

Getting through this day an hour at a time. Not so bad really. It was a beauty. Lots of sunshine and not as humid. Everything is going to be alright. I need to just let it. Gonna fix myself a cup of joe and do some much needed reading. -joanxxxxx