Stress and Life

Hi,

I figured I would start a new thread. I need to vent. Lately I've been so frustrated with things I drop what I'm doing and cry. I did that twice today. Once earlier this afternoon when I got really angry at someone I'm on a team with in my online school (we had a big paper due as a team and I worked on the paper for hours, each person does a section but I was putting it all together, then I run it through this plagiarism checker the school has and one person plagiarized two entire sections, word for word, that I had to completely rewrite). I made a post that wasn't nasty, but firm. If I hadn't caught that and turned the assignment in, if the teacher really wanted to she could have had our whole team expelled from the school. So, this girl wrote back a really nasty post directed at me saying she did copy the work but it was the teams fault for not giving her feedback (I had given her feedback and asked her for her references six days ago, she never responded) and I blew up. So, I made another post back at her that was kind of mean but I was so so angry. Then I just walked away from the computer. I took a klonopin to calm myself down and cried myself to sleep.

Two hours later, my roommate had made dinner and woke me up. I started telling him the story and he wasn't listening. I couldn't help it, I just started to cry.

I've been like this all week. I'm going to two schools, full-time. One school I am taking four semester long classes that will end in a few weeks. The other school I only take one class at a time but each class five weeks long and very intensive (so they consider that full-time, instead of reading one chapter a week, I'm assigned four, plus other assignments). I continue right through to August 2010 with that one (I will work in a week off somehow this summer, I'll lose my mind otherwise).

So, I keep myself really busy with school. I see two therapists every week. I go to a relapse prevention group every week. I work out a few times a week to relieve stress. I keep a journal.

I know that God won't give me more than I can handle (even if it feels that way sometimes). I've noticed that some things from my past come up- I feel off, then I cry about them, then I feel better, then something else from my past comes up that I either never dealt with or never dealt with properly and the process repeats.

Lately, I don't know exactly what it is that is making me feel this way. I haven't had any changes in any medications or my routine or anything. I don't have much of a social life right now so most of the people I talk with are old friends that I exchange messages with on Facebook. I'm so sensitive to everything and I hate being like that. I cry so easily. Yeah, that girl from school made me mad and I sent a message back but I then I can't stop thinking about it and I cry. Every class I'm on a team and there are always issues. People don't do their assinged portion and I'm stuck doing it because I'm not going to let my grade go down because they didn't do their part. If this was a face to face thing with this girl I would have kept my ground and been firm but then would have gone into a bathroom stall or somewhere where I could be alone and cried my eyes out. I did send the teacher an e-mail earlier asking if she had any suggestions on what to do differently with these teams. This class I'm taking now ends on Monday then I start a new one on Tuesday with a new team. Square one again. I've tried being a leader, letting other be a leader (but then nothing gets done and the due date gets closer and closer and I have to step up and say okay I'm doing this, your doing this, etc. or nothing would get done). It is so true that 20% of the people do 80% of the work. I don't understand how so many people can have such low standards for themselves. Maybe mine are way too high. I reach for the stars though. That's just the way I am in recovery, I get mad if I get a B+ on an assignment.

I'm just, I don't even know. I don't feel in danger of relapsing which is good. I'm half way through painting my bedroom so everything is in boxes and I just don't have time right now to do the other half. I don't have the motivation either.

The change of seasons might be part of it too. I love summer and complain about winter from New Years until it's warm. In actuality, I've developed my day to day rountine, being inside, being curled up on the couch with a blanket studying and now that the weather is getting warmer, that will change. It's good but any change in routine is so hard for me.

I keep this special face for my friends like I've got it all together. I shouldn't say that, I let people know I'm having issues, but not to the extent that I really do. Lately I've gotten back in touch with a lot of old friends from Facebook that are struggling with medical issues, staying clean, or anything and they all call me for advise. I'm happy to listen and help them (I'm even flattered they look to me for help, nobody would have done that a few years ago), it's just drainging, I can't say no and I end up being on the phone with them for hours that I just dont' have time for. One girl called me tonight with issues. I talked for about a half hour then I nicely cut her off because I just couldn't stand to listen to more problems when I'm on the other end of the phone with tears streaming down my face because of my own stuff and I don't even know why I'm really crying.

In the big scheme of things, my life is really good- better than it has ever been. I'm clean and sober. I'm doing great in school (I'm studying to be a psychologist). I have a roof over my head. I have a car. I'm not married and don't have any children so I'm kind of on my own. So I really am grateful. I'm just having a really hard time right now and I don't know what it is that is really bothering me so much.

So I don't know. Thank you for letting me vent. I do feel better just typing all this out. Please don't feel obilgated to repsond or anything.

Is anybody else really struggling lately or want to share anything?

Thanks for being there.

Laura

Hi Dee,

Oh my gosh. I don't have children. I can't imagine the dose of reality like you just received. Remember though, they sent you the friend requests. They more than likely want to know you or at least have some type of a relationship with them.

One thing I've noticed with Facebook is that I have gotten back in touch with so many people from my past. The people that I get back in touch with have cleaned up their lives and are doing well. Usually the people I can't find or don't have any type of profile on Facebook (especially with the people in my age group 25-35), there is something wrong- like they are actively using drugs or in the very rare instance, they just are not interested in Facebook. I'll hear through someone else that the people I can't find on Facebook are still bad into drugs or in jail. So, maybe they are testing the waters a little bit with you. They see you are on there, you must be doing pretty good and they are your blood. My mom died years ago and dispite the alcohol and mean boyfriends, I know she did the best she could and I miss her so so so much. Especially with the two daughters that you haven't seen or talked to in 20 years. A lot can happen in that time period. They see you on Facebook so they must have made a search for you, they want to find you. Maybe they really want you in their life.

I'm sure that regardless of the circumstances behind the situation, that must be a lot to handle. We all make mistakes in life. Look at the person you are now. You have been clean for over 7 YEARS!!!! That is amazing. I don't want to say anything about what you should or shouldn't do. That is completely your business. I will do this though- say a prayer for you. That will help me too because I haven't prayed in a long time and everytime I pray, especially with these prayer beads I made (I close my eyes and hold one bead and say a prayer about a person or a situation or something, then move on to the next bead and say a prayer about someone else or a different situation, I keep doing that until there are no more beads and I always feel much better when I'm done.) So, I'll get my beads out and I will dedicate a couple of them to you and your situation in my prayer later.

I was thinking late last night, yesterday was May 1. May 1, 2007 was my original clean date (after many repeated attempts and failures, then over four years went by before I ever tried to get clean again so since that day, I have been mostly clean with two periods of relapse so that day is significant). I had gone to this ministry that I had been to twice before. Once 8 years ago for 2 1/2 months. The second time 5 years ago for 6 months. And then this last time. I only knew about this place because one of my best friends grandparents owned it. So they took me in three times without me paying anything. Each time I was there I did work for my stay usually for cleaning many hours out of the day. The woman who owned it was in recovery but had kind of switched addictions to a variety of different things and one of them was everthing had to be very clean, always.

So this last time I was there, I had been taken off all of my medications and once I fully detoxed, my anxiety was so severe. I really tried. After I got my health back I was assigned projects or things to clean which I did gratefully. Then the grandmother would call me over to her house all the time. Another addiction that these people had all switched over to was food. So, they were all at least 400 pounds. So she couldn't really move very well. She would just ask me to clean all the time by pointing and saying can you vacumn, can you sweep the porch, can you mulch the lawn, constantly. We were not allowed to leave the property. I had tried running around the property but on the grass, it was so spotty I kept twisting my ankle. I knew that really hard exercise would aleviate my anxiety for at least a few hours so the only place I could really run was on this half sized, outdoor basketball court (it was paved and flat). So I would get up every morning at 5:00am and run 500 laps to try to get rid of the anxiety for at least a few hours. I told her how bad my anxiety was many times.

Sometimes she would get me so mad, almost by picking on me, I would cry. Then she would pick on me for crying and I really felt like **** after that. "See, look what you do when you can't handle something, you CRY LIKE A BABY!!!" I can still here that voice in my head now. Another thing she would say to me all the time is "Do you think your special, that you deseve special privlidges or something?" If I had asked to go to an outside AA meeting after months of not leaving the property. I heard that one a few times.

After 3 1/2 months of doing their intensive program of 5 meetings a day, plus all of the cleaning and everything else she wanted me to do, their person that worked in the office relapsed. They asked me to volunteer and work there for 45 hours per week, Monday though Friday. I said of course I will. Well, I was alone for most of that time during the week. In the next room over was the "med room" which I had access to. I had to go in there a few times and get people's meds when they were leaving. They had a CNA there a few hours during the weekdays, but the meds were not well managed. After I unlocked their cabinet, it was like "take your pick." They had anything and everything in there, many of which was from people who had left years ago. My Xanax was also in there from when I came in. So any time I went in there I had another "volunteer" come with me for two reasons- 1. I didn't want to be accused of anything and 2. I didn't trust myself at all.

After months of trying to manage my anxiety by myself and many hours alone in the room next door, I finally convinced myself to take some non-benzo anxiety medicine to help because I needed some relief. So I went in early in the morning (I had the keys right on the keychain they gave me) and took some. It worked for a while, then I convinced myself that wasn't enough, so I took my Xanax as well as some Klonopin from a bottle from a person who had left years ago. Well, I couldn't control how much I was taking and they found out. At that point I had taken a bunch of diffent medications and put them in a plastic bag. I figued if I had already relapsed, I might as well get as numb as I could, especially after so many months of being in this constant anxious state. Relapsing never felt so good (and that really scared me but that was the way I felt at that time). I ended up going to my old sponsors house for a few days then my step-brother took me to Vermont to stay with a friend of his (I'm still here today, with the same person, I rent a room from him in a beautiful house out in the woods). They had asked me if I wanted to start the program again. I knew that wasn't the answer. I would have lost my mind if I had to start all over again there. So, I love these people very much, even with their faults. They took me in and helped me three times when I had nowhere else to go. I know what I did was wrong and I apologized for it. Of course the grandmother had broken my confidentiality and told my best friend that I had "broken into a room and stole from her grandparents." Slight exageration there (on her part), but that is just the way this woman is. So, my best friend said she didn't want anything to do with me anymore. Okay, fine. I never heard from her again.

Up here in Vermont, after attempting again for a few weeks with no medications, I knew I had to be medicated becasue the anxiety was so bad my stomach was in knots, I couldn't sleep, eat, function. My whole thought process revolved around my anxiety. I saw a doctor to put me on something and she put me on Klonopin. It was like night and day. I felt so much better. I didn't trust myself with that drug so I gave it to my roommate and he dispensed it to me for a few months. Then I took it back and have never had any desire to take more than what I am suppose to. I just stay on the same dose everyday and it works.

I have called the ministry because I do want to stay in touch with them, but every time I call, she reminds me of what I did and says I was kicked out. The last part was not true but I think she says that because I didn't agree to go back and start the program all over again. Who was going to do all of her cleaning and go through all of her closets now??

So, I stopped calling. Who needs to be reminded of being "kicked out"? I said I was sorry and truly meant it. That whole situation just bothers me. I wrote letters saying I was sorry when I first moved up her in Sept. 2007. A few months later I decided to visit a friend back in that same state and I called them to see if I could go to some of their daytime meetings. They said no, I wasn't allowed on the property (except for the nighttime AA and NA meetings that are held at the facility when they have no choice).

So, that was it. The last time I called was over 6 months ago, when she reminded me again that I was "kicked out." It wouldn't bother me so much if these people were not like family, but they are. Their whole way of doing things has completely changed and I would no longer recommend that place to anybody because of how bad it's gotten there. They lost their vision and in the place of that is other addictions and greed. It's so obvious that they all switched addictions. The grandparents son is a great guy, but he weights over 520 pounds and now gambles a lot.

I guess I just feel used. Her harshness was not something I could handle durning my extreme anxiety times, especially when I was crying. I still feel like that book is not closed. I obviously did the right thing by coming to Vermont (I did relapse one more time, 100 days after I got up here but stopped on 2/12/08, which was the first day I went on Suboxone, I've been clean since then). I'm doing so good now. I guess more time needs to go by to heal. Me calling there again, isn't going to do anything except set me up to let her make me feel bad. So, I don't call. Then I feel guilty for not calling. These people are in their 70's and with their extreme obesity, I don't think they will be around for many more years. (I even got them set up on Nutri-System when I was there and tried so hard to help them lose weight, from what I hear, nobody has lost any weight).

I think that is a big part of the underlying stuff that makes me feel so fragile and sensitive about everything right now.

She has such a nasty way of saying things that can really sting and I have a lot of memories of that, during my most vulnerable times. It was held against me that I wasn't paying, but I did way more than my part volunteering every time so I don't feel that guilty about that. I am tempted to donate money, but that money most likely will not go to the ministry. It will go to a gambiling habit or a better plasma TV in one of their private homes or something like that. I have been used as an example by them of how they take people in who can't pay and have nothing.

I guess it's just a whole lot of things from that place and those people. It feels good to talk about it though.

Dee- I will say a prayer for you later today. I wish you the best with whatever decision you decide to take with this.

Thank you.

Laura

Hi Dee Dee,

I didn't know you were hurting so badly...we are close. I wish you comfort and relief from whatever is in your way. Dee, I think I told you about my daughter I gave up for adoption. My family was dirt poor, plus my Father was an alcoholic coming out of the Army and shell shock from the front line of three wars. I was the oldest and responsible for my five siblings. Anyway, at the age of seventeen I got pregnant by a guy I believed loved me and would marry me if I got pregnant. We all know how that lie goes. I ended up in a home for unwed mothers in Georgia. I came home to Florida to adopt my baby out cause I wanted her at least in the same state as me. I found her through a detective thirty years later. She came were I was and we were getting dressed to go for my eleven years sober in A.A. (This was always a dream of mine to have my daughter give me my "chip" on one of my birthdays.) When Amy took her shirt off, I saw needle tracks from her neck down to her chest. I'd done a five year stent with heroin, but never had I seen tracks so violent as these. I had to sit down. I was completly floored! She told me some of her life. She had gone to one year of Florida State, but flunked out for failing subjects and partying. All the reasons I gave her up for, she had done them anyway. She really crushed me when she went to bed with my husband, her step-father. I'm so glad she went back to Tennessee and I haven't heard from her in ten years. I still call her adopted Mother to check on her...I'm still her Mother although I've never mothered her, she came from me. I know how it feels to have to let go of a child. I had to let Amy go twice. I've wrote her out of my will and my life for now. It's up to God if anything changes. I know how hard it is to come from dsfunction and being kicked around. I have gotten what's left of my immediate family to bond together. This Mother's Day is My Moms' birthday and all of my bothers and sisters and their grand children are going to be here for a surprise party for my Mom. Not really, I told my Mom cause she's 86 with high blood pressure...I didn't want it to be too much for her. This will all happen because I straightened out my life and my family wants me around. There's still regretsfrom the past haunts me, but I have to endure and let go. I have a dead ex-husband I dearly loved.I wish with all my heart he was still alive. I know this will never be, but my heart has no logic in places. There's a part of me will always want to be with Jimmy. I know this will never happen. I can only embrace the memories and be satisfied. Thanks for all of you who put yourself out there, it was an effort really appreciated and treasured. Dee, honey I know there's enough love and forgiveness in you, you will survive and have a wonderful life. It's there, we just have to see it and accept it as ours. We are special people who survived for some reason and I think it's because we cared enough about ourselves to do the impossible. This was to turn a hopeless addict into a person with hope and dreams that come true. I love you my dear sister in life. Thanks for being here for me and the world.

Yours in the struggle,
Barbara

Thank you both for sharing what you did. I don't have any children and I don't know what it's like to be a mom. I can't imagine what it is like to go through what you are, but you both seem to express yourselves very clearly and know your positions. I wish I could insert some wise words of wisdom, but i just don't know what to say.

I do understand people thinking that addiction is a weakness. Most of my family thinks that and as a result I don't speak with them anymore. I've been labeled a loser for life by some of them. I know what addiction is because I've lived it and I'm not going to let their ignorance, get me down. I can say that now that many years have passed and I don't have these people in my life. It was hard at the time though.

One of the people I no longer speak with is my step-mother. I'm not allowed at my dad's at all. So, my dad and I meet for lunch or dinner at a restaurant. I am now so grateful that she is not in the picture. I have a better relationship with my father now, then I even did. A lot of it has to do with me being clean and sober. A lot of it has to to with my step-mother being there and being so negative. Her presence kept my relationship with my dad very superficial and almost fake. Now, with her not around I love hanging out with my dad, just the two of us.

So thank you again for sharing Dee and Barbara. I'm feeling much better this week. I hope you both are having a good week.

Talk to you soon.

Laura

Hi Laura,

Glad you posted and loved hearing from you. You seem to have good things working in your life...this is good. My Dad was always stick with me, but now I realize all he wanted for me was to turn out to be a lady. My Dad did understand my addiction and didn't hold it against me. He's gone now, but I sometimes dream he comes to see me and is smiling.

I'm glad you are feeling well. I too, am much better these days. I have moments when I don't know what to do with myself. I just start cleaning or getting some chore out of the way.

I'm going to bed, so all of you have a peaceful night and rest well.

Yours in the struggle,
Barbara