Saturday, August 8, 2009

This is not comparing apples to oranges, this is comparing apples to apples.

I suppose I haven't had much to say in here lately because I've been doing pretty well with my recovery. Something my therapist said to be about a month ago was that "sometimes thoughts are just thoughts. We think they always have to mean something or that they are who we are." So we end up getting stuck in this cycle of having the thoughts, then thinking about what the thoughts mean, then thinking about what those conclusions mean. And it was like a light turned on for me, and I felt like I could relax. You see, these thoughts I was having, I always thought were something that I needed to deal with, and if I didn't deal with them (i.e. think about what they meant), then it meant I wasn't making progress, because I was obviously in some form of denial if I wasn't thinking about these thoughts.

Phew! Are you as tired from reading that as I was from, er, thinking that? Like a fucking hampster on a wheel.

And what was so beautiful about this revelation is that it meant that these intrusive thoughts started to happen less and less! By accepting that the thought was just a thought, and not trying to figure out where it fitted in the grand fucking scheme of Recovery, I was able to fully accept the thoughts. Because when we're constantly examining something, we haven't (and we won't) fully accept it. It's like going to the grocery store: You know precisely what you want, but if you stand there holding the apple and looking it over, comparing it to the next apple, and the next, and the next, well...you know you want an apple, and you know you'll get an apple, but in the meantime, you're still standing in the fucking store.

And this is more than one apple. This is many apples. How many, I don't know, but I do know that I'll know exactly when it's time to leave the store, and when it's time to go back.

Not to say that last night I didn't get the wind knocked out of me as I was trying to fall asleep, and something triggered that shocking realization of Holy Shit this really happened, and this is how it felt, this was the sequence, the smells, the closet door and the sheets and the bedside table and the curtain over my door and yes, where did that come from?

I guess sometimes there's a few decoys in the fruit bowl.