Post by caressa on Feb 15, 2011 4:37:47 GMT -5
For many years, especially when I starting drinking, I was a people person and I loved to party. I was the first one on the floor and the last one off. If you didn't ask me to dance, I asked you!
When I went home to live with and take care of my dad on my family's suggestion according to them, I saw it as an order, he said to me, "When you were young, you were such a quiet young thing, now you are making up for lost time."
I was very involed in the Legion, working banquets, selling tickets and poppies, involved in sports, put on events for senior citizens, not knowing that a lot of it was escape so I didn't have to look at myself. I was Zone Sports Officer for 13 branches and put on dart, bowling, euchre and cribbage tournaments and got up in front of a 100 women to speak and never had a problem.
This disease is progressive. I got to a stage that if I spoke, you couldn't hear me. I became so introverted that if you said, "Boo!" I jumped a mile. I was full of anxiety and so into "Oh woe is me I am so hard done by" that it was pathetic. They called me the den mother of the 4th floor at the YWCA. The girls started coming from the 3rd and 5th floors and I piled all their woes on top of my own. It kept me in such a depressed state that it took more and more pills to bring myself up to a functioning level or what I thought I needed to function, not knowing I had become a walking zombie. I was existing and not living, certainly not my own life. I had withdrawn from society.
That is why I am so grateful that I can come here and share when I am awake and no one else is. I try not to call anyone before 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. and yet there are time and were in early recovery, that I didn't have this outlet and had to call and talk to someone. I had a sponsor whose hours were from 12 noon at the earliest to about 5 a.m. It was important to get numbers of people who were on shift work, who were home and on disability and unable to get out, and those who told me to call day or night and meant it.
People are more apt to get me at night than the day time. I use to do the AA Central Help Line from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
I met a woman when I was 4 years sober. She use to say I was introverted and she was extroverted. She mellowed and I came out of my shell.
When I went home to live with and take care of my dad on my family's suggestion according to them, I saw it as an order, he said to me, "When you were young, you were such a quiet young thing, now you are making up for lost time."
I was very involed in the Legion, working banquets, selling tickets and poppies, involved in sports, put on events for senior citizens, not knowing that a lot of it was escape so I didn't have to look at myself. I was Zone Sports Officer for 13 branches and put on dart, bowling, euchre and cribbage tournaments and got up in front of a 100 women to speak and never had a problem.
This disease is progressive. I got to a stage that if I spoke, you couldn't hear me. I became so introverted that if you said, "Boo!" I jumped a mile. I was full of anxiety and so into "Oh woe is me I am so hard done by" that it was pathetic. They called me the den mother of the 4th floor at the YWCA. The girls started coming from the 3rd and 5th floors and I piled all their woes on top of my own. It kept me in such a depressed state that it took more and more pills to bring myself up to a functioning level or what I thought I needed to function, not knowing I had become a walking zombie. I was existing and not living, certainly not my own life. I had withdrawn from society.
That is why I am so grateful that I can come here and share when I am awake and no one else is. I try not to call anyone before 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. and yet there are time and were in early recovery, that I didn't have this outlet and had to call and talk to someone. I had a sponsor whose hours were from 12 noon at the earliest to about 5 a.m. It was important to get numbers of people who were on shift work, who were home and on disability and unable to get out, and those who told me to call day or night and meant it.
People are more apt to get me at night than the day time. I use to do the AA Central Help Line from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m.
I met a woman when I was 4 years sober. She use to say I was introverted and she was extroverted. She mellowed and I came out of my shell.
. I will be back looking for Lin and others.