Post by caressa on Dec 18, 2007 1:21:22 GMT -5
This evening my sponsor and I were sharing. As the saying, goes, that’s not odd, that’s God. I had phoned her twice and got a busy signal. Less than an hour later, she called me.
She has suggested that I put some of my stories down on paper. I don’t know how often I will get new thought, but I will turn it over and see what comes up.
We have a lot in common and have been in similar circumstances in our life and can identify with each other. Both of us come from abusive marriages. Both physical and mental abuse.
Today, thanks to the program, I have learned not to accept abuse from others or from myself. Quite often the abused becomes the abuser. We get angry and we start hitting back. I know I did. For many years, it was all his fault. The only problem was, he left and I replaced him with husband number two. I thought they were as different as night and day. One was tall dark and handsome and came from a Caribbean background. The other one was Scottish, had freckles and red hair and was about three inches shorter, yet the temper was more violent when he was drinking. Number One used women, Number Two used alcohol, and I used right along with them. I cheated on my first husband (he could do it, so could I) and drank with the second.
Both had a habit of using me for a punching bag when they couldn’t control that anger. My first husband hit me twice. My second husband hit me many times, tried to choke me to death and put me through a wall and left the imprint of my body in the wall plaster. It took three men to hold my second husband from coming at me over the table when we were playing cards because he didn’t like the way I played my hand. When I won a trophy for District Euchre and Zone Cribbage for the Legion he celebrated that he taught me all I knew.
The biggest amend that I owed this man at the end of the marriage was that I had married him. I certainly didn’t love and respect him and had married him for all the wrong reasons. I was looking for someone to keep me in the style that I would like to become accustomed and I was looking for a father for my son.
He never had time for my son and didn’t try to communicate with him unless he was drunk then my son didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He demanded respect from him but did nothing to earn it. He lost his job at the railroad three months after we were married and we ended up on welfare. We both went back to school. I got my grade 12. He quit to get an apprentice ship as a journeyman and 8 weeks before he was finished the company went bankrupt.
Whether it is to celebrate or morn a loss, it was all the more reason to drink. He tried to quit and he quit for nine months. I told him that I would stop along with him to give him support because it wouldn’t be easy go to bed with someone smelling of booze. Of course, he was the one with the problem and I was doing him a favor. The truth that came out in recovery was that I couldn’t stop, and took a drink once in a while. He started back drinking by having a glass of wine with me at a meal. I could stop, but I could never stay stopped. When he started again, the violence got worse and he started hanging out with the boys and was gone until the wee small hours of the morning. I put up with that, didn’t really care if he was gone although a part of me resented the fact that he was drinking and I wasn’t. I finally put an end to the marriage by kicking him out when he complained when I bought food for my son instead of giving him the money for beer. I was waiting for the right time to kick him out, but never found one. Finally with no food and 50 cents in my wallet, I said, “Leave and don’t come back.” I went over to the Legion to talk to my friend who was bartending. I didn’t have a drink had a can of coca-cola (my first addiction) because I didn’t have the money to add the rye. I hated beer. Never drank more than one beer in my life. Couldn’t stand the taste or the smell, therefore, I couldn’t be an alcoholic. I drank my rye with coke and I never drank it straight, so I wasn’t an alcoholic. Why should I when my first love was coca-cola.
When I talked to my friend, I felt the tears coming and I told her I had to leave because I didn’t do tears. I knew it was anger and feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t regret what I had done, was just wondering what I was going to do. When I got home, I thought, why should I give him the power, why should I sit here alone and boohooing, and started back to the Legion. I think a part of me knew that I could get a drink bought for me. On my way to the Legion, I met my friend’s husband who was Vice-President of the Legion and he was in Legion Uniform. We went back to my apartment and he presented me with a Food Voucher for $50 to get me food in the IGA which was next to the Legion, until I could get money from Mother’s Allowance. God was looking after me when I wasn’t even aware of His Presence.
It was difficult living in a small village with him always around. I came home one night and he was sitting at my back door waiting for me and asking me where I had been and what was I doing out so late. I was very grateful when he moved to the city but I had no car, no job, and no way to get to one. I made the decision to leave and join most of my family who lived in Hamilton. I had left the farm when I was 17, lived in Hamilton until I was 26, and then went back to the farm. My dad sold the farm when my son was 7, just before I met my ex. When I people found out I was going with him, people said, “What are you doing going out with that drunk? A year later I married him. I blamed it on my mother-in-law. If she had kept her mouth shut I would have been quite happy to let things go and figured I could break off the relationship when it was good for me. She told him to choose her or me and he chose me!
I came to Hamilton in 1983. It took me eight years to find the program. I eventually found a job. Got Bells Palsy and because my face was paralyzed my boss fired me because I was his secretary/receptionist and had to deal with the public. The last job I had ended in 1988 when I tried to do the work of three people and because I could keep up, I started using more and more. I had tried to quit drinking over this period but I substituted pills. They were like dried up alcohol.
I didn’t have black outs with alcohol, but I did with pills. I didn’t isolate with alcohol but I did with pills. I stopped living and I only existed, marking time and thinking my life was over. I pushed my family away. My son came and take me out for dinner and then to a show on payday. I ended up too sick to go. Meanwhile, I was totally stoned. It kept taking more and more to get me out of my bed and functioning only to wanting more to go back to sleep. I used my bed for years. It was a good way to hide from reality. Shut the world out, I want to get off this merry-go-round. I don’t want to know what makes the world go round, and round, and round. I finally got to that place of being sick and tired of being tired and sick. It wasn’t until I heard the young girl who called herself my unofficially adopted daughter say, “I don’t want to be like her down the hall.” I had to stop and think, “Am I really that bad? The answer was, “Yes I am!” That was when I picked up the phone and asked for help. That was my day of surrender, August 8th, 1991. I had a glass of wine with a steak dinner on the 20th with this same girl. The 21st is my dry date, and went to my doctor and asked to be taken off all of my medication. He said I needed it and I had to work with the Social Worker at the YWCA to get the help I needed. I took my last pill the day I went into recovery at Mary Ellis House. I take the date of the 21st because I stopped abusing all substances. It wouldn’t have been healthy for me to quit everything at once. I went into treatment November 2nd of 1991 and graduated December 13th. I didn’t think the time would ever go by. How could I possibly live with ten women for six weeks in the same house? When it came time to go, I didn’t want to leave. I went back to the YWCA and moved into my first apartment at 6 months clean and sober. It was a bachelor apartment. I borrowed dishes and pots and pans. I was given a mattress and I slept on the floor but it was the most freeing move I have ever made in my life. It was my space. It had a two burner stove and I kept blowing the fuses. I couldn’t have the oven on and the burners. You couldn’t use the toaster or the electric frying pan with more than one element going. Many hours I sat in the dark waiting for the landlady to come home to give me light. Yet it was okay. I went to two meetings a day for two years. The Area Social Club was just up the street and I was able to go to meetings morning and night. Thanks to my worker, I applied for disability and after being turned down and appealing, I was put on disability.
I did the do things. I went to meetings, got a sponsor, got a group and got active. I didn’t get a group until after I was three months. There were several groups I liked; I was looking for a place I could feel spiritually connected. I joined the Women’s Discussion Group. I came to realize that I was angry at men, resented and couldn’t stand Women, but they seemed the lesser of two evils. I had to learn to communicate with them. I had been a single mom, a person who worked all her life and never stayed at home until the end of my using and then I was surrounded by women. I drank and worked with the men. Most men thought the group was a bunch of men bashers, as a friend of mine said, “We don’t hate men, we love men; that is our problem, we need to detach from them so we can heal.” Many women who had been abused couldn’t do meetings with men, but I had no problem and I went all over the city to meetings. My co-sponsor said, “Stick with the winners, be with the long-timers.” I told her there were few women who went to meetings other than there own, so I traveled to find these women. A lot of the men I met at these groups too and because they went to all the meetings I knew a lot of them. Gossip nearly drove me out of the rooms. I had more blackouts in recovery than I ever had when I was drinking. I was wedded and bedded so many times I couldn’t keep track. Someone said, “JoAnne, can I go with you to the AA Head Office.” Everyone laughed, (we were at the meetings I started at 3 years sober) and said, “If you are seen with her people with think you are an item.” It was even funnier because he was gay and hadn’t officially come out of the closet. I sponsored a gay guy at one time, and they felt safe at the meeting. We had seven meetings in six days. The group was called ‘Freedom of Recovery’ and was registered with New York. Two people took over the meeting in 2001 when I went back to school, but sadly it eventually closed. No one could give it the commitment that I could. I sometimes feel guilty, yet I know I was meant to go back to school. It brought more changes and growth in me. Most of my recovery had been all about recovery and I was able to find some balance and start doing other things like playing bridge. Getting a computer and meeting a whole new set of friend on the internet.
For two winters I was unable to go out during the winter and the people on line saved my life. I was able to do service and share with others, and although you can’t beat face to face meetings, it sure is better than none. I still picked up the phone. I still had a sponsor, in fact over the years I have had an Al-Anon and NA Sponsor as well as an AA Sponsor and Spiritual Advisor. It was important for me to have a strong network of support. They say some are sicker than others. I was one of the really sick ones. You would think that I wrote the book on denial.
She has suggested that I put some of my stories down on paper. I don’t know how often I will get new thought, but I will turn it over and see what comes up.
We have a lot in common and have been in similar circumstances in our life and can identify with each other. Both of us come from abusive marriages. Both physical and mental abuse.
Today, thanks to the program, I have learned not to accept abuse from others or from myself. Quite often the abused becomes the abuser. We get angry and we start hitting back. I know I did. For many years, it was all his fault. The only problem was, he left and I replaced him with husband number two. I thought they were as different as night and day. One was tall dark and handsome and came from a Caribbean background. The other one was Scottish, had freckles and red hair and was about three inches shorter, yet the temper was more violent when he was drinking. Number One used women, Number Two used alcohol, and I used right along with them. I cheated on my first husband (he could do it, so could I) and drank with the second.
Both had a habit of using me for a punching bag when they couldn’t control that anger. My first husband hit me twice. My second husband hit me many times, tried to choke me to death and put me through a wall and left the imprint of my body in the wall plaster. It took three men to hold my second husband from coming at me over the table when we were playing cards because he didn’t like the way I played my hand. When I won a trophy for District Euchre and Zone Cribbage for the Legion he celebrated that he taught me all I knew.
The biggest amend that I owed this man at the end of the marriage was that I had married him. I certainly didn’t love and respect him and had married him for all the wrong reasons. I was looking for someone to keep me in the style that I would like to become accustomed and I was looking for a father for my son.
He never had time for my son and didn’t try to communicate with him unless he was drunk then my son didn’t want to have anything to do with him. He demanded respect from him but did nothing to earn it. He lost his job at the railroad three months after we were married and we ended up on welfare. We both went back to school. I got my grade 12. He quit to get an apprentice ship as a journeyman and 8 weeks before he was finished the company went bankrupt.
Whether it is to celebrate or morn a loss, it was all the more reason to drink. He tried to quit and he quit for nine months. I told him that I would stop along with him to give him support because it wouldn’t be easy go to bed with someone smelling of booze. Of course, he was the one with the problem and I was doing him a favor. The truth that came out in recovery was that I couldn’t stop, and took a drink once in a while. He started back drinking by having a glass of wine with me at a meal. I could stop, but I could never stay stopped. When he started again, the violence got worse and he started hanging out with the boys and was gone until the wee small hours of the morning. I put up with that, didn’t really care if he was gone although a part of me resented the fact that he was drinking and I wasn’t. I finally put an end to the marriage by kicking him out when he complained when I bought food for my son instead of giving him the money for beer. I was waiting for the right time to kick him out, but never found one. Finally with no food and 50 cents in my wallet, I said, “Leave and don’t come back.” I went over to the Legion to talk to my friend who was bartending. I didn’t have a drink had a can of coca-cola (my first addiction) because I didn’t have the money to add the rye. I hated beer. Never drank more than one beer in my life. Couldn’t stand the taste or the smell, therefore, I couldn’t be an alcoholic. I drank my rye with coke and I never drank it straight, so I wasn’t an alcoholic. Why should I when my first love was coca-cola.
When I talked to my friend, I felt the tears coming and I told her I had to leave because I didn’t do tears. I knew it was anger and feeling sorry for myself because I didn’t regret what I had done, was just wondering what I was going to do. When I got home, I thought, why should I give him the power, why should I sit here alone and boohooing, and started back to the Legion. I think a part of me knew that I could get a drink bought for me. On my way to the Legion, I met my friend’s husband who was Vice-President of the Legion and he was in Legion Uniform. We went back to my apartment and he presented me with a Food Voucher for $50 to get me food in the IGA which was next to the Legion, until I could get money from Mother’s Allowance. God was looking after me when I wasn’t even aware of His Presence.
It was difficult living in a small village with him always around. I came home one night and he was sitting at my back door waiting for me and asking me where I had been and what was I doing out so late. I was very grateful when he moved to the city but I had no car, no job, and no way to get to one. I made the decision to leave and join most of my family who lived in Hamilton. I had left the farm when I was 17, lived in Hamilton until I was 26, and then went back to the farm. My dad sold the farm when my son was 7, just before I met my ex. When I people found out I was going with him, people said, “What are you doing going out with that drunk? A year later I married him. I blamed it on my mother-in-law. If she had kept her mouth shut I would have been quite happy to let things go and figured I could break off the relationship when it was good for me. She told him to choose her or me and he chose me!
I came to Hamilton in 1983. It took me eight years to find the program. I eventually found a job. Got Bells Palsy and because my face was paralyzed my boss fired me because I was his secretary/receptionist and had to deal with the public. The last job I had ended in 1988 when I tried to do the work of three people and because I could keep up, I started using more and more. I had tried to quit drinking over this period but I substituted pills. They were like dried up alcohol.
I didn’t have black outs with alcohol, but I did with pills. I didn’t isolate with alcohol but I did with pills. I stopped living and I only existed, marking time and thinking my life was over. I pushed my family away. My son came and take me out for dinner and then to a show on payday. I ended up too sick to go. Meanwhile, I was totally stoned. It kept taking more and more to get me out of my bed and functioning only to wanting more to go back to sleep. I used my bed for years. It was a good way to hide from reality. Shut the world out, I want to get off this merry-go-round. I don’t want to know what makes the world go round, and round, and round. I finally got to that place of being sick and tired of being tired and sick. It wasn’t until I heard the young girl who called herself my unofficially adopted daughter say, “I don’t want to be like her down the hall.” I had to stop and think, “Am I really that bad? The answer was, “Yes I am!” That was when I picked up the phone and asked for help. That was my day of surrender, August 8th, 1991. I had a glass of wine with a steak dinner on the 20th with this same girl. The 21st is my dry date, and went to my doctor and asked to be taken off all of my medication. He said I needed it and I had to work with the Social Worker at the YWCA to get the help I needed. I took my last pill the day I went into recovery at Mary Ellis House. I take the date of the 21st because I stopped abusing all substances. It wouldn’t have been healthy for me to quit everything at once. I went into treatment November 2nd of 1991 and graduated December 13th. I didn’t think the time would ever go by. How could I possibly live with ten women for six weeks in the same house? When it came time to go, I didn’t want to leave. I went back to the YWCA and moved into my first apartment at 6 months clean and sober. It was a bachelor apartment. I borrowed dishes and pots and pans. I was given a mattress and I slept on the floor but it was the most freeing move I have ever made in my life. It was my space. It had a two burner stove and I kept blowing the fuses. I couldn’t have the oven on and the burners. You couldn’t use the toaster or the electric frying pan with more than one element going. Many hours I sat in the dark waiting for the landlady to come home to give me light. Yet it was okay. I went to two meetings a day for two years. The Area Social Club was just up the street and I was able to go to meetings morning and night. Thanks to my worker, I applied for disability and after being turned down and appealing, I was put on disability.
I did the do things. I went to meetings, got a sponsor, got a group and got active. I didn’t get a group until after I was three months. There were several groups I liked; I was looking for a place I could feel spiritually connected. I joined the Women’s Discussion Group. I came to realize that I was angry at men, resented and couldn’t stand Women, but they seemed the lesser of two evils. I had to learn to communicate with them. I had been a single mom, a person who worked all her life and never stayed at home until the end of my using and then I was surrounded by women. I drank and worked with the men. Most men thought the group was a bunch of men bashers, as a friend of mine said, “We don’t hate men, we love men; that is our problem, we need to detach from them so we can heal.” Many women who had been abused couldn’t do meetings with men, but I had no problem and I went all over the city to meetings. My co-sponsor said, “Stick with the winners, be with the long-timers.” I told her there were few women who went to meetings other than there own, so I traveled to find these women. A lot of the men I met at these groups too and because they went to all the meetings I knew a lot of them. Gossip nearly drove me out of the rooms. I had more blackouts in recovery than I ever had when I was drinking. I was wedded and bedded so many times I couldn’t keep track. Someone said, “JoAnne, can I go with you to the AA Head Office.” Everyone laughed, (we were at the meetings I started at 3 years sober) and said, “If you are seen with her people with think you are an item.” It was even funnier because he was gay and hadn’t officially come out of the closet. I sponsored a gay guy at one time, and they felt safe at the meeting. We had seven meetings in six days. The group was called ‘Freedom of Recovery’ and was registered with New York. Two people took over the meeting in 2001 when I went back to school, but sadly it eventually closed. No one could give it the commitment that I could. I sometimes feel guilty, yet I know I was meant to go back to school. It brought more changes and growth in me. Most of my recovery had been all about recovery and I was able to find some balance and start doing other things like playing bridge. Getting a computer and meeting a whole new set of friend on the internet.
For two winters I was unable to go out during the winter and the people on line saved my life. I was able to do service and share with others, and although you can’t beat face to face meetings, it sure is better than none. I still picked up the phone. I still had a sponsor, in fact over the years I have had an Al-Anon and NA Sponsor as well as an AA Sponsor and Spiritual Advisor. It was important for me to have a strong network of support. They say some are sicker than others. I was one of the really sick ones. You would think that I wrote the book on denial.
. I will be back looking for Lin and others.