Vicarious Rising

Bad Plumbing

Now that we've finally closed on the house, we've begun to slowly move our possessions in. We're not quite to the point of being able to inhabit the place yet, but I'm hoping to be able to spend the night there soon.

I have a few more photos to share, one of which is a picture of the front of the house. We finally don't have a parking lot of construction trucks blocking it. The front door will be stained mahogany to match the wraparound porch. I love how it looks as you come up the hill. We have a really long, 600 foot, driveway. I think the house looks like it fits properly up there and it looks deceptively small and unpretentious. The structure actually runs long on the property, so the southern side has the most exposure. All the views from the house are wonderful, but the southern side has a nice tumble down a hill into the natural woods that is really beautiful and peaceful.

The other photos are of a wall unit we bought from an antique shop in Vermont I mentioned before, The Country Gallery Antiques. I have some before and after pictures of what the proprietor, Borge, miraculously did with restoring the piece. I will, however, give myself credit for picking out the unit and seeing how fantastic it would look before it was redone. Even Borge and his wife didn't think it would look as amazing as it did when it was finished (Borge's wife, Janet, called it "ugly" but I wouldn't have gone that far. It was kind of rough and literally fuzzy, though). We bought a new TV set last night to put in the open cubby. My photo of it doesn't quite get the color right - it's more soft brown and less yellow than my pic makes it appear. (By-the-by, they ship all over, so if you like their stuff, check out their website.)

The other couple pics are of our mudroom built-ins, another view of the pantry and one of the kitchen with some of our counter stools. For our 11th anniversary coming up in March, my husband has hired the guy who did these to do a custom bookshelf/file cabinet for my office however I want. Being the big nerd I am, I am really, really thrilled with this gift.

I've been dreaming a lot lately about water leaks, not just in my own home, but about me somehow being responsible for them when visiting in other peoples' homes as well. I don't know what to make of these dreams, but my subconscious is trying to tell me something. I'm always trying to figure out where the leak is from, trying to fix it, keeping it quiet that something is amiss, and - of course - making the problem worse as I try to repair the increasing flood of water.

The water begins to rise, and I am just stumped as to how this happened when I wasn't really doing anything intentionally wrong.

It never really ends, does it?

Author! Author!

I got an email today from that summer writing program I was in last year telling my that my teacher had nominated me for a scholarship. The catch is I have to get off my ass and apply with some sample work before March 15.

Uh, I don't have anything remotely close to entry-ready. But it sure would be nice to not have to pay tuition for the workshop this summer.

If I were one to look for God Signs in things, I'd say:

This Is One.

Booby Prizes

I'm glad I wrote about my sudden melancholy regarding my broken friendship yesterday. To tell the truth, I was a little ashamed to bring it up because I was feeling like I ought to be over it already. Spending over an entire year in a tug-o-war with myself over the whole fiasco seemed like way too much time already. Then I'd spent two relatively quiet months at peace with myself over the decision to get the hell out. It felt like I was backsliding to indulge in mournfulness even for a moment.

I have to remember a couple things, though. This friendship lasted for 15 years. It was and will remain perhaps one of the most significant relationships in my life, regardless of whether it was based on the real him or not. I trusted him with parts of myself I gave to no one else. He mattered to me. A lot. It doesn't signify that he had been fooling me all along in regards to how deep my feelings went for him. How I felt was real.

Part of my annoyance is that I feel duped. I am someone who prides herself at good intuition about people, and it so utterly failed me in this case, I am embarrassed to my core. The funny thing is, my first impression of my best friend was so poor, I cannot believe I allowed myself to change my mind at all. I thought he was a self-centered boor with a stick up his ass. How and why I reversed my initial reaction to him is a real mystery to me that I may never solve.

The real question remains, why did I allow myself to become so involved in this fantasy? What does or did this man represent to me that was so important for me to hang on to? I have recognized that a large portion of my love/infatuation with him was an attempt on my part to hang on and get closer to someone that I felt was an enigma. The more distant he felt to me, the more I became convinced I needed to be closer. Pretty rudimentary stupidity psychology on my part, but given my history with my mother, hardly surprising. With my new sobriety and confusion about my sexuality and marriage, the whole thing snowballed into a romantic fantasy. I desperately wanted to talk about all of it with this person who was my friend and confidant, but he would have none of it. I'd never had a relationship outside my parents run so afoul, heck, my first marriage ended with less acrimony. The man I thought my best friend was would not have ever treated a friend with the disrespect he treated me. Not only was it a rude awakening, but I kept trying to convince myself that I had it wrong - that he had to be the good guy, not the asshole.

I should have done a better job of recognizing the warning signs that my friend was a man with a lot of sociopathy of his own. At 38, he's never married or even been close to it. By his own admission, he has never been in love. And every single one of his relationships has gone down because of his emotional immaturity, inability to communicate and fear of commitment. His way of handling conflict in a relationship is to make the other person feel like there is something defective with them and just flat out refuse to speak to them until they change the subject and are "rational" (re: not saying anything that makes him squirm) again. None of this had ever come up in our friendship before I got sober. My sobriety, I guess, changed how I related to him. It was the last relationship I expected to be a casualty of my getting well. It seems to be the only relationship to suffer for it.

I also think that a part of me thought that he was single because he held some sort of torch for me all this time. Very self-indulgent, I know. Now that harebrained idea has gone the way of the dodo, and I am left with little to console me.

I really screwed up here. I need to take an inventory and understand what happened and why. Try not to rip myself a new one over it. And most of all, try not to let what happened keep me from trusting another person again. I don't think I will ever stop missing the closeness I felt to him, even if it was a chimera.

License to Revel

A few other bloggers I follow were picking a single word as sort of a mantra for the new year. I think this is an interesting idea, as I dislike resolutions. I chose BALANCE as my word. I'd love to hear anyone else's word, if you decide to pick this up as well.

Balance is a tricky thing to maintain. More often than not, things keep an equilibrium by swinging back and forth between extremes rather than staying still in a peaceful center. At the same time, I've tried to live in a place where nothing moved, and that was numb and probably a lot like death. I wouldn't call it living at any rate. That state of being, for me, was about fear and retribution.

When I was a kid, I learned not to be too excited or happy about anything. My parents were certain to rain on my parade, whether it was through criticism or by taking away the things I cared most about. My most prized thoughts and possessions became secrets. Sometimes they became secrets even to me. I didn't dare love too deeply, celebrate too much or enjoy too fully. Because one thing I could count on is that whatever pleasure I derived from that action, person or thing would be taken away.

I'm learning to do away with this extreme view of balance and recognize I am entitled to have a good life and enjoy it just because I am. I've been having dreams about having fun with my friends, dreams that I used to have about going out with a bunch of strangers and getting hammered and not remembering picking up the drink or why I did it. It is a marked change that the dreams are about being with people I love and not including me poisoning myself. However, I am still not remembering our nights out having fun. I'm still holding myself back experiencing the joy of conviviality. I can't quite allow myself to have fun.

Slowly I am peeling away my defense mechanisms and letting myself believe that this life I've created is one I deserve and that the hand of God isn't going to come whisk it away. I really like this happy feeling, the one that makes me each day a little closer to being grateful just to be me.

Yes, I think I am actually having fun.

Cloudy Thinking

I've always been a daydreamer. When I was in elementary school, it was a way to get through classes that were moving way too slowly for my liking. It got me through long car rides and extended stays in my bedroom when I was hiding from my mother and had reread my favorite books more times than I cared to count.

When I was drinking, daydreaming was a full blown activity. I became totally immersed in my dreams, schemes, plans, all the things and possibilities. It definitely made chores like doing the laundry and cleaning house much more interesting. Unfortunately, it was difficult to conquer the world when trapped in my head.

Daydreams are still crucial to me. They are tied to my senses of hope and possibility. They are key to my creativity. I have to find the proper balance between the dreaming and the action. To not get stuck in the fantasy.

When I was doing a little perusing of catalogs yesterday, I found this painting of a woman reclined on a sofa that I think looks a little like me. I bought a lovely leather chaise lounge for my office in the new house, and I think a good framed reproduction of this work would be perfect hanging above it. The painting is by Escha Van Den Bogerd. It is called Daydreamer.

Loose Ends

I've been having pretty extravagent dreams lately, completely new ones in which I am not my typical useless dolt who can barely stand up or is constantly being pursued just because I am too pathetic to live. I still often have something I am either running away from or towards, but it has much more of a quest-like feel to it. The people or things I am running from feel more like obstacles being placed in my way because I am succeeding instead of some greater power determining that I ought to be snuffed out for the greater good of mankind.

All these dreams have an episodic quality about them. A lot of times, while I am dreaming, I am certain I am not dreaming, although the stuff going on really isn't like anything that's happened in my reality and most of the time the people in my dreams are complete strangers. But I am supposed to know them. And some part of me does know them. But at that particular moment, I'm a little muddled. One of my questions in the dreams is whether I should let in on this vulnerability to any of these strangers. Who are my friends and foes? Can I trust my gut instincts about them? I know this is something I am wrestling with in my waking life.

Plus, I hate it that everyone else in my dreams seems to get what the heck is going on better than I do. I know that is a familiar feeling in real life that I have been working on dissipating. It's a serious inferiority complex issue that's got to go. I've just never been one of those who pretended I knew things when I didn't, so when other people acted as if they did, I stupidly took them at face value. Can you say naive?

I've also noticed I've had this hyper attention to details in my dreams: colors, textures, shapes, patterns, sounds. I'm rather fascinated with this as well as impressed with my own memory. Although I wonder if this isn't all some trick of the mind: am I only thinking that I am seeing such amazing beauty? After all, none of it is really being experienced.

What I like about these dreams is that they represent a major change in my conscious-self. I know I am not still stuck in victim mode. I've moved into another phase. I even had a silly little vignette of a dream the other day. I spoke to my mother on the phone a couple nights ago (this actually happened -- and it was the first time in, oh, years and prolly warrants a post of its own), and this triggered a dream in which I was talking to some character that looked at me and said:

"Yah, so? You survived a phone chat, it went fine. What did you expect would happen next? Your whole life would change? Flowers would start blooming out your ass and angels would sing? What do you want to have happen now?"

I kind of blinked at this blunt stranger and realized she was rather wise.

See, the confounding thing is, I feel a bit like I am still keeping secrets from myself. Like some part of me gets this thing called life, but is only sharing in stops and starts. I'm trying to learn to work at that pace, but the much less mature me wants to barrel in and get all the serenity and cookies NOW NOW NOW.

I want everything cleaned up and tied with a pretty bow, no funny feelings laying around waiting to bite me when I least expect it.

What is Home?

Recently I've been dreaming of creation. I have power and magic. I can make beautiful things, fanciful worlds. Music. In my dreams, I form these things with my will and sometimes with my hands. With my heart. I am making masterpieces, not mere trinkets.

I am also aware that I am dreaming. Often the things I am producing, I don't know how I am doing it, where the skill comes from or even cannot read the words of my own stories. They are written in languages I do not consciously know. But in my dream and in my head, I know that I really do understand what I am doing. While I may not explicitly comprehend my output, deep inside it all makes sense, it just has not been fully revealed to me. I simply need to let it flow out and see what comes.

I like these dreams, although I do find them rather frustrating as I never get a completed product and it is a little hard to take credit for something that you don't really know how you did it. But the thing is, I am the owner of these creations. That is the truth of these dreams, even as I am not fully aware of what I am making.

But I must say, these dreams beat the hell out of nightmares about being stabbed by my parents or running from a freak tidal wave. Maybe not so fun as a good sex dream with a hot guy. I really don't have enough of those.

Things have felt a little better for me the past few days. Some of the issues that I have been pushing to a head within myself seem to be falling one way or another, as I hoped they would. This is probably not the sort of behavior that I should be partaking in as a recovering alcoholic, but the letting go and all that shit was not getting me anywhere but more and more confused. I felt like I was giving myself too much of a leash and I was definitely hanging. Yes, I am being vague, but that's all I'm going to say about it today. Suffice it to say, I needed to quit wishy-washing myself and had to do some stuff to force myself there in ways that are probably not generally approved. I've got too much self-will that isn't popular with the AA-folk. Never fear, alcohol and drugs were not involved. Just my good old fashioned pig head.

In any case, my behavior is not recommended to anyone else, so I shouldn't spread the word. I pray I am done with this particular vein of nonsense. My wise inner voice seems to be saying it is done so long as I don't start wandering off the path again. I think I will stay headed in this direction. I see a light on up ahead and it looks mighty comforting.

Setback Mountain

I had started to diligently do my meme homework when Postpaleo put a comment on my "Chasing Gratitude" post that brought an image in my mind of where I am in my recovery.

I suddenly pictured myself as climbing a steep mountain. I'd been doing well, adjusting to changes in altitude and terrain. But suddenly an avalanche of snow and ice just dumped down over me. Because I have been steadily working my way up and have been well prepared, I've got my gear and ropes and whatever climbing shit it is your supposed to have to keep me connected safely to my spot on the mountain and not blown off a cliff. However, I've been covered by about six feet of snow and cannot move. I have to figure out how to "swim" out of the sea of snow and ice to continue my journey up the mountain.

I dream quite frequently about being trapped in snow. I am oddly sweaty and damp, yet freezing cold when there. The sluggish struggle to free myself from that predicament usually ends with the dream shifting rather than me actually breaking loose.

There's a part of me that just wants to sit cocooned under that pile of snow for awhile, numb and hibernating until I am ready (if ever) to finish g(r)o(w)ing up the mountain. And once I get out from under the mound, do I continue up or do I retreat and go back down? Is my equipment all buried?

OK, the analogy is kind of dead here, but I do like the image of being frozen in ice. I can't be hurt, I can't feel anything, it's all just stopped.

Sublime Divine, Baby of Mine

My mother had some sort of falling out with her Roman Catholic faith when I was in 7th grade. It allegedly had something to do with the church's view on women, but to tell the truth, it is probably a convoluted conspiracy theory my mother has concocted about how the Pope is somehow responsible for holding her back in life. It was those wretched nuns at her Catholic high school, you know. Don't ask. It makes sense somewhere in her mind.

I never was confirmed in the Catholic faith, and it is just as well. Organized religion seems a purely manufactured thing having more to do with money and politics than spirituality. As my 12-year-old was observing the architecture of the old church we were visiting yesterday, noting that it must have cost a fortune and an incredible amount of labor to construct the building, my cynical mind thought about how many people could have been better helped in other ways than by imported marble and tile mosaics.

We were in New York City for the baptism of a friend's infant. My son has not been baptized, and I gave him a lot of shit about how we were going to do an impromptu dunking and dub him a name that would embarass him before the congregation and all his friends forevermore. He almost believed me. I have about 100 nicknames for him and I routinely threaten to get on his school's PA system to call him forth by one of them. It's a good way to keep him in line. Works better than corporal punishment.

Eleven babies were Christened. I hadn't been to one of these services in a long time. The priest gave a nice sermon. He talked about how the delight we take in our children, how we want to give them the world is but a hint of how God feels for us. It's a nice sentiment. It certainly made me feel all suffused and mushy with maternal love for my little monster. He was all, "Mommmm, quit hugging me." Poor kid.

In my current state of mind, seeing all those tiny babies was a little difficult. Or maybe not difficult. I am one of "those" who does think there are coincidences. But if I were inclined to use things as a "sign" to move my own agenda forward, I'd say the in-my-facedness of happy babies and families in multiples no less in a freaking church might be a Higher Power sign nudging me towards becoming a mommy again. It sure did kick my ovaries into longing, if ovaries do such a thing.

However, I think we can see what we want to in any situation. I might've seen all those families as a screaming chaos if I were on the side of proving that children were noisy inconveniences. It's all in your chosen point of view.

I sometimes dream about my son getting himself into trouble. I am a much more violent and nasty parent in my dreams. It is all about fear. And my son is a much more wild child, willful and trying to get away from me. Not listening. Putting himself in horrific danger. Or merely being a complete idiot. Sometimes I wake from these dreams and jokingly yell at my son for being a bad child in my sleep. My kid said to me the other day, "I think you have those dreams about me so you appreciate what a great kid I am in reality."

I laughed out loud at that. See, it's all in the perspective.

Don Quixote and the Clone Wars

One benchmark of my recovery is the evolution of my dreams. I've had fairly persistent themes throughout my life in my sleep world, one of which features my mother coming at me in physically and psychologically violent ways. In these dreams, I always have this sense that I have "asked for it," which makes the entire experience that much more excruciating.

Over the past several months, I have been dreaming that my mother and I have been having civil conversations. Rather than being antagonistic, we have been cordial. In some instances, she has been my advocate, and, on very good nights, a mother in a true sense. In my mind, I believe it is me learning to mother myself, to fulfill the things in myself that have been empty for all that time. Additionally, I am not beating myself up in the same ways I have been. Like I have written in other posts, much of the abuse I experienced in the past became a second nature to my own personality. I have been working at exorcising that unnecessary inner critic, and I'll be damned if it isn't actually working.

I had a crazy urge to share in the AA meeting this morning, but I didn't because I thought the people there would think I was a nuttier case than the rest of the bunch if I started talking about the dream I had last night. That, and the fact that I never know if when I speak I will sound halfway like I do when I write or if I will sound like a babbling idiot. I'm not 100 percent certain those are mutually exclusive.

I dreamt that I met some new neighbors who took a look at my teeth (there's that tooth dream symbolism again) and said they could tell by the color of my enamel that I had a clone of myself running around out in the world. But my clone had the exact life that I had always wanted for myself, with the warm, loving and supportive family and all it entailed. Then one of the women asked me, "So, how do you feel about that?"

In my dream, I felt a little like someone had put a hand in my gut and twisted. But I also felt a surge of joy - for this clone was me and had everything I could ever want for myself. How could I not be happy for someone - especially myself - to have that life? I genuininely felt tears of joy, not so much for the clone-me in real-dream-time (if that makes sense), but for the little clone-me who had grown up without all the pain and sadness that I had experienced. This was a nice feeling, that some part of me had escaped my past, even if I did not have any of the good fortune to benefit from it.

But my next thought was: "Ah, shit, clone-me might decide to steal my identity and take what I have now. I'd better watch out for that."

Huh. Now, there's a couple revelations. First, there is my noticeable lack of envy for the clone's life. Then there is my protectiveness over the life I have built in sobriety. Why would a me with the ideal life want to steal the life I have now in recovery? To have the prime opportunity to spend every day in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with a bunch of goofballs and two hours a week in therapy? All this self-awareness and agony, humililty and amends?

The question is: what would I have now if there had been no trudging on the road of happy destiny?

It was an interesting question that my subconscious seems to be telling me that where I am now is where I want to be.