Regrets...I have a few

Hi Anyone/Everyone
I think like most of us, I have my troubles with the past. It is interesting to me how despite efforts to lay it to rest parts of it still want addressing, resolving and reliving. I have spent a good part, okay most, of my adult life trying to alternately run (move west and away from family stuff), hide from it (drink, drugs, boyfriends, cigarettes and food) and even thinking I had made peace with it and so there was no need to revisit it.

Guess what? This does not seem to be the case. Geographical cures last as long as the newness of the move is fresh and addictions demand more and more of you. Essentially I did not/do not want to die from an addiction but the big question/mystery has been how to move forward.

For some reason ( okay I know who is in charge of these incidents and it ain't fate or coincidence) the past wants me to come for a holiday but in my mind it is the kind of holiday where you are trapped on a cruise ship, in high seas with 350 other passengers all of you having a norovirus. I don't think the reference to nasty bodily functions is overstating it at all.
My sponsor used to say with me it was like dragging a wieney through a keyhole. I think of it more like trying to walk a donkey.

I'm pretty good at avoiding the pain and discomfort from my early years and can create any number of handy distractions in service of this.To start to overcome this I cancelled my cable. The call from back then is just to strong to ignore and for the first time, I mean really ever, I have a living, breathing hope that a lasting reconcilliation is possible.

Yikes, I do not want to be 4 or 7 or 13 again. I don't want to feel the isolation, lonliness, fear and despair. What I am encountering on the 'road of happy destiny' is that all of that emotion filters into how I react/behave today. My boss is not my Dad or Mom in the middle of bitter divorce proceedings but when it comes to critisism or feeling overlooked...whoosh I am 8 again and the feelings of insecurity and wondering what is going to happen to me flood through me and I feel completely overwhelmed even though I am a perfectly capable adult. It puts a lot of pressure on friends, lovers, coworkers, anyone on authority figures and family to have that lost kid dictating what this giant middle aged woman is doing and how she is behaving. I truly believe that freedom is in changing what you believe about yourself and the world around you but the tricky thing is you need to know what you believed then to adjust the now. O Crap!!!

Okay so here we are on the road but what comes next? I have become teachable. I have been so blessed in my life to have loving friends who walked the miles (maybe not all but kept me moving along the route) with me. I have had some fantastic loving, easy going guys who demanded very little and brought tons of happiness and fun to the mix. I have also been lucky to have found really good counsellors when I was ready for a little shove into the future. And, God seems to drop books on me just when I need them. Authors have been like inukshuks to me. Peak through the gap and see where to go next.

I suppose one of the primary urges is the desire for change. I want more, I think there is something out in the world I'm not accessing and I want it. I want to grow up, want to like and respect myself, want to be free of fearing I won't be liked or accepted and mostly I want peaceful, fulfilling, intimate realtionships both give and take. I have such a craving right now to be authentic and be surrounded by people who not only support me in this drive but whom I can support too.

Part of what makes the past so hard for me right now is not so much how it effected me but how my siblings suffered. I love them so much and to think of them deprived of anything they might have needed and deserved as kids and knowing (without spilling it to you guys) the true depth of the deprivations kills me. I am so, so sad for those kids and so guilt ridden for not having done more, although May 4, 2011 Jane knows surviving and wanting more was worth what I couldn't do. I want to go back and fix everything, love them unconditionally, rescue them from harm so that their adult lives could be better but, that is what makes the past such a beatch, you can look but you can't touch.

What's a girl to do?? Build new relationships with loved ones, old and new that's what. Be fearless, fall down and get back up. No way is it easy or fast but the love you feel comes forward and it is the absolute best foundation to build on. Don't let to many days go by before you try to mend fences with every one you are in conflict with ( and I do mean everyone). I don't know if you are like me but as soon as I get rubbing up against other people the opportunities for growth, humility and knowledge just grow and grow.

And you know what? I don't care if I make mistakes, have to apologize, flounder like Bambi on ice. I am trying to resolve this stuff. I have joked for years that I am like a Weeble...I wobble but don't fall down. As my faith and hope increase I believe that these desires can be accomplished and I'd bet the farm on that one!
Talk to you soon
Jane