My co dependent brain takes it to a degree that puts so much pressure on me I cannot breathe. As the holidays approach, I feel dread. The dread of someone doomed to fail.
My house needs to be clean and decorated. Silver polished. Centerpieces created or bought. (Mostly created, I am on a budget).
And the shopping! The crowded stores and the lines. Missing the last fresh organic _______, and no where left, no time left to find another so it’s a frozen alternative.
Oh the judgement!
Whom to invite over? Do I have to? I love my friends and family. It’s groups that are hard. And what’s a Holiday meal without a group?
The chatter, the drinking, the pleasing, the drinking, the checking up on and serving, the drinking the pleasing….
I start to crumble.
But I make the menu and check it twice. My mother’s recipes, grandmother’s stuffing, the various cranberries because my son loves the jelly and I like the whole berries barely sweetened. Someone might like the one with orange peel so I get that too. It’s good for leftovers and sandwiches, wiches I cannot eat, being gluten free ( oh my poor tummy).
Vegetarian options for those, and careful to hide gutty looking things so they don’t offend the vegetarians. I usually fail here, so I take the complaining and disapproval of those who are offended.
I try not to be snide or mean. But it’s hard cause I’m stressed from the lack of thankfulness I am judging not getting.
I am an indifferent cook.
My mother was amazing.
I cannot live up to her talent but I do feel the need to try, so I gather the ingredients and stress over the green bean casserole, the stuffing, the squash and the pies.
Oh , you’d like to bring the pies? Thank god, please do. One of each kind they ever made, please. Plus cream.
Oh fuck I forgot the rolls, ‘cause I’m selfish and don’t eat them. Biscuits or crescent rolls? Oh hell do both. And I buy what’s left in the trampled Ralph’s.
Buy. And buy. And now the drinks.
Who wants what? I ask for folks to bring what they’d like and sometimes they do. But what if they forgot? I don’t want anyone to not have what they want on Thanksgiving! So I buy.
She is bringing the appetizers, but she’s always late so I buy back ups. Buying is making me feel superior and prepared.
Don’t think about the bank account. It’s Thanksgiving and it has to be perfect.
So it goes.
I sweat and refuse help, and feel it’s my job and my contribution because what else am I good for? And don’t see the old programs running in my brain. The old stories and conditioning I have examined so carefully over the past 4 years in recovery.
This year, I see it starting. And I have been avoiding it. It’s the Sunday before Thanksgiving and I haven’t answered anyone’s questions about “What are we doing for Thanksgiving?”
I’m going to celebrate giving thanks. Because I want a great big life.
If you want to change your life, be grateful for all you have. Small to large. Mundane to miraculous. It’s simple ; what you focus on you draw to you.
4 Years Ago: I found this very hard at first, convinced it was all over and I had lost my tenuous grip on reality, and my sponsor at the time held me to sanity by asking gentle questions.
Do you have enough food for today?
Is there gas in your car, enough for today?
Is your son healthy?
Do you have a roof over your head?
This is more than millions have. You are ok. Be grateful.
So I started there. And I found I was grateful which surprised me, being as entrenched in a victim mentality as I was.
My sponsor wanted a long list of things I was grateful for. Designed to shock me out of my terror, she wanted PAGES. I stared at her. Is she kidding me? My life as I know it is over, I have no job, no money, no partner, no hope.
She said, I want pages of what you are grateful for right now. I had agreed to be compliant and do what I was told, because my best thinking had got me in the shape I was in. So I would make this list. But sarcasm loomed large.
So here was some of my list-
I am grateful for:
I am breathing ( I could be grateful for this, to be alive, for my son if not for myself)
My son and all that he is ( I had a lot of entries for him).
My house ( cause even if I default it will take them time to evict me and anything can happen in that time)
My beating heart
my love for my family
Friends who care for me when I cannot care for myself.
That pretty picture on the wall that lightens my heart with happy memories
Being warm
My wonderful doggy
My spastic cats
My hilarious chickens
(oh what will happen to them if I cannot get it together!!! My brain wails and the lizard of doom inside me wants to be fed. So I stop it, as my sponsor showed me, with more gratitude.)
The fact that I am ok right now. And right now. And right now. Still alive. Still not in jail or the poorhouse.
My meeting and everyone who doesn’t seem to mind if I sob through it.
My mean sponsor who is making me write all this shit. ( I beat back the sarcasm with a mental stick)
…and so it goes.
The Present: Are we having Thanksgiving?
Of course we are.
But it’s going to be different.
I am learning to follow a quickening in my heart which tells me I am on the right track. It’s a tiny butterfly flutter, like my baby was at 4 months in utero and I was trying to decide if I was feeling new life or gas.
What feels like a smile as opposed to the dread I am so accustomed to? How can I use the Steps to creativity? Because that’s what we do in a 12 Step program or a spiritual program where you listen to the mysterious insides of your heart and not your mind which has it’s own agenda and it’s NOT your happiness, believe me.
Being in a program means living openly and creatively. It means being scrupulously honest with yourself and those close to you. It means living in integrity. It means I am scared shitless most of the time. Yet it’s different than the fear I was in most of my life. Now it’s a thrill. Because I dare to be me and I believe I can change my life for the better. I am strangely so much happier and have so much hope it’s unreal.
So I let go and open up. I know I do not know. I ask for guidance, sit in meditation and I listen.
The butterfly flutters come.
I see the amazing buffet dinner I attended in Hobbiton on my New Zealand adventure this spring. How that groaning table of delicious food made everyone gasp in delight. Could we do that?
It might be a Game Night followed by Harry Potter films. (Lord of the Rings is Christmas, my brother and I decided years ago. Extended version.)
Come in jammies, or costumes or fucking formal wear. Whatever floats your boat. We will sit on the floor. You can help decorate cookies, wrap presents for Penny Lane’s Be A Santa and talk about what we are thankful for. Write shit down. Post them on the tree. Burn them in the fireplace? Sending them to the gods? I don’t know yet.
I really don’t.
But I will try to be aware of my stories and stop them with the tools I have now after 4 years of searching and practicing. I will be thankful as fuck, cause, you know what? I am.
I will feed all the animals special animal treats, and all the people who come through my doors, budget be damned.
Cause I am not perfect, nor am I trying to be. Anymore. I just want to know how to be present. And useful. And of service to those who need me.
I cannot cook. But I can be me. And that’s all I have to be.
