Blessed and still desperate

[kaistevens]

My name is Kai and I am an alcoholic. I've been clean and sober since March 21, 2004.

Three and a half years of sobriety has given me more than I can ever put into words, more than I can count, more than I asked for or expected.

If, on the day I came to recovery, you told me that I would find God, I would have said something very personally offensive and walked away. I would have died. Drinking was my solution to life, for life had been very unfair to me and I was a victim. There was no end to the list of people, places, and things that were to blame for all the pain and misery in my life. I was angry. I was hopeless. I was desperate in only the way the dying can be. I had NO PLACE ELSE TO GO.

After 69 days without alcohol, no sponcer, no steps, only reading in my nightly meeting, I did actually walk away. I could not believe in a God who did not believe in me. I didn't tell myself I didn't need help, or I could control the alcohol now, I just could not see my way to God. But after three months, I was still in the same place I had been before, I had NO PLACE ELSE TO GO.

So, I went back to AA, with no faith, and no hope, but no better place to go to die. It wasn't their words that reached me, or their promises. Because I had heard most of those words and promises before. It was their love and acceptance that reached me. They told me they loved me, so I set out to prove them wrong. I showed them how angry I was. I showed them my wretched and shameful past. They showed me a God, in action, who loved me. My life slowly, but steadily turned around.

Since that slow beginning, my life has improved daily. God has kept me sober day after day after day. God has become my parent, my teacher, and my best friend. He brought me the husband that he had tailor made for me, opened the lines of communication between my children and I, gives me precious and beautiful people in my life all the time. I'm just trying to say that I am SO grateful for the life I have today. I know that I am blessed and I know that God is always there.

SO...

How am I doing today? Not good at all!! I don't want to drink. I'm not angry at God, or at life, or even at my parents. I'm not suicidal, or even really sad. But I absolutely cannot go on living like this one more step.

At about the age of 13, my whole emotional being changed. My emotions were up and down constantly, I started getting and staying tired most of the time, I became suicidal.
When I was 22, I was told it was clinical depression, possibly genetic. At 32, doctors and medications and therapy weren't helping and I was told that I am bipolar. So, I got new medications and more doctors and I was drinking almost constantly.
When I entered AA I was 34, and the program gave me tools to help me start dealing with the irrational thinking, and tools to show me how dump all the baggage that I had been carrying around for so long. But the depression started getting worse.
Four weeks before I had one year of sobriety, I admitted myself into a state mental hospital hospital and a new diagnosis came forward. Petit Mahl Seizures. New antidepressant meds, plus seizure meds and my body started to come to life, for the first time in all my life.
I had the energy to work and clean house and do laundry and cook for my kids. And I met my husband. With in a year of us getting together, my old deamons started coming back. I slowly got more and more tired, was able to do less and less, my mind started clouding up agian, I started forgetting things and losing things again. Missing important appointments, missing too much work, not working very effectively when I was there. Which brings me to today.

I do still have my job and have insurance now, so I have just started going to the doctor to try to find out what this is that keeps tearing me down. The doc said I have a very enlarged thyroid, and we are waiting on the lab work. Everybody tells me I just need to be patient. I have been looking for an answer to this for 20 years. I don't even know if I have a question in this.

I'm tired. I'm tired of being tired of being tired. If this isn't the answer, I think I'm done. I am surrounded by such a wonderful life, and I am sleeping through it. The seizures are back so I have had to surrender my lisence. My boss tries to be understanding but there is only so much sick time available. If I'm not working 40 hours, I don't get benefits. I don't want disability, but if 'whatever this is' did qualify for disability, I would have to go a period of time without work and that can't happen.

I'm scared. I'm scared this won't work. I'm scared that if it does work, it will stop. I'm scared that my husband and children deserve better than I can give them. I'm scared that this is as close as I get to get.

I don't know if I'm asking a question or just making a statement.:16:

[admin]

((((Kai)))), I am so glad to hear from you again. I am sorry you are going through a rough time. I am glad to hear you are seeing your doctor about this. When I am going through rough times, I, of course, rely on God and also share with my friends. I don't have to go through anything alone anymore. Please feel free to continue to come and share with us here. We care. :42:

[allaflutter]

((Kai)))

So pleased to meet you.

Having been disabled for many years I truly do understand the fear and frustration...
Pls remember that if God brings it to you...He will get you through it..
A friend often reminds me when I say I am scared and full of fear and doubt that Whee there is ferar there is no room for God...

What I know is fear can take me right back out...I have been in recovery for a good many 24 hours...I get into grattitude and taht inevitrably removes the fear.

Sending many hugs and prayers
Pls keep us posted on how you are doing

[janbear]

Hi Kai, your Okie friend janbear here is glad to see you again. :42: Been praying for you :195:. AA brought me back to God and i am forever grateful for He blesses me even in rough times. I know He is still there in spite of suffering no matter what it may be about.
I recently was back in the hospital but they ended up telling me i was just very stressed and that stress can cause one of my disorders to flair up. They wanted me to simplifiy some things in my life again.
I can relate to alot of what you have shared here, but for me it always comes back to me being bipolar and schizoidaffective disorder. Thankfully my meds work except for maybe when i am too stressed like i shared above.
I too am glad you are seeing a Dr. Continue to allow God and AA do for you what they do for you too. Hang in there and keep coming back.

[kaistevens]

The lab work came back normal. I'm not all that surprised, I've had thoses tests before. And my research indicates that you can have normal labs and still have a problem with you thyroid. But, I'm still standing in the exact same place as before.

So, I started crying uncontrollably on Tuesday evening and couldn't stop until Thursday morning. Thursday was when I got my news. The little girl who worked the front desk said to me on the phone, "Everything came back normal and is okay." :9: :9: :mad: :44: :sad: She didn't mean any harm and only knows what was on the paper in front of her, but as soon as I got off the phone, I WAS ANGRY!!!

I wanted to throw something. Something big enough to break something. I was scared to talk to anyboby, for fear of what I might say. I wanted to get violent, that is the way we handle frustration where I grew up. I wanted someone else to feel what I was feeling at that moment, because I was so, SO alone.

I just don't know what I think, about what God might think, about 'healing'. Can He do it?...Absolutely, he created everything. God's will, in most situations, has become pretty simple to me. But the only way that I could trust God, was by accepting that I don't understand him. I knew a 17 years old boy who blew his chest open with a shotgun, and I saw his father spending 2-6 hours every day sitting infront of his grave. When I tried to shoot myself in the head in 1995, it mis-fired. There was no dying for me that day. I had made other attempts, that was the only feeling that was ever darker to me that the hopelessness and despair, was 'not even being allowed to die'.

Suicide isn't an option for me anymore, its just like the alcohol, they were both a solution for this life problem I had. So, where do you go when you can't live and you can't die? In March of 2004, I came to AA. And the promised I was told about, came true. And my life turned around, and turned into more that I could have imagined. And then my 'sick' came back, and I'm withering and fading away again, and I have to watch my loved ones watch the whole thing.

My mother is about to die. We don't get along, they don't like me, and that's another story. But about two weeks ago the Doc. put her on a heart monitor. Everytime my sons get off the phone with her they say, "Gramma's gonna give herself a heart attack." She is always crying when she talks to them. And none of that is really what I am trying to talk about, but see, she seems to be having these same health problems that I am having. And when I look back, I can see that she has all my life. Just needing to lay down any time there is an opportunity, this intense exhaustion, not ever really waking up rested. Just tired.

She and my father fit into that group we refer to as 'constitutionally incapable of being honest with them selves', so we don't have a relationship at all. And It has been a long hard struggle to learn to forgive them, but now I'm angry again because she is going to die with no answer. Just always having felt this way.

Does God demand a perfect surrender?
I stopped praying on my knees a week ago, I lay flat down on the floor on my face.
I am letting go the very best I can, and I am looking at my heart and my self, and am willing to see anything that I am doing wrong or need to change.
And I'm not just wanting to become a better person to save my ass, I love the person I am becoming, I love the people in my life, I love the peace and serenity that comes from no longer living in a world that is 'all about me.'
I'm asking for help. From friends, from doctors, from anyone who can help me because I KNOW I am powerless.
I just don't know what more to do. My five minutes has come and gone many times over.

I'm just so done. When I was done with alcohol, I surrendered, a little bit at a time, because it was that or die. Now, I am surrendering and then second guessing my self and re-surrendering and the dying isn't stopping.