2 Days after Coffee...

...and I think I'm beginning to feel the full effects of having stopped taking the anti-depressants. Maybe I picked a bad day to stop______(drinking, smoking, shooting up, sniffing glue, etc.---re the character on the Airplane movies). I am undoubtedly FEELING things, like I can't remember feeling like this since I first got clean. And they are coming fast and furious, too. I sat in the meeting last night and someone mentioned that she liked going to women's meetings (where you can actually cry!) I was not about to tell her that I had already been crying in that (mixed) meeting...
Before the meeting I was conversing with an older gentleman who had been there for the first time a week or two previously, and he was telling me that the only truly hard thing that I had to deal with, was whatever I was doing right then. He asked me what I was doing right then and I told him that I was spinning out in my head. He said some other things that were very spiritual, and true, and then he asked me if I knew how to meditate. I said I wasn't sure.
He explained that the thing is, that you find a quiet place and quiet your mind. When the thoughts start to spinning out again, and getting loud, you tell them to stop it; and quiet yourself back down again. He said that after practicing that for about 6 months, he began to be able to actually shut up the itty bitty sh*tty committee inside of his head. I have little to no experience in doing little, almost immeasurable things for that long.
My friend AM says that it's just that I'm not used to fully feeling things, and now I'm getting to feel them again, and I'm not used to it. Which makes me feel like I'm a big baby, and that I am wrong for being so out-of-whack. She asked me why I think that I'm any more insane than usual, and I told her about crying in the meeting for no apparent reason...
So, DH has agreed to take the boys overnight, tonight, so that I can go to the meeting in town. Thank You, God.
Oprah has a family on today whose Mom has some kind of mental disorder, where she has accumulated over 70 tons of "things" in a 3k foot house. The piles of things were up to the ceiling in every single room. There was a place on the bed that was barely big enough for a large dog to curl up in, where someone slept. No telling where the other one slept. The thing that struck me, is that it was so overwhelmingly oppressive (among other severe adjectives), depressing, and thick with sickness in the AIR. I am absolutely convinced that the problem was 100% emotional/SPIRITUAL. I had to turn the channel because it looked like the way I could become, from how I'm feeling. The hopelessness of fighting the compulsion, the COMPULSION, the NEED to gather and keep things, to hide from the pain inside of her...
There is a place in the carpet where food had rotted out of the boxes from sitting on the floor for so long, under a 5' pile of stuff, and the carpet was literally rotted away. The "Organizational Expert" had to go outside and retch.
It's just like the woman in treatment realizing that she did not take care of her body as a way of hiding from those who would abuse her, physically. The extra weight worked as a buffer between her and her pain. I have been there with the food, and I'm not nearly past it. I want to become determined to do the work necessary to lose weight. I want to feel again what it is like to achieve my goals. To have victory over the things that would hold me down and pull me under.
"Compulsive Hoarding" is what they are calling it. The woman is trying to fill the emotional holes with THINGS. It's spiritual. I wonder what her family history is like, or what they did to fill their God-sized holes?
A better question is, what am I going to do?

Things that make me go "hmmmmm".

Ok, so I'm trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself, when the time for full-time (or mostly) school is over. I think that Counseling is probably correct, but He hasn't let me in on anything more specific. SO, in my impatient, creative way, I've come up with an idea. We'll see if it makes it past the desk of the Boss...
I'm thinking of "Cross Addicted Consultants", for a group(?) of Christian---no, not "RELIGIOUS"---Addiction counselors. I hate that I feel the need to define every time I say "Christian", but really, folks, the image that comes to mind isn't very pretty, is it? No, mine isn't, either. Technically it is Christian, but these days, the word is thrown around by so many "Wanna-be's", that I wish I could come up with another more descriptive word.
So I'm trying to come up with a business plan, which could take until I'm done with all my classes, like in a year or more, in order to be able to look for GRANTS...Yeah, I suppose I couldn't do it any other way but to be a Non-profit...there again, God doesn't usually clue me in until I'm poised with one foot in the air and moving too fast to stop. Like in the Golden Child where Eddie Murphy is in the cavern trying to cross it, and there appears to be NOTHING that he can walk on to get across, but each step he take, there appears a stepping stone, kind of, just as his foot touches it. Yep, that's me.
Anywho,
since I know when the meeting starts in the morning, I'd better get my butt to bed. I would like to actually make it ON TIME for a change.
God, thanks for today. I got a few really good hugs tonight and I guess that's all I needed. and thanks for friends like G, who take the time to write encouraging words for the encourager.

Blessings all