It has been awhile since I have been here to talk to all of you. When I started this blog, I promised to share all of the ups and downs about my life as an alcoholic woman with cancer. I have not kept that promise very well, and for that, I apologize. However, all has not been wasted. I have learned more about myself, and I want to share that with you.
Before I started this recovery process, I spent every moment of my life trying to control all the people, places and things in my life. Alcohol was a big part of that. If I could control my life, especially how people saw me, then I didn't have to admit I was to weak to quit drinking. I didn't have to admit that I really did have a drinking problem. When I first started Alanon meetings 13 years ago, I was terrified that people would find out who I really was, and hate me as much as I hated myself. Gradually, that all started to change.
"We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable." Step one. Powerlessness, surrender. Not so easy to do. Not when you so desperately want people to see you as something else. Anything else. As I watched, and listened, I began to see that I wasn't a terrible, weak person, I was a woman with a disease, and I didn't have to live the way I had been if I didn't want to. Through the process of working the steps, I learned that I didn't have to try so hard to be someone I was not. I could just be myself, and trust in a power greater than myself to take care of the rest. I started learning about myself. Everything about myself. I found things I liked about me, and things I didn't like about me. I also learned that the things I didn't like could be changed just by asking God to remove those things. Over time, I have become more like that person I have always wanted to be.
This last few weeks, I discovered that I wasn't being true to those things that had become so important to me. Honesty, integrity, trust in myself, and in God. I didn't want to share those hard days. The days when I felt so sick, and so tired. when I just didn't want to be sick anymore. Days when I was angry, and afraid. I had gone right back to that need to control how people see me. I didn't want to write when I was so down. I didn't want people to see me as sick, and weak. The truth is, I have what I have come to call "Cancer days". Days when all of my symptoms seem to gang up on me at once and I feel miserable. I have night sweats that can keep me awake, and I lose my appetite, and can't keep any food down anyway. I feel so tired, I just want to cry. And I do cry, because those days bring with them the fear of my own mortality. They bring anger that my life has changed, and I didn't even give my permission for it to change. And on those days, I curl up, and don't want to talk to anyone. I don't want them to see me sick and weak. I only want you to see me strong.
Today, I understand and accept that I am human. I have strengths, and weaknesses, and sometimes they are the same thing. I like who I am, warts and all, and you either love me as I am, or not. The most important thing is that I have a God that brings me the strength I need even when I am scared, or hiding, or sick, or happy, or sad. Today, I pray for honesty, and the courage to be who I am on any given day and I pray for the willingness to share even that side of myself, and my disease.
We admitted we were powerless over cancer, and our lives had become unmanageable. My life with cancer is unmanageable by me. But thanks to what I have learned in Alanon and AA, I know that my life isn't unmanageable by God. Sometimes I forget that, but God never does. He is there waiting for me when I am ready to reach out again and take his hand. Thanks for sticking by me, and I promise, I won't stay away so long.
