Still Beating Myself Up

There will be an end to this, right?  I’m still beating myself up for having been blind to, or simply ignored, all of the red flags that went up with The Bullet That I Dodged.  They were there in front of me all the time, from the very first time we met, and somehow I managed to dismiss them from my mind.

It’s a tricky little machine, isn’t it, our minds?  I can be going along fit as a fiddle, right as rain, and ready for love and suddenly, WHAM!  I become blindsided by something that had been clearly in view; something obvious to everyone but me.  At 41 months sober I feel like I handle most things pretty well.  I’m not sure I “manage” them, but they don’t manage me anymore.  Then along comes something like the notion that perhaps romantic attachment may still be possible for me and I experience all over again the same kind of insanity that accompanied my drug use.  I think this time will be different.  This time it won’t hurt me.  This time will be worth it.

And perhaps one day it will be worth it, but not right now.  I get in that place and I fail to see the most obvious things.  Worse yet, I ignore them.  I should have known he was a liar when I found out that he does smoke.  When I met him the “Drink” question said “Never”.  He changed it at some point while we were seeing each other.  Ten days after we stopped he got a DUI.

I should have known to walk away when he “needed” emergency Botox because he had a meeting the next day, or when I learned the amount of plastic surgery it had taken to look as great as he does.  What mentally healthy man has had a face lift, 2 eye jobs, a tummy tuck, a chin implant, and laser resurfacing of his skin?

I feel impossibly stupid for allowing myself to fall for that kind of crazy.  Like my friend Elaine, with 30 years sober, says: I should be weller than this by now.

Every sign and symptom of active addiction was there in front of me and I failed to see it for what it is.

I had to see my probation officer yesterday and it was the most unpleasant experience I have ever had with her.  It seems “somebody” contacted her and filled her head with the same lies and half truths; everything from me breaking in to his house, to being on dangerously addictive drugs that I have not been prescribed, to slandering him to his employer and jeopardizing his job.

I am sure she believes none of my side of the story, because he has an education and has never had a felony.  I’m sure also that some of my behavior in the past convinced her that nothing I said could possibly be true.  So I spent an hour at her office basically being reamed because of the sin of having anything to do with this psycho.  As with temperamental children, at some point with Probation and Parole, you just have to let them yell till they are out of breath.  They aren’t trained in the law.  They think they know how to do their jobs lawfully and it really isn’t true much of the time, but it really isn’t worth the effort to stand up for oneself.  They just make things more difficult.  All they really want to hear is “Yes, ma’am,” and “No, ma’am.”

So over an hour later, I got through that and was driving home, furious for having been through what I had just been through and more furious with why and I called my step-dad to complain.  But when he answered the phone he sounded terrible.  Just terrible.  So rather than tell him about my poor pitiful day I asked him what was wrong.

He told me my sister tried to kill herself again, this time by slashing her own throat.  I was almost home at the time, so I turned my car around and headed toward theirs.  Not that there is anything I can do except go be with them.  My sister is in Alaska.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to access emergency services in another state?

One of the things you hear in AA  is, “Sometimes life lifes you.”  I know this will all pass, I know the Bullet I Dodged will be a distant memory soon enough.  I know that somehow we are going to be able to get help for my sister.  I know that if push comes to shove with probation and parole that I am well situated and protected.  I know I really don’t have anything to fear,  But this is taking quite a toll on me.

On the bright side, work is going splendidly, so I’ll get myself through the shower now, brush my teeth and pray, and go accentuate to positive for awhile.