Serenity

I recently stopped referring to my ex Anti-Christ and as of 6pm this evening, I have no earthly idea why, so I am going to post something that speaks to recent growth and happiness in an attempt to not pierce his forehead with a sauce pan when he walks in the door. Ahhhhh...

My therapist says the root of my self destructive tendencies stems from my childhood. (Wait a minute! I get to blame my parents?!?!?!? SWEET!!!!) If you look up the word chaos in the dictionary, there is my 4th grade school picture. (Forgive the hair...my mother gave me a home perm) My mother was a chaos junkie. She sought out chaos and when she couldn't find it, she created it. Moving from city to city every 12-18 months, boyfriend after boyfriend (almost all married), money issues, always choosing her career above everything else. My father, while choosing a life of tranquility, decided to marry a woman who wanted no children and no reminders of his former life around which meant we weren't allowed in his house and never saw him. This all added up into a life that never seemed, for one day, to be even remotely stable. I had absolutely nothing to count on or hold onto.
Flash forward 20 years or so. I am married, I have a child, I have a house in a nice neighborhood. I've lived in this house for 10 years. That is 8 years longer than I have lived anywhere else...ever. It seems I had spent my life craving stability. Craving continuity. Desperately wanting something that seemed normal.
What I ended up with was a bad marriage that I stayed in way too long because I didn't want to give up the stability it offered. And I also ended up with money issues and work issues, because every time things would seem to be getting organized or stable in these areas, I would make sure they imploded and returned to...chaos.
I wanted to be organized and do everything I needed at work, but found myself unable to. I wanted to be on top of money, but never seemed able to get a handle on it. Finally, my therapist told me that chaos was my normal and no matter how much I hated my normal, it was still what I gravitated towards. That was an eye opener and something I continue to work on overcoming every day.
Lately, I've also realized that my recovery has been going well and while that's great, I haven't been feeling the usual euphoria I do when I'm on a roll. It's odd how non-plus I am. I mean, I have given my program one of the central focus points of my life, in a way I never have, but I'm not bouncing off the walls with giddiness and that's unusual for me. So I started examining it and realized that yes, I am not over the top blissful over my recovery and at the same time, I'm setting boundaries and getting (mostly) along with my X, I'm on top of my money, my jobs are going great, I am super organized in all these areas I've never been before, I feel I am very slowly making progress with the child of Anti...I mean my daughter...I am focusing on me rather than jumping into relationships with the potential to cause me pain...all these things are clicking. So maybe, just maybe, the frenzy is not normal. I mean, they call it the Serenity Prayer. Not the Ecstasy Prayer. Maybe the goal is to NOT be bi-polar!!!
I've been desperate for peace and tranquility for so long, but I didn't know what it looked like. One of the worst things you could ever be called or though of as in my family was normal. Normal was abhorrent. Ordinary, pedestrian...all dirty words. But maybe they were all wrong. Maybe peaceful, serene, normal are all things to be cherished and desired. I may not be hypering myself into a frenzy of elation, but the blows are also hitting me a little less hard and all of this is worth whatever I have to give up. I may not thing I want to give it up, but its time for a new normal and this recent one I'm trying on for size, is feeling pretty good.

True happiness is of a retired nature and an enemy to pomp & noise...Joseph Addison (from the OA For Today)