Sometimes, I think it’s best to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself. And yet, here I am, week after week, writing a blog. The last couple of days I haven’t felt very well and when that happens, my feelings of sadness or depression are heightened. I take everything way more serious. And keeping to myself is all I want to do. Isolate.
Of course, being sick will cause most people to want to isolate and so we should. Besides not feeling good, we don’t want to infect others with our illness. Yet, isolation can take on a whole life of its own if we let it. Now, that is an oxymoron, isn’t it? Because there really isn’t much life in isolation. It will cause depression and sadness and worse if it gets away from us.
It’s one of the great set ups for relapse as well. For me, this isn’t the first time I have experienced feelings of depression during an illness. I think this happens to many people who are ill, especially chronic illness. Still, I remember once, when I was much newer, about a year clean I think, I caught a very bad flu. It was the first time I had been really sick since getting clean. By the time the fever let up and I was making a slight turn for the better, I was just feeling so down.
Since I was feeling a bit better my husband took a couple of our boys fishing, and so they were all gone for the day. I felt so sad and lonely, beaten and down. Thoughts of using quickly came to my mind because I didn’t have much clean time and I didn’t understand that it was the flu and being so sick that had brought me down. Or maybe I did.
At that time we did not have the pamphlet we now have, “in times of illness”. Nor was this much of a subject around meetings or recovery circles. I was glad to see that pamphlet come out when it did. It is mostly for chronic, and incurable illnesses and thank goodness our program addressed the issues involved in such awful times.
But for me, at that time, I wasn’t sure what to do, I was on the verge of getting loaded. I even looked through our cabinets and my father in law’s to see if I could find something to “take the pain away”. Not because I had been sick, but because of the depression and sadness it brought on. I had been left with my own devices, my own head for a week, isolated. And my thoughts were painful to me. My disease is always waiting for me to be in pain so it can rear it’s ugly head and say, “wait, I know what will help with the pain, numbing it.” I remember finding something, I think it was Nyquil or some prescription syrup. I held it up to the light and look to see how much was in the bottle. I remember saying to myself, out loud even, “that’s not enough to get off on”. I didn’t want to bother with it because it is just a little bit. So, I put it back.
I had way too much down time and I was feeling down and raw. It was the first time since I started going to meetings that I did not go for a whole week. So, there I was feeling my feelings which is one of the major reasons we all use drugs and drink like fish. I was to learn through my years of recovery, that down time for me is painful. Grief and memories, even the good ones, bring back feelings I cannot contend with. I need something to get through it.
Today is such a day as that. Today is eight years since our beautiful girl, my stepdaughter died from pancreatic cancer. Plus, we’ve been stuck in the house due to weather and sickness, even our little boy is off for the weekend and I’m glad. He needs fun and sun. We are sick and the weather here is not good.
So that day back when I had been sick and was now looking for a “pain killer” I said a short, quick prayer and a holler out to God, I looked and seen my NA textbook laying on our coffee table, I picked it up and ended up reading the chapter “Relapse and Recovery”. OMG, that chapter saved my life that day. Another gift from God.
So, I have to ask, or think, how many times has God laid the answer before me and I just didn’t notice? I didn’t pick up the solution and use it or read it or try it? How many times? For whatever reason, I am more than eternally grateful I finally started living in the solution and looking for answers and solutions to my problems.
That chapter, Relapse and Recovery speaks of many important factors of our disease, but the one that strikes me the hardest is Self-Pity. Of all the defects of character, this is the most dangerous one. And it can come to us easily when we’ve been sick or down and out. This chapter also speaks about how isolation is a killer for us. Self-pity can lead to isolation and vice a versa. Two major things to be aware of.
After four days of being sick and stuck in isolation, perhaps I should read that chapter again, all to myself, not in a book study but in quiet time with my God, while I listen to the wind blow the world all around outside. This wind is a source of mine and my husband’s continued illness, it blows at 30mph steady and up to 55mph gusts, it’s bad. The dust is bad. My lungs and especially his are bad. So, I will sit, closed up inside, out of the elements and try to live in the solution nevertheless. Waiting out the fury of mother nature.
When I sit here and write this blog, I feel like I am in touch with the world, with the recovery community. It’s like a private and happy place for me, I love it here. Here, the solutions come to me. Wellness is here.
Meanwhile, life goes on and it’s the end of the school year for many and people are off enjoying a three-day week-end. We call it amateur time, when all the people who do not usually drink and use a lot are out in force, using, drinking, and driving, very dangerous. All the holidays bring them out, eek!
I may not be well right now, but at least I’m safe, and for that, I am grateful. I will continue to travel the happy road to my destiny and live each day as it comes. I will embrace my alone time and down time while I have it and rejoice when it’s over as well.
Question of the Week: Are you an isolator? Or do you just enjoy some alone time once in a while?
