Hard Workin'

image via allposters.com

I spent an hour and a half yesterday on my hands and knees, mopping my mom's tile flooring.

My mom has arthritis.
Clean floors are important to her.
It was her birthday.

It felt so good to crank some tunes (the Children's Folk Station on Pandora is about as funky as I get now), get dirty and sweaty and GET A JOB DONE!

My Dad is a firm believer in work.  He lives what he believes.  He owns his own mechanic shop and farm.  He raises horses and cattle.
When my husband's addiction reached a point where I HAD to let my parents in on what was going on, he confessed that he had his own addiction... to work.  I pretended to be shocked. 
Or not.

There was ALWAYS something for me to do growing up, and if I wasn't always doing something productive, Dad wasn't happy.
We butchered beef together, pulled weeds together, milked cows together, branded calves together, rounded up herds together, planted gardens together... work was what we DID as a family.

We were always early-to-bedders.
We were always caked in mud or grease.

The prospect of work was awful... getting up out of bed before the sun was never fun, especially when it was freezing cold outside.
But once we got out there -once our hands were in the dirt and we were side-by-side putting our shoulder to the wheel, it wasn't nearly as bad.  We had each other.
We quoted movies and sang, "Daddy won't sell the farm" at the top of our lungs. 
And honestly -hard work feels amazing. 

Pregnancy is hard work, but it isn't the kind that you can really get your hands on -the kind that makes you sweat and stink for a few good hours... the kind that can be showered off in one cleansing, glorious experience.
But pregnancy does make THAT kind of hard work pretty much impossible.  I've really missed it.
And on my hands and knees with my track pants rolled up over my knees, I found it again.  I sang "Yakkety Yak" and scrubbed and scrubbed.  My son was by my side, making me laugh.
I was sweating and I was stinking.

Mostly, I was surprised and how GOOD it felt to be back in the game.  I drove back home when I was done with a small, euphoric feeling. 

I wish addiction was something we could man-muscle our way through.  I wish we could get down on our hands and knees, scrub it away with our sweat, and then take a hot shower to wash the remnants down the drain forever.  But it isn't.  It's so much more than that.

But the little euphoria that comes with our victories -no matter how small -is the same. 
I had a small workforce in my siblings (six of us all together), and I have a small workforce in all of you.
Getting out of bed to DO it isn't easy.  The prospect of leaving the warm, familiar comfort of our beds is awful.
But once we're out there, side-by-side, up to our elbows in the recovery fields... it feels amazing.

I'm grateful for all of you.
I'm grateful for my Dad and the opportunities he gave me -despite the fact that I was the butt-end of "old fashioned" jokes at school (seriously?  who milks a cow? you know they SELL milk, right? *guffaw*)
I'm grateful for fields of all kinds.
I'm grateful for you.
And in my own way, I'm grateful for addiction.

Sight-Reading

 

via squarepianotech.com

I have a degree in Music Education.
I don't use it for much, but I do teach piano lessons.  I love teaching -I absolutely LOVE teaching.  Teaching is one of my passions in life.  It doesn't matter if it's music or gospel or preschool or whatever... I love it.  Right now, I have small children at home and that's where I focus my teaching.  I hope to someday teach as a career, but right now I settle for what little cash I can make as a piano teacher.

I took a break from teaching piano lessons during the month of December.  This week, I've started back up again.  It's been so refreshing to see my little students again.  It's also been much easier to teach without having to get up to use the restroom every 15 minutes.  I can lean forward and bend over and my tolerance level is back up where it should be.

My first students to return came yesterday.  They are two sweet sisters (and my cousins) -the older of which is in high school... we'll call her Micayla.

Micayla is musically inclined.  Music just MAKES sense to her -she gets it.  I never have to explain anything twice.  She isn't musically proficient, or anything... she just gets the language of music. 
It should make her easy to teach.
But she isn't easy to teach. 

Yesterday, I put a piece of music in front of her that she had never seen.  I do this every lesson with each of my students.  It's very important to teach piano students how to SIGHT-READ a piece of music.  Very often in life (and especially in the church) piano players are called on to play a piece of music they have never seen before.  Sight reading is a vital skill for a piano player.

"Sight read this," I said, and I sat back.
"Okay," she said.  She squinted her eyes, her body tensed, she leaned far forward and she played it as flawlessly as she possibly could.
I never, ever pick songs that my students could easily pluck out.
I challenge each of my students based on their skill level.

As I watched Micayla, I realized that she was striving for perfection -absolute perfection.  She wouldn't have anything less.  With every mistake -and there were many, which was to be expected -she groaned, she stopped progressing and cursed herself before moving on.
I watched her and wondered... why hadn't I realized it before?

I don't want a perfect sight-reader. 
If I had a perfect sight-reader, why would they bother with a teacher?

Micayla, I realized, doesn't want to LEARN from me so much as she wants to IMPRESS me.
She wants to come to her lesson and impress me with all the work she's already done.  The thought of coming before me -her teacher and older cousin -and MESSING UP was just too awful to fathom.

But I don't want perfection.
I want to give her a challenge, something she's never come up against, and see how she handles it.  I want to see where she makes mistakes -see what passages slow her down.  Then -together -we can work on those difficult passages.  I don't condemn her mistakes.  I don't condemn HER.  In fact, I WANT her to make mistakes so we can learn more, reach higher, and attain a higher skill level.

While it's fun to sit and listen to her play songs perfectly, it nullifies my job as a teacher.

As I watched her curse herself through a song she'd NEVER SEEN, I realized that I have the same tendency.
I don't want to mess up because I know the Master Teacher is watching.  I want to IMPRESS HIM with how well I'm doing with the challenges in front of me.
As a co-dependent, I'm looking for validation -for a pat on the head -for approval.
As a human, that's exactly what I DO NOT need.

I'm slowly learning this.
Last year, I let go of perfection. 
This year will be the year I learn to let go of my need for approval and validation.

I want to come before my Master Teacher covered in bruises and bumps and scrapes and say, "I did the best I could, but I messed up at this point and this point and THIS point is just impossible... can you help me?  Will you teach me?"

I will not nullify His position as Master Teacher. 

 

Subtle

The Three-Headed Man and the Two-Faced Woman

 

Apparently, we are our own circus side-show.
My husband ready my blog two nights ago. I've always told him he's more than welcome to read it, but I strongly discouraged it. He understands my need to have a safe place to write, and he agreed that his reading it wouldn't benefit anyone.
Well.
Curiosity killed the cat.

And the next morning, after he'd been up almost half the night tossing and turning, he asked me if I wanted to stay married.
Of course I want to stay married.
He said reading my blog was like seeing another side of me -like I had two faces. It didn't sit well with him, and he said that if he was expected to be 100% honest, the least I could do was be honest as well.

For years, I wasn't honest. I didn't even realize I wasn't being honest. When he came to me with a confession of a slip or relapse, I would hold him and tell him I loved him and say things like, "WE can do this!" Inside -all the while -I was screaming. I was angry. I was devastated. But I didn't let on... until I hit rock bottom.

 At that point, it was a free for all. I was hopeless. I stopped saying, "WE can do this" and started saying, "You better do this." I started letting my emotions show, and our marriage had a rough go of it for a long time.

I feel like I am being honest now. I also feel like I definitely need a safe place to write, to sort, to let loose. This is my place to write about the part of my husband that is addicted.
This is my safe place to write about living with addicted person.
This is where I let loose.

As I've said many times before, my husband's addiction IS NOT my husband. I also live with a great, loyal man. He loves our children. He's nuts about me. He works hard to provide so I can stay home with our kids. We laugh together, cry together, dance together, sleep together, play together, vacation together, watch movies together, discuss everything together, hate money together, learn together, grow together, and attend the temple together.

He's my best friend. He's my favorite.
Especially since I officially divorced the part of him that is addicted to pornography.
I guess you could say this is my divorce blog? Ha. I do write publicly about the other parts of my husband (the other two heads) on our family blog.
"You should be reading that instead," I said. He agreed.

But it's his choice.
This is my ugly face. My healthier face blogs on a different site -a non-porny site. I've never thought of myself as two-faced before, but I am. Aren't we all, to some extent? And thank goodness! Because who wants to go out to dinner with another couple and talk about the heavy issues going on behind the scenes? There's a time and a place for it.
For me, it's here. It's support group. It's online meetings. In the meantime, keep a prayer in your heart for my husband. He's feeling assaulted, I think. He sought the attack out, I'll give him that. But he could benefit from a few extra prayers on his behalf.

He's a fighter, but he's tired right now.
To answer his question: I do NOT want to stay married to the part of him that is addicted.  But the rest of him?  Oh, boy.  Just you try and tear me away...

Resolution

My husband and I love talking with each other.  His job allows him to text when he'd like, and I'm able to send him messages and call whenever I need to (or want to, really).
There's only one problem: we generally talk about other people.
It isn't always bad.  But it bothers me that our conversations are so lacking in depth.
We don't constantly talk about other people, but we do it enough that it bothers me.  I want to change it.

Thanks to addiction recovery, I've learned that if you want to rid something rotten out of your life, it helps to replace it with something uplifting and good.

So.
My New Year's Resolution (though I hardly ever make them) is to read one wikipedia article every time I catch myself using other people's lives for conversation fodder.

It's January 5th, and I'm three articles behind.

Hopefully 2013 will be a year filled with better, more uplifting conversations.

Here's where you come in... I need wikipedia recommendations!  What do you love to study/read about?
Wars?
Movies?
Science?
Music?
Health?
Food?

I need three fresh ideas ASAP!

Great Granny

I was named after my great grandmother, Alice.
She died when I was 11, but I was lucky enough to be able to get to know her pretty well before she passed away.  I only lived a few miles from her, and I spent time with her at least once a week.  She was incredibly fond of children, and we always felt so important when we were with her.
She was a story-teller and she lived through (even thrived through) The Great Depression.  She didn't throw anything away.  She gifted us with sock monkeys made from great-grandpa's worn out red heel socks.  She cut the bottoms from her plastic household cleaners (think Downy), tossed in a bunch of yarn and ingenuity, and made tiny baby cradles for all of us grand girls.  She crocheted.  She loved to write. 
She saved all of the pictures from her old Lawson Wood Monkey Calendars and used them to creative fanciful stories to tell us on Sundays.

via animationresources.org

We'd gather around her old mustard yellow rocker as she pulled out monkey pictures... she always made the BEST stories and did all of the voices.

Soon after she passed away, I was given a school assignment to write a poem.
I got REALLY into it.  I was really thrilled with the project, and I put my heart into it.  My teacher was so pleased with my poem that she read it out loud to the class.
A few months later, we were asked to write a short story.  My classmates groaned -but I couldn't WAIT to get my hands on a blank sheet of paper.  Ideas flew through my head as the day went on, and in the end I handed in a 10-page "short" story about a pioneer girl named Alice and her little brother, Hal.  My parents loved the story so much they paraded it in front of my relatives.
As my relatives read, they remarked how I was turning out just like my great-grandmother.

The older I got, the more I heard it: I was turning out just like great-grandmother. 
I acted in school plays in high school and was approached several times by older members in the community -they told me watching me was like watching Alice in her younger years. 
After I was married, I got my hands on her journals.  I read through them and found that I was more like her than anyone else knew... even the way I wrote, my sentence structure, paralleled hers.
Her tendency to worry to the point of irrationality -her sentimentality -the way she was so interested in individuals and their stories.
We aren't anywhere NEAR physically the same.  She was short and frail.  I'm tall and corn fed.

At a Family Reunion last summer, I remarked how small she was -how she probably worried all her weight away.
My Dad's cousin was sitting next to me and she sort of chuckled.
"Well, that and the laxatives," she said.
"The what?" I asked.
"You know..." she shrugged.
"I don't," I said.
"That was a problem for her -her weight.  Her sisters were always kind of big.  She didn't want that.  Even when she was hospitalized, she would sneak off and throw her food up in the bathroom."

I had no idea.
My great-grandmother is my Illusion.  She's my Perfect Person that I admire and look up to in so many ways because I can relate to her so well.
And I suddenly loved her so much more: she struggled with her appearance -with vanity.

Step 4 has taught me just how much I struggle with vanity -how much of a road block it is for me spiritually. 
After hitting rock bottom and starting my recovery process, I came to really love myself no matter what I looked like.  I started to love my weird birth mark, my stretch marks, my pointed nose...
It was a gradual process, but the more I learned about true Christ-like love and the Porn World, the more I loved my natural body -my natural self, just the way it is.  I suddenly abhorred the idea of implants -something I'd contemplated getting in the past, thinking maybe if I was bigger I would be "enough" for my husband and he wouldn't NEED to look anywhere else anymore.
Yeesh.
Hollywood is proof that no matter how good lookin' you are, if he's going to cheat, he's going to cheat.

It surprises me how often I'm triggered with my old vanity though.

A few days ago, we went as a family into the city.  My husband took us all out to eat at a nice sit-down restaurant.  There was a 30+ minute wait to get a table for our now family of 5.
The restaurant was packed, and our family waited near the front entrance of the restaurant.  There was snow covering the ground outside, and it was freezing.  Literally.
Families were coming in clad in snowsuits, boots, heavy coats...
And then a woman came in with her boyfriend.  He was covered in a heavy Carheart coat, thick jeans, and sturdy boots.  She was wearing a see-through black lace blouse, tight jeans, and sexy boots.
When she sat down with her back to us, her shirt revealed her back.  Her bare back.  The shirt was slit up to her black lacy bra.
I looked down at my Mom Bod that just made and cranked out a baby not three weeks before.  I was feeling pretty good about just barely fitting back into my jeans. 
And I was triggered. 
Amid the chaos surrounding us, I texted my husband something along the lines of "Why can't she cover up and give us old married ladies a fighting chance?"
He texted back validations, which I'll admit, I was fishing for.

And there in lies my problem: I want to see women in tight jeans and see through blouses and NOT go to my bad place where I suddenly hate my amazing body.
I mean: I just GREW a tiny, perfect human in my body... what's to hate about that?  Would I trade it for tight jeans and sexy boots?
NO!
Is it my job, as a 27-year old MOTHER of three, to be in a "compete" mindset?
NO!
Do I need anyone's validation?
NO!
So why do I seek it out?  Why do I automatically revert to unhealthy thinking when a young, beautiful woman walks by?
I never used to feel this way, but I can't blame it on my husband's porn addiction.  This one is on me... it's on my vanity.  The addiction merely brought it to light (just like it brought my co-dependecy to light).

Unlike Great Granny, I have steps to help me overcome this.  Thanks to my husband's addiction, I've been led to a guiding light.

Because of the Atonement, I have the opportunity to NOT end up with a cabinet full of laxatives. 
All I need to do is take action.

Good Cop/Bad Cop/Better Cop?

via thehut.com

Throughout my entire marriage, excepting perhaps the first few blissfully blinding months, I have lived with two different men.
One was thoughtful, sentimental, and funny.  He laughed easily and helped around the house.
One was angry.  Small incidents would set his temper off, and he was grossly intolerant.

For the past month, I've lived with three men.

I still have my two Ol' Men hanging around with me... one making me laugh, the other making me want to shove Ensign articles about anger next to the toilet so he'll find them (you know you've done it).

But the third?
He's new.  I'm still getting to know him, but holy crap.  He's amazing! 
He picks up on my emotions without me having to say anything, and I find him time after time doing small acts of service so naturally that  I hardly think he realizes he's doing them at all.  When my daughter lost her very first tooth, she was beside herself with excitement and absolutely DEVASTATED when she dropped the tooth somewhere in the house...
It was late, and I was exhausted (and nursing for the 30 millionth time that day).
"The Tooth Fairy always knows the minute a tooth falls out and she starts heading our way," I said, "She'll be here tonight.  We'll just leave her a note telling her what happened.  She'll understand and leave money anyway."
I'd much rather make up a creative lie than actually get off the couch.
A few minutes later, I noticed my husband on all fours in the hallway, searching side-by-side with his daughter (who was still a mess of tears).  And they found it.
My husband used to do things like that so I'd see -so I'd notice that he was doing well.  Now he just DOES them because he wants to.
He's also been talking with me about recovery.  A lot.  A LOT.  I don't bring it up anymore.  I just live with him, and sit by him... and I hear all about recovery.

I wonder about this third head.

I'm still getting to know him, and I'm still hesitant to trust him.  But he's put a spark of hope in my heart.
I recently confessed to my husband that I felt like I'd gone from living with two men to living with three... to which he replied, "I feel like I'm getting to know a different side of me."
Will this third head squelch the other two?
I don't know.
It's got me wondering about my own heads.  How many do I have?  And how many of those are pleasant?  How many need to be squelched?

It's something I'll research (probably while nursing).
Recovery-wise, I'm in a good place right now.  I certainly hope it's because of the work I've done and not just because my husband seems to be doing well.
I'd love nothing more than to be in a good place, even when he isn't.
But hey.
I'll take this third-headedness any day.