On being stuck

I am stuck, stalled at a standstill. I do the right thing day in and day out, but I feel as if I am going nowhere. One foot is on the gas and the other on the brake.

After the meeting the other night I am aware that there is more to my own recovery effort than just weight loss. A 20 minute HIIT session is very doable now, but I just don't get that same feeling of satisfaction from it as I used to.

The meeting helped me understand that I have work to do and that is why I am stuck. I have relationships to mend and mending cannot just be done with words, and that scares me. Words are easy for me, I know how to work with them, how to hide behind them and they feel comfortable to me, people, not so much. Reaching out to relatives that are no longer close but should be, that scares me. So I have been taking a personal inventory of how important those relationships are to me or better still, used to be to me.

My personal inventory is easy. I know I am flawed and I understand the errors I have made. What I am having a hard time with is did I make the mistakes because I was embarrassed about my home dysfunction? My husbands alcoholism my own inability to do anything other than ride out the tide and muttle through. Did I cut people out because I could not witness their own tragedies at the same time mine were going on thereby it being a case of self preservation, or was it more malicious than that?

I went through several years of feeling like the black sheep growing up in my family and perhaps that role is easier for me to live with because I understand it and there is no risk involved. I am familiar with it and again it is comfortable to me. Perhaps my actions of washing my hands of most of my family members even those who had nothing to do with the drama that had gone on was my last attempt to anesthetize my own feelings of not measuring up.

There was a day a few years back that someone very close to me did something I could not understand, or comprehend. I felt it though and every time a song would be played on the radio about lying on the floor picking yourself up I would imagine this family member and I would cry. Now looking back, I did not want to understand, it was reality and it was ugly - just as ugly as my families dysfunction and forwhatever reason I had placed this person somewhere that dysfunction could not touch. The person suffered greatly from what happened, losing more than I could ever imagine losing in a lifetime, more than I could bear to lose really. It hurt. And it changed that person's life dramatically and the life of their immediate family as well as extended family. I had a difficult time looking at the details and so instead, I did the good co-dependant thing and I cut all communication off. Aside from a one liner email here or there, I did not have anything nice to say, so I said nothing at all.

I have work to do in order to become unstuck and I guess I am ready to begin. My oldest son needs to see me mending fences and doing the work, he needs to know that this is the way to go about making amends and hopefully friends in the family so that one day he and his father can have that opportunity.

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