Stuck

I'm stuck. Even though things have been good here (except for four days, but I'll write about that later), things have been great.  In the past, I have been able to swing my thinking right back to happy and free when my daughter was not drinking.  I was so anxious to have a life without addiction as a part of it, I threw my whole heart into the first good feeling emotion I could, and I stayed there until that addiction anchor dragged my daughter back down, and me along with her.  I hasn't been like that for a while, now, yet I can't find that relieved, smile-sighing happiness.  It's more like my heart is tethered to some unseen peg that won't allow it to beat fully --it beats in anticipation of dread rather than delight.

I haven't been to an Al-Anon meeting in a while, either.  The people were kind and unassuming. It helped to have someone to listen to me, who understood. It helped to listen to how other people maneuvered their way through this minefield. And then it got to be too much.  I remember a friend of mine whose son (he's been sober for over two years) went through an addiction to Oxycontin. She said she left a meeting of Al-A, and sat on the church steps crying. She told me that she couldn't bear to listen to those despairing stories every week, so she never went back.  I can understand how she felt.

I am trying to figure out how to explain how I feel.  I am always cloaked in hope, I would freeze to death if I didn't have hope. Part of me is still resentful and sad-very angry at times.  Part of me is very clear headed. I'm resolved to the fact that my daughter will have to want sobriety. That she'll have to find her own way to unravel the sick thinking into more healthy thinking. Some people need other people to do this. Some can self help with books. Some can cocoon themselves away, do that internal juggling and sorting out, and come away a new person. She is dabbling in all of it now, and I'm waiting to see what she resolves, before I can make my move.  That is how I feel.  And then there is a part of my brain that is in fog, like the part that was on high alert and ready to try my hardest--that resilient, 'refresh button' in my brain--feels like the battery is dead. It's not that I've reached an 'I don't care' attitude. It's more of a 'Oh, well' attitude.  I don't like it. It makes my daily thinking more strained and less motivated. 

Those are some of the ways my thinking is, now; like my tires got stuck in mud, I've been spinning them, and now, even though the rain has stopped, and the sun is coming out, rather than try spinning the tires, again, I'm sitting at the wheel, engine running, staring into the distance.  I have AAA on my phone, but I just don't have the motivation to pick up and call the number, and I don't know why.