the struggle is real – hannah ananas

Give it a go?

I have recently begun listening to this podcast about alcoholism. I haven’t really listened to podcasts for the past ten+ years, since I discovered that there would be far more podcasts that interested me than I actually could take the time to hear, and so just gave up on them, instead of being frustrated over having to pick which ones were the most important, being stressed out over feeling like I must listen to them as often as possible, and all that jazz. However, someone sent me this podcast, and I accepted the proffered link, because of the various degrees of connection various members of my family have with addiction, and specifically alcohol addiction. (Let’s just say that, while not everyone has it, we’ve had from the slightest to one of the worst cases of it just in my lifetime.)

It’s called “An Addict Named Mary”. I was surprised to find that, while the podcast is just a girl – I say “girl”, but she is actually a woman in her upper thirties or so – recording with her phone or laptop in each episode, it is actually really interesting. I don’t know if there are other podcasts done by recovering alcoholics, but I like this one. She spends the time talking about the experience of addiction and what is involved in recovery and moving beyond the active addiction (i.e. still drinking alcohol) into a fully sober life, which she hadn’t experienced in decades… and it’s kind of fascinating. I keep coming back to it and listening whenever there’s a new episode, partly because I find it beneficial for myself, as someone who is around people in active addiction, as well as people in recovery, but mostly because I like the girl. She’s funny and goofy, and she’s totally honest about the b*** underneath at times – it almost feels as though I can see the light and depth in her eyes, the eternal joy becoming manifest at last within them, as she struggles willingly through it all, and aims to make a difference for others however they are ready to have her help. I also get the occasional glimpse of the sad, outwardly fun, go-getter who desperately just wanted to be loved, little girl who used to hide in a sea of alcohol (and, occasionally, plenty of other drugs)…, and it’s beautiful to see the transformation.

I particularly liked the first two interviews she did (at least, I think they were the first two). The first was with her sponsee, someone she is sponsoring in recovery, and it wasn’t exactly an interview, but more like just the two of them talking about things. Specifically, the way they talk about their active addiction days is very eye-opening for me, especially as I saw how many people I know who say the same things these girls were expressing…, but who are not recovering alcoholics…. and it had me wonder about how much I’ve been living with blinders on regarding alcohol addiction/abuse.

The second was actually an interview. And it was rough, but super good. She interviewed a guy who admits to being an alcoholic, but who says also that he is not willing or ready to do anything to stop his drinking, despite the many and deep negative effects it has on his life (including, but not limited to his relationship with his young children). Now this one was…. just wow. For anyone dealing with a person who is in active addiction, I highly recommend listening to this episode. For everyone else, I still highly recommend it, because I find it so important for people to see an honest expression of what is going on inside the head of someone who cannot give up an addiction. We have them all around us in society, and the first step to helping them and our society as a whole is to understand and thereby love them. I believe that all change, to be true, must come from love. And this is a guide to the first step involved in loving the people who can not (currently) give up their active addictions.

As a whole, I recommend the podcast. Like I mentioned, it is not very professional, but the sound quality is good enough to sit through it, and the information is definitely good enough to sit through it. Give it a go, trust me.

As I understand it, there are multiple ways to subscribe and auto-download the episodes, however, I just check back regularly and listen via my web browser, because I’m old-school and don’t want to download anything else to my phone. 😛 At the beginning of just about every episode, if not all of them, she encourages feedback and contacting her through her e-mail address – anaddictnamedmary@gmail.com, to be sure. I sent her an e-mail, asking about something a friend and I were wondering, based on something she’d mentioned briefly, but that we totally didn’t get, our not having the alcohol addiction and all. She replied back, telling me that she’d do an episode on it! That was just recently, so we’re both anxiously awaiting the episode. 🙂

Here’s the first episode: The Beginning
Here’s the episode I mentioned of the first interview, with the sponsee: Getting Grounded with Ciara
Here’s the a-maz-ing one with the active alcoholic: Dr. Ew Kaleidoscope Dream Theater

And here’s the website to the podcast as a whole: An Addict Named Mary

Enjoy!

Post-a-day 2019

Take care, friends

I am strong as a person, and I know it – I can take care of somebody else, easily.

That’s why one of the most appealing things to me in a partner is someone who will take care of me…, because I sometimes just want to take a break from taking care of everyone else – of anyone, actually – and have someone do it for me, instead of the other way around.

But I feel as though I am failing as a friend, if I ask that of a friend… it’s only acceptable, it seems, with a partner in life…, but maybe that’s just because the best kind of friends aren’t really in my everyday life right now, and so I can’t even imagine it being acceptable behavior, their taking care of me for once.

And then this reminds me of something from today.

I stopped in on an old co-worker’s class today while I was subbing, and the prayer she read to begin class was about reaching out to those who seem upset or alone, because, how does one know that that person has friends to cheer him up?… I might be the only one who’s even considered cheering the person up, it said… perhaps the person feels just as lonely as I do, and just no one has ever taken the time to see, it read…

And I cried during the prayer, because I felt like that person who feels so alone, but who no one would consider might ever feel like she’s all on her own and alone, with no one even to check on how she’s really doing, and not just how she might look from the outside…

Post-a-day 2018

When we are down

‘Why couldn’t you just let me be happy?’ I believe that is the question she asks her friend Betty, who has recently been incredibly harsh, before walking off, leaving Betty sitting speechless and alone on the steps (“Mona Lisa Smile”). At the time, Betty was in a marriage she had just begun – with incredibly high hopes and expectations – , but that was falling to extreme pieces. Her husband clearly did not love her, and was rather uninterested in her in general, but she didn’t know what to do. All she could do was continue her school work, and unintentionally let out her suppressed panic in the form of nastiness toward her friends.

As I thought more and more tonight about this little scenario that is within the film “Mona Lisa Smile”, I began to relate it directly to my own life. Betty couldn’t let her friend Connie be happy, because Betty was so miserable. How could she help herself against being bitter and angry that Connie’s love life was blooming, when her own – one she had until very recently believed to be perfect – was falling apart? It made perfect sense to me. And so I wondered where I have done that in my own life (or at least wanted to do it).

Talking with a friend the other night, she was sharing how much she had loved her Japan job. It made me want to be angry, because I was miserable in my job in Japan. What does one have to do with the other?! I found myself asking… myself. So what if she enjoyed her job? That’s a wonderful thing! And yet the desire persisted every so gently, to the point where I still have to let it go over and over again (though it is much easier than it was at first). This is the same as Betty Warren’s problem, really. I was unhappy, so it was almost wrong of someone else to be happy in that comparable situation. (I’m not saying this as fact, of course, but as the feeling behind it all for myself.)

When I have been making not-very-much money in recent years, I grow annoyed at the former classmates who are buying their wonderful, large houses. Not having a significant other (or anything similar, beyond a (married) best friend across the ocean), I sometimes feel sick when I see yet another engagement announced on Facebook by people in my age group. And the list goes on for all sorts of things… wonderful pets, trips to beautiful or cool places, exercise…

While my initial responses were similar to pure anger and jealousy (as if their getting a house or getting married has any deprivation effects on my life), upon seeing or hearing about the various happy events in other people’s lives, they have developed to a calmed state of slight discomfort and longing instead. (It just felt wrong to be angry at such things, so I made a genuine effort to look at what was behind it all for me, and to manage a healthy response for myself, as well as for the people who are celebrating – I don’t want to be sending them angry vibes, ya know?) 😛 But that changes nothing from the Betty Warren within me – it still takes an effort to allow others to be happy in a situation in which I am not happy. Granted, my responses are much improved and I do not shed bitterness and nasty comments the way she did. However, the discomfort still remains for the situations.

I don’t know what I wanted to say about this all – I think I just wanted to say that. That I can relate very easily to poor Betty Warren and her inability to let her friend be happy in an area of life where she, herself, was so unhappy (despite what likely was a genuine love for her friend and desire for her friend to be happy in life). We do that in our own lives quite often, it feels. From the greatest to the smallest of things, when we are unhappy with a specific aspect of our own lives, we struggle to see others be happy in that same aspect of their lives. I don’t want to give out a solution to this behavior – I just want us to notice that we have it, really. Simply noticing it, bringing awareness to it, makes more of a difference than we could imagine, anyway. Betty seemed utterly shocked when Connie accused her with the question. To that point, even if she had realized what she was doing, it is likely that she was unable to admit it to herself…

Yeah… I want to look even more into the smallest nooks and crannies of my life to see where else I have been in this rut-based hatred/anger in the past. I want to let all of that go. And I want to be free of it all for the future, and to be able to wish others well with ease, no matter my own current situation.

Post-a-day 2018