Last week was a monumental failure in my vow of abstinence. It started with pot on Wednesday night (for medical reasons – horrible headache) and ended on Saturday with me masturbating while I finished “50 Shades of Grey” (yes, I masturbated WHILE I was reading; hot or not – you decide, but it happened). Go ahead and stick a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a pack of American Spirits in between Wednesday and Saturday. Yup. The only thing I haven’t caved in on is alcohol and I’m not sure how that one slipped by me. Remember how I was supposed to apply #CompassionateRigor during this 30 days?? Well, guess what? I did.

In addition to the teenagers, the finances, the absurd itching on my arms and legs while my body adjusts to this new high fat/high protein diet (supposedly I am detoxing from within my stored fat. Eww, Gross!), add one attempted suicide to the mix. Yeah you read that right. The estranged husband decided he wanted me back, and if he couldn’t live with me then he just didn’t want to live at all. So last Monday he swiped MY bottle of Xanax, which I was saving for some future rainy-day nervous breakthrough, and he disappeared for oh, ten hours until I found him passed out sometime after midnight. A slew of texts started trickling in around 9pm-ish begging me to “let him go” and “end it all”. They eventually turned into jibberish giving me no clue how many Xanax he had actually swallowed. Ugh. Shit was getting real and it was Go Time. In one week my entire focus has shifted from self discovery and self preservation to being the tug boat that gently pulls my family along, pushing everyone forward one step at a time.

It hasn’t been easy. Setting up emergency appointments with psychotherapists and psychiatrists, trying to act “normal” around the kids, putting one foot in front of the other can be exhausting. By Wednesday night I had the worst headache. I tried the homeopathic peppermint oil, Advil, Goodies, and finally had to procure a little bit of pot to help with the aching head. It worked, I am happy to report. Sometime between Wednesday and Thursday I decided that what I really needed for myself was more Compassion and less Rigor. I could see then that in this particular circumstance, it wouldn’t serve me to be rigid or overly rigorous. Right now is about love and compassion, healing and understanding – for myself and the other humans in my life as well. I just did not have the energy for self loathing last week. Sometimes things just have to be good enough the way they are. I needed some TLC for my soul, and that included Ben & Jerry’s, masturbation and pot (not in that order).

Abstinence is teaching me a lot about my desires, attachments and cravings. But it is also teaching me a far heavier lesson and that is about FLOW. I am learning to be okay with each failure because it brings me one step further from where I was, where I used to be, where I do not want to be any longer. Failure means I am DOING SOMETHING. Movement is happening. And movement is good because it means things are changing. Staying in the flow, with or without a drink in my hand, is turning out to be a bigger teacher than the abstinence itself. The river winds and bends, but it always reaches its destination. Be like a river.

I am back on track to make the second half of this month a lot cleaner than the first half. But as an abandoned child, by both parents, one thing I have learned and continue to improve on as a life skill is how to Self Soothe. Self Soothing IS the ability to pick yourself and float your own boat amidst the turbulent seas of life. I am a vessel unto myself and I will float, I will not sink. One crashing wave at a time, I am transporting myself across this Ocean of Uncertainty, remaining fluid and moveable yet sturdy and resilient. New shores lie ahead, it is only a matter of how many moons now.

How do you get over failure & setback? How do you stay in the Flow on the River of Life?? How do you Self Soothe? I’d love to know 🙂