Getting Baked

Budgeting is hard, especially since I don't make any money. Training is in the dumps.

Discretionary income?

Please.

So we tighten our purse strings. I can't spend over ten bucks without hearing it from Rara. "Three dollars, three times a week, is nine dollars, that's thirty six dollars a month that we could put away." So I try not to spend. I bought braided bully sticks for Mow the other day and was handed my ass on a platter. Damn that broad can do math quick. She figured what that would cost us over a millennium, then broke it down to me in terms I understood. "If we want to buy things for her to chew, maybe something else needs to go, like chips," referring to my inability to stop buying munchies. (Notice she didn't say wine.)

I feel guilty. Rachel gets up for work at 5am every morning. So do I, but I move from the bed to the couch, switching one snuggle buddy for another. The neurotic part of me feels castrated. I'm the man, (picture me beating my chest here), I should be bringing home the bacon.

On the other hand, we have gotten creative. We cook together more. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we huddle around the mixer, baking, sifting through cookbooks and magazines for recipes. We eat healthy for the most part, incorporating grains, fruits, and veggies, whenever we can. The challenge is to avoid ingesting five hundred calories before the batter even sees the inside of the oven. Time is spent contemplating baking them at all.

Ever notice how hard it is to make broccoli taste better and how easy it is to turn a sugar cookie into an insulin coma? The other night we made the aforementioned. Rachel made a sweet lemon glaze for the topping. I melted down chocolate. We voted on which were the best.


Any guesses?

Showdown at Fresh Pond

It was a great walk up until that point. Mow frolicked in the small stretch of wood bordering the golf course, nothing new, but when she boldly stood at its edge and looked my way, I knew it was on. She baited and I fell hook, line, and sinker calling, "Mow Mow, this way."

She glanced back, poised to blow me off. I readied. We looked like two gunslingers, facing off at high noon, that is if showdowns consisted of one gunslinger running headlong into an open field while the other shouts obscenities. My blood boiled, propelling me forward.

I swooped upon her and grabbed her up, anthropomorphizing her with talk about how mangy mutts don't disobey me. I catch myself, as always, on the edge of an abyss. The edge of my anger. She did what any pup would do. I try to remind myself that running full speed toward a dead fish sounds like the most fantastic thing ever to her. I let her go, along with my homicidal ideations, and breathe. I leash her and deescalate, finding it hard to do these days. Eventually, I drop the leash again. Before my end hits the ground, she bolts back to the rotting carcass a few hundred feet back. I blast past her, feeling a measure of sick satisfaction that I outran a ten month old puppy. Her eyes begged, please Dad, don't kill me. Again I caught myself before committing the deed. Mow would live another day and I would be forced to temper my rage.

My therapist constantly points out the fact that my anger is never commensurate with the circumstance. Dubbed male's disease, he reiterates that I am struggling with the pain I'm in by dumping my anger on convenient targets. He adds that anger is usually equal to how weak I feel, that males especially, combat feelings of weakness by spewing anger on the world.

But I continue to fail at reconciling with the fact that I am human, and as such, try to deny my own ambivalence. No one can be all one thing all the time, and every powerful emotion has an equally powerful opposite. The equation sounds so simple: to acknowledge that we are comprised of both a healthy and neurotic side means that great love gets countered by stifling rage. I love you, and hate you equally.

It has never been more apparent that this concept eludes me as when Rachel says things out of the blue like, "It's the paradox of being Bry," referring to a conversation she had with her brother, Austin.

"Meaning?" I ask.

"You can be so resistant to change, you fight it tooth and nail, yet I've never met anyone with such a tremendous capacity for it."

Mow is safe, for now, but ignorance hasn't proven blissful at all. It becomes more and more apparent that digging out of old habits is like digging out of prison one painful spoonful at a time. But I'm hopeful...

Editor's Note: No Mow's were harmed during the writing of this post. 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

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We are all faced with change. When there is dysfunction, we adopt behaviors that help us survive, that become so enmeshed into our unconscious, we never give them a second thought. Some lay dormant, others manifest in obsessions. From isolation, depression, and acting out to more serious problems like drinking, drugging, promiscuity, and crime, we act on our unconscious motivation to survive life, rather than live it.

We ask of those struggling, “Why don’t you just stop behaving that way,” and become even more frustrated when they shrug and reply, “I don’t know.” Both sides lose patience, and the lines of communication are severed.

Often, the catalyst for change is either a significant emotional event, or as in the case with the addict, hitting bottom. This can take years. As the consequences become more dire, family and friends may initiate ‘Tough Love’ in an attempt to force the willingness to change, and to preserve themselves from further emotional harm and deepening feelings of helplessness.
Nothing short of complete honesty will get the addict through this crucial time. Anger is high. Relapse is likely. Emotions crescendo.

Developing new coping mechanisms begins with the realization that anger is a non-optional response to pain. Confronted with the root cause of their need to self medicate, the addict comes full circle and must face the fact that substance abuse is a symptom, not the cause, of their issues.

Neurotic behavior can be traced to a faulty belief system. Beliefs about oneself that are inconsistent with reality, such as low self worth and self contempt, can cause erratic behavior. Guilt in the absence of a crime is neurotic, as is anger in the absence of any real threat. Faulty beliefs require thorough examination, often with the help of a trained professional. Here, the distinction between the ‘Dry’ addict and the recovering addict, emerges. Dry addicts see no need for change aside from cessation. Recovering addicts choose to look beyond the behavior.