A Life for Myself

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.

I'm tired......I'm tired of sex addiction. I struggle to find my own life in this mess. I'm at a disadvantage because of my auto-immune illness.....stress flares it up and I end up with all kinds of disruptive symptoms that make daily life a struggle.......I get a fever......sometimes as high as 100 degrees. It makes me get all the symptoms of having the flu.......nausea, no appetite, extreme fatigue - the kind where it can be difficult to just carry yourself around, body aches, brain fog, headache, and much more. Imagine living for months on end with the damn flu but attempting to carry on some form of normalcy in the midst of it. I feel like this addiction is robbing me of my life.

Books speak of health problems being part of the illness of codependency. I agree but my health problem is far deeper than that. It goes back to my mother's life with my father. I didn't know until I was in my late 20's and my mom called me sobbing that she had tried to abort three of her pregnancies after their first child. Through her tears she tried to explain away her guilt and pain to me by telling me that my dad started beating her soon after their first child was born and she couldn't imagine bringing another child into the trauma. I cried for her pain and felt empathy for the horrors of her life. None of her attempts worked and she carried each pregnancy to term - you see she couldn't get to the doctor's right away because she had no car so it was days after she thought she was impregnated that she made it to his office. There was no such thing as the morning after pill then. It was illegal but what a doctor would do was give a woman high doses of methotrexate. Today this drug is given to kill cancer cells.

I was one of those pregnancies - the third. My one sister was born partially deaf and with an extra tube to her kidney, a double uterus and was eventually diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in her late 20's. The middle child has pretty intense mental and emotional problems. She has few memories of her childhood. As a child my mom would take me to the doctor's and say she thought there was something wrong with me. I had unexplained varying physical symptoms that seemed unable to be related to one another. Doctor's couldn't find anything and so my symptoms were explained away as things like "growing pains". 7 1/2 years ago I was diagnosed with lupus which is an auto-immune illness that affects connective tissue - that translates as an illness that can attack any part of the body as connective tissue is basically what our bodies are made up of.

I've always been a worker, a career girl and business owner. It's part of how I have defined myself. 3 1/2 yrs. ago i had to sell my business. I was completely bedridden and even from that place I started to work on creating a new career for myself. I took tele-classes from bed and was able to go to periodic workshops for training. I started to feel better and even though I had to pace myself I was no longer bed-ridden. I completed my course and with excitement began my new career.

My husband had already been drinking for about a year at this point but around this time he started drinking far more frequently. As he did, my health began to decline again and I also found the porn. Eventually I fell completely away from my work. Between the emotional stress and physical decline I just couldn't keep up, not to mention that my work involved helping others heal and creating the life they wanted. I wasn't feeling so capable as my own world was crumbling down around me.

The thing is, no matter how well I deal with my co-dependency I have to face the fact that it is a very real problem having sex addiction as part of my life. I know it's going to be a long road with lots of ups and downs facing this monster of all addictions. I can only control my health to a certain degree. Stress is one of the biggest factors in keeping the illness from being active. I do all the right things I can like eating properly, getting sleep and exercising. I stay away from the external triggers for it.

I just want to be able to have a life for myself in the midst of all of this and sometimes with the added health problems, I get so discouraged and fear that it might not be possible.

My daughter's things have filled my office for several months after graduating from college. She finally found a job and we will be moving her things to her new apartment this weekend. I'm opening a place in my heart to get my office re-organized and take the step toward working again.