Still here, still sober

I haven’t dropped off the planet, it’s just that I don’t have much of anything interesting to share.

I’m still sober. I’m still attending 12-step meetings for sex addicts. I’m still an atheist.

I hope all is well in your world too.

A lot going on . . .

There’s still a minimum of drama in my life, but there’s been a lot more going on the past few weeks. A tragic death, a car wreck (no injuries), a graduation, three birthdays, and two anniversaries (90 days of sobriety and 27 years of marriage). Life on life’s terms is always a challenge. And lest anyone think they are in control: tornadoes.

It doesn’t sound impressive in comparison to all that’s been going on, but I have a miserable cold. I’ve been on the couch for almost a week doing nothing but watching TV. My head hurt too much to read until today. I feel lazy, but (as my sponsor used to say) feelings are not facts. I’m resting and taking care of myself, not being lazy.

So now that I’m feeling well enough to type for a while, I figured I’d go ahead with posting about the problem we’re having with sex. I went to a psychiatrist a while back, on the recommendation of my therapist (who I saw because I was totally freaked out when I lost my sobriety a few months ago).

My sole diagnosis at this time is PTSD, and the psychiatrist was surprised to find that I was taking Wellbutrin and not Zoloft, sinceZoloft is indicated for PTSD and Wellbutrin more for depression. After a long explanation (can I just say that most of the time I feel pretty normal but telling my story was like having the worst low-budget, indie, film-student ridiculous drivel come pouring out of my mouth; I hate it) the psychiatrist mentioned that I might want to try adding Zoloft. He assured me that I wouldn’t have any sexual side effects since I’m already taking what’s prescribed to alleviate those side effects.

Well, that’s not exactly how it went. I started taking the Zoloft and stopped being able to “ring the bell.” That kind of sucks, but not as much as I would have thought. My husband started having panic attacks, which aren’t exactly a nice thing to experience during an intimate moment.

The good part about all of this is that we’ve had to talk about it. Isn’t it funny how difficult it can be have a conversation with someone you truly love and use grown-up words like fear, erection, arousal? Isn’t it funny that it’s often easier (an easier, softer way) to lie when you’re being intimate rather than telling the truth?

The bad part is that I still can’t ring the darn bell.

So many of you are probably wondering, why not stop taking the Zoloft? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s because I really like that my kids can come up behind me and touch me without making my skin crawl. I like that I’m more relaxed about the future. Since I’ve started taking the Zoloft, I’ve chased my 15-year-old through the house with her screaming in laughter — more than once! I can talk to my mother without having it upset me. It’s easier to let go of stuff that doesn’t matter (which is most stuff). I go for longer walks. It’s easier to laugh.

Basically, I’m doing better with this added medication. I really, really like how the kids can come up behind me and give me a hug and it feels good, not icky. It feels good not to have to suppress my feelings so my children won’t be hurt by what feels to them like rejection. I never had trouble hugging and snuggling when they were little, but as they’ve grown, it’s become increasingly difficult to just enjoy their hugs.

It’s an easy trade.

Still not much going on . . .

It’s true there still isn’t much going on. There’s just a minimum of drama when you’re living in recovery. That makes for a good life, but a boring blog. So instead of posting, I’ve been, well, living.

Like most women, I’m not happy with my weight. I’d like to lose 40 lbs, but eating less and exercising more is difficult. I’d rather take an easier, softer way, but one that wouldn’t make my heart explode or anything nasty like that. I’ve been walking more. My strategy is to listen to audiobooks while I walk and not allow myself to listen at any other time. There have been days I’ve walked for 3 hours just to hear what happens next. So far I haven’t lost any weight. But the dog is happy.

What else is going on? My youngest son is in college and living at home. Recently he’s decided we should do a better job making meals. He’s been doing the grocery shopping and cooking, which is pretty fantastic. He’s 20. He doesn’t smoke, drink, or use drugs. He’s getting good grades in college. He’s been nagging the rest of the family about cleaning up after themselves in the kitchen. Oddly enough, although I’m proud and really enjoying watching him mature into a really fine young man, I’m aggravated when he puts stuff away. I make sure everything I cook with is on the bottom shelves, where I can reach. He’s tall and tends to put the olive oil up on the top shelf, where it fits better. But I can’t reach it. And he likes the counters clear. So he moves the appliances out to the garage, which drives me nuts. It’s true we don’t use the blender every day, but I don’t want to go to the garage to get it when I need it. Sheesh. Honestly though, I think it’s just difficult for me to give up control of what I view as MY territory. Which is funny because I’m a terrible cook and he’s actually pretty good at it.

So as you can see, my life is pretty darn good. As I like to say, mental health agrees with me. As I sit typing this, the dog is sleeping next to me, I have a new audiobook to listen to when I finish here and take the dog for a walk. The sun is shining! My son is blasting his obnoxious music and singing off key. My other son will be home from Iraq soon. My daughter has an away game tonight. My other daughter sent me some hilarious text messages about some of the websites she’s found. All of the children have been emailing each other, which makes me so happy. I didn’t want to have children because I was sure I’d mess them up. Then I didn’t want to have more than one, because I was sure they’d grow up hating each other. Instead I have this wonderful, wonderful family.

** If you have kids, read Siblings Without Rivalry. It’s the best book about parenting I’ve ever read, and I’ve read all of them.

It’s hard to imagine that there was a time when I seriously thought my family would be better off if I were dead, if only I could figure out how to make it look like an accident.

It’s hard to believe I was so lost, so unhappy but I was. My sexual acting out helped me through some difficult times, no doubt about it. Of course, ultimately it brought more pain than peace, as addiction always does. I learned those maladaptive coping skills when I was very little, like many people do. And like most addicts, it’s been difficult to learn to live a new way. I was going to talk about that in this post: anorgasmia and antidepressants, a very unhappy marriage, I can assure you.

Instead, I’ve been talking about the good things in my life. The problems with sex aren’t bothering me right now, I have faith that things will work out. And my daughter needs me to drop off some money and a pillow for the bus ride to her game. And I have to be there in the next 15 minutes, which doesn’t give me much time to shower and change out of my pajamas.

I hope your life is just as wonderful as mine is. I’ll do another post and talk about the chart I have pictured. Right now, it’s just not important.

Not much going on . . .

There just isn’t a whole lot going on. No drama. No trauma. No spring either. Just regular day-to-day life. I’m worried that my oldest daughter has gained too much weight. I hope my youngest son and his girlfriend don’t get pregnant. I hope this nice phase that my youngest daughter is in lasts. I hope my son in Iraq continues to stay safe and that he won’t have too much trouble reacclimating when he comes home.

I found this article about a year ago, which is pretty good if you’re interested in how sex addiction affects your brain. http://yourbrainonporn.com/doing-what-you-evolved-to-do

There’s a more recent article at http://www.wakepeopleup.com/sex-addiction-real-disease-or-convenient-excuse/, which is also pretty good.

I hope all is well in your world today and that some of your days are less of a trudge and more of a pleasant walk.

Do I really have to keep going to meetings for the rest of my life?

The short answer is no, but you should. That makes for a dull blog post, so (of course) I’ll elaborate.

Lately I’ve been doing very well. It’s unexpected because I just had a relapse and I figured I’d be right back to square one, which seemed to be the case for a while, but somehow, I got fast-forwarded. Early in recovery there were times it seemed like every cell in my body was screaming for sex and denying myself any sexual release was impossible. I called up complete strangers and talked about how desperately I wanted to act out. It was absolutely humiliating to admit that here I was, a grown woman, well-educated, good family, plenty of money, nice life, and I absolutely couldn’t keep my own hands out of my own pants. I don’t care who you are or what you do, admitting you can’t stop is humbling.

Idiots in those meetings said stupid shit like, “Keep coming back,” and “It works if you work it.” “Don’t quit before the miracle happens.” Nauseating. “It gets better.”

I was so desperate, I kept coming back. I followed suggestions, and I didn’t quit. Eventually, I went to rehab, and there, finally away from an abusive therapist, I began to get better. Withdrawal ended and it didn’t kill me. I began to learn how to live without using my sexuality to self-medicate. I experienced sobriety, which felt startlingly good. What I thought would be learning to like a living hell actually turned out to be an absence of insatiable hunger.

That was over 4 years ago. When I got out of rehab, I was determined to be a success story. I wasn’t going to be one of those who quit going to meetings and gradually (or not so gradually) drifted back into addiction. I’m a success! But sometimes it’s hard to keep going to meetings because frankly, my life no longer revolves around my sex addiction or my recovery to sex addiction.

It’s hard to explain. When my children were babies and toddlers, my friends and I would get together at each others’ houses and visit while the kids nursed and played. Invariably we’d end up telling birth stories. We told these stories to each other over and over and over. I knew how my friend’s son was whisked off because they thought he had a possible heart defect because I’d heart it a hundred times. She knew that I screamed as they x-rayed me to make sure the baby’s head would fit after 22 hours of labor. We shared details that were so intimate, stuff that you don’t normally discuss even in a group of all women. That went on for years as more babies were born and women moved away or joined our group until eventually we stopped. It was as if we’d talked everything out, processed our stories and naturally understood that it was time to move on.

That’s how I feel when I go to meetings now. The story of being abused isn’t all that interesting to me anymore. And most of what I do for recovery doesn’t really have much to do with addiction as much as it does with just plain living.

When I relapsed, I got in touch with two other sex addicts, one of whom wasn’t entirely sure he qualified, and we started a local meeting. It’s been great, but it’s also been kind of a pain. Sometimes I don’t feel like going but I’m the one with the key. I’ve been kind of hoping that the whole thing would just fizzle out since I’m not really in desperate need of meetings now that I’m doing well.

But the other day, I was reminded of why it’s a good idea to keep going to meetings, even after you’re doing well: newcomers.

Everybody is scared to death at their first meeting. It’s a very vulnerable time. Will anybody recognize me? What will I say? Will anybody there be as bad as I am? Will there be child molesters? Some women wonder how the heck walking into a room full of male sex addicts is going to help, since that’s pretty much a sexual fantasy come true. Some women are physically afraid. Is this a cult? Am I crazy? Can this really help?

Having a newcomer at the meeting reminded me that I can help. I’ve been there and I know there’s a way out, something a newcomer has all but given up on. And it reminded me to be grateful that I’m not ruled by compulsive sexual behavior OR past sexual abuse.

Yes breaks the tie

I’ve had these three things jiggling around in my head and I’m going to try to see if I can pull them together in a way that makes sense. In case I don’t, the idea I want to get a cross is that women have a lot of “invisible” power in relationships and that invisible power damages relationships as long as it stays unacknowledged.

The first invisible power is over sex. The second is over food.

In my marriage, yes breaks the tie when one of us wants to have sex and the other doesn’t. Friends of ours gave us the idea years ago, back when we were in our late 20s, way before the idea of sex addiction ever reared its head in our relationship. At that time, up until I met my former therapist, my sexual acting out consisted of erotica and masturbation. Was I compulsive? Yes. Was my life unmanageable? Absolutely not. But that was before Fr. M the wonder therapist. Afterward, as we were putting our lives back together, I basically stopped asking for sex because I couldn’t really tell the difference between normal sexual desire and sexual compulsivity and trying to figure it out was driving me crazy. But now that I’m better we’re back to yes breaks the tie, although to be perfectly honest, we’re a lot older now. I’m 46 and my husband’s 49. Sometimes it’s just too much bother to try to get things going and we put it off until the next night.

My husband loves to cook but generally, I’m the one who does the cooking in our house. I’m also the one who buys most of the groceries. So basically, we eat what I say we’re going to eat. Now that I’m no longer a stay-at-home mom, sometimes I come home and find that dinner’s been made. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice surprise but it’s always a bit of a jolt because normally, my family eats what I feel like eating. Sometimes I come home to spaghetti when I felt like having grilled chicken salad. When I come home to spaghetti cooking and a pile of groceries on the counter, that’s even more aggravating. Again, I’m glad for the help, but my husband doesn’t buy exactly what I’d buy. He never buys swiss chard. I never buy cake. He’s the king of treats!

In most marriages, women control two of  the most basic pleasures in life, sex and food. That can be a cold, lonely place for the men. They’re in the position of having to ask for what they want and having to be grateful for what they get even if it’s not exactly what they want.

Interestingly enough, this has been swirling around in my mind because I recently discovered that my husband has been cheating. He got caught when the results of his blood work came back showing that his cholesterol is very high. I was surprised because we eat a very healthy diet, lots of swiss chard and very little cake. But what I didn’t know was that my husband has been cheating for a long time. Instead of grabbing the fruit or oatmeal I have for him here at home, he’d been making a daily stop at the Dunkin Donuts. He intends to just get coffee but usually ends up adding a donut or muffin. And at lunch time, he’d often stop and grab a quick hamburger at McDonald’s and then come by the office and eat the salad I’d ordered for him. I was shocked. I honestly had no idea he’d been doing this, he’s a health nut! He exercises daily and preaches healthy diet and exercise to his patients. This behavior was completely out of whack with his personal ideals. He was really embarrassed at having to confess this little secret life of his and I was astonished that I could be so completely in the dark about his life.

I know my husband has a sweet tooth. But I don’t. Sweets aren’t good for you and I don’t buy them. This feels righteous and good to me when I stop to think about it, which is rare because I’ve been skipping the potato chip and cookie aisles in the grocery store for over 20 years now. That stuff doesn’t even register as a temptation for me, other than ice-cream isle. It’s really eerily familiar in a reverse way to how he never noticed the porn shops on the way to our nearest major city. I could tell you exactly where those suckers are. How could anyone miss them? Now I know. The same way I miss the sweet stuff in the grocery store. I love my husband dearly. I’m hoping that after a while, the healthy sweet stuff I’ve been buying will be more appealing to him. I noticed this morning that the organic chocolate cookies made without hydrogenated oil is still unopened. I’m guessing that the healthy sweets don’t taste as good as the unhealthy ones, which is why he’d leave the fruit on the counter and buy a donut on the way to work instead.

It’s been interesting how I’ve been feeling about his “disclosure.” Concerned about his health, that’s for sure. I love this guy, and the deal is that we’re both going to live to 80 and then drop dead together at the same time. Compassion. I absolutely know what it’s like to do that which you do not want to do, over and over. Superiority. I don’t have any trouble not eating sweets. Hurt. Why sneak? But mostly I think we need to redress the imbalance of power in our relationship regarding food. It’s really not fair that I make all the food choices. So I’m trying out how to extend “yes breaks the tie” even though it’s tempting to stroke those feelings of superiority and allow my compassion to become condescending.

Feedback Sucks

One of the problems I have with 12-step groups is that I have a hard time balancing acceptance with feedback. When you go to a meeting, one of the time-honored traditions is that there is no cross-talk. That means that when you share that you can’t ignore your lover’s texts, I don’t interrupt you nor do I use my sharing time say that I think your chances for sexual sobriety are non-existent. For those who have never been to a 12-step meeting, often there’s a reading and then afterward people “share” or talk about what that reading makes them think of in terms of their own recovery. Sometimes people will just talk about what’s going on in their lives instead, which is referred to as “getting current.” I do not like “getting current.” I tell myself that I’m not focused on the solution. I tell myself that I’m dragging the meeting down. I tell myself that I should share with my sponsor, not the group. I tell myself that it might be triggering for someone. I worry about which words to use, what to leave in, what to leave out. I worry.

As an aside; my husband doesn’t like meetings much. Me going to a lot of meetings is a trigger for him that reminds him of how awful things were when I was seeing Fr. M. After going to meetings, meetings, meetings and working the steps and doing all the things recovering sex addicts are supposed to do, I was a whole hell of a lot worse than I was when I started and I still couldn’t stop masturbating. Of course now we both know that’s because I was in an abusive relationship with my therapist. That, coupled with my acceptance of the Catholic doctrine that masturbation is a mortal sin, the whole thing was like a freight train out of control. Have I mentioned recently that I’m grateful to be an atheist?

There’s no substitute for telling the truth about yourself to a group of people and experiencing their acceptance of you. It’s the beginning of separating You from Your Behavior, it reduces the shame that all addicts feel, and although it sounds like avoiding responsibility for your actions, it’s not. It’s merely the first (necessary) step toward changing.

I’m good at meetings. I keep my shares short and on topic. I stay aware of whether or not I’m getting my point across and try to inject humor where I can when it’s appropriate. I don’t cuss. I don’t dump. No drunk-a-logs from me. I also try to keep tabs on the tension between my responsibility to the meeting and my responsibility to myself. I don’t get current.

Some of you are probably wondering by now if I can smell my own bullshit.

I can, but to be truthful, it’s pretty faint. Still, a few months ago I thought that maybe I needed to make a change in how I do meetings. Maybe I needed to be a little more open and honest and share more about how I’m doing. That’s idea was cool when was doing well, and getting current wasn’t embarrassing but lately, getting current hasn’t been a whole lot of fun. Plus, I no longer have the sobriety date to back up my words of wisdom.

I’ve been real grateful for the no cross-talk rule. Of course, most people are willing to share something from their own experience that might be helpful to someone else. It’s can be a very gentle form of feedback in the sense that it’s not ostensibly addressed to any one person. This sort of thing has been very helpful to me over the years. But I’ve noticed that when I’m not doing so well, I tend to be very selective about the feedback I glean from other people’s shares. Actually, I notice that other people are like that. I’m different. More enlightened. But I have a hard time arguing with the logic that what other people like me are susceptible to, I am also susceptible to. So a few weeks ago, I asked my group for feedback. I told them exactly what I’d been doing, and answered the questions they had.

At the time, it was very painful. Embarrassing. Humiliating even. And the feedback sucked. Nobody gave me permission to continue acting out.

But I’m sober now, and I’m glad I asked.

Changing old patterns

Don’t we all hope against hope that this time, Charlie will refuse to play Lucy’s game? He’s such a nice guy. And Lucy; what a bitch! Don’t you wish Charlie would kick her instead? Guess which one is the sex addict?

I hate thinking that I have anything in common with Lucy, but night before last, my husband and I had one of those Charlie Brown and Lucy conversations. All married couples have from time to time. It starts out innocently enough, and before you know it you’ve got that sinking feeling of deja-vu and you know it’s going to end badly.

The night before last, my conversation with my husband was about sex. Specifically, I wanted it but he didn’t. Since I was one down in the bell ringing department (not that I keep track or anything) I made a half-joking suggestion that it would be okay with me if he just rang my bell. Alas, if it were only that simple! Having had the experience of climbing Mt. Everest only to find the bell at the summit completely unring-able my tired husband laughingly declined.

And that hurt. Not a lot, but it hurt. Plus, it’s scary because when I’m sober, the only sex I get is the sex my husband wants to give me.

And there you have the set up for our recurring bad conversation.

I try to express my frustration that I can’t take care of my own needs myself but it comes out wrong. He gets upset. I breathe very shallow and try to cry without moving.  We are both miserable.

But this time, something different happened. My husband said what he thought, even though he wasn’t sure how I’d take it. It turns out that he begins to freak when I mention anything about masturbation because he doesn’t know what to say. I said I don’t need him to say anything, that I had only told him how I felt because he asked in the first place, and goddamn it if he didn’t want to know then why ask? It was a nasty trap where no matter what I say, it’s unacceptable. Here’s where things changed. He said that he could understand that (!) but that he didn’t know what to do about it (!) and that it wasn’t his fault that I couldn’t masturbate (!) and that he wasn’t my mom, my stepdad, or my step granddad.

It was a startling departure from the way this dance usually goes. And although it sounds like psychobabble nonsense, it actually was pretty powerful to hear him actually name names, as in, “I’m not J____.

We talked for another 20 minutes or so and I’ve got to tell you, it was exhausting. I don’t know how it was for him, but I know for me, it too a lot of effort to just listen. I kept telling myself that all I had to do was listen, not agree, not argue, just listen well enough to hear. A few times I tried just repeating back what he was saying to check to see if I was understanding, and to let him know I was actively listening. After we finally finished, I rubbed his back to help him fall asleep.

Two days later and I’m still emotionally tired from it. I haven’t slept well the past two nights either, and today I’m home from work with a splitting tension headache. But I don’t have that freaked out feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I’m not tempted to act out in any way. In fact, recovery wise, I’m doing well. This feels like growing pain.

The whole thing reminds me of Lucy and Charlie Brown, because from the outside looking in, anyone who knows my history would call me the bitch and my husband the saint and I’m really lucky that my husband doesn’t buy into that false image. He had to let go of his desire to be the nice one, the good one, the Charlie Brown one in order to tell me the truth.

It was a very loving thing to do. And ultimately, much, much more loving than merely ringing (or attempting to ring) the ‘ole bell.

It’s good to be sober again.

I’m not a big dieter. In my experience, most diets take a lot of effort and I end up feeling like shit at the end because I haven’t lost much weight. Hunger generally isn’t a problem because it’s a feeling I don’t tolerate well, so I just don’t allow myself to be hungry, which might be why the diets don’t work that well. Actually the one time I was successful in losing the weight was after I was in recovery. I did the Jenny Craig diet and used my recovery tools to deal with feeling hungry. Went from around 180 to around 160 in something like 6 months, which counts as successful in my book!

Like a lot of women, I’ve always been unhappy with my weight. I remember being a teenager and punching what I thought was a huge, blubbery stomach in disgust. I thought had a huge butt and thunder thighs. This was at 5′ 3″ and 105 pounds! Why couldn’t I have realized how beautiful I was?

As it happens, I think I actually know the answer to that question.

That summer that my grandfather was watching us, I gained a lot of weight. I can’t be sure, but I’d bet money there’s a connection there. I remember eating these huge three egg omlettes with a quarter pound of cheddar cheese and toast with more cheese sliced on top. Later I’d have a 2″ thick fried cheese sandwich for lunch and a regular dinner (a meat, a starch and a vegetable). Now I know that one of the ways abused children can react to molestation is to attempt to insulate themselves with a layer of fat. Eating feels soothing and nurturing. Plus when you eat, that’s a living thing – maybe I’m weird – but there are some things that just really reaffirm to me that I’m not dead. Eating. Being hot (temperature). Having sex. Maybe I’m subconsciously afraid of being dead inside. I dunno, sometimes you can take the psych stuff too far into woo-woo land.

So now I’m in recovery and I’d like to lose some weight. On the one hand, I’d like to complain. I mean, come on. We’ve been to the moon and we can’t figure out what diet is best? And that whole aura of snake-oil salesmanship makes me want to stay far, far away from any kind of diet. Like we need to eat for our blood type? Come on. The Grapefruit diet makes more sense than that. But some diets make sense to me. The Paleo Diet, for example. But the Low Fat Diet also makes sense. And so does the Whole Grain Diet.

I feel frustrated that we can’t just figure out how to eat and exercise properly. But maybe it’s that we do know how to eat and exercise properly, we just don’t know how to make ourselves want to do it.

My husband likes to say that if you can tell the difference between broccoli and a brownie, you’re completely capable of making good food choices; but I don’t know whether I should choose the whole grain pasta or the grass-fed lamb chop.

What I do know is that when I cook, it’s a sign that my recovery is going well. And I’m cooking, not reading erotica, not obsessing about sex, and (most importantly) I’m not feeling deprived because I can’t enjoy porn, masturbation, and so forth.

That’s an important concept. When you feel deprived because you can’t do what you want to do, that’s one type of existence. In 12-step language, it’s white-knuckling. When you feel at ease because you’re doing what you want yourself to do, because you want to do it, that’s sobriety.

It’s good to be sober again.

Recovery has ruined my acting out

There’s a saying that AA will ruin your drinking. It’s true for sex addiction too. Nothing works as well when you’re thinking in the back of your mind that you might be a sex addict, or in my case that you are having a relapse instead of merely experiencing a rebirth of interest in less vanilla (i.e. more fun) sexual stuff.

I know that sounds totally self-deluded, but that’s exactly what I was trying so hard to believe. Unfortunately (or fortunately I guess) there’s that whole progressive thing that you get with addiction. You know, where “normal porn” is boring. Whether I call it vanilla, normal, or wholesome; it doesn’t work for me for long.

Think of food. Sure it’s nice to have a fancy dinner every once in a while, but imagine if you were hungry, really hungry and a nice PB&J on homemade bread with a tall glass of milk was completely ho-hum. Like so boring that you wouldn’t want to eat it even though your stomach is growling.

That would be kind of sad, don’t you think? That’s not how I want to be. It’s not sober.

So I decided to quit downloading erotica and reread Patrick Carnes and in the process I found a new author, Maureen Canning. The book is Lust, Anger, & Love. After reading a teeny-tiny bit of her book, I just couldn’t make myself believe any more of my own b.s. After reading more, I didn’t feel like working so hard to rationalize any more.

For today anyway.

On a more personal note, my oldest son is in Iraq. If you are one of the many Americans who send packages to our troops overseas, thank you. Today, I went to the post office with the package I’ve been putting together for him. There’s a cd of family photos, some candy, toiletries, and a few magazines, Family Handyman and the like. I hate dropping those packages off. Most of the time I can avoid remembering that he’s over there, wearing body armor and carrying a gun with bullets. I feel so sad when I think about it. I have to fight to stay centered and not fall into a big pit of sadness. Some of those young men and women don’t come home . . . life is not a sure thing. There are no guarantees. That’s difficult to live with.