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letter rich he might as well just have called her lady macbeth instead of master button presser and look at his interesting choice of verb tenses my long term needs have been consistently sold out to and my own personal center has been thrown askew all his verbs are passive you would think that some external force was making him sell out or throw himself askew but that s not the case at all he was the one who chose to be with sarah and to give in to his addiction and as for the you are bad news for me statement what the fuck oh yeah rich in contrast was such a catch what with his very pregnant wife about to give birth any second sure sarah herself chose to get involved with a married man but did rich ever stop to think how much he fucked up her life he does eventually devote some of the book to talking about the pain he caused his wife but sarah nah she s just collateral damage when my concerns about the basic text were poo poohed by other people in the program i began to think that maybe i was just some bitter feminist harpie who was getting her knickers in a twist for no reason but it wasn t like i went out of my way to do a feminist literary critique of this book fundamentally it just makes me feel uncomfortable and icky going back to the steps again i also felt strange when i looked at the some of the steps to come especially steps 4 5 and 6 step 4 made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves step 5 admitted to god to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs step 6 were entirely ready to have god remove all of these defects of character the language in these steps is incredibly ponderous moralistic and serious in tone especially for people who probably have just found their way to a 12 step meeting because something very serious and nasty happened to them i ve had enough seriousness and judgement in my life i need to lighten up and have fun and by that i don t mean that i want to get drunk and party but just that i want to focus on the simpler more beautiful parts of life as charlotte kasl points out in many roads one journey moving beyond the 12 steps there are no steps about expressing love to people having fun celebrating life and becoming powerful or healing the physical body 160 when i contemplated working step 5 it felt like it would be such a chore again i felt guilty and imagined that i didn t want to do that step or the steps immediately after it perhaps because i was trying to avoid taking responsibility for my actions but charlotte kasl to the rescue again the term defects of character might be apt for perpetrators narcissists and other exploitive people but it doesn t fit for shame based or guilt ridden people who all too easily focus on their failings and weaknesses defects of character is a culture bound christian concept stemming from the idea that we are all born sinners and must redeem ourselves through a life of confession and atonement 317 thank you charlotte now i understand why i had such a negative reaction to step 5 why would i somebody who has beaten myself up forever want to focus on my defects of character of course i need to take responsibility for the bad things i ve done and the people i ve hurt but i ve already done that i can t spend one single second more obsessing over how i ve fucked up i desperately need to realize what s good about me for a change coming tomorrow a list of all my good qualities post navigation older posts many roads one journey 16 steps dating divorce sex and love addiction sex and love addicts anonymous slaa december 10 2013 comments 9 it s been a while eh nearly six months to be exact i didn t think i d ever come back to this blog to be honest and i was planning on starting a new one elsewhere but if i do start a new blog it would probably be something that i could use as a writing sample if i ever wanted to get a writing job so it couldn t be as self confessional true i could write in a journal instead but i ve always enjoyed interacting with people online and getting their feedback writing is such a solitary activity and it s so nice to know that you re writing for somebody other than yourself i don t have anything much to report about my six month absence nothing particularly exciting has happened i haven t been dating although i ve had a few minor obsessions from a distance with unsuitable men so yeah my issues with men haven t been completely resolved that s for sure it s been nearly six months since i got divorced and i can say confidently that i m over the divorce and my ex husband i do still think of him from time to time and feel sad that the shit hit the fan so badly but ultimately i m incredibly glad we re no longer together the relationship was keeping both of us stuck and miserable sometimes it s hard and lonely being in my mid thirties and single but now i have the opportunity to work on myself and make changes for the better it s an exciting time really i haven t been going to slaa meetings for quite some time i didn t feel like i was getting anything out of them really there were some nice cool people there but there were also others who were very cliquey and stand offish there are a lot of good things about 12 step groups but there are also things i don t like the rigidity for one nobody ever came out and said directly that not doing things the slaa way is bad but i distinctly got that vibe in fact i had been feeling guilty for not going to meetings anymore and was worried that my addict side had taken over because that s what 12 step groups would have you believe if you stop going it never occurred to me that it s okay that i don t like slaa that much or perhaps more accurately that i don t like the only women s group we have here in town i m allowed to have an opinion and not like things and that doesn t mean that i m weak or about to give in to addiction recently i ve been reading a couple of books by charlotte kasl women sex and addiction a search for love and power and many roads one journey moving beyond the 12 steps and i ve been completely blown away by what she has to say i would highly recommend that every woman whether struggling with addiction or not reads these books in fact i would recommend that every man reads her work too contrasted with 12 step programs charlotte kasl s 16 steps are life affirming and empowering i ve been so inspired that i ve even been thinking of starting my own charlotte kasl inspired discovery un covery group because it would be nice to have a support group of women just not via slaa post navigation older posts should i work from home relationships work june 26 2013 comments 6 when i was a full time erotic masseuse my immigration status meant that for the most part i was not able to find regular employment i spent more years than i care to remember giving sensual massages to corporate types during their lunch breaks or whenever the urge overcame them during that time i worked exclusively from home and i scheduled my own hours i know that a lot of sex workers love the freedom that sex work gives them but i on the other hand have come to realize how important it is for me to have a regular routine i might not like going to bed at a reasonable hour and getting up insanely early to go work for the man but as somebody who suffers from depression and anxiety i need that grounding i also like seeing people at the office and being able to socialize and connect with them i missed out on all of that when i was an erotic masseuse and of course when i actually did meet people there was an immediate barrier between us because i certainly couldn t tell them what i did for a living my time as a full time sex worker was a period of immense loneliness and disconnection it has occurred to me recently however that there is a huge difference between enjoying seeing my colleagues because well i m human and we re social animals and actually liking these same people there are of course some nice decent people in my office but most people there are either mind numbingly dull or much worse backstabbing fucked up assholes in fact i have realized that for all of my self identification as somebody with mental health issues i am actually a damn sight healthier than many of the so called healthy people around me i may have my flaws but i am at least genuine sincere and honest i would never intentionally hurt another person with my words or actions despite being thirty five fucking years old it still blows my naive mind that there are people out there who would do that in a heartbeat i just don t get it i have this one colleague for example who has a disturbing fetish for anything involving young japanese women he has also told me all about his nightly internet activities with online dommes while his wife and kids are sleeping the fact that he told me this information about himself should probably have alarmed me but i guess at first i stupidly felt special that he had chosen me as his work confidant and honestly there are a lot of people out there with strange sexual quirks but it doesn t make them bad people besides this one happens to be an irish catholic heritage wise and i pretty much assume that all catholics are sexually screwed up apart from his odd sexual confessions there was nothing out of the ordinary about this guy in fact i felt comfortable enough around him to open up about my own troubles the divorce my mental health problems the loneliness i sometimes felt he s a chubby guy in his mid forties with a friendly smiling face who looks like he would be somebody s favourite uncle so he has an air about him that almost invites you to open up to him in fact i m going to refer to him from now on as mr avuncular there came a day though when i realized that the things he said to me were somewhat passive aggressive and just generally off not off in a sexual way but off in a oh fuck i m now seeing an entire other side to this person and i don t like it way one time he yelled at a colleague and me for laughing at something while he was on the phone with an important customer that in itself isn t a big deal when you work with the same people 8 hours each day 5 days a week you are bound to get mad at each other at some point no it was that when he yelled at us with such anger and contempt in his face i realized i d finally seen the true him the witty self deprecating i m a friendly chubby guy act he puts on is exactly that an act i think it hides something much much darker and i do not want to know what that is recently this guy has distanced himself from me for no discernible reason if i wasn t codependent i would probably just have thought oh fuck him and would have forgotten all about him but my subconscious reacts badly to any form of rejection or what i perceive as abandonment by this point i didn t care for him anymore but that didn t stop me trying to chat with him from time to time via the office chat system i suppose i did that so i could feel that he still liked me and that i matter two sundays ago i was incredibly sleep deprived and hungover and since it was the week before my divorce was finalized i was feeling particularly depressed and hopeless i told him how i was especially upset by the comments a friend had made at the party the night before about how it s weird i have so many cats and i sorta joked actually genuinely worried deep down that i was going to end up as a crazy cat lady here s what the kindly and helpful mr avuncular had to say to that via chat after i had expressed very clearly that i was absolutely not going to give up my pets to find a stupid boyfriend mr avuncular i m sorry i was hoping to persuade you that if you didn t want to be alone you could have giving them up as an option but clearly it isn t one you re going to have to find someone very very special to accept you with all of your cats into their lives petrichor you re not really cheering me up here mr avuncular i truly hope you do you can be cheered up knowing that you ll always have your cats they make you happier than a guy would and that s alright if you can accept that then you can be happy despite my warped codependent brain i wasn t far gone enough not to notice that there was something incredibly weird about that little exchange he was clearly fucking with me in some sort of strange passive aggressive manipulative way pretending to dispense advice and be my friend when really he was trying to hurt me and i have no idea why and i find it especially troubling that he would try to hurt somebody he knows was going through a divorce and who freely admits to being depressed it s almost sadistic maybe you don t pick up any of that from the chat i posted above but believe me all my intuition tells me i am right these are the kind of people i work with i have realized too late that i set myself up for these kind of experiences because i am far too trusting and let people into my life who have no business being there and tell them things they have no business knowing really there were two very unhealthy people involved in the above chat exchange mr avuncular for obvious reasons and me for recognizing that people are unsafe but still keeping them nearby because i want them to like me i also share inappropriate things with inappropriate people i was beating myself up about that before writing this post because c mon oversharers are embarrassing but you know what it s probably inevitable that i do that given that i am living in a foreign country by myself with no contact with my family looking for a connection with other people is intensely human and intensely normal i just need to make sure that i spend more time with my real friends outside of work so that i don t get lonely and then end up getting too close to people at work my company has started allowing some of its employees to work from home if they want to i dread the feeling of social isolation i know from my massage days that i would get if i stayed at home all day but on the other hand i hate the fake and meaningless work interactions i have why not work from home so at the very least my cats and dogs will have me all to themselves have any of you lot ever worked from home if so did you like it post navigation older posts rest mental illness sex work sleep june 24 2013 comments 4 curious i m going to blog about the effects of finally getting enough sleep so i googled rest to see what cool pictures i could find for the post and i found r e s t real escape from the sex trade that wasn t really the kind of rest i had in mind in fact i have no intention of giving up sex work any time soon i have been taking a break for the last couple of weeks but rent is due soon so i saw a client tonight embarrassingly i have apparently seen this guy quite a few times before and i barely remembered him at all although the last time was only a few months ago it has occurred to me that there must be countless men who have been my clients and who have seen me out...