On August 24th I tied the knot. D and I had a big wedding, but we kept it local and had the reception at our home. It was a wonderful “party,” but it took an overwhelming amount of planning, money, time and dedication. All worth it, mind you, but strenous nonetheless. Simultaneously, I was working two demanding, time-consuming jobs, not including mother of two teenage boys.

A week or two prior to the wedding, I came down with a bad case of vertigo. If you’ve ever had straight-up, long lasting vertigo, it’s not pretty. You cannot balance, you cannot walk erect without feeling like you’re about to fall over, and once you’re on the drugs for vertigo, you basically cannot get out of bed.  What the hell. Why would this happen just days before I was finally about to marry the only man I ever loved and who treated me so well?  I almost started to feel as though I was sabotaging myself. Now that it is behind me, I think it was pure stress.

But a strange thing happened to me shortly after we were wed. I had a dream that I married my PoA instead. And it felt both good and awkward. When I awoke I felt guilty and I questioned my loyalty and my heart to D. But then I had a deep revelation. I was not dreaming of my old boyfriend, nor that I wanted to marry him or go back to him or anything like that. Instead, I was dreaming of the “loser” inside me. And it occurred to me that we have both a loser and a winner inside us all. When we finally choose recovery, we allow the “winner” in us to take over. And it has. I have been quite successful these past 5 years and DO feel as though I have graduated. But the “loser” is still there. ANd every so often it calls out and says, Remember me? And honestly, sometimes I miss her. She was lazy, and didn’t care about herself, and could hide and shirk her responsibilities. She was a chronic underachiever who had the luxury of running away from her problems as opposed to facing them becasue she didn’t have much self-worth. And she settled. She settled all the time, scraping the bottom, taking whatever was given to her, so long as she didn’t have to work too hard.

It is when I am most overwhelmed by responsibility that I miss that old girl the most. She was a wreck, but she was always so comforting.

It has been seven months since tying the knot and since I have been overwhelmed with work. Since then, my life has calmed down  almost to a dead stop, mostly becasue I continue to clear things off my plate and avoid stressful situations. I no longer work either of those two jobs, I am obviously no longer planning a wedding, and what little work I do, it’s uninspiring, but mindless and easy. I can’t help but wonder if this is a good thing, or if the underachiever in me, the girl who never liked responsibility is trying to come back and gain control again.

If that’s the case, then I have another battle before me. Yin versus yang. Good versus evil. Self versus Avoidance of Self. And as we all know, self-avoidance (which is basically letting the “loser” in you take over) has no place in recovery. It’s a relapse. And while it doesn’t come out in the form of a PoA, it does make itself known in the person I am and in the quality of my life. And while I will never be able to completely remove the loser, I can strike a balance, and tell her who’s boss…the winner.

This old Cherokee legend about two wolves sums my dilemma up nicely, and what I need to do to overcome…

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.” He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”