I am approaching five months in recovery. It sounds like such a short amount of time, but when you consider how much power gambling had in my life, it is quite a while. There are so many positive things that have occurred since I quit gambling. Obviously our finances are improving and I am not stressed out all of the time about trying to find money to replace the money that I spent at the casino. Our family life is wonderful - I cannot believe that I jeopardized my wonderful relationship with my husband because of my addiction. It is frustrating when I think about what I put him through and only makes me love him more for accepting my "major" flaw and being willing to work through recovery with me. I do not deserve him after what I have done, but I do know that I was not always a bad person and that I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to him.
Life is constantly throwing curve balls at us, but that is life and there is nothing we can do to change that. One of the GA sayings is that we must learn to accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can. In writing it seems so simple and logical, but in practice it is very difficult. There are so many things that I try to change daily that are outside my control. Most often I find this to be challenging at work. So many times I find myself trying to change other people's reactions and opinions. What I am trying to accept is that only they can do that. I am working on focusing on changing my view on things, my part in a situation, and trying to figure out ways to avoid situations that I cannot control. Avoiding things is probably not the best solution, but it definitely can help in certain circumstances.
Another benefit to recovery is that I am more focused at work, have a better level of self confidence, and that enables me to establish boundaries with those around me. I hate to say that I cannot do something or that I am unable to meet a deadline. For weeks I have worked at least 30 hours of overtime a week to make sure our office move was successful and it paid off because everything worked out correctly. Since my focus was on arranging everything for the move much of my workload was done during the weekend, late at night, and through lunches. This has been draining and I am definitely exhausted. The good news is that the workload will hopefully fall back within a 45-hour week and I will eventually be able to occasionally take lunch breaks again!
We are going on vacation next weekend and taking a couple of days off from work. I am looking forward to quality time with my family and it cannot come soon enough!
Last night my husband asked me how I felt about my daughter's soccer tournaments that are coming up over the next year or two. They have two tournaments in Las Vegas. I had already thought about this and decided that I could go to the tournament if we stayed at a condo or house away from the casinos. I love driving out to red rock, going to the M&M store, and so many other things. Of course, there were certain things that I told my husband I would wish to avoid. I would want to stay out of all casinos - I am not worried about relapsing and gambling - which is surprising. The reason I want to stay away from the casinos is that I know I would be agitated and probably not the most fun person to be around if I was constantly surrounded by the sound of slot machines. Though I am in recovery, it does not mean that the sound of a slot machine would not trigger every urge possible to want to gamble again. We will evaluate going to her tournament as the day draws nearer. It is over a year from now and I do not know where I will be in my recovery at that time. It does make you think though. Much of my recovery has been easier for me because I do not go anywhere near a casino, I do not go in convenience stores with scratch tickets (even though that was not where my addiction was focused, I could see it being a way for me to "cheat" the system and hinder my recovery), I essentially avoid everything possible to do with gambling. I think it makes it easier.
I hope you are all doing well and wish you the best in your recovery or strength to support someone around you.
Have a great week!
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