Ellensburg or a move?

Yesterday Katrina and I went to Bremerton to watch a commissioning ceremony for a young man who stayed with us for a quarter while he finished his degree at CWU.  Aaron is going to be a great officer and we wish him all the best.  Going to Bremerton brought us through Tacoma and over the Narrows Bridge.   So many memories through this whole area.  It was good that this fell on my 10yr anniversary of being a person in recovery.   I love the Pierce County area and will always call it home.   I am not one to look at areas I had a lot of negative experiences in during active addiction as "bad areas".   Tacoma isn't all bad.   Tacoma is also where I was able to get into recovery.    Sometimes, getting out of certain environments is needed to be able to get into recovery.  I needed to stop hanging out with certain people and going to certain places for sure, but, it didn't mean I had to put a bad spin on an entire area.  I love Tacoma.  It will always be home.  You will soon walk through my return to use in 2006 that happened right here in Ellensburg.    Just because I returned to use doesn't mean that Ellensburg is a bad place.  Yes, there are drugs here, there are drugs everywhere.   Yet, there is also recovery everywhere.   :)

We had settled into Ellensburg.   We adapted to the slower pace, I was working at Fred Meyer, Stephanie had left Freddie's and went to work at a local Radio Shack.   I met Andy Jager not long after getting to the 'burg and did some work for him in the Loss Prevention arena.  He bought the local Radio Shack and was able to get Steph part time work.    We moved from the little one bedroom duplex out to the country into a really cool old cabin on the corner of Smithson and Lower Green Canyon.    I was now part country boy.    Steph got a horse, shoot, she got two!   I had chickens, my dog, and I had a truck.   We lived ten miles out of town and I came into to work at the "big city Fred Meyer" every day.

Stephanie and I weren't doing to well.  We went through several years of trying and trying......both of us going to individual counseling, and even couples counseling.   We had both come from very trying pasts.  Steph is an amazing person who was horribly abused as a child and then in a relationship with her son's father who continued that destructive cycle.  Me, with my past addiction issues, sexual abuse past, depression, anxiety, and all that goes with those things....well we had a tough get go from day one.    But, we tried.   We tried and we tried and we tried.    We would split, get back together, split again, get back together again.   The first move out came in Ellensburg.   The first move back in came in Ellensburg.   It was a pretty tiring cycle for both of us.   I can say with certainty that we gave it our all.    In the end it doesn't work out for us, but we are friends and I was finally able to move on and let it go.   It wouldn't be without a lot of pain and heartache, and part of my decision to return to use in the fall of '06.

The years 2001-2004 were marked with a lot of the above.   Relationship issues.   Yet, I was continuing to do good at Fred Meyer.  After being her a few years I started considering a move.  In retail management if you "want to grow you gotta go."  This means going up the ladder from store to store.   The coming to Eburg thing was me showing I was willing to do this.   In Loss Prevention, we didn't have a ton of room to grow.   We could go to bigger stores, or, apply for regional management or investigator positions.  These didn't come along to often and there were only a handful.   I even considered, and moved into for about six months, a regular management position in the store.  This would have given me an opportunity to move into a Store Director position in the future.    I loved my work at Fred Meyer and they were a good company.  

I was also not real fond of the idea of having to move away.   Tyler was right here, the reason I moved over here.  He was a teenager now and needed his father.   Our relationship was becoming strained a bit by this point.   He was in the normal teenager stage of life, but also, had started his own use of drugs and alcohol at a young age.   He wasn't wanting to come to our house as much because I had strict rules and he wasn't able to do the same things he could get away with at his mom's.   Even with all that, I didn't think moving would be good to do.

In this time period I had pretty heavy involvement in the local AA groups.  Prior to Ellensburg, I just went to a meeting here and there.   Coming to Ellensburg I became involved at all levels.   I was involved in service work for the groups that brought me to regular business meetings locally, and business meetings at a district and area level.   AA is a group that is completely self supporting in all aspects.   The members are the only ones that are running the show.   We had a pretty tight knit group of us who were the ones running the show.  It was good for a while, but, as time goes one, people transition out and people transition in.  This is how it is designed to work.  No one person running the show for to long a period of time.   This can become repetitive.   You tend to have the same people in and out of positions again and again.   It is the few who are running the whole.  Not many want to become involved in the running of the business side of keeping meeting going.   There are a variety of reasons for this.  A lot of people who are going to meetings are required to go, in fact, the majority of people who first come are required.  They don't want to do anymore than they have too.  Go to a meeting, and that's it.   Many people don't have the time.  They get into recovery and get their lives back, they get busy.

Coming from a larger area, I saw first hand, the difference between meetings in a big city, and meetings in a small city.    You see the same people and hear the same stories again and again in a small city.  I even got tired of hearing myself talk in meetings.   It was during this time period that I started to get a desire to got to meetings a bit less.   I wanted more from my life then just work and meetings, and then...more meetings.   Being involved in the service work side of things puts you in some kind of meeting several times throughout a month's period.   It becomes your life in many regards.    I will never forget bringing a newer person to a business meeting once.  This is what you do.....you encourage others to "get involved".    He left pretty disappointed and said something I will never forget that shows what you are dealing with.......He said  "you guys just spent two hours arguing over how to spend five dollars"......that, in a nutshell, describes a lot of it.

I made the decision to leave Fred Meyer in about 2004.    If you remember from past blogs,  I had went to school in years past for drug and alcohol counseling.  I met a person who was looking for a prevention specialist and she had started recruiting me for the position.   This was a lengthy process and not something that just happened over night.   I had been with Fred Meyer for a while now.   A steady job, steady paycheck, benefits, retirement.....I had grown used to having structure and consistency in my life.   This was a tough one.   I was considering giving up Fred Meyer to step into a grant funded type position and it was scary to even consider.    Yet, I was at a point with Fred Meyer that I needed to make a decision.   I knew I couldn't stay at the Eburg store in the same position for years on end.  I was bored and needed to do something.

So, I did it.  I pulled the trigger and gave my notice at Fred Meyer.  I was finally going to go into the field I had set out to go to in those early days of recovery.   Fred Meyer had been good to me.  I still have friends from my days at Fred Meyer.   They are a good company that provides jobs to many.  I was leaving the mall of Ellensburg!

Now, the person who had recruited me to leave and work for her........in the field of prevention work, I was excited about.   To this point it had been great.   I thought long and hard about this decision before giving notice to leave the company I had been with for years.   Yeah, well, less than a month after leaving Fred Meyer, it all blew up in my face!   I was left standing with no job.    I had decisions to make and they needed to be made fast.

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