MY STORY...

I post my story again to let you know what Love Addiction is to me and to thank again Susan for creating this board, this space of healing.....


A New Day
I was a nice, funny, intelligent, kind little girl and I
was the wise eldest daughter of four children. I lived
in a big beautiful, famous city and I attended the best
Catholic school in town. My father had a very good
job and we were well off. My parents were a beautiful
couple. They were in love. And they were happy. We
had a beautiful house, the right friends, the right cars,
the right clothes, and the right accent.
Unfortunately something in this “perfect” life was not
actually perfect. Our neighbor was a pedophile and it
happened my parents trusted this man and often left
my brothers and I in his care. From the time I was five
years old until I was ten, I remember painful memories of this experience. Isensed something was wrong
with him when I was eleven and I started avoiding
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him completely. I had silent and hidden resentments
towards him and unfortunately, also felt guilty. This
horrible experience remained a secret for many years.
I had the courage to talk about it only with my husband, for the first time when I was 23 and then later to
therapists.
Another feature of this little girl was that she was “in
love” with her father. He was so beautiful and so cool
with his “Ray Ban” and his sports car (he was even a
racer). He was a boss, he had power over so many
people, he was always right, and everything he did
was good and great and perfect. We children all
adored him but we feared him also. He rarely beat us
but he was extremely severe; he wanted us to stay
silent when we had lunch together. He wanted us to
behave impeccably.
Anyway I felt loved by my parents, especially my
mother who was sweet and caring. I had and still have
a beautiful relationship with her.
I had a turbulent adolescence. At 12, I experienced my
first depression. Then I alternated periods of euphoria
and periods of depression. (Now I know this is called
bipolar disorder). When I was 15, I began using hash
and I often got drunk. I had many love stories. I had
crushes at the beginning and then, when I got my
targets, Ilost interest and found a wayto leave the guy.
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The first time I really fell in love, I was 18 and my
boyfriend was 18 too. I walked on clouds and he was
everything to me. It was the first time in my life I felt
such sensations. It was high and limerence all the
time. When he left me, I had a nervous breakdown. I
lost sense of reality and recovered in a hospital for
about 20 days. My parents and all the family moved
from the big town to make me live in a quieter place
in the countryside. Ileft the hospital and continued my
therapy in the country house.
Slowly I came back into myself but a very deep
depression started. I missed and regretted so much
about my first love. I felt so bad. One night I attempted suicide. I cut my wrists. I was just 19. My
father found me and saved my life. That was one of
the worst days of my life.
When I was 23, I met my husband, a beautiful, intelligent, and good man. I felt I had found life for the first
time. It was the first time after my 18 year old boyfriend that my heart beat that way again. I was in love!
And this man was in love with me! A fairy tale. We
got married after eight months and after another year
my wonderful daughter was born.
Everything was perfect. But inside of me something
was still broken and a happy family life was not
enough to fix it. Sometimes I was depressed for
months and I didn’t know the reason. Sometimes I
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was euphoric and I didn’t know the reason.
After the episode in my late teens, I didn’t have any
therapy and I didn’t even know I needed it.
I didn’t finish college. My father wanted me to work
in his firm. I started working with so much enthusiasm. I wanted my daddy to be proud of his little girl.
I hoped so much he would finally loved me, after
years of absence of mind and unavailability. All this
made my husband jealous and a sort of rivalry began
between my father and my husband.
I worked for ten years with my father and in the end,
I was 33 and I really didn’t know who I was anymore.
I felt exhausted. I felt like a loser who didn’t have the
courage to live her life but was living in the shadow of
her father. I was tired. I wanted something else. I left
my father’s work and with my husband and my
daughter, I moved to another town. I had to find a new
job. I found a course to become an English interpreter
and translator and Iwas selected. This course included
a stage in a country of English language.
Guess what? During that stage I met my “Person of
Attraction (PoA).” He was different. He was sweet.
He made me feel like the most beautiful woman when
he looked at me. Maybe he was the third greatest love
of my life (but this is a very dramatic definition). He
had everything to hook me. He reminded me of my
father (he was cool). He was sweet. He was kind. He
was strange. He was picturesque. He had a wonderful
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voice. He was beautiful. He was interested in me.
So the CRAZY DREAM started . . .
Istarted texting, phoning, emailing my PoA, who was
overwhelmed from my behavior and didn’t know
what to do. He chose to not respond. How many tears
this crazy dream cost me. I started fantasizing and
obsessing in such a deep way that many times, I was
not present in reality, but was lost in my world of
dreams. One day I was so lost in my dreams that I
started confusing reality with dreams and thoughts
and I had to call my former psychiatrist. Finally I
started my therapy for bipolar disorder and also took
medications for psychosis. I went back to reality.
At this time, Pope John Paul II was dying. Istarted to
pray. And I noticed that after praying, the obsession
decreased. I started to pray every day. I found the
strength to stop emailing my PoA. And only with
prayer and willpower, could I control my addiction.
I went on like this for two years. I controlled my
addiction. But my life seemed gray to me. I didn’t
know I was a Love Addict and I didn’t know my life
seemed gray to me because I missed the high of my
addiction. One day I felt completely free from my
“passion” (Istill didn’t know it was called addiction).
I found my PoAs profile on social media and sent him
a message, “just to say hello, don’t worry, I’m just an
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old friend.” I don’t know why I sent that message,
probably because my addiction was not healed yet.
Anyway my PoA responded for the first time and he
wanted to SEE me. Of course I wanted to meet him.
So I met him and did what Ithought I would never do:
I was unfaithful to my husband…but the strength of
addiction is so great.
After our meeting he said I was special and beautiful
and great and so on, but this situation was really
impossible and we had no future. But the addicted me
went on in this way for two years, writing desperate
emails to my PoA, but I never received an answer…
heartache……
A pain that never ends. I didn’t know a pain that never
ends existed. It exists and it’s called love addiction.
Again, for the second time, I was dragged from my
feelings to a place of a total weakness. I didn’t find a
solution to my pain and desperation; the more I called
my PoA, the more he stayed silent.
One day I prayed so much, I asked God to make me
find the solution inside of me, I wrote down this
prayer and that day I found the LAA site. I felt like an
outcast who has found an island. After six years of
pain my insanity had a name: Love Addiction. And
there were others like me, others who had my same
issues and others who were healed from this disease.
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This was the answer to my prayers.
When I joined the board and started posting and
sharing with my new friends, fellow love addicts, I
felt completely understood for the first time in my life.
After so much pain, I felt a great joy. I was not alone
anymore. The first thing I thought was that I had
finally found a solution. I wanted to help others. I felt
a great love for all people suffering from love addiction. So I became a "newcomers greeter.” After only
two days, I was already working for the site that was
saving my life. The power of the group is essential in
helping us overcoming any kind of addiction. I was
able to have “no contact” and stopped emailing my
PoA (who never responded) and I posted on the board
every time I felt the urge of contact.
“No contact” gave me back my dignity in about two
months and it gave me clarity of mind. I no longer
considered myself "the stalker." I was me again.
Humiliations, frustrations, and confusion didn't hurt
me anymore.
I started working the 12 Steps. I woke up at 4:00 in
the morning and read the BigBook online. It was June
2009. Every word I read was a balm and gave me new
hope that I could fight my addiction. I was sustained
by my strong faith in God and I felt Him close to me.
In working the steps, I was completely honest with
myself for the first time in my life. I faced my past,
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my childhood, my abuse, my weakness, and my fears.
It was a healing journey inside of me.
I had some slips during the healing process and they
made me feel really bad, because now I knew that
relapse behavior was insanity, it was wrong and not
good for me. I had slips even in late recovery and they
reminded me of the power of this addiction.
About two months ago, I read a very beautiful book
called "Smile Across your Heart" by Laurie Martin.
The book is about self love and it transformed my
heart. I became able to feel the good energy of the
Divine and I found a personal way to meditate.
Meditation is like eating spiritual food; it nurtures our
soul and it makes us feel whole, complete and happy.
My tools of Recovery are:
1. Talking to other members, asking and giving
advice.
2. Workingthe12stepswithhonestyandperseverance.
3. Reading all the precious information and the
experiences of others on the board.
4. Reading many, many books about love addiction because it's important to know our addic-
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tion. This helps us to know ourselves and to
recognize how our behavior makes us feel.
We can then find the tools to work on ourselves and fight our disease. Reading books
about spirituality is also important to me.
5. Prayer, contact with the Divine, and dialogue
with God. Find a way to pray and meditate, it
will give you strength and peace.
6. Individual therapy.
7. Understanding we are powerless over this
addiction, so we can only surrender to our
Higher Power if we want to heal. We have to
work, read, study, take action, and change.
8. We CAN change, change is possible (Read
"The Art of Changing" by Susan Peabody).
We have the power to change, which is the
power of healing.
9. When we start feeling free from our addiction,
we can start to know and celebrate ourselves.
This is our prize.
Since that day, on May 2009, I have slowly retraced
all of my past. I have finally understood what happened to me in the 70s, in that beautiful, famous city,
when my parents were far away on one of their trips.
And I’ve understood that I’m not crazy; I just have a
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bipolar disorder, due to the stress I suffered when I
was a child.
And that I have love addiction because I thought that
a beautiful, mysterious stranger, who reminded me of
my father, could save me, once and for all, from all
the pain I suffered in my life.
Today, thanks to this board, Susan Peabody’s books,
and my LAA friends, I feel I’m healing… but I think
I had to live through all of this. I had to be molested as
a child, I had to find a PoA, and I had to suffer so
much to finally find a way home.
I will always be grateful to LAA for saving my life.


Light