If you had asked me, before Austen was born, if nearly every detail of my life was fixed in routine, I would have said no, and I would have thought that was quite true. After all, I had free will and all that. If I felt like picking up a doughnut on the way to work today, then, damn it, I could do that. I could drive all kinds of alternate routes to the grocery store. I could drink from the pink glass and not the blue one. I could get away for the weekend or even pick up and fly to another country.

But the fact is, most days I didn't do that. And I never noticed it until Austen pointed it out. I wouldn't notice I'd always served Austen his baby oatmeal in the orange bowl until I put it in the blue bowl and he refused to eat it. I wouldn't notice I'd always driven the same road to the grocery store until I had to stop along the way at the post office or the gas station and Austen would howl with confusion and outrage. I wouldn't notice that always sorted the mail by the mailbox and muttered "junk, junk, junk..." under my breath until Austen started saying "junk" whenever we went to get the mail. There were a thousand habits I didn't notice until I broke course and found that, for Austen, my habits had become compulsions. They were part of The Way Things Must Be.

A few days ago, Austen was playing with Mark while I arranged a playdate for Janie. "Ok, bye. Great, thank you. See you then," I said as I hung up. "No!" Austen shouted, "You said it wrong!"

"What?"

"You said the wrong thing on the phone!"

I struggled to remember what it was I said and realized I'd said something after "bye."

"Oh, did I say something after I said bye?" I asked.

"Yes!" said Austen, "What's wrong with you?!"

"I just don't always think about the rules when I'm talking, buddy. That's the way my mind works. And that's ok. I like being a little flexible, and the other person knew what I meant."

"No, it's not ok. What's wrong with you?!"

"I'm different?"

"No," Austen was getting increasingly upset, and I could tell he didn't want to let go of this question, "What's wrong with you?!"

"I'm crazy!" I said with a smile.

"No, you're not! What's wrong with you?!"

And suddenly, something clicked. I broke a routine, but this question was part of a routine too. It wasn't the exact same question -- it certainly wasn't the same tone of voice -- but I could hear myself asking Austen, "Hey, what's wrong, buddy?" And I knew the answer. Because Austen has an extremely limited diet and is extremely particular about how his food is served, it can be a struggle to get him to eat enough.  He also has difficulty recognizing his hunger (although we can always recognize it based on his behavior), and he can go long periods of time without realizing he needs to eat.  So, when he's at his most anxious and upset, as he was now, the solution has nearly always to ignore whatever he was upset about and feed him.  We also diligently point out to him that his anxiety and frustration are hunger signals, hoping that this will help him recognize his body's cues.

"I guess I must be hungry, buddy," I ventured.

"Ok," he said, "I guess so."  And returned, immediately and peacefully, to his game.

My husband and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised.  Interesting.  In Austen's view, I had done something wrong, so there must be something wrong with me that caused me to misbehave that way, and what he (and we) had linked to misbehavior in his mind was hunger.  I know of other kids who have threatened to put their (seemingly) misbehaving parents into time-out, but only Austen would think to feed us.  I was thankful that he didn't follow me into the kitchen to make sure I got a snack, because I'd just eaten lunch, and frankly, I was stuffed, both with food and food for thought.

Most parents hear it at one time or another.  Some variation on the universal theme of parent awfulness: "I hate you. I wish you were dead. I don't like you.  I'm not going to be your child anymore.  I want a new Mommy/Daddy.  You're the worst parent ever."  These pronouncements are usually inspired by something truly terrible we've done, like forbid our child from diving head first off a playstructure onto concrete.  (Actually, a lot of people married to addicts (for whom the rest of this story may also resonate) hear that kind of thing too, and usually for the same reasons.)  And those words can hurt, even when we know they're just a passing storm of anger and frustration.

But yesterday, when Austen screamed, "I don't love you!" it made me feel, well, loved.

Austen is autistic, and it comforts him when the little details of his world are neatly in place.  One of these details is the need to have all words printed neatly in capital block letters; no lower case letters and no script allowed.  If one of us should write something using any lettering that is offensive to Austen's discriminating eye, he will not rest until he has fixed it for us.  Grocery lists can be found with each item crossed out and correctly rewritten above.  Signatures on birthday cards are blacked out and bear neatly printed versions of the name instead.  If you want to keep a document safe from Austen's pen, you should generally keep it out of his sight.

I've recently been reading over some old journals and letters while doing some 12 Step work, and my daughter Janie has enjoyed having me read to her about what I used to do when I was a child.  Yesterday, I was reading to Janie when (and you can see where this is going, I'm certain) Austen, mistakenly thought to be safely occupied with something else, noticed that (shockingly) I didn't not print every item in my childhood diary in capital block letters.  And this was an outrage.  A crime.  An atrocity.  Austen wanted to fix that journal for me right away.

Of course, the answer to that was no.  No, you cannot cross out every word in my precious junior high diary and rewrite it.  I took the journal and locked it up safely in my room.  At which point Austen told me to please walk away and not look at him.  Nothing to see here. Move along.  He'd just be over here trying to pick the lock.  Just ignore him.

So, being the sharp and totally onto-him mother that I am, rather than walking away, I stopped and said, "Buddy, I really can't let you have that diary.  I wrote it when I was very young and it's the only one I have.  It's a part of who I was and who I am, and it's very special and important to me.  If you cross out the words, you'll be damaging it, and I'll be sad and angry and hurt. I'll feel like you would feel if I wrecked up your electronics collection, which I know is really special and important to you."

And that's when the screaming started.  "No!  You must let me have it!  Promise?  You have to let me destroy it!"

"No, I can't do that, buddy."

"Yes, you can!"

Austen's anger usually comes from anxiety, so I took a guess as to what he might be anxious about and tried to reassure him.  "I love you no matter what.  I know I said I would be angry if you damaged something that is important to me, but I would still love you, always and always."

"Well, I don't love you!" he shouted.

"Do you feel that way because you're angry at me?" I asked, trying to help him label his emotions.

"No," he said, through tears of frustration, "Because I have to destroy your diary, and it will hurt you.  And if I love you, I don't want to hurt you.  But if I don't love you, it's ok.  And I really need to destroy it, because it's WRONG in lower case!  So, I don't love you!"

Oh.  Wow.  I'd really misunderstood and misjudged: the level of his need, the level of his empathy the level of his emotion.  But all I could think right then was that this was the best "I don't love you" I'd ever received.

As I write this, I have a cup of tea beside me, and I am trying to get myself to drink it.  I'm not hesitating because I don't like tea or because I think it will be unpleasant.  I'm hesitating because I'm trying to drink it out of a Pyrex measuring cup, which feels... Uncomfortable.  Weird.  Challenging.

You see, my mugs were all dirty and I had forgotten to start the dishwasher.  Now sure, I could have hand washed a mug, but why not use the more readily available measuring cup?  It has a handle.  It can hold hot liquids.  It's no heavier or more unwieldy than some of my beloved oversized mugs.  But I recoiled a bit at the thought.  Was it sanitary? I wondered.  Um, yes.  It's been through the same dishwasher as the mugs I usually drink tea from, and I use it to make lots of food that I safely and happily eat.  Would the tea taste ok?  Why wouldn't it; the measuring cup is just glass, and I drink out of glasses all the time.  But still, it just seemed... Wrong.

Of course, my son Austen is very familiar with this sensation.  Austen (as those of you who visit regularly may know) is autistic and has to eat his yogurt with a plastic spoon.  It can't be silverware, because those spoons are heavier and will (if left in the yogurt container) sometimes tip the carton.  Disaster!  But even among plastic spoons, not all spoons are created equal.  Austen's plastic spoons must be clear plastic, and not just any clear plastic; they must be the kind I buy (in bulk) from our local grocery.

This has been frustrating.  I've carried a lingering resentment over it.  After all, I once forgot to pack a spoon in his lunch, and the school called.  Austen completely refused to eat lunch without that damn spoon.  The school has plastic spoons of course, but they are white, not clear.  He insisted on a clear spoon.  So, the teachers looked through their own lunches and his classmates lunches for one to trade, but their clear spoons weren't the same brand as our clear spoons.  Their clear spoons had little swirls on the handles, making them totally different.  And because he couldn't eat his yogurt, he couldn't eat anything.  He was stuck on yogurt and couldn't get past that to the rest of lunch.

So, I ended up driving a package of spoons over to school, muttering to myself the whole time, "A spoon's a spoon, damn it!  Why does it have to be this spoon?  There are a hundred spoons at school.  There are even clear plastic spoons at school.  For crying out loud you don't even need a spoon.  You could drink it.  Or lick it off your fingers!  Why do you have to eat the yogurt with this particular type of spoon?!"

But I know why.  Autistic engineer and author Temple Grandin explained it in her recent interview on NPR when she said, "If I say to you, 'Think about a church steeple,' I only see specific ones and I can tell you exactly where they're at. And I was shocked to find out that most of the people see a generalized sort of vague, generalized, generic steeple. For me there's no generalized one. There's only lots of different specific ones."  There is no Platonic ideal of a spoon in Austen's mind, there are only specific spoons.

And I can say that's crazy and troublesome and that I just don't get why it makes eating yogurt at school impossible some days.  I can say that, that is, until I sit here unable to drink out of a clearly very mug-like object, complete with a handle and an ability to hold hot liquids simply because it doesn't fit my idea of what one ought to drink tea from.

Last week, I asked you all to join the Just for Today Challenge with me, where we would all change one thing about our lives for just one day. I'll share what I did, and if you did something yourself, either share about it in the comments or (if you wrote a post about it) enter the URL for the post in Mister Linky below to add a link to your blog.  (This is my first attempt to incorporate Mister Linky, so I'm hoping everything will go smoothly.  Just in case, I'd encourage you to leave a comment too, at least this time.  I'm going to try to make this an ongoing thing, so hopefully I'll work out the kinks as I go.)

As many of you know, I've instituted a day of rest and spirituality for myself every Wednesday, and each Wednesday I'm thinking of focusing on one change I'd like to make.  This week the big challenge was cutting out sugar.  Now some of you might think, "It's not hard to go just one day without sugary treats!"  Well, good for you, apparently you're not addicted to them.  For me, it was hard: really, really, crushingly hard to go the entire day without sugar (and because I only take my caffeine in soda form, caffeine as well).

Actually, that's not entirely true.  I got up in the morning and said, "No, no. No chocolate PopTart for you today!  We're having a bagel instead."  And that wasn't so bad.  Then I ate lunch and I wanted a Coke with it, but I settled for water.  And I wanted some Halloween candy for dessert and my hand was reaching for the bowl, but I pulled it back and said, "I can go just one day without a mini Snickers!"

But then the kids came home from school, and I felt like I was drowning in "Mama, I want..." and "Mama, I need..." and "Mama, where is..." and "Mama, can I [insert insane and dangerous request here]..." and "Mama, Daddy said I could..." and "But he started it" and "No, she started it" and "No, he did!"  I wanted one of those freaking Halloween candies so bad I was ready to tear my hair out.  And I wanted to wash it down with a can of Coke.  So I stopped taking things one day at a time and took them one minute at a time for the few hours until Mark got home from work.  Once Mark was home, I had dinner, went off to my meditation group and came home to the kids asleep.  And I thought about that pumpkin pie in the fridge, but I didn't need it.

So, I learned that I really use sugar and caffeine to handle the stress of juggling the kids' needs and demands, of setting limits and enforcing rules, of just the plain sensory overload of two kids focusing their attention on me.  And I learned that one day without sugar was hard, but it also acted like a reset button: the next day, I didn't crave sugar as much and while I let myself indulge again, I ate (and drank) less of it than at any time in the last few months.  I've also noticed that my sugar intake has gradually increased over the course of the week, creeping not quite back up, but closer, to where it had been before.

Still, it's comforting to know that my one day a week of change could be a way of hitting reset on a lot of things in my life, and I'm looking forward to testing the theory with some other behaviors.  And I want to know how your one day worked for you!  What did you add to your life or give up?  What did it feel like and what did you learn?  Post a link and/or leave a comment.  And feel free to pick a day and a behavior yourself and join in next Tuesday too.  If you participated this week, you can keep it up with the same thing this week or choose something new.  It's up to you.

Mr. Linky:

"Where's the ketchup?"

"Don't you remember?" asks Mark, a little exasperated. "We had this conversation," he says as he begins to describe it to me in elaborate details: all the full sentences I said to him in response to what he said to me about some colossal ketchup accident and grocery store followup fiasco.  I wish I could remember, it was probably funny.

"Sorry, honey. I just don't.  I, um...  I wasn't looking you in the eye when I said any of this, was I?"  I'm embarrassed, because I'm fairly certain he's not making this up.  I know, we both know, that the conversation took place, but that I tuned him out, my mind's auto pilot answering him automatically.  And we both know what I was doing when it happened: reading.

"I get scared when you don't remember these things," Mark admits.  And I know how he feels, because I've recited a thousand lost tidbits, odd facts and snippets of conversations to him over the years, little bits of time and place that were lost to his addiction, times when he wasn't present with me because his mind was occupied with the next high, or the last one.

Shortly before this conversation, in my 12 Step group, we were talking about the ways in which we partners of addicts sought to escape from reality, the ways in which we literally and figuratively ran away from our problems.  And I shared that reading has always been mine.  For as long as I can remember, for as long as I've known how to decipher these symbols on a page, I've used them as a way to take my mind someplace else. When I was a child, I would shut myself up in the cool of my room and read from the time I got up until late in the night.  I'd forget to eat.  I'd lose sleep.  And when at last I did shut off the lights, I'd try to block out thoughts of whatever I'd done wrong (there was always something) by inserting myself into the books I read: putting myself on the island of the Swiss Family Robinson, in Laura Ingall's house on the prairie, in a cozy hobbit hole, on the Orient Express.

Sometimes my reading has been wonderful and beneficial; I've learned and been exposed to new ideas, experienced wonder and beauty, grown mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  (Go figure, those things they say in the public service announcements for your local library really are true.)  But I have to admit that sometimes, picking up a book or a magazine, or even reading a blog post. has been a way for me to escape into someone else's mind, a world someone else creates for me, while I avoid being present in the world right here around me.

Since my conversation with Mark, I've been making an effort to change my programming, to try (often with his help) to look up and shut the book or the computer when someone is talking to me.  When I am able to manage it, I've noticed I'm often annoyed.  I find it difficult to focus, as I'm often all too eager to leave my real life and plunge back into the familiar fantasy of someone else's words.  But at least this notice I'm taking of my annoyance and impatience is, if not comfortable or natural, at least a form of presence in my real life, one I've never had before.

In the first 12 Step meeting I attended, a group for friends and relatives of sex addicts, I heard repeated references to "our disease." And "our disease" — codependency — supposedly compelled us to engage in codependent behaviors: things like spying on and stalking the addicts in our lives. I winced each time I heard it. I didn't like the word "codependent," and the idea that the behaviors were compulsive didn't seem right. I felt like I was trying on an ill fitting uniform; it chaffed. And that bothered me.

I hear newcomers in meetings sometimes saying the same things I said, "I do not have a problem!  I am not sick!  I am just doing what any normal person would do!  He's the one with the problem!  It was not my fault!  Don't try to pin this on me!  What was I supposed to do?"  And I see that reflection of me: self-righteous, angry and resentful that someone was thrusting the wrong clothes into my hands and insisting I put them on.

It was all muddled up in my head: his problems and my problems, his responsibilities and mine, normal and healthy, normal and sick...  I couldn't take what worked and leave the rest. After all, if I couldn't accept the premise, how could any of this work?  It was all or nothing.

Recently, I was reading an article about the compulsive nature of cyberstalking and I heard echoes of those words "our disease." But this time I saw that there were some things that fit for me and others that didn't, and that some things might work for others but not for me.  Instead of picturing someone shoving a single generic outfit at me, I saw a whole Hollywood wardrobe room full of clothes.  I could pick and choose the ones I want to wear.  I could walk around, see what fit and what felt comfortable.  I could walk away from what was offered.  I could say yes to the shoes but still say no to the tights.

And I laughed thinking that freedom from "our disease" means freedom from being concerned about whether it's right to call it a disease at all.

Years ago, before I knew about my husband's sex addiction, one of the things that drew me to him, that I really liked and respected about him, was how he seemed to have broken away from the pattern of addiction and dysfunction in his family. His dad was an alcoholic, his siblings had done time for a variety of drug related crimes, and here he was: the one sane and functional member of his family. He didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do drugs and was (as far as I knew then) scrupulously honest. He drove the speed limit, signaled when he turned and came to a full stop at every stop sign. I met him while he was taking some of the most challenging classes at a prestigious university, having worked hard and graduated near the top of his high school class.

After his addiction came to light and I saw just how deep and how far back his compulsive behavior extended, and as my eyes slowly cleared from the fantasy and denial that clouded my own thinking, I began to realize just how hard it is to overcome the scars that a dysfunctional childhood leaves. When I met him, the solution to dysfunction was easy; follow the codependent mantra: work harder, do better. So, I assumed Mark was better, stronger and more determined than others, allowing him to come through his childhood unscathed, when weaker and lazier men (or weaker, lazier children) would have succumbed.

The truth was, my husband hadn't come through his childhood unscathed. (Does anyone?) He knew he did not want what he had grown up with, so he tried to imitate the trappings of a sane and fulfilling life — getting good grades, going to college, getting a job, staying away from the alcohol and drugs that wreaked havoc in his family — without really knowing what lay beneath, unable to recognize the ways in which he was repeating the same compulsive patterns in a new way. And I (as much as I thought I was oh so healthy and sane and better than he in my not-addictness) wasn't truly healthy enough myself to realize that the popular indicators of success (a college degree, a job, the lack of a criminal record, abstention from drugs, alcohol and cigarettes) are not necessarily indicative of mental, emotional and spiritual health.

Neither of us realized it was possible to, as we both had, work extremely hard at entirely the wrong things. Neither of us realized it was possible to remove some of the symptoms, and take on some of the trappings of health and well-being, without touching underlying distortions of thinking so deeply ingrained they weren't even noticeable anymore. Until those trappings fell away, until we'd nearly lost our marriage and torn apart the family and the new life we'd built, neither of us could see that we were living a fantasy of health and not the real thing at all.

The newborn daughter of a very dear friend of mine recently had heart surgery to correct a congenital defect. Fortunately, the surgery went smoothly, the defect was easy to correct and the baby is doing just fine. Still, it's been a few weeks of highly emotional extremes. (Yay! The baby is here. Oh no! The baby is having heart surgery. Yay! Everything went well. Oh no! My friend is even more exhausted and stressed than the typical first time parent of a newborn.) I've spent a good deal of time in recent weeks thinking about my friend, her husband and her baby, and I've spent some time noticing (oh, what a change that is from years past!) how I'm thinking about them and what my impulses are. And I've found my impulse is to shop. And research. But mostly research about what I could shop for.

I had a carefully picked out perfect gift before the baby was even conceived and I'd purchased it as soon as the news was out that my friend was pregnant. I spent more than I normally would, but this is more than a normal friend. Now that the baby was here and needed special care, I found myself wanting to shower my friend in still more gifts. I asked friends who had dealt with hospitalized babies what they might need. I asked friends who are pediatricians and nurses for suggestions. I googled and googled. And in the end I had a list of lots of helpful goods and services. And I wanted to buy everything on the list.

I wanted to purchase things in excess of what my family could afford, with no regard for what we could afford. In part, I wanted to let my friend know how much I care and how much I love her, but I realized that I also wanted to make sure that everything was done the "right" way, that she wanted for nothing, that every inch of her road was as smooth as it could be (as smooth as only my codependent superpowers could make it). I sat at the computer with items in three different online shopping carts (complete with extra fees for wrapping and express shipping) and my mouse hovering over the "Purchase" button when it struck me that my impulse was coming as much from lack of trust as from love.

My friend lives in the same small town where she grew up and is part of a tight knit community. She is surrounded by friends and family, both hers and her husband's. She has people who can (and are) helping with cooking, cleaning and shopping, who can (and will) take good care of her. I don't have to be everything to her. I don't have to do everything for her. I don't have to drain my bank account to show my love for her or take care of her every need singlehandedly. I can be there and be a good friend and still trust other people to be there for her too. I can trust her to ask for my help if she needs it and I can trust her Higher Power to take care of her. Wow. What a surprise to see that I had been carrying the weight of her world, and what a relief to empty those shopping carts and let it go.

Well, mostly. I still did buy just one more gift. But with a new baby in town, sometimes a little excessiveness feels just right.

I have spent my share of time cyberstalking the women my husband has acted out with. (Hey, I'm codependent; I'm really, really good at focusing on people who aren't me.) And I'm not alone. Focusing on and obsessing about the activities of acting out partners is an unhealthy behavior nearly every partner of a sex addict engages in at some point. During my last binge googling the name of one of my husband's former lovers I realized I was engaging in a form of emotional cutting, purposely causing myself pain (and getting something from it).

Since then I have been tempted a few times to just check in, you know, and make sure his old lovers still have fewer Facebook friends than I do (because we all know what an important measure of a human being's worth that is), but thankfully I've been able to recognize that I'm standing there, ticket in hand, ready to jump on the crazy train, and have stopped each time. (Actually, just writing about it has me itching to do it. "What harm could it do?" the little voice in my head is saying,"You can just check real quick. No one will even know. And then you don't ever have to look again. Just this one last time." Yep. Craziness. Still.)

But in spite of being cut off from the good stuff, that little crazy part of me has been weaseling its way around the rules and getting some cheap thrills lately anyway. You see, if you're in recovery around your relationship with a sex addict (go figure!) you tend to meet other women whose partners have been unfaithful and you tend to be the one that your existing friends call with they're dealing with infidelity. This week, a friend fresh in the pain of her own cyberstalking adventures shared some of the information she found with me. And I found myself thinking, "Looking up my husband's lovers is obviously bad for me, but it doesn't hurt to cyberstalk someone else's lovers a little, right? After all, they didn't do anything to me. So there's no harm in looking at their pictures and bios and résumés and Facebook friends and tweets. I'm just getting enraged on my friend's behalf, and that's not nearly as bad." So I poked around beyond what I had been given already.

But spending time googling other people's lovers is obviously (when you're not off in Crazytown) a healthy way to spend time. In fact, in a lot of ways, it seems crazier than obsessing over my husband's lovers. At least when I'm focusing on his acting out partners, I'm feeding off my own pain rather than voyeuristically engaging in someone else's drama. And I'm seeing that the fact that something like this feels like a safe way to indulge myself only shows how deep the need to indulge is. But spending my time googling people in my friends' lives can't really be a harmless new diversion for me, any more than beer would be a smart recreational choice for an alcoholic who has given up hard liquor. It's a simply a crazy new twist on the same old unhealthy behaviors.

This weekend, for the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to hear a sex addict from my husband's recovery group speaking about his experiences. I know my husband's story, about as intimately as anyone else can; in a way, it's my story too. Mark read his First Step — the narrative of his life in his addiction — to me the night before he presented it to his 12 Step group, and it moved us both to tears. I've read the stories of other sex addicts in books and on blogs. I've had the chance to hear Patrick Carnes and other experts on sex addiction speak. But hearing someone else's story of sex addiction and recovery — live, with all the nuance that comes from facial expression and vocal inflection — was new to me.

I can't share the story here, as it's not mine to tell, but I did find myself wishing, as I listened, that everyone could hear — really hear, with minds and hearts open — a story like the one I heard. I wished that everyone could hear the pain and the shame and the compulsivity behind years of sexual encounters. I wished everyone could hear the remorse and regret for the pain caused. But most of all, I wished everyone could hear the gratitude, the joy and hope of recovery, the promise of change.

As my husband and I were driving home, he said, "I'm so glad that you got to be part of the kind of amazing sharing I'm privileged to witness every week." And I told him that I was so glad too. The power and beauty of the journey I heard was the kind of thing that almost made me wish everyone could go through the pain and shame of addiction to experience the gift of living a life so full of love and grace.