The Forth Step Blues

Hi All,

I am just going to say it. Writing a fourth step is really hard and painful. It sucks in such a massive and complete way that I almost convinced myself to stop but I didnt. I am still working away and picking at my resentments one by one. Tonite I talked to my Sponsor about how this is hard and makes me think about things that I would like to forget and feel ways that I want to run away from. I read my lists and feel like a victim. Since I spent about 15 years drinking over this particular feeling, I think it is safe to assume that this is not a feeling that I am good at actually feeling. Frankly, I'd rather feel any other way then powerless and hurt. Sadly, this is exactly how I feel when I write my resentments. I feel both powerless and hurt. I'll say it again: I feel powerless and hurt.

Ok, so that hasn't killed me yet but it is uncomfortable. The real truth, for me, is that recovery is really about being uncomfortable. Comfortable is a  few bottle of red wine, a pack of Marlboros, and a good friend to drink with. Uncomfortable is actually looking at the things that caused me to be so comfortable with the wine. Boy does it suck.

So here I am plodding along. I wish I could say it was easy and fun. I wish I could say everyone should do this because I am having such a great time. I cant say any of that but I can say that some of the people I admire most in this world have done this. They say that once we understand why we react the ways that we do, what caused our feelings, then we can work to do better, to be better. I've said it before and I'll say it again...it really does seem that the only way around is thru. Hope you're getting thru it too. xx

Going Deep(er)

Hi All,
Ok, here we are. Smack in the middle of the fourth step. This is the time to seriously work on humor and not taking myself too seriously. My goal since my list is complete is to now work on each individual resentment. Ummm. Wow. This is not an easy task. I feel overwhelmed by it. I also feel strange about it because I do not like the hater space. Nope. Dont like it. My inner hater gets all comfortable and then I am working hard to get her back in her cage when I am done. A lot of effort but since I was just thinking tonite about how I miss drinking, I would say it is ok to keep working on my sobriety.

Which leads me to that. The missing drinking thing. It comes up. Sometimes at predictable times (stress) and other times it is more random. Anyway, today it was both. I was laying in the bath tub being relaxed or trying to be and thinking about my old college friends bc they had facebooked (yes, i just made it a verb) and I was thinking that I was so boring now and maybe it is just not worth it to be sober bc I have to sacrifice all of my fun, exciting, and crazy times for more chilled out, stable, healthy times. This is a pretty fucked up thought bc most of my fun, exciting times were more fun for others or from the outside than they actually were for me. I mean I said it was fun but I am not sure it was actually fun? And even if it was fun in the moment, it was not fun after the moment. So, it is all very tricky to get my head around and sometimes I get sort of muddled and think a margarita might just make this Friday night a little better and life is short and...and...yep, there is my disease. She is good, but I am better.

I see her coming with her life is short stuff. Jeepers. I want to live till I am 100 and be healthy and vital and happy. I dont want some crazy high strung psycho life that ends at 40. I dont want that for me or for my family. The only person who wants that life for me is my disease. She wants me dead and she wants me dead soon, but (as I've heard) she'll settle for me unhappy too.

It is Mother's Day weekend and I am a sober Mama. I am proud of that. I am proud that I am not tipping my wine glass as I type in order to relax or to feel happy. Today I can get there on my own. I am not perfect but I am trying to be a better person and I am not going to an alcoholic beverage get in my way. Not tonite. Now, back to my list. xxxK

Anger, Resentments, and Me

Hi All. Well, here I am. Today is Wednesday. I am using this writing as a tool to somewhat delay my ongoing work on my 4th step. I am proud to report that I have entered the world of my resentments and am living to tell about it. On this past Saturday I could not sleep and so I wrote the list. At first it was really tough but once I got over my self consciousness (what kind of person is mad at this many people) I sort of got into it. I got in touch with my inner hater and I have to say that she was not as hidden or hard to reach as I might have thought. Here is what I have learned so far.

#1 Hater at the office. The list of people that pissed me off is longer than I originally anticipated. One thing I noticed straight away is that I developed a lot of resentments at work--and specifically at work in advertising in NYC. This is interesting for a number of different reasons but mostly because this is when I was drinking the most, was the most unhappy, and liked myself the least. I think it is worth considering that when I was passively hating on myself by drinking myself into a nightly stupor--I was actively hating on others too. My actively was in the form of thoughts and gossiping-so while I never was violent or not law abiding--I certainly was engaging in behavior that was not helpful to anyone and was mean. Since the resentments that I have center around people being mean to me this is pretty funny.

#2 Being a hater. Once I am in the hating space it is pretty easy to just hate away. This was good for list making purposes but is an interesting thing to consider for daily life. Once I am in the negative it is not that much of a stretch to see things from that perspective. When I am in the hate space than I am a victim of everyone. It is unpleasant and downright disempowering being my kind of hater. I am glad I am not there very often these days.

#3 Jealousy. I notice that a good deal of my resentments were against women and had some sort of jealous subtext. Sort of like, you were mean to me and you were really pretty and good at your job. I felt like you judged yourself as better than me. Which really was more like: I judged you as better than me and then I felt yucky and less than and terrible and blamed you. Which really was more like: I felt yucky and terrible and blamed you.

#4 Love--or something. I have some heavy resentments in the romance department too. These are more complicated since I had some complicated entanglements. Yes, entanglements. Ok, I think what I can say about this category is that it is not that dissimilar from my work category. I felt less then and terrible and blamed you. To sum it up, I dont think anyone can love someone enough or right if that person doesnt love themselves enough or right. The men I was involved with could never have loved me enough or right back then--regardless of how much they tried, really cared, or wanted to help me. I was a lost cause dressed in black and waiting for someone else to find me, save me, and basically fix me. I think we all can see how that is not the set-up for a good relationship. My most bitter resentments stem from a time in my life, again, where I hated myself, felt so lost, and was just looking for someone to make it all better. I hate or hated some of these men so much for not loving me enough for both of us. Ouch.

So, this is all that I have learned so far. I am just beginnning to look at my actual resentments so sure there is tons more to learn. Right now I just feel totally floored at how much I blamed the people around me for feelings that I had. I feel less than and I blame you for thinking you are better than me. I feel ugly and blame you for thinking you are prettier than me. I feel stupid and inadequate and blame you for thinking you are smarter and more competent than me. It is painful to see how I did this--to others and to myself. Painful but fascinating.

I hope you are all learning something today. I know it sounds corny but last night I was trying to help my daughter figure out what to do instead of cry when she feels frustrated. Nothing against crying but it is not always productive to solving the problem at hand. So I am saying something like, when you feel like crying because you are frustrated than maybe you can just Stop and think about what you really need or want and then ask for help if you need it--this way you know what you want and other people do too. She thought about this and then agreed to try. She said something later asking how I knew what she should do. I told her that I have struggled with this crying about the problem instead of thinking about the solution for a very very long time. She laughed and said since you were 5? Yes, that sounds just about right--trust me kid, I got this one. xx K











http://silkworth.net/aa/12steps.html

Finally to Good Enough...

Hi All. Are you sick of me yet? Shit. Now that I have started writing I just cant seem to stop. So, today: today today today. Today was hard. I will write that again. Today was hard. Today I took my Dad back to the house he used to live in to put it on the market so that he can move up here with all of us. Ultimately, this is a good thing but as I sat there with him...looking around his house with all of his stuff and pictures...it did not feel like a good thing. It felt sad. Terribly sad and not much else. I resisted the urge to say something positive. He said that it felt like the end of something. I was about to say but also the beginning and stopped myself.

I thought about how sometimes life is sad and things are hard. Change is hard. Yes, there will be a silver lining, maybe many silver linings but none of that matters when you are sitting in your house and about to sell it because you realize that you can't live alone anymore. It felt somehow liberating to just be sad with him. Not to try to manipulate things around and make him feel better--which truthfully never really works anyway. There we were--just sad and sitting there.

I looked around at all of the stuff in his home. Antiques, pictures, things that had stories. His things. Things that had stories that only he knew. It felt so strange to be there with all of those stories. Deciding which ones to take back here and which to get later. Honestly, it just felt all wrong. Then I went in the bathroom and just sat there. OK, I feel sad. OK, this is sad. OK. I have to just be there for him. OK. I am leaving bathroom and returning to help my Dad. This is NOT about me.

I tried asking for help throughout the day. Relieve me of the bondage of self. Relieve me of the bondage of self. I think it sort of worked. I had moments of frustration, resentment, sadness but I had many more moments of feeling that I was doing the right thing. Of feeling that I was doing the best that I could and it was good enough. One big moment of the day was when I realized that everyone else was doing their best too. Perfect? No. Good enough, yep, good enough. Amen. xxK

Into Action and Resentments

Hi All,

Well, last night it really started. I am on my way to doing an actual and real fourth step from the Big Book (of Alcoholics Anonymous). This is interesting for lots of different reasons but mostly because I am actually doing it with my real and true sponsor, who I actually talk to twice a week at designated times. For anyone reading not in recovery (Hi Mom :) this just means that I am doing a personal inventory of people that I have resentments towards. The idea is that we basically clean out our emotional closet so we can understand our role in our resentments and, ultimately, our lives. I find it all sort of daunting since my party line usually is--who me? mad? (Said with red crazy face and clenched teeth and punctuated with a door slam.)

Trying to look back at my entire life and figure out resentments is really strange because it requires some serious (not entry level) honesty. Not if I deserve to have a resentment, but if I do. This to me is an important distinction. This is about my truth not about what I want my truth to be. So far my experience with my list is that I dont have much to work with. I am either highly evolved (nope dont think so) or have been the victim once again of my very own brand of revisionist history. Who me? Mad? This is coming from someone who often said things like I dont really get angry and I meant it. What I should have said is that when I experience an emotion that feels something like anger, I order a drink, drink it, and repeat until said emotion is gone. No wonder I thought I never felt anger, because I never really allowed myself to.

The sort of sad part of all of this is that because my drinking was my coping skill there are some emotional tools that I am only just beginning to make sense of. These are adult skills but (like many of us in recovery) I am a beginner adult at 38 and am still trying to feel my way thru the darkness of emotional honesty. Who am I angry at? Forget why, I can barely get the who? It turns out that I am actually a little afraid to face anger and/or resentments.

A long time ago when I first quit drinking I remember being afraid to cry. I just thought and maybe even said that if I started crying I might never stop. I cried for the better part of the first year of my sobriety. I am not sure over what specifically. Mourning my friend alcohol and then just trying to sort thru what it feels like to actually feel things. The answer is...surreal, exciting, and scary. In much the same way that I worried that my crying would never stop I guess I am sort of worried that there will be no end to the anger pit once I dive into it. While I know this is not true, it feels that way. All I can think is- that if we dont understand our own history for real then we really are doomed to repeat it. Here's to a fourth step that doesnt go on forever--and honest feelings for all of us. xxK

I