Hi All,
Today is Thursday. All here is going ok. It is not easy this business of being an adult, and being responsible, and being sober, and enjoying it. I can say that I am trying. I am trying hard to be the person that I want to be and to keep myself focused not on what I want, but on who I want to be. I memorized the Third Step Prayer which I will attempt to link to if I can figure out how to. This is not to get all AA crazy on anyone but just to show where I am at. I am working really hard on the spiritual principle of turning my will over to a power that is greater than me. My higher power. God. Or, in my case, some sort of hybrid of the God of my childhood and the Higher Power of my adulthood. I used to think that I could not mesh those two but I have come full circle with this and realized it is my God I am talking about--so it is just fine if it only makes sense to me.
I got thinking about this picture that I remember of my First Holy Communion. I was wearing this white dress and veil. I love this picture because I actually remember being really happy on that day. I remember feeling spiritually connected and special. I actually thought maybe I want to be a nun someday...no, I am not kidding. I was young but I got something on that day. I felt a taste of something divine within myself. As I grew up, I grew further away from that girl. It is funny that at 38 I find myself more like her than I was at 28 or even 18. I think maybe that girl is who I want to be again. The girl who was curious, spiritual, smart, wordy, and interested in everyone's story. That was Karen Anne and getting back to her was the distance that I have traveled in 30 years. All the way to Hong Kong I have traveled looking for someone else, something else, seeking.
Years of my life spent looking at other people. Studying their face, their personalities, their style, their intelligence, their family, their everything that was not me. Years spent contrasting and comparing. Years drinking and thinking about just who it was going to take, what special person I could find, that would make my life special, make me happy, excited, and ok. Was it this boyfriend? That boyfriend? Someone I hadnt met yet or might. Someone I let get away? Someone I could never really get? Somewhere I just knew that he was the answer. If I could just think harder, see things more clearly, talk to him a little longer I might just be able to figure this all out.
I wonder now when I look back why I was always so sure that everyone else had something that I didnt. What made them special and me--not? Maybe the wisdom is that we are each as special as we think we are. Or maybe we are all the same amount of special and it takes us all our own journey to figure this out. Some of us think we're less special, some think they are more, and eventually we all get to our right size--right along with everyone else.
I dont know where I am going with this really. Somewhere corny? Spiritual? All I know is that I am beginning to hear that girl that I thought I had lost. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her in my daughter but more often I hear her...right here, with me. She is not a stranger. She's been right here with me this whole time. It turns out that my true self...is not an alcoholic, not selfish, not mean, or sarcastic, or melodramatic.
Dont get worried. I am not doing any strange denial thing. I accept my alcoholism as part of me forever. I accept that I need to treat it and that I cant underestiamate its power to bring me down. To twist me up. I see so clearly today how much power it had in my life. How much power I gave it. I never got that part before--that I gave it all away. I never got that I always had something to give. I heard the other day an old familiar phrase: there are no victims, only volunteers. Amen to that. xxK
http://silkworth.net/aa/3rd.html
Today is Thursday. All here is going ok. It is not easy this business of being an adult, and being responsible, and being sober, and enjoying it. I can say that I am trying. I am trying hard to be the person that I want to be and to keep myself focused not on what I want, but on who I want to be. I memorized the Third Step Prayer which I will attempt to link to if I can figure out how to. This is not to get all AA crazy on anyone but just to show where I am at. I am working really hard on the spiritual principle of turning my will over to a power that is greater than me. My higher power. God. Or, in my case, some sort of hybrid of the God of my childhood and the Higher Power of my adulthood. I used to think that I could not mesh those two but I have come full circle with this and realized it is my God I am talking about--so it is just fine if it only makes sense to me.
I got thinking about this picture that I remember of my First Holy Communion. I was wearing this white dress and veil. I love this picture because I actually remember being really happy on that day. I remember feeling spiritually connected and special. I actually thought maybe I want to be a nun someday...no, I am not kidding. I was young but I got something on that day. I felt a taste of something divine within myself. As I grew up, I grew further away from that girl. It is funny that at 38 I find myself more like her than I was at 28 or even 18. I think maybe that girl is who I want to be again. The girl who was curious, spiritual, smart, wordy, and interested in everyone's story. That was Karen Anne and getting back to her was the distance that I have traveled in 30 years. All the way to Hong Kong I have traveled looking for someone else, something else, seeking.
Years of my life spent looking at other people. Studying their face, their personalities, their style, their intelligence, their family, their everything that was not me. Years spent contrasting and comparing. Years drinking and thinking about just who it was going to take, what special person I could find, that would make my life special, make me happy, excited, and ok. Was it this boyfriend? That boyfriend? Someone I hadnt met yet or might. Someone I let get away? Someone I could never really get? Somewhere I just knew that he was the answer. If I could just think harder, see things more clearly, talk to him a little longer I might just be able to figure this all out.
I wonder now when I look back why I was always so sure that everyone else had something that I didnt. What made them special and me--not? Maybe the wisdom is that we are each as special as we think we are. Or maybe we are all the same amount of special and it takes us all our own journey to figure this out. Some of us think we're less special, some think they are more, and eventually we all get to our right size--right along with everyone else.
I dont know where I am going with this really. Somewhere corny? Spiritual? All I know is that I am beginning to hear that girl that I thought I had lost. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of her in my daughter but more often I hear her...right here, with me. She is not a stranger. She's been right here with me this whole time. It turns out that my true self...is not an alcoholic, not selfish, not mean, or sarcastic, or melodramatic.
Dont get worried. I am not doing any strange denial thing. I accept my alcoholism as part of me forever. I accept that I need to treat it and that I cant underestiamate its power to bring me down. To twist me up. I see so clearly today how much power it had in my life. How much power I gave it. I never got that part before--that I gave it all away. I never got that I always had something to give. I heard the other day an old familiar phrase: there are no victims, only volunteers. Amen to that. xxK
http://silkworth.net/aa/3rd.html
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