Resentment

That I am not too well at the moment may not be the most obvious thing to those around me, but it is true.  I am not too well at all.  I have for some time now been trying to conceal the fact that I am enraged; that I wish for the slow and painful death of my enemies.  I am so angry that my work is impaired, my life is diminished.  I cannot fall asleep and once I do I have a hard time getting up.

I don’t remember being this unhappy at Christmas.  Four years ago, maybe, but definitely not since.  Maybe I’m just emotional, but God gave us emotions for a reason so I suppose there is something there that I can be growing from.   So you’ll excuse me if I rant for a second, right?

I sent my mom off to rehab earlier in the month.  My step-dad was trying to figure out a way to get her thrown in jail, but I managed to talk him into rehab and then I had to talk her into going.  Hours of screaming.  It took hours of screaming.  He promised to do several things while she was away and he promised he would attend family week.  He has done none of the things he said he would do and he is not attending family week.  He is a flaming bag of assholes and I wish he’d die.  But if he isn’t going to die, I hope my mom survives divorcing him.

The older of my two sisters has been a raving lunatic for nearly a month, (plus some 40-odd years, but who’s counting) and in spite of the fact that my other sister bought her a plane ticket to fly down from Siberia, she decided not to come and to blame everyone else in my family for causing her to not use her non-refundable ticket.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time defending myself against my step-father’s assertion that I am on the verge of relapse, an idea he is anxious to tell everyone.  It is possibly a marijuana induced delusion, but he doesn’t have a problem with pot.  He’s just an alcoholic.  Ironic, isn’t it?  That someone who claims to be sober, but isn’t, would be warning about the imminent relapse of someone who is actually sober?

I realized when I was barely able to keep myself from crying over it at a meeting tonight, that I am already fearing the day that my sponsor dies.  He’s 76, I think.  He isn’t going to live forever.  I hadn’t realized before tonight, though, how strongly I feel love for him.

And just for a wacked twist to everything, I’ll throw this in.  I haven’t thought about the Imaginary Future Ex-Husband in a long, long time.  He crossed my mind briefly on the 13th which is the anniversary of the night he vanished on me, making my recovery possible, but except for that, he is not part of my consciousness.  Tonight I ran into his brother at a meeting.  He has been sober for 4 days.

All of these things, and more, have been weighing heavily on me and I have barely been pretending to be normal-ish,  and I am only one more disaster away from bursting into tears and running away from home.  I feel powerless to change any of it.  I feel unable to even change my point of view or my attitude.  I am not sure, but I don’t think I’ve been this fucked up in 4 years.

“But what’s to be done? What can one do in such a case? Must one despair?”

“No. It is enough that you are distressed at it. Do what you can, and it will be reckoned unto you. Much is done already in you since you can so deeply and sincerely know yourself.”
-Feodor Dostoievsky, “The Brothers Karamasov”

It hardly seems like the fact that I am distressed is enough.  I suppose, however, that it is a beginning of a first step on the situations that face me.  I have been trying ‘The Best Short Prayer” for awhile now, and it seems to not yet be working.  I suppose if I just said ‘fuck it’ I would get up and go paint my bathroom or something.  Pink, I think  I have gotten all the hideous wallpaper down so I suppose it is time to do something.  There is plenty around here to busy myself ‘doing’ – and in that I might at least find myself ‘being’ productive or distracted.  If I found something to do for someone else, like Zossima suggests farther along in the narrative, I might even grow to again have faith in a plan and a purpose for me and a connection to a Higher Power that can solve all my problems.

“But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead of nearer to it at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.”