I think I hate being in therapy. I mean, they make you look at yourself! And who wants to do that? I thought I’d done well enough having gotten through the 4th step and, after all, I’m still sober. I guess that isn’t entirely true. After an hour and a half with Anita yesterday I realized that I still have a bunch of work to do on a resentment I didn’t think I harbored any longer. A resentment toward my mother. Oh my God! Can’t we just put that behind us already? It’s bad enough that I feel like I’ve lost all the passion in my life, and lost it long ago, but to have this still be the thing that is blocking me is beyond the pale. Read the rest of this entry »
You are currently browsing the archive for the Resentment category.
I am beyond furious and my sponsor is out of town. It happened again. I finally got last week’s paycheck cashed on Wednesday and today this week’s check bounced. Obviously, in spite of what my employer says, I need to find a new job. Read the rest of this entry »
A fight breaks out in a slum after a heavy session of whisky, gambling and Ya Ba. The effects of this rather potent form of Methamphetamine are increased aggression, paranoia and then total melt down. Week after week Thai TV channels and the newspapers were showing pictures of drug crazed adults, often with a knife to someones throats. I one instance a man slashed a babies throat killing the child all on TV. Something needed doing until so the Thaksin Government declared a "War On Drugs". Then things got really nasty. (Ya Ba translates from Thai to English as Mad Medicine).
I hate confrontation, but I’m afraid I find myself in a position where I have to have one. With my boss.
My paycheck bounced.
I’m trying to save up some money so that I can declare bankruptcy and my paycheck is bouncing. I can’t stand it. My student loan and my car payments are due as is the bill for the attorney that kept me out of jail two years ago and my “Cost of Supervision” – the surtax I pay for being a dangerous criminal. It’s Christmas. And I’m barely getting by. And my paycheck bounced. I’m so mad I could spit.
This happened about this time last year, too.
You don’t bounce payroll. I mean it’s just not done. It’s probably time for me to be looking for a new job but with unemployment in my area at 3 times what it was 2 years ago, and not having graduated from college and being a felon, the chances of me getting another job at the wage I currently make are very slim. It might be a good time to think about going back to school, too, but it’s too late to get financial aid for the spring semester. Without financial aid it will be impossible for me to go to school. I already have $10K in student loan debt – what’s another 20 more, right? If I end up with a decent job that has health insurance? Seriously, I don’t think that will ever happen. I think I’m stuck where I am.
I’m stuck where I am and I have to talk to my boss about getting paid and worry about when this is going to happen again. I just hate that.
You know, the whole last year of my recovery I’ve been in the grips of the thought that I should be weller than this by now. I should be more comfortable in my own skin and the world should somehow be more manageable. Or if I’m feeling anxious or depressed or fearful or angry there ought to be something I can take to make it go away. The Big Book is rife with claims that as recovering people we should be happy and I guess the fact that I’m not, or that I haven’t been, makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong; that I am failing at the program. It doesn’t really register that life is sometimes difficult for everyone.
I’ve been reading an old Grapevine interview with Dr. Paul, the author of “Doctor, Alcoholic, Addict” – the story that spawned the Cult of Page 449 (acceptance is the answer) and I really like what he has to say about overcoming stuff like this:
“I grew up thinking that I had to perfect my personality, then I got into AA, and AA said, no, that isn’t the way we do it: only G-d can remove our defects. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t be a better person simply by trying harder! Read the rest of this entry »
“I wish I was smarter. I wish I was stronger.” Patty Griffin
It brings me no comfort knowing I’m in a position I’ve been in before; hopeless, out of answers, hurting and not knowing why. And I am frightened to find that at nearly three years sober, the longest I have been sober since I was 14 years old, my brain is up to the same old tricks that have always ended every period of sobriety I’ve ever reached for in the past. I recognized that whatever was wrong was seriously wrong when I was sitting in the airport in Phoenix, coming home from another failed attempt to find love, and I found myself crying, listening to the Carpenters and googling “what’s the best way to kill yourself?“
I don’t need a reason to die, I thought. I need a reason to live. I have all the reasons to die I need. The recovery in me kept arguing, “this isn’t normal. You need help, kid. What about your family? What about your friends? Do you have any idea what this would do to them?”
“Yeah,” I replied inside my head. “They’ll get over it.” Read the rest of this entry »
There are natural limits on what I can compute on greed and will power alone, as I have said before, but greed and will power are my constant companions in the marketplace. I may be able to set them aside to some degree with respect to my disease and, to a lesser extent, with other alcoholics/addicts, but the fact remains that greed and will power still color virtually everything I do.
Such was the case last night when my sponsor and I went to the Western Idaho State Fair, though I could not have known it at the time.
We went through the livestock exhibits where several of his grandchildren had won ribbons for various things; rabbits, geese, ducks, pygmy goats and the like. We spent some time with his daughter, the most inspirational, funny, and kind person you could hope to meet and who, though she was born without legs, has never allowed herself to be limited by what other people think she should be able to do. We ate funnel cakes and corn dogs and wandered the midway where we enjoyed the eye candy and not the rides. We looked at quilts and photographs and tatting in the exhibition hall. And in another hall we came upon a booth selling 650 thread count egyptian cotton sheet sets – for $20.
Now, first let me let you in on a little secret. There is this boy coming to visit; this boy I’ve never met but whose voice I love, and whose sense of humor I love, and who’s quirky perspective on all things I find are either endearing or happens to match my own. This is a rare, rare boy, indeed and though I’ve “known” him through gay.com and facebook on and off for 8 years or so, we’ve never met. Secondly, you remember that, with one rather short and doomed exception, I haven’t dated anyone seriously for 16 years. Oh, I know there was the “felationship” with the “IFX” – the imaginary future ex-husband. We’re not counting that at all. That was merely an episode of loneliness and desperation – the kind that any serious addiction is bound to lead to.
I could go on and on, but I’m sure you get the picture. I want this guy to like me, and I think he wants to like me, too, because last week we decided that going on the way we have been is pointless. We should see if there is something more there. We should conduct a chemistry experiment. He bought a plane ticket. He’ll be here on Friday. I am excited, and happy and I am in a low grade panic.
So I want him to be comfortable in my house and I most especially want him to be comfortable in my bed. When I walked by the booth at the fair with the sheets all I could think was, “Oh my God! That’s 250 higher thread count than I have now. I MUST HAVE THESE!”
Now, I’m not an idiot. I know perfectly well that you cannot sell 650 ct. Egyptian cotton sheet sets for $20. I know that is not really possible. And yet I bought a set. And guess what. Not only are they not 650 ct., but they AREN’T EVEN COTTON!!!! The entire package is a LIE. And I should have known this going in. On some level I must have known it. But greed and will power are funny things, and I can hardly blame myself for being suckered in because while I bought one set, my sponsor bought three!!
When I sat down to write this I was still so mad that I wanted to go back to the fair and taser the guy who sold me the 180 thread count microfiber sheets right square in the nuts.
But I feel better now. I’ve taken a look at where I was wrong. I’ve admitted to myself and to you that I made a decision based on selfishness and greed – and to some extent fear, and while I haven’t harmed anyone but myself, I am willing to live with the consequences of my action.
I’m also willing to go to Dillard’s later and buy some fantastic sheets, so maybe I haven’t changed that much after all.
To read more about how anger and resentment affect decision making in people, and therefor why it is fatal in addicts, I recommend “Portrait of the Angry Decision Maker” by Jennifer S. Lerner and Larissa Z. Tiedens.
To say that things at home have been tense is something of an understatement. One of the roommates has some pretty execrable behavior involving other people that I have grown very tired of. To paraphrase Elvis, a little less drama and a little more action, seem to be in order, yet there is very little hope of that happening. I got dragged into the drama the other day and I feel I am owed an apology, and there is less hope of that.
My friend Nikki had assured me of the power of prayer and shared a recent experience with asking for divine help and receiving it. As I sat on my front porch in the morning a couple of days ago I thought of what Nikki told me and thought perhaps I’d try it again. I thought I’d ask for guidance in this situation. I came inside, logged on to facebook and there was an email from a friend, sent to a good number of people, looking for a new roommate, fast.
Miss Marie lives in a very charming, newer house, not far away, with her 2 cats, and as she works in Los Angeles for months at a time, she needs someone whom she trusts her home and her cats to. I immediately sent an email. “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me!”
I know Miss Marie through a mutual friend who has seen me through the worst of my addiction and through all of my recovery so I know she has had access to the unvarnished truth about me, but to be sure I shared the information that could give a sensible person pause. Knowing all that, she didn’t hesitate for a moment. She thought, as did I, that it would do both of us good.
My probation officer didn’t hesitate either, which is good news. Miss Marie’s job starts back up the first week of August and I’ll be moving in on the 1st. We’ll have a couple of days together for me to learn the routine and then I’ll have a few weeks of utter peace. It is an extraordinary balance of accountability to another, which I find very motivating, and solitude, which I also treasure.
And all placed in my path 5 minutes after praying for guidance in the living situation.
Though I have no conception of “Higher Power” beyond “bigger than I can understand,” perhaps I’d do well to pray more.
It is so strange, and so strange that it is comforting to be again in the company of my family and among people who share my religious heritage. The Church (of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints – the Mormons) take a very dim view of homosexuality and of drug addiction. Now that the addiction part is under control, and now that my father and I have both worked very hard to heal our relationship, I’m a part of this gigantic clan again.
I have a cousin, Nicholas, who I’ve hung out with a little bit, who only ever knew my name before, not my face, and he knew that my name was always attached to trouble or heartache. “THAT Cousin Chris” is what he calls me. The younger ones figure out who I am and their eyes widen briefly. The little kids, and there are a dozen of them, all think I’m great. I think I’m just better adapted to talk to little children.
Another cousin of mine, Nate, was 6 years old when I effectively left the family. Now he’s a giant man with several children of his own, a wonderful wife, and a really cool job in Washington D. C. that affords him a ringside view of our government. (He really likes Barney Frank, whom he knows personally, and he also really likes Larry Craig, whom he knows personally, and wishes Larry would “just come out already.”) We are polar opposites, politically, but because he came by his beliefs through work and reason (as opposed to being brainwashed by talk radio and Fox News) we are actually closer than one might imagine, and honestly I think he’s really cool.
Being around these people, being in this environment, is so comfortable, and I’m only slightly ill at ease with that. I have some anger about what the LDS church has done to my tribe. I’m even more angry that members of my own family share the political view that prompted church members in Utah (mostly) to pump $40 million into California to pass Proposition 8. I don’t understand how people who love me, who claim to want the best for me, could possibly believe that a world where inequality is the law is morally right. I don’t want to be married in their temple. I am happy to live in a country where they are permitted to practice the religion of their conscience, and I believe in protecting freedom of religion. Freedom of religion is one of the civil rights that our country is built on. Equal protection under the law is another of the ideas that our country is supposed to be built on and until I am truly offered equal protection I will not really be one of them – one among my own people.
So I’m part of our family – but not a full part. Here, in this place I love, among people I love, I am considered to be an inferior.
I’m no closer to coming to believe that “a power greater than myself” is appropriate to turn my “will and life” over to the care of. I still think that “Higher Power” is an unconscious, impersonal, greater good –indifferent to my personal circumstance–the law of cause and effect if you will; cause and effect in a system too large for me to grasp. Perhaps if I were omniscient I could understand all of what has happened and what continues to happen. At the moment the power, I think, resides with me and within the group, and in my relationship with my sponsor. I refuse to concede that the Higher Power resides with and favors the saints and not the sinners –no matter what they believe.
sober count
Linked In
Recent Comments