Nothing That Three Million Dollars Won’t Fix

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.

I am in the habit of thinking that I have no problems that wouldn’t be solved with the addition of $3,000,000.  With that kind of money I’d buy a modest half-million dollar house, go to school, attend spiritual retreats and get some dental work done.  I’d relax and spend the rest of my life enjoying living.  The education thing here is kind of critical.  I’ve attempted to work full time and go  to school full time on three occasions now, and on three occasions I’ve ended up in the hospital.  So I know I can’t try that again.  That means that if I really want an education I’m going to have to figure out how to be even poorer than I am now, and still be okay.  And that whole thing has come up again because of my baby sister.

Now, let’s be clear.  I adore my sister.  She is one of my favorite people on earth.  She has worked very hard and absolutely deserves every success that she has.  I can’t even say that I’m jealous of it.  But she’s in the middle of buying this house and she sent me pictures of it.  And I don’t know the last time I felt like such a failure.  And all of that goes back to the education thing, which goes back to the time when I was 15 and mom dumped us in a foreign country for a year.  That’s the last place where the story stays simple  It just gets worse from there.  I question, at times, whether I would even have ever been an addict if there had been any continuity in my secondary education.

Change is hard.  Changing this is going to be hard.  I don’t know if I even have the stomach for it.  Anita keeps reminding me that forgiveness isn’t for the other person.  It’s for ourselves.  But one of the people I need to forgive in this mess is me.

Even if I go to school now, by the time I’m out I’ll only have about 20 years of work life ahead of me.  I wonder if it would even make sense at this point.  I’m leaving out whole chunks of information that would make this story make sense.  Sorry.  I wish I had time to be more clear now.