Made a Decision

I grew up in a wild, topsy-turvy environment.  Never knowing what to expect, insecure, on guard, distrusting...and acting as if everything was fine.  My acting skills were honed.  I relied on me to survive.  This was survival.  Like the saying goes, "Never let them see you sweat".  It was in my best interest to hide, cover, deny my true self, how I really felt, thought and believed.  This is what I learned worked best.

I learned to put up a "front", a facade.  Made it as people-pleasing as possible especially to those who were in power.  Screw the rest.  Who cared about them?  I cared.  Deep down in my secret place, I cared and dared not show it.  This was survival...at a cost.

I got in a lot of trouble as a child.  Because even though all the above is true, I just couldn't sustain it.  My true feelings would break through and there I'd go again speaking my truth as if anybody really cared.  What mattered was I cared and that was good enough for me...even though I paid the price for such independent thinking, for asserting my point of view and for the sheer audacity of speaking or acting on it.

Sometimes, oh, sometimes the valiant efforts to be true to my inner self reaped great rewards, changes.  One of those changes was when we, my 2 younger brothers, sister and I,  were removed from the horrific circumstances we were living in.  We had a chance where before we had no hope.

Anyway, most of my life I continued to act "people-pleasing" with a large dose of a strong need to survive and those intermittent break-through efforts to assert myself, to get what I wanted, "by going to the candy store to buy a hammer".  I kept wanting love, attention, affection, acceptance, intimacy, emotional support, etc. from the very people who just didn't have it to give or if they did, not in enough quantity to fill the void, the large, lasting, gaping hole left in me from surviving the traumas.  Until I came to the rooms of the 12 Steps.

Here, at last, was the warmth, love, respect, acceptance in large enough quantities to help me feel loved enough, supported, understood and accepted enough to grow, develop, and blossom in self-acceptance, etc.

It felt good but it wasn't enough to arrive...I needed to make a decision.  Kind of like where Neo in the movie "The Matrix" must make a choice between the red pill or the blue.  This choice can free him from the known comforts of the "dream world" he's known all his life or he can live in the unknown territory of reality, how freedom really is.  

What is my choice?  Do I hang on to what I know?  The bondage of self?  Do I continue to exert my will in selfish, self-centered, fear-driven, controlling, best-thinking, manipulative, inconsiderate, jealousy, suspicion, bitterness, dishonest, denying, self-seeking ways?

Or do I let go?

Take the leap?

Into the unknown of depending, trusting, confiding, relying on the Higher Power I choose to call "GOD" to guide me, lead me, direct me according to the Higher Power's Will?  To use me?

One day at a time...sometimes one minute at a time.  Sincerely, Carol xoxox