A Rough Day After

After I left the workshop on Saturday, I felt a tsunami of emotions sweep over me. On Sunday it was worse.

The thoughts were tumultuous, huge waves of self-loathing, self-pity, doubts, fears,  selfish and self-centered to the extreme.

Thoughts like, "Why do I even bother?  Who cares?  So what if I have 19 years of sobriety?  What difference does it make?  No one even notices.  I'm nothing in the mix of all the people who make it or don't make it.  Why don't I just give up?  It doesn't matter to anybody.  Not even to myself.  There is no point in it.  I might as well just give up.  Who needs a 20 years birthday in AA?  I don't.  No body else appreciates me.  Why don't I just stop doing this?  It's useless.  I'm stupid.  I keep on trying to do this Program, these Steps, and I still don't get it right all the way, all the time.  I still have to keep learning, learning, learning like I'm too slow to get it like everybody else seems to be getting it.  Look at them...they got it.  I don't."  Wah, wah, wah.   Jeesh.  It was m-e-a-n, cruel, incessant.  Resentment is a number one offender in that it's so sneaky, feels so natural, like second-nature.  Don't even realize I'm in it, like an emotional quicksand sucking me down into the mire and guck of the abyss, the hellhole of separation from my HP and fellow human beings.

I felt bewildered, beleaguered, confounded.  Whoa.

I realized I over-did it the day before.  The workshop lasted all day.  There were breaks but it felt like I'd been in a marathon.  I didn't even want to go to the restroom because I felt afraid I'd miss something.  Plus at the end of the day, I realized the whole workshop was pretty much what I'd already heard on-line.  And I felt disappointed in me.  :(

So Sunday I stayed home most of the day, prepared to go to the 3pm meeting but on-route I changed my mind.  I dropped off Stitch's grooming comb and lint brush at my daughter's apartment then I went to Goodwill (a thrift store) and browsed, looked around, relaxed for a few hours.  Not really wanting or needing anything, just curious to see what the Universe brought there.  Like an Easter egg hunt...a surprise if I find something I really like.  :)  LOL

Anyway, after resting and relaxing I felt so much better.  My place in the matrix of where I fit readjusted itself.  The Higher Power rules and I submit.  My sobriety does matter.  It matters to me and to others who may feel a ray of hope that no matter what, I got 19 years under my belt.  I may not work the Steps perfectly and that's okay.  Just as long as I keep working them.  More will be revealed.  And it does get better.  Just like the disease gets worse and worse if left untreated.  The healing and growth in the Program gets better and better as long as I suit up and show up and work those darn Steps...yeah!  Love, Carol xoxox