Sunday, July 20, 2014

Hey! Where did everybody go?!

One of my biggest, most challenging accomplishments in sobriety (hands down) has been learning how dangerous self-pity is (not to mention boring, and lame, and unoriginal, and self indulgent, and....well you get the point). It is especially dangerous to addicts. We wallow in it. We convince ourselves that if everyone else knew what it felt like to walk in our shoes, or if they had to survive the shit we've survived, they would be a mess too. It's a big part of the way our addiction deceives and manipulates us; it's not the drugs that are ruining my life, it's everything else!



The reason I bring up self-pity is because I find myself struggling with an inability to find that hidden line between real hurt feelings and just plain old feeling sorry for myself. How am I to know? What I'm discovering is that, in an attempt to rid my life of all self-indulgent pity, I seem to have lost the very important art of recognizing my feelings, honoring them, and then doing something about it. I think I may have become a bit of a doormat during this transformation and I'm pretty sure that's not the desired effect....

Perhaps the difference between the two is that in one scenario: my feelings get hurt, or I'm struggling with this whole "trying to be normal" thing, or my anxiety is getting the better of me, or I realize how exhausting recovery is and I start feeling resentful towards the whole goddamned thing and I allow those feelings to own me. I let them eat me alive and the next thing you know, "No one knows what it's like to be me" becomes my mantra again (and we all know where THAT leads).

In the second scenario however, I behave quite differently. In this scenario: my feelings get hurt, or I'm struggling with the whole "normal" thing, or the darkness begins to take over and I still allow those feelings to exist (because they do) but I do not allow them to take over my thinking. I acknowledge how I feel and then I do something about it. I take action.  

When I was in early recovery, I learned about this "taking action" phenomenon. I learned that if I truly wanted my life to change, if I wanted my life to look, smell, and/or feel different, I had to start doing things that I didn't necessarily want to do. Changing behaviors is one of the hardest things for any human being (never mind an addict) to do. However, we must learn to do this if we wish to achieve long-term sobriety.

Perhaps what I'm really struggling with is fear. Perhaps I'm scared that the people who loved me before my addiction began, do not love me anymore. Perhaps I'm scared that they will never understand and they will always silently judge and perhaps I'm afraid that I will be an outsider forever. I want to say to them "Don't you think I've suffered enough?", "Don't you think I've paid for my mistakes?", "Can't you see that I was fighting for my life and that it was never about you, or me, or anyone else, it was always about something so much bigger than all of us?"

But the truth is, I know that I can't say any of those things. I may feel them, and I may think them, but I can never say them. I know that I can never say, "Look how BIG this is for me. Look how I am on the outside and all of you are on the inside and look at how much easier it would be for you to extend a hand....than it is for me to try and find a way back in." I can never say it, but I want to. I really, really do.

My heart aches. Literally. I have all these feelings that I know I'm not really entitled to, except that I have them. I often feel alone, like a freak, misunderstood, ignored, looked down upon. I often feel like an outsider looking in and the truth is--it hurts. So whether or not I have ground to stand on, whether I'm within my rights to express these feelings or not, and whether this is me wallowing in self-pity or just acknowledging how I feel, I cannot continue to keep it all bottled up inside.

Perhaps, for now, this is what taking action looks like....






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