Emotional sobriety

The topic of today's meeting was emotional sobriety.

The way I picture my emotional sobriety is that I seem very together on the outside, but on the insides I'm feeling like there are monsters at war with heroes. Sometimes I'm the hero, sometimes I'm the monster. Sometimes I'm the frightened villager cowering beneath their massive feet.

And that seems real. The quiet everyday-ness of life seems like an emotional pretense for the all-too-real emotional warfare happening in my head. And my heart. And the base of my neck.

The other thing that comes to mind with emotional sobriety is boundaries. My boundaries are so poor, I don't know where I end and where someone else begins. If I care about you, your problem becomes my problem. And if you care about me, my problem becomes your problem. And then we live in the muck.

Someone in the meeting said something I found very profound. I only hurt the people I feel I have power over. I don't rage against my boss and I don't rage against strangers. But know me well enough, and I'll tell you what I really feel about you. And some of that will be hurtful.

I remember as a child never closing my bedroom door. I always felt, I guess, that that would be interpreted as hiding something, of holding back. I never looked at my room as a refuge from anyone or anything. I never had my own safe place. I always felt like I needed to be around and available.

People were never barred from my room. But no one ever came into my room either.

And now I suffer under this same open boundary in my primary relationship. I can't seem to ask for my own space. I can't seem to find my own emotional space. I'm always dragged in, and I feel no power to stay within myself. My wife is similarly wired. It's like standing in a pool of gasoline asking each other for a light some of time.

I don't have any answers today. I don't have a clue, really. Search... Search... Nope, nothing.

Perhaps... there's probably an amend to make to myself. An amend to take care of myself, to nurture myself. And an amend to all other people to let them be responsible for their own feelings. That's the best I can do today.

Someone shared that they have every intention -- on entering a difficult conversation -- of staying rational, staying balanced. But for them, before ten minutes are out, they are dragged in and part of the havoc. That's how it feels for me. I can have all the best plans and the best intentions, but when the clock starts, when things actually get going, I revert to my patterns with people.

I like the metaphor of the budding sapling. All great trees start as a little twig. Emotional sobriety is a gentle twig I mow down every day.

I'm not a doctor, but I play one in my life

The subject of today's meeting was Step Two. Two is key for me, because my Step One was very sincere, a very low bottom. I was disgusted by my behavior and I couldn't stop. Desperate. Step Three was fairly easy for me, because I've always been one to jump on the bandwagon. Very willing. Recovery has been a very good thing to commit to.

Step Two is hard, harder for me. I like to entertain the notion that I'm special, especially damned and beyond hope. I'm really not all that hard a case, but I feel incurable. I think this arises from my experience of not being able to fix myself. I can be so hard-headed that I think "If I can't fix it, no one can".

I'm such an expert. I am also an expert on most other people.

Step Two tells me that there is something out there that can make me whole. It also tells me that that power is not me. From this, I understand that the best thing I can do is get out of the way. The doctor (God) wants to work on me, but I need to get out of the way first.

That is really, really hard for me. For some reason, I am always searching, always reaching. I think my mind is completely devoted to being a problem-solver. There is no bigger problem than me. How is that for grandiosity?

Thinking about it more as I drove from the meeting, there is only one Step where I fix anything, and that is Step 9. I fix -- or at least try to fix -- the messes I have made along the way. And even that is a humble task, because I do not really fix the issue, I do my best to mend the issue. I treat the problems of the past, I do not ultimately correct them.

But the other Steps, the other actions of recovery, none of them are about me fixing anything. None. It is just not part of the program. What is a part? Accepting. Accepting. Always, always I want things to be different. I guess I am afraid that if I accept things, things will not change. That is my fear. That is the little "truth" that keeps me in a state of personal meddling.

God, I am afraid of letting go. I am afraid that I am not going to be taken care of. I am afraid that letting go means giving up. I am a fighter. I am a fighter. Man, am I beat up.

So, I have a lot to learn. Luckily, I do not have to go anywhere to, catch anything, hold anything to learn it. I just need to be here now. I need to let go.

Please God, you are welcome to my sorrow, you know how to sooth it.
You are welcome to my pain, you know how to treat it gently,
God, you are welcome to mistakes, you know which step lead me astray,
You are welcome to my plans, you know better than I.

May I accept what is happening now
May I move forward with simplicity
May I look backward with equanimity
May I be grateful for all that happens

A visitor

This blog finally had a visitor who is neither a close recovery friend or someone looking for fake Confucius quotes. I linked to Confucius quotes once, and now I am apparently a top resource for Consucius quotes on the web.

The visitor was a blogger I've been following and apparently she found this blog through her traffic statistics.

This inspires me to write again. The completely lack of attention had discouraged me.