Skeletons 1.4 – My Recovery Reconsidered

This was originally posted on January 1, 2018. I no longer identify with these feelings, as I’m in a totally different place today. That said, I’d like to report that God has graciously allowed me to have both but in His Way, not mine.

Recovery Reconsidered: Their Way, My Way, or Both? 

As previously mentioned, I came upon a “New Year Mission Statement” I wrote back in the day titled “My Way” and after reading it, I realized: wow, this is pretty much how I currently feel in my recovery and life in general. 20 years later, I can still relate to my teenage self.

That’s when it hit me: I’m still a child in a thirty something body who needs to grow the F up. This gave me pause to ask two questions:

1. Rhetorical Question: How can I expect to raise my children right if I am still a child myself?
2. Actual Question: What have I done and NOT done to get to this point in my life?

I know exactly what I’ve done and not done and here are the simple answers:

1. As selfish and self-centered as I am, I am very codependent. I have lived my entire life putting others needs, wants, feelings and opinions before my own.  I have spent years trying to live up to everyone’s ideal of me so that I remain in their good graces, even when I don’t need, want, feel or think the same as them.
2. I have not made my recovery a priority.  I haven’t done the steps properly and have been stagnant in my growth due to my fears; thinking I am not good enough to share in meetings, worthy of taking tokens, engaging in sponsorship or seeking more friends in recovery outside my little circle…until now.

I know what you’re thinking: why haven’t you, Pixie? What’s been holding you back these (close to) 6 years that you haven’t drank?

The long and short of it is this: I fully embodied the dry drunk mentality.  I was carrying around the idea of “someday” being able to “drink like a lady.” (Which P.S. WTF came up with that phrase, as if women drink differently than men. FTS, we’re all human beings who suffer from a spiritual malady that keeps us alcoholics sick so that will be last time I use that ridiculous phrase.)  The obsession was alive and well for most of my recovery and was finally lifted on December 12th, 2016.

I could give you a million more reasons why, I’m good at that. Justifying my “not so great” decisions to make myself feel better; or to make you think that I’m doing everything that is expected of me so that I am not shamed, or punished when you find out I am not.

With that said, I am SO done living that way within the rooms of AA. I’m pushing 40 years old for crying out loud.  I’m tired of feeling bad that I don’t work my program “their way.” It’s time I own “my way” and finally work a program that works for me.

But, here’s the thing:

“My way” is a big “bad” skeleton (BBS.)

#morewillberevealed