My alcoholic mind works in strange ways. From time to time, I will decide there are certain people I intensely dislike. I will let them take up residence in my head and spend inordinate amounts of time deciding why I don’t like them. Good thing I learned that my perception was/is screwed up.
Strange, as my recovery changes, the people whom I dislike change. I’ve been told that the reasons I dislike certain people are probably the things I need to look at in myself. How positively horrifying! I thought this was the biggest load of hooey when I first heard it.
It’s almost laughable how true those words have been in my journey. Let’s see: I “hated” Tanna because she was outgoing and pretty and made friends easily. But my alcoholic mind said I hate Tanna because she flirts with everyone, has to be the center of attention and probably spends all her money on fancy clothes instead of her kids like a good mom would do. Lesson that came through the steps: I am prone to jealous fits, I want to be the center of attention and resent anyone who takes my spot, and I judge all mothers because I wanted to know where I stood on the measuring stick of moms and had a sicko need to put others lower than me.
I “hated” Travis. He was simply there to teach everyone, had an ego the size of…..well I dunno, but bigger than everyone else’s, and he was a know-it-all. Hmmmm, so what did I find out through the steps? That I have some kind of oppositional defiance disorder. When someone wants to teach me then they better disguise it as something else so that I think I figured it out otherwise I’m closing my ears. I also learned that my ego was out of control and that’s why I was so quick to focus on others who I perceived as thinking they were better than me. Pride will kill me.
Then there was Janis. I “hated” her the most. She took up so much space in my head that I should have presented her a bill for rent. Sometimes on very bad days I still think I hate her. On a decent day I can tolerate her. On a particularly good day I might feel that she has something of value to give to somebody, somewhere. The strange thing is I find it hard to even tell you what I don’t like about her. Maybe it’s the way she walks around with her nose in the air. Maybe it’s the way she avoids me at meetings. Maybe it’s the way she appears fake. It could have something to do with how judgmental I think she is. And ungrateful. And gossipy. And materialistic.
When it slowly dawned on me that all the things I hated about her were the things I hated about myself, I wanted to barf. Was I really that person? Could I act that awful? Is that who I was?
What I learned through the steps: There is hope for me. I don’t have to live that way anymore. I don’t have to be that person I hate so much. Every day I can ask God to remove from me the character defects that get in the way of serving Him and doing His will. I can work on and cultivate the gifts God gave me. I can use those gifts to better the lives of others and as a bonus my life seems to improve. I am not, nor was I ever broken beyond repair. I just needed to have the willingness to look at myself.
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