Alright. Forgive my language, but yesterday was a rough one. I did my best to shake off vanilla girl from my previous post and celebrate the fact that I had hit two weeks. It was very rainy and cold here in NYC. The rain has always gotten to me. It puts me in a bad mood and makes me want to stay in bed. I know this is childish and rather inconvenient since I don't live in the desert, but so it is. Trudged to work anyway.
Some backstory. I was supposed to get promoted to manager a year and a half ago. I had earned it and they had told me they were firing the operations manager, and I would get bumped up to manager, thereby doubling my salary and giving me a job that I liked a lot better. However, the combination of the economy and the fact that they didn't fire this guy, even though he sexually harassed a lot of people (ie rubbing my shoulders all the time, mentioning casually that he'd like to f*** me on his desk...) and seriously slacks on the job, he apparently has some sort of blackmail info on the bosses because he NEVER gets fired. Someone sued once. She lost.
Oh poor me, life is so unfair, cue a thousand tiny violins playing just for me!!! So that combined with the economy, we all got a 10% pay CUT and I didn't get the job. Recently a manager moved to another position so yippie-skippy I got the job!!! This was about three weeks before I stopped drinking. They asked me to do two weeks to a month MAX at my regular salary before they raised to to "make sure it would work out". Nevermind that I have been covering for managers at my same salary 3x a week for the past year at my same salary without incident) Whatever. I figured I'd stick it out one more month. So a month goes by and I mentioned last week very nicely that their free introductory trial had come to an end. (I had done a huge busy season, doing the work of THREE managers for the price of none.) It took a week for the boss to get back to me due to legitimate personal business (his wife having her EIGHTH baby). So yesterday he had the new operations manager tell me he wanted to wait til the end of the next busy season, at the end of May. I had a freaking conniption. I co-manage with my old immediate superior, a good friend and basically blew my top at him for a good twenty minutes so that I wouldn't do that to the boss or quit or anything. So I am also freaking out because I have to move in a month, I am looking at apartments today and I don't even know what I will be making or when! It kind of has some bearing on what I rent, ya know? A studio apt here costs $1500 a month, which I can't afford at all without the raise.
Now look. I am not without perspective. I am incredibly grateful to have a job and I kept reminding myself of that. The money will come. I reminded myself of that too. But here's the thing. Despite my drinking and starving, there were plenty of emotions I still experienced, much as I tried to quash them. But not anger. Sure I felt hurt or frustrated plenty of times, but WOW. The red monster came out yesterday. I truly wanted to BURN THE PLACE DOWN. I wasn't going to but even feeling like that was absolutely terrifying! I don't know how to handle anger because I've never really experienced it before! What do I do???
I lamented that I couldn't drink, couldn't smoke, couldn't even go home and have really angry sex with someone! (Angry sex by yourself is somehow just silly). I wanted to pick up a cigarette, get drunk at a bar and take some unsuspecting fellow home. Can't really walk into a coffee shop and grab some guy by the tie and say, "hey big boy..." I'd probably trip over a stroller. Damn.
So I went to my damn meeting with my accursed brownies. Saw vanilla girl. She pretended she didn't see me and left. Aren't women swell? So I gave away her brownies to someone else. The people I gave them to were very appreciative. The meeting helped somewhat, though not much. Went home and talked to a non AA friend for awhile. I had to explain to her why I had missed a fundraiser she was throwing. She had gone to the one I threw when I was raising money last year while doing a marathon for leukemia/lymphoma. So I felt bad, but it was a bunch of random ladies I didn't know getting together over what else but white whine! She is a super close friend of mine so I told her about going into AA. Like everyone else, she expressed surprise and like many of my friends seemed somewhat uncomfortable because, "but Rachel, I drink like you do! Does that mean you think I'm an alcoholic???" Head-desk.
Once I got her past that point it was a pleasant conversation. I told her that I could not possibly have any idea nor did I have any opinion about such a matter. I assured her that my head was far too up my own bottom to judge her drinking habits, nor was I about to start now. If she ever asks to come to a meeting I will take her happily but just as no one knew the extent of my drinking, I don't feel like I should be judging others on the matter.
Anyhow. It was a tiring day. Finished up with some big book and actually some of the stuff about "turning it over" clicked finally. That has been a big sticking point, as I don't believe in God as something sentient, so while I believe in a higher power, turning it over just didn't make sense with my conception of God. But I was able to click it into place last night. The best way I can describe it is that my conception of life/God/higher power and how it all fits together with self is an analogy with the ocean. That each of us and our lives are like a wave on the ocean. We have our moment, we crest and fall, we are our own wave, but all that time that you can see us, we never stop being part of the ocean. So turning it over is sort of like accepting and moving with the tide instead of trying to fight it. That the tide is what caused me to be a wave in the first place and I'll have a much easier trip if I just go with it and let it take me where I am supposed to go... It's always better when you work with nature instead of against it. So yeah. At least I had that yesterday.
-- Edited by whitewhineoh on Tuesday 27th of April 2010 07:05:04 AM
-- Edited by StPeteDean on Wednesday 28th of April 2010 04:50:36 AM
"Don't worry about getting in touch with your emotions.....
they will be getting in touch with you"
That has been my experience
I use the phone
a LOT
attending meetings talking to my sponsor working the steps
made things quiet down
a LOT, things will even out, they do for all of us that work the steps, if we don't, it just gets worse, that's why we say the difference between an alcoholic and a hard drinker is when a hard drinker quits drinking their problems go away
__________________
Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night, light a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
Wowww, Rach. Incredibly good stuff there, your post is shot through with little miracles. Let me be the other " wave" right now (I LOVE that concept!), and be there traveling with you, alongside you, and let you know what I "see".
You have begun to believe that a Higher Power could restore us to sanity. That if we give up the fighting with life-events we can work on, but not control, our sanity returns. This coincides with Step 2.
Jump back to Step 1. We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol; that our lives had become unmanageable. (And therefore, we are powerless over LIFE too. Everyone is, they just don't all get the opportunity to realize it like we do.)
I used to think at certain times, especially during sobriety of over a year or more, that I could finally "manage" my life. I thought unmanageability meant that I wasn't working or couldn't pay the bills or didn't have a car or other things like that. I was wrong about that. The things that were unmanageable in my life could be as simple as the fact that I kept trying to control how other people, at work or privately, were reacting in my life. Another thing was that when I became angry enough times, I was in real danger of slipping in my sobriety. This stuff cannot be controlled, and is therefore unmanageable. Yes, we are going to experience anger. But we don't know how to manage it. "While anger was the dubious luxury of normal men, for alcoholics, it actually had the power to kill." Strong words right from Big Book (save for my possible imperfect placement of the words in the exact same order... but the content and idea is spot on). I also find that other emotions and situations are unmanageable. Not just wehre alcohol is concerned. And the way my head bounces from one fear or resentment to another fear or resentment is unmanageability at its finest.
The crux of all this, the powerlessness and unmanageability is that "I can't. But HP (Higher Power) and the collective spirit of AA CAN......... and I think I will allow it/them to." It means we no longer try to manage our lives completely by ourselves. It means we surrender. And we surrender not to lose, but WE surrender in order to WIN. Together.
And you are reaching out, over and over again. And that shows real growth and real acceptance. You are beginning to accept that you don't have all the answers, and that a Higher Power can indeed provide you with the people, the literature, the concepts, the Grace, to help you.
No small wonder that the only- ONLY way to stay sober through AA is to NOT try to do it alone. The fact that we have to continually, once we have worked the steps and had a spiritual awakening as a result, HAVE to reach out to others and share our miracle in order to STAY sober, is based on a simple truth. That alcoholism is a disease of isolation. And that the only way out of the disease's cripple, is to stop the isolation. So the remedy requires interaction, both with a Higher Power (HP), and with other people. Something I know I shyed away from in my drinking. I used to think, "I created these problems in my life, and now I have to fix them... and I CAN'T fix them.... so I can't be fixed." See how clever? Dead end, right? Wrong.
Lightbulbs are going on for you every which-way. You are getting this. And without these great learning tools right now, (job problems, financial problems, interpersonal problems), you and I would not have a laboratory in which to start "getting it". What a blessing that we DO have real-life application of our program, if we are looking for applications, which we are.
(((((BIG hugs to you today))))) Keep trusting that things will work out, and keep sharing and reaching to AA for help!
With Love, Joni
-- Edited by jonijoni1 on Tuesday 27th of April 2010 10:21:01 AM
__________________
~Your Higher Power has not given you a longing to do that which you have no ability to do.
Ahahahaha. Ago. Nice one. LJC, yes I have a sponsor, though she hasn't told me specifically what step I am "supposed" to be on. I generally think I'm on three? Just I have known I am an alcoholic for a couple of years and that I didn't have control over it, and I have recently really understood that my life was just not livable this way. So I feel comfy with step one, and have always believed in a higher power, just had a bit of stumbling with the lingo in the big book, since my higher power is more energy than the traditional Judeo/Christian patriarchal God. So the whole "turning my will over" tripped me up a bit and made me cranky, though I feel like I have found a way to understand it now. However, I can't say that I have in fact turned it over, you know? That's gonna take some serious work as I am a control freak, especially as it comes to self-control. The funny thing is, except where alcohol is concerned, I have always considered someone of INCREDIBLE self-control. Most of the time. Sigh. I freak out when I feel out of control. That was a big issue with my food stuff. To the point where people thought it was a GOOD thing that I was drinking. They saw it as, "Oh, she's letting go! What progress!" Um, no. So step three is going to take awhile for me. And I am REALLY not anxious to get to step four. But given that I am sixteen days in, I don't think I need to be rushing so fast.
