My life is all alcoholics all the time these days. I don’t know where it came from, it’s certainly wasn’t my intention, but here we are. I learned how to work the program, the program worked me over, and now I have something to offer the sick and tired who are sick and tired of being SICK AND TIRED.
Those who can must, peeps. It’s a fundamental truth of our way of life, my primary purpose is and will forever more be to help another alcoholic. That’s it. Anything else I add in there re: diet, boys, outfits, occupations, and hair color is really just my will manifesting itself in the only way it knows how. It still comes right back around to; what did you do for the other guy today? Who did you help? Did you sacrifice your own creature comforts for the well-being of the next woman?
I’ve always wanted to be of service to my fellow alcoholics. I’m moved deeply whenever I hear someone announce their day count. I love Newcomer women! But for the longest I was balls out terrified to open my mouth around them, because I thought I would scare them right off. When I was still counting days, I was relatively happy. I stopped drinking and my life got immeasurably better in those first months. But from four months until very recently, I failed to enlarge my spiritual condition and my untreated alcoholism ran circles around my attempts to control my disease.
I was a surly, screaming bitch from month 4 to 14 and I had no idea why.
I tried to do some step-work, but it really didn’t have any affect because I wasn’t completely surrendered. I thought I was, but thinking can be incredibly misleading when it comes to the nature of alcoholism.
Long story short, I was given the gift of desperation AGAIN, I started my steps in earnest, and I really went after my recovery with everything I had in me. And I got better! I got glowy and happy, social and bubbly. The more I stepped, the more people started responding favorably to me and before I knew it I had new-comer girls asking how I’d stayed sober for almost two years.
I was baffled when this first happened. I’m so used to thinking of myself as a miserable excuse for sobriety that seeing some gorgeous little drunk come up to me with admiration in her eyes, was more than I could handle. I freaked out, said something weird and abrupt, and ran away. Progress not perfection, right?
I wasn’t settled into the changes that I had undergone. I didn’t trust that I could interact normally with people now that I had my spiritual experience. I was still defensive and locked up, waiting for hostile comebacks to come vomiting out of my mouth. Or for the volume of my voice to raise uncontrollably, and for people to starts slowly backing away from me. I’ve had 29 years of seeing people shy away from me, it’s normal and natural that I would still be expecting these things. But it’s no longer necessary, and slowly I started sticking around to answer the newcomer questions that were leveled at me.
And my answers are always the same.
“Ohmygod, you HAVE to do your steps. It’s like Magic….you have to try this shit!”
“Did you start your steps, yet? That’s fantastic, I’m so excited for you! You should call me, I want to hear all about it.”
And I mean every word of it. Every word of it is what was given to me when my sponsor read the Big Book with me. That’s what saved my life. Shit, that’s what gave me a life worth living! Steps, steps, and more steps. Service, service, and more service. These two things bring me incalculable amounts of joy, and I can’t stop shouting it from the rooftops.
So now, Alcoholics are popping up EVERYWHERE. There’s two in my office that are in constant need of support. One of them suffered my foolishness when I was first getting sober, and now he’s newly sober so I can repay the kindness.
God, you work in such mysterious freaking ways. I totally respect your Gangsta.
Ingenue
P.S. Stepwork brings the sexy back.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Dr. Jekkyl and Ms. Hyde? Your table for two is waiting...
It’s so funny to be getting a look at the Jekyl and Hyde nature of Alcoholic Ingenue and Recovered Ingenue.
Untreated Alcoholic Ingenue:
Walks a mile a minute with her shoulders squared and her jaw set. Shouts when she means to whisper, fumes and blames EVERYTHING on EVERYONE. She’s usually wearing way too much eye makeup (her favorite avoidance therapy is fixing up the externals when the internals are gnarly) and two pushup bras (because one is never enough when you’re sick and suffering) to try and fake cleavage that God did not intend to be there. She flirts with married men and then gets outraged when they say inappropriate things to her. She spends her entire work day trying too look busy and important at the expense of actually doing her job. Don’t even think about asking how her day went, she’ll tell you all about it. And it ain’t ever pretty.
Recovered Ingenue:
Still wakes up feeling a mild case of the Fuck Its, but drops to her knees first thing and gets in conscious contact with her creator. After that she bounds around like a golden retriever, just happy to be up and about and moving. Hair and makeup are whatever she has time for, she prefers to spend her “getting ready” time on spiritual and physical fitness. No matter. Whatever she looks like on the outside, she feels totally gorgeous so she’s free to wear whatever the fuck she pleases, male attention be damned.
Work is spent in service to the world at large. When she has a question she asks it humbly, even if it makes her look unknowledgeable. She works through problems as they arise, instead of putting them off for another day. She answers phone calls and emails. She takes responsibility for her mistakes and works arduously at correcting them.
She DOES NOT BLAME THE QUALITY OF HER LIFE ON ANYONE ELSE.
She sounds like a bit of a surfer girl when she speaks, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about that because authenticity is fucking priceless, dude.
She smiles and hugs, listens, and laughs.
With all of this evidence, you would think I’d have absolutely no reservations about strenuously working my program and chasing after my steps. And yet.
Every now and then we all need a refill on the willingness. I can’t ever forget what I become when I fail to enlarge and maintain my spiritual condition.
xoxoxo,
Ingenue
Untreated Alcoholic Ingenue:
Walks a mile a minute with her shoulders squared and her jaw set. Shouts when she means to whisper, fumes and blames EVERYTHING on EVERYONE. She’s usually wearing way too much eye makeup (her favorite avoidance therapy is fixing up the externals when the internals are gnarly) and two pushup bras (because one is never enough when you’re sick and suffering) to try and fake cleavage that God did not intend to be there. She flirts with married men and then gets outraged when they say inappropriate things to her. She spends her entire work day trying too look busy and important at the expense of actually doing her job. Don’t even think about asking how her day went, she’ll tell you all about it. And it ain’t ever pretty.
Recovered Ingenue:
Still wakes up feeling a mild case of the Fuck Its, but drops to her knees first thing and gets in conscious contact with her creator. After that she bounds around like a golden retriever, just happy to be up and about and moving. Hair and makeup are whatever she has time for, she prefers to spend her “getting ready” time on spiritual and physical fitness. No matter. Whatever she looks like on the outside, she feels totally gorgeous so she’s free to wear whatever the fuck she pleases, male attention be damned.
Work is spent in service to the world at large. When she has a question she asks it humbly, even if it makes her look unknowledgeable. She works through problems as they arise, instead of putting them off for another day. She answers phone calls and emails. She takes responsibility for her mistakes and works arduously at correcting them.
She DOES NOT BLAME THE QUALITY OF HER LIFE ON ANYONE ELSE.
She sounds like a bit of a surfer girl when she speaks, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks about that because authenticity is fucking priceless, dude.
She smiles and hugs, listens, and laughs.
With all of this evidence, you would think I’d have absolutely no reservations about strenuously working my program and chasing after my steps. And yet.
Every now and then we all need a refill on the willingness. I can’t ever forget what I become when I fail to enlarge and maintain my spiritual condition.
xoxoxo,
Ingenue
Friday, June 19, 2009
God help me.
Damn, dude. It happened again. I vacated my blogging for no good reason and here I come, crawling back in abject humility.
Yeesh, that's a bit dark isn't it? I didn't mean it to be, but it stays. Maybe that's my true inner state right now. Maybe that's what I'm trying to supress. Maybe I'm trying to hide from the fact that even though I've been step-working like my ass is on fire, my life still seems a bit.....awful. Don't get me wrong, it has it's moments! All in all though, I have to say I am not impressed.
And this is my own doing, really. I am back living with roommates, AGAIN, and again all hell is breaking loose. It's nowhere near as vicious this time, and it's not affecting me as deeply, but it is affecting me. I react, I pre-act, I fix, I solve, I pray, and everytime I think I've come to the bottom of this shit, it comes back.
Having said that, I am deeply, deeply responsible for the hurt feeling of my roommates. This time, there is no doubt in my head that I am the problem. I left the apartment for months in a state of mild disaster, I'm construction style confrontational whenever they try and approach me about it, and lately I've been pulling off this Mean Girls style sneer whenever they come within a five foot radius of me.
I'm in fullbown attack mode and I cannot make it stop.
My adversaries? A 60 year old buddhist nun and a 5 foot 2 codepenent trainer who flinches whenever someone sneezes too loud.
What the hell is the matter with me? Honestly, the buddhist nun is a bit of a nightmare, but I know why or how she's stirring up this level of character defectiveness. I cannot seem to extricate myself from the downward spiral where she pulls me aside in the morning to explain to me that I'm angry and confrontational and I respond by becoming angry and confrotational.
It's no good, the emotional hangovers are BRUTAL and I did not vacate my last hostile living situation to move into another one. Clearly, G.O.D has a lesson for me that I failed to learn the first time around, so we're going for it again.
G.O.D-
Please, for the love of all that is Holy and True, show me what it is you want me to learn in this situation so I can do the damn thing and get on with my life. And please, again for the love of all that is Holy and True, make it obvious.
Can I get a witness? Whoop whoop!
Ingenue
Yeesh, that's a bit dark isn't it? I didn't mean it to be, but it stays. Maybe that's my true inner state right now. Maybe that's what I'm trying to supress. Maybe I'm trying to hide from the fact that even though I've been step-working like my ass is on fire, my life still seems a bit.....awful. Don't get me wrong, it has it's moments! All in all though, I have to say I am not impressed.
And this is my own doing, really. I am back living with roommates, AGAIN, and again all hell is breaking loose. It's nowhere near as vicious this time, and it's not affecting me as deeply, but it is affecting me. I react, I pre-act, I fix, I solve, I pray, and everytime I think I've come to the bottom of this shit, it comes back.
Having said that, I am deeply, deeply responsible for the hurt feeling of my roommates. This time, there is no doubt in my head that I am the problem. I left the apartment for months in a state of mild disaster, I'm construction style confrontational whenever they try and approach me about it, and lately I've been pulling off this Mean Girls style sneer whenever they come within a five foot radius of me.
I'm in fullbown attack mode and I cannot make it stop.
My adversaries? A 60 year old buddhist nun and a 5 foot 2 codepenent trainer who flinches whenever someone sneezes too loud.
What the hell is the matter with me? Honestly, the buddhist nun is a bit of a nightmare, but I know why or how she's stirring up this level of character defectiveness. I cannot seem to extricate myself from the downward spiral where she pulls me aside in the morning to explain to me that I'm angry and confrontational and I respond by becoming angry and confrotational.
It's no good, the emotional hangovers are BRUTAL and I did not vacate my last hostile living situation to move into another one. Clearly, G.O.D has a lesson for me that I failed to learn the first time around, so we're going for it again.
G.O.D-
Please, for the love of all that is Holy and True, show me what it is you want me to learn in this situation so I can do the damn thing and get on with my life. And please, again for the love of all that is Holy and True, make it obvious.
Can I get a witness? Whoop whoop!
Ingenue
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