Having just gotten back from a meeting at my new A.A Homegroup, I feel a new clarity has come to me. I must write about it before it goes. I know that it’s my fault that my mother’s family did not stay connected. First the drunken incident where I chose to drink, which lead to the disasterous end of my relationship with my older sister Mary and began a long and complicated relationship with my mother that I kept ruining due to insecurity and not being able to let the baggage of the past go and finally for chasing my youngest sister Jenna out of our lives through my cruel words over facebook messenger in 2018.

One thing I loved about drugs was that they helped me unlock that part of my brain that would not allow me to see people and situations for what they were, yet for some reason accountability is not my favorite word. More often than not, the answers we’re looking for are already inside of us but for one reason or another we can’t face them so we may turn to complex psychological explanations, scientific facts about the chemistry of the brain and even religion to help us find an explanation that suits our purposes. To avoid the answers we know to be true because we can’t face them with a sober, rational mind. I write this to acknowledge that this is my reality and that I’m not sure what to do with it.

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My avoidance of truth is not driven by ego. It is driven by shame and self-defense. Especially if I created a situation I cannot fix or do anything about there’s a part of me that wants to see it from a “But there was nothing I could’ve done, it was out of my control” point of view. Unfortunately, I wonder if that causes me to suffer more than I need to. So how do I face reality without it crushing me? This is the question I really need to answer for myself. I don’t like thinking in this way but I see the necessity of it and why it matters. I used to have a habit of intentionally ruining good things if I didn’t have any hope that they could be saved or fixed. From relationships to all other types of things, I came down with a big case of the “Fuck its!”.

Today I have hope that I can try to repair something that is broken, but there is always that one thing I can do absolutely nothing about and it bothers me more than I can describe. So then the problem I have is acceptance. What can be done about that? I know it’s impossible for anyone to go through life without taking any L’s. We all get them and some we deserve. I want to think of myself as innocent and totally deny any darkness inside of me. Another lie I like to tell myself because I don’t like acknowledging my own failures or being seen as evil or bad because that’s how I see me. Having it confirmed by someone else would hurt too much.

I also came to the conclusion that maybe God as I understand him took my sister out of my life to give me pain with a purpose. How can I go into the world to heal people as a therapist or a sponsor if I have no pain of my own that I can use to relate to others and help them to heal, too? Maybe it’s not part of the plan to have back what I have lost because even though it would create fullfillment, it would also remove the unique wounds that might make me useful to someone else!