Sunday, April 8, 2012

Resentments and Dysfunction

He has risen today, and the world is glorious because of Him!



I ignored them my whole life.  Numbed them with alcohol until the alcohol no longer worked for me; until it turned against me by making my oblivion as awful as my reality.  No more escape, not in the bottle or anywhere because "everywhere I went, there I was" (one of my favorite quotes.)

So, I wrote, worked the steps in several programs, with several sponsors, saw a multitude of doctors and health care professionals, yet I remained ill - very, very ill - until one day I attempted the only escape plan I had never tried - suicide.  It was an act of complete desperation.  I was a rat in a maze, a prisoner in a labyrinth of darkness and suffering, a crazed animal cornered by predators, no longer able to run or fight back, for my energy had depleted; my will to live had extinguished; my heart pumped blood and self-hate through my body and mind.  I needed both to stop.  God had other plans (doesn't he always?) :)

I have been participating in intense therapy for the last ten months with the most wonderfully trained therapist I have ever met.  It has been a long, grueling process - one that I am still in the midst of - but I have made so much progress.  Resentments and dysfunction sometimes go deeper than what the steps can reach. "Problems other than alcohol" do exist.  I have first hand experience with them.  However, these problems can never be addressed fully if sobriety is not first intact.  As my sponsor says, "We can always add on to our program but nothing can ever take the place of it."

I am on my eighth year of sobriety, and I am told that emotional sobriety is harder than physical sobriety.  I am knee deep in my journey to emotional sobriety, and apparently, "I am right on time."

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Thank you for sharing!