Syd, I tried to find you in the profiles to send you a personal Christmas message, but couldn’t locate you for some reason. Probably my own user error. So, belated Merry Christmas.
I’m having a very hard time with my email system, so I just found this too. Please pardon the tardy response.
My goodness, thirty years is a lot of experience in AA. You are so correct about how powerlessness creates a hostile feeling towards others. Right now I’m feeling angry at my neighbors who dump trash all around, then it attracts vermin and is just so disgusting. I can’t wait to sell and move away from this place forever North Sacramento area condo and it’s got old growth trees but the high crime and bad people make it an impossible place to live, and I hate that I have to move but I just cannot adapt at all to the ridiculous crime levels. Thank you for your kind insights and perspective about my struggle with my sister. I agree with you completely: she has arrogance and pride, and yet she’s also using those to cover for some very deep insecurities she has. I feel so stupid because there’s a part of me that just thinks: “well WHY won’t she just ask for help?” It seems so simple to me: if a person has a problem then why wouldn’t they ask for help, or try to change? Yet she doesn’t.
Year after year slips by and she just continues to drink and destroy herself and those who love her without ever showing even a tiny desire to get help. This is what is so very hard to understand. And yet I must admit that I am entirely powerless over alcohol, entirely helpless in the face of the surreal destruction that’s happening to two of my siblings, and most dramatically to my dear sister.
But I want to THANK YOU for offering understanding and support. You and Merl and other on here have been at times my sole source of support during some very very stressful and trying times since the day before Thanksgiving this year. I am so grateful for this safe place to come to. So grateful for the acceptance and assistance I’ve received here. Thank you so much. I am just so very glad to have this place to come to. You’ve helped make a difference and that has helped me hold on to hope.
It may seem that thirty years of AA experience is a lots and this has its place. The hardest part for me was breaking through my denial and even my denial of my brain injury. My denial went two ways, either I was extremely macho or I got through my problems by tuning out. The extent of my denial was like I had lost a limb and I denied that it happened or I would think the arm or leg would grow back. The real struggle with my denial is the aggression this created, anxiety would break through, and what I was warding off would come crashing down on me. This felt defeating and humiliating and it felt like I had no defenses with which to handle the anxiety or aggression. It was likely I could have turned to alcohol to deal with this burning rage. Yet in its hidden way, from the 12 step meetings, powerlessness had become a part of me and yet I also wanted this power to get things done.
Naturally because of my brain injury I could not bring my ideas to a conclusion on powerlessness and power. In the later part of AA I was not communicating to others clearly because my thought process was so complex and convoluted. This powerlessness and power contradicting each other made my ideas become highly condensed. My consciousness would flood upon me then I would get into these elaborate monologues, making it difficult for others to follow my train of thought. Sometimes I go off on these tangents, jumping from point to point, without indicating the intervening steps in my logic. So from thirty years of observation of my addiction, my defenses would go up, and my monologues just seem to be strange and tedious. The mental exertion required was exhausting, so sometimes it is not always clear the sobriety trip was always worth it.
It may seem strange not really knowing if sobriety was worth the trip. This struggle between various pairs of polar opposites: between doing the program and doing nothing seems meaningless now. In many ways I did AA to find security and power and then I find insecurity and powerlessness. The gift, though is the serenity and the wholeness is the bad along with the good. So with Al-Anon it should help you with your doubts and weakness, which could help to create a mysterious consciousness just beyond your consciousness control. What I am saying is do not give up the 12 step program when the meaning feels like absurdity and it feels hard finding hope in hopelessness. The process will teach you self-possession and self-surrender. It will feel like your own consciousness, possessing yourself and taking control of your life, and yet having no control over your life. Somehow this creates your own center and then this enormous ability to handle problems becomes this deep inner unity.
In AA we always told each other, “Never give up till the miracle happens” and this is to say the miracle is you. It is just a place to begin and miracle becomes the rhythm of the 12 step program — this deep precious place within you.
I’m sorry that you took exception to ModSupport Team member Christina’s removal of your post. The decision was one that was discussed by the Moderator Support Team, and it was felt that what you said went far beyond being a personal rant, which our members are free to do. The problem with it was that it was a particularly vitriolic and violent verbal attack on others, and attacking others, whether they are members here or not, is unacceptable. We also treat attacks on moderators and network administrators in the same way that attacks on referees are treated in sport.
Private messaging is quite simple. Click on any member’s avatar, and a “Message” button will appear. Click on that, and a private message form opens for you. Every reply button on a private message screen is marked “Reply privately” so that there is no doubt as to whether the communication is private or public. There are also other ways of starting a private message: click on the FAQs tab in the purple banner, and it is #6.
