July 16, 2005

• It’s time for this… maybe way past time.

  I just logged on here and noticed up there in my banner (started to
  type “batter” — Freudian typo?) where it says, “This is where I spill
  my guts.”  I didn’t do any of that on those library computers I’ve
  been using for eleven weeks (but who’s counting?).  I was thirty
  years old before I even learned how to spill all the emotional shit I
  was bagging, and it took some hardcore junkies in a therapy group to
  drive me to it.  I was always good at rationalizing things,
  explaining feelings away, kidding myself that things were just peachy
  – even when I was miserable and my life totally out of control.

  I claim among my expertise, “staying on good terms with myself.” 
  Maybe I should change it to, “getting on good terms,” or, “getting
  back….”  Sometimes my self-esteem drifts off the screen.  I
  can usually catch it and get it back before something catastrophic
  happens.  “Catastrophic,” y’know?  Something like getting
  loaded, getting laid by a stranger, loading my gun and going postal –
  stuff like that.  When I look at myself clearly and critically, I
  know that my potential for destruction and self-destruction is greater
  than my potential for greatness.

   Twelve-step program literature calls these things, the personal
  failings that distress me, “character defects.”  I can think of
  probably a few dozen better, more appropriate and accurate terms, but
  why quibble?  The programs have a few defects of their own. 
  But realistically, any Virgo can find defects in anything.  The
  programs have many virtues, too, not the least of which are the twelve
  steps themselves.  One of my favorites is the tenth step: 
  “…continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
  promptly admitted it.”

  My Divine Sponsor (not having had a group or a human sponsor when I
  first found and worked the Steps, I was guided through them by my
  Higher Power) sometimes reminds me that an inventory must include both
  virtues and failings.  It’s not always obvious to me which is
  which, just as I often need to reflect on things at length before I
  understand whether I need to accept them or change them. 

  I was beating up on myself for about a week over something that program
  purists would have (and I had) judged to be an act of betrayal
  requiring amends.  I had without thinking told someone something
  that I’d learned about someone else at a meeting.  We weren’t
  technically IN the meeting at the time, but were on the porch in a
  small group of friends offering support to another member whose husband
  was out getting loaded and draining his business bank account as fast
  as he could within the limits imposed on daily ATM withdrawals.

  I probably can’t adequately explain what was said by whom without
  actually betraying the confidentiality of the group.  One person,
  prior to that meeting, had expressed some concern for our mutual friend
  and had passed on to me a mistaken impression about the nature of her
  crisis, thinking it was a physical health thing instead of the marital
  and monetary crisis it was.  When I next saw that person, I
  corrected her misconception and told her what was really going on with
  our mutual friend.  Later that night it occurred to me as I lay
  awake in bed that I probably should have just kept my mouth shut.

  I fretted over it and tried to rehearse just how I would make my
  confession and apology when next I saw them both.  When next I saw
  them both, the problem evaporated.  The one who had misinformed me
  was grateful to have been set straight so she could offer support to
  our other friend and that one was grateful for all the support she
  could get.  I wish that every mistake I make would fall into that
  category of thinking I was wrong when I’m not.

  I let those eleven weeks without a computer slip by and we still don’t
  have the roof fixed.  Mea culpa.  I have excuses for that
  (weather, mosquitoes, illness and Doug’s sleep schedule not coinciding
  with mine) and have not had the moral fortitude not to make
  excuses.  Mea culpa again.

  Despite an ever-growing collection of junk that’s been growing for
  years and is growing faster than ever thanks to Dagda’s Dumpster at
  Felony Flats (that’s a whole blog in itself, one best done by Greyfox
  – he collects the stuff, I just haul it home and try to find room for
  it), I once again have not organized the yard sale I’ve been planning
  for a couple of years and probably won’t get it done this summer,
  either.

  That stuff bothers me, gnaws away at my self-concept, disturbs my rest
  and pops into my mind at odd busy moments to blunt my pleasure in
  whatever I may be doing.  But that’s the small shit, really, in
  terms of my own values.  And it is my values, above all, that
  matter here.  We’re talking about my self-esteem.  In my own eyes I’ve been guilty of some much worse transgressions.

  I have been influenced.  I’ve allowed myself to be swayed by
  others’ beliefs and values.  I have yielded to political
  correctness and polite bullshit, gone along to get along.  I have
  let other people make excuses for me, instead of adhering to my own
  higher standards of behavior.  Horrors!  I gotta quit that
  shit.

  And, dear readers, despite no longer having to attend to the library’s
  timer and limit my blogging accordingly, I still have limits.  It
  is dinner time, and I must go cook, and eat, steak, salad and other
  tasty stuff.  Seeya.
  

  • 10:06 pm
  • 7 Comments