Restless, Irritable, Discontented

I'm scheduled to speak at a meeting tomorrow. While I know it's not a time to prepare a speech (meaning to figure out how to show myself in the best light) not to have thought about it, to have invited God's input for preparation, is wrong. I don't know where the collection of my pictures I had got off to, so I printed out some more today. It's good to look at them. And it's good to see the others, the ones during recovery, that show the distance I still have to go toward a normal body weight. My abstinence has been good since January, and the scales and clothes show it, but not fast enough for me ego, which, of course, needs to be dumped.

What do I have to share? I do have recovery that's awesome, and I am in the midst of taking quantum leaps forward in recovery. That's the reason for the subject I wrote for this post - yesterday. It's been my state all week. The reason, as I understand it, is the growth itself. I'm addicted to a person, just as much as I am to food, to compulsive overeating. I've had him in the role of my higher power for years and years and decades. At this point I'm trying to move him out of that slot so God has room to take it. I can't move him out, but I can avoid worshipping at the pagan shrine. How can I do that? My current course is to utilize the mantra, "Say what you mean, mean what you say, and don't say it mean." Just this evening, he asked me if I had put an orange in the refrigerator, and I said no. So he suggested I put it in the freezer. Then later he asked for it and only then did I realize he had intended the orange sodas he bought, not a piece of fruit. His anger at my doing the wrong thing when he could easily - as easily as I could - have placed it there and gotten it out was not fair - as if that had ever made a difference in our relationship. Yet he's bitter at me for not doing it right. I thought it was an unusual request. And yes, I could have figured it out - I finally did. But in the past I would have bought into the guilt he threw at me. It's not my guilt. We went further, with him criticizing my life, my not staying in his presence, and that only, all day every day. I sit here with the fear still there, but not the recrimination. I'm finally growing up, finally realizing the next rung of recovery and delivered promises. But it's not fun, at all!

For Today this morning said, ‎"It is not easy to risk failure in plain view of those who wait smugly on the sidelines. To be thought foolish or insane could well start an avalanche of negative self-judgments. But as I grow, I become more willing to venture out of my cocoon." (p. 99) I did. I ventured out of my cocoon. A little. I'll move more tomorrow, and each day, one day at a time.

And yes, I'm restless, irritable, and discontented. It comes from feeling my feelings, from not denying them. It results when I realize what I've missed out on for so many years, in so many different ways. Affection, acceptance, respect, attraction, affirmation, confidence, confiding. Trust. I'm grieving for a life that could have been, but I have to offer the hard-won understanding that each of us is responsible for our own recovery, for our own life. Nothing I could do would be good enough, would elicit the acceptance I crave. Not from a broken person. But an unbroken God and a fellowship of sick people, recovering from insanity like mine, can fill me so full of acceptance, I find surfeit at last.