That Damned Onion

You can't be in recovery long without hearing about the Onion: the work we do refines us on the inside, going deeper and deeper, getting to parts of our psyche like layers of an onion. As sick as I am of this metaphor, I have once again come up against the layer in me that always leaves me stuck, and stuck is something I can't afford.

I am 39 years old, but you wouldn't know it in the way I respond to my parents. I do not have adequate boundaries with them. When they are unhappy with me, I make myself physically sick with worry and anxiety. I'm a black-belt al-anon with everyone but them.

It ebbs and flows, and it is making me sick again. Whenever I tell them something I know will make them unhappy (mostly things beyond my control), the cycle begins: they go into a rant and I try to disappear inside myself or block them out or reason with them (never works).

Last night, I got a new sponsor, and told her all about it, that it was making me sick and I don't want to participate in the vicious cycle any more

So The Trudge Report is taking a bit of a turn, growing with my program. There's going to be a lot going on here about dealing with my parents. I'm finally sick of the onion making me cry.

Emotional Sobriety and Duct Tape

The other night at a meeting, a guy I'll call Jim shared his misadventure with his cell phone. It seems the battery panel wasn't holding the phone's battery in any more. Wanting to save some money on a replacement phone, he purchased one on Craiglist.

Alas, phone number 2 does not work, and as the reader can guess, the merchant is nowhere to be found for a refund. Angrily, he duct-taped the battery panel onto the original phone and stormed out of his house to a meeting, where many shared about how to make lemons when life hands us lemonade (or whatever non-alcoholic beverage you would make with a blackberry).

I asked him how his phone worked with the duct tape. Great! he enthused. So I asked, why did he buy a replacement phone when the duct tape fixed the problem?


"Because I didn't want people to think I couldn't afford a new phone."

On the surface, it looks like this guy's problem is scammers on Craigslist, but I think he has a part to play in his own misery.

Jim purchased the replacement phone out of pride. The duct tape solved the problem, but he wanted others to be impressed with his new gadget, and maybe therefore with Jim himself.  He wants life to improve based on an external condition: the ownership of a cooler-than-yours phone.  To make matters worse, Jim can't afford a new phone, so when he started prowling Craigslist, he did it to bolster a false image to others!

If Jim wanted to save time, money, and emotion, he could have adopted a grateful attitude for a cell phone that's working with such a simple fix. No Craigslist drama!

I know it's wrong to sell bad stuff to people - I get that. But "anger is the dubious luxury of normal men", and I am not normal. I need to focus every ounce of emotional energy into my sobriety.  I don't have the luxury of spending any of it on Craigslist crime, or whether or not people will think less of me if I have duct tape on the back of my phone.

You're NOT an Alcoholic If ...

1. You don't understand the concept of a 6-pack (isn't one enough?).
2. You question the concept of "Happy Hour" - who would be in a bar for a whole hour?
   
3. You immediately stop drinking when you start to "feel it".
4. You have ever left an alcoholic beverage unconsumed for any reason
5. You have no booze in your home, and that's not because you already drank it all
6. After any sip of an alcoholic beverage, you have ever uttered the phrase "Whoa, this is too strong!"
7. You're not sure where your neighborhood liquor store is.
8. You especially look forward to events that are alcohol-free - no idiot drunks around!
9. You purchase wine for cooking purposes, and you actually do cook with it.
10. On second thought, you do have some alcohol in your home: a bottle of something someone gave you for Christmas, which is still unopened, and now covered in a layer of dust. You totally forgot about that thing! Maybe you can re-gift it to someone this year.