Feelings......... What makes me an alcoholic or an addict is not how much i used or drank, not where i chose to partake of my dis-ease, not who was around me at any given time......but why i did the things i did..... i drank and used drugs to escape my feelings about everything and everyone and your feelings about me....i didn't want emotions and feelings and didn't know what to do with them when i had them.....they made me uncomfortable....and scared.... i just wanted them to go away..... and since i couldn't trust in my own feelings...there was absolutely no way i could believe in anyone else's......so i buried me as best i could....under alcohol, drugs, and a world of distrust and fear....while i pretended to face life head on on the outside i slowly was dying inside.... {and to think i thought i was unique..ha.}.... When sobriety found me {i wasn't looking}, i was almost dead...inside and out....i have said many times that bankrupt had more than me when i got here....and it is true.....i never reached my goal, however, of blanking out my emotions and feelings....when i got to my first meeting i was 17 and so filled with hate, anger, distrust, and fear that the love i saw in the room the first night scared me beyond words.....it was a full year of dry misery before i came back to a room.... a year
of feelings and emotions and no drugs or booze and worst of all no way of hiding from them anymore.....i saw no hope of living and didnt want to see my 21st birthday ....but i didnt want to die drunk or high... so i went back to the only place i saw anyone remotely like me......to a meeting....i was two weeks shy of turning 19....... The program is where i learned to feel and how to feel and not have to hide....the steps is what i use as tools to handle feelings and emotions...the fellowship has taught me i am not alone and few special people have shown me through love, patience, nuturing and
kindness that i do have to be afraid to feel or to show those emotions and that i do not have to fear what they will do to my insides anymore....since i am not afraid of what feelings will do to my insides anymore, the result is that i dont have to hurt the outside me anymore either.....or anyone else's....today there is a choice... a choice i was given the day i felt enough pain to ask for help........... The last couple of years i have spent alot of time healing the little child inside of me from many of the life experiences that
caused me to want to die so young... it has been a long and hard journey ....the rewards have been as tremendous as some of the work has been painful...i learned how to play again as a child, and to laugh with a young girl's delight at simple things like blowing bubbles and playing in the sand....and having a butterfly land on your nose....i did many of the things children do and even spent a few days being treated as a precious and fragile treasure in the midst of some of the worst hurts and pains as i continued to work through issue after issue with
the help of a sponsor and some close friends along the way..to say i am grateful would be an understatement.......and the journey continues.......
Now maybe i have entirely too much time on my hands...maybe i just found something in my statement to really ponder upon......but i just spent the last week or so in amazement of the statement i made and how i relate to it .....see i learned along the way it wasnt safe to show emotions or to feel them too often... not unlike spock.....
(Soberly submitted by Joy M. from Tulsa, OK)
