Mr. SponsorPants

entitlement

 

I deserve...

I've worked really hard today, I deserve...

I'm tired, I deserve...

I've had a rough...

I'm not feeling...

I always...

 

I think entitlement is the fulcrum upon which alcoholism shifts my thinking; the counterfeit currency it uses to rent more space for character defects in my life.

If the "curious mental blank spot" is the mental insanity of alcoholism, wherein we fail to recall with sufficient force the pain and humiliation which drinking causes us so that some "insanely trivial reason" prompts us to pick up a drink again, why not then this same mechanism in a more subtle form -- dressed up as "what I deserve" (entitlement) -- to keep me from doing/growing/being what I know will bring me more health, balance, happiness and light.

When I can quietly, dispassionately, consider what I'm thinking just before I do things I wish I wouldn't do, I can see this sick quid pro quo at work.

It's never, "Today was really hard.  A lot of tough crap to wade through.  So I deserve to feel better about myself, about how I feel, how I look, about my ability to be disciplined, so I'm going to reward myself with an extra ten sit-ups before bed..."

Oh no.  It's usually quite the opposite.

And so subtle -- not a voice demanding.  A whisper suggesting.

 

I suppose you could just call it rationalization, but that seems too broad a brush stroke for what I'm trying to address.

Sometimes I wish the "Little Voice" I attribute to my Higher Power would step a little closer to the mic -- some days it's got a lot of competition.  A lot of background noise to break through.

 

 

 

 

always the hardest

 

 

 

If I stay resentful at someone then I've defined them

 

 Is it possible that sometimes we cling to a resentment so we can keep someone neatly labeled, rather than consider them from another point of view?

If I stay resentful at someone then I've defined them -- as the villain or the perpetrator or the bully or the thief or whatever -- and I can avoid the hard work of having an open mind, of considering what their illness or issue might have been (or might still be).

And then I can subtly minimize my part in the equation, postpone or avoid taking the full responsibility for my proverbial side of the street when I have one (as I so often, often do).  In my heart I can slow the inventory-driven recovery process down, quietly whispering in my head "yes but they blah blah blah" every time I consider my part in something.

 

It's much less work to stay closed off in anger rather than open myself to seeing those who wronged me as fellow sufferers, or even, with Divine help, see them through eyes of love.

That's why I try to remember that the first thing the Big Book suggests I do in writing an inventory (the dreaded 4th Step) is not to pick up the pen and make a list of the people, institutions, etc. I resent -- no, the first thing I'm instructed to do is try to view those who I believe have wronged me as spiritually sick themselves.

Letting go of resentment is not just about taking responsibility for our part in things -- though that is essential -- it is about compassion, too.

I felt a cleaving in my mind

 

I felt a cleaving in my mind --

as if my brain had split --

I tried to match it -- seam by seam --

but could not make it fit.

 

The thought behind, I strove to join

unto the thought before --

but sequence ravelled out of sound --

like balls -- upon a floor.

Emily Dickinson

 

I don't know if Ms. Dickinson was an alcoholic -- I kind of think that we'd know that about her, generally speaking, if she had been (though she did spend an awful lot of time alone in her room.  I'm just sayin'...) -- but when I read this (and if you read it a couple of times in a row a beautiful rhythm reveals itself to you) I think it is a perfect expression of what some days are like; the blunt force trauma of alcoholism upon my thinking.

It used to feel like that a lot.

Now, rarely.

I can draw a direct correlation among my one-day-at-a-time physical sobriety, working out a solution on, as the Big Book puts it "the altruistic plane," prayer and mediation for healing my thinking.

Gradually.

Substantive changes rarely happen in a flash.

 

Be patient.

Be constant.

It works.

It really does.

 

Things I learned (or was reminded of) this week. An ongoing series.

 

Some of the time, alcoholism's influence over my thinking can be very subtle.  Insidiously so.

 

Much of the time, what I resent hasn't happened.

 

Most of the time what I fear doesn't exist.

 

All of the time I have the chance to change my perspective through prayer and meditation -- but it's much more effective if I do it regularly.

 

When close to meltdown, three deep (deep!) breaths can save a life.

having an alcoholic mind

 

 

Having an alcoholic mind

is like always having something

stuck between your teeth.

the two parts of asking for help

 

 

There's really two parts to asking for help, when you think about it.

There's the "please help me" -- the part where you ask for help.  That's hard enough.

But the real heavy lifting is in actually hearing and accepting whatever help is offered; without ego, without defiance, without resentment, without filters...

Sometimes in life it's taken almost everything I have to just ask for the help.  Anything more than that felt like it was beyond me.

As dramatic as that sounds, it's true.

 

Thankfully, when I run out of power, I have an outside source which has never failed me when it comes down to it.

And no, I don't mean coffee, smart ass.

 

in an instant

 

 

 

god's grace can come in an instant.

hang on.

 

 

some days,

(many days -- most days?)

it's only addiction tricking you,

by using your thinking to torture you;

telling you to cut and run

or up and quit.

hang on.

 

breathe.

pray.

god's grace can come in an instant.

hang on.

 

My real To Do List today:

 

 

1. Don't pick up the first drink.

2. Be honest.

3. Be kind to others.

4. Be gentle with myself.

 

That's it, really.  Everything else, while important in its way, is extra.

 

here's a truth for you

 

 

A comment, copy/pasted in its entirety from yesterday's post:

Here's a truth for you.

If you're young and female and you show up at an AA meeting, you will immediately have a "team" spring up around you, be showered with sympathy, and receive 100 phone numbers from people who insist you call them if you feel the slightest bit blue. This will be doubled if your voice quavers and tripled if you cry. You'll leave feeling great.

If you're a middle aged man, however, you'll get lectures on working the program, admonishments for being selfish, and demands that you clean the coffee filters and put away the chairs, because that's "service".

 

While I'm not a spokesman for AA -- no one is -- I think I am going to reveal one of AA's great secrets right here, right now, in this blog:

We're human.

 

We can be weak, lecherous and shallow.  I know I can be -- though usually my arrogance kicks in and the last newcomer I will go up and speak with is the "attractive" one -- not because I am above such base or shallow impulses, but because I don't want people to think I'm like that.  So I am as shallow as anyone, just acting it out in the opposite way.

Isn't insight wonderful?

Frankly, if you're a middle-aged man, and you want that kind of attention in an AA meeting, you should go to a gay meeting in a retirement community (think Palm Springs) -- you don't have to be gay to go -- and you can be as objectified as any ingenue taking her first dainty steps onto life's grand stage.

If I may respond to some points directly (and if I sound a little bitchy, I apologize -- I worked a double today, as my boss went home sick, so this is Mr. SponsorPants after being on-the-clock from 7am to 9:30pm -- "a little bitchy" is going to have to stand for being a freaking model of restraint right now)... shouldn't one be admonished for being selfish?  I mean, do you want to be lauded for being selfish instead?  "Hey, from what you said you pretty much just thought about yourself and put your wants ahead of everyone else's all day.  Way to stay in the disease!  Good one!  We used to give chips for that, but... no one wanted to give 'em away, they just kept them for themselves.  I'm sure you understand..."

I cannot speak for the commentor's experience of AA -- there are certainly all kinds of meetings out there -- but I do have a hard time believing that the word "demand" quite fits whatever way the conversation went, regardless of how salty the mean old AA was... And, I hate to drag another dark secret into the light like this, but... cleaning coffee filters and putting away chairs actually is service.

 

An embarrassing anecdote. 

When I lived in another city, some time ago now, I was seething with resentments I didn't even know I had, and they were all around my being single.  I had some pretty strong expectations of what was "supposed to happen" when I got to this town, and it just wasn't bearing fruit, romance-wise. 

I was also, at the time, pretty overweight (I've been up and down in my weight so much I could open my own damn Gap outlet, what with having owned a pair of their khakis in practically every damn size they come in).  Now, lots of people who are overweight find great partnerships, but because of my feelings about how I looked I was really shut down (that's a big oversimplification, but I'm barrelling along trying to get to the point here, so let me have that one as a "gimme."  Thanks.) and thus, in retrospect, I know that was the reason things weren't all Rolph and Liesel in the rainy Gazebo for me.    

(You have no idea how many pictures of earnest high schoolers mooning over each other in their Senior Year production of "The Sound of Music" I had to scroll through to find the genuine article for that line.)

What I now know was that I was expecting the force of my personality to compensate for my lack of physical fitness.  And if I'd been more open, not so self obsessed and shut down, it might well have...

Walking home from the video store (this story is ancient history, Poppets... loooong before Netflix and downloads and such) after renting an errr... educational video **cough** about ... errr... intimacy... (you with me here?  I'll go there if I gotta, but you've always struck me as a sharp group) it hit me like a ton of bricks:

I was the biggest freaking hypocrite going.  Because I was not renting educational videos about intimacy based on the personalities of the people in the videos.  I was renting them because of how the people in the videos looked.  (This all came out in some brutal inventory writing shortly after this light-bulb went off).  I was thunderstruck to realize that the very value system I was so resentful of everyone else having (so I thought -- shut down, remember?) I myself had a heaping, steaming pile of too.  Once again I caught myself thinking I was better, different, exempt... once again I discovered my thinking twisted into artificial categories defined by extreme, black-and-white thinking and no small amount of delusion.

No, really, isn't insight just wonderful?  **cough cough**

Most human beings are drawn in one way or another to youth or beauty or sexual charisma.  I think it's fair to observe that a lot of the time it is a conscious act for people to look beyond those things.

The people in AA, just because we're sober, and trying to work a spiritual program, are in no way exempt from that inclination or that challenge.

In fact some of us, feeling raw and vulnerable without our best coping mechanism (drinking), are sicker for a while before we get better -- because of the profound fear being so raw and vulnerable will engender -- and we will absolutely act that out in all sorts of ways.

AA is not a hotbed of lascivious predators (spare me the stories, I know, I know, some meetings and some people have behaved very badly -- the overwhelming majority have not -- that is the false logic of "some X's are bad therefore all X's will be bad," i.e.,  some women are bitches therefore all women will be bitches.  Some men are sexual predators therefore all men will be sexual predators.  Some AA's in meetings have taken advantage of newcomers therefore all AA's in meetings will take advantage of newcomers...)

 

Another embarrassing admission:

I actually used to resent the fact that I hadn't been 13th Stepped.  (Yeah, for me, low self esteem was great progress.) 

It's just a fucking warm bath of wonderful insights I'm sharing with you in this, isn't it.

 

Yep, sometimes a pretty young girl will get some extra attention solely for the fact that she is a pretty young girl.  Hate to break it to you, but she's going to get better customer service and fewer speeding tickets than you will too.

But she'll have to struggle to be taken seriously, and be on her guard against people with mixed motives, and hopefully have the resiliance to rise above the weird messages about what women should look like which our culture continues to spew out in subtle and sophisticated ways... so it's a mixed bag for all of us, Bucko.

Meanwhile, I admit that although we try like hell in AA to extend the hand of fellowship to everyone in the same way, we screw it up pretty good on occasion... and yes, some extend the penis of fellowship instead of the hand, it's true.

(There is a whole other post to be written about the other side of this too.  I have never met an alcoholic who, even through their real and sincere tears, didn't know how to work the angles -- we're perfect children of God, but we're sharks, too -- pretty and weepy sharks or middle-aged and bitter sharks, but calculating either way.)

I've been to a lot of AA in my day -- in lots of different cities.  We get it wrong sometimes, but we get it right a lot -- and dear God, when we do, it is pretty fucking beautiful.

Now get back in the kitchen and scrub those pots, you selfish thing!  Chop chop!  You think those chairs are going to put themselves away?

No, I can't help you, don't be ridiculous!  I have to take Hotty McBangbang to the Big Book study.