What I have learned - 4th step ramblings - Part I

First my disasters at work have imploded. I think that is the right word to use but this has been a painful lesson that I will not soon forget.

First put all personal feelings aside and look at every job as a business transaction. This seems obvious but sometimes the helping side of me sees to enthusiasm in the other person and wants to help. Maybe it is ego wanting to play the saviour, but mostly it comes back to bite me in the butt.

I love people and I get sucked in now and then. Before the program I had no empathy for anyone and I thought since I had a tough road they should just suck it up and get on with life. What changed? I think with the program I realized I had a fear of emotion. I had shut down to tolerate the life I had been given as a child. If I couldn't feel I couldn't understand your feelings since I had none of my own.

The program changed me. Not overnight. It wasn't like a bright light shown upon in the middle of the night and I was free. To feel your pain I had to acknowledge that I had pain of my own. Deep pain buried under layers of anger which when it surfaced, which it rarely did, would come out as depression. I think that is happening to me now, since I mentioned it. Humm. Pause for reflection.

After I admitted that I had feelings and not good ones, then I had to look at what they were. Really scary stuff. First I tip toed around this by writing the story of my life. My first 4th step. Notebooks upon notebooks of whining (this still happens sometimes). Really I laugh when I come across those pages now. Those pages were good for me and I cried a lot. Letting it our was so freeing. Once the tears started they didn't stop. I had been robbed of my childhood by my mother's sickness and it had ruined my life.

This was the big issue that I couldn't get past because it penetrated every cell of me and made me feel broken. I took this idea of being broken into every relationship I had. Each time I was healthier but still not well. I didn't know you could really let it go, but you can you just have to want to stop being pissed and broken.

I am mad now that life isn't meeting my expectations. Since I don't know how to do mad I am depressed. I am alone (in my mind) my job really sucks right now and I don't see that changing in the near future. All that is just a lie my mind is telling me to keep this story going. Everything passes whether we like it or not. Good or bad everything passes it is just when its bad it seems like it takes forever to pass.

This isn't the post I intended but it has shown me a few things I needed to see. I have learned some other stuff that will have to come later.