A Baby Shower for D

D is have her baby in a month.  She “organized” a baby shower by posting it on her Facebook page and inviting her sister.  With only a couple months in recovery she has not had enough time to make sober friends and drug addicts are notoriously bad at gift giving.  We took her to Walmart for a small shopping spree.  I mentioned it to a lady at the meeting this morning who promptly contributed $40.  The money helped a little.  Having a woman with good sobriety validate our intentions and efforts with real cash helped a lot.

D had a great time shopping and was immensely grateful.  I discussed being happy with low expectations while enjoying the moment.  Lea had a hard time with staying focused on supporting D.  There is a line in the big book that describes that thinking and behavior  perfectly “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.”

I hope D had a wonderful party.  It was nice to be able to emotional and financial support a young woman trying to make a better life for herself.  Participating in a baby shower in any way was new behavior for me that definitely stretched my comfort zone a little.

Lea modeled a small chunk of self-destructive behavior after having many good days in a row.  It was annoying, sad, scary, and much like watching myself in days gone by.  Have a good time in intimate relations with others and then be a jackass to blow up the memory of the good time.  When discussing a part of her undesirable behavior later, she defended it with two mutually exclusive explanations of what she was doing while claiming both to be true.  I let her know that I was dismayed by her behavior.  There was some conflict, but we mostly got to disagree without being disagreeable.  That is a lot better than either passive-aggressive attacks fronting some other unrelated issue as a cover from my anger or her doing some door-slamming.

I went to a speaker meeting with Jon discussing the situation on the way home getting some relief by talking about my feelings with another person.  Talking about my feelings with a man I don’t know that well is a positive new behavior for me.  It felt good to let go of some negativity and obsessive thinking.    

This sounds like a tempest in a teapot.  Probably so.  The danger is that it might be a small spark in a big can of gas and blow-up on us in a flaming relapse.  I am working on avoiding those sparks in my life.  Risk analysis for an alcoholic/addict has to be heavily skewed towards avoiding the bad by seeking the good. 

“It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.”  AA big book page 66.

I am grateful to be of service to others today, for the progress I have made in expressing my feelings and for being much better at handling conflict with others.  Honest discussion is a lot better than passive-aggressive attacks and using.