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IT IS MY CHOICE!
of course, i could throw my hands in the air and wail, about how self-pity is a feeling and i am powerless over my feelings and i would not be wrong. the catch is, as powerless as i am over my feelings, it is what i do with them that is where my power lies. living and indulging in self-pity is not the same as felling a bit of self-pity. stuff happens, good stuff and certainly bad stuff, every single day. when i look at only the bad, as i often do, it is quite easy, to take frustration, anger and sadness and turn them into an attitude of self-pity, which is not a feeling, but a state of mind, i create myself. do not misread 5that last statement, it does not mean that i accept all that happens to me, ion fact some days it does suck to be me. the reading does not suggest that i put on my rose-colored glasses and spin everything into a “susie sunshine” sort of lie to tell myself to feel better. that is not much better than using what is in the bag to change the way i am feeling. what it seems to be telling me today is that with a more balanced world view, i can see that good, bad or indifferent, i can recover and that it is my choice what sort of attitudes i choose to indulge in.
balance, especially when it comes to interpreting the events of any given day is not a task i was born to, nor is it one, that i have developed quickly. in fact, it seems to be taking forever to see the shades of grey and move from my binary, black and white view of the world around me. it is in the boundary between yin and yang where serenity lies for me, not at the edges. self-pity, for me, is an extreme reaction to my unmet expectations of what i think each day and life in general SHOULD bring me. self-pity is as the reading says a tool of addiction, that i can use to disqualify myself from recovery. part of my anger towards those who have recently relapsed is an expression of the addict within, wanting that momentary relief from life on its own terms. listening to them lament about how they were oh so powerless, so what did anyone expect. reminds me of that yearning that is still within me, to say FVCK it and run. to return to my black and white world where self-pity is my common mode and HOPE is something i can only read about in novels. dwelling in those feelings seems like the answer, when it actually is the problem and giving up on anyone, no matter how pissed off and hurt i am, is where the addict within wants me to go. the slope gets slippery from there and only i can choose to move off of it.
and so it goes, i DO RECOVER and i DO NOT NEED to live in self-pity, as i have been given far more than i ever thought was possible, as a result of living a program of recovery. so with an attitude of gratitude i think i will see what is happening in tghe rest of the world.

∞ DT ∞