I was reminded yesterday, in the subtle (or not so subtle) way you sometimes are when you go to an AA meeting, that I am the problem. I know this, but sometimes, I still like to think that the problem is actually you. You being any one and every one of you. My life seems easier when you are the problem. The collective "you" are relatively easy to blame and it means I don't have to change or take responsibility, because I didn't do anything. You did, and I don't control you and I can't change you and you are not my problem. But believe me, I feel justified in being ticked off at at you.
Then, I walk into a meeting and someone so kindly reminds me that if I am disturbed (which is an understatement), then the problem is me. If I am this pissed off - it isn't simply because you are an asshole. Because the theory is - even if you are an asshole, I don't have to be bothered by you. But since when do you get to tick me off and I have to take responsibility for it? Why do I have to change my attitude and my behavior to accommodate your assholish self - as opposed to - why don't you, stop ticking me off?
This isn't really going anywhere - it's just that I've been in a bad mood for a while now. What can only be described as restless, irritable and discontent. I feel slightly bored, extremely agitated and highly annoyed, constantly. My sponsor cleared one thing up for me today though - very simply - you don't want to be with someone who has to ask whether they can go to coffee - simply run the other way. Yeah, run the other way. I wish I knew how to do that. Instead I think - his sponsor won't let him go to coffee, what can I do to get him to go to coffee anyway? HELLO???!!! This is old behavior.
So, at the meeting she was talking about how we get to choose every day how we are going to be in the world, regardless of how everyone around is behaving. Great. Which means, I am choosing to be restless, irritable, discontent, bored, agitated and annoyed. And I've been complaining, a lot. Which is the way I used to be. Constant complaining and constant negativity. But I can't figure out how to choose something different. I feel like I'm trying and it isn't working. I feel like ever since I had that breast cancer scare (I know, get over it already right?), I can't get back to normal. I just don't feel right. I feel anxious, all the time.
The stress of my job is getting to me a bit, and the uncertainty about my life - the options I have and the choices I have to make - the fact that I have never really found a way to deal with what I went through. The loneliness is overwhelming sometimes - sometimes I just want something instead of nothing, even if the something isn't really what I want. I've isolated myself too much and not maintained any kind of closeness with people in the program in Chicago. I don't really have that many close friends back at home in the program right now either. I have friends, some I would even call close, I mean, they would show up for me - but I feel closer to the edge than I do to the middle, and honestly, I don't really feel particularly close to anyone right now.
I keep saying my birthday is a bad time of year...which is bothering me as it gets closer. And I know it just sounds like I feel sorry for myself - but the truth is, just once, I want to have a good birthday. I don't know how it is that my birthday has been so built up in my mind over the years that it feels like a big deal. It never was a particularly big deal, I guess it's just that I have such negative associations with it. Growing up my birthday was frequently ruined because my mother was drunk, not to mention the fact that most of the family wouldn't come to me and my brother's birthday parties anyway - but the family went to everyone else's - we have always been the odds one out. As I got older, my birthday just seemed sadder and sadder, the family more and more fragmented, my relationship with my parents more and more dysfunctional.
I always reflect on my life around my birthday, but never in a positive way - and the older I get, the faster time goes and it just feels like a reminder of how my life isn't the way I thought it would be or the way I want it to be. I fail to look at what I do have - I fail to look at what is right. But I could tell you every way that I am sad. It still feels like the pieces of the puzzle that I was left with - after everything I went though last year - don't fit together. Nothing lines up, nothing is recognizable. Very little makes sense. And it has been almost exactly a year - I was diagnosed with breast cancer, two days before my 29 birthday. I feel like I can't live through those days - those days right before my birthday. Most of my life I just figured I had more time, I could always see opportunities and chances - the possibilities. Now all I see is an end point. It's like a wall that I am standing so close to, that I can't see around it. And it's too high to climb over.
The problem is, unless I can give up my expectations, of life being a certain way, I think I will always feel this way and go through this around my birthday. I think I will always feel like I have failed.
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