Who here is fooled?

I am not an optimistic person. I'm just not. Not at all really. I consider it a character defect, and I work on it. I am mentioning this because this post that I am about to write - it could be a totally different post - it just depends on my perspective. This post could be about what a great and wonderful life I have and how I owe it all to AA. It could be hopeful and happy - but my natural state isn't either of these things and I tend to come at things, I guess I would say, from a darker angle, from the down side - it is all in my approach. Tomorrow I may write that post about how great and wonderful my life is and how I wouldn't trade it in for another life. Sometimes I actually do feel that way. But this is not that post. This isn't the direction from which I am looking at the moment. It could just be the time of year. The fall makes me sad. I got sober in the fall two years ago, the holidays are never happy and it is just a time of reflection for me.

I have had some hesitation to post about just anything and everything lately. I have a sponsee reading this blog - which is fine of course, but I have such hope for her that I don't want to ruin it with my lack of optimism. Sometimes I feel like I am supposed to be this great example of how to work the AA program. Sometimes I am that. Sometimes I fall short of that. Other times, I just fail at that completely. Sometimes I don't try all that hard. I am supposed to be happy, joyous and free - those are the things that we are supposed to want and get from AA. Happy, joyous and free. At the moment I feel like a bad example of those things and I don't want to discourage her. But this blog is the one and only place in my life that I don't censor myself, so I can't start now just for her sake.

Sometimes I worry that we in AA have all fooled ourselves and each other, and that she will find out that we are all just a bunch of fakers and then she will pretend right along with us, maybe, hopefully. Sometimes I think we have actually fooled ourselves to such a degree that we do really believe anything is possible. When in fact, what I feel like telling her, is that this is still just life, and it is difficult and sad and disappointing. I worry sometimes that this amazing life that we tell each other is possible - it is just fiction - it is something we have imagined up for ourselves and we talk all about it like it is happening all around us, because we all need something to hang on to or to look forward to - without which this really would be intolerable wouldn't it? What I should probably remind her of - is that those things - the happy, joyous and free part of life - those things are a choice. That really is the answer to all of this - it lies in what you choose for yourself and this is all about learning how to choose differently.

I do feel those things sometimes, happy, I have even posted about what those times feel like - but my default is laced with negativity and for me to live in a state of serenity, contentment, happiness and hope - requires a very deliberate effort. It is no secret that my mood fluctuates rapidly and that I might wake up tomorrow feeling completely the opposite. It is probably silly really to even post right now, while I feel this way, because I know that it is fleeting. I have learned to pay little attention to my moment to moment feelings because I know they change. But I do think sometimes that even in those moments of optimism and hopefulness, and happiness - what underlies those things is still the same because I am still me.

I have been trying for a while to figure out why I'm unhappy. Is it chemical - should I try taking something again even though it didn't work? Would I just be fooling myself? What is this thing that we all talk about in AA that I have posted about before - a more amazing life than anything you ever could imagine? What is that? A life beyond your wildest dreams. What is that? People always talk about getting these things. I think I have figured it out, and this is going to sound horribly negative probably, but again, tomorrow I might write a different post about the exact same thing. What you get is just a life, no more amazing than the next one, or maybe you get to keep the one you had, and maybe it seems amazing and beyond your wildest dreams, but that is only because you have learned to adjust your expectations - or rather, you have been forced to. Maybe you have let go of your expectations completely. Suddenly what looked intolerable, seems more amazing than anything you could have hoped for. But what underlies it is really the same and it is still disappointing.

My life - it isn't what I expected. Sure, it is amazing, if I look at it independently of those expectations. If you expected nothing, how could you be disappointed? You wouldn't be. This is about changing yourself to meet conditions, that's all. This is about acceptance. You can be happy under any circumstances, you just have to accept it whatever it is. Is my life better than it was 2 years ago when I came into AA? Yes, infinitely. Is it very much the same as it was 2 years ago. Yes. I live in a different city and I have a different job and make a lot more money, but my life is the same. It looks different, drastically in some ways, because I have done just what AA tells you to do - change yourself and your expectations to meet conditions over which you have no control. I think I fool myself sometimes into believing that I have really let go of the things I thought I wanted out of life, but I haven't. I have glimpses of what it is like to feel happy with a life that does not include those things - that does not include finding a man or having children - but I am not actually okay with that. So the happiness is only fleeting and it feels fake to me. It feels contrived.

People have never been able to understand why I would be unhappy with the life that I have - because I have a great job and good career and I'm financially successful - those are the things that other people focus on because those are the things you can easily see. That is only a matter of someone comparing their insides to my outsides though. Trust me - my insides don't match my outsides. It isn't that I am unhappy necessarily. Of course I am grateful, tremendously. I guess I do have AA to thank for the happiness that I do have because it is AA that has enabled me to shift my perspective at all. I am not unhappy with what my life is, I am not disappointed when I think about it. I am not ungrateful. But I am unhappy with what it isn't, and I am definitely disappointed.