Blog entry for:

i will see it for what it is and let it go. what is it? well the way i see it, resentments are the start of the roadblocks that i encounter on my path to becoming the man i have always wanted to be. looking at addiction as part of the physical, emotional and spiritual me, i get the fact that each and every resentment i carry, sets up an emotional reaction, that i often cannot see, until i am too far down the road to do anything but the corrective part of the TENTH STEP. i understand,m rage, and i understand anger, after all, all of my feelings had folded into those two feelings, once upon a time. that does not mean that anger is somehow a “negative” feeling, for me it just is.
the away i look at it, anger ⇒ resentment cycle, is no different than guilt ⇒ shame cycle, both take what are normal human emotions and morph them into a tool that i can inflict pain upon myself with, over and over and over again. no matter how justified or realistic the original feelings were, shame and resentment are manufactured by me, based on what is going on in my head, especially when being worked upon, by the cultural expectations i have been imprinted upon me. i was taught to let no slight go unpunished and that retaliation and revenge were not only appropriate but expected. the flip side, was not to let anyone see me getting angry or to get my hand caught in the cookie jar. so unless, there was immediate recourse, the slight, imagined or real, was swallowed and worked over by my head, until it becomes a nicely polished resentment and when my opportunity came, i could strike with force to release it. not a very healthy way to live in the real world, but it certainly fit into what i saw the world as, way back when.
what has changed is that today, i have the means and the motivation to live in a more healthy manner, at least when it comes to my emotions. anger, while it can often result in destructive behaviors needs to be handled in real time, or nearly real time for me. instead of obsessing on the notion of what i did or did not do correctly in the situation, i need to look at whether or not it is real, and if the offense is real, and not something i just want to perceive as real, address it with then person or institution that wronged me.
the beauty of working step cycle after step cycle, is that i get to uncover those old, ancient and quite nasty resentments that i buried long ago, and finally release them. ironically, most of the resentments, well belay that, ALL of the resentments on my last FOURTH STEP were from a time forty years ago, and i was still just as angry and hateful when i wrote about them, as i was way, way back in the day. each previous cycle, i told myself that i had dealt with them, and that they were no longer a driving force in my life, so just swallow, buck up and move ahead. well now that is true, and i need no longer swallow any of that sh!t from that time in my life. does that mean i will be returning to the “scene of the crimes, ” any time soon? more than likely not, as there really is nothing there for me at all, these days. it is nice to feel that without regret or anger, just a bit of sadness, that i allowed that time to own me for so fVcking long.
today? well today, i am going to do nothing at all, so hopefully when Friday Night Date rolls around again, i can be present for the woman with whom i share my life with, today. yes there are lost of things i COULD do to generate some cash, but there is nothing i am going to do, at least not right now, except to acknowledge that it is a great day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞