Resentments

 "Try never to judge.  The human mind is so delicate and so complex that only its Maker can know it wholly.  Each mind is so different, actuated by such different motives, controlled by such different circumstance, influenced by such different sufferings.  You cannot know all the influences that have gone to make up a personality."

Resentment:  Anger or displeasure stemming from belief that one has been wronged or betrayed by others; indignation.

"Never forget that resentment is a deadly hazard to an alcoholic."  Bam.

"But with the alcoholic . . . this business of resentment is infinitely grave."  Boom.

"Resentment is the 'number one' offender."  Badda Bing.

"The elder statesman is the one who sees the wisdom of the group's decision, who holds no resentment over his reduced status, whose judgment, fortified by considerable experience, is sound, and who is willing to sit quietly on the sidelines patiently awaiting developments."  Judas, Mary, and Joseph, please leave me alone.

I'm pondering my resentment over the break-away Keep It Complicated group.  I've been trying to convince myself it's not a real resentment, that it's not a serious, deadly resentment.  I'm looking up words, reading from the literature, talking to other alcoholics whose wisdom and experience I respect, and I gotta tell ya I'm getting slaughtered: I got a resentment.  I can soften it by calling it mild or justified but then again I used to justify drinking 18 beers and then driving a ton of steel and glass at 70 MPH.

I don't think I'm resentful about the group itself - SuperK pointed out I don't even know who's attending the meeting.  I'm pretty sure I'm resentful at the ringleaders who started the meeting.  I see them as grouchy, grumpy, bitchy old men who don't like to be told what to do and if you explain why they're being told to do something they don't want to do they brush the explanations off with facile reasoning.  And I perceive - maybe correctly, maybe not - that this kind of behavior has taken an awful public health emergency and worsened it and extended it, and this has affected ME.

It gets worse.  My sponsor also attends this meeting.  I don't put him in the same category as the ringleaders but he's still attending the meeting.  And when the ringleaders do something I find particularly irritating he sort of laughs it off.  This irritates the shit out of me.  It sounds like one of those laughs that came out of me when I would say something like "those 18 beers?  boy, I don't remember the drive home last night" or "I gave that woman gonorrhea but she thought she caught it from her boyfriend."  It's humorous if you're soulless.  

I'm having trouble talking with my sponsor at the moment because "how's your Program going?" is a standard part of my stump speech with any alcoholic.  It's a way to keep my friends accountable and a way for me to remind myself that I better be taking care of my Program.  The good thing for me is that I have a ton of close friends who have a ton of sobriety so my sponsee-sponsor relationship at this point is a lot less fraught with importance . . .

Still . . . infinitely grave . . .