Entitled Parking Lady

Here's what improvement looks like in the Seaweed arena, courtesy of Entitled Parking Lady.  My initial reaction, born out of much practice when I was still drinking and nurtured by a rage-o-holic family, would have been to react sarcastically, angrily.  It was not that long ago that I would chosen this as an appropriate response.  I began to see some improvement when I migrated from raw anger to more of a snarky, passive-aggressive approach to people who were annoying the hell out of me.  Folks knew I was angry even though I wasn't blasting away with both barrels.  It was more of a knife assault at that point - better than gun play but still not impressive.  Nothing to write home about, in other words. At this point in my life I am reduced to shooting flaming daggers out of my eyes while keeping my mouth shut.  I'm getting there.  I still need to keep going but I'm moving in the right direction, as slowly as I possibly can.


As I mentioned previously I stewed about my encounter with Entitled Parking Lady - and lest you raise an eyebrow about her nickname let me tell you that it's a marked improvement over her original nickname, which I won't go into her to protect the children and vestal virgins who might be reading - I stewed about this incident far too long and far too deeply.  I called my New City sponsor reluctantly, and far too late  - a man who, by the way, has less sobriety than me, a fact that probably galls me more than I care to admit - and he did some hearty laughing in my face, which is the appropriate response.  It helped a lot just talking about it.  He didn't tell me anything that I hadn't already told myself, but that isn't the point.  I have to remember that it's the reaching out for human contact that does the trick, dashing on the rocks the isolating power of my disease.


He did point out that things must be going pretty well if this was the only thing that I have to get   all worked up about.