A Resentment and a Coffee Pot

I muse a lot on what our literature suggests are the three big tar-pits of self that can get me in trouble: money, sex, and pride.  The first two are pretty self-explanatory and not at all subtle, but that pride can sneak up and bite me in the ass when I least expect it.  Just as soon as I think I'm not overly concerned about my place in society, my right to be right, I get an uncomfortable reminder at how much it pisses me off when I think I'm being undervalued and ignored, that my opinion is not being accepted as THE opinion.  Being disrespected, the street boys say.

One of my early morning meetings has, after an inordinately long period of bitching by some of the members, finally fractured into two groups.  While I mostly agree with the complaints of the malcontents, the reasons for their departure, I confess to not being affected as deeply, partially because I'm not a daily attendee of this group.  I don't know how anyone goes to the same meeting at the same time on the same day for years and years - I'm ready to bring out the flame-thrower and scorch half the people in the groups I've been attending once a week for a couple of months.  Moreover, I think The Fellowship should be a little messy, a little irritating.  I'm all dressed up in my little hat and little thrift-shop suit jacket today, all nice and clean and somewhat presentable, forgetting, of course, what a total ass I must have been when I was getting started.

I have felt a creeping irritation at the fleeing members.  I find myself talking to some of them when they're not actually . . . you know . . . there.  I decided not to go to the new meetings until I decided to go to one of them.  It was fine - I have a lot of friends there, people I care about, people I'm going to remain friends with even though we don't see eye-to-eye on the solution to this particular conundrum.  Really, the best thing for the recovery community is to have as many meetings available as possible; the more convenient it is to spread the word the better for the still suffering alcoholic.  As a general rule I like 20 or 25 attendees in my meetings - not so big that I can't get a word in edgewise if I have something to say - which is always - but not so small that I'm compelled to talk if I don't want to - which is never.

I went to the original meeting today, somewhat reduced in size.  We're working through The Traditions at this meeting and the first couple focus on unity and the group conscience.  Talk about god sending a message, loud and clear.  One guy brought up the "elephant in the room," thinking out loud that he wants to be careful that he doesn't develop a resentment over the defection, that it's a good thing in the long run.  His pique is a natural reaction, I think, to a bunch of people saying that they don't like something that you like so they're going to take their ball and go home.  I was told about the new meeting beforehand but some of these members weren't - the natural reaction ego-wise being that they imagine that they were deliberately left out.

I know that I was sick of being around people who were unhappy.  The old meeting is smaller but more relaxed.  I don't feel like there's a bunch of judging going on anymore.  I can't imagine that this tension wasn't palpable in some way.  I stuck to this because I liked being around happy people.  You know, if I try some Indonesian Samosa sauce and I don't like it then I can try some other kind of sauce.  It makes more sense to me than continuing to eat the samosa sauce and bitching about how much I don't like it.