FEAR!

Fear: The general term for the anxiety and agitation felt at the presence of danger.

Today I'm going to let my Fear run wild.

I'm going to be afraid and I'm not going to discriminate against any of the many diverse types of fear that I can succumb to. I'm afraid (see how easy it is?) that some types of fear don't get proper respect. There are so many excellent and powerful kinds available to me, both real and imaginary. Personally, I like the ones that don't actually exist -- I can really get rolling when I ponder things that are very unlikely to happen, or things that are impossible for obvious reasons: attacks of flying monkeys and vampire infestation and stuff like that.

I tend to gravitate to being afraid of what may happen in the future. That's my favorite kind of fear. I love rushing ahead and suffering unimaginable pain. Nothing good ever happens to me in the futures that I imagine, so I can only assume that nothing ever will. And this is despite the fact that bad things happen to me only rarely. I'm sure the tide is turning. I feel a ground swell of Bad.


There's a lot of excellent fear to be mined in the past as well. Let's be careful not to waste this rich vein of anguish. Even though I've done my best to clean up the wreckage of my past, I'm confident that my missteps and misdeeds will come back to haunt me. The demons of my past are always stalking, stalking, relentlessly stalking, materializing out of the hazy mist of a time already gone to ruin what I have now.

Think about all of the things that could go wrong. Death! Disease! Pestilence! Famine! And that's just today!!

Ride, Ride My See-Saw

I went to the pool yesterday and had a nice swim. I bent over to pick up something or the other -- OK, some girly guy conditioner -- and my back did a bit of a seize-up. "Oh, c'mon," I thought. "This is hardly fair. This is hardly something that I want to happen with me." At least I could have gotten hurt jumping off a third floor balcony into a swimming pool or getting mangled in a bar fight or car wreck. That kind of pain I deserve. But this? This routine run of the mill happens to everybody crap? This I can do without, as long as I'm calling all of the shots.

Once again I have to try to find the middle. When I'm running amuck, instincts awry, I seesaw between wildly improbably extremes. Sometimes I pretend that nothing is wrong and I can go on about my day with blissful disregard to the actual circumstances. Like showing up at a wedding with a blood stained shirt. If I pretend that nothing is wrong, then nothing is wrong. "Maybe no one will notice the blood stains," I say. "Where did these blood stains come from anyway? Should I get stitches for this cut over my eye?" I was the guy who showed up at work with a temperature of 102 and projectile vomiting because I was too important to stay home. I thought the world would fall apart if I wasn't manipulating it.

My other tendency is to try to fix the problem with some ACTION. I'm quite the problem solver. I can solve anything with SHEER WILLPOWER. It never occurs to me to let something run its course. I have to bend it to my wishes. Sometimes I need to sit quietly and see what happens. The temperature comes down over time. The projectile vomiting gives way to the dry heaves. If I break my leg I can't jog that afternoon.

When all else fails, I can start shouting: "Why me, why me, why me?! Why did a bad thing happen to me? Why didn't it happen to someone else?"

You, for instance. That would be better for me.

Boundaries and More. Actually, Just Boundaries. There's Nothing Else

Boundary: Anything marking a limit; bound; border.

Here are some thoughts about setting boundaries worthy of Freud or Mr. Jung, the psychological father of A.A.. First of all, you should have no boundaries so that I can gain access to whatever it is you have that I want with a minimum of effort. If you insist of setting some boundaries, in a tiresome disregard of my desires, then they should be weak and easily surmounted. I don't want to have to work to get what I want. I want it to come easily.

On the other hand, I get to construct some very formidable boundaries. I'm thinking along the lines of a well defended compound, maximum security stuff, with razor wire and moats and electrified fences and lots of guards in the those little turrets, with shotguns and halogen search lights that can fix you in their icy glare with the slightest movement. You need to behave the way I want you to behave.

I don't think any of this stuff is in the Big Book. I'm not checking, either.

Is Yours an Innie or an Outie?

Needs: Something useful, required, or desired.

Yesterday I decided to explore my Inner Child, and that was a big mistake. My Inner Child is a pain in the ass. Maybe I should work on my Outer Child first, also a pain in the ass, and someone who causes a lot more problems in my life than the inner one. My Inner Child is just fine; maybe he should go play with all of the other Inner Children and leave me alone. If I could figure out how to open the gate and let him scamper free I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'm not suggesting that I can totally ignore my psychological make-up. I'm suggesting that I shouldn't get too bogged down in it. Maybe some basic understanding of how I got to where I am today, and then get on with working The Steps. I'm not too big on getting My Needs Met, as in "I'm just not getting my needs met at that meeting." Well, tough shit. My needs are clean water and food in my belly, and a warm, dry place to sleep at night. Everything else is A Want.

Maybe I can trick my Inner Child so go away. Leave him some Maternal Love or Positive Feedback peanuts outside. He likes those. He'll follow those for thousands of miles.

Oops! Thanks! Gimme! Wow!

Praying Mantis: Any of a number of related long, slender insects with grasping, spiny forelegs often held together as if in prayer.

I read an essay on praying written by a skeptical atheist. This guy visited a number of different religious organizations, all of the main stream churches, before ending up at a country pentecostal type church. It was interesting to see how similar these groups were in their advice about effective praying. All of them stressed that praying was hard work that took a lot of practice. Work? Work? I hate work. I hate expending effort that doesn't provide quick, immediate results.

One leader said that prayers could be broken down into four groups: Oops! Wow! Thanks! and Gimme! I recalled my entry into A.A. and my initial struggles with praying, trying to throw off all of the old prejudices and rote memory exercises that meant nothing to me. My mentors suggested starting the day with Please! and ending it with Thanks! I couldn't argue semantics with that kind of advice.

Anyway, I thought the reporter would really tee off on the simple old Pentecostals. They are a pretty easy target for the cynical among us with all of their swaying and exaggerated facial expressions and brandishing of well worn Bibles. He spent some time talking to the kids at the church. He thought that they had a very simple and personal relationship with god. It ended up being his favorite church.

I have been giving short shrift to my praying lately. Praying is not nearly as sophisticated as meditating in the hip, slick, and cool world that I inhabit. But it was kind of cool listening to the kids talk about how they prayed: if they wanted something they asked for it; they frequently prayed for other people; they didn't seem to get too upset when things didn't go as expected.

My problem is that I pray AT things. God, gimme a Ferrari. God, gimme that guy's Ferrari because he doesn't deserve it. God, if you aren't going to give me that guy's Ferrari maybe he could have a minor accident -- nobody should get hurt, of course . . . too badly -- where there is extensive body damage. I get into trouble when I pray for specific results. And I think it's good technique to add that "if it's your will" disclaimer onto the end of the prayer, even though I don't mean it, obviously.

God, make my half-water Americano with unrefined sugar hot and delicious this morning.

Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

Ergh.

I have noticed since I quit drinking how the active alcoholics in most families seem to drive the agenda. I don't know why it took me so long to pick up on this. When I was drinking I would have been happy to have dinner with Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan and Vlad the Impaler as long as the alcohol was flowing. I didn't go anywhere if I couldn't drink as much as I wanted to and if I did, I made your life miserable. It had nothing to do with the people; it had to do with the drinking. This is why our acquaintances get more and more distasteful the longer we drink. Decent, normal people don't enjoy being around us after a while.

When the drunk hosts a family event, which they like to do because it puts a legitimate face on drinking and drunkenness, the alcohol is center stage. The turkey and the Christmas tree and the American flag play second fiddle to the alcohol. I remember showing up at a Memorial Day barbecue a few years back at an alcoholic relative's house. This dude had wine and a bar stocked with all kinds of hard liquor. He had a Margarita station and coolers full of beer and ales. The appetizers consisted of a prepackaged, unappealing cheese ball, and saltines. I rooted around in the cooler for something to drink, finding only one kind of soda, containing both sugar and caffeine, which I try to avoid, being a total hyperactive. That stuff makes me thirstier.

I drank tap water with an ice cube I fished out of the bottom of the cooler.

Eventually we got around to eating. Drinkers like to postpone the eating as long as possible. Food harshes the buzz. At that point I was damn hungry and resentful at having to sit around watching people drink. There were no distractions: music or TV or games or anything like that. Why bother? The booze was flowing. The activity was sitting around, talking and drinking. It wasn't very much fun. And this wasn't bad drinking; there weren't any fights or people falling into the coy pond or anything like that. Just steady drinking.

It was about this time that I started to make the calls explaining that as a recovering alcoholic I had to limit my exposure to drinking. I suggested that it was a lot easier for us to tolerate alcohol in a larger context: a glass of wine at dinner, a beer at a football game, a cocktail at a jazz club. I don't even see this kind of drinking any more. To a person everyone was respectful and kind while quickly putting me on The Shit List, I suspect.

I was careful not to accuse anyone of being a drunk or a bad host. I tried to be clinical about it but people that drink too much give The Stink Eye to people who abstain. I remember early in my sobriety when I wasn't so forthright getting stuck at a bar for a going away party. There was a guy at my table who was clearly alcoholic. He asked me a few time whether or not I ever drank. You know the type: "You mean you never drink?" Like the phrase "I don't drink" implies that I do indeed drink. This dude kept ordering rounds for everyone. I kept accumulating little shot glasses of liquor at my place which I would push into the center of the table from time to time. He ended up drinking them, probably. He had skin in the game; he wasn't going to waste good alcohol.

I'm done with this. It helped me to see it in black and white.

Hm.

My relationships with my family have changed over the years more or less as a function of how I'm working my Program. I started my recovery as a total people pleaser. Most alcoholics have an unhealthy obsession with being loved by everyone. Most of us are chameleons. "What do you want me to be?" I'd ask. "I'm sure I can do that." When I drank I sort of kind of belonged a little bit to every clique and group, standing as far out on the fringe as I could possibly get. I was there but I didn't fit in, not really. I didn't know who I was so I could hardly allow you to get to know me. What I could permit was to allow you to get to know who I thought you wanted me to be. Whew.

This doesn't work in the long run, especially with relatives. I couldn't let myself be totally controlled by other people and remain happy. I got resentful. I got tired of doing what other people wanted to do all of the time. At the end it didn't even matter if I wanted to do what everyone was doing. Everything made me mad. I simply wanted call the shots some of the time. Everybody does. And to make the whole mess even more convoluted, I was too chicken shit to stand up for myself very often. When I did I felt so guilty that I caved in, and really resented everyone else.

So I shifted into bargaining mode. Because I felt like other people were pushing me around with absolutely no regard for my tender feelings and fragile needs I figured I should get to make the decisions every now and then. At that point I had been in A.A. long enough to know that I shouldn't do this all of the time and that I should compromise as much as possible. Do what I wanted to do but try to accommodate others.

This didn't work very well either. My selfish family had been used to getting their way for so long that they were loath to cede any control. They pushed back, and I often gave in. I don't like conflict, either. It's a nice addition to my people pleasing. And then when I'm mad I whip out the good old passive-aggressive playbook and really go to town. Sometimes I got my way but inevitably these people would poison the event by arriving late or dropping little hints of disapproval.

For example, for many years my mother would host a Thanksgiving meal. We would eat at either 2PM or 4PM, to accommodate church activities and children. This seemed like a weird time to eat to SuperK and me. I have trouble working up a big appetite at four in the afternoon, but we went along with it for many years. Finally, we offered to fix the meal and suggested 1PM, which is a normal meal time. Everyone agreed then showed up whenever they wanted. Some were on time but most weren't. The punctual ones had food to prepare and started to fuss around in the kitchen. We had timed the bulk of the meal for 1PM. We sat and looked each other across the table, watching the food cool.

Eventually I just began to lose interest. We have ceased fighting anybody or anything, the Book says. It's no fun being marginalized and manipulated all of the time. I started to duck events, at first with flimsy excuses and little white lies, then more openly. I quit inviting people to my house, preferring silence to unhappy guests. They wouldn't come -- giving flimsy excuses -- or made me miserable when they did.

Eventually, I have become comfortable with my behavior. It isn't ideal in any Rockwellian sense but I am consistent and forthright. My family doesn't understand. A few of them -- the drinkers, mostly -- are clearly hostile. The rest just keep inviting me to the same things over and over, to my eternal amazement.

I don't feel good writing about this kind of behavior. It feels petty.