Everyone Familiar With This?

From Chapter 5 "How It Works:"

(are you familiar with this part?)

"Many of us exclaimed, "What an order! I can't go through with it." Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection."

(found on Page 60 of the book, "Alcoholics Anonymous")

Screw THAT, my friends

I WANT SPIRITUAL PERFECTION

Haha

Or at least I want to be the only one who knows that I haven't attained SPIRITUAL PERFECTION!

OR PLAIN PERFECTION!

I just have to say - I must still be a pretty sick recovering addict - 'cos today I had the impression that I needed to be perfect...I mean - not just excellent or faultless, but PERFECT.

I just received a rental increase letter today (grr) and I spent so much time trying to write the PERFECT rebuttal letter...

Then I realized - THERE ARE NO LAWS to keep my landlord from doing this - raising the rent - anyway!

So my PERFECT LETTER that I spent waaaaaaaay more time on than I needed to (quite a few li'l anger management breaks while I was writing heh)...has turned out to be the worst WASTE OF TIME EVER!

2 HOURS of it.

I could have studied Fairy Tales - or World Literature
(Hey shhhh-up, I heard you laughing about 'fairy tales' - it's a SERIOUS STUDY - it's a 3rd year University course)
:)~

Anyhow - I could have played with my cat (who is still sorely needing attention after that near-fire a couple of weeks ago...he's still jumpy and parks his furry self right at the window opening about 20 hours of the day!), had a nap, worked on World Literature homework, gone to see a friend, gone for a walk...(gone to a meeting shhhhhhh!)

And it wasn't the letter that had to be PERFECT!

IT WAS ME - in the letter!

Haha - I had to 'portray' myself as having been the perfect tenant, surely non-deserving of this rental increase and a buncha other stuff...and the fact is.

I still shouldn't have my rent raised

BUT

- I am not that perfect tenant I was writing about. Sheeeeeeesh - but that was what took up so much time! I didn't lie or anything - I just left out the couple of things that I should be held responsible for - like breaking my window screen and something from the past...I let a person stay here for 2 weeks without telling my landlord 'cos my friend was in a crises...technically the landlord could have charged extra money for that because technically an extra tenant was here for more than just overnight for one or two nights. I just didn't bother asking permission though I'm quite sure my landlord would have understood the situation at the time and would have refrained from charging me or my friend anything extra - since my friend and I knew the situation would be very temporary...

...neither of those things are seriously BAD things...but they do point to the fact that I am not perfect - and also - I have hidden 2 details from my landlord instead of reasonably discussion those things. I actually cranked in the letter about my screen being broken for several months...without explaining how it got that way (I locked myself out and had to come through the window - didn't even break the screen at that time...it was when I tried to put the screen BACK later that I broke it lol).

What the heck?

.....the details aren't really bad and I'm not a bad tenant or horrible person because of those things...but I had to try to come off as PERFECT in the letter - and try to write about my situation as if I have never done anything wrong - EVER.

So - I guess I am still pretty sick, all things considered. I KNOW, myself, that I'm not perfect - but I don't want anyone else to know that!

HAHA

What a dumb post, eh?

Things like this bother me - thot I would post it and maybe someone else who has had a similar experience can comment.

When I was browsing the Big Book - I got to the paragraph that I posted at the top of this blog entry.....and it kinda gnawed at me.

Yep - I STILL WANT PERFECTION RIGHT NOW...

Ah well - maybe tomorrow I'll be perfect.

Or

Maybe I will just act and think with more balance, eh?

This little incident is a reminder, for sure, that I can over-tip with certain behaviors once I allow my mind to get too set. Hmmm I think when I was in treatment, the counsellors used to call this 'obsessive thinking.'

So - oh great - it's not gone...obsession

Oh great - I'm still not perfect

*ptoeey*

Whatever

I am grateful that it was not obsessive thinking of another sort - where I thought constantly about alcohol, drugs, using.

And - I got rid of the letter

LOL

Program Promises

I must have been ONE FORTUNATE addict when I cleaned up - and it must have been 'my time' for sure, because I understood 'The Promises' and experienced a taste of them within my first week of sobriety.

Here are the Promises from pages 83 and 84 of the Alcoholics Anonymous book:

“If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.”

I was definitely AMAZED before I was halfway through. What I realized during the first week of sobriety is that I had made a DECISION. That decision FREED ME from all the self-inflicted alcohol-depression, hangovers, the cycle of hangovers and binges. Though I didn't feel it very often at first, I did experience feelings of 'peace' in knowing I wasn't fully immersed and entangled in a trap anymore. I wasn't free from every bad thing, but I was FREE from GETTING DRUNK and initiating the next hangover, the next bout of depression and panic attacks.

I felt more FREEDOM knowing that I would never have to return to FEELING THAT OLD WAY if I didn't drink again. I didn't know how I was going to 'not drink' for the rest of my life...but after a few days of sobriety, I knew how I stayed sober the day before...and resolved that if I didn't know how I would stay sober 'TOMORROW' and 'JUST FOR ONE DAY' ahead of time, or even 'Just For Today' - that I would simply do what I did YESTERDAY.

Whatever works, right?

'The Promises,' for some reason, are a concept that, even at the start of my recovery, I never did take lightly. I made fun of them on the surface, but never strongly declared that I doubted the possibilities on pages 84 and 85 of the A.A. Literature. I am fortunate, because I grasped onto those pages RIGHT AWAY. I was never one who spent a lot of time asserting, "Those things will never happen with me!" A few of my peers who said that the promises would never appear in their lives have died drug-related deaths. Some are out drinking and drugging today. Most have just relapsed and disappeared. A small number of immediate peers with whom I started my recovery journey with - have stayed clean. I can count these only on hand, but they, too, say that they understand The Promises - and they understood pages 84 and 85 of the Big Book early on.

Apart from the decision I made 3 years ago - to stop drinking...I also made a decision that if I felt that any of 'The Promises' were transpiring in my life, I would REFUSE TO GIVE THEM UP. That has always meant, for me, that I refuse to trade any freedom I've gained, any peace, serenity I've ever felt since being sober, any 'new happiness'...for a drink.

Twelve Steps

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought though prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.


---Taken from my 'A.A. Big Book'