we are all human beings

resentments. and forgiveness. the universe keeps dropping this in my lap this week. meetings. blogs. talking with friends.

my regular tuesday meeting was really good this week. we read aloud from "how al-anon works" on detachment and forgiveness. i haven't read this book yet, so it was a great passage to hear. chapter 11 i think. there was a lot of good food for thought in that passage.

i heard a story this week. an analogy. someone was taking time for themselves, relaxing of sorts, and then HP comes and gives this image to think about. a petri dish. really huge petri dish. with nasty green colored ink in it. and they are standing in this, the alcoholic and in laws and family are all miniature people in this huge petri dish, standing in this green ink (which was described as old anger). and they look around, at the people they are most upset with, in laws in particular, and then a revelation. that we are all human beings, all together, standing in this disease of alcoholism. we all deal with it as best we can. we need to forgive each other.

i am really mad at my mother in law. i had been ignoring how mad i was at my mother in law. until i sat and listened to someone else talk about this. this analogy of this big petri dish allowed me to see my mother in law as human. a person in pain too. she is dealing with alcoholism too. her husband. her children. and i am mad at her for not being there for me. i feel she let me down, and i resent that. but she is suffering too. i was failing to see that before. i was so caught up in my anger at her, that i failed to see that she is affected by the disease as well.

i went to her, after my husband kicked me out of our room, before my leg broke. i was at my wits end. asking her for help. i had never done this. i cried and told her how bad things were and how bad the drinking was and how worried i was about her son, my husband. and she said, "if i knew how to help him i would have done it a long time ago." and then a few days later when blood work came back from the doc letting us know that my husband's liver was doing bad and triglycerides were through the roof, and he was uncaring and saying "what do i have to live for anyway" and i'm thinking "your kid, your kid, your kid you big dummy" and i call her and she says she can't do anything and i say, "well he's your son and he's dying, thought you would want to know" and i hang up and feel so alone and i am so mad that the only time in 13 years i have ever gone to her for help she wasn't there for me and i haven't talked to her since. that was september.

man, i gotta let this go! she is a person too, in this disease. she has her own pain and sense of loss and powerlessness and i am mad at her? jeez, my views have been so skewed. resentment and anger really cloud your vision. she has been dealing with my husband's alcoholism for 20 years. i have only been dealing with it for 13. and she has her husband and her other kids too that are all alchoholics. the disease is everywhere. and she hasn't faced it yet. she doesn't see how affected she is. she is lost and hurting and i was mad at her? now i am realizing that i wasn't mad at HER, i was mad that trying to talk to her was showing me that i was powerless, and i did not want to hear that. i wanted to fix all this. that was the beginning of my realizing my life was unmanageable.

so i have to let this anger go. this resentment go. it is time to forgive. it isn't doing me any good. shoot. i am realizing that i have a lot of people to do this with. man oh man. i have spent so much of my life running around frantic trying to fix things and avoid confrontation that i just kept pushing my anger and resentments down. i am mad at me, my husband, my parents, his parents, his friends. wow, i have a lot of work to do now. this is good though. face this stuff. dig through it. look at it. then let it go. forgive and be free.

let go and let god. looks like i'm beginning grasping step 2. "came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." i am believing that i really can't do all this on my own. i am powerless. i get that. and we are all in this together. so i believe i need a power greater than me to get to sanity. but how? how do i do that?

step 3, here i come.