Forgiving/Resentful

[caressa]

This is a biggy for me today. My phone and internet service was disconnected on October 30th and I didn't get a phone until last Friday and I got my internet service today. When I went to access my hotmail account with my service, access was denied. I phoned for technical support and they said my account was closed and it would be reinstated in five days, meanwhile I am awaiting a message about the part-time job that I applied for last month.

I know it will come through if I am suppose to get it, and if I remember rightly, I did e-mail them my new phone number and address before getting disconnected, yet all correspondance with them has been by e-mail.

I put my back out and something went pop this morning and I realized that some of it could be anger and that I needed to let it go and part of it is my own fault by being behind in my account. I have made payments but haven't paid it monthly in full, and now I have to play catch up which is never easy. I also didn't have a phone at the beginning of the month to make the payment on time, so they received it late. I have to take responsibility for my part and let go of the rest because I am powerless over the system and life and this is just another curve ball being thrown my way.

I have been dealing with anger and as my friend said when I shared the problems I had with the wire connection of my computer, if you weren't angry about this you would be angry about something else. I still have the anger about the wires which lay across my hallway and are hazardous to myself and to others who come to visit. The phone jack is not near an electrical outlet and I have wires everywhere and not where I want them. I pay for wire maintenance but I was informed that because the jack is working where it is it would cost me an additional $80 to have it moved. It appears to me as though I am paying for a half service and they are taking my money for part-time care whenever it is good for them.

Sorry to dump, I seem to have a long way to go on this one.

[Lin]

firgiving and resentful? OOPS. Guess I need to have a go at this one today too.

Yesterday after school I had a dentist appointment to get a crown. My spouse took the OPPORTUNITY to get drunk. He was drunker than I'd sen him in YEARS! He was loud, obnoxious, rude, blaming me BECAUSE I BUY THE KIND OF BREAD HE DOES NOT LIKE. What a pitiful excuse this time. I tried very hard not to react to him yelling at me and blaming me. Whne I left for my f2f AlAnon meeting I almost stayed home because I could tell the yelling was upsetting the dogs. I could not take them with me and I did nto want to leave them there to be subjected to it if he continued the rambling. When i got home he was passed out.

But at 1:30 the dogs woke me up. I heard him in the kitchen yelling my name. I went in. He had fallen. he had knocked stuff off the top of the dishwasher and broken a mug. The broken glass was there. He had a gash in the back of his head and one on his knee. I cleaned up the glass and blood. I cleaned the head wound so I could see if it needed stitches and it had stopped bleeding. (I'm not sure how long he laid there before they woke me. he kept saying I"m SICK. I'm SICK. I'm ashamed to say my reply way not very polite. It was something like I'd be sick TOO if I got as drunk as you did. I said something like jsut puke and die and you'll fel better. Resentful? probably. I'm sure he wont remember it. But I was sober when i said it. I've never told him or even thought that I wanted him dead. I was disguset , disappointed, angry. Evidentally I was also resentful. (hence this chip today)

I will make amends for those words. They were jsut words. I did nto mean it.

I let him lay there until he got up and came back to bed. That was about an hour. I offered to call him an ambulance or bring him a cane, but he said NO. So i went to bed and watched TV.

Gota work on this today,.

LIN

[caressa]

Sounds pretty normal my friend, I know I would have reacted if it had been me. What I think we need to do is to not hang onto the anger and resentment. It is okay to be angry. It is a normal feeling. It is the obsessing and the feeding of it that hurts us.

Thanks for sharing. God Bless

[Tiger]

Hi Lin and Caressa,

Great topic!

All of us go through these "negative incidents" in our lives.

I learned a few techniques over my years in AA taught by the "old-timers" of a the "Golden Years of AA"

1. Keep these incidents in perspective - as simple as "and this too shall pass" to as profound as " what does this mean over a life time" - this will give us a perspective on incidents in this thing we call "life"

2. I had trouble with praying for those whom wasn't resented because I knew my prayers were insincere so I developed my own pray which was "God, give them what they deserve".......but......when I did an inner voice said "I will if I can give you what you deserve" - I replied "Don't do that!" and somehow the "playing field became even - they weren't "perfect but neither was I !
I could "tolerate them" - they had a right to live as I did!

3. The Magic Seven Words of AA:

Over the decades of AA the following story - which I heard from in the old-timers in the sixties era of AA - got lost:

It was the day before "Mother's day 1935. A New Yorker had come to Akron, Ohio on a business deal that had gone sour - His name was Bill Wilson - He was staying at the Mayflower Hotel in Akron, Ohio. He had been sober for six months but as he stood in the lobby of the Hotel he could hear the tinkling of glasses, laughter and the music of the juke box coming from the Hotel's bar..and....He Wanted To Drink!!!...He prayed "God, don't let me think this way". He went to the phones, found Dr. Bob and the rest is history.

This prayer can be used not only for "drinking" but also for our reactions to the unpleasant incidents in our lives!

To sum it up! If we took the 3rd step "nothing is happening by mistake in our lives - both good and bad and ":Divine

Providence" tells us that ultimately "good" Will come out
of this situation....in God's Time!

The above has gotten me through 3 bouts with cancer and Lucy through loosing her eyesight 4 years ago with macular degeneration plus a bad back where she has to go to a Pain Management Doctor!

We "muddled through" the good years and the bad years and those many in-between years sober!

This Thanksgiving I will have 29 years of uninterrupted sobriety and Lucy has over 31 years.......and it's been a GREAT TRIP in spite of everything!

Love.............Tiger

[dg]

Wow, Lin, your post brought back alot of that kind of memories. I would have done the same thing too with the words towards the A.
Brings back to when my A got hepititis and was out in the streets.. I was filled with resentments towards him being sick and coming home only because he was ill, but at the time we didn't know it was hep becuase the symptoms didn't show up until 3 days later and I had to take him to the hospital. I did say a few choice of words to him when the doc came in the room and told him he had hep and was he a 'user" I was filled with alot of pain,embarrassment and anger that my life was like that, full of crazy choas because he chose to use. With this still hovering over our heads of his hep thing, he still has to be tested every 6 months for a long long time, altho its not C (whew) but the fact that the mere fact is he got it. It took me alot of deep emotions to even to forgive him just for making his choices and me feeling like I wasn't important to him in the first place for him to go out and end up in the streets at that time.
I am glad I did forgive him now.. my whole being of my serenity was totally worth it because I was able to do this is pretty much based on the program.