But what if none of this were my fault?

Today I was George Stuffingenvelopes for three hours, didn't even notice what the publication was I was stuffing.

Baptist Orphanage Newsletter? Auctioneers' Quarterly? It was menial but not unpleasent. My mind reached for questions and answers, spiraled but spiraled forward, moments, and time was away, gone.

How was I here, and not where but when. When am I?

I only recognize happiness in retrospect. Suspect these might be some good old days.
*
Some feelings coming back.
***
I'm god-conscious as well. I believe that He is like some two-by-fours over a deep well, I stand upon, some incredibly deep hole of falling falling remorsing remorse, without Him.

But inside I am deeply flawed, and my short-comings exacerbated by years, decades of "self-will run riot".

I work now. When I volunteer to do extra work, I'm learning that I feel better.

But would you believe that with me, sometimes I have not wanted to feel better. I have a theory now about some "alcoholics" (I reject that term, have no other) being deliberate invalids, like some normal people admit to enjoying a fever and a cold ("sick days" for the hearty, good soups and extra blankets and other treats they give themselves) but far far worse and crazily mixed up, or "complex".

I've never read anything serious about masochism, the subject has never interested me, and I don't believe that's what I'm referring to. No, masochism would be to relapse, and I'm talking about addiction in it's last stages, when you are out of control and there is no pain, remorse, fear or any governing feeling that will cause you to save yourself from "jails, institutions, death".

Just a theory that I began to enjoy dying.
____
I say I'm learning that I feel better when I volunteer for extra work, not that I've learned. Somehow, the lesson will not stick, my mind will not have the lesson as instinct. The instinct should have been there all my life, not to be learned.

So that is one way a Drunkard mystifies others, and in recovery is mystified by himself. Do this, and you will not float away into fearsome danger. Do this and you will not feel like an outsider.

Show some get up and go, for crying out loud.

But no. The automatic answer is no.
*****
A.A. is contradictory to me.

We are to believe we were powerless and therefore blameless.

Yet we are to forgive ourselves by confessing to ourselves, one other person, and to God.

We have a disease.

Yet the cure is a moral inventory and overhaul.

I know very well what my attitude is and will always be. I remember this much. I chose to drink, to cower, to steal from my parents, to steal from businesses. I chose to drop out of school and I acted indifferent about betraying my parents. (What, should I credit myself for feeling a little bad? Of course not. That means I felt bad and did it anyway. I'm not a brain deformed sociopath, not insane or retarded.)

I live with the contradiction. That, or I only accept part of the 12 steps, and those parts are all after the first step which says we were powerless (the essential step, they say, and number one for a reason).
***

Some feelings coming back, after 17 months. I'm all right. I thank my Father for this home, my job, my friends, my remaining family, for the age we live in, for the humanity we share. All that and more.

Sometimes and again, we all have glad news too. Hm! I think about that too of course, but funny how it is more of an after thought for me now.