My feelings are hurt.  Even though I knew things weren’t going well and that I was considering ending my sponsorship too, it stung.  The teacher gave up on me.  Yes, I was a difficult student who asked a lot a hard questions, but still…teachers are supposed to meet their students where they are at, right?  I guess I don’t really know how sponsorship is supposed to work, but she wanted me to follow her guidance without question.  I brought my baggage to the table as I tried to grapple with it as I went through the steps with her.  I wanted a teacher; it seems she wanted a disciple. 
 
This a minor example of how I feel from my last post.  I tried to be so honest with my Sponsor and in the end she rejected me.  If I would have “faked it” a bit more and played by her rules she would have accepted me, but then I wouldn’t have been myself.
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Well, here I am: sponsor free, out on the prowl, no strings attached!  I’m a free agent.  I can look into all sorts of traditions that will nurture my sobriety without being told I’m doing it wrong.  I’m going to embrace this freedom, once I stop crying over being rejected.
 
I’m newly back in China after a lovely visit to Portland.  It was easy and fun to be sober there.  I went to a few 7am AA meetings and found my people there.  Such a Portland quote from the meeting, “If you are a man, or identify as a man, you are welcome to come to the Men’s meeting on Wednesday.”  People were warm and welcoming, we were in a Church basement, there was another women crocheting like me, I ran into a woman I taught with at the high school there, I left with people’s phone numbers and left with warm feelings towards everyone, it was worth getting up and driving 20 minutes to get there.
 
I also went to one Refuge Recovery meeting.  It was 20 minutes of yoga, 20 minutes of guided meditation and 20 minutes of reading and shares.  I loved this meeting style, I guess it was only born a few weeks ago and already there were about 20 people there. I went out afterwards for fellowship with the yoga instructor, chair and her boyfriend afterwards at a gluten-free and vegan bakery.  I saw how they could be part of my community if I lived there.  I could have sober friends easily.  I missed how my life could be if I lived there, I felt homesick for really the first time in the 8 years I have lived aboard.
 
Well, here I am. I’ll go to my weekly AA meeting, I will start my step 4, I will do yoga and foster meditation.  I’m equipped to stay sober.

​As I want to work on this forgiveness aspect of my recovery I am realizing I have been doing some wordsmithing and jumping over the work that I ultimately need to do. Forgiveness is an act of love, right?  I haven’t been able to really think about how to forgive myself for what I did while drinking because it is so tied up with why I drank in the first place: seeking acceptance while self-loathing. How do I forgive myself for hating myself?
 
When I think back to my family, how my identity formed as a teenager, I came to think of earning love through achievement and that turned into love through competency.  I am competent.  And when I’m not I have no value.  Sadly, I truly believe that, and then I’m resentful of it.  Even in my marriage I see elements of this: I take care of the bills, travel, dogs, etc., and that’s how I earn my love, through being of use.  When I was in high school I thought if I were to be an animal I would be a worker bee, a fucking drone doing my part to keep things in order among the other faceless masses.  Useful, needed, uncelebrated.  How uninspiring.
 
I have created a divide within myself through the façade I have used for decades of a successful confident woman.  “Fake it until you make it” has worked well for me to get hard times, and I fake it all day long, then cry myself to sleep with self-loathing, anxiety, and overwhelming fatigue.  I carry resentment toward people who I have felt I had to earn my love with them through my achievements, but I set it up this way.  I know that I have isolated myself from true connection by acting the part.  I have thought, “you don’t really know me, you know what I have shown you. If you did really see me for what I am me, you would hate me.”  How do I get at that to pick it apart?
 
How do I get at that?  Writing this out.  Asking for help (don’t know how to do that yet).  Talking to my inner critic and cultivating a better dialog with myself about myself.  This is the work at hand to reconstruct my self-worth beyond a function for others to use.