Jagged

Wow, talk about a sharp turn. I feel like my skin is made of broken glass right now. I’m sharp and cutting and angry and blah and hateful.

Incidentally, I took my first stab at the 4th and 5th step. I’m not sure I did it “right” but I told the kindly Orthodox Jew all of the things that I keep returning to in my darkest moments, all of the things I feel guilty about.

Interestingly, I’ve shared all of the things at least individually in other settings with various people, but I’ve never laid them out all at once in a package. On the whole, I don’t think my list of transgressions is all that bad and I do have some very good qualities to balance out my fuck-ups.

But I don’t feel magically different. I don’t feel lighter. Instead, I feel angry and resentful and bitter and grumpy. So, either I did it wrong, or, I don’t know, GA’s not a magic cure-all. Tempted to insert a smiley face there to denote my impishness in that statement but there’s some bile behind it, too.

I’m not blaming step 4 and 5 for my mood, mind you. I’m really not. At least not directly. I think I did, in fact, lift a layer of muck off my soul but it seems to have unearthed even more muck. That’s all. Not step 4-worthy muck, but truthful muck like: I’m not sure I want to stay married, I hate my job, my finances are a mess and I don’t think my husband is the one to lead us out of the mess.

On second thought, maybe those ARE step-4-worthy. Back to being unsure that I did this right.

But I did it. I admitted to another human being the awful stuff I had done, and also owned some really good things about myself, which is why those awful things sting so much: they don’t align with who I really am as a person.

So, I don’t know. Mixed up. Mucked up. Fucked up. Angry. Bored. Tired. But sober. No drinking and no gambling and, truthfully, a flit of a thought about both but no real zeal behind the cravings. Kind of like the cravings all got together and said, “All right, we’re beaten and bruised, but let’s rally once more. Let’s give it one more college try,” and they failed.

I’m not going to jeoporize 49 days drink free and nearly 60 days gamble free because I feel a little uncomfortable in my skin right now. It will pass, or it won’t. And if it doesn’t pass, then I have some tough decisions to make. But I don’t have to make them right now.