12 Steps Forward, 13 Steps Back...

...and I don't care...or do I?

It is amazing the tapes that get played over and over in our heads...our "self-talk" that can serve to bolster our courage, or tear us down.

I have discovered that I play a lot of the "I'm not good enough", "I'm never going to make it", "something is  wrong with me" type messages. It partially explains why my parents are so toxic to me when they do what they do with the best loving intentions, or why rejection from my spouse has been so hard for me to overcome. I literally cannot TOLERATE or be around people who have criticisms to offer now...or want to cling to the negative parts of my past...or worse yet, offer their opinions of me based on inaccuracies or rumors...

I am in recovery and completely committed to that. I am protecting sobriety like a fragile egg at the moment, as I am still weak. I am NOT in resolve or in the decision to change my life...I have NO DESIRE at all to use any kind of mind altering substance...but I struggle in coming to the conclusions that:

1.  I am beautiful and someone will find me attractive
2.  Other people's opinions of me are none of my business
3.  Knowing the truth of a thing is enough
4.  Other people's issues, reactions, and opinions belong to them. I don't have to do anything to convince  anybody of anything.
5.  I am worth loving and taking care of, and no one gets to violate that with me.
6. I can expect and demand to be spoken to in adult tones, phrases, contexts-and end interactions when  they violate that
7.  I am as much the sum of my successes as i am my failures, and I can refuse to accept anybody else's definition of me.

Staying "clean"  is not a hard thing for me at all right now. I'm not struggling with that. SOBRIETY is...sobriety being the state of mind that led me to use in the first place. I am unlearning the things that took a long time for me to learn..undoing the patterns that took a long time for me to develop, and challenging the beliefs about myself and my worth that took a long time for me to ingrain.

It is very hard to let go of people and places that are toxic to me...especially when I love them. Some I can't let go of due to other entanglements, and I have to learn how to balance what I will undoubtedly encounter from them, with the coping skills I am learning to deal with them.

First steps into a new life...a whole new life and way of thinking. Not marked as much by "Jo doesn't drink" anymore, or any other "clean"symbolism...but because I am going to learn how to love myself TRULY this time.

For those of you who have believed the best about me all along, or taken the good with the bad without losing faith, or listened to what I said, or helped to LIFT me when I have fallen...I thank you so much.

Yes, I realize the picture is a bit revealing and suggestive...not meant to offend...but I am taking care of myself for once...more and more every day...so if you don't like it, I guess that's YOUR stuff. :)