So today I had a conversation with a friend who was unwittingly showing her defects of character. They were based out of trauma like a lot if not all defects of character are born out of. And I frown on them, hypocritically. I knew she was wrong, and yet I preached to her how and why they were wrong, while I sat in my own resentment towards a whole fucking fellowship of people. Persons that wronged me and/or didn’t live up to my expectations of what a true friend is, yet again in my own design of reacting, become what I hate. Hold that thought. I head to a meeting, and the meeting is on fear and how they drive us. Also shared is how our own resentments feed those fears. Being hurt and betrayed often when I was younger led me down a path of character defects that eventually, as I stopped working on them in my recovery, took me out. Fear of betrayal, fear of not respecting myself and enforcing or reinforcing boundaries made it easy to take normal, balanced judgments and overcharge them into being hypercritical. I easily cut people out of myself. I would say that I didn’t judge people, just their actions. But the way I feel I may have gone about it was that I identified people by their actions. Who would want to sit at my table if their implied status at my table was ignorant, selfish, and fake. How could my giving of self be received as authentic when they feel lesser than by my implied labels? Because we’re sick people, we’re all recovering, and this is a fellowship. But that doesn’t change the hurt that is created, exists, or persists. One’s words defining another as a sick man don’t resonate well when the tone of definition is that man’s a piece of shit. I’m in a place now where that reality of how I may have made people feel finally ring in my head. And it’s not that I thought that they were a piece of shit. But it is the thought that the people that did hurt me in my past still were. Forgiving has to do with acceptance. And when I haven’t accepted the things that happened to me or the people involved, they live on as pieces of shit in my head. And anyone’s actions that remotely corresponds to the people that hurt me end up suffering the same connotation that they are pieces of shit too by the judging verbiage I use to describe them and by the very possible connotation they may experience in my actions driven by fear to protect myself and others. In the Big Book of AA it asks us in step 4 to take inventory of the people that hurt us, our fears, our wrongs, and our shame. Within all that we dissect it and discover the nature of it all, and it almost entirely has to do with selfishness, self-centeredness, fear, or all the above. “We began to see the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape?” I’m pretty sure drugs and alcohol saved me from the pains growing up that might have driven me to suicide. There are other addictions after we recover that we find ourselves in and defects of character that live on or develop as we face everything and try to heal. “Though we we did not like their symptoms and they way these disturbed us, they, like ourselves, were sick too. We asked God to help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. When a person offended we said to ourselves, “This is a sick man. How can I be helpful to him? God save me from being angry. Thy will be done.” It goes on to say, “Where were we to blame? The inventory is ours, not the other man’s.” And in that moment after years of hearing the same shit over and over again, something again clicks and a new layer of the onion is finally being noticed. In my resentment to certain persons, I know I’m right. They were wrong for what they did to me; simply not being there when I needed them suffices to possession of this resentment. But I think to myself, I used to cuss God out on a daily basis before, during, and shortly after my relapse. Yet, God still showed up and gave me grace, granted me forgiveness. Where had I shown any of these people an ounce or grace that God has shown me? Also, how has the trauma of my past been evoked to end the relationships I’ve had with these people. When have I allowed them time to grow? How am I taking their perceived trespasses and charging them with the traumas during my youth? It’s not fair. And all it has done is isolate me. My compassion went out the window when I saw a close friend be betrayed by people she reached out to. And in turn my judgments have casted out anyone in my life who’s shortcoming I took as personal as the traumas and betrayals of my people. The names of the people were different, but the charges with their severity were just the same. Again, I was right, they were wrong. But how is overcompensating for the injustice in my past any useful in being handed to other people today? It has served no solution. How ironic it is that being right can become so problem oriented. All boiling down to fears. Fear of being betrayed and hurt again. Fear of being alone. Fear of betraying myself for not standing up for myself or others for that matter. Watching injustice happen and yet created it myself. Grace. How grace leads to repentance. How can I be afforded grace when I haven’t afforded it to others? Mercy. I can start with being a little more gentle and forgiving myself. I can start forgiving people in my past by letting go of the hope that the past could have been any different. The past happened. I’m not the person I used to be nor is anyone else who they used to be or are who I perceive them as. I can be or get honest with myself in my own humanity; I’m human and fallible. I can hope the world is warmer from a different perspective and have faith that it is more real than the one I had before. I can evoke courage to dare allow others to be better or to simply be human. I can start with that to create a brotherly love for others that I too wish to have for myself; living by spiritual principles.