The Resentment Collector Who Turned Off the Car Radio to Rehearse Arguments – Jennifer K.

Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Brenda and I am an alcoholic. It's so good to be here. We'll start it out with the preamble. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other. They may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees. For AA membership, we are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. It does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and to help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. and the 12 steps. Number one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity is step two. Step three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. Step four, made us searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Five, admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Step six, we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Seven, humbly ask him to remove our shortcomings. Eight, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. Nine, made direct amends through such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Ten, continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Eleven, thought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him. Praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out. And twelve, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps We tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. Thank you for letting me read. I am just so excited to be here today, excited to Be Sober, and excited to have the honor to introduce Jennifer Kelly. I first heard Jennifer speak in Hilton Head a few years ago, and I immediately connected with her. and when I got alcoholism from my head to my heart God touched me to take a risk and ask Jen to sponsor me and I have grown more in the last three years than in all the other years combined and I've been in AA for a long time even though my sobriety date is April 28th of 17. I've grown more in these last three years, and Jennifer has helped me so much. She makes me better. She encourages me to not only talk about the principles, but to live these principles in my life. And I've been able to do and been honored to get to do the fourth and fifth with Jennifer two times. And every time I learn a little bit more. So I look forward to her sharing on the fourth and fifth step today. And I know that you and I will gain even more. Jennifer? Thank you so much. That was very kind. Can you hear me? Are we good? Okay. My name is Jennifer Huddleston Kelly, and I am an alcoholic. I've been kept sober since December 5th of 92, and that's my miracle. And now I'm from Plano, Texas, and it is an honor and a privilege to get to be here. I want to thank you for inviting me to share. I wanna thank Leslie and Cliff. You both did a fantastic job. And I got really squishy during, from the beginning, uh, listening to Leslie talk because hearing anybody talk on the first step takes me back to mine. You know, it takes me Back to what it was like and what happened. And, and, um, just by way of qualifying myself, I, I managed to procure a felony DWI in November of 92. And, and I had a moment of clarity sitting in the jail cell because I didn't have anything else to do. And and I didnít really have anybody that I thought I could call who would come get me out. As a matter of fact, I was trying to remember who did get me out, and I don't know for sure. I know that I went through a list of people in my head, and I had used a lot of people up. I had worn a lot OF people out. And just this morning, I was looking at some of the people who were here, and I realized, oh, I'm going to lose it here. um i realized i have real friends all over the country like all like i got their phone numbers i could call these people uh from both coasts and tennessee all over the place and and uh that they're my real friends and uh what a gift alcoholics anonymous has brought into my life such amazing people i remember when i came to aa i called a drinking buddy of mine and i said you're not going to believe it They're just like us. And she said, who did you think was going to AA? And I didn't know. I didn'T think it was folks just like US. But I am so thankful that I have a place where I fit in, where I belong and where I feel connected to you. I also want to thank those of you who have, hi Kim, that's my friend Kim right there. I wanna thank those OFU who have your cameras on because I get real tired of talking to me. I get real tired of talking to me. And so seeing your faces is very helpful to me because I feel the connection when I can see you. And so I really do appreciate that. And there's my friend, Ben. See, now I'm going to just say hi to everybody in the world. Anyway, so I probably ought to get started because I got these meaty steps. I never have anything to talk about when we're talking about character defects. Just kidding. But but with four and five, I got a lot of experience on this in part because I wouldn't do the 10th step. So I just kept racking up these inventories like crazy. As I said, I came into I came in thinking I had a legal problem and and thinking I Had a drinking and driving problem. and, um, and I've kind of figured if I could just figure out how not to drink, we'd get those problems solved and I could Just go on my merry way. And, uh, that's not how it turned out for me. I, uh. I came in and I did what you asked me to do, not because I believed it would work, but just because I was fresh out of broad ideas. And I got a sponsor cause you guys weren't going to get off of me about it. You know, just pester, pester pester. Get a sponsor, get a sponsor. get a sponsor, come to the women's meeting, come to the woman's meeting. Just relentless and so I did it just to shut you up and my first sponsor hadn't worked all 12 steps she didn't know how to work them out of the book and I didn't know to ask her quite frankly she was a nice lady and she had more sobriety than me and that's really all I knew to do was just find a nice Lady and ask her to help and for a while that worked for me. You know, I said the third step prayer with her and we got to the fourth step and I don't know why that the diagram on page 65 seems like kryptonite to a newcomer. I do not know why. That was just baffling to me. I could not figure it out. I sat in meetings and I heard people talking about all kinds of different stuff, about worksheets and checklists and all kinds of things. And some people were doing it out of the 12 and 12, which I was not interested in at all because there's 7 million questions in there. And my sponsor just told me it's in the book and sort of sent me on my way. And so I sat down with this little diagram from page 65, and I committed to writing something that looked just exactly like this. And when I say it looks exactly like This, I mean looks exactly Like This, my first inventory was 137 pages of three columns. That's it. That's what I did. I did 137 pages of three columns, and then I scheduled a fifth step. I did not write about fear. I did Not Write About Sex. I did NOT even get to the fourth column. I just did the thing that I saw on page 65. I wrote who, I wrote the cause, and I wrote what it affects, and I thought I was done. And what kind of baffles me now is I sat down with a sponsor, and I read all this stuff, and she didn't correct me. she never said you left something out. She never said there's another part to this. And so I walk out of there, uh, when I got done sharing that with her, we set it on fire cause she was really big on burning stuff. I don't know what that's all about, but she had a specific coffee can on the patio for burning inventories. And so we burned it and, uh, I went home to do six and seven, which meant I took a nap cause I'd been crying for a long time reading about how I was mistreated. And, um, and then, uh, and then I, it was time for eight, you know, and I, I had burned my inventory. And so I just picked out a couple of ex-boyfriends I thought might be excited to see me. And nobody I owed money to, I can promise you that. And I'm walking around thinking I'm on step eight and a half. And my sponsor did again, my sponsor doesn't know any better because she hadn't gotten that far in the steps, frankly. And you're not going to believe this, But she got drunk. And I am walking around Alcoholics Anonymous thinking that I've worked steps that I haven't worked. And I got my little one year chip and I got to go on the first little sober date. And something happened on that day that I did not want to happen, something that I asked not happen and something that I got up to leave twice so that it wouldn't happen. But the problem was I kept sitting back down and, um, and this guy was getting a little handsy with me and, uh, and I told him I wasn't ready for that, but then he would say something kind. He'd say something that, that spoke directly to what would be on my sex inventory if I've ever written one or what would it be on my fear list if I had ever shared that with anybody but I hadn't done and so I thought that I had the power to make a decision and control a situation that I clearly was not in control of and by the way this man was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous at that time and I was forced into something that I didn't want to be a part of and I'm walking around AA with a secret because I am ashamed and because I don't know enough to know that um that what he did had nothing to do with my worth or worthiness. I'm thinking it's because I am, because I'm me. I think that things like that happen to girls like me, drunk or sober, they just happen. And I'm really surprised because I thought at this point in my recovery that I have a relationship with God that's going to allow me to act or react differently than I would when I was drinking and I hadn't, but my God works right on time. And I will tell you that I was an active member of my home group and I had lots of AA friends and a lot of people that I cared about who cared about me. And, um, and I went to a friend of mine. It was a guy. I didn't tell him my sponsor. Um, cause I was embarrassed because I was ashamed. I went to this guy I knew in AA and I told him what had happened on my first little sober date And I didn't tell him because I was looking for a solution, not a spiritual solution. What I wanted him to do was go beat up that guy and kick him out of AA. I mean, that's my plan. And what he said was you got to find a real sponsor and you got out of work the steps and you've got to do it real quick because I don't want you to get drunk over something that's already done. It's already happened, but I don'T want you TO throw away your sobriety because of it. And, uh, and you need a woman that you can talk to about this and where you can figure out what to do next. And um, and I did what he told me to do because I didn't want to leave alcoholics anonymous because I did not want to drink over guilt and shame anymore because I had just gotten that one-year chip, and I never wanted to do the first year crazies ever again, ever. It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. And yeah, I don't, I got different flavors of crazy, but I don' t want to go back to that one. And so I found a woman who knew the book. I was taking a meeting to detox and to carry the message, and this lady knew the Book Inside, Outside, Upside Down. She had found herself on every page. and um and i wanted her to leave me alone because she was way up in my hula hoop and she was asking me a bunch of personal questions and we were not friends and um and she intimidated me and uh i wanted er to go away and so i asked her a question and i figured if i let her help she might stop bothering me and the question that i asked er was how do you find the sponsor and i'll call it synonymous and she opened up the big book and i thought I got her now because it's not in there and uh and she read that the man who was making the approach has had the same difficulty but he obviously knows what he is talking about that his whole department shouts at the new prospect that he is a man with a real answer and there she was a woman with a Real Answer because she understood the book Alcoholics Anonymous and found herself in the pages and I knew that's what was missing for me and so we went through the book. And when we came to a step, we took it. And so, um, we got to that third step prayer and we, and the next line right after the third step, prayer says, we thought well before taking this step. And I freaked out because I had not thought well, and she just started laughing and said, well, it's too late. You already did it. Uh, she thought that was hilarious. And, uh, but what I had thought well about was the first step and the second step. What I had thought well about was my predicament, and the possibility for a solution. That maybe, just maybe, there was a power that loved me and wanted good things for me, and that would be there anytime I needed it. And once you got that down, it's kind of a no-brainer what comes next. You know, all I know is my drinking life is a burning building. I know how that's going to end. It's not going to end well. And so I have to take that leap of faith by saying that prayer, and then next we launch out. We launch out on a course of vigorous action. I've been thinking about this phrase. I don't even know where I saw it, but it's kind of been stuck in my head. It says, we are saved by grace, but we are changed by choice. And I think this fourth step is where I begin to make the choice to be changed. I don't even know what needs to be change. I don' t know what's wrong with me. The big book tells me three times in about four pages that I'm convinced. Being convinced we were at step three, I don''t know that I''m convinced. My sponsor just told me we were a step three. I guess that''s as convinced as I need to be. And then in the next paragraph, it says that I'm going to be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. And I can occasionally concede to that. You know, things weren't going that swell. I'm driving a car that's about to catch on fire and I don't have any friends left. I'm living in one bedroom of my parents' house. I moved in with alcoholic luggage. I had a couple of trash bags full of stuff and that was it. i called off a wedding due to alcoholism and he was marrying some other girl because he kind of forgot we were supposed to get married and um i'm financially ridiculous and uh and i got a felony and i'm a run daycare centers and they don't really let felons take care of your little children so i can't tell anybody that i'm about to be convicted on a felony, you know, my track record's not going that great. I can say that a life run on self-will is probably not going THAT great. She pointed out that I was the common denominator and everything. But then we get to this step four, looking at this inventory, and it says being convinced itself manifested in various ways was what had defeated us. We consider its common manifestations. Now, I don't know about you, but at this point, I am not convinced by any stretch of the imagination that self is what has defeated me. I will tell you, I'm a loser magnet where men are concerned. I can find them, man, it's just, but I can't help it. They just, like bees to the honey, here they come. You know, I, it's not my fault. It's not my fault and I can, let me just tell you, I've had some of the worst jobs any human being has ever had ever. Um, but it's not my default. It is that my employers couldn't get their act together. I, uh, today is my two year anniversary from starting a business and just for fun, I made a list of all of the jobs I've ever had and asked people to guess which one I hadn't had. And it got embarrassing real quick. I had some weird jobs, drunk and sober. I just kind of, I don't like writing a resume or interviewing. So pretty much if you show up and say, you know what you ought to do? I say, sure, that sounds good. And so I don' believe that this is really my fault. And as a matter of fact, when I begin to write my inventory, I'm writing it so that I can convince my sponsor that the condition of my life doesn't have a whole lot to do with me. I become then this is just for me. I become convinced through this process. And so the first thing that I'm going to do is write a grudge list. and uh and my the sponsor took me through the inventory from the book the first time she said we're not going to get too precious with this let's just start with the people you hate and uh that was good because i hated a lot of people that we had plenty of fodder for my inventory uh i kind of collect resentments other people may get but you know collect unicorns or pigs or whatever. I'm a resentment collector and it's one of my hobbies. And I really believe that for me, this inventory is an analysis of my obsessions because that's what resentment is for me. I become obsessed. I became obsessed with a version of a story that I tell myself and that I repeat. And what I've noticed about me is that the more I repeat that story, the more we need to tweak it just a little bit. The tone of voice is going to change just a Little bit. Each time I tell it, the volume gets a little louder in my telling of the story. The language gets a Little more aggressive. I find more evidence of this kind of behavior with this person that I'm angry with. And I start tallying up some stuff, you know, because I hadn't been paying attention until somebody gets a little snappy with me. And by the time I've told it 23 times, I mean, it just almost, I was just minding my own business and I was attacked by somebody. I mean that's just the way my head works. Because a story is really no good if it doesn't have any drama in it. So I will take something that starts out with, I walked up to the meeting and somebody didn't hug me. And by the end of it, I mean, I'm telling this story like, let me tell you who hates my guts. And I've got to write this stuff down because this is what my crazy looks like. And this is What My Crazy Looks Like Stone Cold Zone. I have told myself this story that if I could just stop drinking, everything's going to be fine. And I think the hardest day of sobriety for me was the day after I got my one year chip. I go, wait a minute. I don't drink anymore. And I don'T know what in the heck I'm doing. I DON'T know how to have a relationship. I DONT know how TO BE FRIENDS. I SURE DON'T WORK EIGHT HOURS. I mean, I collect some paychecks, but I sure do not. I work really hard not to work eight hours. And I don't even want to tell you how long I was sober before I figured out the day goes a lot faster if you just put in the eight hours crazy. But there's all this stuff I don'T know how to do. And and for me, the inventory was the key to me learning what I DON'T know. That's really all it is. if you are new and nuts, this is not about guilt or shame or hazing. I mean, I kind of thought it was AA hazing, like we're not really going to let you all the way in unless you're willing to do this horrible thing. It's about figuring out what we don't know so that we can invite God in and learn something new. That's the whole ballgame. That'S all it's about is figuring out what we don't know. And so the first thing that I'm going to look at are my resentments. And so I write them in four columns. My sponsor showed me how, and that's a really important part of my story is that when I got a sponsor who worked out of the book, one of the first things she did for me is first she had me write the grudge list. And then I went back to her house so that she could explain how she wanted me to write this. And what she did was she ripped a page out of her inventory and she handed it to me. And for me, that was a really powerful thing. I tried to memorize that, that page of her, uh, inventory, like it was a CIA document so that I could return it to her because obviously the fact that we had to burn these things, let me know this is some top secret information. And, um, so I'm trying to memorize this page from her inventory and she said, she asked me what I was doing. And I explained it to her and she said, why? Why are you memorizing it? I said, so I can give it back to you. And she said why? And I said so it doesn't fall into anybody's hands. You know, and I started explaining how my weird conspiracy theory brain works and she just is shaking her head. She's like, I don't care. I don'T care who sees this. I DON'T care if my fiance sees this, I DONT care if my home group sees this. I don't care who sees this, and I could not believe it, but the cool thing was the fact that she could promise me that she didn't care whose saw what was on that inventory showed me, it made that demonstration that Cliff was talking about, the demonstration that that stuff on that page had no power in her life anymore. She was no longer consumed by it. she was no longer afraid of it. She was no longer obsessed with it. And what she told me was that she had gone through the inventory process, which is four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, and occasionally some ten, and that she was completely free. And y'all, I could taste that. I could tastes the idea that someday I might be free of these obsessions that I had had since I was a little girl. I never knew how to shake something off. Never. You hurt my feelings. I didn't know how to get through it. I did not know how the get over it. It just felt like it was all velcroed to me. It felt like I was just stuck with it and I would relive that hurt over and over and over again. I mean, I'm a grown woman and I was living in this feeling of betrayal. I felt when they brought home a second baby to my house, I was three and I'm walking around 27 years old, still mad about it. I still want her sent back. And I don't know how to let it go. I don' t know how to surrender. I don''t know how to do this a different way. And so I begin to write things out. And I do what the book says in the second column I write the cause. I write about why I'm mad. Why am I mad about this sister of mine? Why am i so upset? Because I'm secretly afraid that I'm not as loved as she is. I know I'm not as successful as she is. She and I have very little in common. Uh, she mentioned it. She was over at dinner recently and said, I had a dream that you and I were giving Ted talks because we don't agree on nothing. So I'm not imagining that. Um, she sees it too. We don't have the same ideas about God. We do not have the same ideas. We certainly don't vote the same way. um and yet we're sisters you know and and i want this close relationship with somebody that i am nothing like and i don't know how to do that i don'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE IT DIFFERENT and um and so we begin to take a look at that and then i look at which areas of my life this affects? Does it affect my self-esteem, the way that I feel about myself? Does it affect me? Does my security, my sense of safety? Uh-huh. Does it affect my ambitions, the things that I want? Does it affect my personal relations, my sex relations or my pocketbook? And for that one, it was everything except my sex relations, you know? And I really, then I get to the next part, and we turn the page, and there is a fourth column. Who knew? And so as I am writing that fourth column, what I discover is that I have made mistakes, and I am wrong. Now in every meeting I go to this, I'm just someday I'm going to retire this soapbox, but it's not going to be today. In every meeting that I go To on the four steps, somebody talks about that fourth column and they say, I got to look at my part. And that drives me nuts. And that's because my sponsor drove her nuts too. She passed it on. The reason that I don't believe in using the language of my part is that if I'm talking about my part, I'm hanging on to the idea that you have a part too. And what the instructions tell me is that I'm going to set aside everything that everybody else did and I'm going to look only at myself. What were my mistakes? Where was I to blame? It does not matter what anybody else did, how anybody else acted, how anybody else contributed. What matters is what did I do? What are my mistakes where was I to blame? And so I'm gonna write those things down and what I look at is that I have completely unrealistic expectations of my younger sister. She was the white sheep. And in my mind, that means she's got to be perfect. And if she's not perfect, I'm going to pounce because I have felt threatened by the fact that she did things right and got the results of getting them right. And I look at the fact I wasn't subtle about wishing she wasn't around. And yet I'm demanding her approval. I'm demanding her inclusion. I want her to feel a way about me that I've never made any effort to feel about her. It's embarrassing. It is embarrassing when I start really looking at what I got going on in my mistakes and where I'm to blame. I discover that I have these demands on other people that I never ask of myself. I don't like you. I won't you to respect me, but i'm disrespectful of you i want you to be honest with me that i'm dishonest with you it's painful sometimes to take a look at what's really going on but i tell you what this is where my life begins to get different because i suddenly start figuring out why things aren't working for me like when i came into aa i couldn't stand women and i didn't like men Can't imagine why I'm lonely. When I'm writing this down, what I discover is I can't stand people who confront me with the truth, but I got no patience for people who lie. I mean, it doesn't leave a whole lot. There's not a whole Lot left when this is what you're working with. And so I got to figure out what's blocking me and over and over again, it's me. It's me and my opinions. It's me and my rigidity. It is the fact that I hold you to an impossible standard. It s that I am constantly asking others to give and give and give without ever thinking about what it is that I'm bringing to the situation. So it says that it is plain that a life which includes deep resentment only leads to futility and unhappiness, and that's my experience. And that's my experience sober. It also tells me that resentment has the power to kill. And it's because it becomes this obsession. I don't know how you do resentments, but I know how I do mine. They are the first thing I think about when I wake up, and they are the last thing that I think about before I go to sleep. I got to turn off the car radio to rehearse conversations that are never going to happen. I got to turn off the car radio so that I can say, let me tell you, that hooker comes up to me. Let me tell You exactly what we're going to say. And I practice that whole thing as I'm retelling the story about how she was so disrespectful to me and suddenly here I am. I'm back in it and I'm living it all day long. When I'm living this obsession, you know what there's no room for? You. There's no room for you. There's no room for God. There is no room for service. There Is no room for sunlight. I am so committed to my own misery and I'm listening to all Jennifer radio all day long and then that feels so good. We pull in some other stuff, you know, who else was this way? And I start reliving stuff happened in third grade y'all. I'll go way back. and, uh, and the weirdest part is, I'm just going to tell you this one doesn't even have to be real. It doesn't Even have to kill me. It does not have to Be real. Um, I have a little example of that one. Um There was a guy that I worked for He's actually the reason I have my own business now indirectly, uh And there was a guy that I worked for and I sponsored his girlfriend. And, and I went, so I knew, let me tell you, before I took this job, I knew who I was dealing with because I sponsored His girlfriend. And he was a Guy that she met in the ANA, but he decided it wasn't for him. And so he stopped going to meetings and he never got a sponsor and he never worked a step. and uh and then he started a business and um when i sponsored her what i would tell her when she would call me upset about some of his behavior i would say you know bless his heart he's walking around in a lot of pain and then a lot fear and he doesn't have a solution and and sometimes that's just going to lead to bad behavior sometimes it is i mean he's doing the best he can with what he has but he just doesn't have anything to give. That's what I would tell his girlfriend when she would call me about his behavior. Then I get involved and I go to work for him and I'm making more money than I've ever made in my life, which is an important part of the story because I stay in a situation that is not healthy because I am making more Money than I have ever made of my life. I could buy stuff. I could go places. I mean, it's fun. Like that part is real fun. The office stuff is not because it's crazy around there. We got a guy and his girlfriend and they're fighting all the time and it's Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey going on. And I mean it's miserable so I get my husband hired on too. So me and my husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, we're all in the same place. It's total chaos. We're throwing around a bunch of money, and when things get a little out of control, I get sassy. I know this is hard to believe, but it happens, and so I start getting a little sassy, a little insubordinate. I start sharing about how we need to straighten some things out. By the way, I'm not running this company and nobody really had to ask me for my opinion. I'm generous like that. So I start getting a little sassy and a little insubordinate and he gets tired of it. I know it's hard to believe because I am a little ray of sunshine. And, um, so what he does is he takes my husband to lunch and, uh, he offers my husband my job and he sends poor big daddy comes home to tell me about it. This did not go well. Bless his heart. Big daddy had no idea how this reaction was going to go. He doesn't really, he's not a thinker through her, you know? And so he shows up and says, Hey, a weird thing happened today. And he tells me this story and my head bends around about 19 times. And, uh, and I call my sponsor and I am furious. I am as mad as I think I've ever been. And she cannot stop laughing. Here's why you've got to have a sponsor. She is laughing so hard. She thinks this is the funniest thing she has ever heard. And I am beyond mad. And uh, she said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to burn something down. I got some keys and a lighter. Why do you think I'm calling you? I am so angry. And so we came up with a plan of action. But then when I wrote the inventory on this guy, y'all, I knew when I was talking to my sponsee that this was a guy who just didn't have any tools or skills or he just didn'T have anything to work with. But when it starts happening in my world, you know why he did that? Because he's evil. He did it because he's evil. And I completely rewrite this story like I have never met an angrier man in my life. And I take what I know to be true and set it aside to tell a story in which I am the victim. and it is not until I get to that fourth column that I have to take a look at absolutely not and setting aside whether he was an angry dude or not or whether the office was well-run or not all that stuff, setting that aside. Here's what I know. I had 20 something years of sobriety and I was insubordinate, disrespectful and dishonest. that's what i know and i have rewritten that story so that i can play the victim when in reality i am the person with a set of spiritual tools that was not using me i had resources and i wasn't using i knew the facts about the situation and i chose it because of my greed guess who got to make the amends and I'm not being sarcastic when I say that guess who Got to Make the Amends I get to get free and so I'm going to write that out the second part of the inventory is the fear list and and I truly believe you do the fear list however your sponsor tells you to I did mine in two columns the first column was what is the Fear the second column was how has self-reliance failed me and what my sponsor had me do is take a look at what I do in reaction to the fear. And I got some real goofy examples. You know, I'm always afraid of being abandoned. I don't want anybody to ever leave me. So what I come up with is a little test. I like to run the people who love me through the ringer just a little bit, just to make sure they're ride or die. And so what I doing is I try to push them to the absolute limit so that I know where the breaking point is, and if this is sounding a little crazy to you, it's because it is. When I'm dating a guy, I play a little game. I call it Do You Love Me Now? Y'all remember that cell phone commercial? Can you hear me now? Yeah, good. You know, well, I do. Do you love me now? And and so. I just sort of become this bottomless pit emotional need because they think that's real cute. And and So about every 25 minutes, I say, hey, do you love now? Do you let me now and and they say, yeah, yeah. I love you because any guy can figure out that's what's supposed to happen. and you do that about i don't know two three hundred times and um and if he gets past that part then you sort of do some surprise attacks you know you wake him up at three in the morning let me now and um and most of them can even make it through some of that uh but then you just kind of like you do some psycho stuff a little you know pmsy crazy uh off the rails thing where you start to fight about absolutely nothing. And then right in the middle of that, you go, let me know. And let me just tell you that this test is 100% effective because I have found the breaking point of absolutely every man in my life. And they have one, all of them. I don't care how much they started out loving you. If you run this test enough, you will find the day when they go, nope, sure don't i cannot do this i do not know what you need but i am 190 convinced it is not me i do Not have it and that is such valuable information um the problem is by the time you figured out where the breaking point is it broke they are done i am not a hollaback girl By the time I've loved them, I don't love the feathers off of them and they are gone. And it's funny talking about it now, but too many of you people are laughing. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You know, I want you to say that, but every action I take based on that fear pushes you away. Every action I make based on my fear pushes me away. It pushes you away. It's not what I want to do. It's just it's it's my best thinking. That's what the book says. It's my bad thinking. My bad thinking is I'm afraid of being alone. And so I'm going to go isolate. I'm a freight of intimacy. So, oh, I'm gonna get naked with strangers. What could go wrong here? That seems like a great plan. Every alcoholic I know comes up with that genius plan right there. you know, it's what we did. And so then we get to the sex inventory and I've got to look at my sex behavior. And again, it is so that I can figure out, not so that I can't figure out but so my sponsor can figure out what I don't know. And what I do not know is how to be genuine and vulnerable and honest in an intimate relationship because I walk around with this core belief that I am not enough, that I have never been enough, that I will never be enough. And that somehow this intimate act, if I can just figure it out, will guarantee that you will never leave me. Because somewhere in here, I've decided that the only way I will be okay is if there's someone who will never lead me. And through this process, what I begin to discover is the first person who leaves me in these relationships is me. I abandon me in intimate relationships. I set aside who I am, what I'm about, what i know to be true about me and i immediately try to turn into what i think you want me to be so that you will stay and so then i've got to sit down with somebody else and i've Got to take this inventory and i've gotta share it honestly and man there is nothing i'm excited about about that because I am going to be transparent with another woman. I'm going to take all these secrets that I don't want to tell anybody, and I'm going to sit down, and we're going to go through them one by one by one. And there is only one reason why I would do this, only one, and that is that I do not want to drink again. And I've watched people drink who didn't share what they were supposed to share in that fifth step, and so I sit down with another women, and begin to go through this process and I begin to share my secrets and my obsessions with her. I recently saw a quote that I love. It says, truth and freedom are constant companions. You will not find one without the other. Truth and freedom ARE CONSTANT COMPANIONS. You WILL NOT FIND ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER. So if I'm going to get free, I'm gonna have to get real. And the only way I know to get real is to sit down with another woman, knee-to-knee, and share my secrets. And as I shared these secrets with her, what I found out was I'm just a garden variety drunk who's been listening to her own head. I'm juste a garden-variety drunk who plays God by developing these opinions that apparently are based on no facts, like not very many facts. I don't really require facts to have opinions, and I've noticed based on the internet, neither do a lot of y'all. Just kidding. Not really. Anyway, I just developed these theories, and the sponsor that I had for the longest in sobriety, I bet she said, where did you hear that 2,000 times talking to me? She would always question my sources. And I would just think, well, that's how the world works. Because I didn't know what in the heck I was talking about. You know, I'm walking around believing that my parents brought home this second baby and that means they can't love me as much. and it's not until I begin to sponsor women in Alcoholics Anonymous that I realize you know what your heart can expand to include as many people as you'll let in it'll just keep stretching I didn't know that I walked around with this idea that there's room for one of us and by God it's going to be me we're going to off her she's got to go and I've been walking around with this old idea. At school, in friendships, at work, a new girl shows up, I immediately start a campaign on, you know what's wrong with Nancy? Let me tell you what's strong with Nancy. Because you can't like Nancy as much as you like me. One of us has got to go. It's one of my old ideas. And that's what we begin to discover is these patterns, these ideas that I've been walking around with for as long as I can remember. And we got to shine the light on and figure out if they're true or not. Because if this is what I believe in my life, then this is also what I'm believing about God. There's no space for me in God's heart. There is not enough room for me in God. And so I got to have a new idea. I've got to have a New Awakening. I don't know that there's more room. I don't know that we can love infinitely. It's one of the greatest gifts we've been given. And so I sat down with this woman and we start talking and we started talking about my resentments. And what we discover is that I feel threatened a lot because I have a really hard time accepting that people just choose me. They just choose to love me. I didn't have a whole lot to do with it. and um and what i've learned in my time here is that when people love me um if it's god's will i can't run it off and if it'S NOT GOD'S WILL I CAN'T MAKE IT STAY it's really that simple it sounds like spiritual algebra but it's really that simply if it is God's will I can't run it often if it IS not God's Will I can make it stay but that's if I'm being honest and if I'M being genuine and I had to learn to practice that as my faith grew so we look at those at those resentments and we discover I don't know much about being a friend but I can learn I don'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT BEING A SISTER BUT I CAN LEARN I DON'T KNOW Much About Being An Employee But I Can Learn Once We Can Admit I Don'T Know new information can come in. Then we take a look at my fears and, um, and what we discover is that I've been trying to run stuff. I've Been Trying to Do God's Job and Not Mine. And so we got to separate this into power. One of the goofy fears that I had, um... I couldn't swim when I got sober, uh, and I still can't swim. I just don't drown. Uh, I got... it got better, uh, but that was one of the things that I shared with somebody was that I wouldn't tell people I couldn't swim. And so I kept getting in these situations where I got thrown in the pool and it was humiliating. And, and so I, not only did I have to tell people, I couldn'T swim, I needed to find out if God could swim.And I have a really cool story about how that happened. I wish I had time to tell it, but a four-year-old convinced me that I needed go off a diving board and turns out God can swim. and um and i and i uh so i i spend a summer and i learn how to swim and i go off the diving board at the end of that summer and that's the story that i've been telling for years about what i you know how i surrendered that fear that when i believed that uh i couldn't swim i went straight to the bottom of the of the pool well several years later i met big daddy and we're dating You know, we go to the public pool because we don't have a pool. And I love the public pool because we are the world. You will see a little bit of everything at the publicpool. I do not have a body image problem at the publicpool and mostly we eat snacks and read library books and then jump in the water when it gets too hot. So we jumped in the water and Big Daddy's treading water and he's kind of panting a little but and I'm just talking to him and he says, what are you doing? I said, what do you mean? What am I doing? he said, are you kicking your legs? I said, no. He said, are you moving your arms? I Said, no, he said how are you floating? And it turns out I'm freakishly buoyant like when I believed that I would go to the bottom of the pool if I got thrown in I went to the bottom of the pool when I believed that whatever I could float turns out I can float. My belief brought the thing that I was afraid of to me. My belief bought the thing I was looking for into my life. It turns out it's fat. Fat is really floaty, but it's a really good story and I'm going to keep it. And then we get to sex behavior And what we discover is that I don't really know how to trust God. And I don'T REALLY KNOW HOW TO BE COMPLETELY MYSELF WITH SOMEBODY ELSE. AND THE SOLUTION TO THAT IS MORE GOD AND LESS ME. IT'S MORE GOD UNLESS ME AND WHAT THAT MEANT FOR ME WAS THAT I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO DATE. I HATED TO DO THINGS IN ORDER. I HATE TO BE HONEST AND I HATTED TO CHANT, CHANT IF IT'S GOD'S WILL I CAN'T RUN IT ON. and if it's not God's will, I can't make it stay. And then somebody showed up and I was completely myself and he loved me. And he still does. I mean, I get him lots of room to run and this fella just keeps waking up beside me every single day. I think I exhaust him quite a bit, but he ain't going anywhere. And one day at a time we invite God into our relationship and things get better. The inventory process is endless. There are things that I could not address early on because I didn't know to look for it, but I get to continue. I am not a one and done inventory girl. I use this inventory process over and over and again, and we peel that onion. And each time I find out I'm neither as wonderful nor as terrible as I thought I was. I know that I'm going to be okay. And I figure out just a little bit more about what God's job is and what mine is. And mine is to help his kids and his is to show up for me every single day. And he's done that without fail. I'm glad to be here and it's a good day to be sober.