“Hurt”

Regardless of all the people who’ve hurt me over the years, I’ve hurt myself the most. This idea comes up somewhat when doing step work in AA, but I like how it’s explicitly in the readings at NA meetings. It’s easy for me to do stepwork, clean up my side of the street, and call it ‘good’. Much more difficult is recognizing that the work on myself, of making up to myself the harm that I have caused myself, never ends. It would be a never ending story to list out all the ways I’ve hurt myself over time, but some general examples do jump out.

The literal self-harm—burning myself with cigarettes—comes to mind first. Even though it’s been a number of years since I’ve done that, the scars are still there and I can still remember how it felt. I remember being asked once why I did that to myself. I’d answered about how it gave me something else to focus on besides the pain I felt. I can see why the person I told that to didn’t understand. What sense does it make to say that I hurt myself to avoid feeling pain? None at all, unless you’ve been there, in which case you know all-too-well exactly what I’m talking about.

There are all the opportunities I’ve missed out on in life, ones I either turned away from or wasn’t open to, choosing my addiction instead. How many jobs did I not even bother to apply for because it was more important to me to be loaded all the time? How many relationships—romantic and friendships—have I failed or let fail because it was more important to me to be fucked up? Or because of my deeply insecure raging egomaniac of a shackled self-esteem I couldn’t—wouldn’t--bring myself to admit it when I was wrong?

In some ways, though, I think the most damage I have done to myself has been in my own mind. I’ve shared in meetings that I don’t need anyone to verbally abuse me, I can (and do) do it to myself all the time. How many times have I told myself I was worthless? Or that I didn’t deserve something I wanted—like love, kindness, or being happy? And even now, today, I still struggle with this mental game the Disease plays with me. I get so exhausted from all the imaginary conversations, all my attempts to control others by creating scenarios in my mind where they say what I want them to, or life happens the way I think it should. And why is that so particularly harmful to me? Because it’s a denial of who I really am and how I really feel.

I don’t burn myself anymore, and I’m pretty good about seizing opportunities when they come up now, but this mental game is still a challenge for me. Fighting the Disease in my mind, fighting back against this vicious force that loves nothing more than to tear me down and tell me I am a worthless sack of shit, that battle still rages. Maybe it always will; maybe not. Maybe the making amends to myself is nothing more than continuing to get better and better at not listening to that voice which keeps insisting I am worthless.

And there’s one last thing, to: all of this is not to say that making amends to others, owning up to the wrongs I’ve done and making it up to them (where possible), hasn’t been an important part of my recovery. It has. My point here is what good does it do me to make amends to others if I continue harming myself?