“Going Back To Work”

Okay, here’s some truth for you. This is how fucked up my disease is.

After being out of work for more than a year, I’ve finally gotten a job. It’s actually a better job than the one I was laid off from. A better organization, better benefits, and a dollar more an hour than I was making before. How do I feel about it? Terrified. But that’s not the disease, that’s actually just me.

The disease, this fucked up part of me inside my head, is the little two-year old. Good ol’ lil’ Joshua who when he heard the news that I’d be going back to work, threw a tantrum like you’ve never seen. “I. Don’t. Wanna!” And he stamped his foot and started pouting. No tears yet, but oh is he ever pissed.

That’s the diseased part of my brain, the part that tells me I’m special, I’m not like everyone else. It tells me I’m too good to have work, that the kind of work I’ll be doing is beneath me and stuff I’m not really that good at anyway. It tells me I’m more special-er than anyone else who ever lived, that the rules don’t apply to me. “I’m an artist,” pronounces little Joshua as he grabs his crayons and graffiti’s the walls. “I’m special. Everyone else should just support me because I’m the most wonderful person that ever lived. Don’t they know that? Don’t they know who I am?!”

I hear this; I feel the adrenaline that courses through my veins from that false sense of superiority, feel the top-heavy weight of my inflated ego. But the way through is not to backhand lil’ Joshua. The little snot isn’t suffering from a need in attitude adjustment. He’s just scared.

He’s scared that he won’t be good enough, that he’ll fail. He’s scared that he’ll be stuck like he was before, doing work that he hated for people who didn’t see him as a person and couldn’t really care less about him. That’s the thing about our inner child--they never really get over not receiving the love and support that they needed when they needed it. But talking down to that part of ourselves, cursing ourselves for feeling those feelings, that is not the way. That just plays into our insecurities. It repeats the patterns we’ve come to think are the way things are supposed to be. The cycle continues.

I don’t need anyone to tell me I’m worthless. I’m quite well accomplished at calling myself a lowly sack of shit. I don’t need anyone else to drag me down; I can drag myself down better than anybody else ever could.

When I hear the disease, what is for the moment given voice by the fears of my inner child, I can recognize it for what it is. I don’t have to act on it, and I don’t have to listen to it. I can stop, take stock of what’s really going on. The disease cowers in the face of What Is.

I’ve been doing this Recovery thing long enough now to know a few things, too, about how my disease reacts specifically. It doesn’t like it when I do good things for myself. Whenever I have a significant success, an accomplishment that someone else might normally be proud of themselves for, my disease tries to tear me down instead. This is how fucked up my disease is: the greater my success, the harder it works to make me feel like shit. Thank God that I’ve got some experience living the program, and in dealing with myself, that I don’t have to listen to it, that I can work to overcome it. It’s not easy but it is possible.

The disease never stops lying to me. The truth is that I’m lucky to have found a job, and a good one at that. I’m lucky to have some Recovery so that I don’t sabotage myself anymore. The war can still rage on inside my head, but it stays there now. Maybe even one day lil’ Joshua will throw his tantrums and I’ll just call out to him from the other room, “yes, dear, I see you. You’re going to make yourself sick.”