Defects of Character

[MajestyJo]

Accepting Faults/Blaming Others

In early recovery, I didn't think I had any faults after I quit using. After all, I was raised to be a good Christian girl.

It took me awhile to recognize that to err is human. I didn't want to admit to being human let alone the error. When I heard people say, "Well I am only human you know," I would get a resentment. I felt as though they used the saying as a cop out. They use their humanness to not change.

In today, I tell it as it is. What you see is what you get. As a friend said to me on Messenger the other night, "g/f you are just 2 2 funny. I never know what is going to come out of your mouth next."

Before recovery, it was all about the blame game. It was every one elses fault and the world owed me a favor as I was so hard done by.

Today I embrace change. I don't want to be that person any more. She was not very likeable. She still has a lot of work to do on herself. God and I work on it one day at a time.

Before recovery, I thought I was the best. I thought I was being the best me I could be. I also learned that you can't know what you were never taught. I was very isolated on the farm growing up and didn't have a lot of people skills. I didn't have a best friend until I was 17. When I met her, I was the follower. As my disease progressed, I became the leading authority.

So glad that it is progress not perfection.

I didn't find recovery until I was 49. I thought it was always about others and thought I was the way I was because of the people in my life. I firmly believe we are products of our environment and I had to come to believe, it was me that put me there. I was there often because I chose to, and most times I wasn't invited. Most of my life I wanted to be in the "In" group, yet when I got there, I never measured up, in my own eyes and yet I couldn't take the blame, it was their fault real or imagined.

Even though I was in denial about being an alcoholic, I felt like I had come home. I could identify, but stayed sick because I compared. It wasn't until I could honestly say to myself, I used alcohol like I did other drugs. I am an addict, I could accept that. When I got really honest and looked at the thinking behind the drinking, I knew I was an alcoholic.