Welcome to the crazy!

So, I don't exactly know if I should be publishing something this personal, but here's something I wrote yesterday while I was as Sky Harbor waiting for my shuttle to Tucson.

What I’ve been realizing lately is how even without alcohol I’ve still got numerous what you’d call defects of character that keep me from being, I don’t know what to say, like a real human being. This thing happened with my friend where I wanted to do something nice for she and her husband so I washed the dishes in their sink just before I left last Wednesday. I washed a plate that had been carrying a tart that a friend of hers made for her birthday. Well, when I was washing the plate it slipped and the edge chipped. Not knowing what to do I simply put the plate into the dish drainer and threw the chipped pieces away. Then I got busy with getting stuff together to get to the airport and forgot all about it. A few days later she wrote me an e-mail and asked me about it. She was very diplomatic and didn’t come right out and say, “Hey! you fuckhead! Why the hell did you chip my friend’s plate and then just leave it?” But in my mind I felt sure she must have been thinking that in some fashion. Of course I felt awful, and wrote back and explained what had happened and apologized profusely and offered to pay for a new plate. She hasn’t written back anything about it, so now I wonder if she’s mad at me. And I’m killing myself thinking, why the hell didn’t I at least leave a note or something? This kind of avoidance of conflict is something I’ve done all my life, and it looks like I’m still doing it.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming alcohol for this. I’m not putting responsibility for my behavior on alcoholism. Rather, it’s more accurate to say that the same character defect that caused me to do this also caused me to drink excessively. It’s all about avoiding pain and responsibility.

Maybe this isn’t such a big deal. I saw a plate at Target that I think is identical to the one I chipped and it was only like $2.98 or something; and after all, the whole thing came about because I was attempting to do something nice. Finally, who among us hasn’t chipped a plate or a glass at some point in our lives? Still, it’s not the incident that matters but my reaction to it. At least, it’s useful I think, because it gives me a crystal clear example of the kind of behavior that I’ve got to face up to if I’m going to stay sober. Step four is going to be a bitch! As a sort of prelude to step four, I think I’ll try to go off this example and list some other times when I avoided responsibility or tried (consciously or unconsciously) to cover up a mistake.

That was yesterday. Today I got an answer back from my friend (who I've decided not to name in the interest of preserving anonymity), and she said the plate was no big deal, and she hope I didn't think she was mad at me. It's almost like she read what I wrote yesterday, even though the above hadn't gone any further than my own computer at the time.

So it looks like in addition to avoiding responibility, I also seem to over-dramatize negative situations, and I kind of soak up the guilt and shame like a sponge. Let the pity party begin...