Ascendancy Under Repair

Turn and face the strain, ch-ch-changes

There's gonna have to be a different man

        - David Bowie

Despite the blogging hiatus, my recovery journey has never stopped. Since I last posted I sold my home of four years, changed cities and jobs. I've discovered a vast, vibrant recovery community in my new hometown. I picked up my FIVE year sober chip, for God's sakes. And  I am ever reminded that working the 12 steps is not a singular linear progression with a beginning and end, but rather a circular pattern of ascendancy in which each successful completion of step twelve is met with a new understanding of step one, a leveling up of a spiral staircase of enlightenment, with each round building on the lessons of the previous. 

In reality, climbing the spiral sobriety staircase of so-called recovery utopia is neither steady nor consistent. I'd love to sit there and say that 2021 allowed me to reach levels of awakening and expansion enabling me to let go of the poison emotions which are to relapsive to us alcoholics and addicts. But let's face it- we are human, I am human. And humans feel their baser emotions, their toxic feelings which feed anger and resentment. Fear. Insecurity. Jealousy. Possessiveness. Bitterness-

...rage.

It's all built into the human condition, and seems to surface at times of major life change. In 2016 when my life imploded and I transitioned from husband, father and respected community physician to newly-recovering alcoholic and underemployed halfway house resident, my sponsors taught me humility and acceptance as counters to fear and insecurity. I learned to make myself small, whittle my ego, and relish my newfound sobriety as a gift, handed down by my HP in exchange for the perennial sense of self-importance I was (reluctantly) giving up. It worked. I "gave it away" and in return received something far more valuable. Life came back online for me and I began to feel whole, complete again. I was an ER doc. Money was flowing into my bank account, friends and family rallied around me, and my ability to form new relationships, both romantic and friendly, once again came easy.

What I didn't realize was that I had stalled in my Program, or at least slowed down. I had reached a landing on my recovery staircase, and felt a passive comfort there. I attained a certain level of success and then cruised, got lazy, decided I had ascended high enough. After all, I was sober and that's all that mattered, right?

What I failed to recognize was that there was an entire other set of  insidious ferrell emotions I had not yet dealt with, mainly because early on I was not yet emotionally sophisticated enough- my emotional intelligence had not yet risen to a certain threshold. Those initial five years were spent mastering fear, panic, and insecurity while anger, jealousy, and rage went unattended. This was largely because they didn't rear their ugly little heads when I was busy struggling with jump starting my life- learning to crawl, if you will. Back then I was simply  happy to be alive and sober. Well, now my life is moving, and gaining momentum. I'm now settled into a job I really like and which affords me the kind of free time I always fantasized about. I'm in a relationship which could easily have sprung the passages of the world's most distinguished love poets. I'm digging my new city, my new house to-be, and expanding new friendships.

So where has all this rage come from? WTF? The feeling pops up suddenly and at the most unexpected times. Triggered mainly by memories of my still absent children, it has supplanted self-pity as my go-to.  If I confront and beat it back through a tenth step it only resurfaces somewhere else in my day, my life. I'm engaged in a continuous game of emotional whack-a-mole. What precipitated this? Was it all the 2021 change, or have I simply leveled up to handle more complex situations (which used to baffle me)?

Maybe I need to work more on pride. Dammit, I've come so far- how do they NOT SEE this? Can't they see I'm in long-term alcoholic remission, improving myself, my life, growing, trying? Or was November 4th 2016 the day my children gave up on me forever? If that's the case, I'm beyond pissed. I'm raging. And although more "satisfying" an emotion than self-pity, it is not less obstructive to advancement in sobriety.

The rage I feel is creating a delay in my ascendancy. Until I get a grip on it, and pull out the tools of recovery to repair it, I will not advance. So here I am, for the moment, stuck. And boy am I pissed.