[nandm]

Day 3

Clearing the decks.

"There is something about a closet that make a skeleton restless."

Difficult as change is, it does lead to new good. We tend to cling to the familiar even if that familiar is causing pain and discord. We feel uncertain about taking steps to move from what we know into the unknown. Besides, we're not convinced that change is going to work for us, anyway.

We can point to the fact that we've tried all manner of changes---change of jobs, of spouses, geographic changes---and none of them have proved to be teh answer. We see no logic in the supposition that, afteer we've bared our soul, and admitted our past defects, there will be clear sailing ahead. Taking into account the problmes we have faced, we're not even sure that some of our past behavior wasn't necessary.

What we don't yet realize is that there was a payoff to our dysfunctional behavior. Despite its negative effect it gave us a certain amount of satisfaction in the doing. It was "self-will run riot"---the behavior of a two-year-old whose demands for self-gratification are insatiable.

We cannot clear the decks for change, we cannot clear away past wreackage, without first identifying it, as we did in Step Four. The next move is to be willing to verbalize what we've found so it can be dealt with in a healthy manner.

Today's Step: Coming out of the closet willingly and admitting the exact nature of my wrongs is a change for the better.

Step by Step. Muriel Zink