I relate to being a faintly evil and highly misunderstood genius in certain areas with a secret heart of gold that carried old affecting scars he was not the least responsible for placing at his core which were the reason I occasionally hurt the innocent; a fellow who needed to drink to bring myself down by self-crippling with drink to approximate the level of the people I was forced to bear and deal with day to day.
It wasn't required that others understood that I was so sensitive that I almost required a few drinkies now and then. It was about emotional survival after a while. I knew the truth of it and that was enough. I knew there was no other who would.
And I was dead right about that guy needing to drink to get by. Changing enough to bring a different guy to life was required to stay sober. Different responses and attitudes and even deep alterations to my personality to the point where I would respond to a situation with x instead of z, which had always been natural.
I needed to learn a lot from people like me who had already gone through the changes I needed to make to live comfortably sober. At first it was just showing up and going to coffee with them after AA meetings and talking about my stuff and their same stuff and how they handled it and how I might handle mine. Getting off my lonely island and starting to reconnect with other humans and presenting myself to them as best I could, not a false construct I thought people would best respond to. Telling them little bits of the truth I found they could indeed handle it all. I could stop hiding and running away and could begin the adventure of change.
It clicked finally my choice was between making my best grudging and inconsistent efforts to change very slowly for the better or to endure ever more serious unpleasantness. Not sure how that understanding got through, hampered and crippled by my emotions and thoughts as I was.