good stuff, tops. the av in my head even sings to me, you might recognize the tune ... an old country song ...
" ... I come from a long line of drunks ... when times get tough ..."
Even goes so far as to say that life's too hard anyway, I gave up a long time ago, might as well coast to the end ... I mean, look at what happened when I was really trying ...
That is part of what has pulled me back in- before ... They say drinking is what causes problems. But when I think of how things got before I had a problem ... dealing with that ... sober ... seems a little daunting.
So, what it comes to for me is this:
Who do I trust? I can't rely solely on my memory of what things were like before I developed a problem ... I have to trust that life can be/has to be BETTER than before I fell in this hole of addiction. ... Not that I'm just going back to square one.
Something faulty about my thinking ... about ME - got me getting to a place where I gave up in the first place ... which is very much what I did.
life got and still is very hard on many levels, drinking aside. Some of it my fault, but honestly, a lot of it was/is out of my control.
What has helped from AA is the mentality that we have to live life on life terms. I've never been too good at that. I've also wondered how I haven't gone completely insane after all that has happened ...
So for me, its a combination of choosing to hope, letting go and hanging on ... for life.
I love your analogy of the wedding. I agree that the sneaky av isn't so sneaky after all when we start comparing notes ...