WMJ1012

In 2010, I completed my 4th Step. My work had to be in Big Book Step Study (BBSS) because it’s the only thing tha5 would work for me.It is spiritual surgery, and it’s beautiful.

I had written every single day, without fail, for 18 months, just God and me, in my home. I changed so much. I was calm and kind to everyone, and enthusiastic about life. The only thing I cared about was helping other people.

I still had a long way to go, but for the first time in my life, it just seemed like everything was going to be okay.

On the day I finished this portion of the work, I called my sponsor to tell her I was done. She had earned my trust over a long period of time and had never steered me wrong - not once. It was the first healthy, safe relationship I had ever had with anyone that lasted more than a year, and I cherished it.

My work was solid. But I was given some “further writing instructions”, and I questioned my sponsor about this. She assured me that she had been given the same instructions.

When I finished these, I sat looking down at my notebook in utter hurt and disbelief. I started seeing something. There were things that had been being done to me for years by the people I loved the most, and I hadn’t even been aware of it. All the pain I had just worked through, all the relationship problems, the horrific suffering and the shame...it had all come from this one place.

There had never been anything wrong with me at all.

I was so hurt. I reached for the telephone to call my sponsor, but remembered she had said she’d be unavailable.

I believe today that I was “pushed”, then left alone to cope, because I had made progress.

This is dangerous, and it kills people in recovery.

There was no one else to call. The next thing I knew, I was hanging out with a guy whom I had wanted nothing to do with. He had been pursuing me hard, and I had been holding up boundaries with him, but now my boundaries were failing.

I was only able to get out of that because of the work I had done on myself. I just told him I felt I was in his way, and in mine.

But I was character assassinated by him for having ended it. This wasn’t necessarily about what anyone thought of me; this was going to be about abuse. Abject abuse. And I felt it was going to be bad.

I did exactly what I was supposed to at the time, and I took the situation to my trusted sponsor, not seeing that I had been pushed. But I was shamed by her that day behind closed doors, shame that I carried for YEARS afterwards, not knowing WHY I had it.
I never confronted the abuse.

This character assassination got so big, I have never seen anything like it done to anyone in my entire life - not even CLOSE. Anyone who saw it can attest to how bad it was. It went all over the state over about 3 years and began to degrade our society here, and it was terrible for everyone.

I was much more vulnerable at the time than I realized, and my psyche was too fragile to handle it. The result was a very quick and devastating Complex-PTSD, and the numerous insidious health problems that come along with that. I could never tell you the places this took me. It left me in situations that God NEVER wanted me in.

It was a hard lesson.

Today, If I question something, I pause until I know how to proceed.

I take everything directly to God - ONLY.

And I WILL confront today.

When God (or our right, natural instincts) are telling us something, we should trust ourselves. That is the will of God.

And if there’s something you need to do, don’t wait.

This goes on in all kinds of AA meetings. I know that now. It probably goes on in church too. But when it goes outside of these places and it gets that big, you might want to consider saying something.