GreenTea

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The following is an email I wrote to my sponsor tonight... Something is telling me to share this with everyone... Maybe it'll help somebody...
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I spoke briefly with one of my sisters last night...

My best friend from H.S. gave me a call last night. He and I still maintain contact and I usually find a way to come for a visit every couple of years. He's on his second marriage, is happy as can be, and has two beautiful sons, (age 2 and 6, I think).

Anyway... Another member of our "crowd" from back then... She and my sister were best friends for a long time, nearly inseperable. Her mother just died form cancer. It was in remission, but I guess it came back suddenly and strong. "Too young... Too young" was about all my buddy could say about it.

So he called to tell me about it, the implication also being to please let my sister know and tell her to give her old friend a call.

So I did... Called the landline and left a message.

A little while later she called me back. First words from her mouth, "So what happened?", (no "hello", no "its me", whatever). I told her what I knew, which wasn't anything. She said she just called up there, got a machine and left a message for her.

Then she started telling me how it was really, really strange that she heard from me out of the blue like that since my name had come up and I was discussed only the day before. I'm thinking to myself "God-shot" and so I knew that calling to tell her, despite all our current issues, was the right thing to do. She told me about it in a really accusatory way, like I had her house bugged or something and somehow "arranged" it all.

Our father was an ugly, mean, abusive wife-beating drunk. Thankfully I was a happy drunk followed by an emotional drunk as the poison supply ended for the night.

READ... Reactive, Ego-centric, Attacking and Defensive... My new acronym for an emotion-fueled mind-racing drunk, dry or wet... And yeah, she's a drinker, perhaps more so than before, I think. I'm concerned and a bit afraid for her. I think she's "going down that road", but maybe its just the way she is with me, I don't know. The last handful of times I've interacted with her, in person or by voice, its as if she was a slightly smaller version of my other sister, the historically over-bearing, hate-filled, really abusive one who's tried to kill me in the past.

By this point she was already severely "talking down" to me, like I'm one of her kids being called on the carpet for screwing up.

So then she bumps it up a few notches and starts really tearing into me over the stuff from that last {State omitted} trip. You may recall me mentioning it and that it was so bad, I honestly thought that I'd never hear or see from them (family members), or interact with them ever again -- the jury is still out on that one a bit I think, by the way. I mean she's really tearing into me about how evil I am. I can practically see her strangling the phone as she spits into it.

So I says nice and calmly, "Look, why don't we just end this conversation now?" I think it was the calm and even tone that *really* pissed her off -- I wasn't "engaging" with her emotionally you see, nor was I all "tail between my legs" apologetic towards her.

She starts looking for more notches but she had run out. I can almost see her turning purple and she hurls more invective and vitriol at me. She pauses a half second to catch her breath and I quietly interject, "Good-bye".

She practically screams "BYE!" and goes -click- ... She has to get the "hang-up" in before I do, you see... -chuckle-

The whole thing left me shaking... I was very surprised at how quickly those ugly, deep-seated, hideous, frustrated, depressive, nasty, make-you-want-to-kill-yourself-and-take-someone-with-you emotions hit me, trying to overwhelm me. I mean they rose up immediately in all their "black hole abyss" glory, full power "warp factor eight" intensity.

I was really surprised... And then I thought to myself, "...And I lived with that, feeling that every single friggin day of my life, minute after minute... Wow..."

Thank You God!!!!!!!!!!! ... I survived... God carried me through it all, all those years and I survived... THANK YOU GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I said, I was shaking... But I pushed it aside... My thoughts were along the lines of, "Yeah, I have no use for any that" meaning that particular pit of hideousness...

So I took a few deep breaths, tried to shrug it off, remembered who I am now, and continued with what I was doing... I didn't let my mind go back to that "pit" floating in the air next to me. Everytime it tried, I shook my head, took a breath and went to focusing on what I was typing.

By the time I was done answering emails, that "floating pit next to me" had disappeared! ... I say again, Wow!!!!!!! :-O

It was amazing! ... THANK YOU GOD!!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know what I'm going to do about my family... The situation is sooooo messed up. I've come to realize that I spent a LOT of time looking at them, thinking about them, and interacting with them from a basis of "wishful thinking"... pretending that they were the kind of people I *wanted* them to be instead of seeing them as the people that they actually *are*... So I prayed about them and for them last night before I went to bed.

Again, I claim progress... That "abyss pit" was soooo intense, so overwhelming, and so ugly... Seing it that way, and seeing it for what it is, and being able to "push it away" from me like I did -- like God did for me -- well... its at least miraculous if not a miracle. I am again awed.

And now I'm okay again... I was okay again long before I went to bed... I'm still breathing a few sighs of relief... THANK YOU GOD!!!!!!! ... I feel like I just dodged a flamethrower tied to a nuke armed with a proximity fuse and heading straight for my heart...

Wow...

A lot of "testing" lately it seems, huh?

Anyway, thank you for letting me share.