Other People

[MajestyJo]

This was one of my biggest defects of character. I lived my life through others. I was out to please you so you would love me because I didn't love myself.

My addiction was Other People. The more I had in my life, the more people I had who loved me.

I gave up a piece of me, every time I picked up a drug. People were part of my drug, getting new people to accept and love me. I needed you to validate me because I could never find it within myself.

Thanks to this program, I no longer have to do that. It is okay to be me. I have a Higher Power who loves me the way I am, warts and all. I had to learn to accept myself, so I didn't keep looking outside of myself to make me feel better.

I often looked to other people's words because my own never seemed to be enough. I didn't believe they were enough, in fact I was often told they were not, so I hung onto the words of everyone around me. I took people hostage just in case I might need them later, never wanting to let them go.

I used you to get what I needed because I couldn't find it within myself. I learned through this program, that I went to a meeting to find myself. By listening to you, I was finding myself and putting me together. You were part of a puzzle that I needed that in and of myself, I could not ifnd it. Often because I didn't know what 'it' was.

[janbear]

thanks for sharing Jo. Got me to thinking about myself

[MajestyJo]

Reality can be as painful to accept as it was to escape.

"Walk Softly and Carry a Big Book"

When I think of escape, I think of picking up a drink or a pill and yet I know I had that pattern long before I was an age to drink and before I became addicted to medication.

My first conscious awareness was at 14, not being able to go outside because it was Sunday, going upstairs, taking off my Sunday Go-Meeting clothes, and crawling into my bed.

There were many times spent UNDER the bedcovers with a flash light reading the books from my dad's cupboard which was a forbidden zone.

In later years, I recognized shopping, working, and relationships as means of escaping my reality, especially those of me not being lovable and worthwhile and finding validaiton in people, places and things.

As Wayne Dyer says, 'Each place along the way is somewhere you had to be to be here." I had to go through what I went through to get to where I am in today. Trying to repeatedly escape that reality, means I am no longer living my life. Life has me instead of me having a life.