Forgiveness of yourself is a necessity - God forgives us of our sins, but you must ask and believe that the forgiveness is there, and if you ask and you accept then you let it go, regrets will haunt and destroy you. Making amends is something you do - they don't have to and may not forgive you - but if you reach out to make those amends, then you can clear your conscious by knowing you did so. you can't control who accepts and who does not.

If you want to continue beating yourself up - then by all means continue to do so, but it's not a necessity, it is a choice.

Peace!

There is the pity pot and then there is real pain and sorrow. There are no amends left to be made. Only living amends. I can't be young again and I do mourn the loss. I lost out on a lot and now life is harder than ever and more meaningless than it ever has been. Even with all this sobriety.
Self forgiveness is hard for me because the damage is irreversible. Who cares if God forgives us? Life is a crap shoot and it pisses me off. I'm doing my best and God knows it!
Thanks for letting me vent.

Hey this AA stuff really is my life cause here I have to say that I still don't think drinking would solve a thing. No desire here to make a bad situation worse! Now that's gratifying. When life gets you down, wait, I have learned, it changes. Feeling feelings suck but it's part of being awake and alive and I love that part of being sober.
And perhaps my experience hasn't helped another but because I am in recovery I have had the opportunity to walk even into death with beautiful people feeling their feelings awake and alive. Fearless warriors. I've met the best people in my life in the rooms of AA and NA, OA too! And the program itself taught me to look for what to be grateful for. My religion if I have one is to have an attitude of gratitude. I'm still glad I get to be alive and have this experience. Even if it's morbid.
So thanks again for being there and have a good day.

Hey, Lorna. What a change from your first post to the last post. I hear gratitude in there! :-)

Oh, I'm sure you help a ton of people!!

Be good to yourself and thanks for brightening my day a little when I needed it.

~Chris

I hear ya Lorna. I personally think it is ok to mourn the past-like a death almost. Dreams of could of, would ofs..... And then you gotta
let it go.

I find comfort in knowing that things have unfolded for me as they should, although I sure as heck cannot sometimes understand why. I look back on my life and sometimes say "crap-all I had, I all I could have been.." Bullshit! This is it, there is no other road, this place I am at was meant to be. Now is all I have, and I can either learn from the past and move forward now, or lay in regret of what could have been.

I lived too long in misery. Noty today though. I am no "young" like I use to be-but my heart still beats and I can get around, so dang it! I am not going to wallow-I am going to live and make the most of it-warts and all. I daily need to tell myself this-it is something we all probably need to work on. xo

What are the options? We can choose how to feel about things or choose to let go or not. We can live the best we can each day. That is it. It's hard yea.

Peace to you.

Lorna - I so hear what you are saying.

But - if we look back in regret - we are seeing what our lives could have been, from a view of how we would have wanted our lives to be. There are no guarantees - sober or drunk. Life has turns that we cannot predict or second guess - or to put it another way - hindsight is always 20/20.

So - maybe you would have been a more wonderful mother - maybe your husband would have been a happier man - and maybe not - we just never know.

I think good things come into our lives in direct correlation to how much we are able to let go of. It's like we have just so much room so we absolutely have to let go - or there is no room for the good. And the good things that have come into my life have been beyond my wildest dreams.

None of us set out to cause total and incomprehensible demoralization to ourselves. But we did. Could we have predicted that? No.

Go to meetings and let people reflect back to you the love that we all deserve and you will let go of the negatives - I promise you that.

And you helped me a great deal today. I needed to remember how I used to feel - that I had ruined everything and it would never be better. You will find miracles as I did. Take care.

I understand where you are coming from. I still have times when something will remind me of the past and I will have genuine feelings of sadness and loss and hurt. I dont regret the past, I dont wish to shut the door on it and I have gone a long way to forgiving myself for things I have done but that doesnt mean that I dont sometimes have feelings about it. That is ok for me, I believe it is natural and that contact with the past often helps me with decisions and attitudes in the present. And I totally agree with you, not all feelings of sadness, loss etc are self pity - far from it.

Yea I know what you mean. I have a really hard time too thinking of yesterday and how different I wanted things to have been but weren't because of 20 years of alcoholism/depression. I not only brought myself down I brought my son down with me. He had no choice and deserved better.

It's so fresh still and I"m not that long sober so the only memories I do have aren't good ones and it hurts. I beat myself up, but nothing can change what I did, only changing the choices I make today can change it and making new memories and being better now. It's hard.

My whole identity has become that depressed alcoholic who did all that crazy sick horrible stuff and wasn't really there and wasn't really who I really am or wanted to be. I want to make it better. I want to fix all the damage I caused to my son, to myself, our lives. But it doesn't happen overnight and that sucks too.

One of the biggest triggers for me now is the regret and guilt. It's kinda crazy to want to drink more because I drank. It just hurts alot and has been compiled and compiled and so hard to get out of that cycle. I have to stop now. I have to end this and start making new memories.

What's that LIke? What's it like to actually have peace and security, stability. To be doing what I really want to and not doing what I don't want to. To not struggle all the time or be afraid or sad or feel like a worthless dumbass? I guess in time I will know. But it takes time and forgiving yourself over and over and learning to live in today only making the next right choice. Best wishes and hugs

Our journey is that, our journey. I have always believed I have been looked after and protected and that so speaks to me today....my HP was taking care of me even when I was not grateful.

Your ESH is just that, yours. It makes us who we are and gives us the qualities we have.

Yep, I love that bit of the BB. Today, I can live and share my own ESH. Thank you for sharing yours with us. We all help each other.

Peace to you.

PS. You can not change yesterday yet you can make today :)

Hi Lorna, like many others, I agree with you. I've always called the neglect of my kids "my limp" in sobriety, but, like you, I am grateful for the time I've had in recovery.

I've had to mourn the loss of the wreckage of my past too. I differ in my idea of self forgiveness. It's not a choice or our society would be chock full of sociopaths. It has proven to be a gift, free for the taking with very little effort in return. No timetable on when one is ready to receive it. That's been my experience.

My HP is not a punishing God. I know he forgives me. He is pure love. Love what Linda Jean said.

I am not walking around with guilt and shame as much as I am just shocked at how decisions in life can take it for a turn that never goes right again. It is hard to love and trust a God that is so impersonal that anything can happen to anyone. I feel a loss. I did not get to raise those beautiful little kids. I did not get to be happily married. Some folks are born to starvation and aids. Like I said life is a crap shoot. I am angry at God. If life is important than why do we all die? I am glad I get to live and for that I am thankful. But I am deeply disturbed by what I've seen happen and happening. My mind does not revolve around my little world anymore. I wish I was a simple person but I am not. It is only the fellowship of other like minded people that keep me going because none of us have a clue. We're just in this together and that seems like what it is all about perhaps.

None of us are simple. We are a composite of our inherited traits and our experience - both bad and good. Today (like you) I make living amends to my wife, family, friends and society as a whole.
I willfully contributed to the mayhem and damage to society. The repercussions of some of my actions I may never know. But I am not alone. God gave us self-will, the ability to decide our course in life - for good or bad. The problems we see in this tired old world are examples of us humans as a speices exercising our self will - and reaping the crop that we sow.
Today we can but trust God, keep our side of the street clean, and help those we are able. Part of the amends is not to add to the weary pain inflicted on our race. You are doing what you are able - and that is a very good thing...
Hugs,
Dennis

Thank you Dennis. I see the human race as just acting like any other part of nature. Nature looks for the easier softer way and takes it when it can. It is all about survival of the fittest of it's species and has no care for whatever it has to use to perpetuate that. We are just part of nature after all acting like any other, one with the whole. We are all in It together. The course in life we as a race have chosen was inevitable in my opinion.
Some are simple. This is not a bad thing. A simple belief for example is easier for some than others. Some can simply follow without question. On the AA birthday chips it says on one side "To thine own self be true." This saying taken to heart is what gives me integrity. I am not that simple that I can just easily accept that everything is as it should be. I don't believe that. Everything is as it is, not necessarily what it could or should be. Why do we strive for high ideals? My Higher Power must have the ability to see me through who I am today. I now have the self esteem to honor myself. I am a good person who tries hard. I don't need to be forgiven and I have forgiven myself. It is God who I need to forgive. Cause this life is far from perfect and if 'He' was so good and loving and in control than why would life be so full of agony, because it is unless you stick your head in the sand and pretend it's all good. I like to be an aware person. I like to live with my eyes opened today without being clouded over by any self induced comfort system. I indulged in every form of escape only to find I can not. No I am not a simple person. I am also very strong willed. I have quit all addictions that I have found I was using just to arrive at the conclusion that it is all addictions, whatever we do to help bear the pain physical and mental, oh, and let's not forget the boredom, of being alive.
So, I have to choose God. I don't want to. God is a figment of imagination perhaps and that my friend is the truth. I am not so simple that I can say I have proof. But nor do I have proof to the contrary. We have a need to feel like we are good people doing the best we can and in fact that is just another ego fix. To feel forgiven, WTF? For what? For being alive? I don't need forgiven. I need an explanation. My Higher Power knows this and loves me anyway! :-)
One thing I can agree with and that is that the AA principals work. But some people in AA suffer a lot because we are agnostic. So consider yourself lucky that you are simple enough (lucky I dare say) if you can easily believe, and let the rest of us struggle with respect. I grow weary of the religious aspects and I'm sorry. But this story is about me and who I can help and that is all I have.
One more thing I will say about me and that is I don't think I was given life to be happy. I am here to learn. Otherwise life for me would be for nothing. The idea of wet brains and brain disease is frightening to me. To think we could strive for life's lessons when one by one they disappear into the fog. Life is a strange thing to me. And still I am grateful because I am here doing this thing called living, eyes opened as well as I can, no fix needed, just the comfort of what is today, and if I notice it is all around me, in the form of other living things, and the elements that sustain that life. Even distractions from boredom. I believe there is love. Thanks everyone. I love you.