Mistaken Identity

I went to a meeting yesterday, after not going for four days. I had a lot of negative feelings from the weekend, but something made me get up and go yesterday, and I was so glad I did! I heard just what I needed to hear to put all those negative thoughts out of my head and get back on a positive track. I had a really long talk with my Temp Sponsor, and she laid it all out about Simplicity and how I still trying to control things and not surrendering to powerlessness.

I felt so good after this meeting, that I came home and wrote a very long post to the online group of AA that I'm in, divulging all the good things that happened to me at the meeting and how I am seeing things in a different light regarding spirituallity, lightening bolts from my HP vs. subtle guidance and change working in my life. I wanted to share all this, because I had still been lurking and reading other newbies posts feeling uncertain of the same things I had been feeling.

Well, one member began replying to my posts and telling me that I was obviously too far into MYSELF if I could sit there and write such a long "NOVEL" all about myself and not out there doing service work, and pretty much was telling me to get over myself. I was totally dumbfounded, didn't know if I had overstepped a boundary line of this online group by posting such a lengthy post, and I did not feel that I was writing ABOUT myself FOR myself, I felt that I was sharing my feelings with other new members in hopes that they could relate and see that things DO get better!

Turns out this member had mistaken me for another member of the same name with lenghty history of sobriety, therefore she was telling me to read the BB and do service work at a Treatment Center when I have only been sober for 5 days! I mean, I just got my BB and I can't go speaking to others at a treatment facility this early in my recovery, sure I could do other service work, clean up, coffee, greeting etc, but I can do that right in my own meetings. Anyhow, to make a long story short, when she finally realized that she had made a mistake, she gave a very empty apology and followed it up again advising me to read the BB, which I HAVE been doing!

Obviously this woman did not read my entire NOVEL or she would have realized that I was the new member and not the old timer, she was too far into HERSELF! And immediately jumped to conclusions and began spewing advice. When one thinks too highly of their own opinions, that can do A LOT of damage, can send a person packing and out of that "ignorant persons" earshot! (Hmmmmm, is that what I have been doing to hubby all these years? Thinking too highly of my own opinions and sending HIM packing? Hmmmm, a very deep thought) After falling into my old ways a bit and battling verbally back and forth a bit with this woman, I saw it was getting nowhere, she was incapable of admitting her own shortcoming and giving a true apology of any kind. So I just ended it with giving it over to my HP and praying for HER! I knew I could not keep letting HER upset me when I HAD been so happy and filled with joy!