I don't know what's wrong with me. On the one hand I feel like I'm grieving a great loss but no one has died. The past several months I've felt like all three of my families are dying but last night as I talked with Mac, I finally admitted what I did not want to think about- it is me that is dying.

I don't know when it began. But I know that I have gone backward in my program. I feel just as miserable as I did when I came into Al-Anon almost four years ago. At that time my life was unmanagable and I felt like I was responsible for the whole world. I also felt like everything I thought about myself was somehow not suitable. I had an alcoholic/addict husband who used to take me apart piece by piece. I was living in a prison of his making. Any emotion I had was inappropriate. If I laughed, I laughed too long and too loud. If I sang or danced around the house because I was happy, my song and dance was inappropriate. If I sought out activities that made me happy, he ridiculed them. If I expressed a desire to be intimate I was made to feel undesirable. If I went to worship at church he also had something to say about it. If I was sad, and I was a lot of the time, I was wrong to be sad. If I was angry and tried to defend myself the verbal abuse and threats of violence increased. Nothing I did was right. I felt like a piece of garbage.

Those feelings are back. Recently I've had various AA and Al-Anon members say and do things that have brought back those feelings. To be verbally attacked in a meeting by a board member of the clubhouse, who didn't belong in an Al-Anon meeting to begin with, simply because she was someone of social standing and felt better than me was wrong. To have that same person deliberately open a meeting room door and leave it open violated anonymity and confidentiality. To have that same person try to engage Al-Anon members in a personal vendetta against the smokers in the building was wrong. She may be the person behind the anonymous phone call. Then to go to a meeting with Al-Anon members and have them reprimand me in a group meeting was also uncalled for. One of the members is my former sponsor. I can't seem to ever do anything right in her eyes. She has criticized me almost as harshly as my alcoholic/addict did but the difference is that she says she does it out of love. I don't need that kind of love. My Bible tells me that love is gentle and kind. I thought that was what Al-Anon was all about.

Tha sense of being responsible for everything is back too. At one time I felt like I held my alcoholic's life in my hands. I felt super responsible. Over the last few months I had begun to feel responsible for my home group, the clubhouse that houses AA, Al-Anon and NA, the Lawrenceburg group and the district. People just didn't seem to have any energy left and I was propping them up. I have enough on my plate without having that responsibility added to it. I feel like the thing for me to do is to step down as GR and district secretary. I just can't do it any more. Al-Anon, the very thing that saved my life 4 years ago, is beginning to kill me.

I just can't do this any more. I still need my meetings but no one is showing up for them. I've joined an on-line Al-Anon group and I'm beginning to get adjusted to it. I've got contacts in various other meeting locations that I am keeping in contact with and that I will be visiting soon. In addition to that, I am going back to Centerstone for counseling sessions. My nerves are so bad and I am so miserable that I need the extra help again. This time they may put me on some kind of medication. I kind of hope they don't because my entire family is on some kind of nerve or depression medication. I'd like to continue in life without it. But I did get put on it once before when my alcoholic was still in prison. It could happen again. All I know is that I can not continue at the pace that has been set for me without some serious help. My friends are beginning to get a little scared that I might do myself some harm. I will admit I've been a little suicidal- I was before, too. But I don't think I'd ever do myself harm. Pain is the major deterent there.

When I can, I will attend meetings on Monday morning with my sponsor. That is a fairly healthy group and it is a no-cross talk group. I feel the need to be in one of those right now.

Other parts of my life seem to be improving but the constant paranoia and depression threatens to engulf me there, too. But I can honestly say that those areas of my life are getting healthier while this one area, the area that saved my life, is killing me. Maybe I'm in the wrong program. I've mentioned that to Mac a few times that's why he thinks I seriously need an AA sponsor and he is it right now. But I'm riding his nerves too badly. He may bail on me soon if I don't get help. He pretty much told me that last night.