Nice Katy.  Jim its okay to say goodbye to the people we need to leave without explaining why or giving excuses or feeling bad about it.  My early sponsor told me that I was going to have to get away from all things alcohol and that included my family, my then alcoholic/addict wife and her family.  I had to get away from them all and then once I got over the anxiety of it because it was so un-usual, I walked away because I wanted to recover my peace of mind and serenity.  It worked.  I'm better than okay and I guess they are better off themselves.  You're okay.   (((hugs)))  

(((Jim)))
As Raven says - To think own self be true
I have lots of people in my life, through work, who have different priorities to me. I enjoy the parts that make me smile and the rest I celebrate as diversity. People do what they do for their own reasons. Me included!!

I can relate to outgrowing relationships and also that relationships, like love, can change over the course of time. They can be transformed into something completely new and different but still on the continuum of relationship or love. For example, my love for HP has changed quite a bit over time, waxes and wanes, and is still changing, but however it manifests, it's under the umbrella of love.

People used to be either on my team or as an adversary; with the help of Alanon, I can limit my time around people whose warmth has faded or whose presences has become awkward- without it affecting me so much. I believe that even the best of us, given time, may disappoint someone only because we're not perfect. I can't afford to isolate and am working on improving my "sociability" that has become altered and distorted with exposure to the disease. I have found that it's not necessary to "trash" everyone that has become b o r i n g, but not malicious. It's excellent that you've found your center, a very important element wherever you go.

Hi Jim

I go somewhere if I have any good business or social reason (Big Book Step 12.)
Is there a good reason? Are you going to support someone like you would at a funeral? Are you going to bring something happy to the occasion? (Can these people "hear" you? Are you connected to them in something real?)

What are your motives for going.

It's funny you mention this today because i was just reading an email from my spiritual friend who said he was involved with an unhealthy group Of people and he says he really should have found a healthier fellowship (he has that now with a group of spiritual seekers.)

After i went through the steps I could feel that God did not want me to bring back in almost ANYONE from my past I had changed so much. Of course i went against that (!) and invited them all back in one by one. None of it worked.

-- Edited by WorkingThroughIt on Saturday 5th of April 2014 09:09:15 AM

Thanks Guys,

Pinkchip there is no harm intended at all. They love having me around or else wouldn't have invited me. :). It is my attitude that is the problem and that's what has me concerned. My mother was always like this. She was very bitter and isolated. It's funny because I am at a stage in my life now where I have moved on from being that kid and I have things to 'brag' about...I just don't...it's not a competition for me. I don't have to live up to siblings or my father or to my high school friends. I am me....that's it, that's all. Nothing more to see here.

It's rooted in that, my mother moved us to this suburb because she wanted everyone back home to think that we were moving on up and not moving to a new city because we had to. My father was laid off and out of work for 1 year... We moved somewhere we couldn't possibly afford and gave me a false sense of reality. We lived in this giant house but never had any money for anything....wha??..Then it all came crashing...the drinking, the mental illness and all the dysfunction.

The point is, I never felt I belonged in 'suburb'...but because it's where I grew up, it's where I went to high school and where I played sports and it's where I met all my friends, who were very different from me. Now that I am starting to come into my own, I am moving on from a place that they can't seem to let go. Yet, I am ready to let go.

Jim.

I can certainly understand outgrowing what is familiar and wanting something different. The hard part for me was figuring out what it was that I wanted or fully accepting what I wanted and going towards it even if it was new and different and unfamiliar. My HP always helped me see what it was I was seeking and it was always a big surprise for me. Still is.

That's the beauty of being alive for me, SJ. I get to choose what I want and I get to be who I want to be. When I got confused about that, Joseph Campbell's message "Follow your bliss" showed up in my life. Maybe your HP will surprise you with a message that will inspire you in some way, too?

Jim, I grew up gay and was bullied quite a bit. I learned to play it straight but had a mental breakdown (depression and anxiety), came out of the closet, had to drop out of school, cancel a wedding and dump my fiancée at age 25. I continued having depressive episodes that knocked me on my ass for much of my 20s and into my 30s. I developed a horrible and increasing self-medicating routine with alcohol and was massively codependent in all relationships - Hence, I had a long relationship with another alcoholic.

What's my point? I grew up in a suburban upper middle class home with 2 non-alcoholic parents. I would absolutely be one of those kids you would identify as a "have." My reality was not that though. Up until this program I thought God crapped on me with depression, bad relationships, being gay, and then alcoholism. Don't compare your insides to other people's outsides. EVERYONE is facing their own personal battles.

For me, things got much better when I kept counting my blessings and refused to fall into self-pity. None of my hardships were inflicted upon me - they happened FOR me so I could finally come to terms with who I am deeply on the inside. I also stopped looking at myself as fundamentally different than others in any way. We call that terminal uniqueness. You are a human being with WAY MORE connecting you to others than separating you. All that has occurred in your upbringing can also be looked at as not being done to you, but FOR you so that you could be the resourceful, self-made man you are. Embrace it, work it, and live it. It's fine to let go of relationships that don't feel right but it sounds like you are more annoyed by them due to baggage you have and are clinging to. They may not be your best friends as it sounds like they are not as inclined to share emotions and ideas as much as surface stuff but when you take out your personal stuff, they are just people who love, lose, get sick, accumulate stuff, lose stuff and whose crap smells too.

HI Jim.

I remember you have talked about being one of the youngest folks in meetings. There is a reason for that. When you are young, you are invincible. Things mostly seem to be going your way, and even if they aren't, the young person figures he has a whole lot more years to BS his way through it and to get to a place where you get to "have it all", whatever that may be.

However, once you start hitting middle age, reality hits you in the face in many ways. The occasional death happens. Some cancer happens. People that you thought "had it all" turn out to be big liars, and other people you never would have guessed just have a great life. There is seemingly little rhyme or reason to it, HP must have a plan but I usually can't see it. At our age, we have seen a lot of things that the young person can only imagine, some good, and many just horribly awry. And we discover, just as ClearTheFog said, everybody has some skeleton. EVERYBODY. And the only place where these skeletons are actually exposed for most of us is in Alanon or AA, where the emphasis is so much on being real and exposing it. Most churches don't have that emphasis, in fact almost nobody does because they don't feel that their very lives depend on it. But our lives, and our qualifiers lives, we find out are brutally dependent on being real and being in recovery.

So when you see those people at that party acting like they are cool and they have the latest whatchamacallit that will communicate to their latest generation iphone through the dashboard of their Mercedes, remember they haven't had to be real. But someday, they might just be forced to be real.

And remember that you are way ahead of them in that department. Growing up early like you have will make you a much more mature judge of what is REALLY going on. But it can also make you impatient with the immature. But you may be there for someone, if somebody sees that you have your head on straight compared to everyone, they may just want to find out what you've got that they don't.

And besides as pinkchip said, there could be some good-looking gal waiting for you. Of course, you being the mature person that you are, that won't be your only measure of her :) That happened to me at a party I almost didn't go to, and here I am 30 years later with her.

Peace
Kenny