Wait a minute - did you just hear that?

That's right, that was the sound of a lightbulb going on illuminating a thought I was trying to ignore! It was the sound of the truth of certain things clicking into place! It was the sound of my heart skipping a beat for all the wrong reasons...you get it.

I spent a night skipping the meeting and eating delicious food and having conversations that girlfriends who have known each other for a lifetime still have to work into with a cocktail or two. Yet there we were, 3 girls from 3 walks of life, who bared their war wounds and misadventures like an episode of "sex in the city" a.a. style. So pretty much the same dirty, crazy, funny conversation minus the cosmos.

Tonight was a night of a sort of empowerment of what my sobriety as a woman, depending on other women, means. Realizing painfully and objectively what men in and out of the rooms of a.a. will do for whatever suits their fancy. I am sorely disappointed in the simple-minded willingness I have to be driven by their empty words and false promises and concern.

Not that I have been terribly scorned by some shallow and heartless bastard, or even some overly emotional, I now have feelings sober asshole, but rather I was brought out from under the foggy veil of illusion I had that they had no hidden agendas. I like to think and get stuck in the thought that when someone says I am important that it's true. I pretend that the empty promises they make to me are somehow more substantial than the empty promises I make right back. That somehow their words carry weight to them, because I prefer to be needed than to need.

In my quiet times when I decide to reflect on the draw to someone in the first place, I realize that the connection of it for me is simply more about the moment that I am existing in and nothing beyond that moment. I am pulled in by the excitement of conversation and interaction building and unfolding before me while I participate with abandon. It is like a think tank of energy for me, and I am distracted by the "shiny" intensity of it. When the dust and sparkle settle, I am left to see the peeling paint and damaged structure I mistook for something more under the false light of hope and night. I see how I built a masterpiece in my mind and found it was nothing more than a cheap imitation.

I am seeing in myself the ugly side of using and being used through sober eyes for once and it is interesting how it feels so different to be on fast-forward when I learn new things about myself. I seem to fly through moments and revelations at a rate that alarms even my own ability to comprehend the speed with which I am processing (how's that for a paradox?). The things which used to hold me slave to them, the thoughts which would bore into my day are less of a nuisance now. I am able to swat away so much of the negative with a flick of my mind and move forward into the next moment of my life. Not to say by any means that I have this all figured out - far from it!!! But I do certainly see that I am not being run by my life and my addictions anymore. I am learning to live with them and create harmony between my sobriety and my emotional sanity.