April 25 • That's My Baby
Day 290 My counselor has talked about me acting out through my inner child, but that has never resonated with me as much as this clarifying thought from someone that's been in the program a lot longer than I have: "...we longed for absolute power so that our pleasures would have no end." Damn.
Of all the factors and causes and excuses I've sought to explain and excuse my actions, this one — acting like a baby — was not at the top of my intellectual possibilities, but there it is. It felt like that, like I had a right to 'feel good' even though feeling good always led to feeling bad, always led to tears and horrors and dirty diapers. But an infant does not have the experience of life to know that those things cannot be maintained, or even that there is right and wrong to such amorality. I do.
I did. But I did it anyway. And it is still not satisfying to me to blame it on 'addict brain' or 'my disease,' even though I do know that these phrases describe something — a condition or illness or syndrome — that is real and clinical and mine.
It makes me want to cry... like a baby. –JR