Seeing myself as a separate individual is often difficult.
It's not just that I lost boundaries — I forgot I was supposed to have them. Living with alcoholism, I merged. Their mood became my mood. Their crisis became my emergency. I couldn't tell where they ended and I began, and after long enough, I stopped trying.
That merging felt like love. It was actually disappearance.
Step Four changed something. For the first time, the focus was entirely on me — not what was being done to me, but what I was doing. My patterns. My choices. My motives. The inventory drew an outline around a person I'd lost track of and handed her back to me.
And with that outline came possibility. If these were my patterns, I could change them. If these were my choices, I could make different ones. Separating was painful, but it also gave me the freedom of having a life that was actually mine to shape.
I didn't know how much I'd disappeared until the inventory asked me to account for someone I'd stopped being.
When I notice myself absorbed in someone else's crisis today, I can pause and ask: whose crisis is it?
Today’s Reminder
I am a person, not a shadow.
Carry this peace in your pocket.
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Curated by members of the Al-Anon community for Daily Growth, LLC. Grounded in the Twelve Steps and the contemplative tradition of Al-Anon.