Resentment

The AA 'Big Book' says the main reason for relapse is resentment.  Resentment/anger towards people, places and things apparently causes most addicts/alcoholics to pick up.  I understand that concept.  I have seen it happen with my own eyes to people I cared about, at times right in front of my face. I see it even in my friends who drink/use drugs.  I have resentments and I joke about them.  I don't like them, but they never enter my mind when the craving for alcohol sweeps over me.  Maybe its because I am still trying to figure out what emotion I am experiencing. Sometimes I don't recognize the feelings I experience at times.  I don't know where they come from at times and more importantly, I don't know what they really are.  When I went through rehab, therapy and the like, there was the kindergarten like chart that was given to me.  It was a page or poster filled with cartoon facial expressions with words representing the corresponding emotion.  Given a loss of words when someone is new to recovery, you are given the chart and expected to point to what you are "feeling".  I would study that chart for hours.  While I was riding the bus, sitting on my bed or while listening to group therapy lament.  Like I was studying for a final exam.  The words were completely logical to me, I know the deifinitions of each one but it was the facial expressions that stumped me.  Maybe it was the artist or the publication but to me the words and pictures didn't quite match up.  How I felt by definition seemed to correspond with a completely different picture.  Apparently, for all the knowledge I had gained in my life, I was completely ignorant when it came to appropriate "feeling".  I would tell the therapist, I feel angry but its this other picture that truly captures what I want to emote.  Ridiculous! I was lambasted for not fitting into the box.  I was accused of lying, being manipulative and in general not being cooperative.  Which was far from what the truth was.  I felt alienated by that.  An emotion that was "right" and emotion I could pick out on the chart and the picture DID match.  So why did all the other ones elude me?  Why do they elude me now?  Sometimes, I don't even know that I am angry until a coworker or my boyfriend says something to me.  Is it really anger?  I don't know but it 'annoys' me that I don't see it myself.  

I have spent a better half of my recovery numb, probably a result of my depression.  I have experienced a lot of various 'emotions' but I always come back to numb.  Like I make my way around the Monopoly board and land on numb like its some twisted GO.  I collect my $200 of numbness and start moving around the board again.  Collecting achievements and paying off past transgressions, my reprieve being numb.  Over the past couple of days I have been on a roller coaster of various emotions, none of them productive, none of them enhancing my life.  I make conscious decisions daily not to fall into the negative and the result is being numb.  Disaffected.  Careless if you will.  I have been beset by problems at work, the Christmas holiday and family run-ins.  Collectively shaping me into this numb space I exist in now except I resent this.  I resent this mechanism in me that I can not fix.  I don't know how to stop it from happening and I don't know when it will pass.  Part of it is that I am vunerable right now.  I can go either way out of this, completely enraged or completely broken down.  Again, not something that is going to be a positive contribution to the people around me.  So my inclination is to isolate until it blows over.  However, there are a couple of days coming next week that all of us have to put on a big smile and be Merry!  For the most part I will do that, I am a professional you know.  I have been "acting" my whole life, its part of being an alcoholic.  But I don't like this anymore and wish it would go away.  None of this makes me want to pick up a drink.  There are other reasons I would like to drink and do drugs mostly it would be to express myself.  Express those feelings I saw in the chart and have them make sense.  I believe thats the real reason I drank to begin with.  Alcohol and drugs especially let me feel safe while feeling happy, angry, sad.  Now thats ****** up and that I truly resent but that is for another time.