The Consequences of Confession

Original Sin

When involved in recovery, we are encouraged to be open and honest about the causes and conditions of our drinking. Unfortunately, the natural result of that tactic is to be open and honest about the things we resent. Chief among them was anger and shame about trying to predict the severity of the new threats in our household (by sizing up a hazard, the threat becomes real) but by opening up, others were able to share what they believed the problem truly was.

The trauma leading to the separation of my parents and disorientation that resulted from endless moves and travel may have led to a careless bat swing that apparently hit my neighbor with a baseball bat. Because we moved again, I never found out what happened to him. He was my best friend then and the stress we lived with was never fully resolved, but we were required to go to bed at 7:00 PM, while the sun was still up and my other neighbor began admonishing me to stop cursing and follow the Lord.

Confessions

Fortunately, my sobriety afforded me the opportunity to write things down. But hacks to my work online, duress in my home, and disruptions and obstructions to coming and going during my daily activities requires patience and persistence to adapt to. And hatred and banishment forced by way of bloody assaults and financial hardship have prevented me from any realistic opportunity to use the Courts or to hear their cases. Before I left, I was so disgusted with what had become of my life, I abandoned my identity by throwing my drivers license and birth certificate out over the tracks from a bridge on Central Avenue.

My Efforts/God's Results

It was a strategy I realized has been used by many who simply had no other way to survive. I realized when I began writing on problems like the pollution caused by the black smoke spewing out of my school chimney and dead fish in filthy waterways, my camera and other expensive tools of the trade went missing, so discretion is advised, but not dishonesty.

I wasn't the only person in our neighborhood challenged during these years. My next door neighbor complained of a man taking pictures of her in the Gas Station bathroom, but when I was offended, I couldn't even remember what happened next, so we were in a kind of bind.

Some people perceive sobriety to be a journey back home, but for me, it became a trip to parts unknown. When I was prevented from reuniting with my family, and my communications online were disrupted, I worked to make my amends online.

Leaving Home

Adding to these challenges, while I operated my father's carpet cleaning business, he wrote a cold war novel describing a conspiracy to sabotage Russian Oil Industry investments in the Caribbean Basin by selling them useless land rights. So, I had to face the fact that online, I needed to make amends for problems that resulted all over the world as a result of efforts to promote Christianity in China and Democracy in Korea.

To make matters worse, I sought counseling after by bringing up a lewd act I demonstrated later in another location out of frustration with many who chose to disregard what I minded, so many may have believed I was involved in some kind of revenge by trying to have sex with my teddy bear, which is simply not true. I was just frustrated and completely unaware of how a sex act is concluded.

I had no idea how severe the suspicions I'd left behind had become and when I found out my daughter was in trouble in our region, I returned to encounter a hate crime scene along the way.

Doubt and Confusion

After I made my reports, I realized that I wasn't going to get any help at home at all - and that as a matter of fact, I was under siege. I've worked with the disenfranchised long enough to know that it's really not about me. It's about the opportunity for addicts to continue to indulge their addiction unobstructed, and there's nothing I can do about it. No effort has been made to reunite me with my daughter - despite my efforts to reach out online - because there are no other realistic options available to me and even here, I'm largely ignored, or blacklisted.

I also realized that the information I shared with healthcare workers, Pastors, Scout Masters, and Priests as a child may have been used to find out more by using my own children. That, because I was not capable, or not given a chance to recount the details when I was offended, that others may have chosen to use my children to determine just exactly how this problem came about. Unfortunately, the efforts I've made online have been obscured and misrepresented by hatred, confusion, and contempt, and we're being threatened current locations (even the family I returned to help), and on the streets as well.

After many years of persistent effort to report, I realize that writing is essential, but talking about it is not, even in places where we were once encouraged to do so. So I sit here and slog through revisions of my work that have clearly been left by others; either to find out what really happened, or to exonerate a suspect, while the reader must wonder what really happened and violence results all over the city from claims that aren't true, or representative of our work.

We used media primarily to be sure of ourselves, so we could defend ourselves when people who claim we're crazy to talk about an incident that offends us come to drug and restrain us (the effort to report while still traumatized may be obstructed to prevent people from doing further harm), but proof of the crime we experienced was replaced by proof of the hate crime that resulted and without the proof, the slander and defamation can continue.

Conclusion

If what we've been taught isn't working, we need to find a better way; while we've learned to be rid of the anger, fear and obsessions that cause the problems to begin with, the reporting we've been required to provide has become harmful, so we learn to do that work more carefully, to be rid of the poverty and contempt used to keep us out.